I’d be surprised if it wasn’t true. In the 1960s, a mother could just send the kids out to play on their own, which kids normally did if they weren’t at school. Such things are unthinkable these days, and it looks quite plausible that today’s standard way of helicopter parenting has increased the total amount of parents’ time spent doting on kids so much that even if fathers did only a minority of it, they’d still spend a larger amount of time that the total time normally spent back in the sixties.
‘Unthinkable’ seems like an exaggeration. I played outside by myself as a kid (though that’s 20 years ago), and I have the distinct impression that my bosses’ kids have a group of neighborhood kids they play with unsupervised.
Twenty years ago was still a very different time in this regard. (Anecdotally, I notice that people who are in their mid-twenties and older have childhood memories very different from what is considered acceptable nowadays, both informally and legally.) See the “Free Range Kids” blog for numerous stories illustrating the modern mentality and jurisprudence about leaving kids alone and unsupervised.
In any case, even if you can still find some occasional examples of people allowing unsupervised play in some situations, it’s definitely unacceptable to simply send the kids out and tell them to be back for dinner, the way it was normally done some decades ago.
In any case, even if you can still find some occasional examples of people allowing unsupervised play in some situations, it’s definitely unacceptable to simply send the kids out and tell them to be back for dinner, the way it was normally done some decades ago.
One of my professors lives in a cul-de-sac where literally every house has ~2 kids of roughly the same age, and so most of the parents allow their children to just go outside and play with the gang until dinnertime. I believe at least one of the parents is typically watching, which is also a departure from the old days.
Hearing him describe it to the grad students / other professors, though, it was clearly a “this is an abnormal neighborhood which is like where I grew up, which is fantastic,” and he’s the only person I know of with a neighborhood like that (though certainly similar neighborhoods must exist).
Twenty years ago was still a very different time in this regard. (Anecdotally, I notice that people who are in their mid-twenties and older have childhood memories very different from what is considered acceptable nowadays, both informally and legally.)
But why? I thought crime rates in America had actually declined significantly since 20-25 years ago. If so, then why would it be more unacceptable today to let children play free than it was twenty years ago; has irrational helicopter parenting grown for other reasons, e.g. status competitions, with no correlation to actual danger levels? (Or is there something subtle I am missing, for example has violence declined in ghettos/low-class areas but the middle and upper areas we are talking about are less safe?)
News media has improved. Once, abductions in small towns were news in that town (and nowhere else) - now it is possible for the abduction to be news everywhere. Without calibration for the change in availability of information, the obvious response is to believe that we are not safer.
Additionally, there have been changes in societies attitudes towards certain crimes. Increasing beliefs that certain crimes were bad (DUI, domestic violence, various sex crimes) has led to increased reporting of those crimes and stronger reaction to those crimes when they are reported in the media. This exacerbates the availability bias discussed above.
That’s… seriously counterintuitive to me. I’m certainly not deeply embedded in parenting culture, and my childhood memories date to the early 1990s as well as being unusual in some ways, but I’m skeptical of drawing strong conclusions from an advocacy site. What else are you basing this on?
I would just ask my relatives about parenting standards, but unfortunately they’re divided between having very young and adult children. And that’s a pretty small and biased sample anyway.
Just common everyday observation of people’s attitudes. (I’m not a partisan of the FRK approach; in fact, I have no kids as of yet, and I’m still not quite sure what to think about it.)
One piece of evidence in support: The local Children’s Museum does not allow adults to enter if they are not with a child. The adult:child ratio is approximately 1:1.5. Further, I’ve never been more than ten feet from my son when visiting—and I estimate I’m within one standard deviation of the norm (it’s hard to tell, in part because children from 2-8 are there, and the distance-to-child norm varies naturally by age) In short, there is no reasonable likelihood of stranger abduction. Yet the policy is in place—a response to fear mongering, as far as I can tell.
I’d be surprised if it wasn’t true. In the 1960s, a mother could just send the kids out to play on their own, which kids normally did if they weren’t at school. Such things are unthinkable these days, and it looks quite plausible that today’s standard way of helicopter parenting has increased the total amount of parents’ time spent doting on kids so much that even if fathers did only a minority of it, they’d still spend a larger amount of time that the total time normally spent back in the sixties.
‘Unthinkable’ seems like an exaggeration. I played outside by myself as a kid (though that’s 20 years ago), and I have the distinct impression that my bosses’ kids have a group of neighborhood kids they play with unsupervised.
Twenty years ago was still a very different time in this regard. (Anecdotally, I notice that people who are in their mid-twenties and older have childhood memories very different from what is considered acceptable nowadays, both informally and legally.) See the “Free Range Kids” blog for numerous stories illustrating the modern mentality and jurisprudence about leaving kids alone and unsupervised.
In any case, even if you can still find some occasional examples of people allowing unsupervised play in some situations, it’s definitely unacceptable to simply send the kids out and tell them to be back for dinner, the way it was normally done some decades ago.
One of my professors lives in a cul-de-sac where literally every house has ~2 kids of roughly the same age, and so most of the parents allow their children to just go outside and play with the gang until dinnertime. I believe at least one of the parents is typically watching, which is also a departure from the old days.
Hearing him describe it to the grad students / other professors, though, it was clearly a “this is an abnormal neighborhood which is like where I grew up, which is fantastic,” and he’s the only person I know of with a neighborhood like that (though certainly similar neighborhoods must exist).
But why? I thought crime rates in America had actually declined significantly since 20-25 years ago. If so, then why would it be more unacceptable today to let children play free than it was twenty years ago; has irrational helicopter parenting grown for other reasons, e.g. status competitions, with no correlation to actual danger levels? (Or is there something subtle I am missing, for example has violence declined in ghettos/low-class areas but the middle and upper areas we are talking about are less safe?)
News media has improved. Once, abductions in small towns were news in that town (and nowhere else) - now it is possible for the abduction to be news everywhere. Without calibration for the change in availability of information, the obvious response is to believe that we are not safer.
Additionally, there have been changes in societies attitudes towards certain crimes. Increasing beliefs that certain crimes were bad (DUI, domestic violence, various sex crimes) has led to increased reporting of those crimes and stronger reaction to those crimes when they are reported in the media. This exacerbates the availability bias discussed above.
That’s… seriously counterintuitive to me. I’m certainly not deeply embedded in parenting culture, and my childhood memories date to the early 1990s as well as being unusual in some ways, but I’m skeptical of drawing strong conclusions from an advocacy site. What else are you basing this on?
I would just ask my relatives about parenting standards, but unfortunately they’re divided between having very young and adult children. And that’s a pretty small and biased sample anyway.
Just common everyday observation of people’s attitudes. (I’m not a partisan of the FRK approach; in fact, I have no kids as of yet, and I’m still not quite sure what to think about it.)
One piece of evidence in support: The local Children’s Museum does not allow adults to enter if they are not with a child. The adult:child ratio is approximately 1:1.5. Further, I’ve never been more than ten feet from my son when visiting—and I estimate I’m within one standard deviation of the norm (it’s hard to tell, in part because children from 2-8 are there, and the distance-to-child norm varies naturally by age) In short, there is no reasonable likelihood of stranger abduction.
Yet the policy is in place—a response to fear mongering, as far as I can tell.