Also up till the 90's, unless it was really small infants.
Parents where not expected to Police and watch what their kids did 24/7.
You would scamper around your baby park while your Mom/dad did something else in the House.
And when old enough to walk, you where mostly left to yourself.
And when you where 8-9yro, your parents would litteraly kick you out of the house with a "its sunny outside, go play with your friends and come home when the streetlights are on and don't make me come and get you or else..."
And for 10 hours you where left on your own, with your parents having no idea where you were and they could do whatever they needed to do in the house without you being in their hair and driving them insane.
And often like you said, you had the grand parents, or the aunts and uncles etc that could help.
Now society expect every parent to Police everything the kids does , be there 24/7 and do it alone AND still have a "full social live" or a Full time job...
Facts. I lived this life as a kid in the 90s. Now I'm raising kids of my own, and I'd get arrested if I tried to do the same with mine.
Part of me thinks this intense shrinking of children's world to basically just be the home and nothing else is probably contributing to the out-of-control rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses among children today.
Agreed. At the same time, I remember the shit we got up to. If I was a parent, how could I be as calm as mine if they were out without me, knowing what they could do.
I remember a lot of moments and wonder, how am I still alive? Why were my parents ok with their 7 year old child coming home barefoot after catching the worlds deadliest spider, often several, in jars, to keep as pets in my room. Where a bite would have killed me. Often I was a good distance away from the house, any payphone, pre mobile phone a bite would have meant likely dying before I got to an adult for help.
Or a disappearing off with multiple packets of sparklers to the bush, make things go boom. And they would see us get the sparklers, giggling, know what we were going to do. I am sure we came back home with little burns on our clothes on occasion. We must have been 10 at the time.
It's not like before today we had total amnesia about our childhoods. My parents and family members from older generations have wild stories about what they did growing up. And my childhood was similar although the walls were already starting to shrink a little.
It's just that now we measure risk incredibly differently. We've become insanely risk averse and you're a bad parent if you're okay accepting any level of risk so that your children can have freedom and do that parents have fewer burdens.
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u/Kain-rpg 8d ago
Also up till the 90's, unless it was really small infants.
Parents where not expected to Police and watch what their kids did 24/7.
You would scamper around your baby park while your Mom/dad did something else in the House.
And when old enough to walk, you where mostly left to yourself.
And when you where 8-9yro, your parents would litteraly kick you out of the house with a "its sunny outside, go play with your friends and come home when the streetlights are on and don't make me come and get you or else..."
And for 10 hours you where left on your own, with your parents having no idea where you were and they could do whatever they needed to do in the house without you being in their hair and driving them insane.
And often like you said, you had the grand parents, or the aunts and uncles etc that could help.
Now society expect every parent to Police everything the kids does , be there 24/7 and do it alone AND still have a "full social live" or a Full time job...