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Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

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Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#11

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

tmaly wrote: post #2

I would have thought that two parents working and not technology would have been the major contributor to loss of the community in early periods.

> I would have thought that two parents working and not technology would have been the major contributor to loss of the community in early periods.

I had one working parent and I had a community because I had places to go.

My 5 kids had 1 parent at home full time and zero community. For most hours they were trapped in a building with adults. Sometimes they were contained in some highly limited adult-made program. And that was what they had. Also most every other kid.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#12

Post by doe_eyes »

jc6 wrote: post #10

Is this what Zgmunt Bauman called the transition from Solid Modernity to Liquid Modernity? With rents going up and switching jobs more frequently than past generations it becomes harder to stuck around in one place long enough for strong communities to form.

The rate of work-related moves is half of what it used to be in the 1960s. By all accounts, mobility is decreasing, not increasing.

The reality is that we just don't talk to each other much. If you want to look for the decline of one institution that provided some degree of community cohesion, then the answer is going to be pretty unpopular: we don't go to church anymore.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#13

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

potatoman22 wrote: post #8
WorkerBee28474 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All in all, this is not science It's not trying to be. The intended audience is not peers reading a research journal, it's normal folks and policy makers who don't know what a confounding variable is but still want to make modern life suck less.

Since the audience isn't technical enough to realize the author excluded confounders, doesn't that make it even worse?

Confounders or not, kids don't have crap for communities. They have 24/7 adulting, most of it spent in one building or another.

source:5 kids. source:15 years scout leader. source:10 years youth leader, other.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#16

Post by swalling »

ajma wrote: post #5

Does families having fewer number of children contribute to this? The most local community would be children that live under the same roof.

It’s not just a lack of siblings, it’s also a smaller number of extended relations of a similar age, i.e. cousins.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/cousins-decline-canada-1.7103...

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#17

Post by a1o »

doe_eyes wrote: post #12
jc6 wrote: post #10

Is this what Zgmunt Bauman called the transition from Solid Modernity to Liquid Modernity? With rents going up and switching jobs more frequently than past generations it becomes harder to stuck around in one place long enough for strong communities to form.

The rate of work-related moves is half of what it used to be in the 1960s. By all accounts, mobility is decreasing, not increasing. The reality is that we just don't talk to each other much. If you want to look for the decline of one institution that provided some degree of community cohesion, then the answer is going to be pretty unpopular: we don't go to church anymore.

It doesn't have to be churches, local school with parents association making events, libraries that have spaces for the kids to hangout with others and work on projects together, open sports areas, parks and small festivities, farmers market that have a set periodicity. But it has to have one space where people can start to meet each other so they can talk and desire more things so they can build these other spaces or have some unified way to demand it from their local mayor.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#18

Post by mihaaly »

Are liberal and secular teenagers more willing/open to admit problems or seek help for unusual troublesome matters set them apart form others than religious peers perhaps? Human culture of the past several centuries are full of art and documents showing the repressive nature of religious or other prescribed expectation oriented groups. There are countless movements to counteract with the oppressive side of prescribed behaviour and group habits too.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#19

Post by sircastor »

WorkerBee28474 wrote: post #7
chris_va wrote: post #6

Apologies for being critical, but this reads like the author had a conclusion they wanted to reach and worked backward to some flashy graphs to make it work (the right side of the "lies, damn lies, and statistics" spectrum). There is no discussion of confounders, no control groups or paired studies, and there are million things correlated with the last 50 of societal development years besides the topics mentioned her…

> All in all, this is not science It's not trying to be. The intended audience is not peers reading a research journal, it's normal folks and policy makers who don't know what a confounding variable is but still want to make modern life suck less.

I think it's trying to appear to be science. They want the appearance of legitimacy and objectivity to encourage a particular position.

A quick read through of the site shows it's a conservative-leaning group, and I'd be willing to bet that sooner-or-later they'll be pushing "a return to traditional values" as the cure for all our ills.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#20

Post by thimkerbell »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #9
ajma wrote: post #5

Does families having fewer number of children contribute to this? The most local community would be children that live under the same roof.

> Does families having fewer number of children contribute to this? It could have decades ago, when kids still had places to go. Not now. I had 5 who spent their childhood persistently locked away in one adult construct or another - because there was/is no local community. Within their reach were roads and private property and that's about it. They were in the same boat as most other US kids.

How would you (could one) change this, Waron? Just throwing something out there, not a carefully thought out How.
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