Out of the Woods

Jerry Seinfeld said said it best regarding minimally parented kids- he was like a raccoon living his life out of the house doing who knows what but coming home in the evening to eat. I loved the freedom of my 1980s childhood but I don't know if my father could name one teacher I had- or even what grade I was in at the time with real certainty. Generation X had to learn to be independent and resourceful at a young age. I was much stronger and more savvy than my teenage kids are today. At the same time we could have used more supportive and checked in parenting.

I grew up in Manhattan in the '50s and '60s. I was roaming the subway on my own by the time I was 10. I lived. It probably helped that I was a pretty timid kid and would never have tried an illegal drug if /my parents/ had handed it to me, let alone some lowlife in Washington Square Park. (There were plenty of those. I walked past them on my way to the NYU computer science department at 14; they encouraged high school kids to visit.) So, one moral of the story is that different kids have different needs, and it's too easy for a parent to parent his or her younger self, instead of parenting the actual kid they have. But another moral, I think, is that freedom for kids isn't so very dangerous -- not, for example, as dangerous as highly supervised football games. Not as dangerous as being bullied in school. People who build adventure playgrounds (places with lots of stuff for kids to climb, jump on, and so on) report that it's important to surround the playground with an opaque fence taller than anything a kid can climb, because otherwise some adult passerby will get upset and they'll be shut down. In one way, kids like me are better off today: They have maker spaces, where they can use power tools, laser cutters, 3-D printers, and the like. Kids who know they're trusted behave responsibly with dangerous tools, even quite young kids. But, alas, today's kids still aren't trusted on the subway alone.

That high contraceptive use and low teen birthrate can go "poof" if our current president and his minions get their way. Already they are allowing companies to not provide no co-pay contraceptive coverage or to provide no contraceptive coverage at all. Efforts to abolish and/or restrict abortion continue unabated.

The problem with this piece is Stranger Things doesn't gloss over any of the bad stuff.

So I would have been the main characters' age around the late 90s and early 2000s, and we were for sure free to roam, playing in the woods, playing in the ocean, and despite the bumps and bruises and occasional blood, we all made it out. AND we played a lot of computer/video games too! I would say the "15 mile marker" shenanigans for sure still happen from my experience, but I feel like all my friends at least were really good about looking out for one another, but maybe that isn't true about other groups of kids. I think kids still have time to be kids. But the over scheduling and helicopter parenting does worry me, along with obesity rates.

My parents let us go wherever we wanted after school before dinner and on weekends. Times in 1950's and early 1960's in elementary and middle school we lived in rural areas in England, Germany and in southern Idaho where this was normal. Sadly times have changed where there's more risks to kids, when it's harder just to be a kid.

As a baby boomer I was free to spend time with my friends without parental supervision. I think I learned a lot about how to handle myself, work through conflict, manage relationships and be autonomous in the world. I don't know where kids to get that experience.

In the 50s when the streetlights came on at 8, you were supposed to be home, otherwise free to roam.

It doesn't have to be either/or. Even if things are better now in many ways, there still could be a loss; and vice versa. I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, have two high schoolers right now, and I'd say things aren't better or worse--just different. In some ways better, in others worse. In my experience parents today spend loads of time with their kids. Perhaps more time, perhaps less, I'm not sure. What I do know is the time is spent differently. I know more about what's going on in my kids' minds than my parents ever knew about me. If they're depressed or struggling they come to me. They share with me things I would never have shared back in the day. I don't have to worry about drugs etc because I know exactly what's going on with them. And don't call me naive, because I really do, the good and the bad. When I was a kid, a lot of time we spent together wasn't really together. It was parallel lives. Dinners were family time but discussions were shallow. On weekends we were kicked out of the house. My parents spent more time--by far-- in adult socializing than I do. I remember lots of dinner parties. Kids were sent to bed, gotten out of the way. Seen but not heard. But the roaming around, playing in streams and the woods--that was fabulous. A real loss, that is. I could have been killed I guess, but it was great.

there was an article in this paper last week about record hight anxiety in teens, maybe making some mistakes on their own and building up some independence could help them with that. You gain some you lose some

You can let your children roam in the woods after school without having to worry about teenage pregnancies, drug use, or abductions, right? Get them outdoors already, and the occasional unsupervised "pick-up" sports games -- where the kids do the impromptu team-organizing, and refereeing themselves, really can't hurt them in the long run either... You can't totally take away a child's freedom, and then expect a healthy society to result. Even if they are smarter, more secure, and more protected. There is something to be said still for thinking on your feet, and interacting with nature.

It would be nice to imagine that these encouraging social trends among youth are the result of better parenting rather than from a decrease of socializing among youth. Are children making better decisions, or do parents prevent them from making decisions?

I grew up in the 50/60's, raised my kids in the 70/80's, and watched my grandkids grow up in the 90/00's. There is no doubt in my mind that childhood experiences and the quality of childhood itself have deteriorated over that period of time. Kids are now more obese, more dependent, more needy, less active and less motivated than they have ever been. Just before I retired, I was interviewing many of them for jobs and it was a discouraging experience. One interviewee's mother even tried to sit in on the interview. I understand the impulse to keep your kids safe as well as anyone - but how much of the fear is really justified and what cost are we as a society paying for all that safety?

When people complain about 'screen time' they have a tendency to forget how much TV we watched back in the day. As a child I recall watching TV until my staring eyeballs nearly fell out of my dormant head. Today's kids have just switched one screen for another. TV is scheduled, dull and passive. Computers are more interesting, creative and interactive. Which one do you think you would've enjoyed more if you'd the opportunity when you were younger? My Three Sons or Minecraft? Computers are so much more alive and in time. Network TV's days are numbered right now. As are the mega toy stores and companies. Most kids only want electronics and those related products today.

"And while it’s hard to wrap our heads around the idea that six hours a day of screen time has no pernicious effects" Unless you think that the screen time has replaced outdoor play time and note that childhood obesity is at an all time high. Idle hands may not be holding iPhones, but idle bodies are.

I did wonder yesterday, when reading about Kevin Spacey, why a 14 year old was alone at a party thrown by an actor in his mid 20s. But it was the mid 80s, a blurry party era when drugs and alcohol were abused more than ever, and people still trusted strangers to do the right thing.

Kids find trouble. When we were kids we found it running in the woods and streets. Today's kids are running wild on their cell phones. This is probably a good thing because they are learning how to live online - they are going to live in an online world. Thing is I can understand the sort stuff that happens outdoors and unsupervised. I have no idea what's up with their secret insta apps & fakebooks and whatnot. And it terrifies me. Maybe that is why the show strikes such a chord. We're nostalgic for a childhood we understand that no longer exists.

This article is extremely presumptuous and lays a huge blanket over an entire generation to make the conclusion that today's over-parenting can be excused because we're protecting our children from our own awful selves when we were young. What the author does not even consider is that we were not all rule-breakers who had sex in the back of cars and got wasted in the middle of the woods while beating each other up. I am 35 years old and grew up in the '80s and '90s with the 'freedom to roam'. My parents taught me responsibility, civility, and respect for rules. I spent almost every day with my friends taking bike rides miles away from home, exploring woods and fields, and playing rough games of football or street hockey. To this day, I have never tried an illegal drug, never smoked a cigarette, and never been drunk. And guess what? I wasn't even brought up in a religious home. Just a normal home with good parents that taught me the values and responsibilities of being a human being in a civilized society. I got back to the mantra "the bad few ruined it for all of us". This is what the author seems to be okay with. Instead of locking our children up in over-scheduled, sanitary lives... how about parents like the author take some personal responsibility, spend quality time with their kids, be open about their own transgressions as youth, and teach them how to be independent AND responsible? My parents did it. And that was in the scary '80s.