- evaporation of the single earning household
- destruction of the middle class
- drugs and the drug war
- less kids/single kids are more heavily watched
- unwalkable neighborhoods and mcmansions
We Have Ruined Childhood
461–470 of 505 posts
Re: We Have Ruined Childhood
#462I have a child. I love him very much. I can not fathom why any parents would not have free time as priority. Free time is amazing. Here is why. - I get a break. - My child gets to learn how to learn on his own. - My child builds independence. - My child learns to manage his time on his own. I see this playing out in the work force too. Far too many people I have worked with that are younger need to be told exactly wh…
What I've observed: they don't want any type of failure for their kids. I'm a Scoutmaster, and I have one parent who lashed out at me because I asked him not to interfere when the Scouts were trying to do something for themselves. I didn't let that affect me, I just thanked him for his feedback. Thankfully, I have the support of everyone else in the troop. What saddens me, is seeing first-hand how bad these parents a…
This saddens me too. Recently, I traveled with my 19 year old nephew to Thailand. This guy had been so coddled by his parents all through that he had no experience of doing things by himself. Once when he wanted to go to our resort room from the beach (about 500m walk) in the daytime, he refused to do so alone. He asked me to accompany him. This was a straight line walk and I said he could ask anyone if he couldn't figure it out :-/
Re: We Have Ruined Childhood
#463Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. One suspects the concept of quality time came in with the rising incidence of divorce. Where quality time implies some kind of performance or role, which is stressful, hanging out with one's children is wonderful. I find that the compensations more than make up for the difficulties. I enjoy the company of people who are totally open and forgiving. I get the profound satisfaction of watching them learn. I re-e…
Divorce rates in the US have been declining for decades. Unless you're referring to a different area or timeframe?
I think the phrase quality time emerged in the 1970s at which time the Sexual Revolution was well underway and divorce was sky-rocketing. It's really a euphemism for scarce parental time with children (e.g. a father's visitation period).
Re: We Have Ruined Childhood
#464Seems like society is constantly pushing to remove all the ways in which kids used to live. Can't just wonder around and play on the sidewalks or the streets anymore with your friends, someone will call the police on you. Can't hang out in the woods, as those have mostly been torn down to make way for new neighborhoods, and the woods that do remain are typically private property. Unless you are lucky enough to live i…
I think this is one of the reasons why Minecraft was so successful, especially with kids. It fulfilled a need they're not able to get in real life: exploring freely with their friends.
I keep seeing stories about how kids are talking to their friends more online and less in person, almost always spun as "tech is supplanting face-to-face interactions!"
The reverse explanation seems screamingly obvious. Minecraft, Fortnite, Facebook, AIM, pick your program, are all things kids and teens do to talk and interact when they can't be together in person. They'll play videogames at a sleepover, sure, but it's a very different thing than getting on a game every night to chat. If your friends live driving distance away, you don't have anywhere fun to hang out, and you probably can't go out on schoolnights anyway, it's no surprise that socialization moves online.
Even beyond exploration, Minecraft is a perfect vector for this. It's collaborative and persistent, the same as building a treehouse would be. It can be closed-access, so your parents don't have to worry about strangers. It's drop-in with no fixed player count, so your friends can all cycle in and out for dinner, bedtime, and so on. And it's varying intensity, so you can do anything from fighting monsters to chatting about the schoolday as you decorate a house.
The decline of physical "third places", and the outright death of third places for children, is really depressing to behold. But I think Minecraft is at least a bright spot helping to offset that; it offers practically everything you could want except physicality.
Re: We Have Ruined Childhood
#465One 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.
True, they're probably trying to avoid feminist wrath by getting into that. Along vaguely similar lines, there is a higher incidence of birth outside of marriage than in the past in the USA [0] which ends up affecting some of those things indirectly (if more father influence would push the child in the direction of the outdoors, etc)
But most importantly, there's no "P" in hexidecimal.
[0] https://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Nonma...
Re: We Have Ruined Childhood
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ...and the woods that do remain are typically private property. I've heard that in the states you can own a piece of property but have "no right" to get to it, as it's surrounded by other pieces of private property and, so, you're at the whims of those properties' owners. Is this true? In Sweden, we have the concept of 'Allemansrätten'[0]; which is to say that 'private property' (in the absolute sense) doesn't exis…
"and the woods that do remain are typically private property" This is not really true, there are thousands of forests and lands that are public spaces. Whatever the problem is, it's not this.
The accessible woods are often private property, though, at least on the east coast. BLM and other state/federal lands are fantastic, and they're certainly plentiful out west. But lots of that land demands serious hiking or backpacking, and even the land that's easy to walk into isn't generally accessible without driving. It's not an option for inviting a friend over after school to explore the woods.
The land that is accessible by foot or bike is much more likely to be privately owned. And when it is public space, it's often a town or state park - which is quite likely to come with enough curfews, enforced bans on unaccompanied minors, and other child-unfriendliness that it's functionally private.
Re: We Have Ruined Childhood
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is all pretty US-centric. Kids are allowed a fair amount of freedom in Canada and Europe, where I still see a lot of kids around malls, or parks, playing basketball in courts (which still happens in NYC), or wooded areas. Sure, more are on their phones etc. But it’s really not that different from the 90s IMO, in many locations. The biggest change is there aren’t so many clusters of “neighbourhood kids” as there…
I'm in Canada and the post you're replying to is pretty spot on in my experience. There are no kids outside, except on halloween. To be fair, there aren't many adults outside either which I think is a part of the problem. I have a 4 year old nephew. Once I took him to a park near where he lives. There were only 4 other kids there. In the time we were there, the cops showed up to shoe away 2 boys who were 10-12 years…
I just finished watching “Stranger things” on Netflix. It hits home. I was allowed to wander with my friends during the day, granted I got home for dinner. We used to walk almost a mile to school and back on our own. We didn’t have mobile phones and our parents really didn’t care. It was a way of life. “Where are your kids? Somewhere with their friends”.
I think the iPad generation now live virtual lives with their friends. Kinda sad but that’s what fearmongering by media gets us.
Re: We Have Ruined Childhood
#468Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could be arrested or your children could be taken away from you. http://www.freerangekids.com/category/child-protective-servi...
What the heck? Madness. When I was a kid (not too long ago), we used to throw rocks at other people's windows. Cops has been called out. They came and told us in a polite, friendly manner to not do that, or go elsewhere. Nothing else happened! We were unsupervised, etc. Would have I been taken away from my family in the US for this incident?
It varies wildly and unpredictably.
We could talk about era (this is largely 90s and more recent), location (small towns are often better, suburbs are overzealous but not viciously policed, cities are less likely to intrude but often more heavy-handed when they do), income, and race (the predictable biases). There are definitely places where children have been systematically taken away (mostly poor, minority communities).
But for most people, this comes down to "99.5% of the time, no, but there's no way to be sure you're safe." It just takes a run of bad luck: an invasive bystander, followed by an overzealous cop or social worker, perhaps followed by a judge without much common sense. Which means that it has an extremely widespread chilling effect. I've heard several people say that they know the crime stats and aren't scared of their kid being attacked if they go out alone - but still won't allow it because they're scared of the police and child protective services.
Re: We Have Ruined Childhood
#469Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a Swiss, when I see that constant supervision is mandated in many US states until 12 years old , then I have to think that there's more than just isolated communities there where it's going wrong. You basically have laws that make anything other than what we call helicopter parenting illegal.
But even here in switzerland. For ex. we played cooking on my grandmothers house on a small toy kitchen where you have to use "META Tabletten" to make a fire. On my parents house we coocked with small children electric plates (10cm or less diameter). The panes where just large enough for an egg or so. Today it is possible to buy large toy kitchen, but on no of them you really can cook. There are just no real children…
I remember those too. I still think there's a difference between making kids toys a bit safer and literally taking away their time and space to flourish and replace it with some insane adult-mandated schedule, and then have f-ing Jira boards with your kids as recently discussed here.
Re: We Have Ruined Childhood
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>> someone will call the police on you This may be a naive question but please bear with a non-US person - what would happen in the US if someone actually called police on you? Could you just say "these are my children and I think it is good for them to be unsupervised, good bye"?
It really depends on where you are. Local cultures differ on this, and the only place stronger than Facebook at encouraging peer-enforced group think is the break room at a police station. If the cops in your town are cool with kids running free, then you're fine. If they're not cool with it, then you have a problem. The other issue is a real concern: what are the prevailing traffic speeds in your neighborhood. I'm i…
> TLDR: avoid the suburbs if you want your kids to run free.
A lot of the decline in free-range childhood clicked into place once I realized just how terrible suburbs are for little kids.
The roads are the worst part - wide, empty streets that invite speeding, connectivity that make them short-cuts for outside drivers, lots of bends and bushes that obscure the view. But they're not the only major issue.
Suburbs are usually built for cars, meaning no sidewalks or bike lanes, just a choice between walking in the road and upsetting the neighbors with their manicured lawns. They're usually fully developed, meaning no woods or fields to play in. And they're privatized, meaning no sports fields, no open grass for games unless the neighbors approve, not even any parking lots for safer street ball. They're featureless, so littler kids can't find their street or house in a maze of HOA-mandated similarity. And while our fears of crime are exaggerated, they're perversely insecure, combining a rural lack of bystanders with urban anonymity.
My run-down, dead-end street growing up seems weirdly idyllic in hindsight. Speeding was impossible, no one but the residents had a reason to drive through, every house looked different, there were trees to climb and a bit of undeveloped land at the end of the road. Even the neighbors who hated kids and each other had to use spite fences and complaining, not impersonal HOA crackdowns. But of course, there have been plans to suburb-ify it for decades now...