In reaction to a post from Doug Ross complaining about the mollycoddling of today’s children, James Joyner responds:
Like Doug, I worry that we’re coddling our kids, robbing them of the joys of childhood as well as the earned confidence that comes with taking risks and succeeding.
Yet, while I lament the Nanny State more than the next guy, we shouldn’t kid ourselves, either. The cost of the more carefree existence of that bygone age was more than some cuts, bruises, and chipped teeth. More kids died, were permanently maimed and paralyzed, and had birth defects when Doug and I were growing up than now.
I’m considerably older than James or, apparently, Doug. I think the world has changed quite a bit since I was a kid and not merely in the ways that James or Doug point to.
I think the difference is that kids are a lot more supervised now. I spent my first nine years in a rough, inner city-type neighborhood. There was a brothel on the corner of the street where we lived and the girls used to give me nickels to go buy cigarettes for them from the tiny store across the street. The woman next door ran numbers.
From the time I was about five until I started school I spent nearly all day every day either playing in our backyard (an open sewer ran through it), playing with neighborhood kids in the streets, or just kicking around the neighborhood. We ran, we wrestled, we jumped, we played games. Not video games or board games. Hide ‘N Seek. Tag. Red Rover. Dodge ball. Soccer (soccer had been big in our town since the early 19th century). Baseball.
After I started school once school was out I was on my own again. Once I had a bicycle I rode all over town, perhaps as far as ten miles away from home.
After I turned nine I spent a lot of time reading but that’s a different story.
My parents thought nothing of this, at least in part because that’s the way they had grown up, too.
We had a television but most TV watching was after dinner with the family.
When we moved from our tough city neighborhood to the tonier lily white suburb that my siblings thought of as home I just wandered farther afield. I spent a lot of time at the Y—it was about five miles away and I rode my bike. That was where I began studying judo.
I think that parents are too trepidacious to allow the life I led now. I don’t know if they’re better informed, overly cautious, or if the world is actually more dangerous. I think it’s more dangerous and I think the reason is drugs.
Part of it is definitely fear of government intervention. If our 13 or 15 year olds are wandering somewhere unsupervised, and something happens to them, the government could easily take all of our kids away from us, and we might not get them back. That is a powerful disincentive to letting kids wander unsupervised, even to the library or grocery store (both about a mile away, and more or less in our neighborhood).
Could be. I can only see that practices have changed.
See also this graph of incidence of first heroin use. My childhood is off the graph to the left. As you can see the low point for the last fifty years is higher than the high point prior to that.
Cocaine use
Combining the extreme sexualization of our society and reduction of inhibitions suggests to me a likely higher level of child sexual abuse, child murder, and so on.
One thing that you might consider is that we also do not wish to be reported and have our kids taken away from us. Read up and you will find more than a few stories of how families who give their kids freedom can suffer draconian penalties
That’s what Jeff, above, said.
I did the “future fiction writer” version of that, Dave. I came up with excuses to avoid other kids because I liked to wander, usually alone, sometimes with a single friend. Actual human friends got in the way of imagination, so if I had a friend it was someone persistent enough to force themselves on me.
When were in France I rode my bike everywhere, unsupervised, unhindered. Smoked my first (and pretty much last) cigarette in the drained moat of a Vauban coastal fort when I was 9. Later in the Florida panhandle I’d run loose in the woods where boar and rattlers lived, swam in a mocassin-infested bayou. Much the same in Virginia except that there I could sneak into the Potemkin village the military used for riot training. There was also a massive, abandoned gravel factory.
But times changed.
I am 100% sure I was at greater risk than my kids are now. I try to compensate for the physical overprotection we inflict by giving my son unfettered access to the internet, movies, TV, etc… But I have to admit we shelter our daughter more than that.
I think it’s probably a net loss for kids. But it’s damned hard to look “society” in the eye and say yes, I’m going to take risks with my kids that everyone now believes are reckless and irresponsible. Jeff’s right that if I let my kids have the freedom I had I’d be hearing from child protective services.
“I came up with excuses to avoid other kids because I liked to wander, usually alone, sometimes with a single friend. Actual human friends got in the way of imagination (or other independant thinking activities – Drew), so if I had a friend it was someone persistent enough to force themselves on me.”
Heh. I’m sure this will leave you horrified…….but you and I have more in common than you may wish to acknowledge………..”soul mate.”
Your childhood freedom was amazing, and also Michael Reynolds’. Mothers use their own experience as a guide, and our mom raised herself from age 4, babysat herself and got her own meals, rode the streetcar by herself at age 5, sat on barstools, went to the wrestling matches, etc. So she was pretty comfortable and saw it as “normal” (also educational) to let us roam freely. Also she was pretty busy with littler ones than you and I. There were dangers, and you’re lucky (or watchful on your own behalf) that you weren’t victimized as a little freewheeling wanderer.
It was raucous fun, I must say. I remember running around the bare dirt back yard of the red headed hooligans across the street, who had a tree house. One day their mom brought out a tray of sliced tomatoes with salt on them. This was seen as a real treat. I think I knew they were rougher than we, less educated, more strapped for cash.
As to society being more dangerous now due to drugs and hyper sexualization— drugs maybe, but sexualization, no I don’t think so. Sexual abuse of children has always been with us, unfortunately. We called them sex fiends or creeps or bogeymen. And they weren’t on a registry. Child sexual abuse reportedly affects up to 25% of U.S. girls and up to 15% of boys. There was certainly child abuse including sexual abuse present in our downtrodden first neighborhood. And child abuse including sexual abuse was probably present in our tonier second neighborhood.
I’ll think of you as my evil twin. 😉
“I’ll think of you as my evil twin.”
Fair enough. The world never really works the way we think it does.
Ah, yes. The Gieslers. Mom, dad, seven or eight kids. I think that the dad had some sort of haphazard employment and the mom waitressed or something along those lines. Was there a grandmother living there, too? Haven’t thought about this in a half century.
Benjamin Schwarz of the Atlantic has mentioned more than a few times that the safety of children playing and biking through their urban neighborhoods in the postwar era was guaranteed by the unseen, watchful eyes of a legion of parents. Its a striking image and I would be interested in a fuller discussion of it. The rise of the income household is part of what has changed, but it would be interesting to compare home architecture — the presence of large front windows and porches, giving way to a focus on the back of the house. Also, what homemaking activities kept a pair of eyes near the front of the house.
PD:
The problem with that nostalgic view can be expressed in two words: Kitty Genovese. That was 1964 and the original account exaggerated the number of indifferent neighbors, but reading between the lines it’s still pretty awful.
For contrast there’s the very recent case of Antonio Diaz Chacon who hopped into his car and pursued a man who had grabbed a six year old girl. Chacon was able to rescue her from almost-certain death. (Chacon incidentally now faces deportation.)
I’m leery of those ‘good old days’ stories about how safe life was. In those days people didn’t report rapes or molestations. So who knows how safe we were?
Boys had more range than girls even back then. While my brothers could stray miles from the house, my mother knew where I was, which was within a block or two radius.
i remember crawling along the floor with a bobby pin in my hand aiming for the slot in the electrical outlet. It would fit.
We were kicked out of the house in the morning. Let back in for lunch, then kicked out until dinner. Out again until dinner. Only a hard rain would let us in during the day. One difference people do forget is that most mothers did not work. Not sure how that would have helped when we were blowing up stuff int he woods three miles from home, but they were around.
Steve
michael, I agree about the nostaligia factor and there is a tendency to lay more importance on sensentaional events that are sensational because of their novelty.
Still, my sense is that a lot of residential areas are quieter. If a parent is not home, then the kids are not likely in the neighborhood either. Fewer children means less family density. And kids are an additional set of eyes.
I’ll also blame video games and air conditioning and more children t.v. programs. More cars, more higher speed streets divide the cities.
Organized sports, particularly soccer, seems to eat up a lot of leisure time. They have more homework than I did, and have to travel further to do the things I did.
I’ll also blame video games and air conditioning and more children t.v. programs. More cars, more higher speed streets divide the cities.
Yeah, I think that’s right. But I’ve also wondered if a part of the prevalence of crime in low-income neighborhoods is the attractiveness of the street vs. the discomfort of the indoor space. My kids can have internet, TV, AC, food . . . or they can go stand on an unpopulated suburban street. A poor kid, especially one living in an urban setting, has the reverse set of choices.
A bit off-topic, but a sudden realization re: technology: my son went to his first dance last night, an event that in my day was fairly terrifying. No problem for him. Why? iPhone 4. This generation doesn’t just stand there looking vulnerable — they stand there texting, watching a movie, reading a website. It’s really kind of unfair.
Working parents is a big factor – if there’s no one at home then that means day care. That was certainly the case for me after my parents divorced and my mom had to get a job. Once I became a teen, though, I had a pretty long leash compared to my peers.
My childhood was spent in two, somewhat different environments. At my youngest, we lived in Redford Township in Detroit. This was suburban/urban. While there weren’t many high rises, you had to look to find open fields. The neighborhood was all streets and cross streets, with commercial areas a few blocks away in two directions. As I was little, I was confined first to the back yard, then the block–no crossing streets. As I got older, I could manage crossings on the five-block walk, first with supervision, then alone on my way to first and second grades. Play was confined to kids on the block, though my older brother–six years older–had a wider range of friends and activities.
I moved in second grade to a middle-sized city (40K) in MA. This was the ‘family home’, with scores of relatives within a 30-mile range. Our house was pretty suburban, though it was only a 10-minute walk to downtown. The geography of the area meant that there were woods and hills, valleys, streams, farms, and the CN River all within walking distance. There were train tracks about which we were warned; there were ‘hobo encampments’ about which we were more sternly warned. We tested ourselves in those locations, as well as with the crazy old guy with rocksalt in his shotgun on one farm. We learned firsthand about wild animals and rabies, snakes–poisonous and not. We learned which neighborhoods were best avoided and why. Our fathers and uncles had lots of nifty WWII stuff stuck in the basement, from bayonets and M1 rifles to German and Japanese war souvenirs. I’m not aware of any explosives–beyond M-80s, cherry bombs, and ladyfingers–making their way into our play. My specialty was making rockets combining empty CO2 cartridges with match heads One uncle, a city cop, was generous in passing along brass knuckles, saps, spring batons, and the like, but never guns. We made .22 cal. and linoleum square zip guns all by ourselves. There was certainly a chance for fatal accidents, but we avoided them.
Many families had two working parents (this was in the 50s). Non-working parents would keep half an eye or ear open for the neighbors’ kids, but only if they were within sight or earshot. We played with kids from our parochial school and the local public school, mostly the ones who lived within a four- or five-block area, i.e., a neighborhood.
My ranging ground was probably about three miles before I got a bike. Then, it expanded to about 10 miles. That brought mountains, waterfalls, an amusement park, and dinosaur footprints within our range, but far outside parental supervision range.
We didn’t read about pederasts in the newspaper; it wasn’t reported much. We did know, even at age 8, that there were creepy adults and creepy kids. Word was passed among us, if not always from parents. We certainly knew to stay away from the guys who beat their wives and kids, as well as those who abused their dogs and the ones who were frequently in jail.
Born with anti-athlete genes, I, too spent a lot of time on my own. I had collections of just about everything collectible and piles of field guides to help me identify them, dead or alive, and knew the librarians and curators at the local libraries and museums. I also had forbearing parents.
We certainly had our share of broken bones, teeth knocked out, and the like. One friend drown in a canal; another burnt himself up playing with matches; yet another died of polio. One classmate scalded himself opening a pressure cooker full of applesauce. We didn’t have vaccinations yet against most childhood diseases, so everyone got mumps, chickenpox, and measles and whooping cough and rheumatic fever weren’t rare. Antibiotics were still rare and pricey. Sulfa drugs were often the first resort for infections like tonsillitis.
I can compare all this with the childhood my son had. Living in major urban areas like DC or London, his life was certainly far more constricted. We made efforts to get him into the outdoors through trips and vacations, but he’s an urban guy now, living in LA and loving it. I don’t know if he would have enjoyed the childhood I had, but it’s certainly not worth worrying about. I can’t change that now.
I know he’s healthier in many regards, from never having had a dental cavity to a much better appreciation of diet and exercise. He’s a careful driver and a careful drinker. I don’t think he’d necessarily make a good survivalist, but that’s not in his cards, barring apocalypse. I may know more about the nuts and bolts of technology, but he’s definitely a better user of it.
He didn’t have and couldn’t have had many of the experiences that were important to me. But he’s not me. He’s had his own important experiences, good and bad.
If the childhood mortality rate was high, we weren’t aware of it. We did know that accidents happened and that bad luck was out there, maybe waiting, maybe not.
My extended family was Irish and French-Canadian Catholic. I had 135 first cousins. One of my four brothers died soon after his 9-week premature birth. There were likely miscarriages in the family, but that’s not something a young boy would know. We did learn about breast, uterine/cervical, and penile cancers, though.
Dave,
Just wanted to mention that something seems to be wrong with your RSS feed – it hasn’t updated since the 19th.