I was exaggerating a little, but the issue still exists. There has been a change in general societal mindset around deeming the outsides as dangerous for children, even during the day. This mindset might not exist everywhere, but where it is prevailing, it is forced onto parents who let their kids out in the sense that they are looked negatively upon.
That depends on the location I guess; where I live in Spain kids can basically do whatever. Hell, they come to parties with their parents that last until 8 in the morning. There we do not have the paranoid thing that guys cannot pick up / play with children of others without being called a sex offender either. He is talking about western world, but I am in Cambodia now and here kids seem to be allowed to wander (or boat in floating villages) very far and in cities I saw almost no parents picking up kids from primary school; they all seem to walk away alone.
In the Netherlands, for the parents I know, are also not very restrictive or paranoid, even in cities.
Maybe this is fear induced US/UK stuff mostly? I do not know about the US but the UK parents I know seen weirdly over protective to me as the article states. Not sure that is good for children, especially considering that most kids, if not allowed something, will try to do it anyway or excessively do it when older and/or away from home. Like when relatively young UK guys came to a campground in Amsterdam on their own, we (Dutch) were looking in horror at 17-18 year olds smoking weed, drinking, passing out and vomiting basically 24/7. As my parents told me to try anything, I did not feel the inclination to try a lot and as I did not have to sneak around, I never felt the need to do things in excess when away from home.
To turn your argument on it's head: are these types of articles rare because so many kids are out and about un-hassled, or are they so rare because many people don't let their kids out enough for it to be a common occurrence?
I don't know if one group or another is in the _majority_ or not. I'm also not arguing it isn't still possible for some areas - an area I live some miles away from still has kids out and about - but for a great many people, it's an issue that exists.
I used to be the 'bad guy' kidnapping kids from my sister's girl scout troop who were camping out somewhere in the Ardennes. Early nineties, I think?
We had midnight droppings during the week-long school outings as well. It's been a long time, but I think a teacher would indeed stay back 50m to observe but not intervene.
So much fun. I don't think I ever heard anything about parents having issues with it.
Never mind that far less kids go missing today than 20 years ago and there's much less chance of them being hit by a car, circumstances are such today that parents are more paranoid than ever.
One could easily take those statistics as evidence that parents' paranoia is effective, not that the dangers have decreased.
I read this article [1] just a few days ago about how kids are over protected now. It also includes the Swanson Primary School story too. An excerpt "...I’ve mostly met children who take it for granted that they are always being watched..." struck me, it definitely was not like that while I was growing up.
Besides, is there a time line for the Swanson Primary School story? The article I linked to mentions this as an experiment conducted in 2011. If this is true, I would love to know how it has progressed since.
I do not know anyone who would not have kids going outside. Literally anyone. Yes some socialization was cancelled. Some people kept socializing with one or two friend families. Literally no one I know about kept kids inside 24/7 the way you suggested.
In general, parents who do put less effort into children were also the ones took lockdowns least seriously - meaning their kids were about as usual minus school.
Exactly. I’m not sure I believe this, and definitely don’t have any evidence to back it up.
If kids are safer because they are staying at home, then we can’t criticise parents for not letting them out to play by themselves. That would be like saying Donald Trump doesn’t need bodyguards since very few presidents have been attacked.
My kids were not locked in our home. They were outside literally every day. And I live in a city apartment and we had lockdowns. They socialization did suffer and they missed some sports practice, but they did had enough of healthy physical movement.
1. Where I grew up there was a good deal of intermittent, unintrusive surveillance from adults--mothers looking out the windows from time to time. Their daughters weren't necessarily home when the kids got home from school. Some adults may be forgetting that level of oversight.
2. Kids, anyway some kids, will find a way. A dozen years ago in the DC suburbs I heard voices from an open manhole cover, and looked in. There was a kid of about 12 down there. Being the responsible adult, I said, "Hey! You kids shouldn't be down there." The kid said, 'Oh, we're down here a lot. We go all the way over to the middle school." (Say three quarters of a mile.)
No its very much normal still. However due to shifts in parents its not as prevalent as it used to be ( Kids spending more time indoors, fewer "neighborhood" schools, many other things ). So you don't see it as much, but every parent I know is very comfortable letting their kids wander in their neighborhoods even if the kids don't do that as much.
Kids have less freedom today than they eve did - my parents roamed the city freely, i only walked to school by myself, kids today hardly leave the house alone
It feels like it's happening here too, just some years behind the US. Certainly kids today have much less freedom than I did 25 years ago, even if we're not at the point of protective services taking custody for playing on the street without adults.
Not where I live. My brother has a house in a neighborhood that's full of young families, but if you walked through it you'd think it was a retirement community - not a kid in sight. All the children are carefully shuttled from one supervised activity to another.
I'm not really sure why that is. Crime is almost nonexistent, and the weather is nice.
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