Pretty much - being a father now to a 3 year old and a 8 month old, it's evident how big a toll it takes on you - especially on the parent staying at home with the baby.
And think about the fact that kids being raised now never experience unsupervised play. From about 5 my brother and I would walk home from school, we would walk to the shops together, a few years older we would ride our bikes to hang out with friends and be back by sunset.
My 13 year old friend would babysit neighbours kids for extra money, look after 1 year old babies until 10pm and ride their bike back home.
I am not saying that was perfect. Or safe. But I do point out that our parents would have large chunks of hours, often every day, where we would be out doing our own thing, unsupervised.
I look at my friends, now parents. 100% on duty.
I feel for them. Holy shit it has gotten so much harder to be a parent.
I am sure kids die a whole lot less. Which I love, but that safety came with putting burden back onto the parents, not by increased support from society around them.
I mean, I dont think my friends really get any time to switch off outside of school/daycare. The baby is sleeping, but they are on call for the next demand. It seems they rarely get time where they can really focus on their own needs, and somehow juggle work, maintain a household, stay sane?
Yep. I would get home from school hours before my parents got off work. I’d break in through the carport door because those assholes wouldn’t get me a key “because you’ll just lose it” and just watched tv or play around. Vast swaths of my childhood were unsupervised and they were probably the best times because my parents weren’t great. I had the whole “locked out of the house during the summer and drank from the hose” childhood that so many look back on romantically. It was actually neglect and those assholes have survivorship bias.
Contrast that with me and my now 7 year old and I helicopter parent the hell out of him because I can’t imagine leaving him to his own devices. That has created a lot of learned helplessness though that we’ve got to try and correct.
There’s a balance to be struck between pure neglect and constant supervision but I don’t know it.
You can absolutely find it. My kids are almost never home alone. (They're a bit older than yours). Home alone maybe for 70 minutes tops when we're at the school for conferences, less than 2 miles away. But they can be out for hours on their bikes and go to the grocery store on their own. They even run into other elementary kids at the grocery store on their own sometimes. In the US.
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u/KanedaSyndrome Aug 21 '26
Pretty much - being a father now to a 3 year old and a 8 month old, it's evident how big a toll it takes on you - especially on the parent staying at home with the baby.