How getting richer made teenagers less free

https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/how-getting-richer-made-teenagers

by NavinF • 7 months ago

272 326 7 months ago

starsky411• 7 months ago

This remind me of that saying - no original version but it was like: tough times makes tough people, soft times makes soft people. And I hope it’s not true. But indeed the more choices you have in life, the harder it gets to chose the right thing to do.

actionfromafar2• 7 months ago

In aggregate, tough times make people malnourished, alcoholic, traumatized, lower IQ, apathetic, aggressive. In no particular order or combination.

kakacik2• 7 months ago

Look at US during late 40s / 50s. Do you think your definition is valid for those times en masse? (apart from the fact that most of those markers slowly improved over time due to overall progress).

Same would be valid for western Europe, eastern part got fucked up by soviets pushing communism and related terror left and right.

komali26• 7 months ago

Good times make soft men, bad times make hard men. I never quite understood what the implication was and I always questioned the historical accuracy because no part of history is so easily defined as "good time" or "bad time."

louthy3• 7 months ago

It isn't about a particular time in history, it's about the individual. An individual who suffers hardships often has to endure to overcome said hardships. That makes the individual more resilient and more able to deal with future hardships.

I think the phrasing can come across as a bit macho, which I don't think is the point. It's about resilience.

wongarsu• 7 months ago

There's the other half, which is often only implied: soft men make bad times, hard men make good times. It's supposed to be cyclical: good times -> soft people -> bad times -> hard people -> good times. Usually directly followed by "back in my days things were tough, but kids these days are just weak"

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

A4ET8a8uTh0_v22• 7 months ago

I think the quote itself indicates something of pre-internet outlook, where one's world was more localized. From that perspective, "good time"/"bad time" is more tied to one's geography ( and by extention, tribe ) more than anything else. If true, then "bad time" is simply war, famine, pestilence from more common set of maladies. And if the outlook is more local, the saying does start to make a lot of sense, because our constraints define how we approach life in general. Not to search very far, depression crash made a generation of Americans very wary of trading stocks.

ramon156• 7 months ago

To understand is to suffer

everdrive• 7 months ago

Like basically every truism, it's a broad generalization and when you pick it apart you find all sorts of cases where the terms are loosely defined or else the truism just doesn't fit. There is at least something to be said here, and this is something of an adaptation of Ibn Khaldun's work on the concept of "asabiyyah" in the Muqaddima. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun#al-Muqaddima_and_t...

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."

hshdhdhj4444• 7 months ago

How did we end up in a world where the stupidest memes are considered insightful.

berdario• 7 months ago

Not only stupid, but also a nazi meme...

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.

gherkinnn3• 7 months ago

Why can't this meme die? It is so obviously rubbish. Good times allow for a people to divert more energy to specialisation and growth and might and art and then displace the "hardened" people.

Aeglaecia7• 7 months ago

all living creatures are selfish to the core and will always optimize to minimize effort and maximize personal reward , therefore existing in a soft gentle system will result in acclimatization to a soft gentle system ... this universe is hostile impersonal harsh brutal and altogether basically not a place that anybody could ever be prepared for after having congealed in an insular bubble like the global west ... it is enjoyable seeing everyone here utterly in denial about this ... reminds me of militant atheists lambasting religion and then doubling down when i suggest that maybe healthy community gathering and values is more important than whether or not god is real ...

meindnoch• 7 months ago

This is a famous quote by the renowned warrior-philosopher Joe Rogan.

dredmorbius4• 7 months ago

Predates him significantly, I suspect: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46315310>.

UncleMeat3• 7 months ago

I swear, people will do anything to make claims about history except speak with actual historians.

dredmorbius4• 7 months ago

The original quote is from G. Michael Hopf, in Those Who Remain (2016):

"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:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory>

komali26• 7 months ago

When teenagers aren’t trusted to walk over to a friend’s house or play in the park, when they almost never have a part-time job where they can earn a paycheck and meet expectations that aren’t purely artificial, then I think it’s much harder for them to have a realistic, non-algorithm-driven worldview and concrete life goals they can work toward.

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.

ensocode2• 7 months ago

Probably you won't be the freak anymore in today's online society as most of the others do the same

squeefers4• 7 months ago

so basically for 4 years the majority of my free time was spent playing WoW and posting on 4chan.

because the sidewalk was next to a busy road? sounds like a bit of a reach

nrhrjrjrjtntbt5• 7 months ago

sidewalk ended apparently. i am imagining some super hostile urban planning. like did a cyclist cheat with the planner's spouse? is there not another route?

CrossVR• 7 months ago

If you're in a suburb what else is there to do? Going to any interesting spots to hang out with friends involve asking your parents to bring you there with the family car and then arranging a strict timetable on when to pick you up again.

CalRobert6• 7 months ago

Aside from the fact that drivers have been known to mount sidewalks (especially while sending a text), the real problem is intersections, and crossing said stroads. When there's 8 lanes of Dodge Rams, Chevy Silverados, and F-250's with hoods that are taller than your head you're putting a great deal of trust in the red lamp overhead to actually stop them from killing you.

S_Bear• 7 months ago

I was at a conference in St Cloud, MN a few years ago, and I could see the Panda Express from my hotel. Took around 40 minutes to walk there because I couldn't get the timing right to frogger myself across the 6 lanes. Got stuck in the island in the middle for a good 15 minutes because the slip lane always had cars in it.

cons0le3• 7 months ago

this resulted in me developing an "internet personality" aka "being a piece of shit.

I'm so glad you got out man. Seriously. You climbed out of a hole that many can't even see.

rightbyte• 7 months ago

Glad to hear you figured it out. I somewhat identify eventhough I didn't go as deep.

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.

graemep• 7 months ago

I am somewhat doubtful about the importance of American car centric suburbs because its happening in a lot of other countries too. its happened in the last few decades in British cities that have become a lot less car oriented.

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.

HexPhantom5• 7 months ago

What really stuck with me is how delayed the correction was. You didn't get immediate feedback that "this is not how people actually relate to each other" until college, and by then the social debt was already there. That's a brutal way to learn norms

chiefalchemist4• 7 months ago

The constrain isn’t merely financial, it’s broader than that. Teenagers are less free because adults and society have bulldozed the adversity out of teen lives. This sheltering is creating generations that are more - not less - fragile.

Generations that know nothing but comfort. They are prisoners of unrealistic expectations of what real life is like.

A_D_E_P_T• 7 months ago

I don't think that's it.

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.

lotsofpulp5• 7 months ago

I think it’s a broader awareness of a K shaped socioeconomic trajectory, that the odds of an upward trajectory drop considerably if you don’t follow the standard path into a top 20 university, metro, etc. as economic opportunities continue to agglomerate.

ensocode2• 7 months ago

Generations that know nothing but comfort.

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?

A4ET8a8uTh0_v22• 7 months ago

<< Generations that know nothing but comfort. They are prisoners of unrealistic expectations of what real life is like.

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'

TheOtherHobbes• 7 months ago

The adversity is very much there, but it's all emotional and social. What's missing is (mild) physical adversity, and self-directed play and exploration.

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.

chiefalchemist4• 7 months ago

Punished? How? By who? All voices and opinions are not equal. If kids aren’t learning how to filter out the noise then yeah they’re playing in traffic. But once given the opportunity to learn they keep running into traffic. Self destructive behavior is not due to more danger, it’s a self fulfilling prophecy

smeeger• 7 months ago

teens experience more adversity now than before. social and existential adversity.

UncleMeat3• 7 months ago

This is an evergreen complaint made of every generation.

chiefalchemist4• 7 months ago

Yes. And look where it has led us. Little by little. Easier than previously has become too easy too much of the time.

insane_dreamer9• 7 months ago

Generations that know nothing but comfort.

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.

chiefalchemist4• 7 months ago

Yes, but the two go hand in hand. Michael Easter talks about it in The Comfort Crisis. He probably used a more technical term, but that term escapes me for the moment. In short, worry is relative. For example, we you have to focus on getting your next meal, minor things get no attention, no concern. Now eliminate the need to worry about food and the minor things get center stage.

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.

nicgrev103• 7 months ago

It's 10pm; do you know where your kids are? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LJeBbhPYBs

nrhrjrjrjtntbt5• 7 months ago

10pm is a different animal. Out that late and I dont know where they are? 18+

(Probably some culutral reference I am missing in this video?)

m4ck_• 7 months ago

It wasn't uncommon for kids under 18 to be out that late just a couple of decades ago.

In the 90s/early 00's 10pm was like a weekday, school night curfew.

kasey_junk2• 7 months ago

My parents generation was so laisse faire with their child rearing that they ran ads to remind them to go figure out where we were.

svpk• 7 months ago

As already said it was a PSA ran on TV in the US up until at least the 90s I think. It's not really a different animal when you think about it; at the height of summer the sun doesn't set until around 9 (at least in the northern half of the US), so the PSA is running probably half an hour to an hour after its gotten dark. Which was a pretty typical time for kids to be told to be home. Ie "be home when the street lights turn on." So the ads basically saying "your kid was supposed to be home over 30 minutes ago, are they back yet?

Edit: adjusted the times because I actually bothered to check when sunset is.

majesticmerc• 7 months ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZybUKAtD40

hnlmorg• 7 months ago

Every time I hear that PSA I’m reminded of the acid track “where is your child”

https://youtu.be/sDyxyRcZWBA?si=sqDnodWQ-jWKCdCH

(I know the song came long after the PSA)

reedf1• 7 months ago

Around 35% of American families have been investigated by CPS

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?

myko2• 7 months ago

I'm an 80s kid, I was playing outside at age 6 unsupervised / with my friends. I feel like this should be pretty normal and totally agree with your last line:

What honestly are the kids supposed to be scared of?

lotsofpulp5• 7 months ago

I teach my kids their biggest risk is a driver distracted by their phone in a vehicle with a hood height at or above the kids’ head height.

IlikeKitties• 7 months ago

What honestly are the kids supposed to be scared of?

CPS it seems.

nrhrjrjrjtntbt5• 7 months ago

Call the CPS on them! Why? because they are risking their child having the CPS called on them ... and that is dangerous.

kakacik2• 7 months ago

Not kids, parents are scared, kids have no say unless they are already addicted to gaming, tv or whatever their latest addiction is, and then they themselves don't want to go and just sit and consume.

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)

exitb• 7 months ago

I think a lot of parenting decisions like this are just made in line with the rest of the society. If you let your 9 year old roam the park by themselves, you run a rather small risk of injuries, death, kidnapping etc. But you run a pretty big risk of them being the only lone 9 year old at the park.

n4r92• 7 months ago

That is a shocking stat, although I see that the source article only looked at the 20 most populous counties in the US: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8325358/

I wonder if that causes some selection bias (e.g. density correlating with poverty).

slifin• 7 months ago

Cars, I nearly got run over as a kid a few times

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

symbogra• 7 months ago

The track that the US political economy is on with the feedback loop caused by government backed fixed term fixed interest loans requires an ever increasing LTV, meaning newer entrants in the housing market will have to accept increasingly precarious positions.

somenameforme• 7 months ago

Ok I actually agree with you about debt and the general societal degradation, but kidnapping is a non-issue.

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.

cogogo• 7 months ago

That is a fast track from cars to societal collapse. But agree cars are terrifying. I live in what should be a walking friendly part of Boston that is very pedestrian unfriendly because drivers are overly aggressive, on their phones, or commuting through to avoid traffic and do not care. It is the only reason our 10 year old is not yet wandering around on his own. I have spent years writing local politicians about improved intersections and traffic enforcement and have given up. No one seems to care. The car is king in the US. Even in a corner of the country where there is a lot of room to design around them not for them.

black_puppydog• 7 months ago

Yeah I'm shocked how this article can get away without a mention of cars...

542354234235• 7 months ago

Cars and building for car infrastructure is part of it. Another part, I think, is the decline in neighborhood communities. By that I mean the social pressure to get to know/socialize with your neighbors, through everything from block parties to shared church membership. When kids go “wandering the neighborhood” they were never far from one of the member’s houses, or at least a familiar neighbor who would notice them and keep an eye out.

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.

insane_dreamer9• 7 months ago

cars were just as plentiful in the 70s and 80s as now and yet parents weren't nearly as worried about it as they are now

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

Cthulhu_5• 7 months ago

Loads of things, but the big thing that changed in past decades is the media. A case of a child getting abducted or killed goes nation- or worldwide now, which makes everyone feel less safe in letting their kids roam free.

D13Fd3• 7 months ago

I have six young kids. This attitude is absolutely prevalent (and it's insane). I've been chewed out by a cashier for sending an 8 year old into a store alone. I've had a person run out of a restaurant, panicking, and grab my 2 year old because she was walking too far ahead of me. I've had people tell me it's unsafe to let me 10, 8, and 5-year olds bike together in the park ahead of me while I walk.

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.

delichon2• 7 months ago

I was 10 in '72, in a big metropolis. I'd take off on my Stingray bike on all day jaunts all over. The only comments I got were from my mom who made sure I had change to phone home in case I got a flat. I started a 4am paper route on that bike two years later, nobody batted an eye. It was the best of times.

testing223212• 7 months ago

Genuinely, move.

You become the average of those around you, and that sounds terrible.

TrackerFF• 7 months ago

I grew up in the late 80s/early 90s, and came from a rural place with a lot of poverty and at best working class people. We'd be outside all day long - being inside was considered a privilege. Weekdays and weekends.

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.

3D304974202• 7 months ago

It doesn't even require poverty/rural areas/etc. I grew up in (basically) sub-urban USA to a solidly middle-class family and I was always out wandering around the neighborhood or on my bike.

squeefers4• 7 months ago

and came from a rural place with a lot of poverty
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?

suslik• 7 months ago

The link is: the first part was 'then', the second is 'now'.

squeefers4• 7 months ago

what absolute cretins downvoted that?

dns_snek• 7 months ago

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.

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.

throawayonthe3• 7 months ago

nono the parents are feeling that they're suffocating, lol

1659447091• 7 months ago

We'd be outside all day long - being inside was considered a privilege. Weekdays and weekends.

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.

blitzar• 7 months ago

A trend amongst peers I have noticed ... people are parenting in the opposite manner to the way their werre raised.

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.

IAmBroom2• 7 months ago

You went to private school ... send kids to shittiest free school you can find.

You're making that up.

AnimalMuppet• 7 months ago

Most of us had parents that made mistakes. Some of those mistakes hurt us, stunted our development, or damaging our psyches. When we become parents, we try not to make the mistakes that our parents make.

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.

ajsnigrutin2• 7 months ago

Similar generations and i've noticed the same thing, but living in an urban place, in a large complex of socialist apartment buildings, in a country that fell apart from a larger socialist one to a smaller capitalist one.

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

ileonichwiesz2• 7 months ago

And it's not even worth it... none of those kids will be a professional sportis/musician, it's just wasted time...

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.

dlisboa5• 7 months ago

It's a cultural shift. Your peers are now way more aware of child abuse, kidnappings, murders, than your parents were. Not that yours were necessarily bad parents for that time but there is way more information today of the issues with the world. I certainly wouldn't let my kid walk home alone in the woods at night: are we really sure this degree of freedom is so developmentally important to be worth the risk?

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.

smallnix• 7 months ago

the risk

What is the risk really? I mean put in numbers.

cpursley4• 7 months ago

This idea that parents who let their kids play without 3 layers of bubble wrap and parental hovercraft mode don’t also talk with their kids and aren’t present is not just insulting, it’s far from true. Over coddling causes more problems than it prevents, it’s especially obvious when you compare the maturity levels, mental health situation and general early adulthood outcomes for non-Anglo kids in other developed nations.

ileonichwiesz2• 7 months ago

Your peers are now way more aware of child abuse, kidnappings, murders, than your parents were.

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.

raxxorraxor• 7 months ago

They are more aware but bad at putting it in perspective. This is the classic "fear leads to bad decisions".

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.

mothballed4• 7 months ago

From a very young age when I wondered around the rural midwest, I had a gun. Usually a 20ga shotgun or a .22 rifle. Don't think my parents were too worried about me getting kidnapped or murdered. I used it for hunting but I knew what to do in the case of self defense.

Another one of those things that aren't allowed now.

shlant• 7 months ago

Your peers are now way more aware of child abuse, kidnappings, murders, than your parents were

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?

screye• 7 months ago

Not sure if 'aware' is the right word. More like anxious.

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.

throwaway732255• 7 months ago

Interestingly, I've heard from parents that many feel like they're both suffocating and feeling inadequate

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.

sekai• 7 months ago

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.

Parents appear increasingly terrified of childhood boredom, and thus meticulously cram their children's schedules with activities they feel are "crucial" for "development".

fallinditch3• 7 months ago

My friend is one of those 'overly involved' parents with his daughter: tennis lessons and competitions, sailing lessons and competitions, skiing lessons and competitions. He sacrificed a huge amount of time to give his daughter every opportunity.

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.

dec0dedab0de2• 7 months ago

Yeah, they definitely need time to look out a window and imagine.

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.

Aeolun2• 7 months ago

Hmm, I’m fairly certain the ‘having children’ part is what triggers total collapse of the previous worldview. My spouse was adamant that we wouldn’t force our child to study excessively, but we’re at 7 years old and we have a 50cm stack of extra activities books that need to be worked through every morning and evening, in addition to the homework the school sets. It’s madness. The class teacher told me he’s not even involved with setting homework.

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.

YaeGh8Vo4• 7 months ago

What's striking is the helplessness that seeps through your message. As if you had zero control over what happens. You're just a bystander watching what happens to your children.

It's time for you to wake up, and start exercising your own authority.

takinola• 7 months ago

I obviously don’t know your specific situation but having brought up kids in a similar environment, I may be able to offer some possible explanation for what you are living through.

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)

honkycat• 7 months ago

My parents made me do everything, and were so fucking mean about everything, I ended up missing out on the things I actually enjoyed b/c I didn't want yet another thing to get yelled at about.

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.

FromTheSteppe• 7 months ago

I was raised in such a house. This happened because my mother was an underachiever, and also because my father and grandparents were dead so she was unchallenged doing this.

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.

xattt• 7 months ago

Some of it is likely “subconscious” long-term planning. University programs that result in high income post-graduation typically have prerequisites that include heavy extracurricular activity involvement.

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.

solumunus• 7 months ago

Instagram Mom algorithms is what happened, probably.

DANmode• 7 months ago

Your wife is living vicariously through the kid, in more ways than one.

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.

HexPhantom5• 7 months ago

The irony is brutal: kids lose unstructured time and independence, parents lose breathing room, and nobody feels good about it. What used to be normal "being outside all day" now reads as neglect

mlsu• 7 months ago

Kids are in this weird position where they are placed on a pedestal (they’re sooo important! My little future leader!) but yet they have no real agency in their lives and are very restricted from making decisions, even ludicrously simple ones like can I take a walk outside by myself for half an hour.

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.

owisd• 7 months ago

If you want ideas for what you can do about it, "Let Grow" (founded by the Anxious Generation author and others) provides resources for raising more independent kids and campaigning against anti-kid neighborhoods and overly burdensome neglect laws - https://letgrow.org

ozozozd2• 7 months ago

One of the testimonies mentions a 4 year old cooking dinner (pancakes, eggs and sausages).

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.

duncan_britt• 7 months ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmile/comments/uq0jon/big_bro...

lm284692• 7 months ago

And it also creates permanent adulescents, scared of responsibilities, scared of commitment, scared of exploring. I've seen it countless times with teenagers in my family, they're overgrown babies.

Aeglaecia7• 7 months ago

wonder whats gonna happen in a decade or two when our youngest and brightest minds have all been penned by a culture disconnected from reality

squigz4• 7 months ago

There's something ironic about posting this on HN, where likely a large percentage of us practically grew up on the Internet.

nikanj• 7 months ago

The great Fermi Filter maybe

dgb23• 7 months ago

The irony is that parents feel like their kids are safer and more sheltered when they restrict their movement, while the opposite is true.

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.

Cthulhu_5• 7 months ago

To make it a bit tropey, a sheltered kid is much more susceptible to people luring them out of their safe space with promises of excitement and Things Their Parents Would Not Approve Of.

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.

a3w• 7 months ago

I read the article. And see zero evidence given that letting kids survive is a bad thing if you trade in nothing important.

Then again, this seems US centric.

But this comment just seems cruel, making people think it is their fault if they have bad feelings.

eloisant• 7 months ago

The whole discussion is US centric.

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.

Cthulhu_5• 7 months ago

I'd argue their parents are similarly affected with Something - a kind of anxiety or fear that something will happen to their kids or they won't end up alright if they're left to their own devices.

"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.

nathan_compton• 7 months ago

It is called class anxiety.

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.

HexPhantom5• 7 months ago

What looks like fear of responsibility can also be fear of doing something wrong in a world where mistakes are heavily punished and rarely forgiven

Der_Einzige3• 7 months ago

Anxiety is the only real emotion and it is the best one because it truly protects you from evil.

lotsofpulp5• 7 months ago

Only if you’re not already influential, usually coinciding with wealthy.

moffkalast• 7 months ago

28 is the new 18. The problem is nobody's getting any younger on the other side of life, so that's a decade of life lost.

JuniperMesos2• 7 months ago

There's already people explicitly working on anti-aging technology. We'll see what happens over the next few decades there.

aleksandrm• 7 months ago

I'm sorry, but this is a bullshit article.

ForceBru• 7 months ago

Care to elaborate? Why do you think it's bullshit?

CalRobert6• 7 months ago

For a counterexample, come visit Houten, NL (I live here and it's great) where you literally see kids around 10 years old biking independently, sometimes with a football (soccerball) or fishing rod in tow. And this is a pretty wealthy area by most standards.

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_.

dirkc2• 7 months ago

I recently had a trip to NL and was very surprised to see jobs for children being advertised there!

CalRobert6• 7 months ago

Hah, was it Dirk by any chance? (Give your username)

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.

elif4• 7 months ago

In your analogy, swimmers may have gone down 90% but kids are still being submerged in water as much as ever if not more. The vast majority of traffic deaths are people INSIDE cars.

pbmonster• 7 months ago

Pedestrian deaths in the US are up 78% since 2009. [0]

[0] https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-so-many-pedes...

throawayonthe3• 7 months ago

houten is infamous in some circles as the antithesis of american living :))

hackable_sand• 7 months ago

That sounds majestic

ninkendo3• 7 months ago

For a counterexample, come visit Houten, NL (I live here and it's great) where you literally see kids around 10 years old biking independently

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.

mothballed4• 7 months ago

I see that in poor areas of the midwest. You need enough single working moms with no time to supervise their kids that it saturates the area with enough independent kids that a Karen can't damn all of them no matter how fast they call CPS. The other kids get jealous too so the whole dynamic changes.

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.

yesfitz6• 7 months ago

If you live anywhere like Houten[1] anywhere in the US, please tell me ASAP because I'll move there tomorrow.

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)

CalRobert6• 7 months ago

I lived in the US for thirty years. I’m American. I would be ECSTATIC if the US had one place like this. Best I can think of are maybe accidentally low car areas like Catalina island.

jfjfrjtjtitjmi• 7 months ago

Today, legal protections for minors are more expansive than they ever have been.

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).

renewiltord5• 7 months ago

In San Francisco, a coyote bit a child in Golden Gate Park. The animal rights idiots blamed the child for playing in the park and running in the bushes. Rightfully the coyote was destroyed but allowing the childless to vote is a disaster. They do weird things like this.

delichon2• 7 months ago

allowing the childless to vote is a disaster.

I've never met a Matriarchist before.

lordnacho• 7 months ago

Even in my lifetime, it seems like growing up has become increasingly a sort of highwire-walking. Especially in the educated segment that I find myself in, it seems like you HAVE to do certain things to grow up "successfully". When I was a kid, there were no expectations beyond getting a degree, and even that was a particular quirk in my father's thinking; my uncle did not make it a given for his kids.

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.

insane_dreamer9• 7 months ago

It's because the gap has widened between the "good paying jobs" and everything else (the "shit jobs"). The former has become more scarce which means you have to hustle more to get them or you're getting the later.

locallost• 7 months ago

One reason I think this is the case is because working with children, broadly teaching, pedagogy etc. is also something that needs to be learned. Parents in the past realistically did not have the time to spend so much time with their children. We have more time now, but lack the skills (in general) to do it effectively. What I see often is kids not really having the freedom to make mistakes and figure out things on their own. In my case I realized how bad I am at teaching during covid lockdowns and home schooling. The desire to help was there, but it's difficult to grasp the level the kids can understand. One solution for me was to say, work on it on your own, and try as best as you can. Doing it wrong is allowed and if you are really confused, ask me. But with a lot of parents, they run around their kids trying to help them do everything right from the beginning. I just don't think that can work.

elil17• 7 months ago

"No one in America today lives under the cloud of desperation that these children did."

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

Cthulhu_5• 7 months ago

Not to mentions calls to weaken child labour laws in certain states to try and make up the difference in abducted workers: https://www.epi.org/publication/child-labor-standards-state-...

zkmon• 7 months ago

As children (not even teens), we were allowed to roam the farms around the village and swim in any farm-well we like entire day in the hot sun. Jump from trees into the well, chase animals, walk barefoot in the in midday of 40 deg C of summer holidays. We used to get random thorns in the feet. The kid would pluck it out by surgical poking with steel pin in his own foot.

That's what I call as rich childhood.

HexPhantom5• 7 months ago

The tragedy is that we responded to the real dangers of the past by trying to eliminate all risk, and in doing so stripped away most of the texture that made childhood feel real

renewiltord5• 7 months ago

We did not try to eliminate all risk. That is a lie. We increased risk by allowing criminals to go on the street and then criminalized permitting your child to be a victim.

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.

IAmBroom2• 7 months ago

I mostly agree, as long as:

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.

insane_dreamer9• 7 months ago

we've replaced that with TikTok and Roblox and tell ourselves how much better society has become

dlisboa5• 7 months ago

The one thing this thread has shown me:

It's very easy to be a parent when you have no children.

HexPhantom5• 7 months ago

If you remove physical autonomy and replace it with algorithmic spaces optimized for engagement rather than growth, you shouldn't be surprised when teens struggle with agency, goals, or mental health...

hilbert42• 7 months ago

It's true that children in the first decade or so of the 20th Century considered work normal and not that unpleasant despite their often horrific work conditions.

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.

https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/nclc/

casey2• 7 months ago

富不过三代 Wealth does not last three generations.

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.

joncrane2• 7 months ago

I feel like there's a sweet spot of wealth that is generationally sustainable, which I would say is in the middle and upper-middle class brackets. Just like with any human activity, the amount of work required for the payoff has to be in the sweet spot. Too rich, and not enough work is required for the offspring to stay engaged enough to surmount the hurdles all human face. Too poor and the opportunities just aren't there.

dredmorbius4• 7 months ago

That may be the idiom, but evidence suggest otherwise.

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:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Son_Also_Rises_(book)>

elias_t2• 7 months ago

In 1950, there were 2.7 suicides per 100,000 15- to 19-year-olds. Today, there are 7.5 (though that’s down from a 1990s peak of 13.2).

Little typo, looking at the link it's 11.2 not 13.2. Someone knows why this peak?

jchallis• 7 months ago

One factor is definitely underreporting. Several “accidental deaths” in the 1950s were code for suicide.

elias_t2• 7 months ago

So before it was underreporting and after it was proper categorization? If that was the case we would have seen a more smooth curve before and after I think

HFguy• 7 months ago

“When my brother is fourteen, I’m going to get him a job here. Then, my mother says, we’ll take the baby out of the ‘Sylum for the Half Orphans.”

That is quite a quote. Hard to believe that wasn't long ago.

senordevnyc4• 7 months ago

I have a ten year old daughter in NYC, and I’m probably one of the types of parents who many here are castigating. I’m not ready for her to go out and explore the city on her own. Here’s what I worry about:

- 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.

insane_dreamer9• 7 months ago

I understand and worry about my kids the same age too. But the paradox I myself admit to is that those perceived dangers aren't new nor have they increased significantly since I was young in the 70s -- other than scooters being new -- and yet I, and pretty much every other kid, had tons of freedom and was just fine. So it's mostly about the fears in my head, not the reality on the ground.

senordevnyc4• 7 months ago

Yeah, but “I made it just fine” is poor logic to me. This would be true for kids who grew up with parents smoking, mom drinking while pregnant, no seatbelts, etc. They were mostly fine too.

renewiltord5• 7 months ago

I mean, realistically, you can tell who is going to do all those weird things. We decided that rampant criminality was fine on the streets. City life in America is about being collateral damage in the Democratic Party campaign to enrich their special interest through NGOs.

“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.”

Desafinado2• 7 months ago

Modernity has caused us to lose touch with our roots. When kids were a necessity in the household or farm they would naturally learn the skills they needed to thrive as adults.

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.

melagonster• 7 months ago

If patients are lawyers, doctors, or engineers, this system will still work for them.

ericmcer• 7 months ago

Modernity has also made life really fucking complicated. A 16 year old could walk to the factory, get some paper money and then do what they wanted with it.

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.

Desafinado2• 7 months ago

That's true, but the parenting part isn't actually that complicated, particularly at a young age when you're laying the foundation. Basically just stay out of the way and let your kids do stuff. Don't do anything for them that they can do for themselves. That way they learn problem solving skills and gain the confidence to follow through on things, so when they're 16 they are capable of navigating buying a car and getting a job.

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.

seydor• 7 months ago

i don't think they mind

How getting richer made teenagers less free

Related Stories