If we try to engineer perfect children, will they grow up to be unbearable? - By Katie Roiphe - Slat

[autographedcat]

Not being a parent myself, I have no personal insights to add here, but have long wondered at the incredible amount of structure most kids seem to grow up in these days, compared to when I was growing up.

If we try to engineer perfect children, will they grow up to be unbearable? - By Katie Roiphe - Slate Magazine

Can we, for a moment, flash back to the benign neglect of the 1970s and '80s? I can remember my parents having parties, wild children running around until dark, catching fireflies. If these children helped themselves to three slices of cake, or ingested the second-hand smoke from cigarettes, or carried cocktails to adults who were ever so slightly slurring their words, they were not noticed; they were loved, just not monitored. And, as I remember it, those warm summer nights of not being focused on were liberating. In the long sticky hours of boredom, in the lonely, unsupervised, unstructured time, something blooms; it was in those margins that we became ourselves

Comments

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it's very much class-based in a lot of ways. That's a good point.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Regional as well as class-based. This stuff goes on with big-city upper income types who get into competitions to be perfect. So NYC, Los Angeles, etc. Also tends to be confined to the folks who just have one or two kids. Once you have a herd you're too tired for those kinds of games. :)

We just hear about it because journalists sit in the sweet spot of the demographic that acts that way.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Yes and no, love.

We have three kids living at home with us now - yes the three in his icon. I try to have them be as free range as I can. Some of that is being older and tireder - I know I kept up more with Maggie when she was smaller. Some of it is policy.

But our society pretty stiffly limits how much I can do that. I sent Maggie to the park by herself once - was she 6 or 7 at the time? A smart responsible kid in a quiet residential area walking 4 blocks to the park with the playground. Other parents there with their kids CALLED THE POLICE who came out, talked to her, then called me and made me come get her. We once had the police come to our door because I'd let her walk her friend Amber home around the block, and had let her take her baby sister in the stroller along for the walk - this without them crossing ANY streets.

The main reason that the kids have an awesome fort/swingset in the backyard is that I *can't* get away with just tossing them out the door to go play in the neighborhood and the park.

I remember that I used to walk several miles to preschool with a group of other kids. And I can't send my grade-school aged child to the park by herself.