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The Overprotected Kid
November 13, 2017
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
-Mahatma Gandhi, 1869-1948, Indian leader of non-violent campaign for India’s independence from Brita
-Mahatma Gandhi, 1869-1948, Indian leader of non-violent campaign for India’s independence from Brita
"Even though women work vastly more hours now than they did in the 1970s, mothers—and fathers—of all income levels spend much more time with their children than they used to. This seemed impossible to me until recently, when I began to think about my own life," wrote Hanna Rosin in an article in The Atlantic.
"My mother didn't work all that much when I was younger, but she didn’t spend vast amounts of time with me, either. She didn't arrange my playdates or drive me to swimming lessons...On weekdays after school she just expected me to show up for dinner; on weekends I barely saw her at all. I, on the other hand, might easily spend every waking Saturday hour with...my children, taking one to a soccer game, the second to a theater program, the third to a friend’s house... When my daughter was about 10, my husband suddenly realized that in her whole life, she had probably not spent more than 10 minutes unsupervised by an adult...
"When you ask parents why they are more protective than their parents were, they might answer that the world is more dangerous than it was when they were growing up. But this isn’t true...For example, parents now routinely tell their children never to talk to strangers, even though all available evidence suggests that children have about the same (very slim) chance of being abducted by a stranger as they did a generation ago. Maybe the real question is, how did these fears come to have such a hold over us? And what have our children lost—and gained—as we've succumbed to them?"
Source: "The Overprotected Kid," by Hanna Rosin, The Atlantic, April 2014
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Comments (4)
Displaying All 4 CommentsNewton , NJ, United States
I read a NY Times article on the steep rise in anxiety in teens and young adults. This was the next piece I read. I'm wondering if there are any correlations.
Spirit Child Yoga and ECE
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Excellent point, Francis. The article does touch on the SES factor, and the differences in class.
My daughter noted Friday night the unsupervised kids on bikes hanging around the Y after 9 pm. She said in the middle class suburburbs, the parents would have been waiting in their cars to pick these kids up - for better and for worse.
Thanks again for the very important point.
CSBC
Denver, CO, United States
We have to be very careful here. As usual the writer writes from her perspective, which is middle class, white America. This is not the case in low-income families, homeless families, and many single-parent families. I know many children who go home to an empty house, who walk to school alone, and who roam the streets and parks to entertain themselves.
Spirit Child Yoga and ECE
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Terrific Article. Working for a progressive child care in the '80's, I took kids to an Adventure Playground in Toronto, as part of our summer program. There was a fire pit, junk, tools and very few rules. The kids were in heaven and collaborated and disagreed and solved conflicts and solved engineering challenges and were always so proud of their accomplishments, creations, and agency.
Dr. Bruce Perry tells us that children need lots of adults in their lives, but I think we can also argue they need lots of independence too. One of my own adult children developed anxiety in later adolescence and her childhood looked more like the author's children's than my own (forts, barefoot adventures, the odd broken bone, the freedom of riding one's bike, catching crayfish, etc.)
Thanks for the link to this article. Let's keep this conversation going.
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