By Christine Carter, Greater Good Magazine, March 20, 2020
Last weekend, my kids began arriving home from their various schools. We invited our oldest daughter’s longtime best friend, Lena, over for a homecoming dinner. She’s like a member of our family, and we were excited to see her, too, despite closing schools and social-distancing recommendations. The kids are all healthy, we reasoned. We had Lena wash her hands when she came in; we resisted hugging her.
On Monday we got a government order to shelter in place, and having had Lena over the night before suddenly seemed like a reckless mistake. But not all families in our neighborhood agree.
Parents all around me are reasoning that their high schoolers have been hanging out together anyway, so they’ve already “shared germs.” Lots of seemingly rational (but dangerously short-sighted and scientifically unvalidated) arguments for letting kids out of the house are circulating, including the belief that teens and college students won’t get seriously sick, and that they aren’t contributing to the spread of COVID-19 beyond their “friend groups.”
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