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We Have Ruined Childhood

nytimes.com

171–180 of 505 posts

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#171

Well, if you report 24x7 hate and danger, scare the crap out of people, and report that there is danger behind every tree, then yes, childhoods are ruined. Things are getting safer and the only way you would know it is go look at the CDC stats. Kids need time with their friends away from parents. I'm so glad I was able to grow up in the (sadly last) "be home for dinner, be back by dark" generation.

I'm curious -- what decade was that? I grew up in 90s Russia, it was literally "be home for dinner, be back by dark." The things we did without supervision...

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#172

One thing overlooked in the article is that we no longer have mothers at home. Society looks down on such women without considering how important constant attention is to children in their formative years. Working households also have more stress and more bills (two cars, childcare, etc). Why these points weren't considered for the article is beyond me.

You know too well it is because it is the NYT and they got certain agenda so they won't say a word which could interpreted even slightly against the religion of feminism.

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer isn't dependent on rate of death. It's based on when we start teaching children to heal through trauma, as well as take responsibility for and learn to release their emotions. These drills are simply trauma fuel. They're irresponsible actions taken by irresponsible, fear-driven adults who think they know what kids need when they themselves don't know how to be ok in an horrific situation or how to heal fro…

[flagged]

The fact that you reach for those analogies should tell you that maybe these drills aren't exactly the best.

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#174

Well, if you report 24x7 hate and danger, scare the crap out of people, and report that there is danger behind every tree, then yes, childhoods are ruined. Things are getting safer and the only way you would know it is go look at the CDC stats. Kids need time with their friends away from parents. I'm so glad I was able to grow up in the (sadly last) "be home for dinner, be back by dark" generation.

Exactly... there is not a single day when a story of a violent crime and/or serious injury to someone isn't the first story on all the local news outlets.

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#175

Is this exclusive to childhood? It feels to me, though this could well be a socio-economic bubble thing, that people are just scrambling everywhere. Hyperfocused on something; anything. Maybe it's their career; maybe it's their cause; whatever. But the innocence of just living, existing; hanging out in this beautiful world we call home; seems to be fading for many. Happiness must be now, not future, otherwise future…

I agree, a better title might be something like, "We Have Ruined Life". But I guess that's a tiny bit melodramatic. Still, start with the subtitle - I'd be surprised if you don't relate to it: "[A]an hour of free play is like a drop of water in the desert. Of course they’re miserable." With just those sentences, there's nothing to indicate that the author is talking about children, and the article continues as it sta…

> Didn't Marx once say that "religion is the opium of the people"? Well, religious participation has been dropping like a stone lately - maybe twitter has supplanted that role. And to think that we used to use the term 'holy war' as an ironic way to talk about how people wasted their time with ideological internet arguments - it's not so funny now, is it?

Reminds me of Chesterton's quote.

> For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#176

Well, if you report 24x7 hate and danger, scare the crap out of people, and report that there is danger behind every tree, then yes, childhoods are ruined. Things are getting safer and the only way you would know it is go look at the CDC stats. Kids need time with their friends away from parents. I'm so glad I was able to grow up in the (sadly last) "be home for dinner, be back by dark" generation.

I grew up being able to stay at my friends and bike home in the dark.

Aside from school demands, there is this whole helicopter parenting phenomenon

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#177
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kids need time with their friends away from parents. I'm so glad I was able to grow up in the (sadly last) "be home for dinner, be back by dark" generation. Completely agree with your comment, but "sadly last" here is not accurate unless you're talking about North America and maybe Europe. I live in Japan and it's quite normal, even in a big city like Tokyo, to let kids play on their own until it gets dark. I feel…

Kids in Japan lead carefree "be home by dark" lives up until late middle school and high school, when they start studying 4+hrs/day and sleeping <5hrs/night to prep for standardized tests. I don't think Japan is a horrific dystopia for teens but it's hardly the "let kids be kids" culture that America of yesteryear (apparently) was.

> Kids in Japan lead carefree "be home by dark" lives up until late middle school and high school, when they start studying 4+hrs/day and sleeping I think that time of Japanese kids' life is actually when they are the most free, they can goof off and do pretty much whatever they want as long inside and outside of school and no one will bother them (parents and teachers likewise), as long as their test scores are OK, that's one of the reasons that 15 is considered the start of the "best years of your life" (seishun).

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#178
post #55

I mean. I’m not okay either. I work to try to reduce my screen time as much as I can but when it’s part of the job and also an always ready hit of dissociative dopamine in my pocket it creates an awful feedback loop that I’m not equipped to handle. At work as a programmer, you’re “supposed” to spend some free time doing projects and have “hobby development”, so you can reach the next career echelon. Even not in a pro…

sounds like you live in the city, suburbs and the country have a slower pace of life

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#179
This isn’t anything new. In my 90s middle school and high school, the official policy of my school was that we would have an hour of homework per academic class each day. We got out of school at 3:30. With 5 academic classes, a typical bedtime of 10 o’clock, commute times from school of half an hour, and an hour for dinner, that theoretically left zero time for recreation. I’m confused about how they ever thought that was healthy or reasonable.

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#180
post #108

Here are some hard economic truths. Both parents work. That’s a big part of it. Women have joined men in the corporate workforce and are encouraged to work 10 hour days and move up the corporate ladder. This together with automation and outsourcing and trickle down economics (eg lower capital gains tax than income tax) has contributed to wage stagnation. In the past, taking care of children was indirectly valued econ…

Being a housewife has still much more economic value than the average woman in the workforce, and that's even after artificially skewing the market by outsourcing house work to illegal Mexicans on slave wages.

An average housewife used to take care of the kids, prepare healthy food, clean the house, do the laundry, take care of the elders, trim the flowers in the garden, help with homework and give emotional support. Think about all the people you need to employ to do all those jobs and their cost.

On the other hand at the workplace women are failing, they hardly create new businesses and therefore don't generate any new jobs, they hardly represented in jobs that are difficult, dangerous, physical or technology related. Not even in music where they usually perform but don't create, how many women bands do you know? A huge chunk of them are working in government positions, basically being payed by men generated taxes, the collective "men" replaced the husband. There is an average wage gap of 25% but in terms of true contribution to the economy the pay gap should be much higher, we are bleeding money to enable this feminist utopia which turns out to be more of a dystopia.

It will be much better for everyone if women will be encouraged again to become housewives, not everybody as there are exceptions and some women should be in the workforce, but the whole ideology of women must go out to work need a second thought, that's for sure. A lot of women will miss the social aspect of going out to work and we should also think how to bring back the village environment into our cities, like setting up common places for cooking and other home related work, being stuck in a suburban home 1950' style is also not going to work.

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