Are children's lives supervised too much?

Sarah Bolton

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/learning/is-childhood-today-over-supervised.html

 

(Image from nytimes.com)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/learning/is-childhood-today-over-supervised.html

        Kids these days have no freedom. According to Derbyshire, “When George Thomas was eight, he walked everywhere. It was 1926 … he regularly walked six miles to his favorite fishing haunt without adult supervision”. 100 years ago children had so much freedom. They could almost do whatever and their parents wouldn’t really care. However, “Fast forward to 2007 and Mr Thomas’s eight-year-old great-grandson Edward enjoys none of that freedom”(Derbyshire). Kids today are trapped within their own homes under their parent’s supervision.

Part of this trend has to do with the car culture. 100 years ago, there were 6.5 million cars in the US (St. Onge). Today, there are over 103 million cars (Nealon). The more cars there are, the much higher risk of a small kid being run over. This fear causes parents to keep an eye on their children. If we were to lower the amount of cars, maybe kids could gain more freedom. Another, more plausible solution is to teach kids more about road safety, so that they know what best to do so they don’t get run over.

One resulting consequence of the eternal grounding of kids may be electronic use. Parents trap their kids in the house. Because they can’t explore outside, they explore somewhere else: the internet. They use the internet as an escape, to replace something that is their nature. Another parallel between the two is how the term ‘grounding’ most likely meant a punishment that would keep the punished in the house. Because kids are already always in the house, it has moved to mean taking away the modern way of escape and exploration: electronics.

IF (and big if) I ever had kids of my own, I would let them roam. I would learn the area around my house and teach them the basic survival skills (how to avoid cars, how to identify poison ivy if near a forest, etc.). Then I would let them roam. I would be nervous, sure, but I wouldn’t want them feeling cheated from their childhood because they were always stuck inside the house. I might also explore myself, not as a way to breathe down their necks, but just because it’s fun, and to make up for what I didn’t have as a kid.

Derbyshire, David. “How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Four Generations.” Daily Mail Online, Associated Newspapers, 15 June 2007, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html.  

St. Onge, Tim. “Paving the way: Traffic flow maps from the 1920s: Worlds revealed.” The Library of Congress, 18 August 2022, https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2022/08/paving-the-way-traffic-flow-maps-from-the-1920s/#:~:text=Automobiles%20began%20gradually%20appearing%20on,quickly%20overwhelming%20local%20road%20infrastructure.

          Nealon, Lizzie. “How many vehicles are there in the US.” Bankrate, 1 March 2023,     

          https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/car-ownership-statistics/