I have a lot of sympathy for parents who lived through this period. Growing up in the nineties, I watched myself and my friends transition from spending most of our time outdoors to playing video games. It wasn't that our parents had become uncomfortable with our unsupervised playtime. It was simply that technology had improved so much that our most imaginative games could no longer hold a candle to the latest first-person shooter. In the process, we discovered certain corners of the internet; the strange combination of anonymity and access that encouraged young people (or those pretending to be young people) to communicate in ways that genuinely frightened our parents. In a way, it was we who exposed them to a darker way of seeing the world.
I also recall my parents' confusion. My father grew up in the forties and fifties. He collected baseball cards. His heroes were real people who had worked hard and achieved something. He could buy a new card, then go watch that player at the local baseball stadium, and then imagine himself as that player when he and his friends played ball in a vacant lot. In other words, his hobby grounded him; it brought him into contact with real people doing real things.
I collected Pokémon cards. I saw my heroes in comic books, but as the technology improved, they became ubiquitious - in TV shows, movies, Nintendo, and even the GameBoy I carried in my pocket. I told my parents repeatedly how boring "real life" was compared to a world where you could collect magical animals. In important ways, my hobby alienated me from the world, and my parents noticed.
Without a doubt, parents have become more weary about entrusting their children to the world, and perhaps about entrusting the world to their children as well. But when I reflect on the reasons for this shift, I find them not in some sudden neurotic episode of my parents' generation, but in the technologically-mediated cultural erosion of my own.
It occurred to me: you write that your father's heroes were real people and that you saw your heroes in comic books. But maybe in your father's day, his heroes were heading in the direction of comic book heroes? His hero was not quite a real person, but the public image of an athlete created and maintained in part through baseball cards and other media of the times.
Certainly true, but I think that's largely been the case ever since humans started living in large societies. Most 18th century Americans didn't know George Washington personally; they had a culturally-mediated semi-mythic conception of him. I'm also not saying that my father's generation didn't have fictional heroes. He soaked up the golden age of science fiction. But I think the real difference is that my generation was the first in which those fictional heroes and worlds became ubiquitous and immersive enough to truly interfere with our collective sense-making.
I favor an "old fashioned" child responsibility model. But it's very hard in today's world if you don't live in a rural area. I let my 6yo play around the sidewalks and green space around our apartment, but adults will constantly ask her where her parents are. When she's says they're at home and know she's out they physically require her to come home and are shocked and judgemental when I say she's allowed out. It's come to the point where she runs inside to hide from any adults to avoid this interaction. She's not in the street or parking lot. She's running around having imaginative play.
The shift in 1980 aligns with a larger issue. An increased emphasis on parental supervision and protection could be seen as a manifestation of a broader ideological shift to neoliberalism. If society is viewed as a more dangerous and competitive place where individuals are solely responsible for their well-being, then parents might feel a greater need to shield their children and equip them individually to succeed, rather than focusing on creating a more just and equitable society for all children.
I was fortunate to live in a less litigious society, so I could ride my own horse at a ranch school. (8th grade). I don't have the common allergies. Don't know if childhood in dirty Paris gave me resistance or the ranch school feeding the pigs and playing capture the flag both on horse back and running on the ground. This was about 1950. Re: litigious. Once we showed sufficient maturity, we could sign out, saddle our horses, and explore the woods.
The descriptions of child autonomy ring true to my childhood experience.
In the mid to late 1970s, starting in the fourth grade (I think) I walked through town alone after school to take the bus to go to piano lessons (my mom went with me once to show me how to do it). I got my first paper route when I was in the third grade (it helped that my older brothers and their friends all had paper routes and I tagged along a lot when they did their routes; my mom also helped some at first). We rode our bikes all over town starting as young as 4-5 years old, usually with older children when we were younger. Built forts on our own in surrounding wild areas.
When teaching mathematics, I try giving students challenging problems that are interesting and provide insight into different mathematical structures so that the problems have some intrinsic meaning (the way real mathematics is done). With few exceptions, many of the older students (ninth grade on up) give up if they can't do them within a few minutes or if there is not some ready-made algorithm to follow. I try to explain that interesting work takes time and involves play: trial and error and working through frustration, just trying things out, but the don't seem to take to it. They are so used to doing formulaic work. Is this related? They can't seem to work independently on a challenging problem without someone telling then what rules to follow. You can find the rules, I say - even make some up and see if they work. Part of the difficulty is that they don't choose the problems so they are not necessarily interested in them. But even if I give them a chance to choose their own areas to study (to the extent I can) many of them are lost. What am I supposed to be doing? they ask.
We recently had a "paper airplane design competition" at work for some forced fun, and I volunteered to facilitate the process for my team. (It was more about look of the airplane than flight efficiency). I led a design meeting where we decided on the basic look and colors and theme. Then, I began a research process on paper airplane design. Once I decided on the folds, I then did a mock up with markers, did some measurements, and then created a design in Canva that aligned with the folds. Then I folded it. It took about 5-6 iterations to get it right. A few hours time over a few weeks.
Ya know, other duties as assigned.
I was struck while doing this project that this problem-solving process is something that young people currently struggle with. I had no idea what I was doing. I just found a way to do it with the skills and tools I had, plus some trial and error. This type of problem-solving is something I got better with over time, but it's still something I could do once I left college.
Most of our interns - later college students - and new hires really struggle with problem solving like this. They expect a lot more handholding. I suspect it's related to how education has changed.
I have a strong belief that the American institutionalized school system is largely to blame for the formulaic and non-creative way many kids think these days. It is designed to create good factory workers, not wise, community-minded people like it used to be. Creativity in subordinates is dangerous to people who are concerned about keeping power for themselves.
I think creativity is also being suppressed by modern technology that has been designed to be addicting, what with its instant gratification and endless stimulation. Kids aren't being encouraged to use their brains and exercise their critical thinking skills anymore. Stupid people are easy to control.
It's not a conspiracy, though. That's a lazy excuse to pin the blame on one diaphanous thing. It is many different things, plus our lack of moral vigilance that has led to these degradations.
As parents and teachers, and even just friends, we have to keep encouraging people to be independent, while also not isolating ourselves or having too much pride to ask for help when we actually need it. I think the reason kids could have so much autonomy back then was because they had strong communities– they had many people looking out for them.
Well, that's my two cents anyways.
You sound like a great teacher. Keep encouraging your students to think outside the box.
It's so fascinating how pronounced these shifts in attitudes towards children are just in parenting magazines' advice. I think it's interesting that the idea of giving children autonomy seems to have shifted from allowing them to be free beyond adult supervision and take their own initiative in fulfilling responsibilities to essentially not having those responsibilities and getting to make their own decisions so long as adults are watching over them. It reminds me of this paper I read a few years ago that compared childrens' independence across various cultures and found that American parents defined independence as allowing children to focus on independent task like schoolwork, while children in the two indigenous cultures that were discussed had a lot of tasks that served their community but were given the autonomy to fulfill them on their own. I wish we hadn't shifted away from that second definition so much.
When I started school in the mid-1950s in St Louis, my Mother noted that a group of neighborhood children of various ages would walk to the school together from our set of adjoining flats. When I turned 8, we moved to the suburbs and would do something similar to meet the bus at the end of our street. In 6th Grade I was a School Patrol boy and helped an adult Crossing Guard at an intersection of one of our busiest streets. That was an education on just how many of my schoolmates walked the whole way to school, regardless of age, and often together in multi-aged groups. What I don't remember is how many of these groups were made up of siblings which would have been more common then. By Junior High School, I often bicycled the whole way to our school building and home again (with stops on the way exercising the freedom to do so). But we also on free days often went out the door after breakfast and didn't return home again except for a quick lunch, until time for our evening meal.
Fascinating. Some of the changes in behavior on part of parents may have to do with the drastic decrease in family size. If you only have one or two children, it’s easier to obsess over their every move. If you have five or six, well, it’s just different. So I theorize. My wife and I have two children.
Demographic changes definitely contributed to the shift, but I believe that just as big a difference is how much adults live through their children today due to economic changes. My parents not only didn't live through us, but my mother couldn't WAIT for us to get out of the house and go to college. My mother was basically disillusioned with life and resented parental responsibilities (that was a common feature of the middle-class back then), but my father had a professional career (engineering) and found meaning at work. Today, the benefits he enjoyed from his employer hardly exist anymore, which leaves middle-class Americans to find that meaning elsewhere. Being the protectors of their children is what they've landed on, but strong, independent people don't need protectors. The frailty we now attribute to children is a result of needing and wanting them to be vulnerable so that we can feel good about saving them from the big bad world. So it's a number of factors, but smaller families are definitely a part of it!
I've very much enjoyed reading the earlier comments. In 1964 my father bought me a sailing dinghy. I was 13 years old. He came with me once to the beach to help me get it rigged and launched. Thereafter I was on my own. I pulled the boat on a trailer (with my sister or a friend) to and from the beach (4 blocks) and taught myself to sail. We took lunch and sailed all day at weekends (at times out of sight of land) and raced at the local yacht club. These remain the best memories of my childhood, alone at sea dependant on our own skills to get home. Sailing taught me far more than just handling a boat, particularly how to stay calm when things were getting a bit scary including 'ditching' and ending up in the sea (we always wore life jackets). I'm not sure I can think of a better preparation for adulthood.
I would trust my soon to be 6 year old to have the maturity to undertake errands by himself, but I'm scared of him getting hit by a car. Even as an adult (who walks around our neighbourhood daily) I've had so many near misses or witnessed accidents. I'm not sure how to overcome this -- it's entirely possible my fear is disproportionate, especially considering I used to walk several blocks to get to school when I was his age (albeit in a rural town). Any tips for building that confidence?
I was fearful for my kids but just steeled myself to allow them independence, as I thought it was important. Once my 8 yo wanted to hike through the woods and find the road on the other side(maybe two miles). He and his friends set off and I was very worried, but figured eventually they would figure it out. A couple hours later they reappeared, having never found a road and been stymied by mean-looking cows. But they were extremely proud of their adventure.
My point is, I didn’t want my anxiety to hold them back.
If you yourself have had near misses and witnessed accidents then it doesn’t sound like a confidence issue it sounds unsafe. Drivers are way more reckless than they used to be, there are less sidewalks, and drivers don’t look out for kids, and cars are bigger and taller so motorists cannot see children, and they do more damage. Find other ways to instill independence like walking safe neighborhoods, letting them run errands in safe spaces, having free reign in public places where cars aren’t.
My sisters, brother, and I grew up on a small family farm in farm country. We were often sent out-of-doors by our mother: "... and don't come back in until I call you". We were expected to entertain our selves and to be home in time for supper. We were free to roam the woods, explore in the streams, play in the barn (building forts with hay bales), ride our bikes, &c. I walked about a mile each way to and from our post office to fetch the mail; when he was older, my brother rode our horse for the mail, and was often in the woods on horseback for hours at a time. I split wood for the fireplace and woodstove, milked the cow, shoveled and plowed snow--and all of this was just what it meant to be part of our family/household. And I often worked for other farmers, thowing hay bales, helping with the barn chores, even when I came home for a "vacation" from college. The hyper-vigilance of today's "helicopter", "lawnmore", and "bulldozer" parents (for which I blame the media-fomented "fear of kidnapping" scare in the mid-1980s--those children are today's parents) has much for which to answer. I cannot think of any losses--it was a great childhood.
In our situation as parents in a v. small 1951 development, we encouraged our daughters to take over the local paper route from a college-bound neighbour, which they enjoyed doing for several years (the newspaper eventually did away with "child labour"); at some point, however, perhaps in the mid-90s, a neighbour complained to the police that they had been talking to a stranger, which brought an officer into our home--a scary and threatening encounter, mainly because he made it clear that he didn't believe their denial (their mother and I know that they did not talk with a stranger).
A far cry from being told that I had a bike so that I could get my self to and from soccer practice at school, which was c. five miles away.
Thanks again for your writings, Peter; may your followers multiply and your light glow even brighter.
I was born in 1952, lived in the country near a medium sized village. I had total freedom provided people knew where I was.
By aged eight I was helping the local blacksmith, and the local farmer.
I learned so much, including responsibility, safety, manners and respect.
Everyone looked out for me and didn't treat me like a 'child'.
If I stepped out of line, there was a firm hand on my shoulder, a knowing look and a wagged finger, very rarely a light spank, but no more than to attract my attention.
I think this blog post is missing the extremely important context that Western civilization DID collapse in the second half of the 20th Century -- by any reasonable objective measure. (This was likely due to the extreme lead poisoning at that time). Children could no longer be children. A wave of social change occurred that made childhood profoundly dangerous. Homicide rates skyrocketed and traditional intact community vanished. If anything, parents were not protective nor terrified enough. It has taken decades to adjust to this new anonymous ephemeral form of society that poses unique security challenges especially to children.
Admittedly, our present perception of a malevolent community no longer conforms to present reality. (Lead poisoning was largely contained by the mid-1990s). However, there is this multi-decade lag that occurs with many imagining that this is still the 1990s; when it is, in fact, much more like the 1950s. Nevertheless, on the key point, the wisdom of the crowd was correct -- The second half of the 20th Century was truly dystopian --almost unimaginably so.
My kids and I were talking about Islam, our religion, and we got sidetracked for awhile talking about how "childhood" is a very modern thing that maybe goes back to about the 1800's and comes out of the industrial west.
I've been thinking a lot about the relationship between the creative imagination and the building of the world around us. Booker T Washington's "Up From Slavery" was an amazing read because to rediscover or reinvent trades as a school has got to be one of the most effective ways of endowing students with the general confidence to believe in themselves and the informed knowledge of their own ability to shape the world with their labor power. The former slaves as Washington put it had the complete conviction that it was only a matter of freedom and they would completely take off and be amazingly successful economically.
For me, primary education is play, meaning; discover and learn how capable you truly are through self-direction. The hope is that such informed beliefs will shape the way they act as adults and possibly take a much more active role in shaping the world we live in.
I grew up in a coastal town in Australia in the late 90's and early 2000's. My sister and I walked to and from school indepedently from about grade 2, rode bikes all around the neighbourhood and were pretty much expected to stay outside with other neighbourhood kids and out of my mum's hair until the street lights came on. I caught public transport solo from about the age of 12/13 and do not recall a single instance where my parents asked about school work - it was all my responsibility. They never covered for me when my homework was late, or brought equipment to school that I forgot. They didn't see it as their job. I really appreciate their approach now that I'm older.
My husband and I have moved to a rural area on a military base to deliberately offer this sort of upbringing to our children, although I monitor them more closely than my own parents did. In general pretty much everyone that lives here allows their children much more freedom than they would otherwise be allowed. I love seeing big packs of primary school aged kids on their bike, playing in the surrounding bushland alone and hanging out at the park, though I have heard some other parents my age judging aloud at the freedom these kids are given. I wonder how we as a society can get back to this style of parenting.
I’m 39, an elder millennial born in 1985. I remember when we got dial up Internet at home, when I was in ~5th grade.
When I was about 6 or 7, I lived in a rural-adjacent suburb of a major city, and would hang out at my best friend’s house, or at the ranch where her mom trained horses. Her mother could whistle really loudly by putting her fingers against her teeth, and her rule was that we had to stay “within eyesight or earshot”, and if we heard her whistle, we had to come running back right away. I felt safe and looked after, and there was a group of kids playing together, 4 or 5 of us, so let’s say someone tripped and broke their leg; someone else could run back, I guess.
My dad grew up on a farm; one stoplight in the county, and in the summers, we’d go and stay with our grandparents and amble around with our cousins, in and out of my grandma’s house & my aunt’s house and my other aunt’s house. We borrowed hammers to build forts. We ate fudge at one house and Little Debbie cakes at another, but then peas and corn from the garden at supper.
Notable from my childhood:
— No one monitored what games we played. Adults were not part of our play. We didn’t need or want their presence. We never heard their comments about what we played — neither praise nor being told off — and thus I was not burdened by knowing what my parents thought about my play.
— There were 3 kids in my family, and 2-3 kids in most of the families I played with. (Nowadays that’s uncommon!)
— Sometimes my grandma would demand that we go outside whether we wanted to or not. This was not up for debate.
— Interestingly, no one monitored or cared how much TV we watched, how much Super Mario Brothers we played, how long we spent playing computer games, or how much sweets we ate. We did plenty of those things. We just played played outside more (or at least, it seemed that way bc those memories are much more vivid!) — building stuff, imagination play, that kind of thing.
Now when kids play on my street, even with each other, I get the impression that “parent watching from the window” is not the done thing. And even if kids from multiple households are playing together, often one adult per household is outside, supervising. I’d like to instigate a shift here — surely it doesn’t take 3 adults to monitor 3-5 children playing?
— kids in my life ask their parents to text their friends’ parents to see if their friends can play, which puts an access barrier between them and their friends. When I was a kid, I could knock or call. It’s a bummer that with the absence of landline phones, kids don’t have an appropriate communication tool.
— families I know have fewer children, so groups of 5-7 children playing together seems less common than it was in my childhood.
— obviously screens/devices are a different beast
I’d like to help the kids in my life have more autonomy, which means both more rights and more responsibilities. I yearn for more freedom for them.
There is a fantastic show on Netflix called “old enough” which is a show about Japanese toddlers running errands alone. I feel like all parents in the western world should watch it. We have a saying in our house “always assume competence” whenever our kids are trying things.
They discuss how physicians can discuss adolescence with parents in more productive ways, focusing on opportunity rather than danger, guiding rather than protecting, etc. The shift over time in sheltering our kids also extends to teens!
I have a lot of sympathy for parents who lived through this period. Growing up in the nineties, I watched myself and my friends transition from spending most of our time outdoors to playing video games. It wasn't that our parents had become uncomfortable with our unsupervised playtime. It was simply that technology had improved so much that our most imaginative games could no longer hold a candle to the latest first-person shooter. In the process, we discovered certain corners of the internet; the strange combination of anonymity and access that encouraged young people (or those pretending to be young people) to communicate in ways that genuinely frightened our parents. In a way, it was we who exposed them to a darker way of seeing the world.
I also recall my parents' confusion. My father grew up in the forties and fifties. He collected baseball cards. His heroes were real people who had worked hard and achieved something. He could buy a new card, then go watch that player at the local baseball stadium, and then imagine himself as that player when he and his friends played ball in a vacant lot. In other words, his hobby grounded him; it brought him into contact with real people doing real things.
I collected Pokémon cards. I saw my heroes in comic books, but as the technology improved, they became ubiquitious - in TV shows, movies, Nintendo, and even the GameBoy I carried in my pocket. I told my parents repeatedly how boring "real life" was compared to a world where you could collect magical animals. In important ways, my hobby alienated me from the world, and my parents noticed.
Without a doubt, parents have become more weary about entrusting their children to the world, and perhaps about entrusting the world to their children as well. But when I reflect on the reasons for this shift, I find them not in some sudden neurotic episode of my parents' generation, but in the technologically-mediated cultural erosion of my own.
Interesting comments.
It occurred to me: you write that your father's heroes were real people and that you saw your heroes in comic books. But maybe in your father's day, his heroes were heading in the direction of comic book heroes? His hero was not quite a real person, but the public image of an athlete created and maintained in part through baseball cards and other media of the times.
Certainly true, but I think that's largely been the case ever since humans started living in large societies. Most 18th century Americans didn't know George Washington personally; they had a culturally-mediated semi-mythic conception of him. I'm also not saying that my father's generation didn't have fictional heroes. He soaked up the golden age of science fiction. But I think the real difference is that my generation was the first in which those fictional heroes and worlds became ubiquitous and immersive enough to truly interfere with our collective sense-making.
I favor an "old fashioned" child responsibility model. But it's very hard in today's world if you don't live in a rural area. I let my 6yo play around the sidewalks and green space around our apartment, but adults will constantly ask her where her parents are. When she's says they're at home and know she's out they physically require her to come home and are shocked and judgemental when I say she's allowed out. It's come to the point where she runs inside to hide from any adults to avoid this interaction. She's not in the street or parking lot. She's running around having imaginative play.
The shift in 1980 aligns with a larger issue. An increased emphasis on parental supervision and protection could be seen as a manifestation of a broader ideological shift to neoliberalism. If society is viewed as a more dangerous and competitive place where individuals are solely responsible for their well-being, then parents might feel a greater need to shield their children and equip them individually to succeed, rather than focusing on creating a more just and equitable society for all children.
I was fortunate to live in a less litigious society, so I could ride my own horse at a ranch school. (8th grade). I don't have the common allergies. Don't know if childhood in dirty Paris gave me resistance or the ranch school feeding the pigs and playing capture the flag both on horse back and running on the ground. This was about 1950. Re: litigious. Once we showed sufficient maturity, we could sign out, saddle our horses, and explore the woods.
The descriptions of child autonomy ring true to my childhood experience.
In the mid to late 1970s, starting in the fourth grade (I think) I walked through town alone after school to take the bus to go to piano lessons (my mom went with me once to show me how to do it). I got my first paper route when I was in the third grade (it helped that my older brothers and their friends all had paper routes and I tagged along a lot when they did their routes; my mom also helped some at first). We rode our bikes all over town starting as young as 4-5 years old, usually with older children when we were younger. Built forts on our own in surrounding wild areas.
When teaching mathematics, I try giving students challenging problems that are interesting and provide insight into different mathematical structures so that the problems have some intrinsic meaning (the way real mathematics is done). With few exceptions, many of the older students (ninth grade on up) give up if they can't do them within a few minutes or if there is not some ready-made algorithm to follow. I try to explain that interesting work takes time and involves play: trial and error and working through frustration, just trying things out, but the don't seem to take to it. They are so used to doing formulaic work. Is this related? They can't seem to work independently on a challenging problem without someone telling then what rules to follow. You can find the rules, I say - even make some up and see if they work. Part of the difficulty is that they don't choose the problems so they are not necessarily interested in them. But even if I give them a chance to choose their own areas to study (to the extent I can) many of them are lost. What am I supposed to be doing? they ask.
We recently had a "paper airplane design competition" at work for some forced fun, and I volunteered to facilitate the process for my team. (It was more about look of the airplane than flight efficiency). I led a design meeting where we decided on the basic look and colors and theme. Then, I began a research process on paper airplane design. Once I decided on the folds, I then did a mock up with markers, did some measurements, and then created a design in Canva that aligned with the folds. Then I folded it. It took about 5-6 iterations to get it right. A few hours time over a few weeks.
Ya know, other duties as assigned.
I was struck while doing this project that this problem-solving process is something that young people currently struggle with. I had no idea what I was doing. I just found a way to do it with the skills and tools I had, plus some trial and error. This type of problem-solving is something I got better with over time, but it's still something I could do once I left college.
Most of our interns - later college students - and new hires really struggle with problem solving like this. They expect a lot more handholding. I suspect it's related to how education has changed.
I have a strong belief that the American institutionalized school system is largely to blame for the formulaic and non-creative way many kids think these days. It is designed to create good factory workers, not wise, community-minded people like it used to be. Creativity in subordinates is dangerous to people who are concerned about keeping power for themselves.
I think creativity is also being suppressed by modern technology that has been designed to be addicting, what with its instant gratification and endless stimulation. Kids aren't being encouraged to use their brains and exercise their critical thinking skills anymore. Stupid people are easy to control.
It's not a conspiracy, though. That's a lazy excuse to pin the blame on one diaphanous thing. It is many different things, plus our lack of moral vigilance that has led to these degradations.
As parents and teachers, and even just friends, we have to keep encouraging people to be independent, while also not isolating ourselves or having too much pride to ask for help when we actually need it. I think the reason kids could have so much autonomy back then was because they had strong communities– they had many people looking out for them.
Well, that's my two cents anyways.
You sound like a great teacher. Keep encouraging your students to think outside the box.
Thanks for your comments.
I agree strongly with your comments about the school system!
It's so fascinating how pronounced these shifts in attitudes towards children are just in parenting magazines' advice. I think it's interesting that the idea of giving children autonomy seems to have shifted from allowing them to be free beyond adult supervision and take their own initiative in fulfilling responsibilities to essentially not having those responsibilities and getting to make their own decisions so long as adults are watching over them. It reminds me of this paper I read a few years ago that compared childrens' independence across various cultures and found that American parents defined independence as allowing children to focus on independent task like schoolwork, while children in the two indigenous cultures that were discussed had a lot of tasks that served their community but were given the autonomy to fulfill them on their own. I wish we hadn't shifted away from that second definition so much.
When I started school in the mid-1950s in St Louis, my Mother noted that a group of neighborhood children of various ages would walk to the school together from our set of adjoining flats. When I turned 8, we moved to the suburbs and would do something similar to meet the bus at the end of our street. In 6th Grade I was a School Patrol boy and helped an adult Crossing Guard at an intersection of one of our busiest streets. That was an education on just how many of my schoolmates walked the whole way to school, regardless of age, and often together in multi-aged groups. What I don't remember is how many of these groups were made up of siblings which would have been more common then. By Junior High School, I often bicycled the whole way to our school building and home again (with stops on the way exercising the freedom to do so). But we also on free days often went out the door after breakfast and didn't return home again except for a quick lunch, until time for our evening meal.
Fascinating. Some of the changes in behavior on part of parents may have to do with the drastic decrease in family size. If you only have one or two children, it’s easier to obsess over their every move. If you have five or six, well, it’s just different. So I theorize. My wife and I have two children.
Demographic changes definitely contributed to the shift, but I believe that just as big a difference is how much adults live through their children today due to economic changes. My parents not only didn't live through us, but my mother couldn't WAIT for us to get out of the house and go to college. My mother was basically disillusioned with life and resented parental responsibilities (that was a common feature of the middle-class back then), but my father had a professional career (engineering) and found meaning at work. Today, the benefits he enjoyed from his employer hardly exist anymore, which leaves middle-class Americans to find that meaning elsewhere. Being the protectors of their children is what they've landed on, but strong, independent people don't need protectors. The frailty we now attribute to children is a result of needing and wanting them to be vulnerable so that we can feel good about saving them from the big bad world. So it's a number of factors, but smaller families are definitely a part of it!
I've very much enjoyed reading the earlier comments. In 1964 my father bought me a sailing dinghy. I was 13 years old. He came with me once to the beach to help me get it rigged and launched. Thereafter I was on my own. I pulled the boat on a trailer (with my sister or a friend) to and from the beach (4 blocks) and taught myself to sail. We took lunch and sailed all day at weekends (at times out of sight of land) and raced at the local yacht club. These remain the best memories of my childhood, alone at sea dependant on our own skills to get home. Sailing taught me far more than just handling a boat, particularly how to stay calm when things were getting a bit scary including 'ditching' and ending up in the sea (we always wore life jackets). I'm not sure I can think of a better preparation for adulthood.
I would trust my soon to be 6 year old to have the maturity to undertake errands by himself, but I'm scared of him getting hit by a car. Even as an adult (who walks around our neighbourhood daily) I've had so many near misses or witnessed accidents. I'm not sure how to overcome this -- it's entirely possible my fear is disproportionate, especially considering I used to walk several blocks to get to school when I was his age (albeit in a rural town). Any tips for building that confidence?
I was fearful for my kids but just steeled myself to allow them independence, as I thought it was important. Once my 8 yo wanted to hike through the woods and find the road on the other side(maybe two miles). He and his friends set off and I was very worried, but figured eventually they would figure it out. A couple hours later they reappeared, having never found a road and been stymied by mean-looking cows. But they were extremely proud of their adventure.
My point is, I didn’t want my anxiety to hold them back.
Hiking through the woods is wayyyyyyy safer than walking on an unsafe street with cars.
If you yourself have had near misses and witnessed accidents then it doesn’t sound like a confidence issue it sounds unsafe. Drivers are way more reckless than they used to be, there are less sidewalks, and drivers don’t look out for kids, and cars are bigger and taller so motorists cannot see children, and they do more damage. Find other ways to instill independence like walking safe neighborhoods, letting them run errands in safe spaces, having free reign in public places where cars aren’t.
My sisters, brother, and I grew up on a small family farm in farm country. We were often sent out-of-doors by our mother: "... and don't come back in until I call you". We were expected to entertain our selves and to be home in time for supper. We were free to roam the woods, explore in the streams, play in the barn (building forts with hay bales), ride our bikes, &c. I walked about a mile each way to and from our post office to fetch the mail; when he was older, my brother rode our horse for the mail, and was often in the woods on horseback for hours at a time. I split wood for the fireplace and woodstove, milked the cow, shoveled and plowed snow--and all of this was just what it meant to be part of our family/household. And I often worked for other farmers, thowing hay bales, helping with the barn chores, even when I came home for a "vacation" from college. The hyper-vigilance of today's "helicopter", "lawnmore", and "bulldozer" parents (for which I blame the media-fomented "fear of kidnapping" scare in the mid-1980s--those children are today's parents) has much for which to answer. I cannot think of any losses--it was a great childhood.
In our situation as parents in a v. small 1951 development, we encouraged our daughters to take over the local paper route from a college-bound neighbour, which they enjoyed doing for several years (the newspaper eventually did away with "child labour"); at some point, however, perhaps in the mid-90s, a neighbour complained to the police that they had been talking to a stranger, which brought an officer into our home--a scary and threatening encounter, mainly because he made it clear that he didn't believe their denial (their mother and I know that they did not talk with a stranger).
A far cry from being told that I had a bike so that I could get my self to and from soccer practice at school, which was c. five miles away.
Thanks again for your writings, Peter; may your followers multiply and your light glow even brighter.
I was born in 1952, lived in the country near a medium sized village. I had total freedom provided people knew where I was.
By aged eight I was helping the local blacksmith, and the local farmer.
I learned so much, including responsibility, safety, manners and respect.
Everyone looked out for me and didn't treat me like a 'child'.
If I stepped out of line, there was a firm hand on my shoulder, a knowing look and a wagged finger, very rarely a light spank, but no more than to attract my attention.
It was just plain common sense.
I think this blog post is missing the extremely important context that Western civilization DID collapse in the second half of the 20th Century -- by any reasonable objective measure. (This was likely due to the extreme lead poisoning at that time). Children could no longer be children. A wave of social change occurred that made childhood profoundly dangerous. Homicide rates skyrocketed and traditional intact community vanished. If anything, parents were not protective nor terrified enough. It has taken decades to adjust to this new anonymous ephemeral form of society that poses unique security challenges especially to children.
Admittedly, our present perception of a malevolent community no longer conforms to present reality. (Lead poisoning was largely contained by the mid-1990s). However, there is this multi-decade lag that occurs with many imagining that this is still the 1990s; when it is, in fact, much more like the 1950s. Nevertheless, on the key point, the wisdom of the crowd was correct -- The second half of the 20th Century was truly dystopian --almost unimaginably so.
My kids and I were talking about Islam, our religion, and we got sidetracked for awhile talking about how "childhood" is a very modern thing that maybe goes back to about the 1800's and comes out of the industrial west.
I've been thinking a lot about the relationship between the creative imagination and the building of the world around us. Booker T Washington's "Up From Slavery" was an amazing read because to rediscover or reinvent trades as a school has got to be one of the most effective ways of endowing students with the general confidence to believe in themselves and the informed knowledge of their own ability to shape the world with their labor power. The former slaves as Washington put it had the complete conviction that it was only a matter of freedom and they would completely take off and be amazingly successful economically.
For me, primary education is play, meaning; discover and learn how capable you truly are through self-direction. The hope is that such informed beliefs will shape the way they act as adults and possibly take a much more active role in shaping the world we live in.
I grew up in a coastal town in Australia in the late 90's and early 2000's. My sister and I walked to and from school indepedently from about grade 2, rode bikes all around the neighbourhood and were pretty much expected to stay outside with other neighbourhood kids and out of my mum's hair until the street lights came on. I caught public transport solo from about the age of 12/13 and do not recall a single instance where my parents asked about school work - it was all my responsibility. They never covered for me when my homework was late, or brought equipment to school that I forgot. They didn't see it as their job. I really appreciate their approach now that I'm older.
My husband and I have moved to a rural area on a military base to deliberately offer this sort of upbringing to our children, although I monitor them more closely than my own parents did. In general pretty much everyone that lives here allows their children much more freedom than they would otherwise be allowed. I love seeing big packs of primary school aged kids on their bike, playing in the surrounding bushland alone and hanging out at the park, though I have heard some other parents my age judging aloud at the freedom these kids are given. I wonder how we as a society can get back to this style of parenting.
I’m 39, an elder millennial born in 1985. I remember when we got dial up Internet at home, when I was in ~5th grade.
When I was about 6 or 7, I lived in a rural-adjacent suburb of a major city, and would hang out at my best friend’s house, or at the ranch where her mom trained horses. Her mother could whistle really loudly by putting her fingers against her teeth, and her rule was that we had to stay “within eyesight or earshot”, and if we heard her whistle, we had to come running back right away. I felt safe and looked after, and there was a group of kids playing together, 4 or 5 of us, so let’s say someone tripped and broke their leg; someone else could run back, I guess.
My dad grew up on a farm; one stoplight in the county, and in the summers, we’d go and stay with our grandparents and amble around with our cousins, in and out of my grandma’s house & my aunt’s house and my other aunt’s house. We borrowed hammers to build forts. We ate fudge at one house and Little Debbie cakes at another, but then peas and corn from the garden at supper.
Notable from my childhood:
— No one monitored what games we played. Adults were not part of our play. We didn’t need or want their presence. We never heard their comments about what we played — neither praise nor being told off — and thus I was not burdened by knowing what my parents thought about my play.
— There were 3 kids in my family, and 2-3 kids in most of the families I played with. (Nowadays that’s uncommon!)
— Sometimes my grandma would demand that we go outside whether we wanted to or not. This was not up for debate.
— Interestingly, no one monitored or cared how much TV we watched, how much Super Mario Brothers we played, how long we spent playing computer games, or how much sweets we ate. We did plenty of those things. We just played played outside more (or at least, it seemed that way bc those memories are much more vivid!) — building stuff, imagination play, that kind of thing.
Now when kids play on my street, even with each other, I get the impression that “parent watching from the window” is not the done thing. And even if kids from multiple households are playing together, often one adult per household is outside, supervising. I’d like to instigate a shift here — surely it doesn’t take 3 adults to monitor 3-5 children playing?
— kids in my life ask their parents to text their friends’ parents to see if their friends can play, which puts an access barrier between them and their friends. When I was a kid, I could knock or call. It’s a bummer that with the absence of landline phones, kids don’t have an appropriate communication tool.
— families I know have fewer children, so groups of 5-7 children playing together seems less common than it was in my childhood.
— obviously screens/devices are a different beast
I’d like to help the kids in my life have more autonomy, which means both more rights and more responsibilities. I yearn for more freedom for them.
There is a fantastic show on Netflix called “old enough” which is a show about Japanese toddlers running errands alone. I feel like all parents in the western world should watch it. We have a saying in our house “always assume competence” whenever our kids are trying things.
Love this saying! I think I’ll adopt it…
This reminds me of Kendall-Taylor & Ginsburg's 2021 Pediatrics article, Framing strategies to shape parent and adolescent understandings of development: https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/148/3/e2021050735/181117/Framing-Strategies-to-Shape-Parent-and-Adolescent
They discuss how physicians can discuss adolescence with parents in more productive ways, focusing on opportunity rather than danger, guiding rather than protecting, etc. The shift over time in sheltering our kids also extends to teens!
Interesting! So much of parental anxiety seems to be instilled at the doctor during infancy. It would be great if doctors were more aware of this.