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Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

economist.com

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Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#51

Post by tn_ »

junkscience2017 wrote: post #22
tomc1985 wrote: post #2

Probably because helicopter parenting is in vogue (at least in the US). It is seriously messed up that you can have CPS called on you for letting your kid wander freely in the neighborhood

I can't get my kids out of the house. I try. All of their friends are on SnapChat and/or Steam games. No one leaves their rooms. It is really depressing. Kids are not getting fresh air anymore.

How old were your kids before they got their smartphones/computers?

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#53

Post by jessriedel »

kelukelugames wrote: post #20
dinoleif wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fathers can't be involved if they aren't around. Single motherhood rate in 1950: 5% Single motherhood rate in 2010: 41%

http://www.prb.org/pdf10/single-motherfamilies.pdf This paper says it's 24%. Do you have a source for 41? That's too high.

Your statistic is for the fraction of children living in single-mother households. dinoleif's statistic is for the fraction of babies born to single mothers. So your statistic doesn't count babies who are adopted to two-parent households or whose father later marries the mother (probably plus other factors I'm not considering). I'd say your statistic is more directly relevant to "is there a male adult living in the same house", but dinoleif's for "is the child being raised with a legally committed biological father".

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#54

Post by IncRnd »

Pulcinella wrote: post #9
tomc1985 wrote: post #2

Probably because helicopter parenting is in vogue (at least in the US). It is seriously messed up that you can have CPS called on you for letting your kid wander freely in the neighborhood

You won’t have CPS called on you for letting your children wander and play in the neighbor. Please don’t spread nonsense. Edited with my response to everyone depositing articles about the Meitivs: Nobody “called CPS on” the Meitivs. Somebody called the polic because they saw the children wandering around a parking garage (not a park like in many of the news stories. See [1].) The police officer then called CPS severa…

It's unfortunate, but it happens regularly in today's world.

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#55

Post by verifex »

I was going to initially say something about child-care, but then I read the article and saw that men child-care time was previously 16 minutes a day in 1965, and now is up to around 59 minutes. That actually seems like a positive trend; at least from a holistic and common-sense point of view. It seems pretty strange that the men would spend such little time with their offspring. Now, we need a study to see what affect men spending more time with their offspring is having on them and society in general.

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#56

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

picodguyo wrote: post #26

It's interesting that reactions to stories about parenting are always default-negative no matter what. People are saying this stat just shows we are smothering our children. Had it been the opposite (half as much time), people would be accusing parents of outsourcing childcare.

Negative responses trigger a greater emotional response, thus garner more attention and upvotes.

The fact that negative content commonly reaches the top is just a side effect of the voting system, which reflects human psychology.

As an aside, I think the rise of subreddits like r/wholesomememes and other purely positive subreddits on r/all was done intentionally to counter the rampant negativity on Reddit. I think it's great. I wonder what kind of cultural guidance systems the mods on this site have in place.

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#58

Post by DoubleCribble »

junkscience2017 wrote: post #22
tomc1985 wrote: post #2

Probably because helicopter parenting is in vogue (at least in the US). It is seriously messed up that you can have CPS called on you for letting your kid wander freely in the neighborhood

I can't get my kids out of the house. I try. All of their friends are on SnapChat and/or Steam games. No one leaves their rooms. It is really depressing. Kids are not getting fresh air anymore.

Mystery power outages that seem to hit only our house have been known to occur in my neighborhood on fine weather days. It's like a ghost in the breaker box or something...

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#59

Post by azernik »

picodguyo wrote: post #26

It's interesting that reactions to stories about parenting are always default-negative no matter what. People are saying this stat just shows we are smothering our children. Had it been the opposite (half as much time), people would be accusing parents of outsourcing childcare.

But probably different people. Communities are very capable of holding conflicting viewpoints.

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#60

Post by baxtr »

junkscience2017 wrote: post #22
tomc1985 wrote: post #2

Probably because helicopter parenting is in vogue (at least in the US). It is seriously messed up that you can have CPS called on you for letting your kid wander freely in the neighborhood

I can't get my kids out of the house. I try. All of their friends are on SnapChat and/or Steam games. No one leaves their rooms. It is really depressing. Kids are not getting fresh air anymore.

Sounds like a problem of the US. It’s not (yet) like that in Europe. We spend a lot of time outside with kids not matter how bad the weather is.
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