Uh, if this person grew up in the 70’s, it was already way too late for running around unsupervised.
“My family lived in a subdivision full of cul-de-sacs...”
Faceless suburbs, not much of an upbringing...
I thought of you when I read this.
"say it's likely that"? What this means: absolutely nothing.
In general, I think people are overprotective.
Liberal policies are responsible for this. Liberal policies that let criminals go free and try to take away our right to defend our lives, family and property.
Growing up myself in the "stay out until the streetlights are on" era, there were certain houses we were told to stay around from because of "funny old men." Of course we took this as an open invitation to throw rocks, snowballs and eggs at these houses at every opportunity.
The big difference between then and now is that there is simply so much to do indoors. When I was a kid, there was very little TV (only about six channels and three of them you had to keep messing around with the rabbit ears to receive) and so us kids got underfoot. SO naturally our parents told us to get outdoors and stay out until dinnertime. It was today's equivalent of sending the kids to the rec room to play Nintendo or upstairs to surf the web until dinnertime.
Of course parents want to deflect their neglect of their children so they invent these silly reasons as "the pervert living down the street" as an excuse for having their kids play video games all day and watching hours and hours of endless, mindless television.
You can bet that if we didn't have all these entertainment that today's parents would kick their kids outdoors just like their parents did with them.
I remember life as a kid in Reston, Virginia, in the early seventies. It was like ‘Lord of the Flies’. We built secret forts deep in the woods. We made sharpened spears from branches and tried to hunt animals. We had brutal dirt clod fights that often ended in someone getting “hurt”. We swam in the lake for hours on end. We built dams in the creek so we could create mini-floods. We’d catch frogs, turtles, snakes and lizards and bring them home. In the summer, we went out after dinner for games of ‘Manhunt’ that would last well beyond dark. Those were good times.
Kids should not smoke, but it should not be illegal. We are heading towards a society where we can only do what the law gives us permission to do, and the concept of Freedom is lost.
However, it also means that I can tell my 12-year-old when he says he's going outside, "Come home when it gets dark". It means my kids could ride their bikes unsupervised -- although kids don't ride much at all these days because no kid over the age of nine wants to wear a helmet (another example of government screw-up). It's meant my kids have had lots of neighborhood kids to play with. We've been fortunate that way.
Same could have been true in the 1970s except that you wouldn't have known about it
Now, are your kids safer when you are more likely to know where the pervs are or when you are less likely to know where they are?
Maybe rational thought is required.
I grew up in the 60's and 70's in a family 4 children. Today, we have 2 children, as do each of my siblings. The house I grew up in sat on a 1/6 acre lot. The house I live in today sits on a 1/2 acre lot. Simple math says that the 'density' of kids running around my neighborhood today is many times less than it was when I was a kid. Where kids used to run around in groups of 6 or 8 when I grew up, I see a lot of kids in groups of 1, 2 or 3 today. There was some safety in numbers.
Tolerance for risks are different than they were. If you look back to the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, most large families had children who didn't survive to adulthood. My mother (who grew up in the 20's and 30's) had a brother died of polio. Her uncle had a family of 9 kids of whom 6 survived to adulthood. They didn't love their children any less back then, but with so many dying of childhood disease, the risk of an accident from playing in the street or in the woods or by a stream seemed relatively miniscule. My wife and I would feel devastated if one of our two kids didn't survive into adulthood. In past years, large families accepted losses a part of life and moved on.
Perceived risks have also changed a lot. FoxNews and Nancy Grace give us breathless reports of every detail of the most purient kidnapping or molestation case in each day's news. In a nation of 300 million people, there's always going to be something bad happening somewhere. As parents, we probably greatly overestimate the relative risk of a stranger snatching our children, compared to simple dangers like being in a car accident (or letting MTV teach them that all the cool kids experiment with drugs and sex).
Some things have actually changed for the better. We know now that there were a small but very real number of authority figures in the 60's and 70's who were able to use their positions to take advantage of children, and often got by with only a slap on the wrist when there were signs of trouble. At my high school, there was a driver's ed teacher that girls knew to avoid being alone in the car with, because he had a tendency to get frisky with his hands. Today, that fellow would be gone awfully fast.
Overall, however, we are giving our kids a very different childhood experience than the one we had. In some ways, we are focusing more energy and attention on fewer kids and that may benefit them. However, they will have less opportunity to act independently, make choices on their own, and live with the consequences of their choices.
I was born just before Pearl Harbor, and so got to spend my pre-adolescent and teen years in the 50's, in what was one of the larger cities in Indiana, but which would be considered a small town compared to my present home. We didn't even have a local TV station for most of that time. We would spend winter nights listening to the radio (Ozzie & Harriet, Gunsmoke, Innersanctum) and playing cards or board games. (After coming in from sledding or trying to ice skate on the little ponds in the neighborhood.) I can still remember listening to a radio broadcast of a particular state championship high school basketball game. In later years, I thought of writing about that game, but someone beat me to it: it bacame the movie, Hoosiers.
In the summer, we played baseball (no, not Little League, no parents involved -- just a bunch of guys who felt like playing, using whatever we could find at the time for bases, in a field where a long hit could be lost in the weeds) or went to the river to fish, or went swimming at the pool in the park. After swimming, we might hang around to peer between or under the canvasses to try and see a Daisies game. (Yes, another movie, "A Field of Their Own.") Along the way, we might place pennies or nails on the railroad track.
After dinner, and well into darkness, it was "Hide and Seek" or, as we grew a little older, "Capture the Flag."
In the fall, the same fields or empty lots became football fields. Two or three to a side, "everybody out for a pass."
And, it being Indiana, basketball at any time. We often played in the snow.
You'll find another thread today about Australians who want to begin teaching their youth how to handle BB guns. That little boy in A Christmas Story who just had to have the Daisy Red Ryder gun was me. (Not literally, of course.)
In our high school years, very few of us had cars, but when one could get Dad's wheels, we cruised the drive-in restaurants (yes, there were car-hops,) went to drive-in movies, or to the basketball game, followed by a record hop at the skating rink or in the school cafeteria.
I was on a cruise ship a few months back, where one of the events was a "sock hop." The thirty-something hosts were surprised when I actually took off my tennies to dance in my socks. I had to give them a little oral history about the origin of "sock hop:" at my high school, a P. A. system would be set up in the gym for lunch hour dancing. Since street shoes were not permitted on the gym floor, we danced in our socks.
Today, when I visit my sister, that town no longer exists. Oh, There still is a Fort Wayne, but downtown is a ghost town. I was told several years back that it is "the cocaine capital of Indiana." Everybody now lives five miles outside what used to be the city limits. My present home, San Pedro, CA, gives me more of a community feeling than does my own home town. Geography separates us from the metropolis, and there are many whose families have lived here for generations, and who want to raise their own kids here. Sadly, those kids will never know what real innocence is.
maybe if criminals were in jail instead of being “compassioned” out into the streets, then we wouldn’t have a fortress mentality
I’d say it’s no accident. Too many criminals loose on the streets for a reason. It keeps people inside, where they are more susceptible to media ideology-hype and materialism. “Life lessons”, as it were, are handed down by social architects, rather than by the forces of nature.
lots of wonderful reads here!
Xer Ping
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
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We used to play night hide and go seek in a less than perfect neighborhood. Some of the funnest times I have ever had. Back in the alley or under cars were good places, everyone knew each other so we also used to hide in other people’s yards too.
When I turned 14 I got a brand new Remington 12 guage for my birthday. My mom would get up at the crack of dawn and drive me out to a buddies farm. I’d be gone all day with a sack lunch and a bag of duck decoys. It was no big deal to anyone. Those were the days, a young boy hunting on his own. I’d bag ducks, squirrels, rabbits, doves, pheasants, and even a couple of rattle snakes once. I’m sure a mom would be arrested for child abuse if that happened today. Too bad for today’s kids, they will never know the self esteem I was taught.
I suppose SF isn’t exactly typical, but I think (at least partially) the sense that things have gotten more dangerous since the 70’s is imagined.