In 1967, my mother was 10 years old. By that time, she had for about a year been taking a city bus alone, from her residential neighborhood to Philadelphia’s city center, where she would walk and window shop. She had also been babysitting her two younger siblings—alone in the house, not as a mother’s helper—from the age of seven.
Even by 1960s standards, this was a lot of childhood freedom and responsibility. More than most of her friends got, and more than either of her younger siblings would get at the same age.
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