We've had many good discussions about risk over the years. Thought some of you might enjoy this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Risk and responsibility
(47 posts)-
Posted 11 years ago #
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Very interesting reading, I was largely left off the leash from about age 5 with about 10 other kids in the street, but then I lived in a dead end street with a big grassy area across the road from my house with bushes and trees to play in. The grass was patchy and gone at the "goal posts" and the bushes were all beaten and broken "gang huts". Now the grass has a trough down the middle where the dog walkers go and the bushes are well manicured.
The worst of it is folk with kids couldn't afford to live in that street now, there are only a couple now and I hardly ever see them.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Question- if ignoring your kids is the best way to bring them up, how come those kids grew up to be so anxious and paranoid about their own kids?
Posted 11 years ago # -
The Daily Mail
Posted 11 years ago # -
Interesting question.
Perhaps there's more than one generation between 'totally free' and 'totally paranoid'.
I was told about 'don't take sweets' before I was four. A man offered me some and I said no. It was probably innocent.
Much less traffic then, which is a real concern now - though I don't know how many parents rate 'stranger danger' above roads.
Certainly one man (Robert Black) managed to significantly increase parents' fears across the UK in the '80s - but death on the roads was much greater and (generally) less 'newsworthy'.
Posted 11 years ago # -
The article does given an account of this - albeit an American focussed one - showing how particular interventions and media attention transformed the environment and expected parental behaviour.
Posted 11 years ago # -
In other words bringing up your kids to be confident and fearless doesn't make a blind bit of difference when the right wing media will instantly reduce them to jelly. I am not sure it quite computes.
Posted 11 years ago # -
One can only try...
Posted 11 years ago # -
Min - I'm going to stick my neck out here and say this has lots to do with the results of capitalism/Thatcherism. There are several elements to this, in no particular order:
1. See all those lovely scrubby sites I played wild on as a kid - they are all gone, buried under houses, car parks, Tesco's and the like.
2. The rise and rise of the car has massively increased traffic, this means the roads are far more dangerous, neighbour interactions are reduced and that there is far less informal supervision of kids by adults who know them and just happened to be walking by on the way to the shops etc.
3. The rise of "safe" paid-for entertainment (soft play etc) that people can drive to.
4. The fracturing of communities - while kids might have been out of their parent's sight, they were rarely very far from someone who knew them, this is no longer often the case.
5. The requirement for both partners to work (whether they want to or not) to support a household means that kids are under formal care for far longer than previously.
6. Stranger danger is a factor, but perversely it also means that many adults (especially men) who might have kept an informal eye on kids playing on their own in years gone by are almost terrified to interact with them - for fear of what they may be branded.
7. The development of computers, consoles, mobiles etc mean kids either just don't want to do this sort of thing any more or their parents are happy for them to play with this as an alternative to letting them out.
8. The rise of individualism and a decline in communities taking collective responsibility for an area's children.I'm sure there are lots of other factors I haven't thought about as well.
Posted 11 years ago # -
9. The rise of the spectre of the hoodie: unsupervised children in a group playing on wasteland are more likely to be perceived as actively up to no good, perhaps making parents leery of allowing their children to be exposed to inclusion in such a grouping?
Posted 11 years ago # -
Morningsider, I think number 8 on your list is a huge and misunderstood issue. The atomisation of society is one of the worst things that has happened to us in recent decades.
My wife and I have had a few incidents where we've told off someone else's children, only for the child's parent to have a go at us for it later. It goes without saying that every time the child had definitely deserved it, and we were reasonable about it. My wife's a secondary school teacher so she spends substantial chuunks of every day scolding weans.
The thing that really speaks volumes about this is that the child felt able to tell their parent about it - when I was a kiddler I would never have told my mum if an adult had told me off, because the reaction would have been "why, what did you do?" Same as the kids we told off, I would have been in the wrong, and telling my mum would have led to a double punishment - one for the thing I did, and another for the embarrasment of needing a stranger to tell me off.
It may well be just be our experience, but we've noticed that the middle-class parents are much worse for this than the working class ones. We've had working-class parents come see us to apologise, and make their child apologise. But we've had a mouthful of threats and abuse down the phone from a parent who is a solicitor living in one of the biggest houses in the town.
She got told exactly where to go.
Everyone knows the "there's no such thing as society" quote, but the often forget the second half - "only families and the individual". We've fetishised the family to the point where they are to be treated as a sovereign unit - the children belong wholly and exclusively to the parent, and nobody else is entitled to an interest in the way they are brought up. The flip-side of this attitude is that you must not take anything to do with any child that's not your own.
When I was out roaming in the early 80s, my mum would have known that the vast majority of adults around would have looked out for me if something went wrong, and stopped me from getting into trouble. Can anyone say that now? The only intervention anyone seems to take these days is to call the police, which often only makes things worse.
A sense of community is one of those things that, once it's gone, you can never get it back.
Posted 11 years ago # -
@ Morningsider
Good list.
Posted 11 years ago # -
We've fetishised the family to the point where they are to be treated as a sovereign unit
Posted 11 years ago # -
@calmac Interesting points.
The other side of it is the empowerment of the individual, which is (in theory) a good thing for the down-trodden; however, it too often misses the point that you need to earn the respect that you demand. The current generation of graduates coming into work have become so empowered that they refuse to do tasks that are necessary but aren't interesting.
There must be a sensible middle ground somewhere, but no-one seems to have identified it.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Provocative list Morningsider!
There are still some communities and it produces interesting effects...
Perhaps rural environments are still more community focused and (having been brought up on a farm), my wild areas still exist. Unfortunately areas that my kids don't have easy access to except whilst on holiday.
Due to the church environment, our kids are used to unrelated adults as parental proxies. We didn't quite realise that this had been so internalised by them, until we visited the castle during an open day, and the children scattered - as far as they were concerned they were safe, and didn't feel the need to stay with or near us, because there were other adults around. We didn't share their lack of concern, and felt the need to retrieve them! (I suspect I'm of the free child/concerned parent generation!)
The scared men scenario is definitely real, and has been the case for a while. Before I was married (or a father), I had a toddler run past me on the pavement - they'd turned into their street and begun to run to their door. They tripped and fell over in front of me, and I felt inhibited in setting them back on their feet, even with their parent watching.
A male colleague related a similar experience, from his wife's perspective. She'd crossed the road with their child and a passerby asked "is that one yours too?" She turned to see a small child standing in the middle of the road and instinctively rescued them to the pavement. My colleague said that he would have felt unable to even intervene whilst the child was in obvious peril.
We've attempted to give the children their rites of passage (going round to the shops to get milk, etc) although these have had to be conscious steps rather than just something someone does.
Individualisation and the nuclear family definitely have a part to play in this discussion, although I'm not politically aware enough to have associated it with Thatcher.
Robert
(Who's off to equip the kids with knives and matches...)Posted 11 years ago # -
Although our church environment is very different to that which roibeard's kids experience, I have to agree at it is vital. In fact, while I am sure is would appal roibeard, this is actually one of the reasons we go to church - so that our kids, who interact with their grandparents infrequently and aunts/uncles even less often, would experience this sort of environment. And it does work that way - they have a whole network of three generations of people who look out for them in different ways - both giving them treats and cope ting them to behave.
Must admit, however, that whenever I do discipline other people's kids, I always find myself going and explaining to their parents. To their credit, they have never once expressed any outrage, but always thanked me.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Child abuse is spoken of more now. Incidence may be constant? Most abuse is by family or other older person known to the child.
We played in the street, then in the wider village, eg walking to the park which was quite far away and then going for longer walks in the countryside around the village.
In the city such activity is curtailed by traffic.
The phenomenon of sleepovers was unknown. We played all summer with out pals but we all went to our own houses to sleep.
It was also a lot sunnier
Posted 11 years ago # -
Roibeard - I see clear links between this issue and Thatcherism (not all directly linked to Mrs T herself). During the 1980's and early 90's the then Tory Government mounted an all out assault on collectivism in all its guises, key issues for me are:
1. The right to buy - housing tenure in Scotland fundamentally changed from around two thirds public sector to two thirds owner occupied in less than 20 years. This meant that the remaining public housing stock was generally the worst quality and let to those least able to afford an alternative. Effectively this destroyed many mixed tenure/social class communities, as those who could fled these areas and left behind a number of sink estates, which exist to this day.
2. Unions - the Tory Government set out to destroy the unions and, aided in part by a series of idiotic decisions by major unions themselves, did a pretty good job. Breaking the unions reduced collective bargaining and resulted in a steady slide in earnings for working class communities, which has now spread to middle class communities. When there is no collective bargaining then it's every man for himself - not really conducive to community building.
3. Privatisation - The break-up and sell off of collectively owned enterprises for knock down prices enriched the few, at the expense of the service provided to the many. The fundamental attack on the idea of collectively owned services, and the claim that the private sector is inherently superior to the public sector, continues to this day - think SERCO, G4S, Capita. Almost everyone is worse off because of this (apart from large shareholders in these companies). It is difficult to quantify, but knowing that you have no say, no control over any of these major services has diminished that feeling of all being in it together.
4. De-industrialisation - the wanton destruction of major nationalised industries (coal, steel, car production) laid waste to the economic engine of swathes of central Scotland and other areas of the UK. These communities were then effectively abandoned, people parked on Incapacity Benefit to reduce the unemployment figures. Depression, drug use, alcoholism and other ills have plagued many of these areas ever since. I'm not saying change wasn't needed - but many of these jobs and industries could have been saved, as happened in France, Germany and elsewhere during the 1980's.
6. The City - the flip side of de-industrialisation. The cult of money and greed for the few.
To me, this has resulted in a coarsening of society, a cutting of community connections and a retreat to the bunker of home and family. You are right, communities do still exist in some areas, including communities of interest. That is despite of what happened, not because of it.
I don't expect everyone to agree with me - that would be very boring. However, before people castigate parents for being "paranoid" - it is worth thinking how we arrived at this point.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I am not castigating anyone for being paranoid, I was questioning the validity of the article, something about which smelt like a load of old marsh gas to me. I can't quite put my finger on why but there have been a lot of good points so far.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Min - that comment wasn't directed at you. It was just a general point that many people (or at least media commentators) seem happy to harp on about running wild as children and then point the finger at today's parents for stifling their kids, without stepping back and thinking about how this might have came about.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Ah good, I know what I mean but I know I don't always express myself well. And I totally agree!
Posted 11 years ago # -
There is no doubt thatcher and Thatcherism to blame for the cult of the individual. The demise of the community has been around longer eg industrial revolution or highland clearances.
There was a feel good factor around the Olympics, wiggins, Andy Murray etc.
Out here in the sticks we go nuts for the village gala, weeks of floats and talent shows and closing streets off for barbecues. There is a kindness shared amongst the in group, two strong churches in competition .
Not sure when people you know and socialise with (because kids same age) becomes a community spirit? I have been out here thirteen years and can think of two couples only in a large group of disparAte people who have divorced. Other phenomenon noted at surprise birthday party on Sunday was distinct lack of bald men.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Everything's capitalism's fault. But unfortunately for that theory, capitalism has been around much longer than over-protected children. Actually, when capitalism has its way children are far from over-protected. They might be over-protected here but they're still making our clothes somewhere else.
I blame baby monitors. They condition parents to be too attentive to every sound their children make and to respond. Although baby monitors are only one aspect of what is probably a baby-boomer trend for parents to make children the suns around which their world orbits. We were allowed to run around making fires because, fundamentally our parents had better things to do with their time than chase after us, keeping us out of trouble.
So, for me, it's a combination of Robert Shaw's The Epidemic, Furedi's Culture of Fear and Michael Bywaters' Big Babies.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I'm not so sure about this right to buy theory. In general, where the right to buy didn't change single tenure social housing estates into single tenure owner-occupied estates (largely full of the same people), it actually created mixed tenure rather than destroyed it: areas formerly solely social rented became a mix of tenures.
You could go back a bit to the mass demolition of the inner cities and the creation of the new towns and the peripheral estates. "Regeneration" like GEAR. Now that destroyed communities (horrible, patriarchal, drunken, unhealthy and squalid communities but communities none the less that people like to reminisce about).
Posted 11 years ago # -
"it actually created mixed tenure rather than destroyed it: areas formerly solely social rented became a mix of tenures."
wasn't that the first stage, and then those folk sold up/their kids moved up/away and divisions emerged?
Posted 11 years ago # -
If the corporation scheme was nice, like the one I lived in many people bought, others held out on principle. There were no private landlords nor housing co-operatives. So right to buy did open a fissure that wasn't there before.
Many nice council houses sold to tenants who then passed to children who now sub let to people who like to keep sofas in their front gardens?
World has changed.
We did always lock our doors though. The myth of never locking your door is Inthink a reinterpretation of history.
The st kilda community is an interesting case study. Ex kibbutniks also have varying feelings about living on a commune.
Posted 11 years ago # -
It's always nice to have a bête noire, but I think Thatch gets more credit than she deserves. She's a figurehead for a time of change which was worldwide.
The world has changed. Communities still exist, but they are increasingly virtual, nationwide and international. People don't have to bother interacting with people with whom the only thing they have in common is that they live in relative proximity.
One excellent way of giving people a sense of community is to subject them to the same adversity. Former miners who used to do talks at schools in West Cumbria missed the sense of community but most of them sure as hell didn't miss gaan doon t'pit.
Nowadays there's more diversity. Common experience is less common.
Posted 11 years ago # -
"Common experience is less common"
On one level that started with BBC2.
It accelerated with satellite and several telly families.
I.e. less chance that 'everyone' had seen x the night before.
My kids walked to school (lots still do), which certainly gives a better experience/familiarity of 'the world' than being driven to the school gate.
Posted 11 years ago # -
"wasn't that the first stage, and then those folk sold up/their kids moved up/away and divisions emerged?"
I can't remember the research into right to buy resales so I'll need to substitute my vague recollections and re-rememberings. Buyers of former right to buy properties would, on the whole, be more like the existing social tenants. They would have low incomes (on the margins of buying, that's why they're buying ex-council houses), buying at full market value (rather than a 50-70% discount). Resales would, on the whole, reduce rather than accentuate those kinds of differences. But the other kinds of differences - age, aspiration, lifestyle and expectations of communal living - would have emerged regardless of right to buy as older tenants died and were replaced off the waiting list by younger, less community-oriented, social renters.
This is what happened around my parents - in their council house in Castlemilk for 50 years, from the day it was built. Their children grew and moved away, their neighbours grew old and died or were moved out to care homes and young people moved in. The young ones didn't clean the stairs, they played loud music, sometimes they were drug addicts, sometimes single parents, sometimes fine, sometimes disruptive, yadda yadda. It's the story of social housing. My mum had bought years before (she would be mad not to - 70% discount?). The change in tenure didn't change the area. Demolition, new build, under-supply, needs-based allocation and death changed it.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Sorry that I wasn't clear on the Right to Buy. In my view it did two things that did disrupt communities:
1. When the majority of Scots lived in council housing almost everyone had an interest in its upkeep and maintenance. This has changed - social housing is seen as a burden, no-one aspires to live in a council house. People that find themselves in council housing know they are at the bottom of the social heap, which only adds to the problems many of these people already have. What were one stable communities are now social dumping grounds.
2. For the first 20 or so years that the Right to Buy existed, Councils were explicitly banned from investing the proceeds of house sales in building new homes. Combine this with the fact that Councils were effectively prevented from borrowing to build new homes meant that years went by with no new public housing. Children moving on from their parent's homes had to buy or rent privately - often far from where they grew up due to the cost of housing. Again, resulting in the break-up of communities.
Insto - I agree that large council estates were obviously not mixed tenure, although I would argue that there used to be a reasonable class mix. What was surprising is that back in the 70's/80's that councils owned lots of individual flats/blocks of flats in city centres that you would not assume were council houses. I assume the councils owned these for many years, prior to the post war council estate building boom. Almost all of these have been bought - effectively removing the public element from the tenure mix, although I suppose the buy-to-let market is re-introducing some mix.
Posted 11 years ago #
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