I'm very curious how much time you spend talking about parenting and consuming either social media or professional content about parenting, because those topics are so deeply embedded in parenting today that it's like saying "nobody seems to have noticed the internet".
The swing towards "Fuck Around And Find Out" parenting has been going for the last ten years here, and everybody gives you rapturous applause when you encourage kids to have their own independent playtime.
I have also never seen a man at a playground get dirty looks, in fact there are more men out with their kids than women on the weekends (fewer during weekdays).
It’s a frustrating experience that changed how I interacted with other kids on the playground that weren’t mine. It made me more careful about whether I would let another kid join our game of tag or push the kid in the swing next to us when they asked. Sad really, and truly hope things have changed.
I had minor children from the early 90s to the late 10s. Parenting discussions were pretty much an ongoing thing. When I contrasted my childhood with my kids', there would be a long pause while the other parents realize it didn't used to always be this way.
Perhaps in the last decade awareness has bloomed and for whatever reason, I'm not coming across it. I hope so. That would be great.
“As of April 30, 2018, the term ‘helicopter parents’ yielded 2 million hits on Google. From March 2014 to February 2018, the keyword ‘helicopter parents’ was searched monthly”. https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3922...