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We Have Ruined Childhood

nytimes.com

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Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#471

Post by protomyth »

nandreev wrote: post #171
protomyth wrote: post #5

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...

Gen X in the USA. The Millennials got hosed, badly. Not only did their playgrounds get replaced with child-safe equipment that looks really unfun[1], they got a whole load of parental and school supervision over recess. Never mind the whole no going out without parents crud.

1) the 20' dome monkey bars I played on as a youth got tore down and replaced with a molded plastic installation to play on.

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#472

Post by aaroninsf »

neuronic wrote: post #342
seanhandley wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One word: cars.

Another word: What?

7z unpacks this as:

American post-war car-centric urban design transformed public space from one accessible to, and commonly ranged by, all (including children), into one largely accessible by motorized transit.

Children without licenses and access to vehicles consequently lost direct autonomous access to the core locations in their lives (home - school - simple shopping - peers - common wild space), and have been discouraged from attempting to navigate these spaces on foot (for fear of injury or unrealistic transit distance/detours required).

The author does not state, but one may infer, that car-centric living is coupled to the overscheduling and helicopter parenting at issue in the original article; and that children raised in a car-centric environment experience something akin to learned helplessness.

These problems are further compounded by comparatively poor American public transit systems and a contemporary mindset in which fearful parents discourages free-range children from making use of what transit options are present before the last few years of childhood; and by safety concerns around biking and skating in environments which do privilege cars.

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#473

Post by barberousse »

dTal wrote: post #48
tptacek wrote: post #4

Does this feel to anyone else like a lengthy characterization of a very particular time/place of 20th century child rearing? And, if it does, is there a reason to believe that we got parenting exactly right in, what, American circa 1950-1970, after starkly different parenting norms both before and after?

Unless I'm quite mistaken, free range child rearing was very much the norm basically anywhere in America or Europe for at least several centuries (with the caveat that children were also commonly used as a labor force, especially with subsistence farming). Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, while admittedly idealized caricatures, spend prodigious amounts of time outdoors unsupervised, and this is seen as normal. Red Ri…

"Work" also use to be free-range

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#474

Post by barberousse »

Shivetya wrote: post #378

Government ruined child hood, in particular over zealous DFACs units have ruined parenthood as well to education where a child not being supervised is a child not enjoying themselves. Seriously, when did we come to the belief that children need structured activities all the time. Easy answer, when government employees stepped in. When politicians and government employees decided they knew better than parents or child…

DFACS' also force many children who could be fostered out of falling into homelessness and poverty before they're even 18 because none of them want to report their case or else they'll be separated from their siblings. Got that from the older brother of a pair of young black siblings panhandling on both sides of a crosswalk. You "do something about it" short of taking them in yourself (that's a tall order) and you've just fucked those two brothers' relationship for the rest of their life.

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#475

Post by aaroninsf »

aaroninsf wrote: post #472
neuronic wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another word: What?

7z unpacks this as: American post-war car-centric urban design transformed public space from one accessible to, and commonly ranged by, all (including children), into one largely accessible by motorized transit. Children without licenses and access to vehicles consequently lost direct autonomous access to the core locations in their lives (home - school - simple shopping - peers - common wild space), and have been di…

As a parent these considerations are omnipresent in my household.

My own kids are in the top quintile of "most free range" in our cohort; that feels possible in San Francisco in some ways which do not appear as feasible in many other urban areas. That's one reason we continue to try to raise our kids here.

But they do not get anything like the benevolent neglect of my own latchkey neighborhood-wandering local-kid-pack-factions semi-rural/suburban childhood.

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#476

Post by jimbokun »

vibrio wrote: post #419
parasubvert wrote: post #282

Earlier 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…

"This is all pretty US-centric." Is it US-Centric or urban centric? My guess is most of this board falls on the Urban side (Me included). I am unable to apply many of my valuable unstructured rural experiences as a youth to how I want to raise a child in a city. I thing I'd have the same challenge with Rome, Dallas, Barcelona, or most other urban centers.

My kids go to a city high school.

They have different kinds of unstructured experiences. After school, they have all kinds of restaurants and coffee shops to choose from. They can hang out at the Jewish Community Center and play FIFA. They sometimes wonder with their friends to a field at a local university to play soccer. They watch movies at the local theatre I only find out about when they mention later what they saw.

Heck, my older son took his girlfriend to a fancy restaurant I haven't even been to yet. :)

Before high school, a big mile stone was when they were old enough to safely cross streets on their own to walk to the local pool and basketball courts in the summer.

So there are still plenty of unstructured, unsupervised experiences to be had, just different than the rural ones.

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#477

Post by cr0sh »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #408
piker wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's generally incorrect. If your property is surrounded by others' private property in the US, an "easement by necessity" will generally be automatically granted which allows you access to your property through the surrounding private property.

Not that easements are easy to get or are free of contention -- a lot of pedantic property law comes out of asshole neighbors making other people's lives miserable. Source: good buddy of mine is a real estate lawyer, and after a couple drinks he'll bitch and moan about it for hours

My brother-in-law went through that with a piece of property he bought in California; it was a house on top of a "hill" (or small mountain?).

Two "neighbors" colluded to shut off all easements to the property, hoping that in 7 years (or whatever) they'd get the right to the property and could fix it and resell it. It was originally owned by investors, who wanted to offload it because they were fighting the same fight, and one of them had a heart attack and was dying, and they just wanted out. Along comes my BIL and he gets it for a song.

And the issues to boot.

The neighbors - one was a known "a-hole" in the neighborhood who would sue anyone and everyone; indeed, if you looked up his name in California, he had a record of using the courts almost as if it were his job. The other guy, he owned a large avocado orchard which bordered the property; he had fenced over one of the plat map easements. The other easement was a road which led to the property, which the first guy lived next to, just down below from the house. He blocked it off with a metal gate. He also owned another house he used as a rental, which was just immediately below the house. So he'd leave the gate open sometimes, and would give a key to the renters, but otherwise it was closed off. He'd also let people in for maintenance and inspection of a water tank which served for water in the neighborhood.

The story is wild and long - they didn't count on the tenacity of the family I married into. They didn't count on my brother-in-law, who works construction - being willing to run his dump truck for 48 hours straight with little-to-no sleep to make money in any way possible so he could pay his lawyer bill every single month (which ran to insane levels). He didn't count on my sister-in-law being willing to live in the house, to establish residency, while her husband worked a state away.

We had to hike up to the house one, using machetes to cut thru the undergrowth. My brother-in-law later ran a bulldozer to cut a path up the side of it, to get past the gate (he came from the avocado side - which the sheriff allowed him to cut past the fence, because of the plat map, and thus had to fight that neighbor in court too) - they then used 4wd vehicles to get up the side to the house.

He never counted on any of this and more. My brother-in-law flew a pirate flag from the flagpole, just to give the other guy the finger during all this.

Eventually, after several years, my brother-in-law won the lawsuit, and got access to the road. The gate was removed. The entire neighborhood rejoiced, and my BIL became the "hero" of their area, because they had long suffered various indignities by that guy.

A few months after my BIL won the case, the guy ended up having a heart attack, and died. The other guy lived a few years longer, but also ended up dying of natural causes.

My brother-in-law's house, now that it has access, instantly shot up in value several times over. He and his wife are now thinking of selling it, and moving on to other things.

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#478

Post by XorNot »

SuddsMcDuff wrote: post #373
XorNot wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's objectively the baby boomers fault. Once they die things will mostly get back to normal since a huge voting block which has systematically defunded infrastructure, welfare and services they benefited from will finally be out of the political system as pathetically reliable voters. They're fortunately aging out of power right now too.

Genuinely, I can't tell if you're trying to refute the point, or illustrate it.

There's nothing to refute when someone sets up a truism that the problem must just be people complaining.

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#479

Post by jpindar »

technothrasher wrote: post #359
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed with other poster: If you own land that is completely surrounded by other land, you generally have the right to go through other's land. But on the other hand, it really isn't "allmansrätten" either. (I am from the US and live in Norway - and norway has the same sort of laws). Here in Norway, you can simply camp for a night in some unused wooded area or a field that is obviously not used. In the US, you can ge…

This depends upon the state. Here in MA, you cannot stop people from being on your 'unimproved land'. In other words, people are not allowed to trample your lawn, but they are free to wander your woods. There are generally town bylaws against hunting land without the owner's permission though.

In NH, landowners get a significant discount on their property tax if they allow hiking, fishing etc. on their unimproved land.

Re: We Have Ruined Childhood

#480

Post by wizzard »

saiya-jin wrote: post #390
wizzard wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For much of this, we have over-involved, over-concerned mothers to thank (and a bunch of dads that think like moms). What a hateful, sexist notion to put in the middle of an otherwise articulate comment.

> What a hateful, sexist notion to put in the middle of an otherwise articulate comment. And yet completely true. I've seen it personally in my parents, in all kids around me growing up, and I can see it among friends/family raising kids these days. Guys are simply much more relaxed, sometimes a bit too much for my taste. Not a single case of opposite situation (this might be extreme experience for whatever reason, b…

I don't necessarily object to the generalization that mothers are more involved and concerned. What I find objectionable is implying that this quality of mothers has ruined childhood. The "dads who think like moms" comment also seems disdainful, like there's something feminine or weak about dads who are more concerned.
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