How getting richer made teenagers less free
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theargumentmag.com
Decades later, most of my peers have middle-class jobs. Their kids are barely outside. Their parents are involved with them from morning to evening, or chauffeuring them between sports and other extracurricular activities.
Interestingly, I've heard from parents that many feel like they're both suffocating and feeling inadequate, at the same time. While many kids, both teens and younger, reporting that they're not getting enough space.
> We'd be outside all day long
> most of my peers have middle-class jobs.
>Their kids are barely outside.
wonder what the link is there then?
Is that surprising? All of that sounds fully consistent to me when parents suffocate their kids with expectations and activities instead of meeting their actual needs.
They feel like they're suffocating them because they are, they feel inadequate because deep down they know it's wrong, and kids feel like they're not getting enough space because they aren't.
Similar, except in a city. On weekends, when an adult may be home, we get sent outside as a form of grounding -- "outside. now." -- or if we watched too much tv/video games, and wouldn't come back inside til dark. No asking what we did, where we went, only that we came back in the same health we left. Not having parents home after school (11-14 y/o) meant after-school cartoon binge for a couple hours, then outside to roam around with other kids that didn't have adults home. We'd get in trouble if they came home and we were playing video games or watching tv.
Your parents were very active / suffocating ... do free range parenting. Your parents let you roam outside with few sports, clubs and activities ... do 7 day a week scheduled activities.
You went to private school ... send kids to shittiest free school you can find.
You're making that up.
But the problem is, there's more than one set of mistakes. In fact, they often come in pairs. If you move too far away from one mistake, you may not wind up in the sweet spot. You may be doing the other mistake.
In Zion National Part there is a hike called "Angel's Landing". You wind up on this ridge, with a 1000 foot dropoff on one side and a 500 foot dropoff on the other side. If you move too far away from one cliff, you fall off the other.
Parenting is like that. Take permissive vs. discipline, for example. If you avoid discipline too much, you may damage your kids by being too permissive.
Two of the biggest differences were extracurricular activities and technology... back in my day, you maybe had one or two 'after school' things per week, usually immediately after school, for an hour (so you'd end at two oclock instead an hour earlier) and you then went home, where you had one tv per family. When your parents came home, the tv was gone, dads football, moms series, evening drama movies... and what were you supposed to do then? Read? Well.. you went out. ...same as most of your friends. We sat on benches, played football, basketball, girls wanted attention, got attention, from young-kids age to the age of neighbors caling police due to 'loud teenagers' outside.
And now? Every parent with kids has their kids in one additional language course, some music classes, sports, and not like once a week for an hour or two, but two, three times per week each, at different locations (=driving them around, even though there are a lot of busses). The kids are physically tired from all that, and then they get home, don't even have time to get bored, and even if they did, they now have a tv, phone, computer and a gaming console right in their room. Their friends aren't outside either, since they're being chauffered around for their activities. No proper socialization with peers, no time to do stupid stuff, no time to be bored... nothing.
And it's not even worth it... none of those kids will be a professional sportis/musician, it's just wasted time... yes, excercise, but we exercised too, by being outside, walking, biking, playing footbal with stones, etc.
tldr: blame parents
I can’t agree there. The point of extracurricular activities is to teach the kid new things and expand their horizons, not the (admittedly highly unlikely) possibility that those activities will become their career.
Most children won’t become historians either, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t teach history at schools.
I like my job too, i learn a lot of it, but that's basically half-time of a second job (if you include commute) for a 12yo kid... that's just too much, both for the kids and their parents.
And with foreign languages, notably english, relying on school means they likely wont learn it.
I'd also say it's more likely that your peers are more personally present than parents of the 80s/90s, when parents would often just leave children alone and don't really talk to them. That in itself has been shown to provide good outcomes for children. So it's not all bad.
What is the risk really? I mean put in numbers.
When it comes to your own children the only number that matters is 1. The 1 time it happens their lives, your life, is over.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/31/violent-c...
My kid walks home from his friend's houses in the woods at night alone all the time. He has never once been eaten or kidnapped.
Statistically your children are more likely to be victimized by you than a stranger. So by your logic, you should probably keep them away from you. Right?
It's just a zero insight use of numbers.
The chances of getting kidnapped are and always were far, far, far less than automobile related injuries and deaths, yet we just see that as a normal risk of modern life.
I have been wondering if the fact that the current generation of 20-somethings isn't going out as much is because of this "over parenting" that they received. I'm sure it's also TikTok, living costs, and avoiding other vice related behaviour (drinking, sex) at such high rates, but it does make me think...
When I started, the top three reasons for students leaving the institution were a) family priorities (work), b) transportation, and c) grades (overall GPA less than 1.5).
For the 2024-25 academic year, the reasons were a) anxiety, b) grades (overall GPA between 2.5 and 3, with less than 2 'd' or 'f' grades for the final semester), and c) unstated reason related to interactions with faculty or staff (difficult conversations about study habits, or realistic major/timeline conversations).
In other words, they hit one small barrier, or have to shift gears even slightly, and everything goes to pieces.
We don't let them make decisions when they're kids and the stakes are low, and then don't understand why they can't make decisions when they're adults. . . Or, there are a minority of parents that seem to enjoy making every decision for their kids. It's not great.
The summary is that the risk of a CPS investigation of a kid playing or walking independently is probably 10-100x that of suffering a car accident. And the average car accident is way less traumatic than being ripped away from your family, tossed in a foster home, and feeling like your parents have abandoned you forever because they could not protect you from the state.
What's the solution though? Stop letting kids play outside? I think the solution should be to reform CPS so it's not so traumatizing, and have more governmental awareness campaigns of the benefits of kids playing outside. I see government billboards all the time about anti-smoking, eating healthy, prediabetes screening. There can similarly be billboards promoting kids playing outside.
2) At the bare minimum, victims of CPS reports should be able to face their accuser. Currently laws anonymize reporters, this is not compatible with an open and balanced justice system. Also, needs to be heavy penalties and liabilities for abusing CPS reporting -- asymmetrical risks would end up with just getting the same result over and over again.
3) Cultural change. People that curtail child independence of others' children should be shamed, publicly. People that let their kids have independence, left the hell alone.
As a parent, a cancer survivor, and the child of a high anxiety parent, Yes, yes you should wait and see. Every doctor's visit is a chance to catch something worse.
That said, if you're a chill parent reading this, you should probably be more proactive about it. There is a middle ground, overreacting is usually worse than under reacting, but it is important that you react.
I never said you can't raise kids without all the overprotection and also be present.
The issue of over parenting seems to be a developed nation issue, I agree. I'm not in one and here kids don't do mountains of activities, but violence rates are very significant. There's just no point exposing my son to it in the hopes he comes out the other side unscathed, when even I don't want to be out alone at night. That's "vibe parenting", not an intelligent way of raising children.
We are basically raising our daughter Soviet-style to the extent that we can; so far so good. It's difficult in a culture where ADHD American style of child raising is prevalent.
The article is about the US. You say you are "not in [a developed nation like the US]", but instead somewhere that "violence rates are very significant".
That is just not the US. Headlines are scary, but the statistics don't support the fear. The worries you describe are absolutely irrational for 99+% of US parents.
I don't know where you are and I don't know the statistics for your area -- things might be worse there! But your comments sound like irrational US parent fears, without including that context.
They’re technically more aware of those risks, sure, but any of those crimes are less likely than ever before. This increase in awareness and anxiety isn’t based in data, it’s based on sensational lies and myths. Those lies cause strong feelings and get eyeballs and clicks, and so they spread really well through our fractured media ecosystem.
Nearly all child kidnappings are performed by one of the parents, and there’s no confirmed case of a child ever dying from poisoned Halloween candy.
Granted, depends on where you live, but statistically woods are probably a lot safer than a city with a lot of traffic. Sure, regionally that is not true, you might meet a Grizzly and/or Canadian.
> are we really sure this degree of freedom is so developmentally important to be worth the risk?
Absolutely. A child has to grow up and detach from it parents at some point. It doesn't at all mean having a bad relationship, just being independent. Helps if you aren't a complete beginner by the time it inevitably happens.
Another one of those things that aren't allowed now.
does being more aware of these things mean you necessarily make better decisions overall for you children? Are humans good at translating news they see into accurate risk assessments?
Kidnappings and murders are exceedingly rare, even more so by strangers. Abuse primarily occurs at home, with acquaintances and at places of education. Moving a child from free form play to structured classes is moving risk around, but isn't reducing it.
When there is a big community of kids, there's safety in numbers. Highly supervised play reduces the kids involved, and takes away safety in numbers in exchange for constant vigilance.
An aware person would see the numbers and Calibrate risk accordingly. There is risk involved in everything and helicopter parenting has done little to reduce it.
It's an anxiety spiral.
When my spouse and I were dating, we made fun of those “overly involved parents” who tried to live vicariously through their kids and over-scheduled them.
Since having kids, my spouse has (over a one year period) put our 5 year old in: T-ball, swimming, dance, theater, Sunday school, church, soccer, gymnastics, library group sessions, and to my absolute bewilderment and dismay—beauty pageants. On any given week, there are 5+ activities outside of school. My spouse stays up until 2 AM “helping” our daughter on her kindergarten school projects. Never mind all the activities our 2 year old is ramping up into.
I don’t think this is healthy at all for children, and it’s really created a rift in our marriage. It’s been so bizarre to me to see this change in behavior from what we discussed prior to marriage compared to now. I worry the kids are going to burn out. I certainly didn’t grow up this way, and my personality as a kid would not have handled this well.
When I was my daughter’s age, I was living in a foreign country due to my dad’s job at the time (didn’t have many “scheduled activities” though). Personally, I always thought being able to experience other cultures at an early age added significant value to my upbringing. My spouse however is adamantly opposed to even vacationing in foreign countries due to a fear of “something happening” to the children. Again, this represents a change in perspective that only came about in the last few years.
I’m not sure what has happened with my spouse, but it definitely tracks the article’s observation that parents are becoming increasingly anxious and fearful and we’re likely suffocating our kids’ development.
> Since having kids, my spouse has (over a one year period) put our 5 year old in: T-ball, swimming, dance, theater, Sunday school, church, soccer, gymnastics, library group sessions, and to my absolute bewilderment and dismay—beauty pageants. On any given week, there are 5+ activities outside of school. My spouse stays up until 2 AM “helping” our daughter on her kindergarten school projects. Never mind all the activities our 2 year old is ramping up into.
> I don’t think this is healthy at all for children, and it’s really created a rift in our marriage. It’s been so bizarre to me to see this change in behavior from what we discussed prior to marriage compared to now. I worry the kids are going to burn out. I certainly didn’t grow up this way, and my personality as a kid would not have handled this well.
Parents appear increasingly terrified of childhood boredom, and thus meticulously cram their children's schedules with activities they feel are "crucial" for "development".
It's insidious, but when my kids have nothing to do, and I see them on the phone. I don't like it and I feel the urge to plan an activity.
I asked him one time "do you think she might end up hating you for making her do all these activities?"
He thought it would be ok. He said "it will open doors for her. She's now so good at tennis that wherever she goes she'll be in demand to join the ladies team."
Looks like he was right: she got into a good university with a sailing scholarship, she is athletic, has a good relationship with her parents and is an all round happy and pleasant person.
Personally, I’ve seen far more of my helicopter-parented high-performance peers burn out and die in the last 15 years (I am in my mid thirties). I grew up in the Gifted and Talented cohort but without that Tiger Mom kind of parenting. I did fine, got a full ride to a state school, make good money and work a relaxed remote job.
Most of my cohort went on to MIT, Stanford, Carnegie, the Ivy Leagues. Of the dozen or so I really think only one made it through that pipeline unscathed and successful. Several dropped out to become bums at their parent’s house, one was homeless and became a stripper. Two have sadly taken their own lives despite seemingly good FAANG careers.
These are all “good kids” from stable middle class or even richer families. It’s a bit strange to have watched.
Sorry to hear that.
Unfortunately I think we have way over indexed on "success" being tied to money and seeking these careers at companies that drive people to exhaustion and let the competitive environment drive everyone harder and harder with a ratchet effect.
I can absolutely see why parents see the way things are, try to extrapolate out another 20 or 30 years, and feel like they have to make sure their child is in the "well-to-do" group. It feels like the days are gone where you could be an average performer at an average job and live an okay life.
My son competes on the national and international level in two different sports, so we do a lot of traveling. The bonding is very important, just as it is knowing when to get out of the way and let them shine.
In one sport, I drop him off and pick him up for practice (he gets distracted/flustered when someone is there watching him practice). In the other, I practice with him and am trying to stay better than him as long as I can.
There are a few other things I think are important...
If they don't want to do something, don't push them to. My son decided not to compete in a national ranking event in a couple of months because his competitions are on Thursday and Saturday and he would miss three days of school when factoring in travel.
Try to anticipate their eventual needs and make sure the right tools/equipment/etc. are available for them before they realize they needed it. Also, have backup equipment just in case something breaks or fails.
Make sure that they understand the 'why' behind all the things that both they have done, and what you have done, to enable them to get to that level.
Finally, from a young age, teach them to "always do your best, and always do better next time." The first national competition he went to, he literally finished dead last out of over 250. When we were in the airport heading home, I let him know that it's alright if he doesn't want to do more of them. He didn't back down in the slightest, and asked me when the next one was because he knew he could do better. Next month will be the second time he competes in the Junior Olympics for that sport.
also I hear you on the suicides, but I grew up in a much poorer background and those are just overdoses in my situation.... there's easily a dozen kids in my graduating class that weren't pressured to do anything, had no idea what to do, and got addicted to drugs that killed them
there's no single right path
Not quite. NBA is for a tiny minority a a great well paying career. Most parents who raise their kids to play in the NBA will fail in that goal. However if you instead make the goal get a great scholarship playing basketball which is then used to pay for the degree that becomes their career it can be a great plan.
However here it sounds like the sailing was done not to get a great career, but to get a great college scholarship. This is likely a great plan. I suspect that while there are more basketball scholarships than sailing scholarships, there is a lot less competition for the sailing ones. It wouldn't surprise me if the typical sailing scholarship was higher than the typical basketball one - if you want someone on your team you need to get them away from the other schools, while for basketball if someone isn't obvious NBA bound (and thus your star starter) if they go elsewhere you just pick the next kid on the list for the scholarship.
The above isn't just sports. In music Violin vs Bassoon gets the same issues. Acting also fits in somehow. And your kids may well be doing more than one of the above.
> I’ve seen far more of my helicopter-parented high-performance peers burn out
I've seen a lot of kids burn out from all backgrounds. The real problem I see with helicopter is because the kids never get to make mistakes they don't learn how to deal with them. The less controlled kids learn to be a little cautious and so when they rebel they are not going to go as far.
No: getting to the NBA is very difficult, but you don't have to be that good. You 'just' have to be good enough to play at the college/university level with a scholarship. One doesn't necessarily have to 'go pro'.
I knew someone who got a scholarship to a business/finance program for cross-country running: he wasn't planning on being a pro runner. And doing these activities in high school is probably a good thing, from a social and health perspective, regardless of if it leads anywhere else.
HINT: NONE. If this is true, I'd really like to know what program that is.
Sailing isn't an NCAA sport, it's governed by its own association the ICSA. Sailing Scholarships are explicitly disallowed, in fact the bigger issue that's been happening in collegiate sailing is the opposite of a scholarship.
Eager and wealthy parents making huge donations to sailing programs, rowing programs, lawn dart programs, fencing programs, etc to get admission into top schools where their kid wouldn't be able to get in on their own merit.
> These extra curricular activities, were the secret game you had to play, to get into prestigious universities. At least, it was just a few years ago.
Extracurriculars have been a part of elite school admissions for about a century.
It hasn’t really been a secret for most of that time.
Some people (somewhat correctly) say that this requirement was added to discriminate against Jews at that time, but it was also an education idea (“Progressive Education” by Dewey) that gained popularity around the same time.
Regardless of what the initial catalyst was, the universities seemed to like having folks who were “doers” as a significant part of their student body.
> Besides niche sports like lacrosse and rowing
These are not “niche sports” in certain parts of the country.
> there was the volunteer activities like serving at a soup kitchen.
I can tell you point blank that serving in a soup kitchen does not help you get into an elite school.
For any school that ranks such things, if you have a laundry list of volunteer activities like this, it would get you the next to lowest rating in extracurriculars — this is basically the same as not doing anything.
The key to getting an high rating for any volunteer activity would be to show leadership (which is something the elite schools says point blank that they want) and meaningful impact.
> When Ivy League universities saw a resume like that, they knew which social class the student belonged to.
I’ve got news for you. A wide range of classes of people do these things.
There might be a floor at the absolutely lowest end of the economic spectrum (just due to instability of housing and food), but I’ve seen a ton of great examples from folks who were not upper or upper middle class. Often times necessity can be the mother of invention!
I assure you that these stories stand out to admissions committees, with the biggest challenge often being simply to get some of these folks from modest means to apply.
But I think there is serious value in organized activities. From Junior high through high school I had a rule for mine to do one thing with school, and one thing outside of school. I would have supported more than those 2 things, but I'm so glad I didn't have to.
I'm thinking about enforcing the same rule in college, with a caveat that Gym and Girlfriend don't count, but it seems weird to make those kinds of mandates for someone that has a job.
I certainly wasn’t expected to do any homework at 7. It wasn’t until middle school we were expected to do some amount of homework.
We notice competitive behaviours at our jobs - we expect to see it, and in many work situations competition is admissible.
It is harder to notice competition in our social lives because we deceive ourselves with rationalisations (that appear reasonable) and the games are less obvious.
Just a personal theory (I'm a late learner for even simple status signaling).
It's time for you to wake up, and start exercising your own authority.
it won't be easy. if i were in this position, i can't imagine what i would do. i feel even stronger than GP about this, and i'd probably feel quite helpless trying to get my partner to understand how i feel about this. even just trying to get my voice heard. if you don't have a way to communicate openly in your marriage from the start, then talking about things openly can be very hard, seemingly impossible even. with one issue that my wife and me had, it first took me years to notice and understand the issue and start to speak up about it, then it took a few more years for my wife to recognize and acknowledge the issue for herself, and then she still struggled to do something about it. and very time i messed up somewhere in our relationship, it was a setback for her development too. and i can't even blame her. it's something she learned from her parents (which is how she eventually figured it out)
It’s a joint decision. If it’s not, then you’re not operating as a team. If you’re not operating as a team…then you have a marriage problem IMO. Simple as that.
The healthy marriage outcome would be talking about it and compromising in some fashion. “my way or the highway”…yikes.
One thing I have observed over and over again, is that when I lack assertiveness, because I am tired or something, then she feels like she needs to take over. And she does it very well. But it also creates a lot of anxiety in her.
What I am saying to OP, is that it's time to be more assertive. (1) There is more at play than the couple here; you can't just watch your children getting wrecked and do nothing. And (2), taking some ownership might actually fix the underlying issue.
of course there are situations where simply taking responsibility for something can help, but i don't see that in the situation described. if my wife is scheduling to many activities for the children, how can i take over when i simply want there to be less activities.
in other words if my wife does something that in my opinion simply should not be done, how can i stop her, other than sharing my feelings about it? how can i take ownership of the kids activities other than replacing them with other activities. or what do i do when i am at work while this happens? and working until 2am at night? how am i supposed to react other than saying, please don't do that?
Of course communication is important, and the first thing I would do is talk about the shared expectations we had for the children's schedule. Maybe she didn't understand or remember. Or maybe something on her side changed. Take the calendar, mark explicit downtime hours, and talk about how those should be treated.
If that doesn't work, then it's tough. It might be some deeper patterns in the couple that needs to be broken down and restored. Or a psychological issue on her side. That's where the change of behavior can be useful. It's still communication, on the non-verbal level.
Anyways, I hope OP does something and doesn't just let things fly by.
First, never underestimate the impact of your environment on your way of thinking. We all like to think we’re independent thinkers but really we’re much more influenced by the people we interact with than we could even realize. Once you have a kid, a lot of your social circle will consist of other parents so you will unconsciously absorb their values and motivations as well, including the desire to put your kids through all these hoops.
Second, many professional class parents believe that the key to future success lies in getting their kids into the right school. Hence, it’s never too early to start the kid on the path to great grades, background experiences, scholarships, etc. I’ve seen parents stress out about preschool enrollments because of the “advantages” these schools provided.
Lastly, this is very often the default path for parents. It’s just what you are supposed to do. Everything is set up in that direction. Defaults are powerful and govern our behavior much more than we all realize.
Final last point, the truth is no one knows what works when raising kids. For every story of a free-range kid becoming self-reliant, there’s a story of a latchkey kid that became a bum. Therefore, parents are generally risk-avoidant with their kids (there’s no do-overs) and tend to do “good” and “respectable” approaches in child rearing (like signing them up for sports, extra curriculars, etc)
Specific: guitar and music
To be fair: part of it was to be rid of me and to not have to watch me.
Beauty pagents? Go take a good long look in the mirror. That is pathetic. Is that what you want your kids to value? Passivity? Whatever the fuck beauty pagents encourage?
At least dance is a skill.
But you are alive my friend. Don't let your child still have nightmares, regrets, and feelings of constantly not being enough in their 30s. If your child does'nt have a childhood she can never become an adult.
The truth is if you don’t do it early, it will be harder to scale up your ECs when your kids are older, which will then lower their chances in getting into something that provides a higher degree of insurance against financial uncertainty.
That’s good - but only to an extent, like you’ve both identified in the past.
They need to seek their own hobbies and interests to fulfill their dopamine needs, and give themselves purpose besides dictating who the kids end up being.
Coming from the other direction: you could reclaim some of that time for the kids (take over pageant time and now that’s when we go to the trampoline place with you).
Don’t let your partner run further away from you! Have a chat and reign this thing in.
There’s at least one stranger rooting for you.
I don’t have kids yet but I am thinking a lot about this, and I can only conclude that kids should be treated much more like adults. They should have jobs and real responsibilities, and also should face the same pressure that adults do.
Nobody expects me to be a CEO someday. If I want to, I have to push myself.
youtube came out 20 years ago, the iphone 19 years ago, instagram 15 years ago, musical.ly 11 years ago and merged with tiktok 7 years ago...
we are so cooked frfr
Nothing you listed ever felt “new”, it’s always just sort of been around.
Complaining about the Internet in general and how kids are "disconnected from reality" isn't going to solve anything, and will just result in more crazy ID laws that won't actually solve anything.
No, it really doesn't. Look at Prohibition in America, or the "War on Drugs", or abstinence-only sex education.
What does tend to reduce harmful behavior is actual education about the risks and tackling the sources of those risks. In this case, that would look like addressing the addictiveness of these platforms, instead of, say, requiring an ID to use it. The latter will only encourage kids to go to other platforms, or bypass the ID checks, to say nothing of the privacy risks to everyone else.
Furthermore, the kids most in need of protection from those platforms, because their parents aren't protecting them, will likely just get their parents to ID them and let them on anyway.
> I specifically mentioned a culture disconnected from reality
In what way is it disconnected from reality? It seems to me that it is in fact exquisitely linked to reality by the very nature of a significant part of the population being on the Internet, as opposed to 20-30 years ago, where the culture was more of a subset of the general culture.
Also, I didn't "command" you to do anything. I suggested something. A "command" would look more like, say, a law saying you can't use certain websites because of your age. A "suggestion", on the other hand, might look like, say, schools educating kids about why certain websites are harmful to them.
edit: ah finally; through another HN comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528944) I was able to find the original link to the article (http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2003/07/10/nadd.html) and an archived version of the first version (https://web.archive.org/web/20031008160117/http://www.randsi...). Notably, the list of activities changed:
2003 version:
> Me, I've got a terminal session open to a chat room, I'm listening to music, I've got Safari open with three tabs open where I'm watching Blogshares, tinkering with a web site, and looking at weekend movie returns. Not done yet. I've got iChat open, ESPN.COM is downloading sports new trailers in the background, and I've got two notepads open where I'm capturing random thoughts for later integration into various to do lists. Oh yeah, I'm writing this column, as well.
Current version:
> Me, I’ve got Slack opened and logged into four different teams, I’m listening to music in Spotify, I’ve got Chrome open with three tabs where I’m watching stocks on E*TRADE, I’m tinkering with WordPress, and I’m looking at weekend movie returns. Not done yet. I’ve got iMessage open, Tweetbot is merrily streaming the latest fortune cookies from friends, and I’ve got two Sublime windows open where I’m capturing random thoughts for later integration into various to-do lists. Oh yeah, I’m rewriting this article as well.
Maybe, just maybe, it's possible to integrate technology into one's life without it being detrimental?
Also those examples don't really paint the picture you think it does. Currently, I have about 200 browser tabs open, Sublime Text, several games, Docker containers, and a bunch of other stuff.
That doesn't mean I'm doing all those things at once, or within a very short period of time.
There was never a time in history where kids would be targeted and manipulated by corporations as today. The digital phone is a marketing gadget that brainwashes us to constantly interact with it. In extreme cases, every aspect of our lives is being scored, monetized and compared. Everything has become a hyper individualized hustle.
Of course, the data (e.g. teen pregnancies) shows that this isn't a universal / statistically provable truth, but still. It makes sense in my head.
Then again, this seems US centric.
But this comment just seems cruel, making people think it is their fault if they have bad feelings.
In France kids are still free to roam around, or stay alone at home at 10yo (sometimes younger).
In Japan kids start commuting to school, sometimes taking the train alone, at 6.
"left to their own devices" has its own meaning nowadays too, and there's more and more calls to NOT let them on their own devices, because they're an attention sink.
The US is a place where if you don't make it into or stay in at least the middle class your life sucks. You can't get healthcare, you have to work three jobs, you're treated like shit.
If you want less helicopter parenting you have to create a more supportive society in general, one where there are chances to recover from failure, and one where failing to compete at the top is not a sentence to a life of penury.
Kinda thing only sheltered people say. When I was unemployed and on free gov't health insurance (medi-cal), I got all my healthcare for free and most of my appointments like MRIs were next-day. Not as good as tech company insurance, but "can't get healthcare" is not a thing in the US.
> you have to work three jobs
Plot the number of people working multiple jobs vs time and you'll see a flat line that has no correlation with the stuff mentioned in the article: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620
Sure you’re more limited with providers, but there are plenty and out of pocket costs are near zero.
Your comment is a textbook example of survivorship bias.
Like common.
There is also something to be said about today's unchecked, underutilized anxiety that one feels when sitting doing absolutely nothing. There has been an unending discussion about the causes of this, but I tend to align with the belief that since our current world doesn't provide many dangers for us to genuinely cause anxiety, our brain freaks out and finds less dire avenues to trigger it.
Modernity has upended this connection. Now having kids is basically a hobby that's almost guaranteed to make you poorer.
Point being that 'parenting' has become unnatural because the cyclical environment of 'do what your parents do' has been lost. Consequently many parents are clueless when it comes to raising their own children. It's become an intentional process they need to think about, and few of them know what to do. The default is being overly paranoid, because the necessity to learn skills to support the family isn't strong enough to override the parents paranoia.
My wife and I were letting our kids chop vegetables at age two. Many parents are so dumb they won't even let their kids do this until adolescence.
Nowadays lets say your 16 year old wants a car and a job. To do that they need to schedule multiple tests with DMV, lessons with a driving instructor, update insurance documents and find the time to do hours of practice with you. At the end of that they need to navigate buying a used/new vehicle and setting up insurance. Then they need to navigate the world of job applications, and if they manage to get hired they will need to have their direct deposit bank account setup and have some kind of credit card payment system setup so they can use the money.
Seriously just typing this I get exhausted. It makes sense why parents are hovering over their kids because there are 10,000 things that need to get handled just to like be a "person". You can either watch your kid drown in a mire of bureaucracy or just let them focus on school and offload all of it from them.
Somehow this isn't intuitive for parents, though. They feel like they need to show and do things for their kid, rather than letting them pick up the experience of doing themselves.
When I was growing up my parents were borderline neglectful in how they handled my brother and I, but in that neglect we were forced to deal with situations ourselves, gain experience, and discover who we were. Counterintuitively, that approach was actually more fruitful than being over-present.
That takes an unbelievable a level of dexterity for a 4 year old. Reminds me of those social media posts of 4 year olds saying things that are way beyond the wisdom they may possess.
I call BS.
Is this true? Certainly many fewer people do.
However, there have been high profile child labor busts recently: - 13yo child in a car factory: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/business/hyundai-child-la... - 54 migrant children in meat packing plants: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/settlement-child-labor-dol-depa...
And further, some forms of child labor are still the norm here: America has unrestricted child labor after age 16, and in fact many children do drop out of school at that age to support their families
The Library of Congress has a wonderful collection of photographs taken at the request of the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) by photographer and psychologist Lewis Wicks Hine from about 1908 through to about 1920.
These remarkable photographs shouldn't be missed and should be viewed in conjunction with this article.
(Probably some culutral reference I am missing in this video?)
In the 90s/early 00's 10pm was like a weekday, school night curfew.
Edit: adjusted the times because I actually bothered to check when sunset is.
https://youtu.be/sDyxyRcZWBA?si=sqDnodWQ-jWKCdCH
(I know the song came long after the PSA)
Generations that know nothing but comfort. They are prisoners of unrealistic expectations of what real life is like.
There's definitely a kind of frenetic adversity in the whole college admissions process, at least for kids who are inclined to go that route. If anything, it has gotten much worse over the past 30 years; it's much more stressful than it used to be, and it's easy for teens to imagine that every little thing carries high stakes.
If by "adversity" you mean helping the family put food on the table, I certainly agree that there's less of that. Today we have more weird, more detached, and less rational forms of adversity.
K shaped economy doesn’t just refer to class, but of geography. There is a hidden line out of the middle of that K going dead straight.
sad but true
> They are prisoners of unrealistic expectations of what real life is like.
what is real life like? I guess real is what parents demonstrate, not?
Maybe? I am giving my kid a lot of comfort, because I see how almost everything is stacked against her future. If the unrealistic expectations exist, it is from our ruling class that we simply accept it:D
just sayin'
Mild somewhat-dangerous-but-not-really play teaches that actions and decisions have consequences, and if you make a mistake it hurts - maybe a lot.
The world is a dangerous place, but some element of risk is both unavoidable and exciting. And it's safe (more or less) to explore and take risks.
When the stress is all emotional and social - high school bullying, status games, cliques and groups, gender wars, random adult authoritarianism - it teaches you that dissent is forbidden and you must conform to the group or you will be punished by it.
You never get the lessons about autonomy and exploration. You're physically comfortable but emotionally underdeveloped with a limited sense of individual agency. There's a fair chance you'll have social PTSD and confuse individuality with permanent rebellion. And your natural state will be permanently-triggered rage about something.
Physical, perhaps.
Mentally and emotionally? Not. The pressure to "swim or sink" and grab one of those increasingly precious "well paying jobs" or be flipping burgers is much higher than it was when I was a kid.
The point is, without anything significant to focus on youth today now make the once insignificant significant.
Again, I’m not doing the concept justice, but it is a thing.
What??
> Fully 50% of Black voters in our poll agreed that allowing a 10-year-old to play unsupervised at a park for a few hours was grounds for a CPS call. 33% of white voters and 37% of Hispanic voters said the same.
I am speechless. Has so much changed in the 20 odd years since I was a kid? I was playing outside unsupervised from maybe age 9. What honestly are the kids supposed to be scared of?
What honestly are the kids supposed to be scared of?
The US have more school shootings than the rest of the world combined. It is not unfounded or irrational to be concerned.
My point is it still a very rare thing even in the most common place in the world. The weight of school shootings in people's minds is more emotional than statistical. Careless drivers kill way more people in the US and they do it every day.
I ran the numbers upon having kids. It is irrational.
https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2025/12/guns-are-the-leadi...
https://www.cnn.com/health/guns-death-us-children-teens-dg
I don't think it's particularly useful to focus on school shootings in particular vs other shootings
CPS it seems.
Even if the chance something actually happens is terribly low it became unacceptable. Death of any type became unacceptable, so got injuries, bullying is end of the world. Maybe due to having 1-2 kids instead of 10 and seeing occasionally other kids around die from whatever, so what was sort of normalized is shocking now.
Parenting got much, much harder, expectation of what a good parent is are stratospheric compared to - kid didn't die, you didn't beat him up (too much), didn't rape him and similar level. The more you invest yourself into any activity including parenting the the less you can ignore or accept failure of any sort. And so on.
I grew up free as a bird too, had a small bicycle and roamed fields and city too, but cars were few and slow ones. Its still possible but even for my kids it has to be outside of roads, luckily we live now next to forest and vineyards with roads closed to regular traffic. So it seems its whole societal change of mindset, not limited to US (although there I believe its the worst due to everything car-centric, few continuous pedestrian walks etc)
Because it was just him. His friends couldn't go anywhere unless a parent went with them.
There's no unsupervised time, and then we're all confused when 18 year olds can't cope with life.
I wonder if that causes some selection bias (e.g. density correlating with poverty).
Now as an adult I'd be worried about cycling around with cars that would hit me in the chest and not the legs on impact
Also cars make it very easy for a stranger to pull up and kidnap, parents subconsciously know that and factor it into their decisions
There was also youth clubs where I grew up and a BMX track and no phones so play was mostly happening outside
Society is going to continue to degrading as long as debts keep increasing
Debts will keep increasing because the only way to create new money is everytime someone gets a loan the bank injects the principle into the economy but then expects interest on top so there will never be enough money in the economy for everyone to pay off all their debts
We'll either get mass debt forgiveness or societal collapse and so far we've opted for societal collapse
A mortgage may be more than rent for a similar place now, but I suspect it won't be that many years before the lines cross.
In modern times there's a total of about 70 child kidnappings per year in the US. I am excluding parental kidnappings which sends that up by orders of magnitude, but I think that's fair because that's an entirely different issue and you specifically said stranger anyhow (though even of those 70 - a sizable chunk are not strangers). For contrast about 400 people are struck by lightning each year.
Statistically, it just doesn't happen. It's just one of those things, like terrorism or mass shootings, that is so unbelievably terrifying that people overreact in a self destructive way to try to prevent something that is statistically much less of a threat than just normal behaviors we take for granted.
I don't think money is the key issue. There were no clubs or nice tracks when I grew up, but ditches, canals, and forested areas worked just as well.
My point being, “only 70 a year in the US” sounds like a very low number and inconsequential number since we had an abduction close by already.
Any parent that has heard the same story is thinking of that instead of the stats.
Child abductions are amazingly rare. Data for them is strong because they are consistently reported.
Most Americans are feeling the same way and you must understand this to understand why Cheeto in chief keeps winning.
Which also goes back to car infrastructure. If you need to drive everywhere for any and all errands/activities, you won’t interact with people in nearby houses, you wont see neighbors at the local bar or small grocery store.
and kids were much more on bikes then than now -- which is a rare sight unless it's parents with their little kids on a Sunday ride in the park
As for the bikes, it's a vicious cycle compounded by distracted driving via cell phone. Less bikes means less drivers expecting to see a bike, making it more dangerous for bikes, meaning less bikes.
1: https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/passenger_travel_20... 2: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TTLHH
also, bike lanes were virtually non-existent back then
1: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/density-d...
If you want an intellectually honest comparison, take a look at the District of Columbia, which is basically 100% city and has been for many decades. It's gone down since 1970.
The other commenter and I were talking about cars.
Car ownership rates increased slightly, number of households nearly doubled, and average population density went up in every state except DC. There are more cars. Cars do not stay in one place, especially in the case of suburbanization.
Also, I'm not sure why/how the DC piece is intellectually honest. The Washington Metropolitan Statistical area has more than doubled in population since 1970[1]. Do you think all of the people who moved to PG County stay out of DC? That must be why the beltway is so easy to maneuver!
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_metropolitan_area
This was the original mention of density. Sure, cars don't stay in one place, but if we're talking about kids walking/biking around their suburban neighborhood, how big is the impact if there's a new 50k suburb on the other side of the urban core? Even commuters from the exurbs are taking the dastardly 45mph stroads, not the stopsign-laden 25mph streets through your neighborhood.
The common parlance around here is that "greater density" means smaller houses closer together or multi-unit structures. If you build a new subdivision outside town, nobody says "oh wow the town got so much denser", it just got broader. Waving at "57.5 average people/square mile in 1970, growing to 93.8 in 2020" says absolutely nothing about the experience of the average person on the average streets near their homes.
As an average person, I've observed that both my childhood and current neighborhoods (Mid-Atlantic and Midwest respectively) have increased in the number of cars present, and that's within and between neighborhoods. I have also observed more in-fill subdivisions between neighborhoods. Since the '90s, I've seen just the bike ride that I'd take multiple times a week in my Mid-Atlantic suburb yield one acre lots turned into 8 homes, a small office park being converted into multiple 5-over-1s, a country club being turned into 400 homes. In the past decade in the Midwest, I've seen 2 single family homes torn down to make 8 units with an 8 car garage and 8 more spaces out back, multiple small businesses torn down to make way for "luxury" student housing with a parking spot for every bed room, a shopping center and apartment complex torn down and turned into an even bigger apartment complex with parking for every bedroom. Many of these are on my block or on the bike path around town.
There are more cars. There is more density.
So there you go, I've provided census data, I've provided observations from my own life across multiple geographies that backs up the data.
If you're claiming that there aren't more cars in neighborhoods, please back up that claim.
To clarify, transportation is a means to get you to a destination. I don't know where you live, but I haven't lived in or ever even seen a suburb that provides all the destinations that a child (assuming they're old enough to ride a bike alone) would want to bike to.
Friends live in different neighborhoods. The mall certainly wasn't in my neighborhood. The video store, my church, the woods, the local pool, the public library, all required crossing streets which have become busier and busier.
Just giving my kids space when I'm nearby, in sight of them has terrified countless onlookers.
No one has actually called CPS on me, thankfully, to my knowledge. But the general atmosphere is absolutely crushing for people who want to try to safely let their kids learn independence.
I was in elementary school when the arcade game craze happened, PacMan, Donkey Kong, etc. I would wander the streets looking for games to play. There were arcade games in every grocery store, restaurants, every convenience store (so basically just 7-11s). Home gaming consoles could not begin to match what was in the arcades at that time. I would walk the streets looking for new ones to play.
I mostly played arcade games, but I would play pinball too. One day I was walking past a place and saw a pinball game and went in and started playing. I think it was on the second quarter when someone came and asked if I was there with my parents. I said no and they told me I had to leave since minors weren't allowed in a bar. I don't think I even know what a bar was at that time.
Elementary school kid hanging out in a bar without his parents would get some CPS attention these days I guess.
The worst of times part is, if I was "free range" it wasn't because my parents had discussed the risks and benefits of allowing me to wander the streets. No kid I knew had both parents at home back then. Our moms worked. We were free range because no one gave a shit what we did as long as we weren't causing them some immediate problem. So we had freedom. It was both glorious and horrible.
You become the average of those around you, and that sounds terrible.
- cars: she’s not always the most present and aware, and it takes one mistake to ruin or end her life.
- bikes and scooters: less dangerous in some ways, but more ubiquitous and unpredictable than cars
- sexual harassment: she’s only ten, but sadly in some neighborhoods, that’s old enough that she’s likely to get hassled. That’s a sad fact of life she’ll have to deal with at some point, but I’m not ready yet
- bullying: I had several encounters with groups of older kids when I was off free-ranging as a kid
- subway: some deranged homeless person throws someone off the platform or stabs someone every week here
I could go on, but the bottom line is that the potential harm outweighs the potential benefit for me right now. In my mind there’s no right answer here, just pros and cons. Appealing to how things were a century ago, or even when I grew up, is pretty irrelevant. My daughter might mature a couple years later than I did, and I can live with that.
Also, I’m just pretty fundamentally unimpressed with most moral panics. “The Anxious Generation” seems like just the latest entry in a tradition stretching thousands of years where people worry about how the changes in society are ruining the next generation, and long for a return to how life was when they grew up. However, each generation somehow manages to figure it out.
> This would be true for kids who grew up with parents smoking
not really, given the number of people with lung cancer then compared to today
> no seatbelts
again, the number of fatalities was much higher then
And yes, traffic fatalities were much higher before seatbelts, but they still only affected a tiny fraction of kids. The vast majority were just fine.
One thing I always think about when reading these posts: the complaints about how kids never roam free anymore are also accompanied by claims that abductions are incredibly rare now. But how do we know they’re not incredibly rare because kids don’t roam free? It feels like claiming that you shouldn’t have to wear your seatbelt because traffic fatalities are much lower than they were when seatbelts were introduced!
“No, that serial molester of children just needs a daily check-in with the NGO my friend runs. Then he’s fine to go around. No carceral justice.”
This, and the car-centric design of the American suburb, I think are leading to an increasingly alienated generation of kids. I grew up in suburbs and I couldn't even safely bike to my friend's house because the sidewalk would randomly end before arriving at his neighborhood, and the stroad next to it was at 45mph speed limit (thus in Texas: 60mph) and mostly filled with massive pickup trucks that probably couldn't even see me. So, my options before my parents got home were to play WoW and browse 4chan or do my homework, and if I did my homework before they got home they wouldn't believe me and would make me do some kind of schoolwork so they could see it happening, so basically for 4 years the majority of my free time was spent playing WoW and posting on 4chan.
Imo this resulted in me developing an "internet personality" aka "being a piece of shit." I was into manosphere stuff, mildly zenophobic, incredibly transphobic, and insufferably cynical. Getting to college and seeing the disgust on people's faces when I'd drop a 4chan joke was a complete culture shock to me. Took me a good 2 years to adjust to "normal society," by then I also had to overcome a reputation as an asshole.
I can't even imagine what it's like for kids like me these days now that there's full on weaponized Discords trying to convince them to shoot up schools for the lulz. At least on 4chan that kind of stuff got banned or mocked.
because the sidewalk was next to a busy road? sounds like a bit of a reach
Almost all businesses are located on these wide roads, and neighborhoods basically become islands for the kids. It’s especially bad in the winter, because it gets dark quicker, and crossing that 60ft+ wide 40mph+ road gets dicey even as an adult.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/CzuphnMwvwmoo8yLA
Yeah that looks terrible. That was pretty much random first place I looked.
A pedestrian got hit by a pickup truck and the trucks made a "caravan" to roll coal at the memorial spot where they hit her.
There's no consistency in america. I moved 15 minutes away to "the good" part of town, and every street is new and perfectly smooth. There are marked bike lanes everywhere and they're all connected. I didn't understand at the time, but moving to where the bike lanes are completely changed my life and opened up the entire city for exploring in a way that I didn't expect.
Aside from getting my adorable cats on craigslist, no other 1 decision has changed my life for the better so drastically. I sold my car. I bike to new food places on my lunch break. I met tons of amazing new friends. My fitness is way up.
People aren't good at visualizing what being in a car all the time is taking from them. In terms of happiness, I honestly feel like I got a 50k raise at my job or something. Car centric design is robbing people of the chance to disscover thier own cities
I really wish someone would do a study somehow on what kind of psychological effects are caused by being angry at everyone in your city for an hour twice a day (sitting in traffic).
This can be found even within town/village centres, let alone the stroads and strip-malls on their peripheries. Walking and cycling become far more perilous.
Not impossible, but challenging, and a clear danger for the very young, elderly, or disabled.
Local ordinances to maintain clear sidewalks are quite often observed in the breach.
Then there's the shortened daylight hours, mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
And yeah if I end up having kids, Ill get a minivan or something for chauffeuring. Sometimes you do in fact, need a car
As there isn’t a way to walk to the strip mall across the road.
i mean, i agree with you, theres nothing to do anymore. but surely there was less to do in the 50s? if youre poor, theres never much to do really.
I think just being able to get together with a couple other kids means that, even lacking videogames or boardgames or whatever, means that the opportunities available abound. Kids are infinitely creative and very good at inventing games out of any situation you throw them into. Give them two sticks and a piece of string and they'll turn it into a game of "don't let the string hit the ground" or something.
But, alone, yes I agree there was far less to do.
The fact that adults don't have third places anymore affects kids just as much, maybe even more.
I'm so glad you got out man. Seriously. You climbed out of a hole that many can't even see.
> if I did my homework before they got home they wouldn't believe me and would make me do some kind of schoolwork so they could see it happening, so basically for 4 years the majority of my free time was spent playing WoW and posting on 4chan.
Oh I hate this. Busywork. Also I think you and I got incentivized to play as much computer games as possible due to the arbitrary limitations of it and constant fear of being pulled off to some busywork. It was like a never ending battle ...
I think many parents don't realize that "doing the laundry" on command is like 10x the work of doing it when you please. You can't relax after school.
I think it is linked to things such as pressure on kids to do school work, less trust of both kids and people in general. A lot more control. A lot more metrics replacing judgement.
That's what I call as rich childhood.
The risk remains. We just added another risk.
If I let my 6 year old daughter cross King St in San Francisco and a car illegally turning right while she is in the crosswalk kills her, who will society prosecute harder? Me or the driver? I think I know.
If a sex offender who has been repeatedly released from jail by a judge who feels that “this time, his fourth time, it’ll be different” assaults my daughter society will judge me not him.
I might lose any surviving children, presumably for willful neglect. And you will go out and say that incarceration is bad or whatever. Don’t give me this bullshit. “Try to eliminate all risk”? No.
You just decided you want to punish the risk-takers. That’s very different. “Crime is because of poverty”. Yeah, dude, the reason that Bill Gene Hobbs goes around touching little girls is because he’s poor. Give me a break. “Try to eliminate all risk”. Pull the other one. Obviously the crime rates look great, you don’t convict anyone anymore. No crimes committed.
> walk barefoot in the in midday of 40 deg C of summer holidays
... precautions were taken against hookworm infestations. And yes, I went barefoot in the mud, too, but apparently just living somewhere with winter seasons is enough to inhibit them.
Most of America (at least west and east coast) is at this stage now. Look no further than startup culture were people have convinced themselves that repeated embarrassing failure is actually a sound investment strategy. This is the environment children are growing up in, of course they will all grow up to be embarrassing failures.
See Gregory Clark's The Son Also Rises (2014), tracking intergenerational wealth in England, the United States, Sweden, India, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Chile:
I would disagree. There now far less legal protections from dog attack. 20 years ago aggressive behaviour and attack was very clearly defined!
I refuse to allow my children to park, it is full of aggresive dogs and their shit. Animal parks are too dangerous (bcos of dogs). Support animal fraudsters invaded every "safe" niche.
They are free to molest, maul and attack children. Victim blaming and gaslighting (dog is not "reactive", just agressive). If kid gets mauled, it has to go through painful rabies shots, instead of just testing the predator!
And there is not a chance to get any compensation, since dog owner had no way to know dog could attack anyone (first bite is free).
I've never met a Matriarchist before.
Little typo, looking at the link it's 11.2 not 13.2. Someone knows why this peak?
That is quite a quote. Hard to believe that wasn't long ago.
Here's a good livestream from my town - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujXqogC2zk4 (I share the livestream because that makes it harder to say it's cherrypicked)
Or here's a more polished, edited video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TuGAHR78w
We literally covered the world in asphalt ribbons of death and then we wonder why kids don't play outside.
What's crazy is how many kids are killed by drivers even _after_ kids stopped playing outside. It's like if the number of swimmers fell by 90% and drownings went _up_.
There's a lot of kids stocking shelves in the stores here. It's a great way for them to be responsible and earn a few extra euro. I think it's great that the Dutch don't treat their 15 and 16 year olds like babies, like American parents do.
I just wish this were available to more families.
The (possibly completely incorrect) impression I get from speaking with Americans I know who have moved here, or I work with, is that nobody really works until they get to college unless it's a paper round or it's at your parents business. It almost goes without saying then that most people would be pretty infantile if they don't start work until they're almost mid-20s.
It was a nice surprise to see teenagers working in my local brewery this past weekend, collecting glasses, clearing and cleaning tables, etc. They were probably between 13 and 16. Not allowed to serve alcohol until they are 18, and can take on the personal legal responsibilities for Responsible Service of Alcohol.
Most jobs for teenagers here are in fast food service - two of my friends have mid/late teenagers working these jobs. Most jobs in retail, at least near me, seem to be taken by adults.
[0] https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-so-many-pedes...
"Deaths of children under 10 are actually down significantly (167 deaths in 2009 to 98 deaths in 2023), and deaths for ages 10-19 are down as well."
Kids playing on neighborhood streets show continued improvement... In fact IIHS pedestrian fatality data says that 1-13 year olds are the group with the HIGHEST reduction
Or come to where I live in the midwestern united states and you see the same thing. I see kids as young as 7 years old riding bikes together on a bike path that has a very generous distance to the nearby road, and parents let them roam free.
Always remember: If you see a statistic about the US and think "wow, that sucks, the US must suck", remember, it's a very, very, very big country. The corollary to this is that if you see some small country with a really nice looking statistic, remember that the US probably has many, many, many places within it that also just as nice and share a similar statistic. If we were to lump the NL with all of Europe, I'm sure we could find some ugly looking statistics, and you would probably resent the idea of NL being lumped in with it.
Regression to the mean is a real phenomenon and I wish more people would understand it.
If it's a rich area with stay at home moms (#1 Karens) or enough retired boomers sitting around with nothing to do but enjoy the power of calling modern CPS, forget it.
From my area of the Midwest around Iowa City, there are decent paths that connect the local towns, but intra-town cycling is far less supported. We have bike lanes (good), on some streets (bad), they're unprotected (bad) and they close on Sunday (bad, also what?). The car-free bike path along the river is shared with pedestrians, and some spandex-festooned idiots don't understand that it's not the place to go fast.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFEfr7Amn6U (5 minute overview of Houten)
You don't need a place that's the literal "best place for cycling in the world" for this, you just need to (1) build a bike path that's not adjacent to the road (ours is typically 10-20ft away from the road) and (2) have it be along a main thoroughfare where everyone lives a short distance from it.
(Not where I live, but it's in my state.)
Through my old school I know a guy who is also at my old uni, so I compare notes with him. Nowadays, everyone feels like they have to have an internship every year to get a job. Well, to do that, you needed to be at a top uni, getting top grades. To get into top uni, you needed to go to a good high school, and to do that, you needed to go to a good primary school.
I ended up living in this little bubble where everyone in my local area hires a tutor for their kid. The kids do the typical middle-class activities: an instrument or other performance art, a team sport, or maybe an individual sport. Everything is done with the goal of getting into the best senior school, or the best university.
The parents are all of the type who went through this gauntlet. Two lawyers, a lawyer and a doctor, finance and law, and so on. Everyone is spending a hefty chunk to afford to live here, and on their kid's education.
To circle back to the point of the article, these are professions that make a lot of money. They didn't exist in nearly the same scale as they did a hundred years ago, and London benefits from being the world centre of at least one of these formerly tie-wearing professions, so there's enough of a concentration here to make you think your kid could get one of these jobs in a few years.
But the road is long, and not every kid is going to enjoy becoming a lawyer or a banker. But it's also the case that it's hard to see how you could live in your childhood neighborhood without one of these jobs, so the parents steer the kids down the road before they are really old enough to decide.
I wonder if having fewer kids is behind the rat-race atmosphere. With all your eggs in one basket, they need to be well protected. If you had 4 kids, like my uncle, you wouldn't have time to puff them all down the same path.
It's very easy to be a parent when you have no children.
Same would be valid for western Europe, eastern part got fucked up by soviets pushing communism and related terror left and right.
Lead poisoning leading to lower IQs, alcoholism was definitely rampant (though less stigmatised at the time), traumatised from the war, aggressiveness towards spouses and each other (see: war trauma)
Yes, it absolutely was.
I think the phrasing can come across as a bit macho, which I don't think is the point. It's about resilience.
I think to an extent the mental impact of it is a necessary evil. The future resilience manifests as a drive to not find yourself in the same (or an equally difficult) position again — because it’s so emotionally devastating — so you fight harder to not allow it to happen again. This makes a person more driven in general.
Another aspect is that you’ve seen how ‘deep’ an emotion can be (traumatic) and so more ‘everyday’ emotional events can seem much more trivial, making them easier to deal with. Although, it can sometimes leave the person seeming ‘cold’ emotionally. One thing I found was I was less tolerant of people without the level of resilience I had, which I had to work on.
Of course, there will be some people that can’t endure the initial hardship and don’t develop that resilience. My impression is that most people do endure and find a way to come out of the other side, like a basic survival instinct, although that’s purely anecdotal.
Hell I guess you can describe them as "hard men" but I wouldn't want to be that way and it doesn't seem to make you more successful in modern society.
Not sure what else you’re expecting? I’m not advocating imposed hardship, just trying to give some context for why it can often lead to a more robust and driven person. It’s clearly not universally true.
I imagine there are lots of veterans that are able to cope and have become more robust. But there will always be mental health aftershocks, because that’s why it was a hardship in the first place.
Abused kids domt grow stronger either. They grow weaker and less capable of navigating life too.
I'm not sure how it's supposed to work out. The US is arguably currently under the control of the baby boomers, who were brought up in good times. And those good times were brought on by the two generations before them who were brought up in tough times (two world wars, depression, etc)? But that feels tenuous at best
Yeah, I rather doubt that the direction of history can so easily be summarized by good/bad times and soft/hard men.
This obviously means "human" in this context.
But of course this saying is just a meme at best, it doesn't work like that in reality. In fact, good times make strong men just like good childhood makes strong adults.
In the abstract yes. In practice I mainly hear this meme spouted by trad-masculine-sparta types.
I disagree, people who say this often are "great men of history" types that genuinely ascribe much of the significant events in human history to the activities of men alone.
From the Wikipedia summary:
"The work is based around Ibn Khaldun's central concept of aṣabiyyah, translated as "group cohesiveness" or "solidarity".[41] This social cohesion arises spontaneously in tribes and other small kinship groups; it can be intensified and enlarged by a religious ideology. Ibn Khaldun's analysis looks at how this cohesion carries groups to power but contains within itself the seeds – psychological, sociological, economic, political – of the group's downfall, to be replaced by a new group, dynasty or empire bound by a stronger (or at least younger and more vigorous) cohesion."
Besides the appeal of "though people", the idea that we're also in a cycle, of which the current phase is the worst one, is also basically the Kali Yuga concept, popularised by openly nazi figures like Julius Evola and Savitri Devi
If people are unhappy about their current society, they'd be better off learning about the economic causes, rather than esoteric memes.
"Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times."
<https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8751435-hard-times-create-s...>
It reflects many former cyclical-view-of-history / social cycle theory concepts, dating back literally thousands of years: