Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

afterbabel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 480 posts

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

#21

Post by swatcoder »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #11
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…

FWIW, that doesn't counter the GP's suggestion that changes to the community norm might have impacted the experience for everyone.

Your 1-parent childhood may still have benefited from having many other stay-at-home parents keeping an eye out the window an ear to street for kids who need attention, and likewise your kids childhood may have been more isolated for the lack of that, even with a parent staying at home for them individually.

Sometimes, it's not about the circumstances of one's own home so much as about the prevailing circumstances (and expectations) of the community as a whole.

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

#23

Post by scarby2 »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #11
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…

I had 2 working parents and a community. The perceived safety and walkability of an area has a lot to do with it. My parents weren't worried if they didn't see me from morning until dinner time (and obviously they had no way of getting in contact with me other than maybe phoning all the other parents - assuming we weren't off in a field somewhere).

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

#24

Post by analog31 »

thimkerbell wrote: post #20
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My kids faced the same situation, though at least the neighbors also had kids. I think that parents have to revolt en masse against saturating their kids with extracurriculars. One family going it alone is going to have lonesome kids.

The competitiveness has to go away -- the feeling that your kids have to be 100% occupied in order to give them a fighting chance in the future.

Schools need to back off on homework.

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

#25

Post by bedobi »

peepeepoopoo75 wrote: post #22
throwaway48476 wrote: post #15

America is transitioning from a high trust society to a low trust society. This is one of the many consequences.

[flagged]

are you seriously implying that immigration is responsible for a sudden reduction in public trust? american immigration has been a thing for 300 years

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

#26

Post by rightright »

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.

[flagged]

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

#27

Post by standardUser »

I think it's an important topic but I reject these explanations entirely. Television may have stolen time from other activities, but during that era television was itself a unifying activity, generating a previously undreamt of amount of shared cultural experiences. I'd argue excessive television-watching was a result of reduced social cohesion and community, not a cause.

I blame very different trends from that era...

- The Drug War and "tough on crime" policies that generated a massive amount of fear among parents and created a hostile relationship between police and youth (and continues to, to this day).

- Christian fear-mongering over Satanism and witchcraft, creating even more reasons to keep a close watch on your kids.

- Racial integration of schools and neighborhoods which gave white parents an urgent reason to restrict and monitor which kids their kids played with.

It wasn't distractions and technology or the lack of a global war that lead to reduced trust and cohesion. It was the spectacular and enduring success of professional fear-mongers.

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

#28

Post by peepeepoopoo75 »

bedobi wrote: post #25
peepeepoopoo75 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

are you seriously implying that immigration is responsible for a sudden reduction in public trust? american immigration has been a thing for 300 years

[flagged]

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

#29

Post by bedobi »

The design of the physical environment is in no small part responsible for this. Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school, to friends places and just in general play and exist outside unattended to a much higher degree than in the US. Because in the US they would be roadkill, and even if they somehow survived outside of a car, car centric design means there's nowhere for them to go on foot or by bike anyway. Everything is too far.

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

#30

Post by Firaxus »

thimkerbell wrote: post #20
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What I observed in my neighborhood is that the school playgrounds which used to be unfenced were essentially secondary parks. But they have since been “locked down”, removing more places kids once could just go to hang out in our paved over subrbia. I also had the benefit of an undeveloped forest behind my house to go explore and play in, but I don’t think most kids these days have access to that without an adult driving them to such a location. Walkability to nature is a big plus.
Post reply on HN