What a strange experience. I'm not sure exactly what this article was trying to convey, because the parent didn't seem to actually leave their kids to do their own thing for more than 20 minutes at a time before reverting back to television and devices. And rather than actually giving the kids the freedom we had when we were young, the author laments that this freedom can't exist (not sure why?). So this article really isn't about anything.
This is an experiment over five days. I think it was very sensible not trying to abruptly change the whole day for a ten and a five year old. That would be very stressful for them. Also the article is about that kids today are in a very shitty situation: they can't roam, because you as a parent get judged or worse (like people call the police, when they see kids unsupervised), and the house is full of so called smart devices, that are highly addictive. We in the western world created an very unhealthy environment for children and we need to change that as soon as we can.
My son went to a new farther school this year, it took nearly a year for my wife to get used to the fact that he goes there alone (bike / public transport). However I had to buy him a phone to know his location in order to ease my wife.
I'm not naturally worried, but i got contaminated by her stress.
I don't know where the stress comes from. I think it maybe maybe the lack of trusting other people: you do not trust that strangers help you
Well I'm in Europe (Romania) too and street crime is basically nonexistent where I live, yet I don't let my 11 years old kid commute home by himself. Problem is cars, he only has to make a mistake once and I can't afford that mistake.
I grew up in the countryside in the 80s, cars there were as rare as hen teeth at the time so entirely different situation. Also parents used to have 2-3 kids back then, I only have one so gotta pay extra care coze there's no backup :)
I suspect that part of the worry aculture around parents being overprotective of kids today (at least in the west and the U.S. in particular) comes from exactly what you mention, a prevalece of single-child homes with no backup so to speak, vs increased worry in general.
As European, it varies a bit per country, naturally not always without possible issues, and as a 1970's child back then the freedom was much bigger, still in general we still have the general attitude of not calling authorities just because kids are having fun on their own.
All the best, and maybe something for the 1980's US kids that I just watch recently from a stand up, that touches how US lost this culture.
"Why 70s & 80s Kids Rule: The Ultimate Guide" by Karen Morgan
We most certainly do give kids the same or more freedom. The kids just choose to use devices with that freedom. Society is trying to reverse out of it the best way we know how. Schools are smothering phones so the teachers can get back a shred of dignity and the kids can get an education. Now, if we could just be done with this chrome book/laptop garbage.
Parenting is hard. A freshly-minted parent has so many good resolutions.
After eleven years of parenting we had five weeks of summer without holidays (holidays meaning staying at least three nights not at home). We just had some events like zoos, museums, hiking, rope parks, grocery shopping, household chores, and so on, and each week about two or three days of doing nothing at home. And in the last week I found a way to curb the excessive online time when being lazy. Alternate between being online and offline every hour and use something like a tomato timer and switch when it buzzes off. I also was not telling the kids what they can do when offline. They had to figure out themselves what to do when bored. After two days of this regime, my older son told me he liked it and was not in a hurry to go back online.
I keep thinking about this experience. Why is it so hard not to be online?
On the days we were not at home, we all had almost no online presence. More often than not I told my older son not to bring his cell phone along, and we parents also left our cell phones mostly in the bag, sometimes even in airplane mode.
But it is really hard.
That's what has changed when I was a child. Online presence is difficult to avoid. And that's what's making parenting difficult today.
Sometimes I have to look up things to organize a short trip while the boys aren't allowed to be online. I always feel guilty towards them that I can't stop being online and still don't allow them the same. There are a few applications which could be understood as not being online, like reading an ebook, but others don't, like playing Exponentile or being on Hacker News.
By the way, my wife and I are early retired because of some serious health issues, so we don't need to do business, but sometimes we are exhausted. I know all parents are exhausted sometimes, but perhaps we are more than others.
Damn. We used to visit Hocking Hills here in a Ohio when I was a kid (I'm still obsessed with the place and visit often). The trails are usually a long a creek and have several falls at the trail waypoints. Everyone would stop and swim, the waterfalls would be full of kids and whole families. I would refill my canteen from the creeks.
Swimming is banned now and there are no people playing in the water. You hike your ass into the valley and walk for miles over rough terrain in god-awful heat. The kids hate it.
When I was a kid I couldn't wait to get back there and sleep in a wet tent all week in a primitive camping area so I could go on these hikes.
This article is incomplete, yet the title alone was enough to trigger a trauma response in me. My new girlfriend is a school teacher, just like my mom was back in the 80s, and so offers a good comparison of how modern life is different than that era. Between teaching summer school, professional development days, and continuing education, the new GF got approximately one week of actual vacation this summer, whereas mom could get away for a number of weeks. My dad, who I am estranged from, never took any vacation ever because he cared more about his career than his family, and yet here I am wanting nothing more than to spend time with my kids (single dad), but have to do nothing but work to keep a roof over our heads in this economic climate.
So it's nice to talk about raising our kids in a simpler way, but it ignores that my parents had so much more disposable income and time. Yes my kids (teens) are left to figure it out on their own like kids of the past, but we're also in a far more competitive world today where a significant chunk of their summer vacation is put into activities that are "life prep" - and my family is significantly more relaxed in this regard than many high-achiever families.
Well, I'm glad so many HN commenters enjoyed a pleasant, bucolic childhood wandering freely, but my parents were raised with a similar amount of freedom, but instead had to contend with things like neighborhood perverts sexually harassing/assaulting them, various forms of violence, being attacked by packs of wild dogs, and one of their childhood friends got into the car of someone never identified and later found murdered in a stone quarry.
They had the misfortune of living in a low-income neighborhood, and I can understand why me and my siblings weren't given the same amount of freedom growing up.
If you have the fortune to be in a place where such freedom isn't so dangerous, congratulations, but I feel it's not necessarily the norm.
