The Incredible Shrinking Freedoms

Each generation allows their kids less freedom to wander around. We’ve become so paranoid kids are practically prisoners of their parents until they reach a certain age. I’m glad I was able to travel around a lot on my bike as a preteen. I used to like going all over the place on my bike, exploring the countryside. Even when I was a little kid I wandered all over our neighborhood and surrounding environment in Oahu, Hawaii. I attribute exploring strange new places as sparking my imagination early which lead to be being a creative writer.

But a this picture shows, people are given less and less rope. 

The weird thing is, I’m practically sure we’re being brainwashed by the media to keep our kids under lock and key, when the best thing we could probably do to help with the Big Scary Epidemic of Childhood Obesity(!) is to let them run around outside for goodness sake!

I’d strongly suspect that the rates of child abuse (particularly the big boogeyman: abduction by a stranger) are the same or lower than they were back when we ourselves were allowed to roam far and wide… but still, you think, “Geez! But it’s MY KID” and suddenly you’re left arguing with yourself over whether they should be able go down to the end of the block alone, when you yourself walked a mile to school at that age every day. After all, everybody else’s kid has a watchful parent in tow nearly all the time. (Don’t even get me started on Halloween… the Marines have less guards on patrol in Baghdad than a typical suburban block has on Halloween night)

We parent-types tend to take our cues from the other parents around us, and for the most part, you feel like you’re being incredibly reckless if you let them go to the bathroom in a restaurant without an escort until they’re half grown.

It’s stupid… but oh man, it’s hard to let ’em go too far out of sight, particularly when they’re young…

Posted by Peter Bickford  on  01/16  at  12:32 AM

I work at a family entertainment center - mini-golf, lasertag, arcade, and such. I have seen little kids wandering around all by themselves, with the parents and/or teenagers sitting at a table in our dining area.

Not unusual? These “little kids” I’m talking about can’t be more than three years old. I swear to God, we had one LITTLE girl that kept wandering over to the golf counter (a good fifty feet away from the dining area), and her teenage sister would come all the way over, pick her up, take her back to the table...and then not pay attention when the girl wandered off AGAIN.

Fortunately, it was a weekday and there were very few people in the arcade. But STILL…

Posted by Dave Marron  on  01/16  at  01:19 AM

When I was a kid my mother said,

“When it snows, you don’t see Brock from after breakfast until dark.”

A good example of how far we have fallen.

Posted by Brock Townsend  on  01/16  at  08:11 AM

Peter,

I would say there are probably a lot less child molesters running around than before because of so much media scrutiny.

But the media makes it seem like they are around every corner.

Posted by  on  01/16  at  10:30 AM

I think the problem is that most parents are unwilling to BE parents, i.e.: invest the time in PARENTING—teaching their kids about how to survive in their world—what to look out for—how to react to certain situations—stuff that people my age received from their parents as SOP. At ten, I was free to get on any MUNI bus and ride all over San Francisco (and OF COURSE I knew which neighborhoods to avoid!).  At 12 I rode my bike from SF all the way down the peninsula and up to Skyline Blvd in Millbrae to visit my nephews (that’s one long ride—especially on a stingray bike!)...everything was cool as long as I got home for dinner; or, if going somewhere I didn’t usually go, let the folks know beforehand.

Posted by  on  01/16  at  11:37 AM
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