Where does the desire for excessive care for children

When I was six years old, my neighborhood served as an ideal platform for an active and idyllic childhood. Half a dozen of my peers lived on the same street, and we quickly formed our children's gang. For days on end, we built ramps for bicycles, played with the ball in my yard and just wobble around.

My area was still being built up at that time, so we had a lot of unfinished houses to explore. When the builders left the construction site at the end of the working day, we rode on bicycles to look at what they had done and climb the framework of houses growing out of the mud-covered areas. The most interesting thing was to explore the two-story houses. It was necessary to climb up the unfinished railings, unfinished staircases, so that at the top one could have the opportunity to walk along the beams and be abandoned by things in one’s friends.

And on those sites where there were no houses yet, we organized mud fights. We dug holes and threw pieces of dirt at each other for hours. In one of the pieces that flew into me in the middle was a stone that hit me right in the eye. For several days I had to lie in a hospital and have surgery. After all this, the only consolation for me was the possibility of wearing eye patch for several weeks, just like “one-eyed Willie” from the movie “The Goonies ”. (Now everything is fine with the eye, it's just that he has very strong astigmatism ).
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Behind our house was a giant field that crossed a small stream. My friends and I spent hours studying its shores and gave names to the objects we found in this area. I remember once we had the courage to go and follow the stream to see where it would lead us. Then we found a cool and secluded alcove, and decided it was the perfect place for a fort. We built a fort of a pallet and old tires we found nearby, and spent a lot of time in our secret shelter.

While I was walking, my parents knew that I was somewhere nearby, but they didn’t know exactly where, and they didn’t care. The only rule for me was the need to go home for dinner.

Fast forward to thirty years.

One evening my six-year-old son went into the yard to play, which I did not mind. But when I went out in ten minutes to say something to him, he was nowhere in sight. I checked the backyard and walked around the house. Then I went back to see if it was inside. I searched all the rooms, shouting his name. Anxiety was born in my stomach. Kate was also worried and took part in the search. We again checked everything outside, then inside, then outside again, and all the time shouted his name. I got into the car and drove around the block. Gus was gone. He seemed to have completely disappeared. I drove around the block again, and at this time Kate was looking for her son in the yard and in the house again. The excitement grew into a panic. Terrible thoughts flashed through my head: someone had kidnapped him.

I called the police and said that I could not find my child. They promised to send their employee. A couple of neighbors volunteered to help us find him. I returned to the car and increased the search range. Finally, I noticed Gus. He was a few steps from the house of his grandmother and grandfather, who lived half a mile from us. With extreme relief, I put him in the car and brought him home. Soon the police arrived. I timidly admitted to them that everything is in order, and I found my son.

And I wondered: have I not panicked too much?

In my defense, I will say that Gus never tried and was not interested in independent walks along the street, not to mention walking alone to the house of his grandfather and grandmother. It was sudden and unprecedented. But this gave rise to other difficult questions:

Why wasn't he interested in exploring the county on his own? Why was it abnormal for him to go for a walk, to walk not only to the house of relatives, but also to play with other neighboring children, as I did?

But this is a hypothetical question, since there are no neighborhood children to play with in the district; they are all isolated in their homes. And this leads us to the hottest question: what has happened in our culture since I grew up to make such a transformation happen? Why are parents more careful today?

Tapering perimeter of children's entertainment

The parental responsibility rules have really changed a lot in just one generation. Previously, children went to school on foot or cycled. Now they are not even allowed to go to the bus stop. Children who spontaneously get together now play special and controlled meetings. Parents shoved the children out of the house so that they would walk and not return until sunset, but now they prefer the children to stay at home, or at least go no further than their yard.

If parents release their children from home, they do not move away from them far. On a typical playground, you can see a mom or dad guarding his son. Parents, arms outstretched to catch the child, if he falls from the bar. Parents, riding a hill, with a child securely held in their arms.

Not only the physical distance accessible to children, but also their opportunities for vigorous activity have seriously decreased.

Half a century ago, boys often carried pocket knives with them everywhere, and now the age at which parents are not afraid to give sharp objects to their children has increased significantly. The same is true for matches and lighters. Not to mention letting the child steer when driving out of the garage onto the road while he is sitting on your lap.

And these observations of the growing children of growing older children are not just for the story. Studies show that modern children have a more limited life than their parents and grandparents.

Several studies in the United States, Europe and Australia have found that over the past 50 years, the radius of independent movement of children has decreased by 90%. If his grandfather in his childhood was allowed to go many miles away from home, a modern child measures this distance in yards. According to one British study, while 80% of third-graders were allowed to go to school on foot in 1971, by 1990 this number had dropped to 9%, and today it is even less.

The zero tolerance policy in schools is well documented and already leads to situations where an honored student was removed from school for bringing a table knife from home to cut a peach (she wanted to share it with classmates). In some schools, it is already forbidden to run and play ball in order not to get injured, and games such as saloks or walking with a wheel require adult supervision.

Most adults can instinctively feel how the culture of childhood and parental control has changed. It will be harder to understand why this shift occurred.

What is behind modern excessive parental care

I met with such statistics and such examples even before I had children myself. I remember the 2008 hysteria about "free walking children," which was started by a column by Lenore Skenazy " Why I let my 9-year-old child go alone on the subway ."

It was two years before I got Gus. And like all people without children, I planned out all the educational work. What is wrong with people criticizing Shkenazi? Children can not be nursed ! I knew exactly what kind of father I would be - a father, allowing my children to freely walk, be independent and engage in risky things. I was going to be the parent of free walking kids!

Like all other beliefs about parenting, which appeared before the birth of a child, this has undergone a very strong change.

I didn’t completely lose my ideal — I deliberately made sure that the children did “dangerous” things — held knives, played with matches, waved a hammer and launched fireworks. I encouraged them to play in the courtyard. I took them on camping trips, fishing and nature walks.

Just at some moments, for example, when they were walking along the street on their own, the fear that held my heart was stronger than I had imagined; and even during those occupations that I allowed them, it was very difficult for me to struggle with the desire to prevent every broken knee or cut on my finger.

And although on the topic of excessive parental care mountains of texts have already been written, much less thoughts were expressed on the topic of the cause of this phenomenon. Why do modern parents care so much for their children? Below, I present several hypotheses generated by both research and my own reflections.

There are fewer children in families

On average, people now have fewer children than before, and this affected not only their tolerance for risky activities of children, but also all the other factors of this list.

First, the less parents have children, the more time they can devote to each of them. Therefore, beginning in the 19th century, when the birth rate in the West began a downtrend, children were less and less a simple asset used for domestic work, and more and more often a being created for care and admiration. They, as the sociologist Viviana Zelitser says, "have become economically worthless and emotionally priceless."

Common sense says that this “pricelessness” should increase if there are fewer and fewer children in a family. Parents who risk becoming childless will lose much more if they have only one or two children in their family and something happens to them. Winston Churchill was not joking when he advised a friend: "There should be four children in the family - one child for the mother, the second for the father, the third just in case and the fourth for the continuation of the race."

Of course, parents, in whose family there are many children, do not love each of them less, and will not find the loss of any of them less destructive than the parents of fewer children.

But perhaps at the subconscious level, parents with many children are a bit more relaxed about risky activities of children, and parents with one or two children hold on tight to them. I have two children, and if something happens to one of them, I will have only one. I can not agree that this affects the excessive care of my children.

You can also make a simple calculation - the more children you have, the less able you are to follow them. If there are two children, each parent can follow one child. When there are three or more of them, parents physically cannot follow them all the time. Even if they want to overprotect them, they are physically incapable of it.

Two working parents and higher expectations from children

Many children are raised in families where both parents work full time - this happens more often than before. But, oddly enough, both fathers and mothers spend more time with their children - more than in the 60s.

Perhaps this is because today's parents, many of whom grew up in the 70s and 80s, when the number of divorces beat records (despite the popular misconception, their number has since decreased ), they want to create a close family that was not as they grow up. At the same time, since both parents work, they feel guilty for not spending enough time with their children.

Combine all this with a culture that emphasizes the importance of educating and interacting with children in maximizing the emotional and educational development of the child. When there are fewer children in a family, parents spend more energy on achieving success for each of the children, and they consider that they are obliged to engage in micromanagement of their development. Therefore, if a mother from the 1950s left the children to play on her own, her modern version should play with them and constantly interact with the children. And these expectations about a more intensive interaction laid a burden not only on mothers, but also on fathers. Previously, the function of fathers in upbringing was more peripheral, but now they are often expected (and they themselves want it) to be more involved in this matter. Today's fathers spend 4 times more time with children than their fathers did in 1965.

As a result of this combination of working parents and high expectations, when moms and dads return from work, not seeing children all day, they often do not agree that children go for a walk on their own - this will shorten the only window of opportunity to spend time with the whole family. Parents feel that they should not let go of their children and intensively communicate with them.

And although Kate and I work only during school hours at school (and then at night when the children go to bed), I can testify to the presence of this phenomenon. We feel obligated to spend more time with Gus and Scout in our free time, especially when they were very young. Now, unintentionally, although they are old enough to play on their own, they still cling to us and want to spend all their time with us.

I would never have even thought to play with my mom and dad when I was growing up, and I try to explain this fact to Gus and Scout. But from this little comes out. I can not blame them for such affection - we ourselves have created this problem.

Children have more classes and their activities are more structured.

Along with the desire to maximize the potential of children, there appeared a strict structuring of their extracurricular activities. More music lessons after school and sports. You can start from any age. Three-year-olds go in for gymnastics, play football (in the chaotic grazing of a herd of cats called football), and do yoga with their mothers. Leaving the child to himself means giving his ability to atrophy. It is almost neglect.

As a result of such a loaded calendar, as Hanna Rozin of the Atlantic Monthly writes , it turns out that when children do not spend time with their parents, they are under the supervision of other adults, in school or on the playing field:

“When I was little, my mother didn’t work long hours, but she didn’t spend much time with me. She did not organize my gaming meetings, did not take on swimming lessons, did not let me listen to the music she liked. On weekdays after school, she just waited for me to come for dinner. I rarely saw her at the weekend. On the other hand, I spend every Sunday hour with my three children, take one to football, another to the theater group, third to friends, or just spend time with them at home. When my daughter was 10, my husband suddenly realized that in all her life she had not spent more than 10 minutes without adult supervision. 10 minutes in 10 years. ”

When children take part in structured activities, they are often looked after not only by their teachers and coaches, but also by their parents. Decades ago, parents could just take the child to practice (or birthday), and now they often remain as a spectator, feeling that they need to watch the development of the child, and just in case they need it. With such supervision, as Rozin writes, today's children "accept that they are always being watched for granted."

From the 1980s to the early 2000s, the amount of free time for children on average decreased by 9 hours per week. Children have no time left for free, unstructured games - in which they most often could risk and explore the limits of their capabilities.

Children have fewer friends in the neighborhood.

I noticed that the older Scout gets, and the more she can play with Gus, the easier it is for them to move away from Kate and me and play on their own. From this I concluded that Gus’s unwillingness to play on his own, although due to the fact that I spoiled him, also simply depended on the fact that he had no partner for the games. Since he had no peers in the neighborhood, he had to wait for Scout to grow up and be able to become his game partner.

Remember when you for the most part made various discoveries and did the most risky things. Probably when you were among other children. And although children begin independent games to test the limits of their abilities on their own, such classes flourish precisely in the context of neighboring gangs. Having freed themselves from adult supervision, children subordinate each other to risky things, such that they would not dare on their own.

With the decrease in the number of siblings and neighbors' children, this, first of all, the central part of children's experience, seems to disappear.

Technology

Of course, no discussion of over-guardianship is not without the role of technology. Even if in the past, parents wanted to keep a child in four walls, there was little to do there. Parents did not want to communicate with bored children, just as children did not want to be bored, so the latter were driven out - if only the children themselves did not run away from home of their own accord.

Today, with a virtual world that every child can explore, parents can easily leave the child at home. Children have fun with their electronic devices, and parents are calm, knowing that their child is home.

At the same time, technology has also increased our expectations about the availability of communication between people. Not so long ago, people of any age could communicate with each other only by wired phones. There was a time when a man was absolutely inaccessible, and this had to be tolerated.

In the era of GPS and smartphones, our expectations have changed dramatically and increased. We expect to be able to contact anyone at any time. And this expectation influenced the process of raising children. For the generation of my parents, the inability to contact my children at intervals of several hours was normal; For my generation, this seems strange and frightening.

Fear of judgment

In 1978, the boy's parents, who as a result of a fall from a roller coaster on a playground, became paralyzed and damaged his brain, sued $ 9.5 million from a Chicago parks department for seven years.

After that, the US Public Safety Commission issued a “Safety Guide for Public Playgrounds,” which listed proposals for enhancing the safety of equipment. And although they thought about how recommendations that manage parks across the country in fear of such litigation, they spent several decades persistently turning playgrounds into calmer, safer — and many would simply say, into more sterile — places to play.

Quite recently, metal structures for climbing and a slide were demolished on the playground closest to us, and plastic prefabricated structures were placed on a platform finished with rubber. What's funny, half of the new designs are designed to rotate on them - apparently, the developers believe that it is better to replace the fear of heights with nausea from dizziness. And it’s funny that children still try to use this equipment in “dangerous” ways, such for which it was not intended - they climb up instead of following its predefined functions. You can replace the equipment, but you can not change the heart of the child.

Rules governed by litigation and the rising cost of insurance in schools and clubs are clearly trying to level the landscape of this heart. Zero tolerance to arms, a ban on football and American football at recess - Scout instructions contain a huge amount of security disclaimers , and deprive her childhood of too many surprises, risks and fun time.

Fear of intrusiveness

Nowadays, we have to fear not only lawsuits, but also the intrusiveness of our neighbors. Even if you allow your children to walk freely, it will look so unusual that it will surely be condemned by your peers (as well as parents and parents of the spouse who, although they raised their children in the same way, no longer consider this an acceptable way of bringing up ). What is more important is that these observers may incite the authorities against you.

In a single generation, behavior that was generally accepted has become the illegal exposure of children to danger. Publications can be found about the many cases in which concerned citizens called the police and reported that other people's children walk alone. Their parents then had to fend off accusations of negligent treatment of the children and be investigated by the guardianship authorities. Some parents were accused of neglect of children because they left an 11-year-old son to play in his yard alone for an hour and a half. Other parents were accused of leaving the child in the car unattended, having just ran for a few minutes to the store.

And even if the approach to the free upbringing of children does not prove dangerous from the point of view of the law, it can be dangerous from a social point of view. If you are a parent sitting relaxed in place while others are running around with your children, you may be considered an inappropriate guardian. And if foreign accusations are easy to reject, the pressure associated with the need to raise children in a new way is infectious. Even people who think the new rules are stupid feel the pressure that drives them into the general stream.

Fear of crime, or the illusion of control

One of the most obvious reasons for the excessive care of children is the idea that if 30-40 years ago children could walk on their own, now the world has become more dangerous. When we continue to discuss this topic in the following posts, we will turn to real statistics about whether the number of crimes such as child abduction has increased or decreased. But I am sure that I do not need to insert a spoiler here to hide the statement: the world has not become more dangerous since I was little.

Why does it seem to us that this is not so?

Many will blame the emergence of news networks and websites and their constant sensational coverage of abductions, violence, murders, etc. If we argue this way, it turns out that although the real numbers on crime in most places are falling, it seems to us that they are growing, because images of violence and tragedies fill our screens and constantly come across to us. No more bad things happen, it just seems to us that they have become more, because they are often disproportionately illuminated.

And although this argument is often used not only in the field of crimes involving children, but also to explain why people feel that the world as a whole has become more dangerous, it never seemed to me convincing. Just the idea that we consume more news than before is historically incorrect.

A century and a half ago, people did not have the Internet, but newspapers produced several pieces a day. It was possible to take the morning, afternoon and evening newspaper, and sometimes the intermediate issue, when something extraordinary happened. And the stories covered in the yellow editions at the time were at least as sensational as today's ones. If you do not believe, check the archives of the 19th century newspaper of the National Police Gazette . So, although the citizens of that time were not always in touch, their appetite for the news was as great, and was satisfied quite regularly.

Maybe the current news has become more visual? Old newspapers had black and white illustrations and photographs. Now we have more photos, plus endless video broadcasts - all in color. Perhaps the innocent faces of the abducted children and the videos of their grieving parents give the story too vividly and take more for the soul?

Probably. But even this explanation cannot explain the whole picture.

In 1800, 43% of the world's children died before they were five years old. In 1961, the percentage of infant mortality was 18.5%. Today, for the whole world, it averages 4.3%, while in the USA it is much less. In 1935, there were 450 deaths for every 100,000 children under the age of four; today there are only 30. Very many parents a century and a decade ago did not just watch stories about dying children, but they themselves also experienced this. In the families of their neighbors, in their own families. If you visit the cemetery of the 19th century and see how many tombstones are topped with too short an interval between birth and death, you can feel for yourself how routinely there was the loss of a child.

Of course, many of these deaths were caused by disease, but historical records indicate that many children died in random and unexpected ways: when mistreated with tools and weapons, due to falling into the fire, due to the attack of wild animals. Parents of those times experienced the injuries and death of children no less than we are today - and yet they less, and not more, protected their children.

How can this paradox be explained?

We again return to the number of children in the family. Parents of the last century could have ten children, and they knew that several of them would not live to adulthood anyway. But there is also a difference in worldviews. The discrepancy of philosophies.

One explanation for the overwhelming custody of children is that the world today seems vague, and that raising and keeping children safe is one of the few things we can control. But it is difficult to imagine that people who lived when almost half of their children could die before they were 5 years old did not consider the world cruel and uncertain. The world has always been uncertain. What has changed is how we react to its uncertainty.

In the past, when science and technology were less, people considered life more susceptible to the influence of fate and divine will. Since they could not control these forces, they simply did everything they could and accepted that everything else would be what it would be. You can not escape a certain amount of suffering in life.

Nowadays, knowledge and technology have greatly grown, as have our expectations about the possibilities of control. Living in a non-religious society, we see that the opportunity to influence our lives is almost entirely in our hands. We were bequeathed to tools that could help us and our children to live longer, easier, safer - and this influenced our perspective. If science and technology can save millions of lives, is it not wise to save them all? All tragedies, even death from old age, began to seem preventable. This view and the myth of omnipotent progress cannot but influence our process of raising children. Why do some children have to get hurt? Why do children have to die? Our belief in comprehensive control is comprehensive; If you try hard, you can outsmart all the tragedies.

But of course, this belief is illusory. The vagaries of fate still work the same way as before. The dice of chance still rolls. Our attempts to test and limit, regulate and arrange, can, of course, help to avoid some dangers, but can never eliminate them all. Accident dictates the inevitability of risk. But our attempts to destroy the invulnerable continue for obvious reasons, and multiply when the goal seems closer and closer - although it remains forever beyond our reach.

Conclusion

When I brought Gus home from his travel adventure, I tried not to get mad at him at all. I did not want him to think that he had done something bad. I told him that I was glad and proud that he decided to go for a walk on his own, and was worried only because he did not tell me where he was going to go.

And, despite how terrible my feeling was that he was kidnapped from our yard, the next day I again allowed him to go play on his own. But am I prepared for the fact that he alone will go to the house of his grandparents? It seems to me that for this he needs to grow a little. I'm still trying to figure out what restrictions need to be imposed.

A new style of parenting is not without virtues. He may have protected children from a couple of cases of astigmatism. And children spend more time with their parents, especially with their fathers, and develop close relationships with them. I do not think that I should give up the role of authority in order to be friends with children on an equal footing, but I like the fact that we and the little son do so much together. It seems that it is good for him and for Scout. Children spending more time with adults today seem to be more adult than children of the past.

But the statistics on whether excessive guardianship protects against injuries and abductions are not particularly strong, and the advantages of such education do not seem to be entirely roses and songs. For our close relationship you have to pay.

It turns out that sometimes, when you try to suppress one danger, another simply happens instead. Trying to ensure our children safety in some matters, we deprive them of safety in others. And next time we will discuss exactly the risk of prohibiting children to commit risky actions and the need to balance both sides of the equation.