[grey_whiskers]

This is caused by too few children. When I was a boy, my mother had 6 kids to look after. It was nothing for us to take off in the woods behind the house without telling our mom and stay gone for hours. In the summer she would literally shoo us out of the house and tell us not to come back until we were hungry. We would walk a couple of miles in the summer to go swimming, catch crawdads, climb trees, and catch fish. I didn’t know we were poor until I was about 12.

Ladies, care to comment?

[Tax-chick]

I definitely think that fewer children are both a cause and a result of fearful parents. I don’t send mine off to the woods to hunt their suppers, but my older kids are allowed to go anywhere they can walk without getting on a main road, as long as they’re together and they tell me they’re going. The little boys (7, 5, 3) go to the playground across the street together (without me) once I’ve watched them cross the street safely.

As others have observed up the thread, some of the most highly-publicized frights are less statistically likely than they were when we were children. Some dangers are geographically affected - more shootings in the inner city than where I live. My main concern is traffic safety, and I also have the children go about in groups, which one can do with so many.

[Scotswife]

Thank you gw - that post describes my childhood very well.
I only had 2 siblings, but we still were kicked out of the house and told not to come home until dinnertime.
We lived out in the country, so we wandered about the woods and made our own fun.

There are times when I feel stretched and hope I am devoting enough time to each child.
You’ve helped me worry a little less about that today :)