Of note in recent discussions is the universal lack of trust.
Parents now check for and become aware of local pedophile and ex-felon locations near where our children circulate.
Urgent notifications from our schools advise increased awareness when a predator or abduction attempt is reported in the vicinity of our schools.
Society is not the same as it was in the late 20th century. These predators have rights which limit or extinguish the trust and freedoms we once enjoyed as children.
Contemporary "Helicopter parenting" and the limits on time which today's parents have to share with the children competes with time required to maintain their responsibilities to their jobs, mundane tasks of the household, meals, shopping...it's not surprise these generations struggle with fitness and obesity as well.
My how times have changed. I walked to 1st grade more than a half mile. Never wore a bike helmet.
Oh yeah, we drank water right out of the garden hose!
It’s really sad ...
It’s not the parents and this is not new.
My youngest is 21 and I raised my own children with the same hyper-parenting that I’ve always hated.
But I didn’t have a choice.
Take your son to the ER for a basic head-bashing accident and they call CPS.
Let your kids go to the park at ages 6 and 8 and somebody calls the police.
I had the police called because my son and his friend were sitting, 15 feet from my front door, 5 feet off the ground on a tree branch.
I had the police called because my son was digging in the dirt with a spoon. (That call was out of concern for the... I kid you not... welfare of the grass.)
Child Protective Services was called when my daughter went to the ER with a broken arm at the age of 15. 100 witnesses saw her fall and break it rollerskating at the rink. But I was still called on the carpet for child abuse.
It’s not the people want to parent their children in an overprotective way. It’s that we live in a Nanny State government that picks and pokes into average lives and threatens everything that we love and hold dear.
And why do they poke the average mom and let kids die in foster care?
Well, we’re the easy marks. We’ll go with their program as far as we’re able. We’ll bow and scrape for them not to take our children. The real abusive parents won’t cooperate as nicely. They’re a hassle to deal with.
But Jane Smith on Bayberry Lane will do anything to appease. They can check a hundred blocks on their sheets if they mess with her.
And there you have it, in a single sentence. And not only do they have rights, they trump yours, mine, and our those of our children.
I don't understand how it is that every sort of pervert/criminal degenerate have managed to seize control of our society. They have black robed fools issuing Fatwa's on traditional America. And the SCOTUS will issue another sodomite supporting fatwa, regarding gay marraige in June.
Over the past two decades, my kids used to “dig to China” and then hose off before coming in several hours later. They used to “follow the creek” for miles and take apples and sandwiches, then come home not too long after dark. By third grade, they knew how to deal with busybodies so they would not lose the privilege of roaming on their own, and they never ran into trouble. They also knew how to deal with predators, and I’ve always been pleased with how well they handled those problems.
I ran into trouble a couple of times with the busybodies, but I learned how to be diplomatic enough or intimidating enough that nothing ever came of their desire to ruin childhood for other people’s children as much as they had ruined it for their own children.
Reality bites, physics kills. You can’t have freedom - whether you’re an adult or a child - without the risk of harm. We live in a society which believes the risk of harm can be eliminated through constant supervision and a readiness to sue.
It can’t. The harms avoided by supervision, helmet-wearing, and cushioned playgrounds are obvious. The harms accumulated due to the absence of freedom are invisible.
My favorite call-the-cops incident (among several) was when my 4-year-old son had a crush on a little girl up the street, but couldn’t remember where she lived. He was going up the street knocking on each door, asking, “Does Maggie live here?” A middle-aged lady deputy showed up on the doorstep with him, “He says his name is Frank, and he lives here.”
One day there’s a thread berating parents for being too lenient. The next, a thread scorning our “overprotectiveness.” It’s a no-win situation for most parents of young kids today. Try to explain or “defend” yourself — well, there will be no shortage of people ready to tear you down and let you know you’re a failure.
FWIW — I don’t think the world was necessarily much safer, back in the day. I think there were plenty of pervs and predators out there. The difference is that now, people talk about it. And I say this because I know of incidents with older members within my own family, and they basically shrug and say “who would’ve believed me?”
My wise friend maintains that the best kindergarten education a kid can get, is spending a summer in and around the creek in the back pasture.
Oldplayer
Families were bigger then, too. Most of my friends had 4-5 kids in their family. There was a definite separation between “kid stuff” and “adult stuff.” Our moms just told us to go outside and play. If no friends were around, we had our siblings. Nowadays parents, often mothers, press themselves into every little aspect of their kids’ lives. I think a lot of them are living vicariously through their kids.