I agree with much of what you say here, except for this comment: "Almost the only way kids can communicate with one another away from adult ears now is with their smartphones. And now some people want to take those away from kids!"
For the purposes of communicating with peers, a dumb phone is all they need: one that can make calls and send messages (not WhatsApp.)
I know there is hyperbole and exaggeration, but social media harm is real, and smartphone addiction is real. It's telling that tech bosses themselves don't allow their own children to use the very technology they've created (CEOs of TikTok and Meta, for starters.) Adolescence is hard enough without having to worry about how many likes you get on your post, or worry that the dumb things kids inevitably say can become memes shared with an entire peer group in seconds. If it's difficult for an adult to understand that a highly polished influencer on YouTube is a business, not a representation of someone's real life, how much harder is that for a young kid?
As a personal example, a friend of mine reluctantly let her 13 year daughter download Snapchat because "all of her friends had it." Within 3 days, she had taken over 300 selfies (her mom only investigated because she was surreptitiously posing for a selfie during a family movie.)
I think that children should have a very free off-line life, and a highly restricted on-line life. Unfortunately, most parents allow precisely the opposite.
Great post. Perhaps this is a good time to bring this up - How much of the lowered crime rate is just people not going out as much anymore? Because I see everyone bring this up, that crime is down but kids aren't outside. But NO ONE is outside, so are there enough eyes out there to keep my kids safe if they are roaming the streets by themselves? And maybe no one being outside means creeps don't hang out waiting to grab kids anymore?
We can't deny that there was a lot of serial killing in the 70s, and police departments couldn't solve crimes as easily. Women might have been the primary target of your average serial killer, but that was good enough reason to try keeping kids safe. We know native american women now go missing a lot and are never found, so it's not like crimes of opportunity have gone away. It feels more likely that opportunities for stranger crimes have decreased. With lowered crime rate, the sense of safety hasn't come back though. People aren't quite leaving their doors unlocked like the days of yore. And in most cities, property crime rates are increasing. Even in the wealthy safe cities of the bay area, cars get broken into regularly if it looks remotely like a laptop is left in the car. Why would any parent feel like their kids will be safe out there when they can't protect their car and their laptop left alone?
Going back to what Jane Jacobs said half a century ago about about city design, it seems like the issue in the US pertaining to safety is just the lack of sidewalk life, which makes it hard to trust that kids will be safe when they are allowed to go out by themselves. I strongly doubt it's just media fear or parents helicoptering out of their own anxiety that's the root cause. American towns and cities are not designed to give their citizens a sense of safety and community.
Another thing about kids' safety - a lot of millennials experienced sexual harassment and abuse at the hand of supposedly trusted adults as well as strangers. They didn't have the same culture as now when it is safe for children to share what happened. I feel like that's a bigger motivation for Gen Xers and Millennials to helicopter their kids more, because they don't want what happened to them to happen to their kids. When Larry Nassar could abuse girls right in their parents' presence without them realizing what was happening, what chance does the average kid stand? When these crimes weren't reported, can we really say that "crime is down", especially crimes against children? Also there's a very high rate of sexual abuse in schools. I've come across statistics that say the rate of sexual abuse of kids in public school is higher than in the catholic church. If that's the case, can we with a good conscience say crime is down?
My thesis here is that one big motivation for parents to restrict the free movement of their children is to keep them safe from predators, and predators seem everywhere. Now restricting internet usage is also from the same motivation - to prevent creeps from getting to kids. I guess it's a good question to ask if the rates of CSA and child abusers have gone up or down in these generations. It might seem like alarmism to connect the restricted movement of kids to CSA, but it is at the back of every parent's mind more than traffic accidents or physical injuries at the playground or not getting into college.
It’s been interesting to view these posts in light of a rural existence. We live in a rural area. The only “store” my kids could walk to is about 3 miles away, and there are no sidewalks leading to it. I grew up on the same road where we live now, and except for the increased traffic, I feel like my kids have a pretty similar outdoor experience to my own. There are no other kids to play with (there children one or two other children who live on the road, but I never see them outside- an experience that I also had growing up here in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s). They can roam around on our property, which is several acres, but during parts of the day I don’t feel comfortable with them spending much time walking on the road. Traffic (including huge farm machinery) goes way above the 35 mph speed limit. Plus during my childhood you didn’t have people texting while driving 60 mph. They may have driven fast, but in my mind, at least their eyes were probably mostly on the road. And again, no sidewalks, though they can certainly get off the road if needed. My parents were also worried about my sister and I being on the road, which is funny considering how much more traffic there is now.
I guess my point is, my kids are homeschooled and lead a pretty free range life, but it looks different than what you describe, perhaps because of location. I wonder if in your studies you've noticed differences in rural children vs urban or suburban children who have freedom to play, but different environments to play in.
This is the kind of place my son grew up in. He was also homeschooled, but he had friends over quite a lot, other homeschooled kids. And we went to town a lot for sports that he participated in.
I like to think of this from a development point of view. The basic human being is the same in all localities. Play varies. I would suspect better overall mental health in rural areas because of nature.
“Mother Nature has endowed children with instincts to play, explore, and contemplate—during their free time—in ways that are far more educationally valuable than what we do to them in school.”
I'd never expected it to be so controversial for me to suggest that healtheare was not an intrinsic human right. I didn't mean that some people were more deserving of healthcare than others. I was simply arguing that it is better seen as a fundamental human need, similar to food and shelter. These are things we can't live without, but in our society we provide for these needs through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. I believe that's a better way to look at healtheare too. For some people, calling healthcare a "right" is an attempt to make an end run around the troublesome set of costs, considerations, complicated trade-offs, and concerns that we all must engage in around this issue, and already do. Ignoring those issues doesn't change them or magically generate new resources. It only makes us less able to consciously create and generate the best overall set of solutions.
-John Mackey, The Whole Story: Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism
I have a modified discussion starting point that healthcare be provided from birth through 18-yrs-old. Once one reaches legal adulthood, there must be a contribution to the economy, either individually or through a spouse. Make a 3-pronged system of Medicaid for the non-contributing, Medicare for minors and for the elderly who contributed, and a new prong for working couples with at least one income, with a tax credit for those who wish to continue private insurance.
Isn't this the key? — "Because of child labor laws, children today don’t labor long hours for wages, but now they labor long hours at what we call “education.” Note how "school" is present and central to each of the three rights Peter addresses. Up until the '70s and '80s, most kids did not "go off to college" and started "adulting" upon high school completion. About four decades ago, "going to college" became increasingly important, transforming the focus of the K-12 education experience from supporting those "adulting" skills and mindset to goals of preparing children for college. We shifted our goals from maturing our children to ones that not only infantilized them throughout elementary, middle, and high school through increasing supervision and emphasis on stellar grades and extensive academic extracurricular activities, but extending that infantilization well into their twenties.
NYU social psychologist Jon Haidt believes that social media apps delivered to teens through phones are behind the increase of adolescent anxiety and depression. I counter that the truly harmful phone apps we should be concerned about are Life360 and its ilk.
Virtually every one of my former high school students who are in college has Life360 tracking them for their parents — it is the norm. And this represents an incredible challenge to reclaiming the rights Peter rightly champions.
I coached debate and speech for the last 15 years or so. Last year one of one of my debaters was in a scrimmage round with her partner after school. The round wasn't going well for them due to poor prep and she typed to her partner on a shared Google doc "I think I'm going to kms." The next day she was called down to Counseling to discuss suicide ideation. You see, her counselor has a phone app that notifies her when one of her students goes outside their "lane", much like Life360's dings and vibrations for parents when the same young human goes outside their geographic lane.
I asked the student how she felt about the state spying on her and she denied concern, saying it showed that school just "cared about her". I then asked if she had Life360 on her phone? Other than it tended to drain her phone's battery, she had no complaints and welcomed it as proof that her parents "cared about her". I asked if she would delete Life360 from her phone when she went off to college in a couple of years. She said, "No", her parents probably wouldn't let her.
I then asked if she would delete it once she graduated from college. Awkward silence.
The loss of privacy is central to the deterioration of all three rights. Leisure time is no longer allowed because it detracts from academic activities, inside and outside of the classroom. Which leads to the reduction of unsupervised travel in public places — kids don't work anymore and parents either chauffeur their children to soccer, robotics, Kumon, SAT prep, and, yes, even debate; or they track their phones when it's some other parent driving them around. Of course, privacy not only suffers in a practical sense, but also in a principled sense.
All thanks to society's outsized emphasis on school.
That's interesting. I have students who are being tracked. I only recently found out about it. I expressed my shock but he was nonplussed. They put the prison in their heads.
Peter, this was just the blog I needed to read. I shared last time we were trying partial enrollment at our local public school - perhaps my clinging to the vestige of a past that never existed? Suffice it to say, it has not gone well. Today, I toured our local Sudbury Valley school and my son fell in love. He wants to start tomorrow. When I asked him what he loved most about it, he responded, “I can eat whenever I want.” To see it through his eyes was to realize just how much of a prison schools have become. I was so proud to tell them I know about Sudbury thanks to you. I’m forever grateful!
Not sure about privacy for kids…Kids are kids and communicating with strangers on their smartphones now. Everyday in the news we hear of another story of a child abducted by a stranger they befriended on social media (right under the noses of their parents). Parents have made quite an investment into their kids by the time they hit puberty and providing some measure of safety and concern over protecting their one and only childhood isn’t a bad thing! I do think our kids need more outdoor time, play time, nature time, errand time and even chore time!
It is NOT sensationalism. It is a reality. We had 2 stories in the town I live in just in Aug. Young girls meet strangers online, they are groomed, befriended and then agree to meet these creeps. It is VERY common. Just ask the Center for Exploited and Missing Children. It literally happens every day.
Sorry, I don't believe it. If it were happening the whole country would know the names of at least a few of these victims. I'm not saying there is no predation; there clearly is. But actual kidnapping of American children by people unknown to them is extremely rare and should not be conflated with what you're talking about for the simple reason that kidnapping fears are used to keep children from experiencing natural childhood, to their enormous detriment. We absolutely should protect young people from predators online and everywhere else but it only does harm to pretend that children are being kidnapped and held hostage every day in this country. It's simply not happening.
It is happening all the time. I am acquaintances with an FBI agent who deals with missing and exploited children. It is an epidemic. These kids are meeting strangers online and lured to meet them. Maybe not called “kidnapping” like in our day but it is happening as these agents cannot keep up with this very real and prevalent problem
You specifically used the word “abducted” in your original comment and that is not what’s happening. I suggest you choose your words more carefully so as to not to encourage further infringements on children’s right to play outdoors. Perhaps you’d be more comfortable in a more alarmist forum than this one.
Sexual predators and other bad actors have found an easy access point into the lives of our kids. They are meeting them online through multiplayer video games and chat apps, social media, sport gambling sites, etc…making virtual connections right in their victims. homes (under our noses!). Peter, I know it’s hard to believe but contact the Center for Missing and Exploited Kids or the FBI, who look for and find missing children who have been lured by online predators. I used the word “kidnapped” in earlier post. I guess that’s the term I grew up with and it’s not the term used anymore. Please contact those 2 agencies for real data!
I’ve only read a handful of the comments and they have all been so thought provoking. The way we limit kids’ freedoms now speaks to so much about culture in general, there is so much food for thought here.
One element this brings up for me, partly because I’m raising Palestinian-American kids during this worst war, is how much many of my peers don’t even say the word “death” in front of their kids. Several months ago I shouted at my 4 year old, who generally appreciates the seriousness of being near cars, and I said “that car could have killed you, you know!” My friend looked at me in terror, because I used the word “killed” so effortlessly. I do not think her 4 year old, my son’s friend, has heard about death in any format, I think he’s been actively shielded from it. I don’t have a choice, which is a strange little convenience of the war, I guess. My kids don’t get to not know about it.
Anyhow, I think some of the helicopter parenting/tracking/fixation on fear, concern, worry - I think some of it is related to our own confusion about death, dying, about life ending. I wonder if some people, especially in the Anglo Global North, believe they are not supposed to die. And how that might have ripple effects when they opt for one measure over another to preserve a state of safety. Just a thought
This comment reminds me of something I read recently (https://aeon.co/essays/rapid-urbanisation-is-stoking-paranormal-anxieties-in-china), where Chinese people in big cities have lost some of the funeral rituals in rural China that brought death closer to home, like literally keeping a dead person inside their home for a few days before they are buried. One result of this appears to be that people are more afraid to talk about death, and apartments where a person has died are treated as haunted. I suspect something similar has happened in the Anglo Global North, as you say. Even writing this comment, I almost said "deceased" instead of "dead".
When death, in all its inevitability, becomes taboo or something, I wonder if the psychological effort that takes is worth it. A rejuvenating upside to not pretending about death is it makes life much more vivid and real, and precious. I can’t pretend to be an expert in psychology, but it seems to me like some of the exhausting attempts to rein in children’s freedom is related to the weight of managing our cognitive dissonance about death. Or something!
Peter, I wonder if you know of any legal actions that have been taken to assert children's right to play (or do anything else, for that matter). I'm looking for support for an appeal to my city's Human Rights Commission that children actually be allowed to behave like children in public spaces. This is permitted in parks and playgrounds but when I take kids to, say, the campus of UT Austin, I'm chastised for letting them explore on their own and climb things. It occurred to me that requiring kids to behave like adults in order to use public places is akin to requiring that Native Americans, for example, dress like white people in order to do the same. I think we should start putting children's plight in terms like this, since doing so invokes oppression of certain groups of adults, and we know the grownups can relate to THAT. The restrictions I'm talking about and that you refer to in this piece are putting a very meaningful cramp in American children's ability to develop normally and healthfully, since it requires them to suppress their special characteristics as a group, under the very dubious rationalization that doing these simple things is "dangerous." A relatively narrow, legal argument against suppression might be the most effective since it would put the situation in a light adults could relate to. Any previous legal work along these lines would help me hone my argument against this suppression and make my case to the commission. I reached out to an organization that advocates for the right to play but haven't heard back from them.
I feel what makes more sense as a strategy is promoting and perhaps funding alternative schools. That quickly gets into the sketchy terrain of the fact that tons of more basic needs, like clean water, already go unmet with our current system.
I think more moves towards actual democracy, meaning the relevance of individuals, is the baseline strategy to eventually get to where schools aren't just state propaganda centers.
Thank you for this Peter! It always a joy to read your thoughts and I always appreciate your perspective and the supplied evidence.
I was just having a conversation with a parent today about the continued tightening of the structure of public education and the way this harms children. Thankfully, more and more families are opting for alternative forms of educations.
We live in a neighborhood that is theoretically safe for kids. But every time we let our kids roam freely, there is inevitably an adult (that neither we nor our kids know) who intervenes and tries to put a stop to it. Even if you try to give kids basic freedom, even if you live in a place where it's possible, the culture completely disallows it. As a parent of young kids, it's very disheartening.
Oh just because I think the built environment itself is adequately safe for younger kids to roam around, but the social environment makes it unsafe to do more traditional parenting. I'm more afraid of random neighbors calling CPS than I am of actual kidnappers or car crashes. None of those cultural norms have to exist and 20 or 30 years ago this exact same neighborhood would've had kids roaming freely all over the place. But social attitudes have changed what kids are allowed to do.
I have been reading and studying your books/articles since before I had my own child (who is now nearly 29!), Peter, and now, as a Play Therapist - non-pathological, btw - which your work has greatly influenced my becoming - I have disagreed with you on several of your posts.
But not this. This decline in children's rights and increase in adult wrongs is a hill I will die on. Part of my practice is supporting my young clients' parents to slow down, and increase their children's leisure time. It's good for the entire family.
Incidentally, one of my biggest mistakes (not a regret, because all mistakes lead to gifts in the end) was that I entered into an emotionally toxic relationship with a man when my daughter was young. The gift was we were able to live on a rural, crime-free, small island in Canada for four years before I left him and moved back to the states. And once she grew up and learned ("MOM! Did you know permanent residence is, in fact, PERMANENT??") she could move back to that island, she did. She now lives there (that toxic man has since died), and helps run a small organic farm with her partner, and if and when she has children they will grow up with all their rights intact. Of this I am greatly joyful and relieved. (That's the gift of that horrible relationship).
I have two boys (8&12) we live near the city but on nine acres where we make attempts at homesteading. Neighbors around us have on average an acre, a couple have more. The street is extremely busy 45mph, no sidewalks. We’ve unschooled from the beginning, and given them many freedoms (ever increasing geographic freedoms within our property, for instance at 4 they had free reign of the front couple acres but couldn’t go to the pond alone or within 50 feet of the road. Now they can go anywhere except within 25 feet of the road as long as they take Walkie talkies into the woods with them. They also are largely in charge of their time. Screen time is restricted to a degree, but otherwise they can do what they like) and as they get older we have started trying to do better with not lording over them. Instead we try to have conversations where we agree as a family on limits that accommodate everyone, such as my husband has to sleep early so we are quiet after a certain time to allow for that, and the boys have to go to sleep before my bedtime since they want me in there reading/listening to audiobooks with them as they doze off and I deserve to go to bed at a reasonable time for my bodies preferences. So, I do enforce the bedtime, but I’m flexible depending on daily circumstances and how my body feels and they agreed to this arrangement. It sometimes leads to argument from my youngest if I’m tired earlier, but it’s an agreement we have...
Where I falter on freedoms is with screens. My husband and I have been negatively effected by them. Various addictions and anxieties associated with screens have been problems for us. Even when we recognize it’s a problem we struggle to make the right choice. For instance porn, I don’t want them exposed to that. It’s a whole argument In itself on wether or not it’s harmful. To us, in our individual experiences, it has been. And they’ve happened upon it already. And despite ongoing open non taboo conversations about it, they didn’t tell me about it. It seems instinctual to be drawn to such a thing. So I ended up having to have conversations I thought above age appropriateness with them (and this from someone who is really open with them about sex already). I’ve discussed this with numerous people who point out our level of trust maybe isn’t what we think it is.... and that more conversation is necessary. But the boys don’t often WANT to have these types of deep and nuanced conversations. And if they are “free”, I cannot force them to.
I cannot force them to hear me out so that they can have the benefit of my experiences to inform their decisions or views on things. I struggle with this. Because I think a caring and socially responsible parent of free kids has a responsibility to offer the knowledge and lessons they’ve acquired/learned so their kids don’t have to suffer or cause others to suffer from making the exact same mistakes....
For example it seems to me that if I didn’t speak to my white (so far straight male identifying) children about the privilege they have in our society, they may unknowingly do or perpetuate harm to others different from them. I want them to be forewarned so they can be forearmed. I won’t force religion or my ideas of what they should believe on them. But I’d rather they not suffer or cause others to suffer because I didn’t give them the benefit of my experience. How do I do that if they’d rather talk about Minecraft than have deep important conversations? This is especially hard in our family because my partner and I are both introverts and on top of that we live rurally. So the boys don’t see a ton of varied social interactions from us. They are being partially educated by media that is often unkind to anyone different from the “norm”.
Anyway, I also have experienced so far that the addictive ness or allure of screens takes them from playing outside alone or with others. The more screen time we allow, the less time bored or playing or outside...they want. Before We had a laptop to watch streaming services on, they were always outside, always playing. Since we’ve introduced a big projector screen and a PC with games on it, they almost never choose to do anything else. It is my belief this is a sad and unbalanced, unhealthy way to live.
I’m going through pretty much the same with my unschooling child when it comes to devices. In my case my partner doesn’t see the need to limit screens, and I do. So it’s impacting relationships all around, where the child favours the device friendly parent more :(
Exactly the same here. My husband admits to having been “raised by screens” and so it’s how he easily connects with them. I wanted to try letting have video games and all as an experiment into more freedom and rights but I regret it whole heartedly. It seems to have taken over our lives completely.
When I started high school at age 14, my work day increased from about seven hours to eleven hours, because we had four hours of homework every night. I was also required to do work at home, like washing dishes. As a result I stopped playing music, which I had loved. I barely had time to exercise. I stopped walking my dog. I don't know if my high school still requires that much homework from students, but I noticed that when a new private high school started in my town, the founders said there would be no homework at all, because kids need some leisure time too.
About time free from adult supervision: I just finished reading volume three of Karl Ove Knausgaard's novel, My Struggle. This third volume is about his childhood in a kind of suburban area of Norway, on an island. It was a newly built neighborhood with a lot of young families and a lot of kids. A lot of the island was as yet undeveloped and was still forested, and Karl Ove and his friends roamed this forest freely, along with the built areas of the island, and the shorelines. They were outdoors almost all of the time that they were not in school, even in winter. This was a great thing for Karl Ove particularly, because he had a very controlling, authoritarian, and abusive father. The only escapes were school and the world outside the house.
Nobody was really watching the kids. They were expected to have some common sense. Sometimes they didn't: once Karl Ove threw a rock at a moving car and damaged the windshield to the point that the driver could have been hurt. He got in a lot of trouble for that, as he should have. I found it interesting that the adults blamed the kids when the kids did something stupid. The adults didn't seem to think it was their responsibility at all to warn kids off from things like dropping rocks on cars from bridges. And nobody blamed the parents when kids did stuff like that.
I just realized that we're kind of like that too when it comes to guns: if a kid finds a gun and takes it to school and shoots people, until recently nobody thought it was the parents' fault. But that is changing, as it should.
Maybe there is a happy medium between giving kids total freedom to do virtually anything, unsupervised, when they're not in school, and hyper-managing and surveilling them.
While I agree with what you say in a perfect world, we don't live there anymore if we ever did. 8 am not worried about "stranger danger" but I am worried about the influence my 13 year old daughter gets from *hanging out " with other girls her age. They are all on their way to be sexually promiscuous and some will be pregnant before they are married. That is what I am worried about. Her peers are starting to "date" at 13 -16 and being alone with boys will only lead to one thing.
We did not allow our older daughter to be alone with boys at all and chaperoned her when she found the boys she wanted to marry. He actually came to me and asked to get to know her better with the intention of marrying her. I agreed under the condition they not be alone until they were married. He agreed and now they are married with a child.
We are trying as best we can to do the same thing with our 13 year old.
I do agree with everything about children you say for the younger ones for sure. They should have more freedom and outdoor time. But when they reach puberty it is important for the adults to step in and not let the young adults be free to allow there hormones to run rampant.
I find this pretty weird. You are not letting two young people be together alone until they are married? How can they really get to know each other and have deep conversations with a parent always lurking around?
It is possible. With our older daughter they would go out to have dinner or at a coffee shop and sit at another table and talk for hours. My wife and I would sit at a table far enough away so they would have that privacy to talk. The point is to not let them be alone by themselves so they are tempted to let their hormones take over. They both agreed and accepted this condition. It is important for the older and wiser people to guide the younger ones so they are not left on their own to figure everything out from their peers.
If my parents had done this to me I would have been furious. It sends a message that the young people are not to be trusted and have zero autonomy. IT seems to me that once you turn 18, adults should respect you as a fellow adult. What if your child does not marry till age 40 or so? Are you going to supervise their dates when they're in their 30s?! It seems like a recipe to make kids run away from home as fast as possible.
Teen pregnancy has been on the decline in America for a long time. If you are worried about your daughter having sex before she's eighteen, talk to the parents of the boys she is dating. Then you can come to some agreement about the conditions under which they can hang out. That's what I did when my son was a teenager. You can also just teach her about birth control, but I get the feeling that for you that is not enough, and you don't want her to have sex before she is married. That may seem reasonable when talking about a high school student, but it's not reasonable for a person over the age of 18.
It may be tricky and sometimes upsetting, but young people have to learn to navigate romantic relationships sort of on their own. YOu can answer their questions and even give advice, but get the eff out of their life when it comes to their dating!!!
My experience here in rural TN, where your kind of thinking is quite prevalent, is that it is the teens who know nothing about sex who get pregnant too soon. Their parents don't want to talk about sex except to say, "Don't do it." So they don't understand reproduction and they know nothing about birth control. This is what makes them vulnerable, not "being alone." Teens will find a way to be alone if the adults are always hovering over them.
Teens also look around, see other people and think, "I bet that person has had sex." Meanwhile their parents and teachers are basically telling them that sex is dangerous and might even kill you. So why are all these people walking around looking perfectly fine? They start to think you are full of BS. Then they might not even believe your advice about birth control. You want teens to trust you. So you have to be honest. Sex is fun, and they know that. They know you know that. They know you are kind of lying when you tell them that sex is terribly dangerous, always results in pregnancy, and might kill you.
I agree with much of what you say here, except for this comment: "Almost the only way kids can communicate with one another away from adult ears now is with their smartphones. And now some people want to take those away from kids!"
For the purposes of communicating with peers, a dumb phone is all they need: one that can make calls and send messages (not WhatsApp.)
I know there is hyperbole and exaggeration, but social media harm is real, and smartphone addiction is real. It's telling that tech bosses themselves don't allow their own children to use the very technology they've created (CEOs of TikTok and Meta, for starters.) Adolescence is hard enough without having to worry about how many likes you get on your post, or worry that the dumb things kids inevitably say can become memes shared with an entire peer group in seconds. If it's difficult for an adult to understand that a highly polished influencer on YouTube is a business, not a representation of someone's real life, how much harder is that for a young kid?
As a personal example, a friend of mine reluctantly let her 13 year daughter download Snapchat because "all of her friends had it." Within 3 days, she had taken over 300 selfies (her mom only investigated because she was surreptitiously posing for a selfie during a family movie.)
I think that children should have a very free off-line life, and a highly restricted on-line life. Unfortunately, most parents allow precisely the opposite.
I agree. They don't need smartphones. Also, smart phones make dumb people.
Great post. Perhaps this is a good time to bring this up - How much of the lowered crime rate is just people not going out as much anymore? Because I see everyone bring this up, that crime is down but kids aren't outside. But NO ONE is outside, so are there enough eyes out there to keep my kids safe if they are roaming the streets by themselves? And maybe no one being outside means creeps don't hang out waiting to grab kids anymore?
We can't deny that there was a lot of serial killing in the 70s, and police departments couldn't solve crimes as easily. Women might have been the primary target of your average serial killer, but that was good enough reason to try keeping kids safe. We know native american women now go missing a lot and are never found, so it's not like crimes of opportunity have gone away. It feels more likely that opportunities for stranger crimes have decreased. With lowered crime rate, the sense of safety hasn't come back though. People aren't quite leaving their doors unlocked like the days of yore. And in most cities, property crime rates are increasing. Even in the wealthy safe cities of the bay area, cars get broken into regularly if it looks remotely like a laptop is left in the car. Why would any parent feel like their kids will be safe out there when they can't protect their car and their laptop left alone?
Going back to what Jane Jacobs said half a century ago about about city design, it seems like the issue in the US pertaining to safety is just the lack of sidewalk life, which makes it hard to trust that kids will be safe when they are allowed to go out by themselves. I strongly doubt it's just media fear or parents helicoptering out of their own anxiety that's the root cause. American towns and cities are not designed to give their citizens a sense of safety and community.
Another thing about kids' safety - a lot of millennials experienced sexual harassment and abuse at the hand of supposedly trusted adults as well as strangers. They didn't have the same culture as now when it is safe for children to share what happened. I feel like that's a bigger motivation for Gen Xers and Millennials to helicopter their kids more, because they don't want what happened to them to happen to their kids. When Larry Nassar could abuse girls right in their parents' presence without them realizing what was happening, what chance does the average kid stand? When these crimes weren't reported, can we really say that "crime is down", especially crimes against children? Also there's a very high rate of sexual abuse in schools. I've come across statistics that say the rate of sexual abuse of kids in public school is higher than in the catholic church. If that's the case, can we with a good conscience say crime is down?
My thesis here is that one big motivation for parents to restrict the free movement of their children is to keep them safe from predators, and predators seem everywhere. Now restricting internet usage is also from the same motivation - to prevent creeps from getting to kids. I guess it's a good question to ask if the rates of CSA and child abusers have gone up or down in these generations. It might seem like alarmism to connect the restricted movement of kids to CSA, but it is at the back of every parent's mind more than traffic accidents or physical injuries at the playground or not getting into college.
It’s been interesting to view these posts in light of a rural existence. We live in a rural area. The only “store” my kids could walk to is about 3 miles away, and there are no sidewalks leading to it. I grew up on the same road where we live now, and except for the increased traffic, I feel like my kids have a pretty similar outdoor experience to my own. There are no other kids to play with (there children one or two other children who live on the road, but I never see them outside- an experience that I also had growing up here in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s). They can roam around on our property, which is several acres, but during parts of the day I don’t feel comfortable with them spending much time walking on the road. Traffic (including huge farm machinery) goes way above the 35 mph speed limit. Plus during my childhood you didn’t have people texting while driving 60 mph. They may have driven fast, but in my mind, at least their eyes were probably mostly on the road. And again, no sidewalks, though they can certainly get off the road if needed. My parents were also worried about my sister and I being on the road, which is funny considering how much more traffic there is now.
I guess my point is, my kids are homeschooled and lead a pretty free range life, but it looks different than what you describe, perhaps because of location. I wonder if in your studies you've noticed differences in rural children vs urban or suburban children who have freedom to play, but different environments to play in.
This is the kind of place my son grew up in. He was also homeschooled, but he had friends over quite a lot, other homeschooled kids. And we went to town a lot for sports that he participated in.
I definitely grew up in a more rural environment, and I miss it. I'm sad my kids don't have it
I like to think of this from a development point of view. The basic human being is the same in all localities. Play varies. I would suspect better overall mental health in rural areas because of nature.
“Mother Nature has endowed children with instincts to play, explore, and contemplate—during their free time—in ways that are far more educationally valuable than what we do to them in school.”
Amen
I'd never expected it to be so controversial for me to suggest that healtheare was not an intrinsic human right. I didn't mean that some people were more deserving of healthcare than others. I was simply arguing that it is better seen as a fundamental human need, similar to food and shelter. These are things we can't live without, but in our society we provide for these needs through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. I believe that's a better way to look at healtheare too. For some people, calling healthcare a "right" is an attempt to make an end run around the troublesome set of costs, considerations, complicated trade-offs, and concerns that we all must engage in around this issue, and already do. Ignoring those issues doesn't change them or magically generate new resources. It only makes us less able to consciously create and generate the best overall set of solutions.
-John Mackey, The Whole Story: Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism
I have a modified discussion starting point that healthcare be provided from birth through 18-yrs-old. Once one reaches legal adulthood, there must be a contribution to the economy, either individually or through a spouse. Make a 3-pronged system of Medicaid for the non-contributing, Medicare for minors and for the elderly who contributed, and a new prong for working couples with at least one income, with a tax credit for those who wish to continue private insurance.
Isn't this the key? — "Because of child labor laws, children today don’t labor long hours for wages, but now they labor long hours at what we call “education.” Note how "school" is present and central to each of the three rights Peter addresses. Up until the '70s and '80s, most kids did not "go off to college" and started "adulting" upon high school completion. About four decades ago, "going to college" became increasingly important, transforming the focus of the K-12 education experience from supporting those "adulting" skills and mindset to goals of preparing children for college. We shifted our goals from maturing our children to ones that not only infantilized them throughout elementary, middle, and high school through increasing supervision and emphasis on stellar grades and extensive academic extracurricular activities, but extending that infantilization well into their twenties.
NYU social psychologist Jon Haidt believes that social media apps delivered to teens through phones are behind the increase of adolescent anxiety and depression. I counter that the truly harmful phone apps we should be concerned about are Life360 and its ilk.
Virtually every one of my former high school students who are in college has Life360 tracking them for their parents — it is the norm. And this represents an incredible challenge to reclaiming the rights Peter rightly champions.
I coached debate and speech for the last 15 years or so. Last year one of one of my debaters was in a scrimmage round with her partner after school. The round wasn't going well for them due to poor prep and she typed to her partner on a shared Google doc "I think I'm going to kms." The next day she was called down to Counseling to discuss suicide ideation. You see, her counselor has a phone app that notifies her when one of her students goes outside their "lane", much like Life360's dings and vibrations for parents when the same young human goes outside their geographic lane.
I asked the student how she felt about the state spying on her and she denied concern, saying it showed that school just "cared about her". I then asked if she had Life360 on her phone? Other than it tended to drain her phone's battery, she had no complaints and welcomed it as proof that her parents "cared about her". I asked if she would delete Life360 from her phone when she went off to college in a couple of years. She said, "No", her parents probably wouldn't let her.
I then asked if she would delete it once she graduated from college. Awkward silence.
The loss of privacy is central to the deterioration of all three rights. Leisure time is no longer allowed because it detracts from academic activities, inside and outside of the classroom. Which leads to the reduction of unsupervised travel in public places — kids don't work anymore and parents either chauffeur their children to soccer, robotics, Kumon, SAT prep, and, yes, even debate; or they track their phones when it's some other parent driving them around. Of course, privacy not only suffers in a practical sense, but also in a principled sense.
All thanks to society's outsized emphasis on school.
Why not take the student at her word when she says it doesn't bother her?
That's interesting. I have students who are being tracked. I only recently found out about it. I expressed my shock but he was nonplussed. They put the prison in their heads.
Why do college students allow their parents to track them? It seems they could just refuse this since they are legally adults.
Peter, this was just the blog I needed to read. I shared last time we were trying partial enrollment at our local public school - perhaps my clinging to the vestige of a past that never existed? Suffice it to say, it has not gone well. Today, I toured our local Sudbury Valley school and my son fell in love. He wants to start tomorrow. When I asked him what he loved most about it, he responded, “I can eat whenever I want.” To see it through his eyes was to realize just how much of a prison schools have become. I was so proud to tell them I know about Sudbury thanks to you. I’m forever grateful!
Megan, I am so happy for your son.
Not sure about privacy for kids…Kids are kids and communicating with strangers on their smartphones now. Everyday in the news we hear of another story of a child abducted by a stranger they befriended on social media (right under the noses of their parents). Parents have made quite an investment into their kids by the time they hit puberty and providing some measure of safety and concern over protecting their one and only childhood isn’t a bad thing! I do think our kids need more outdoor time, play time, nature time, errand time and even chore time!
You do not hear about stranger kidnappings every day. That's sheer sensationalism and it's not helping things.
It is NOT sensationalism. It is a reality. We had 2 stories in the town I live in just in Aug. Young girls meet strangers online, they are groomed, befriended and then agree to meet these creeps. It is VERY common. Just ask the Center for Exploited and Missing Children. It literally happens every day.
Sorry, I don't believe it. If it were happening the whole country would know the names of at least a few of these victims. I'm not saying there is no predation; there clearly is. But actual kidnapping of American children by people unknown to them is extremely rare and should not be conflated with what you're talking about for the simple reason that kidnapping fears are used to keep children from experiencing natural childhood, to their enormous detriment. We absolutely should protect young people from predators online and everywhere else but it only does harm to pretend that children are being kidnapped and held hostage every day in this country. It's simply not happening.
It is happening all the time. I am acquaintances with an FBI agent who deals with missing and exploited children. It is an epidemic. These kids are meeting strangers online and lured to meet them. Maybe not called “kidnapping” like in our day but it is happening as these agents cannot keep up with this very real and prevalent problem
You specifically used the word “abducted” in your original comment and that is not what’s happening. I suggest you choose your words more carefully so as to not to encourage further infringements on children’s right to play outdoors. Perhaps you’d be more comfortable in a more alarmist forum than this one.
Sexual predators and other bad actors have found an easy access point into the lives of our kids. They are meeting them online through multiplayer video games and chat apps, social media, sport gambling sites, etc…making virtual connections right in their victims. homes (under our noses!). Peter, I know it’s hard to believe but contact the Center for Missing and Exploited Kids or the FBI, who look for and find missing children who have been lured by online predators. I used the word “kidnapped” in earlier post. I guess that’s the term I grew up with and it’s not the term used anymore. Please contact those 2 agencies for real data!
I’ve only read a handful of the comments and they have all been so thought provoking. The way we limit kids’ freedoms now speaks to so much about culture in general, there is so much food for thought here.
One element this brings up for me, partly because I’m raising Palestinian-American kids during this worst war, is how much many of my peers don’t even say the word “death” in front of their kids. Several months ago I shouted at my 4 year old, who generally appreciates the seriousness of being near cars, and I said “that car could have killed you, you know!” My friend looked at me in terror, because I used the word “killed” so effortlessly. I do not think her 4 year old, my son’s friend, has heard about death in any format, I think he’s been actively shielded from it. I don’t have a choice, which is a strange little convenience of the war, I guess. My kids don’t get to not know about it.
Anyhow, I think some of the helicopter parenting/tracking/fixation on fear, concern, worry - I think some of it is related to our own confusion about death, dying, about life ending. I wonder if some people, especially in the Anglo Global North, believe they are not supposed to die. And how that might have ripple effects when they opt for one measure over another to preserve a state of safety. Just a thought
This comment reminds me of something I read recently (https://aeon.co/essays/rapid-urbanisation-is-stoking-paranormal-anxieties-in-china), where Chinese people in big cities have lost some of the funeral rituals in rural China that brought death closer to home, like literally keeping a dead person inside their home for a few days before they are buried. One result of this appears to be that people are more afraid to talk about death, and apartments where a person has died are treated as haunted. I suspect something similar has happened in the Anglo Global North, as you say. Even writing this comment, I almost said "deceased" instead of "dead".
Yes - this is the sort of thing I mean exactly!
When death, in all its inevitability, becomes taboo or something, I wonder if the psychological effort that takes is worth it. A rejuvenating upside to not pretending about death is it makes life much more vivid and real, and precious. I can’t pretend to be an expert in psychology, but it seems to me like some of the exhausting attempts to rein in children’s freedom is related to the weight of managing our cognitive dissonance about death. Or something!
Peter, I wonder if you know of any legal actions that have been taken to assert children's right to play (or do anything else, for that matter). I'm looking for support for an appeal to my city's Human Rights Commission that children actually be allowed to behave like children in public spaces. This is permitted in parks and playgrounds but when I take kids to, say, the campus of UT Austin, I'm chastised for letting them explore on their own and climb things. It occurred to me that requiring kids to behave like adults in order to use public places is akin to requiring that Native Americans, for example, dress like white people in order to do the same. I think we should start putting children's plight in terms like this, since doing so invokes oppression of certain groups of adults, and we know the grownups can relate to THAT. The restrictions I'm talking about and that you refer to in this piece are putting a very meaningful cramp in American children's ability to develop normally and healthfully, since it requires them to suppress their special characteristics as a group, under the very dubious rationalization that doing these simple things is "dangerous." A relatively narrow, legal argument against suppression might be the most effective since it would put the situation in a light adults could relate to. Any previous legal work along these lines would help me hone my argument against this suppression and make my case to the commission. I reached out to an organization that advocates for the right to play but haven't heard back from them.
I feel what makes more sense as a strategy is promoting and perhaps funding alternative schools. That quickly gets into the sketchy terrain of the fact that tons of more basic needs, like clean water, already go unmet with our current system.
I think more moves towards actual democracy, meaning the relevance of individuals, is the baseline strategy to eventually get to where schools aren't just state propaganda centers.
Thank you for this Peter! It always a joy to read your thoughts and I always appreciate your perspective and the supplied evidence.
I was just having a conversation with a parent today about the continued tightening of the structure of public education and the way this harms children. Thankfully, more and more families are opting for alternative forms of educations.
We live in a neighborhood that is theoretically safe for kids. But every time we let our kids roam freely, there is inevitably an adult (that neither we nor our kids know) who intervenes and tries to put a stop to it. Even if you try to give kids basic freedom, even if you live in a place where it's possible, the culture completely disallows it. As a parent of young kids, it's very disheartening.
Jim, why do you use the qualifier "theorectically"?
Oh just because I think the built environment itself is adequately safe for younger kids to roam around, but the social environment makes it unsafe to do more traditional parenting. I'm more afraid of random neighbors calling CPS than I am of actual kidnappers or car crashes. None of those cultural norms have to exist and 20 or 30 years ago this exact same neighborhood would've had kids roaming freely all over the place. But social attitudes have changed what kids are allowed to do.
I have been reading and studying your books/articles since before I had my own child (who is now nearly 29!), Peter, and now, as a Play Therapist - non-pathological, btw - which your work has greatly influenced my becoming - I have disagreed with you on several of your posts.
But not this. This decline in children's rights and increase in adult wrongs is a hill I will die on. Part of my practice is supporting my young clients' parents to slow down, and increase their children's leisure time. It's good for the entire family.
Incidentally, one of my biggest mistakes (not a regret, because all mistakes lead to gifts in the end) was that I entered into an emotionally toxic relationship with a man when my daughter was young. The gift was we were able to live on a rural, crime-free, small island in Canada for four years before I left him and moved back to the states. And once she grew up and learned ("MOM! Did you know permanent residence is, in fact, PERMANENT??") she could move back to that island, she did. She now lives there (that toxic man has since died), and helps run a small organic farm with her partner, and if and when she has children they will grow up with all their rights intact. Of this I am greatly joyful and relieved. (That's the gift of that horrible relationship).
I have two boys (8&12) we live near the city but on nine acres where we make attempts at homesteading. Neighbors around us have on average an acre, a couple have more. The street is extremely busy 45mph, no sidewalks. We’ve unschooled from the beginning, and given them many freedoms (ever increasing geographic freedoms within our property, for instance at 4 they had free reign of the front couple acres but couldn’t go to the pond alone or within 50 feet of the road. Now they can go anywhere except within 25 feet of the road as long as they take Walkie talkies into the woods with them. They also are largely in charge of their time. Screen time is restricted to a degree, but otherwise they can do what they like) and as they get older we have started trying to do better with not lording over them. Instead we try to have conversations where we agree as a family on limits that accommodate everyone, such as my husband has to sleep early so we are quiet after a certain time to allow for that, and the boys have to go to sleep before my bedtime since they want me in there reading/listening to audiobooks with them as they doze off and I deserve to go to bed at a reasonable time for my bodies preferences. So, I do enforce the bedtime, but I’m flexible depending on daily circumstances and how my body feels and they agreed to this arrangement. It sometimes leads to argument from my youngest if I’m tired earlier, but it’s an agreement we have...
Where I falter on freedoms is with screens. My husband and I have been negatively effected by them. Various addictions and anxieties associated with screens have been problems for us. Even when we recognize it’s a problem we struggle to make the right choice. For instance porn, I don’t want them exposed to that. It’s a whole argument In itself on wether or not it’s harmful. To us, in our individual experiences, it has been. And they’ve happened upon it already. And despite ongoing open non taboo conversations about it, they didn’t tell me about it. It seems instinctual to be drawn to such a thing. So I ended up having to have conversations I thought above age appropriateness with them (and this from someone who is really open with them about sex already). I’ve discussed this with numerous people who point out our level of trust maybe isn’t what we think it is.... and that more conversation is necessary. But the boys don’t often WANT to have these types of deep and nuanced conversations. And if they are “free”, I cannot force them to.
I cannot force them to hear me out so that they can have the benefit of my experiences to inform their decisions or views on things. I struggle with this. Because I think a caring and socially responsible parent of free kids has a responsibility to offer the knowledge and lessons they’ve acquired/learned so their kids don’t have to suffer or cause others to suffer from making the exact same mistakes....
For example it seems to me that if I didn’t speak to my white (so far straight male identifying) children about the privilege they have in our society, they may unknowingly do or perpetuate harm to others different from them. I want them to be forewarned so they can be forearmed. I won’t force religion or my ideas of what they should believe on them. But I’d rather they not suffer or cause others to suffer because I didn’t give them the benefit of my experience. How do I do that if they’d rather talk about Minecraft than have deep important conversations? This is especially hard in our family because my partner and I are both introverts and on top of that we live rurally. So the boys don’t see a ton of varied social interactions from us. They are being partially educated by media that is often unkind to anyone different from the “norm”.
Anyway, I also have experienced so far that the addictive ness or allure of screens takes them from playing outside alone or with others. The more screen time we allow, the less time bored or playing or outside...they want. Before We had a laptop to watch streaming services on, they were always outside, always playing. Since we’ve introduced a big projector screen and a PC with games on it, they almost never choose to do anything else. It is my belief this is a sad and unbalanced, unhealthy way to live.
I’m going through pretty much the same with my unschooling child when it comes to devices. In my case my partner doesn’t see the need to limit screens, and I do. So it’s impacting relationships all around, where the child favours the device friendly parent more :(
Exactly the same here. My husband admits to having been “raised by screens” and so it’s how he easily connects with them. I wanted to try letting have video games and all as an experiment into more freedom and rights but I regret it whole heartedly. It seems to have taken over our lives completely.
When I started high school at age 14, my work day increased from about seven hours to eleven hours, because we had four hours of homework every night. I was also required to do work at home, like washing dishes. As a result I stopped playing music, which I had loved. I barely had time to exercise. I stopped walking my dog. I don't know if my high school still requires that much homework from students, but I noticed that when a new private high school started in my town, the founders said there would be no homework at all, because kids need some leisure time too.
About time free from adult supervision: I just finished reading volume three of Karl Ove Knausgaard's novel, My Struggle. This third volume is about his childhood in a kind of suburban area of Norway, on an island. It was a newly built neighborhood with a lot of young families and a lot of kids. A lot of the island was as yet undeveloped and was still forested, and Karl Ove and his friends roamed this forest freely, along with the built areas of the island, and the shorelines. They were outdoors almost all of the time that they were not in school, even in winter. This was a great thing for Karl Ove particularly, because he had a very controlling, authoritarian, and abusive father. The only escapes were school and the world outside the house.
Nobody was really watching the kids. They were expected to have some common sense. Sometimes they didn't: once Karl Ove threw a rock at a moving car and damaged the windshield to the point that the driver could have been hurt. He got in a lot of trouble for that, as he should have. I found it interesting that the adults blamed the kids when the kids did something stupid. The adults didn't seem to think it was their responsibility at all to warn kids off from things like dropping rocks on cars from bridges. And nobody blamed the parents when kids did stuff like that.
I just realized that we're kind of like that too when it comes to guns: if a kid finds a gun and takes it to school and shoots people, until recently nobody thought it was the parents' fault. But that is changing, as it should.
Maybe there is a happy medium between giving kids total freedom to do virtually anything, unsupervised, when they're not in school, and hyper-managing and surveilling them.
While I agree with what you say in a perfect world, we don't live there anymore if we ever did. 8 am not worried about "stranger danger" but I am worried about the influence my 13 year old daughter gets from *hanging out " with other girls her age. They are all on their way to be sexually promiscuous and some will be pregnant before they are married. That is what I am worried about. Her peers are starting to "date" at 13 -16 and being alone with boys will only lead to one thing.
We did not allow our older daughter to be alone with boys at all and chaperoned her when she found the boys she wanted to marry. He actually came to me and asked to get to know her better with the intention of marrying her. I agreed under the condition they not be alone until they were married. He agreed and now they are married with a child.
We are trying as best we can to do the same thing with our 13 year old.
I do agree with everything about children you say for the younger ones for sure. They should have more freedom and outdoor time. But when they reach puberty it is important for the adults to step in and not let the young adults be free to allow there hormones to run rampant.
Dean
I find this pretty weird. You are not letting two young people be together alone until they are married? How can they really get to know each other and have deep conversations with a parent always lurking around?
It is possible. With our older daughter they would go out to have dinner or at a coffee shop and sit at another table and talk for hours. My wife and I would sit at a table far enough away so they would have that privacy to talk. The point is to not let them be alone by themselves so they are tempted to let their hormones take over. They both agreed and accepted this condition. It is important for the older and wiser people to guide the younger ones so they are not left on their own to figure everything out from their peers.
If my parents had done this to me I would have been furious. It sends a message that the young people are not to be trusted and have zero autonomy. IT seems to me that once you turn 18, adults should respect you as a fellow adult. What if your child does not marry till age 40 or so? Are you going to supervise their dates when they're in their 30s?! It seems like a recipe to make kids run away from home as fast as possible.
Teen pregnancy has been on the decline in America for a long time. If you are worried about your daughter having sex before she's eighteen, talk to the parents of the boys she is dating. Then you can come to some agreement about the conditions under which they can hang out. That's what I did when my son was a teenager. You can also just teach her about birth control, but I get the feeling that for you that is not enough, and you don't want her to have sex before she is married. That may seem reasonable when talking about a high school student, but it's not reasonable for a person over the age of 18.
It may be tricky and sometimes upsetting, but young people have to learn to navigate romantic relationships sort of on their own. YOu can answer their questions and even give advice, but get the eff out of their life when it comes to their dating!!!
My experience here in rural TN, where your kind of thinking is quite prevalent, is that it is the teens who know nothing about sex who get pregnant too soon. Their parents don't want to talk about sex except to say, "Don't do it." So they don't understand reproduction and they know nothing about birth control. This is what makes them vulnerable, not "being alone." Teens will find a way to be alone if the adults are always hovering over them.
Teens also look around, see other people and think, "I bet that person has had sex." Meanwhile their parents and teachers are basically telling them that sex is dangerous and might even kill you. So why are all these people walking around looking perfectly fine? They start to think you are full of BS. Then they might not even believe your advice about birth control. You want teens to trust you. So you have to be honest. Sex is fun, and they know that. They know you know that. They know you are kind of lying when you tell them that sex is terribly dangerous, always results in pregnancy, and might kill you.