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What's annoying is that as someone who did have a rather free-range childhood, people don't get that there actually were good reasons for people to be helicopte
by Noos 9y ago
What's annoying is that as someone who did have a rather free-range childhood, people don't get that there actually were good reasons for people to be helicopter. You let the kids go off and play with others for hours alone, right; but then you find out later that while they did, an older teen was molesting them, or introducing them to porn. You let your kids play and roughhouse, cool; but back then you'd often have your kid chip a tooth or bust their collarbone, or they'd be blacking each others eyes or fighting after school. You'd give them the freedom to be alone, and then they'd be in front of you with the cops by them, because they were throwing rocks at windows.
People need to stop knee-jerk reacting to things and understand trends often happen in context to previous happenings. The helicopter movement arose after we realized in the 70s and 80s that free-range childhood often led to some really dangerous things happening to kids, that unsupervised time actually helped cover up things like sexual abuse or violence. It isn't just millenials being millenial or something.
- chmod775 9y agoI do believe that most parents who give their children the time and freedom to grow up are very aware of risks like those you mentioned, but they'd rather take that slim chance than raising a child that, in a way, may be crippled for life. At the end of the day it's just weighing a bunch of different risks and outcomes against each other. Different people come to different conclusions about "what is best" and there can be no definitely right or wrong approach - not unless people could agree on what they actually wanted to achieve/raise.
- scott_karana 9y agoSurprise! All of those things can, and do, still happen. Plus, the Internet silently facilitates a lot more of that behaviour despite being in the "safety" of the home. Citations needed.
- Noos 9y agoIt's not the same. Yes, the internet has led to some nasty, new behaviors. But its one thing to have your kid's minecraft server invaded by trolls, it's another to find out your kid was physically beaten up by neighbor kids down the street
- scott_karana 9y agoThose are not mutually exclusive. It's worse to be systematically hounded online and then subjected to regular bullying.
- glangdale 9y agoSeriously this. My wife talks about a very free range early 70s childhood, with the punchline "Of course, one person was molested, and another was killed by a car while free-ranging". We have a Chinese friend who talked about all of kids teaching each other to swim without adult instruction in a (pretty polluted-sounding river). When we made impressed noises, she said "well, of course several children died per year".
- eru 9y agoThis is more of an argument against pollution and cars, and for teaching kids how to properly report any attempts at molestation; than against free-ranging?
- jacobolus 9y agoDo you have a reference about changes in the amount of molestation, busted collarbones, after-school fights, or porn viewing happening to kids now vs. 40 years ago? Even if there are such changes, it seems unclear to me that they can be attributed to kids playing outside unsupervised. But my understanding is that most child molestation is by trusted adults known to the family (or family members), most kids nowadays (certainly by age 12 or 14) have plenty of access to porn (probably much easier than in the past), kids still fight during and after school, and injury rates aren’t especially changed. I could be wrong about though, I haven’t looked up precise figures. Just making up a list of scary sounding hypothetical situations and anecdotes isn’t the best way to judge risk. The biggest causes of death for children in the US are cancer, car collisions, drowning, gun homicides, and suicide. If we want to make life safer for children we should be focusing on reducing car use and using traffic engineering to slow cars down (ideally <20 miles/hour) in populated areas, pay more attention to home swimming pools, get rid of guns to the extent possible, and figure out what in the society is making teenagers so unhappy they would want to kill themselves (maybe has something to do with their lack of autonomy).
- Noos 9y agoI don't think anyone really collected that data to compare. I know most of those happened to me, when I was unsupervised, and others I knew. It would make a good project for an academic to collate the data through interviews.
- guywaffle 9y agoI can guarantee kids watch more porn now at a younger age than they did in the 70’s and 80’s.