Lost childhood – Who stole it from us?
I was reading excellent Dan Simmons’s “Summer of Night”. Even though this is a horror story set in 1960’s, he cites several different studies in the beginning of the book, about differences between kids today and back then. I am going to paraphrase some of the Dan’s text.
Among them was the study done by Sanford Gaster – “Urban Children’s Access to Their Neighborhood: Changes over three generations.” Study was published in Environment and Behavior on January 1991. Study talks about loss of “free roaming space” for American kids over three generations between 1915 and 1976. Study pretty much mirrors experiences in Europe and other parts of the world form the same era. It talks about how kids between eight and thirteen years of age in 21st century lost most of their freedoms that kids in the let’s say 40’s 50’s 60’s or even 70’s had. A freedom for kids to be active in their own physical universe, separate from their parents and other adults.
The change is dramatic as you suspect. Kids used to wave goodbye to their mothers after breakfast and were out of sight until dinner or even after dark. In the morning, the parents didn’t ask where the kids were headed and the kids did not tell. They would climb their bikes and explore pits, rocks, farms, free trails, swamps, mansions, construction debris, climb various towers and walls. It would all make a perfect play ground. They would climb the trees and go as high as they could go. No crime, traffic or environmental hazards could stop those kids from claiming their “free roaming rights”. And yet millions of kids today are deprived of that pleasure because their parents are nervous about exposing them to risk. By the time those kids got to be 10 years of age, they were already responsible young adults that could take care of their parents if needed.
Study shows that in early 20th century “roaming radius” of unsupervised play for kids was 6 miles!!! To explore, fish, ride bikes, go into heavily wooded areas etc… In the mid 20th century that got shrunk to couple of miles maybe. In 70’s kids of age 8 and up were allowed to go to the swimming pool by themselves. These days I’m afraid to say that radius is less than 300 yards if we are being generous. Some kids are not allowed to go unsupervised outside of their own yard until they’re twelve or so!!! Imagine a group of eleven-year olds today climbing their bikes and going out into the twilight. TV would flash amber alerts, helicopters called and parents would be interviewed on the evening news. A kid today climbing a bike, he did so in an armor like a medieval knight wearing everything from helmets, pads, specialised suits, anything but diapers. Kids in the mid and early 20th century never wore helmets or any other expensive equipment. Oddly enough there were no dead or paralyzed kids with brain injuries. Only scrapes and bruises. Everyone went over once in a while, but scrapes or broken bone is the worst outcome.
You might then ask what about kidnappers, pedophiles, crazy people and ax-murderers? Statistically, American kids today living in suburbs or rural areas, are about as safe as they were in 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and so on. It’s we, adults and parents who don’t believe that kids are safe outside of direct adult supervision. Because when we see few bad apples (out of 300 million people living in US now!!!) on TV once in a while, adults start to panic while their common sense is overridden. We then keep kids as prisoners in safety of our own homes tranquilized by drugs such as cell phones, iPads, computers, TV, video games and texting.
Kids in 60’s wore about $4.50 of clothing on them and took care of their own bikes and toys. Today, you’ll be lucky if your kid does not asks for designer jeans, shirts and fragrances. If their bike breaks, they will probably ask you for a brand new one.
Neil Postman wrote in 1999: “The point is that childhood, if it can be said to exists at all, is now an economic category. There is very little the culture wants to do for children except to make them into consumers.” So how come kids weren’t treated as consumers back then, you might ask? Well, moguls of marketing and advertising haven’t discovered them yet. They were still human beings.
I also could not help but notice that today’s kids are not allowed to even cross the street without crossing guard, squad car and stopping traffic in both directions.
Dan Simmon’s asks: “Why do kids of today’s age have so much to say (online chats, forums , social media), but have so little to do, like going out in the real world and play”? He claims that one possible answer is that we, adults, stole the real world from them.What happened to them? What happened to us?
hi Vanja, Pretty much everything you’re saying about how it used to be for kids was certainly true for me when I was a kid growing up. We played outside, and that included riding our bikes. We lived in the country and there were few cars on our roads, and we would go up to 4 miles away. (This was when I was about 11 years old and up.)
Did we tell our parents where we were going? No. If we were out playing we were out playing…riding bikes, playing down in the ravines, shooting our bows and arrows at the archery range in our ravines, walking through the woods, wading through the creek down the road, etc. We were pretty responsible though. We took archery in 4-H and were taught how to handle the bows and arrows safely. We never did anything irresponsible when it came to handling the bows.
I honestly can’t remember if we were allowed to swim in the lake unsupervised or not.
Of course, we didn’t have cell phones or walkie talkies. If something happened while we were away from home, we’d go to a neighbor’s house.
Occasionally we did get scraped up or we’d fall and twist an ankle while running around, but that was part of being a kid.
During nice weather, our parents didn’t want us indoors unless we were doing chores or sick. We could stay inside and read a book if we wanted, and sometimes we did that, but mostly we wanted to be outside.
Yes, we had free roaming rights. We knew how far away we were allowed to go. When I was around 7 years old I walked to school and rode my bike around the neighborhood.
As far as clothes were concerned, we bought most of them from yard sales or the Goodwill. Or my Mom made our clothes.
I found out recently from a co-worker that kids under a certain age can only be so many feet away from their parents. This coworker said his kid was playing down the road at a neighbor’s house. They were outside in the yard and he could see his kid.
A cop stopped by, and when he found out it was his kid down the road, he was told that he could call child protective services and his child could be taken away. This manager told the cop he had no idea that there was a law like that. The cop let him off with a warning. I had no idea there was a law like that either.
Did things really get so bad? I don’t know. But I do know that back in the 60′s and 70′s when I was a kid people could be trusted. Parents didn’t worry about their kids being kidnapped…at least not where I lived. Neighbors looked out for each other.
Why weren’t we treated like consumers back then? Well for one thing, most of us didn’t have televisions. There were many years in my childhood that we didn’t have one. And even when we did have one, we only got 2 or 3 channels, and we were only allowed to watch tv occasionally.
We weren’t bombarded with advertising on radio either…at least I don’t remember that.
As far as drugs are concerned, I never saw drugs in any of my schools…not even once.
Anyway, it’s a very interesting topic, Vanja. I have no idea what happened that things changed so drastically. But I’m glad I don’t have kids.
hi Vanja, Pretty much everything you\’re saying about how it used to be for kids was certainly true for me when I was a kid growing up. We played outside, and that included riding our bikes. We lived in the country and there were few cars on our roads, and we would go up to 4 miles away. (This was when I was about 11 years old and up.)
Did we tell our parents where we were going? No. If we were out playing we were out playing…riding bikes, playing down in the ravines, shooting our bows and arrows at the archery range in our ravines, walking through the woods, wading through the creek down the road, etc. We were pretty responsible though. We took archery in 4-H and were taught how to handle the bows and arrows safely. We never did anything irresponsible when it came to handling the bows.
I honestly can\’t remember if we were allowed to swim in the lake unsupervised or not.
Of course, we didn’t have cell phones or walkie talkies. If something happened while we were away from home, we\’d go to a neighbor\’s house.
Occasionally we did get scraped up or we\’d fall and twist an ankle while running around, but that was part of being a kid.
During nice weather, our parents didn’t want us indoors unless we were doing chores or sick. We could stay inside and read a book if we wanted, and sometimes we did that, but mostly we wanted to be outside.
Yes, we had free roaming rights. We knew how far away we were allowed to go. When I was around 7 years old I walked to school and rode my bike around the neighborhood.
As far as clothes were concerned, we bought most of them from yard sales or the Goodwill. Or my Mom made our clothes.
I found out recently from a co-worker that kids under a certain age can only be so many feet away from their parents. This coworker said his kid was playing down the road at a neighbor\’s house. They were outside in the yard and he could see his kid.
A cop stopped by, and when he found out it was his kid down the road, he was told that he could call child protective services and his child could be taken away. This coworker told the cop he had no idea that there was a law like that. The cop let him off with a warning. I had no idea there was a law like that either.
Did things really get so bad? I don\’t know. But I do know that back in the 60\’s and 70\’s when I was a kid people could be trusted. Parents didn’t worry about their kids being kidnapped…at least not where I lived. Neighbors looked out for each other.
Why weren’t we treated like consumers back then? Well for one thing, most of us didn’t have televisions. There were many years in my childhood that we didn\’t have one. And even when we did have one, we only got 2 or 3 channels, and we were only allowed to watch tv occasionally.
We weren’t bombarded with advertising on radio either…at least I don\’t remember that.
As far as drugs are concerned, I never saw drugs in any of my schools…not even once.
Anyway, it\’s a very interesting topic, Vanja. I have no idea what happened that things changed so drastically. But I\’m glad I don’t have kids.
I was born 1984and grew up in early 90′s. I didn’t live in a very small town but my neighborhood was very big and we had one corner store, lots of parks and I would roam everywhere. I did however tell my mother who I was playing with and where we would be. We would go in behind the corner store and there was a small area of woods, we would build forts. Play on jumps with our bikes, chase boys, and take in pop bottles to get 5 cent candies ( that still exist today ). However My children, 3 boys different story.
Perhaps if I lived in the same area I would let my 8 year old son roam around on his bike, go to the corner store by himself, go to the parks, if he told me exactly where he was going sure. I live in an area that has stores, parks, but busy roads. My 8 year old son wants to walk to school so bad, which would be 4 – 5 blocks away but crossing a 2 lane highway. My 6 year old just started being able to play outside in the front yard and riding his bike on our neighborhood. My 4 year old wants to be out there with him but I can’t be out there watching him sometimes, so my 4 year old will sit at the window and watch. I would like to let my 6 year old go to the park by himself that is 2 blocks away, I know he is “mature” enough as we’ll and we talk about strangers and I go over stuff like that with him all the time. I know he is ready but no one else his age is allowed to do this? Other parents would be questioning it. I don’t care what others say, but I have also heard about ” child protective services” coming in on cases such as that because to them your being neglectful, irresponsible, they will make you attend parenting courses ect. It’s pretty much illegal to spank your child now, even “lightly” you can have your child taken away, let a lone let your 6 year old go to the park by himself is looked at as bad “parenting”. I do not agree, but I can;t risk having social services at my door threatening to take my sons over absolutely stupid stuff to. I really badly want to see change in our society, in our country, and people to stand up to “higher power”. Its become so ridiculous, I don’t agree with child abuse, physical mental or emotional, but I think some things that are classified as child abuse is very silly but then that depends on the worker you have. ( I say this because I have a close friend who is a child worker) Anyhow, that is my opinion and how I feel about this culture, society, country I live in ( being Canada) Now my 8 year old spends most of his time on video games, and TV shows, but my husband tries to keep them active as much as he can and he grew up being able to explore, run free, not many limitations either and feels his children should be out riding bikes and exploring too.