As we reflect on the past this Homecoming Week I’d like to focus on how kids are raised and draw a distinction between then and now, because things are getting ridiculous.
The best part of my grandma’s childhood took place in the ‘50s, so I asked her what it was like growing up before ‘helicopter parenting’ became the norm. “We were terribly independent,” she said. In the mornings she’d get ready, make lunch and get herself and her sisters out the door. They’d take the bus to school, though if they missed it they’d have to walk “a really long way.”
In the part of town my grandma grew up in, everyone worked. Kids were expected to largely look after themselves. My grandma would babysit when her parents weren’t home and was totally comfortable being unsupervised. Though televisions were around, no one could really afford them. This left large pockets of time — consumed today by the ever-present talking screen — in which kids had to entertain themselves. There weren’t video games as we know them today, and kids didn’t talk about their kill/death ratio at school or anticipate the new MOD for COD. (If you’re not sure what these are — thank heavens.)
On my grandma’s 15th or 16th birthday, she and her friends walked at night in their pajamas to the city cemetery, stealing the caps off tire gauges for fun. At the cemetery, they played tag until they got tired. This image — girls in their pajamas darting between headstones, playing tag in a cemetery at night — is really profound, because it’s likely the nightmare of a parent of the 21st century. Unprotected girls. Playing at night. Tag. This is the sort of unregulated playtime child-regulating establishments across the world seem to be at war with today.
Contrast the above scene with circumstances today: Helicopter parents/neighbors/teachers/school officials/legislators prevail. In September of this year, a school district in Washington state attempted to ban the game of tag at recess. This was done, supposedly, to protect the kids from physical and emotional harm. In April, Maryland parents were accused of child neglect when they dropped their children, 10 and six years old, off at the park and left them alone to play. These kids, expected home at 6 p.m., were instead taken to Children’s Protective Services by police after calls from anxious neighbors. These Maryland parents were the same who, in December of last year, got in trouble for allowing their kids to walk around their neighborhood unattended.
The article this story was taken from mentions the debate surrounding ‘free-range’ parenting — “what 50 years ago was considered letting children play.” Free-range parenting appears to be the sort of parenting that prevailed, albeit unconsciously, in the 1950s. My grandma concedes that parents didn’t really control their kids — “We just knew what we were supposed to do.”
This is not to say that the ‘50s and the 2010s are the same in terms of children’s safety. The ‘50s were an era of famously unlocked doors, suburban amity and a nearly absent televised media. Today, however, paranoia seems to trump all safety conclusions. Kids are rarely allowed unstructured playtime, and concessions to kids’ ‘emotional health’ are getting in the way of natural, healthy development. Keep in mind, the ‘50s were entrenched in their own brand of Cold War paranoia. Children needed to have escape plans, needed to know where to run and hide in case of emergency. The difference between then and now is that back in the day, kids had agency. They were trusted. Indeed, there is a point at which making the world safe for children goes too far.
Take, for example, these laughably horrifying banned activities at schools across the world: holding hands — at any age — is considered a “gateway sexual activity” in Tennessee, and a ban is strictly enforced among students and faculty; schools in Australia and the U.K. have replaced traditional red ink with green ink when marking papers, due to red ink’s “confrontational” nature; in the U.K., a few schools have banned kids from making ‘best friends,’ “in an attempt to save others’ feelings”; a school in Connecticut banned virtually every type of activity that would allow one group of children to ‘win’ against another group of children — apparently to stave off the emotional insecurities that might arise from ‘losing.’
Luckily, some parents are greatly dismayed by these asinine bans. We live in a world where participation ribbons carry the same weight as trophies — and we often aren’t allowed to give out trophies unless everyone gets one. But this begs the question: How might ‘emotional protection’ serve to do quite the opposite? Can’t shielding children from real life disappointments hinder emotionally sheltered kids from growing into emotionally capable adults?
Critiquing this system is becoming commonplace, and free-range parents actively attempt to let their children have the kind of untethered childhood they likely experienced. These bans illustrate a great divide between parents who must account for their kids at every instant and those who want their kids to learn to deal with the challenges of society in a semi-tempered environment. I think the fact that these bans exist at all, regardless of opposition, says something about the societies that create them in the first place. We must reach a point at which children are ‘safe,’ but not at the cost of limiting their creativity and ability to interact — sometimes physically — with others.
“I had a wonderful childhood,” my grandma confided in me at the end of our talk. Let’s hope kids today might be able to say the same thing in 60 years.