At my old school we had glorious two story high steel monkey bars apparatus. At some point they put rubber shavings under it as a safety thing. Several years later, they cut it down to one story. Later they removed the whole thing.
I know exactly what they mean by fear, excitement and risk. It was fun while it was dangerous yet it was extremely rare for a kid to fall off and be hurt.
I fondly remember those steel bars polished by countless human hands like it was yesterday.
I don’t know what’s there now. Probably a big sign that says “Your parents made you a pussy”
I chuckle when my parents generation call my generation spoiled and thin skinned because of things like this and participation medals. They are the ones that made those changes because of their feelings, standing there in fifth place getting a medal felt stupid to me as a kid, it was just so my parents could feel happy about something.
It's funny because my grandpa called us pussies for playing in man made safe playgrounds instead of in the woods. Every generation will think the next one is coddled.
My school had one of those too. We also had swings with 15’ or more of chain. I remember regularly getting nearly parallel to the top bar of that during recess and bailing out and even doing backflips off of it.
There was a particularly dangerous piece of playground equipment that the kids called the “witch’s hat,” which was a 15’ or so tall round central metal pipe maybe 3-4” in diameter, which had a cap on the top that could freely spin. Attached to the cap were maybe 12 10’ chains attached, which linked to a giant octagon or decagon made out of 1-2” or so straight pipe sections which were fitted together in angle brackets. It was essentially an inverted merry go round which you would need a few kids on opposing sides to operate, all running in the same direction. It would cause a kind of wave as the weight distribution shifted as kids were lifted off the round while hanging on, and then your side would come back down and you would hit the ground running while hanging on for dear life.
Some kid flew off and broke their collarbone and they ended up soft-banning it except when the teachers weren’t looking, and eventually they decommissioned it. It was a sad day on the playground when that happened.
I completely agree. When I was a child, there was a super fun steel monkey bars in a park near my home. I used to play a lot on it. Fear was surely one of the fun factors.
Then they removed it, because the local council was afraid some kid might get hurt.
The brand-new playgrounds around here are not as obviously dangerous as the bad old days, but they're significantly more "dangerous" than ones from even ten years ago. I think a tide is changing, and there's more research into actual danger and what can be done to reduce serious risks (the "solid foam rubber" flooring you see is much much safer than even significantly deep sand, for example).
HA! First week of 5h grade at a new school, my son decided to be a "badass" and do a flip off the monkey bars, over the head of a friend. He landed badly and broke his forearm (which required a rod inserted surgically to stabilize).
He learned his lesson!
And we didn't sue, because kids can be dumbasses and will always find ways to hurt themselves. If he wasn't jumping off a 5' tall jungle gym, he'd be doing backflips out of swings or jumping from tree to tree or something else that doesn't make any sense to adults with fully developed brains.
I remember falling off of a tall monkey bar thing like that and getting the wind knocked out of me the first time. And a lot of other equipment that I haven't seen in decades.
I remember this awesome tall metal slide that was in the downtown of a small city I grew up in. It was removed at some point and I was bummed because I remember as a kid going down it before/after going to movies, restaurants, bakeries, etc. Public spaces are now over-optimized for legal liability and to prevent homeless people from camping/loitering, etc. There's no where to go in public that feels safe and comfortable and welcoming anymore in the US. You go to Europe and see all these city spaces that are built to let people just live and exist... It really sucks we're removing all the fun little things that make life worth living.
I grew up on an area were giant eucalyptus trees are common, me and my “gang” when i was 8-10 liked to climb tose trees because they were very difficult as they’re almost like a pole with only thin branches. Worth to mention that I knew how to fell a tree with an axe at that age and that I was given permission to use the axe!
This is fine to say, but how many dead or permanently maimed kids before you think playgrounds should be neutered?
I mean, it's just a number right? So how many kids does a playground need to kill every year before you'd say "oh, maybe we should nerf the monkey bars"?
Time-and-time again is see the masses have zero idea how many people are getting killed regularly until the stats are put in front of them. We assume it's small, but often non-negligible, like the fact that there are 11 drowning deaths every single day: https://www.cdc.gov/drowning/facts/index.html
I arrived to the conclusion that this "risk-aversion" in child rearing is basically the result of smaller families. This may sound callous but I think parents are much more OK with their oldest son/dqughter taking bigger risks if there are other 4 ones at home than if that's your only child and losing him/her is the end of your lineage. Not saying that more kids work as a genetic backup, but I think that for sure that creates a subconscious effect in the parents' risk assessment.
I read somewhere that propensity to war is proportional to the average age of a society. I think the same phenomenon applies to acceptance of risk in child behaviour but now related to fertility rate.
- I can only assume that if a kid doesn't have an older sibling "to keep an eye on them" the parents take this role, and parents tend to be more risk-adverse and responsible caretakers than siblings.
- I've never lived in the American suburbs, but they don't seem very dense. I know that, growing up in Mexico, the kid density was great. Some of it probably has to do with the fact everyone had siblings. Matching ages with nearby neighbors is more likely when there's more kids too. We were outside all the time, older siblings introduced younger ones to the crowd. Friendships were made, broken and fixed. Adventures were had. More than once we got into situations that I knew my mom wouldn't be happy about too.
You are missing something: 200 years ago you were lucky if 1 in 5 kids lived to 5 years old - disease was a big killer. As such you dare not get attached to your kids if you do you will be heart broke when they die. So you let the kids do whatever, the ones that survive great, the ones that don't well odds are it wasn't the risk taking that got them anyway. (you also had to work hard to find enough food for this family)
Don't read the above as kids were allowed to do anything. They were cared for, but it wasn't as close as modern families would care for them. If the kid is mostly safe that is good enough.
Perhaps it's the result of small families for completely different reasons than you posit.
On the first child, parents are still learning. They're risk conscious and worry about everything. On the second child, they've picked up a few specific fears ("What if Alice gets hit in the head while horse-riding like Bob did?") and stopped stressing about the others. On children three and four they've got much more experience and just don't worry about things as much.
With larger families, this attitude would come to be reflected by society as a whole. With smaller families, parents don't make it past the first and second child so often, and they never stop worrying.
I don't think this is the case. Where I am from the number of children is quite the same now compared to when I was kid. Yet the activities that were absolutely normal for the kids back in the day would be a definite deviation from the norm now - all in line with increased "risk aversion".
> I arrived to the conclusion that this "risk-aversion" in child rearing is basically the result of smaller families.
This seems unlikely. I had only one sibling, but way back when I was young we were given free rein. And we were latchkey kids, because both parents were working. The only rule was that you had to be home in time for dinner, but otherwise we were completely unsupervised after school and could roam anywhere our feet or bicycles could take us. Everyone was like this at the time, all of the kids, regardless of family size. My next door neighbor and good friend was an only child. IIRC most of my friends had one sibling at most.
I think what's changed is the media fearmongering about the dangers to kids. Crap like America's Most Wanted freaked out parents, massively damaging our collective psyche. Also, the rise of the internet has given ultra-judgmental cranks a platform to spread their opinions about child rearing and tut-tut any parent who isn't a helicopter. Indeed, ultra-judgmental internet cranks have practically taken over every aspect of society now.
I don't think this is the case. Where I am from the number of children is quite the same now compared to when I was kid. Yet the activities that were absolutely normal for the kids back in the day would be a definite deviation from norm now - all in line with increased "risk aversion".
It's not really about smaller families, it's about children density, living in a safe area (no cars counts as well) and the mentality (sometimes that translates into local laws).
You might be on to something, but in my experience it's the opposite: parents are overly concerned with their first child then relax a lot by 3 or 4 at which point they barely give a shit, relatively.
> This may sound callous but I think parents are much more OK with their oldest son/dqughter taking bigger risks if there are other 4 ones at home than if that's your only child and losing him/her is the end of your lineage. Not saying that more kids work as a genetic backup, but I think that for sure that creates a subconscious effect in the parents' risk assessment.
Well, actually you're not totally off. Having more kids (we have three, more on the way hopefully) definitely lowers the pressure on individual ones. But moreover, and more importantly, seeing our friends with large families (5+), the biggest reason the kids can play is that the older siblings are there. When we get together with a few other families of that size, the oldest kids are like 8 - 10 (i.e., old enough to let us know if the littles are in serious trouble). It's really easy to let your kids go play in the woods by themselves if you trust the older ones to run and tell you if something is wrong. Bonus points for having multiple families with the same arrangement so one can tell you something is wrong while the group is still 'supervised'.
My eldest girl (one of the youngest in the group) is convinced that the older kids are still 'kids', but she also naturally listens to them despite having a dominant personality herself. Thus, she gets to have fun with them, while we are happy the kids have some sense in the group.
So from my perspective I think the following is true:
1. Most people have one or two kids. This makes the child density very low. Parents today have to actually work to get their kids around other kids.
2. The way cities are set up makes it hard for kids to interact. While we live in a walkable neighborhood and some of our friends with large families do too, they're unfortunately not well connected except by car, so my wife or I have to make an effort to see them. Luckily, we're good friends with the parents, but otherwise this would make it difficult.
3. Schooling artificially limits the age range kids are exposed to. Obviously, you only get kids your age in your class, but because of (1), even if you got to know their siblings, you still only get one more age, and siblings are likely to not be super far apart.
4. Yes, parents certainly feel more trepidation when they've invested everything into one kid, versus investing everything into multiple kids. I don't see how anyone can honestly doubt this. I don't even think it's callous. Just reality.
I mean, I saw it with my grandparents, who had more kids than my parents did. They were easily taken care of in their old age by the multiple children they had, whereas by choosing a smaller family (not totally their choice), my parents put a much greater burden on my brother and I (mostly me, since I live closer). That's just the truth of the thing.
I've been around horse barns for many years. Rode today. It's not a kids thing any more. Most of the riders are not only adults, but older adults. Few kids take riding lessons. The old ponies are under-used.
Fifteen years ago, the ponies were usually being ridden or groomed by girls in their early
teens. We used to see groups of kids go out on the trails unsupervised. That was normal.
The kids would go out for an hour or so. Nobody does that any more.
Now, if there's a kid around, it's usually because the parent is a horse person. Barns that teach kids are very organized. Kids are never out of sight of an adult. Usually the parents sit there and watch.
It's sad. Kids that grow up around horses tend not to have trouble with bullies. After you're used to dealing with half-ton, somewhat pushy animals with huge teeth and steel-shod hooves,
big guys just don't look that big.
Maybe your view is a bit coloured by your own experience? In my view riding ponies or horses as a hobby is something that was always financially out of reach for 95% of the population.
It's not as normal hobby any more than racing carts is.
Horse girls are disappearing at similar rates like car guys. It seems that screen-related activities are less work while giving similar levels of fulfillment.
It’s not ok to let your five year old play with a soccer ball on a busy neighborhood street unsupervised. It’s good to let your thirteen year old play in the neighborhood with their friends. But what about everything in between? At what age should you let your kid play in the pool without you even watching? When can they be trusted to use a band saw unsupervised? How young is too young to have unrestricted access to razor sharp eight inch kitchen knives?
This is mostly rhetorical; the point is the constant (necessary) risk calculus is draining, and parents are rational to err on the side of caution.
It has been observed that most public spaces in America are default adult spaces where children are only tolerated. It follows most public spaces will tend to have adult levels of hazard and risk.
I am very sympathetic to this (to the extent that my wife thinks I am borderline irresponsible).
That said, I think the argument about how fears are misplaced since now is the most safe time to be a kid is bad.
> And it is widely believed that the world is no longer a safe place for children to play in. Yet statistics show that it has never been a safer time to be a child. Injury-related deaths are at an all-time low in most Western nations. In the US, deaths from unintentional injuries fell by 73% for boys and 85% for girls between 1973 and 2010. This misperception of risk creates the parental paradox.
This doesn't make much sense. Parents have mass migrated to a different style of parenting. In the same period life has gotten much safer for children. Therefore we should revert to the older style of parenting and not be afraid that the risks will return?
I think this cause is really hurting itself with this kind of weak argument.
My big problem with these articles is that they invariably list activities that are NOT risky or dangerous. And what they end up doing is just ramping up sense of danger about non dangerous behavior. If you frame reasonable and safe activities as risk taking, then well, people will conclude those activities are risky.
And second issue is that they do NOT engage with other host of issues that limit outside play. For example, unsupervised playing kids are annoying to many unrelated adults - and adults who strongly dislike kids and want to exclude them from everywhere are very common. Or, simple fact that just meeting friends often requires in advance agreed upon play date and a drive by car. Or, simple fact that before you was bored in your room and outside had things to do, nowdays you have fun stuff at home (computer, tablet, phone) and outside has not much to do above the age of 7.
Half of this feels like fighting fear by adding new dangers and threats to the equation. Hey, not only you need to add risk, if you dont your kid will have serious mental health issues. Hey, lets worry simultaneously about risk taking while doing safe activities while also worrying they dont take enough risk.
When I was a kid (~10 yo), mothers of younger (~4 yo) kids would send them to the grocery store a few blocks away and ask us to follow them in secret to make sure they didn't get lost or run under a car or anything. This way they could build confidence in relative safety.
I grew up in the 70s and we spent most of our time outside because we weren’t allowed inside or our parents were at work. Everything was unsupervised and bit like Lord of the Flies, but we survived. I have a lot of memories of riding my bike, alone, pretty much anywhere I wanted in the city.
Seems great, and I think most of us enjoyed it, but the kids who really got ahead in life stayed inside studying.
Fast forward several decades, I raised some kids of my own and by and large we let them have a lot of a fun. That said, the stakes are so much higher these days that it is impractical to give kids total freedom. The long-term costs and lost opportunity is just way too high.
It's not exactly what the article is talking about but: I have a 2 year old niece. Her family have an attitude of "let her learn for herself" that I've found pretty interesting. They keep a very close eye on her and try to warn her verbally and with demonstrations but don't really stop her from doing anything.
So instead of physically separating her from a hot kettle they just go "it's very hot!" and demonstrate by touching it carefully and then pulling their hand away. They let her play with matches.
She could pick up on these cues long before she could understand words. But it does look exhausting. And there have been some moments (once she was trotting around holding scissors pointing up in the air) where I've thought "no that's too risky and no amount of careful supervision can prevent injury here". She has also burned herself, but only once.
So overall I am pretty impressed, at least in principle, and if I have kids I'll definitely endeavour to try and curb my overprotective instincts.
As much as I contributed to my kids growing up under a ceaseless adult presence, I was a bad father. In doing this I deprived them of irreplaceable opportunities to learn self-actuation, learn social problem-solving and earn confidence.
As far as I acted on a baseless fear that they were at meaningful risk of stranger kidnapping, I was a stupid father. That's mostly a different kind of bad father but whatever.
That second one, god damn it grinds my gears. For some reason, here in Phoenix, we had a constant gossipy murmur about kids getting stolen out of Target parking lots right out if their parents carts or even cars. No news stories, but you’d always hear some (white) woman claim someone “almost” kidnapped their friend’s kid just the other day. When you dig even slightly deeper, it sounds more like someone of color just happened to be walking by as they loaded up their kid in their car.
The kidnapping thing doesn’t happen like that. Not in the US. It happens to vulnerable families at the border who pay unscrupulous coyotes to bring them over.
Learn social problem solving with who? There are -no- unsupervised children anymore, anywhere. No sense in kicking yourself, there are no opportunities for the kind of play older generations engaged in available to kids these days.
> Think back to your favorite childhood play memory. Where were you? What were you doing? Was there an adult supervising you?
I have two memories
1) I was playing in my grandfather’s pipe yard with my cousins. Lots of heavy equipment and stuff that was precariously stacked. Very easily could have ended up in a situation were something fell on me and killed me. Instead, I just ran headlong into a rusty pipe and nearly broke my nose.
2) I was in my early teens riding a 3 wheeled ATV. I was going too fast and went into a wash and flipped the machine over me. I didn’t kill myself. Didn’t even get seriously hurt, but easily could have.
I was incredibly lucky to come out of both of those experiences relatively unscathed. It’s not really a tough calculus thinking “well, my daughter doesn’t have an eye anymore, but at least she was having fun!”
I instead encourage my kids to have fun in activities that _feel_ risky but where the chance of life altering injury is low. Like walking on a high brick fence or jumping from a high point into a big deep body of water.
Anyway, as a parent I’m so fucking tired of people trying to tell me how to raise a kid.
I'll go out on a limb and say SAE Level 5 (full self-driving) is going to solve this problem. Imagine a world where a group of children has regained all the safety of traveling anywhere their parents will let them. It will reset our current understanding of parenting to where it was 30 years ago.
As a parent, I have found that raising a child without risk, fear and the occasional smaller painful accident is not possible. My daughter is 4, and we can not convince her that something she does is dangerous until she has empirically proven it. Exceptions are obvious things where it is clear that you will die or you "will become a skeleton" (crossing the road without looking, playing around train tracks, playing with electricity).
Examples:
"Don't sit on the backrest of that chair, it will topple over". "No, that's not true at all, you're wrong!!!" 5 minutes later: Crash. Quiet. Cry. Never done again.
"You cannot build bridges out of sofa cushions between the sofa and the coffee table, it won't support you". "No! I am small! It will hold!" 5 minutes later: Crash. Quiet. Cry. Never done again.
On bicycle: "Drive slower, you have to break!". "No, I like it fast! I cannot fall, my tires are big!" Seconds later: Crash against fence. Quiet. Cry. Now she drives carefully.
In winter: "Be careful on that ice!". "But my new shoes have rubber, dad, they won't slip, don't you know that?!?" Seconds later: Slip. Bamm. Quiet. Cry. Now she knows rubber soles slip on ice.
As long as there is no risk of a serious, life-threatening accident, I have become pretty relaxed. I remember that I constantly had scraped knees and bruises as a child. When I was 7, my grandparents regularly send me to a gas station nearby to buy the paper, and my mother would send me to the supermarket with my 4 year old brother to get groceries. I walked to kindergarten by myself when I was 5.
I lived in small village in India. When I was a kid (6+ yo) the only time I was at home is to eat & sleep. Parents were not watching us at all. Me and my friends used to go wherever we want to go miles away from village & somehow used to come back by lunch time or dinner time. I miss those days.
I think the author’s points here are only their strongest when mentioning the lack of unstructured play and overall reduction in play time & leisure as a whole.
It’s weakest when it speaks about “risky” play, where the author seems to focus on the excitement & fear etc. that comes from physically risky play. I don’t think physical risk should be a requirement for a robustly healthy childhood play experience. From the article, bemoaning the lack of play in abandoned locations seems fairly absurd, though again some other points are well taken.
I will note one interesting trend that may partially be a product of this desire &/or need for risky play, which is the recent popularity of much more elaborate & diverse videogames in the “sandbox survival crafting” genre. These for me actually do seem to evoke a similar feel to the childhood sense of exploration and creative play. I’m not necessarily proposing these as a solution to what we had decades ago but it may be that just as the “safety” movement didn’t happen overnight, perhaps cultural solutions to fill these same needs will take a bit more time as well.
I'm much more worried about the road to the playground than the risks on the playground themselves. Below 18, about 3/8 of the deaths are from traffic.
I grew up in 80's the time where almost everybody played in parks and fields. But I can't give that to my own son of 7.
He has to cross 3 streets to reach a playground 200m from here,the worst of the crossings a street with 50km/h limitsand 1 car every 10 seconds. Not much, except just enough people drive like idiots, 90km/h or more on a road not even 500m long.
We've been teaching him good pedestrian behaviour since he could walk. We've done a few tests where he walked to the baker, thinking he was unsupervised. He probably can do it most of the time. Except, 1 distraction while an idiot drives by will kill him.
So I bring him to the playground and let him play as unsupervised as possible for an adult on the side of a playground. Of course, he knows I am there.
I start working with him with more dangerous tools like a soldering iron. He can deal well enough with these risks. But not the streets.
Having grown up in the 70s and 80s, and who is just finishing up raising a kid in the 2010s/2020s (he's 15), I think I have some nuance on this view. While I worry about the lower amount of unstructured play my son had, he did have tons of structured/semi-structured play that I would have loved. Sure, I ran around the woods, but he was able to go on all sorts of adventures through various camps that I never got to do. I mean, I guess being bored out of my fucking mind most of the summer and doing stupid shit was helpful, but it wasn't some pinnacle of education. My son at age 11 took at digital media camp thing and walked around interviewing people at different locations and making little videos. That was pretty cool and seems kind of educational.
Plus, I know at least 3 people that were kids when I was a kid, within several years, that are now disabled adults because of that unstructured play. Two broke their necks, one broke so many bones they were in a wheelchair for several years. I know probably half a dozen kids that were hit by cars in some form. Several kids dead by drunk driving. So that unstructured play isn't without cost.
There are other tradeoffs, too. I know several kids that are raised more unstructured because of their specific situation, and they have a lot of social and physical confidence, but they are also kinda dumb. Like they lack intellectual curiosity. Anecdotal, I know, but I just don't think things are as clear as they make it out to be.
My son's playgrounds were still fairly dangerous, so I think the pendulum has started swinging back. When he was 6-9 or so, his favorite two playground stuctures were a 15' tall climbing tower, and the old school metal merri-go-round thing. Oh, and one elementary school had two huge play structures made of wood with all kinds of tunnels and nooks and crannies, he had tons of fun with that with his friends.
What I mostly missed with him is his ability to just go outside and play with a bunch of kids - there is a negative feedback loop where even if you want your kid to do that, there are no other kids out there in many places. Plus there are just not many interesting "third spaces" anymore that are fun for kids but also ok for them to be kids.
[+] [-] LispSporks22|2 years ago|reply
I know exactly what they mean by fear, excitement and risk. It was fun while it was dangerous yet it was extremely rare for a kid to fall off and be hurt.
I fondly remember those steel bars polished by countless human hands like it was yesterday.
I don’t know what’s there now. Probably a big sign that says “Your parents made you a pussy”
[+] [-] simonbarker87|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vasco|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aspenmayer|2 years ago|reply
There was a particularly dangerous piece of playground equipment that the kids called the “witch’s hat,” which was a 15’ or so tall round central metal pipe maybe 3-4” in diameter, which had a cap on the top that could freely spin. Attached to the cap were maybe 12 10’ chains attached, which linked to a giant octagon or decagon made out of 1-2” or so straight pipe sections which were fitted together in angle brackets. It was essentially an inverted merry go round which you would need a few kids on opposing sides to operate, all running in the same direction. It would cause a kind of wave as the weight distribution shifted as kids were lifted off the round while hanging on, and then your side would come back down and you would hit the ground running while hanging on for dear life.
Some kid flew off and broke their collarbone and they ended up soft-banning it except when the teachers weren’t looking, and eventually they decommissioned it. It was a sad day on the playground when that happened.
[+] [-] techdmn|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reddalo|2 years ago|reply
Then they removed it, because the local council was afraid some kid might get hurt.
It's sad.
[+] [-] daverol|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bombcar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alistairSH|2 years ago|reply
He learned his lesson!
And we didn't sue, because kids can be dumbasses and will always find ways to hurt themselves. If he wasn't jumping off a 5' tall jungle gym, he'd be doing backflips out of swings or jumping from tree to tree or something else that doesn't make any sense to adults with fully developed brains.
[+] [-] mechhacker|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diogenescynic|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] neuralRiot|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scoofy|2 years ago|reply
I mean, it's just a number right? So how many kids does a playground need to kill every year before you'd say "oh, maybe we should nerf the monkey bars"?
Time-and-time again is see the masses have zero idea how many people are getting killed regularly until the stats are put in front of them. We assume it's small, but often non-negligible, like the fact that there are 11 drowning deaths every single day: https://www.cdc.gov/drowning/facts/index.html
[+] [-] lp4vn|2 years ago|reply
I read somewhere that propensity to war is proportional to the average age of a society. I think the same phenomenon applies to acceptance of risk in child behaviour but now related to fertility rate.
[+] [-] aylmao|2 years ago|reply
- I can only assume that if a kid doesn't have an older sibling "to keep an eye on them" the parents take this role, and parents tend to be more risk-adverse and responsible caretakers than siblings.
- I've never lived in the American suburbs, but they don't seem very dense. I know that, growing up in Mexico, the kid density was great. Some of it probably has to do with the fact everyone had siblings. Matching ages with nearby neighbors is more likely when there's more kids too. We were outside all the time, older siblings introduced younger ones to the crowd. Friendships were made, broken and fixed. Adventures were had. More than once we got into situations that I knew my mom wouldn't be happy about too.
[+] [-] bluGill|2 years ago|reply
Don't read the above as kids were allowed to do anything. They were cared for, but it wasn't as close as modern families would care for them. If the kid is mostly safe that is good enough.
[+] [-] strken|2 years ago|reply
On the first child, parents are still learning. They're risk conscious and worry about everything. On the second child, they've picked up a few specific fears ("What if Alice gets hit in the head while horse-riding like Bob did?") and stopped stressing about the others. On children three and four they've got much more experience and just don't worry about things as much.
With larger families, this attitude would come to be reflected by society as a whole. With smaller families, parents don't make it past the first and second child so often, and they never stop worrying.
[+] [-] 331c8c71|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lapcat|2 years ago|reply
This seems unlikely. I had only one sibling, but way back when I was young we were given free rein. And we were latchkey kids, because both parents were working. The only rule was that you had to be home in time for dinner, but otherwise we were completely unsupervised after school and could roam anywhere our feet or bicycles could take us. Everyone was like this at the time, all of the kids, regardless of family size. My next door neighbor and good friend was an only child. IIRC most of my friends had one sibling at most.
I think what's changed is the media fearmongering about the dangers to kids. Crap like America's Most Wanted freaked out parents, massively damaging our collective psyche. Also, the rise of the internet has given ultra-judgmental cranks a platform to spread their opinions about child rearing and tut-tut any parent who isn't a helicopter. Indeed, ultra-judgmental internet cranks have practically taken over every aspect of society now.
[+] [-] 331c8c71|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xandrius|2 years ago|reply
Once you fix that, kids are going to be kids.
[+] [-] globular-toast|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anon291|2 years ago|reply
Well, actually you're not totally off. Having more kids (we have three, more on the way hopefully) definitely lowers the pressure on individual ones. But moreover, and more importantly, seeing our friends with large families (5+), the biggest reason the kids can play is that the older siblings are there. When we get together with a few other families of that size, the oldest kids are like 8 - 10 (i.e., old enough to let us know if the littles are in serious trouble). It's really easy to let your kids go play in the woods by themselves if you trust the older ones to run and tell you if something is wrong. Bonus points for having multiple families with the same arrangement so one can tell you something is wrong while the group is still 'supervised'.
My eldest girl (one of the youngest in the group) is convinced that the older kids are still 'kids', but she also naturally listens to them despite having a dominant personality herself. Thus, she gets to have fun with them, while we are happy the kids have some sense in the group.
So from my perspective I think the following is true:
1. Most people have one or two kids. This makes the child density very low. Parents today have to actually work to get their kids around other kids.
2. The way cities are set up makes it hard for kids to interact. While we live in a walkable neighborhood and some of our friends with large families do too, they're unfortunately not well connected except by car, so my wife or I have to make an effort to see them. Luckily, we're good friends with the parents, but otherwise this would make it difficult.
3. Schooling artificially limits the age range kids are exposed to. Obviously, you only get kids your age in your class, but because of (1), even if you got to know their siblings, you still only get one more age, and siblings are likely to not be super far apart.
4. Yes, parents certainly feel more trepidation when they've invested everything into one kid, versus investing everything into multiple kids. I don't see how anyone can honestly doubt this. I don't even think it's callous. Just reality.
I mean, I saw it with my grandparents, who had more kids than my parents did. They were easily taken care of in their old age by the multiple children they had, whereas by choosing a smaller family (not totally their choice), my parents put a much greater burden on my brother and I (mostly me, since I live closer). That's just the truth of the thing.
[+] [-] Animats|2 years ago|reply
I've been around horse barns for many years. Rode today. It's not a kids thing any more. Most of the riders are not only adults, but older adults. Few kids take riding lessons. The old ponies are under-used.
Fifteen years ago, the ponies were usually being ridden or groomed by girls in their early teens. We used to see groups of kids go out on the trails unsupervised. That was normal. The kids would go out for an hour or so. Nobody does that any more.
Now, if there's a kid around, it's usually because the parent is a horse person. Barns that teach kids are very organized. Kids are never out of sight of an adult. Usually the parents sit there and watch.
It's sad. Kids that grow up around horses tend not to have trouble with bullies. After you're used to dealing with half-ton, somewhat pushy animals with huge teeth and steel-shod hooves, big guys just don't look that big.
[+] [-] yourusername|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blueflow|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] achenet|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abyssin|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Xeyz0r|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cultofmetatron|2 years ago|reply
adding this to my list of thing to look into if I ever have a daiughter.
[+] [-] ip26|2 years ago|reply
This is mostly rhetorical; the point is the constant (necessary) risk calculus is draining, and parents are rational to err on the side of caution.
It has been observed that most public spaces in America are default adult spaces where children are only tolerated. It follows most public spaces will tend to have adult levels of hazard and risk.
[+] [-] gampleman|2 years ago|reply
That said, I think the argument about how fears are misplaced since now is the most safe time to be a kid is bad.
> And it is widely believed that the world is no longer a safe place for children to play in. Yet statistics show that it has never been a safer time to be a child. Injury-related deaths are at an all-time low in most Western nations. In the US, deaths from unintentional injuries fell by 73% for boys and 85% for girls between 1973 and 2010. This misperception of risk creates the parental paradox.
This doesn't make much sense. Parents have mass migrated to a different style of parenting. In the same period life has gotten much safer for children. Therefore we should revert to the older style of parenting and not be afraid that the risks will return?
I think this cause is really hurting itself with this kind of weak argument.
[+] [-] watwut|2 years ago|reply
And second issue is that they do NOT engage with other host of issues that limit outside play. For example, unsupervised playing kids are annoying to many unrelated adults - and adults who strongly dislike kids and want to exclude them from everywhere are very common. Or, simple fact that just meeting friends often requires in advance agreed upon play date and a drive by car. Or, simple fact that before you was bored in your room and outside had things to do, nowdays you have fun stuff at home (computer, tablet, phone) and outside has not much to do above the age of 7.
Half of this feels like fighting fear by adding new dangers and threats to the equation. Hey, not only you need to add risk, if you dont your kid will have serious mental health issues. Hey, lets worry simultaneously about risk taking while doing safe activities while also worrying they dont take enough risk.
[+] [-] drchiu|2 years ago|reply
Things are made “safe” because there is now always a risk of getting sued when stuff happens.
[+] [-] cyco130|2 years ago|reply
I believe it's now illegal in some jurisdictions.
[+] [-] stephc_int13|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhfbshfbu4u3|2 years ago|reply
Seems great, and I think most of us enjoyed it, but the kids who really got ahead in life stayed inside studying.
Fast forward several decades, I raised some kids of my own and by and large we let them have a lot of a fun. That said, the stakes are so much higher these days that it is impractical to give kids total freedom. The long-term costs and lost opportunity is just way too high.
[+] [-] bjackman|2 years ago|reply
So instead of physically separating her from a hot kettle they just go "it's very hot!" and demonstrate by touching it carefully and then pulling their hand away. They let her play with matches.
She could pick up on these cues long before she could understand words. But it does look exhausting. And there have been some moments (once she was trotting around holding scissors pointing up in the air) where I've thought "no that's too risky and no amount of careful supervision can prevent injury here". She has also burned herself, but only once.
So overall I am pretty impressed, at least in principle, and if I have kids I'll definitely endeavour to try and curb my overprotective instincts.
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|2 years ago|reply
As far as I acted on a baseless fear that they were at meaningful risk of stranger kidnapping, I was a stupid father. That's mostly a different kind of bad father but whatever.
[+] [-] dclowd9901|2 years ago|reply
The kidnapping thing doesn’t happen like that. Not in the US. It happens to vulnerable families at the border who pay unscrupulous coyotes to bring them over.
[+] [-] forgetfreeman|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dclowd9901|2 years ago|reply
I have two memories
1) I was playing in my grandfather’s pipe yard with my cousins. Lots of heavy equipment and stuff that was precariously stacked. Very easily could have ended up in a situation were something fell on me and killed me. Instead, I just ran headlong into a rusty pipe and nearly broke my nose.
2) I was in my early teens riding a 3 wheeled ATV. I was going too fast and went into a wash and flipped the machine over me. I didn’t kill myself. Didn’t even get seriously hurt, but easily could have.
I was incredibly lucky to come out of both of those experiences relatively unscathed. It’s not really a tough calculus thinking “well, my daughter doesn’t have an eye anymore, but at least she was having fun!”
I instead encourage my kids to have fun in activities that _feel_ risky but where the chance of life altering injury is low. Like walking on a high brick fence or jumping from a high point into a big deep body of water.
Anyway, as a parent I’m so fucking tired of people trying to tell me how to raise a kid.
[+] [-] 1970-01-01|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisArchitect|2 years ago|reply
Balancing Outdoor Risky Play and Injury Prevention in Childhood Development
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39139540
[+] [-] lqet|2 years ago|reply
Examples:
"Don't sit on the backrest of that chair, it will topple over". "No, that's not true at all, you're wrong!!!" 5 minutes later: Crash. Quiet. Cry. Never done again.
"You cannot build bridges out of sofa cushions between the sofa and the coffee table, it won't support you". "No! I am small! It will hold!" 5 minutes later: Crash. Quiet. Cry. Never done again.
On bicycle: "Drive slower, you have to break!". "No, I like it fast! I cannot fall, my tires are big!" Seconds later: Crash against fence. Quiet. Cry. Now she drives carefully.
In winter: "Be careful on that ice!". "But my new shoes have rubber, dad, they won't slip, don't you know that?!?" Seconds later: Slip. Bamm. Quiet. Cry. Now she knows rubber soles slip on ice.
As long as there is no risk of a serious, life-threatening accident, I have become pretty relaxed. I remember that I constantly had scraped knees and bruises as a child. When I was 7, my grandparents regularly send me to a gas station nearby to buy the paper, and my mother would send me to the supermarket with my 4 year old brother to get groceries. I walked to kindergarten by myself when I was 5.
[+] [-] jp42|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ineedasername|2 years ago|reply
It’s weakest when it speaks about “risky” play, where the author seems to focus on the excitement & fear etc. that comes from physically risky play. I don’t think physical risk should be a requirement for a robustly healthy childhood play experience. From the article, bemoaning the lack of play in abandoned locations seems fairly absurd, though again some other points are well taken.
I will note one interesting trend that may partially be a product of this desire &/or need for risky play, which is the recent popularity of much more elaborate & diverse videogames in the “sandbox survival crafting” genre. These for me actually do seem to evoke a similar feel to the childhood sense of exploration and creative play. I’m not necessarily proposing these as a solution to what we had decades ago but it may be that just as the “safety” movement didn’t happen overnight, perhaps cultural solutions to fill these same needs will take a bit more time as well.
[+] [-] hyperman1|2 years ago|reply
I grew up in 80's the time where almost everybody played in parks and fields. But I can't give that to my own son of 7.
He has to cross 3 streets to reach a playground 200m from here,the worst of the crossings a street with 50km/h limitsand 1 car every 10 seconds. Not much, except just enough people drive like idiots, 90km/h or more on a road not even 500m long.
We've been teaching him good pedestrian behaviour since he could walk. We've done a few tests where he walked to the baker, thinking he was unsupervised. He probably can do it most of the time. Except, 1 distraction while an idiot drives by will kill him.
So I bring him to the playground and let him play as unsupervised as possible for an adult on the side of a playground. Of course, he knows I am there.
I start working with him with more dangerous tools like a soldering iron. He can deal well enough with these risks. But not the streets.
[+] [-] gilbetron|2 years ago|reply
Plus, I know at least 3 people that were kids when I was a kid, within several years, that are now disabled adults because of that unstructured play. Two broke their necks, one broke so many bones they were in a wheelchair for several years. I know probably half a dozen kids that were hit by cars in some form. Several kids dead by drunk driving. So that unstructured play isn't without cost.
There are other tradeoffs, too. I know several kids that are raised more unstructured because of their specific situation, and they have a lot of social and physical confidence, but they are also kinda dumb. Like they lack intellectual curiosity. Anecdotal, I know, but I just don't think things are as clear as they make it out to be.
My son's playgrounds were still fairly dangerous, so I think the pendulum has started swinging back. When he was 6-9 or so, his favorite two playground stuctures were a 15' tall climbing tower, and the old school metal merri-go-round thing. Oh, and one elementary school had two huge play structures made of wood with all kinds of tunnels and nooks and crannies, he had tons of fun with that with his friends.
What I mostly missed with him is his ability to just go outside and play with a bunch of kids - there is a negative feedback loop where even if you want your kid to do that, there are no other kids out there in many places. Plus there are just not many interesting "third spaces" anymore that are fun for kids but also ok for them to be kids.