UPDATE: Danielle and Alexander Meitiv have been cleared of child neglect in one of two cases for which they have been investigated.

Ten-year-old Rafi Meitiv and his 6-year-old sister, Dvora, are not unfamiliar to Silver Spring law enforcement. In a span of five months, the siblings have been picked up twice by police for walking home from their local Maryland park without adult supervision.

Although the kids’ parents, Danielle and Alexander, are now under investigation by the Montgomery County Child Protective Sevices (CPS), the Meitivs have turned allegations of neglect into a stand about their parenting technique, and poured fuel on to the fire of America’s already overheated parenting wars.

Essentially, keeping an eye on their kids at all times runs counter to the Meitivs’ beliefs—a practice commonly referred to as free-range, or slow parenting. They’ve said they will sue the police and CPS for infringing on their right to parent as they wish, which is using a technique that encourages children to be more independent by allowing them to go to the park alone, make their own way to and from school, or leaving them at home by themselves for short periods.

Free-range parenting is the opposite of helicopter parenting, which involves near constant monitoring of a child’s activities, and the Meitivs have garnered support from parents who think kids need less supervision to thrive. Vocativ spoke to three parents about why they believe free-range is the way to go.

Leonore Skenazy, mother of two, New Yorker:

Lenore Skenazy with her husband, Joe, and sons, Morry and Izzy. Izzy, right, was the subway joyrider. Lenore Skenazy

In 2008, the parenting style made headlines over the actions of Lenore Skenazy, who says she’s “fighting the belief that our children are in constant danger from creeps, kidnapping, germs, grades, flashers, frustration, failure, baby snatchers, bugs, bullies, men, sleepovers and/or the perils of a non-organic grape.”

Skenazy allowed her then-9-year-old son to find his way home on the New York subway. He made it back to their apartment in one piece and Skenazy, a writer, blogged about the experience. Within days she found herself on the wrong end of a nationwide parenting scandal—earning the label of “America’s worst mom”—and parlayed her infamy into a book and subsequent reality show.

“We’ve become brainwashed into believing our kids are in constant danger, and once you believe that it changes everything. It changes the way we parent. It changes what we’re allowed to do. It changes childhood,” she says. “The reason the Meitiv kids were picked up is because somebody saw them in the park and thought, Oh my god, children outside, they’re in danger! It’s all based on that basic assumption. Ironically, we’re living in the safest time in human history.”

This isn’t to say Skenazy is anti-safety (“If you have a baby and invite me to a baby shower, the gift I bring is a fire extinguisher”), and she describes herself as a natural worrier. But she also says free-range parenting is about keeping things in perspective.

And Skenazy is ready with a cautionary tale. She cites one woman who left her three kids in the car while she picked up the dry-cleaning, and was greeted by two police cars and a fire truck when she returned. She was so spooked by the experience that she made sure to take her kids out of the car from that day on. Unfortunately, one of her children ended up being hit by a car in the parking lot.

“Literally more children die being run over or hit by cars in parking lots than die waiting in cars,” Skenazy says. “Somehow, if you inconvenience yourself—even if it makes no sense, even if it endangers your kid—you have proven you are a good parent. But if you ever choose convenience, if you ever take your eyes off your kids, you are a bad parent. We’ve come to believe that in our bones.”

Nancy McDermott, mother of two, upstate New York:

Nancy McDermott has been practicing free-range parenting for the past four years. She lives with her husband and two sons in upstate New York and wants her kids, 10 and 12, to develop an age-appropriate sense of autonomy. However, she admits that there is often pushback—even from her own children.

“I would love for my kids to do more, but they are actually somewhat afraid because they have absorbed the idea that things aren’t safe,” she says. “They are so much less competent than I was at their ages. I regularly went to the store, rode my bike across town or out into the country and walked home from school. They are only just starting to do some of these things—but I find I have to suggest them. Their worlds are so much smaller than my husband and mine were.”

It also extends beyond the home. McDermott says that in addition to the idea that children need constant supervision, parents have been “reduced to a necessary evil” who also require policing. She notes school policies that enable teachers to go through lunch boxes, weed out unhealthy items and send notes home reprimanding parents for nutrition choices. Or the contracts they make her sign so that she’s aware of her responsibilities as a parent, such as checking homework.

“Imagine if I sent a note like that to a teacher?” she says.

Mollie Kaye, mother of four, British Columbia:

Mollie Kaye’s children also share the occasional frustration with being free-range kids. Kaye and her husband live in British Columbia with their two boys, 14 and 12, and two girls, 10 and 8. Instead of being driven to baseball or softball, like most of their friends, they have to take their bikes, which doesn’t always go down well.

“They don’t like it when it’s uncomfortable; it can be socially awkward to be the only kid to be riding his bike to baseball practice,” she says of a recent run-in with her oldest son. “He says, ‘What are we, poor?’ He thinks it looks bad.”

Despite this, she perseveres. She noticed she had a more relaxed parenting style when her first son was a toddler; she’d let him fall over in the playground and not make a big deal of it—much to the horror of some other parents.

But she started consciously practicing free-range parenting when she got divorced from her first husband and saw an immediate difference. It involved letting her kids play in the backyard unsupervised, or allowing her then-5-year-old to walk up the street to a friend’s house. She says they began demonstrating a self-reliance that mirrored her own experience growing up in central Ohio in the 1970s.

“It’s a bit sad for me that there has to be a movement. That we have to call this out and say we’re doing a free-range kids thing—it seems a bit self-conscious and ridiculous. I’m grateful to Lenore for putting it out there and drawing attention to it. But I’m still mourning the fact it has to be like this, to justify allowing certain freedoms for kids,” she says, adding, “And the Meitivs, thank god for them. I hope that they will be sacrificial lambs for this cause. I hope they won’t back down…This has to get so bad before it’ll get better, I guess. Somebody’s got to stand up.”