Kids need time with their friends away from parents. I'm so glad I was able to grow up in the (sadly last) "be home for dinner, be back by dark" generation.
Completely agree with your comment, but "sadly last" here is not accurate unless you're talking about North America and maybe Europe.
I live in Japan and it's quite normal, even in a big city like Tokyo, to let kids play on their own until it gets dark. I feel quite lucky to be in a country not yet afflicted by this disease that has hit all of North America and (I hear) Europe as well - a disease of over-protecting kids to the point of suffocation.
People need to call this trend for what it is. They're not doing the next generation any good, and probably lots of harm.
Which I think is more of a problem than helicopter parenting in America and is what I think our school system is turning into. We're already working longer hours for less pay and increasing pressure on children to perform well even in Kindergarten.
Sorry, as a parent in Japan, I beg to disagree. The system here has lots of problems, don't get me wrong - and I really don't like the "juku" (cram-school) model at all. But particularly at younger ages (which in many ways are the most important ones), there is still that fundamental freedom to be on your own with your friends.
Kids age as young as 5 are often out on their own with their friends outside, or walking to school, etc. That's something you would be arrested for in the U.S.
I see the North American situation as much more scary, TBH.
Do you mean "until age 5"? All of the kids I knew from that area of the world, as young as elementary school, spent every second either studying for school or practicing piano/violin.
> All of the kids I knew from that area of the world, as young as elementary school, spent every second either studying for school or practicing piano/violin.
Sorry, but "that area of the world" is way too broad. Korea, for example, is quite different from Japan. And in any case, it's dependent on the cross-section of society you're talking about.
Elementary school itself, for example, is not suffocating at all, from my experience. Too much homework, yes, but not to the point that kids have no free time.
But again, my point is not about the amount of work. It's about the freedom to be on their own.
So I don't think Asian cities fair better than North America or Europe. It's a global problem. Two kids seating in front of reach other talking via instant messanger or in-game chat.
Of course this happens, but let me return to my point: it's perfectly normal to see a 5-year-old in the park on their own (here in Japan). In the U.S., the parent would be arrested.
Don't try to convince me that those are the same, they clearly are not. Pressure on kids, etc. varies by social strata, city/country, etc. But the degree to which it has been institutionalized, accepted, etc in North America is very different, and I would argue pathological.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arreste...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/...
https://geekdad.com/2015/01/kids-play-arrested/
https://www.cnn.com/2014/07/31/living/florida-mom-arrested-s...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/13/parent...
I didn't even have to dig to find these, they're from the first page of results of a single Google search.
Counterpointing myself though, in the third link you can see reference to active pushback against this whole thing: http://www.freerangekids.com/
I speak from experience having had people (including family) be shocked at how free our kids are here in Japan versus the experience in North America. Whether the media are making things worse (probably) is besides the point: you can get arrested for this as a parent. That's completely absurd and would not even be understood (let alone accepted) in many other countries, including Japan.
The pressure in Asia builds even before pre-school where toddlers have lessons to attend, to get into a decent pre-school.
Anecdotal evidence to see some 5 year kids playing in playground alone in Asia doesn't prove the point that parents in Asia are not robbing their kids of their childhood.
USA is big multi-cultural place with many different parenting styles. Painting all of them with broad brush without statistical significant studies is not ok.
One might not get arrested in Japan, does not prove anything. I might not agree completely with USA system, but it must have a reason to exist.
But I completely disagree with your statements about "Asia", as if all countries are the same. Let's at least be specific about which countries you're talking about, and what direct experience you have with those countries.
I make no claims beyond my local context, and North America (with which I have contact through family/friends).
Also you must be aware that USA laws are quite complex with different state and federal laws. Moreover it's a constantly evolving common law jurisdiction. So the rules related to parenting have a clear reason for existence and might change in future. It does not make the kids worse off than other countries as each has their own problems.
Also in Asia I am talking about cities mentioned in my earlier post. Country or region is just too broad a brush to stereotype, even in Japan Sapporo is very different from Tokyo.
> Country or region is just too broad a brush to stereotype, even in Japan Sapporo is very different from Tokyo.
I agree about stereotyping. But seriously: even Sapporo (which as a rare relatively new Japanese city has similarities to modern western cities) is much more similar to Tokyo than it is to, say, any North American city.
My point is not about whether laws are what where, but that attitudes are in line with those laws (and are what gave rise to them).
Read other comments in response to the post, and you see many other people referencing experiences similar to what I'm talking about.
I'm not trying to say Japan doesn't have problems (it does). Just that on this specific point, Western countries are heading in a very bad direction IMHO.
The same applies to "Asia"
Some students hate club and we had clubs for students that hated club (unfortunately the English club was one of them). They show up for an hour a week and go home. It depends on the principal, though. Some principals are very much opposed to that idea, so if you don't want your kids to spend a lot of time at school it pays to investigate schools that will accomodate you. I will admit that I like Japanese schools and find them dramatically better than anything else I've experienced, so I'm biased.
I remember, discussing with the head of the kendo club why she was into kendo, she said she was not really into it. She could not answer why she chose it or spends so much time there. I think acceptance and resignation are things that are taught very early in the Japanese education system. And don't get me started on the sempai/kohai system that just normalizes peer pressure and a generational hierarchy. I have seen people in their 60s still obeying their one year older sempai!
I did not like the school system I went through in France, but almost every thing I disliked is magnified in Japan. Yeah, the students clean up their classrooms and the admins do their paperwork correctly that's about all I see as advantages. All the rest is about formatting perfect wage slaves with no room fro creativity or self-search.
I do like Japanese education in primary school from what I've seen so far and I will probably enrol my kids in a Japanese primary school instead of an international French school when the time comes
I think I dislike school in general as I think many of the concepts it is based on are outdated and should be improved. Fixed, imposed curriculum over the year with fixed, determined schedule on subjects. No collaboration between students, just competition. Arbitrary rules and authority bestowed upon random adults. Grades that are geared towards establishing a hierarchy rather than helping progress. Lack of interactivity and experimentation, etc...
Since I read more about it, I see France is pretty correct in comparison, with Japan being a conceptual opposite of what I think ideal.
I'll probably leave my son in primary in Japan, but I don't think it is a good idea after that.
I can read your message and understand how you feel. Japan is a hard place to live in as a foreigner. The culture is not like a buffet. You can't take the bits you like and leave the other bits aside. This is especially challenging if you are raising kids, since the school system is going to instill Japanese values in your kids whether you like it or not. A few people have asked me if they should raise kids here and I think it's totally great, but only if you are ready to buy into the Japanese culture completely. If not, it's going to be -- as you put it: appalling.
Indeed, you need to get the Japanese culture completely and uncompromisingly to see what the schools here "teach" in a positive way. However the Japanese culture is about more than just submission and obedience, the other parts, I am fine with, but I am not going to leave my son in a system that considers imagination and critical thinking like deviance.
My parents lived in France for a while and still revere parts of French culture, so I'm familiar with it. Honestly I can't imagine having to reconcile that with Japanese culture. I'm often surprised, though, because French people in general seem to do well in Japan -- especially compared to Americans or British people. Anyway, I feel for your situation. It can't be easy. I hope you find a path that works out for you!
It is ridiculously easy to be a French in Japan. A lot of people immediately become very friendly to me when they learn where I am from.
Also, there's one thing I'll concede to Japanese culture: they do take food seriously here! That's also a strong shared point.
Lately it's gotten even a bit more difficult because you are allowed to apply for only 1 public high school and one private high school (unlike the UK, "public" and "private" refers to what you would normally think -- public is publicly funded and private is privately funded). You can always pay your way into a top school if you have enough money, but generally if you want to get in you need a good result on your entrance exam.
Here's the thing most people don't understand: most students don't care. And by most, I mean about 80%. Only 1/4 of high schools are high performing high schools where students are expected to go on to university. Even with that, most students will prefer to go to a high school that is close to them or where their friends are going. Only a few students choose (or are pushed by their parents) to go to the really top schools.
Even with low level schools, you can still make it to a respectable university. The school I taught in is one of the lowest public schools in the prefecture (one year, due to lack of enrollment, we accepted students who scored 0 on the entrance exam! Seriously, you have to be trying to get zero!) However, we usually sent 4 or 5 students to Nagoya university, which is a decent university. Several of my students when to Shizuoka university too -- which is not a great university, but definitely good enough to get a good job in Shizuoka prefecture.
At low level school, students do not study. I mean, a few study because they like studying, but never once did my students do their homework! Students are carefree, happy and energetic. Compared to the highschools I went to in Canada (I moved around a bit), it is absolutely night and day. It's like comparing prison to a holiday camp.
At high level schools, it's really, really hard work and students stay late to study every day (usually coming home around 8 pm). However, the vast majority of the students like studying! And even if you somehow get pushed into a top level school, every school has a kind of "escape hatch" where you basically decide "academics are not for me -- I'm going to become a factory worker".
This is not to say that there isn't pressure to succeed, but the reputation Japanese schools have is completely undeserved.
And to get to the normal argument: what about suicide rates. We can compare suicide rates by age group in Japan [1] and the US [2]. For Japan under 24 (2014) the number is 1814 (0.0000143 per capita) and for the US (2016) it is 6159 (0.0000190). In other words the US youth suicide rate is about 25% higher than Japan's (Why does Japan have a reputation for high suicide rate? Because older people commit suicide -- it is very rare for young people to do so).
[1] (pdf) https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
[2] (scroll down to table) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States
Let's say it how it is: this is a gift to private schools at the expense of the poors' education. Private schools are expensive but always have some room left.
Here is how it works: you can only register at ONE public school (that is, a school that will not have prohibitive costs). You can play safe by choosing a low tier one or take a risk at choosing a high ranking one. Thing is, if you fail, you only have very expensive schools left, so most poor families will just skip that part of education or only register their kids to a "safe" high school with low scores. There is not a single good reason to not allow two or three fallback choices.
> never once did my students do their homework!
I am assuming you were teaching in a juku or another kind of additional education. If so, it could be because your homeworks were not mandatory and the school already had given them enough to fill 4 hours of work.
"the reputation Japanese schools have is completely undeserved."
I am not sure the reputation they have in US. French tend to think Japanese schools are good, I was appalled at what I discovered.
Essentially you are allowed to apply for 1 public and 1 private high school. Unlike most places in the west, public high schools still cost money in Japan. It's quite expensive: something like $1000 per student per month. However, the government helps you out if you are low income, or if you have multiple children -- so essentially it's affordable, though expensive for everyone. Private high schools can have higher prices, but not always. So it's not necessarily the case that a private high school is much more expensive than a public high school, especially if you are middle class and only have 1 child.
I think the main reason for the 1 choice only was that it used to be that students would write many exams and then pick the best high school they qualified for. What the new system does is make it so you have to strategise a bit: you can apply for a higher level private school (maybe aiming for a scholarship) while applying for a lower level public school. The main result is that students tend to lower their sights to ensure that they get in.
However, there are caveats: What happens if a student doesn't pass either of their exams? What happens if the student doesn't pass their public exam, but can't afford the private school? So there are extra exams. Essentially, the schools pick the students that they want, but leave some spaces open. Then they do another exam and fill up the remaining spaces. So there is always a possibility that you will get accepted in the second round. Access to education at the high school level is assured, so if you totally screw things up, you will still go to school -- but you may go to some random school.
Anyway, it really is the case that students as low level high schools don't study, generally! I don't know how old your child is. You said teenager and given your story about required sports club, that's almost certainly junior high school. Sometimes if you live in a very rural area with only a small school, then you can also be stuck with what you are stuck with. But if your child enrolls in a school that is aiming the students towards trades, or factory work, the academic expectations are practically zero. If you enroll in a school with the goal of going to university, then the expectations a very high. Keep in mind that the vast majority of Japanese students do not go to university -- it's very different than the west. Usually they will go to a kind of junior college (like 2 year dental assistant program), or a trade school, or they will go straight to work.
In my school (which had about 750 students when I taught there), 50% went straight on to work. Normally the number of students going on to university I could count on my fingers (and sometimes only on one hand). In my area there are 4 high schools. 3 of them are similar to the one I taught in. Only 1 has students who are expected to go on to university. This is totally normal here.
The vast majority of high school students in Japan have an easy time of it. You child may not, especially if you expect them to go on to further education.
Japan is a country with the highest amount of bullshit jobs I have seen. I will agree happily that it is better than the homelessness that seems rampant in countries with high inequalities, but that's still a failure of the educative system.
"I think the main reason for the 1 choice only was that it used to be that students would write many exams and then pick the best high school they qualified for." Yes, and what is wrong with that?
"The main result is that students tend to lower their sights to ensure that they get in." Especially if their parents can't afford a good private school as a backup plan. It may be different where you are, but when we explored the options around Tokyo, private schools were more expensive.
Indeed, you can go after to one of the public school that still has slots left, but that is not your choice, that's a situation where you go "ok, I guess I'll learn bakery then" because you did not score well at one miserable test in your life. That's a ridiculous system.
"something like $1000 per student per month" The one we found, which is apparently one of the best public school in Tokyo is closer to $1000 to $3000 a year: http://www.kokusai-h.metro.tokyo.jp/en/school/expenses.html and I heard similar prices in other public schools.
There are no fairly reliable, widely known alternative routes to the top jobs? In the US you can go to Directional State U and top jobs are mostly not barred to you. It’ll be very, very hard to get a job at McKinsey or Goldman Sachs but it’s possible. Even if you went to the University of Northwest Texas grad school washes you clean of all plebeian stain. Harvard Business School or Yale Law School opens the same doors whether you went to a good university or not.
More generally who the hell do Google, Siemens or LVMH hire in Japan if all the good jobs go to graduates of Todai who expect to work at the same Japanese company for life?
I good example of a shokunin is a friend of mine who works for a fibre optics company. The company hires x number of people from her university every year. She started there wrapping cables (even though she's an electrical engineer with a very impressive academic record). Eventually after she learned about the company and worked in various departments, she was given managerial role and she will work as one of the elite people in the company for the rest of her career. After she retires, the company will look out for her. For example, my wife's uncle was a manager at Suzuki and they gave him some land near the factory so that he could build a house and retire. That kind of thing is pretty common.
If you miss the boat, your chances at being a shokunin at a large company are pretty much zero. I mean, it still happens if you have good contacts, but it's essentially impossible. Your best bet is to find a small company and get a yearly contract and just be the best employee ever. Then if the company grows, you might become a shokunin.
But you can still have a good career without being one of the elites. Hell, it's the same for me working for western companies. I'm never going to be CTO of some company or VP of software. I don't care. It limits my ability to make money, but I like being on the ground writing software. I don't think I could even be principle architect somewhere because I just don't want to think about the big picture. I like details.
So even if you go to a lower level school and get a lower level position somewhere, it's completely fine. I think that's the thing that people miss -- you can still have a good career and make a reasonable living. It's just that you are very unlikely to be on the elevator to being VP at Honda without coming from a big name university. Again, it happens from time to time, but it's just super unlikely.
In my experience the same's true for upper-middle class Americans.
This word is becoming way over-used (and thus losing its meaning).
There are real misogynists and real misogynistic behaviour; I can think of a prominent media identity in my own country who is definitely a misogynist. But misogyny is not simple sexism; it is active hating and dislike of women, and words and actions that show you hold them in complete contempt. I don't think that word can be applied across any society; it's an individual pathology, not a cultural pattern.
I think that time of Japanese kids' life is actually when they are the most free, they can goof off and do pretty much whatever they want as long inside and outside of school and no one will bother them (parents and teachers likewise), as long as their test scores are OK, that's one of the reasons that 15 is considered the start of the "best years of your life" (seishun).
Once they are in college, they've made it. It's over. And college in general is not as vital as in the usa, because the Japanese hire the person not the projects or the knowledge. College is a breather between cram hell and salaried life.
The only thing that really scares me here are cars. People tend to drive a little too fast in residential areas IMO. Especially delivery trucks... although at least you can hear them coming from far away.
In my home city in the US, you couldn't even walk in downtown after dark.
Memphis, Houston, NO, St Louis, Baltimore etc have some crazy high crime neighborhoods, and it used to be worse. Murder rates higher than the worst places in the world. Not even places like Afghanistan come close.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate
[1] https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/focused...
You weren't a teen in [0] 1978 NYC... specifically the south Bronx. I was (though not from there although I lived just a short drive away) and street raced a bit in that area (you were Not ever going to get pulled over for speeding).. dude that was a fkin dangerous place back then; literally-- packs of wild dogs roamed the streets, and people who wanted to rob you and maybe worse didn't bother to hide. No way in hell you could walk through there and not get messed up, even if you were armed. Seriously.
[0] https://www.villagevoice.com/2014/08/07/the-rise-and-fall-of...
Ironically safety of children seems to be the complete opposite of the direction of the 'increased safety boosts risk taking'. When children have a higher rate of mortality they tolerate risks more but when there is a lower one they become more paranoid. I suspect the reason why is that most people have a terrible innate sense of statistics and probability - as shown by the success of gambling institutions like Las Vegas and the lotto.
-
Murder rate (per year per 100,000 inhabitants)
Japan: 0.20
USA: 5.30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
-
Rape rate (number of rape incidents per 100,000 citizens)
Japan: 1.0
[0] murder: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf (page 16)
[1] rape: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violenc...
Stats-wise, it would be best for the kids to stay clear of their family ;)
In England police recorded numbers for crime are not seen as statistically sound.
> In January 2014 the UK Statistics Authority published an assessment of ONS crime statistics. It found that statistics based on police recorded crime data, having been assessed against the Code of Practice for Official Statistics, were found not to meet the required standard for designation as National Statistics.
We can't compare the numbers between Japan and the US because we don't know what definition of rape is being used in each country (and for the US that definition is different for every state).
We don't know if there are cultural things that change how many people report a rape to police. We don't know if police record every report.
Here's a Human Rights Watch article about problems with the Japanese justice system's approach to rape and sexual violence: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/07/29/japans-not-so-secret-sha...
And seriously, it is causing lots and lots of pain now in my adult life.
From what I’ve seen in Germany, not much seems to have changed since I was a kid.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/26/anette-soren...
https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/assets/4315981/DeathsOverTime.png
Remember, the correct way to look at this data is per person. The US has 30% more people now than it did in 1990. So, even though there were similar number of deaths, you're children are still safer than you were in 1990.
A not-so-fun fact most people don't know:
> One in every three of fatal pedestrian crashes involved a pedestrian with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of at least 0.08 grams per deciliter (g/dL)
https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/pedestrian_safety/ind...
Your graph stopped at year 2012 with a rate of 15.1 pedestrian fatalities. The latest report on the CDC website has the following text under "key findings": "In 2016 there were 5,987 pedestrians killed in traffic crashes, a 9-percent increase from the 5,495 pedestrian fatalities in 2015. This is the highest number of pedestrians killed in one year since 1990."
Unless I'm mistaken, this give a rate of 18.1 in 2016. It is a large increase from 15.1 in 2012, though the discrepancy in sources may invalidate the comparison. Anyway, this 2016 report points to a increased fatality rate.
From the same source, it seems the problem is that accidents have not much increased in frequency, but they are more fatal. The fatality rate went from 11% to 15% in 10 years.
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
My grandfather collected bells - the ones they had in the old schoolhouses 100 years ago (he'd get them when the schools closed). I grew up in the suburbs but we had a steel bell about 1m diameter on our front porch. For grins mom would ring it occasionally at dinner time. You could hear it 3 streets over. She didn't always know where we were. Sometimes other kids would ring it at night and run away - if you thought ringing doorbells was annoying....
The numbers quoted in this article look ridiculously high to me: https://abcnews.go.com/US/missing-children-america-unsolved-...
But even at a tenth of that, making your kids harder to abduct may be the main driving factor in lowering kids abductions.
1. There were children born before you with frightened helicopter parents and there will be children born tomorrow who grow up with more freedom than you did. Generational experience is not homogenous.
2. Current trends do not set our future paths into stone, and it is possible that we will be able to plant seeds to move things in freer, saner directions going forward.
That's what I'm trying to do: give the kids the same opportunity we had - freedom to explore the outdoors. Confidence to take care of themselves and not need an adult to do everything for them. To give them opportunites to build character.
The strongest memories I have of Scouts were of the older boys teaching us things, and of myself doing the same for younger boys. These “things” ranged from profound reflections on life to very practical skills. We ran our own fundraisers, planned our own trips and periodic events, and staged our own elections for very meaningful leadership positions.
“The Adults” were always in the background, jumping in to support and advise when asked for. I always thought that they had chosen the easy path, because they didn’t have to work too hard! In retrospect, I realize this was actually the hardest path – to trust that your kids and their insane friends are actually capable of intelligible self government etc.
And this didn’t come at the expense of excellence, but quite the contrary! Our troop had a proud legacy of winning the various prestigious awards at summer camp year-after-year, and the boys were very good at passing down this expectation of integrity and success to successive generations of kids.
That’s something that is hard to maintain in troops with very hands-on adult leaders - once a Scoutmaster’s kids age out, the culture of the troop can change dramatically. On the flip side, troop culture seems to be more resilient when it’s boy-led.
Anyways, I wish you the best of luck! Thank you for bringing these pleasant memories into my head to reflect on. Your kids will thank you for your restraint :)
We also sent them out sailing by themselves all day across the lake. They have to navigate and set up their tent on the sailboat themselves. We only check up on them once before nighttime and then sail back to our own campsite, which may be an hour or more by boat. The next morning they pack up their stuff, prepare the boat and set sail to travel back to the campsite (half-day sailing depending on the wind conditions). The oldest boy (14-15 years old) is in charge and has to bring everyone back safe. Some of my best memories are surviving and being responsible for the other kids. You have to take care of them, teach them and protect them.
These days they have a mobile phone, so in case of an emergency, they can contact the grown-up leaders. But in my time we got a couple of coins for a payphone and we were also fine.
Note that three of these are in the top 10 (and 2 in the top 5) if you rank them by deaths.
You may debate how useful they are, or if the frequency of school shootings is sufficient to justify them, but I will point out that the number of times I have had to evacuate a school (admittedly, due to a bomb threat) is equal to the number of times we had to "assume the position" for a tornado threat (exactly once).
https://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/water-safety/w...
I would guess the trend is not so bad in Queensland. One thing that is very impressive here is the number of pools in schools, including public schools, and the very, very active swim programs that go with them. Brisbane probably has one of the best swimming cultures in the world (backed up by the number of swimmming champions that have come from here).
Watching my nephews that nature of their swimming seems to be a bit different, for me we were riding or bikes to pools/beaches by ourselves from the age of about 9, they live in Brisbanes suburbia and have to be driven to a pool/beach and then supervised. They're largely left to their own merits once they get there, but it's more of a family thing than a friends thing and they don't have to learn there own dispute resolution and the like, nor do they get to decide when to go and when to leave.
Although, props to the CDC. That is some serious data gathering, cleaning etc. Most countries don't have that level of detail. At least not publically available.
I'm not trying to be a snide jackass here - I suspect it had real deleterious effects but they were normalized and went uncommented upon. The Black Death appeared to have some similar precedent as western culture became utterly desensitized to skeletons and 'the end is nigh' beliefs became a sizeable reoccurring minority to majority. I believe Rome had similar beliefs as some saw the writing on the wall of their decline. I'm not an expert but I wouldn't be surprised it died out in the dark ages as people were in the actual 'post apocalypse' and doing things like former Roman seamen founding Venice.
Oh that’s right, people can’t cause earthquakes and nuclear bombs are a bit tricky to make. Whereas there are millions of guns circulating right now and even toddlers manage to off themselves with them at a nonzero rate.
I’m a gun supporting liberal, and I say something is wrong with our culture.
It's based on when we start teaching children to heal through trauma, as well as take responsibility for and learn to release their emotions.
These drills are simply trauma fuel. They're irresponsible actions taken by irresponsible, fear-driven adults who think they know what kids need when they themselves don't know how to be ok in an horrific situation or how to heal from it without developing toxic behaviors...
Toxic behaviors like the kind that traumatize children further.
Don't take candy from a stranger. Razor blades in apples…
Unless it's a difference in degree, that alone is not what has changed.
To be sure we seem to be a more fearful society then we were then.
Let your kids play outside by themselves or walk to school, and get reported to Child Protective Services. It is very much a different world these days.
On the other hand, there are plenty of parents who completely neglect their kids. We don't want that either.
I'm just trying to process the irony of this entire discussion. American kids are over-protected because the media has created a culture of fear that terrible things are constantly happening to kids. Now you're going to flip that hysteria around and apply it to the parents.
I don't think childhood in the US is quite as bleak as these articles make it out to be. Probably has something to do with where your area is on the income scale. Upper-middle class kids are coddled and probably always have been. Working class kids can't be coddled because their parents are busy putting food on the table.
It's just that the media focuses pretty exclusively on the well-off, because that is the world journalists live in.
> The suicide rate for children is twice what it is for children during months when school is in session than when it’s not in session,” according to Dr. Gray. “That’s true for suicide completion, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation, whereas for adults, it’s higher in the summer.
It seems that families are particularly under stress if such observances can be made. As a single white guy, I find this a bit alarming because I've always had this notion that a family unit would be an easier way to ride out deep depression, rather than not. It just goes to show.
One of the comments I sometimes make to others when this topic comes up is that I'm glad that cell phones and the Internet didn't exist when I was a kid. Why? Because I likely would have missed out on the best parts of being a kid. Boredom was great. We would then find something non-boring to do, such as: ride bikes, play basketball/football/baseball, swim, listen to music, ride go carts, and so on.
Freedom comes from being free. Not from being surveilled.
Keeping an eye on where your kids are is vastly different than commercial entities doing it.
1) the 20' dome monkey bars I played on as a youth got tore down and replaced with a molded plastic installation to play on.
It's a US newspaper talking about a particular US pathology. China manifests this in a different way (heavy tracking of kids) but I think most countries are perfectly ok with kids being kids.
Aside from school demands, there is this whole helicopter parenting phenomenon