"I was the son of a single mother. During summers I would explore my neighborhood, visit friends' houses, walk to a pond to fish, ride my bike from our home in Bloomfield, N.J., to the abandoned lots of Newark, and jump it over curbs. I could be unsupervised from 10 in the morning until 8:30 at night, when the streetlights started coming on. If I was home with my grandmother, sometimes she would leave me alone to do grocery shopping."
From "Why are so many parents being arrested?/The communities that used to assist them are gone. So we call the cops instead."
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Same age. Same experience (though no grandmother). Different locale (Cal).
I learned responsibility and felt the kind of freedom that's almost entirely unknown these days, if only because every kid's got a cell phone.
This was a NJ urban boyhood. You don't want to know, but will no doubt hear anyway, what country kids did back in the day, and it's just hair-raising, I tell ya.
I remember one Halloween in my small Alabama town when I was 7 & Trick-or-Treating with only my 12 yr old brother. We stopped by one guy's house, and he opens the door & says "I'm finishing cutting up some homemade fudge. You boys come in & sit down & I'll have it done in a jiffy." We sat in the man's living room looking around for a few minutes. He came back with the fudge wrapped in saran wrap, which we put in our goody bags, said "Thank you" & disappeared into the night.
Did we get grief from our parents about this when we told them about it? Not at all.
Partial archetypes. The myth of the completely innocent child, as a grammatical reflex, produces a myth of infinite evil.
It used to be that children were at least partly responsible for what happened to them.
At age 5 I walked four blocks alone to kindergarten.
At age 8 I rode my bicycle, across a US highway, one mile to baseball practice.
Today's do-gooders are pussies, and the cops who play along with them are idiots.
What is interesting to me is the way my parents changed. My brother and I were out from sun up to sun down everyday in the summer. Sometimes we came home from lunch..if we did we usually had friends with us, sometimes i ate lunch at my friend's house. We palyed in dumps, swam in rivers, wandered around in the desert or the mangroves, even hitched rides.
My niece and nephew however.....my niece is going to be a junior in high school, and neither my parents or my brother is comfortable leaving her in charge. hell...my parents won't even leave their dogs alone for a night.
Althouse,
It seems as if your day has been positively negative. Hopefully, tomorrow will be yesterday.
When I was a kid, we'd get off the bus from school (had to cross a pasture that every other day had a herd of cattle with a mean bull) and we would grab our shotguns and go out into the woods until supper time. Ahh, the 4th grade.
The only time my parents ever freaked out about me being gone all day was one time when I rode bike about a dozen miles to a lake to go fishing all day on a weekend. The only reason they freaked out is because they couldn't find me.
According to David Sedaris, little boys should be spending their time doing worthwhile things like knitting curtains, making potpourri, and watching soap operas with their mothers.
Yep, aside from the fact that I had an intact family, that was pretty much my childhood as well. I grew up in a town with a river and I thank goodness had as much of a Tom Sawyer childhood as you could have in the '50s early '60s. Nothing makes me young again as to go barefoot.
I'd trust my kids alone before I trust my kids locked in public schools where principals keep inhalers under lock and key.
Like others here, I had run of the city (Raleigh, NC circa late 50's onward). On a typical summer day, after breakfast I tossed a bag lunch into my army surplus backpack, hopped on the bicycle, met my buddies for a day of adventure & was not expected back home til dinnertime.
My kids didn't quite get that amount of freedom, tho they did roam the neighborhood pretty much at will, because thankfully there were lots of like-minded kids with immigrant parents on our street.
Now it's the grandkids turn. We'll see what mischief they can get into, hopefully enough to shock their parents with childhood tales, once grown & free from parential retribution :)
Why do we sic the police on parents for doing things that we (that someone, anyhow) considers an unacceptable parenting practice? For the same reason we're the most litigious society on the planet.
Because we've systematically stripped individuals and communities of any authority to act when they see trouble EXCEPT for calling the cops or suing.
The kids are schooled not to accept assistance from any adult they do not know, so that is part of it too.
This was starting to develop in the 1990's when I lived in Winnetka. A young girl zooming down the sidewalk on her bike did not see me and ran into the side of my car, which was stopped (properly) waiting to turn out of the train station.
The impact dented my car, destroyed the front of her bike and threw her to the ground. She had a few scrapes but did not seem to be hurt.
There was nobody around and this being before cell phones I could not call the cops without leaving her, which I did not want to do.
So I offered to put her bike in the back of my car and drive her home. She was a little hesitant but really wanted to go home so she accepted. It was no more than a 3 minute drive to her house.
Her mother readily accepted my version of how the accident happened but gave her daughter a hard time for getting in the car with me. This in Winnetka, me in a business suit on my way home from work.
Surely it's gotten worse. Just as surely a lot of males would no longer put themselves in the position of being alone with a young boy or girl. That's not my approach if I see a kid who needs help but I understand the motivation.
I think the real problem is that as a society we have gone somewhat schizophrenic. We've come to permit "anything goes" in so many areas that there's a authoritarian, puritanical rebound. The fact that a "hook up culture" and a "rape culture" are said to coexist of certain college campuses is a good example.
Plus we often let the craziest among us set the standards.
Just a traditionalist's memory now, but the majority of Americans were Christians who attended strong patriarchal Churches which produced a protected place around them that was safe for booming families of the WWII veterans' kids.
Our WWII veteran fathers, whether they had fully gotten over their PTSD or not, would not permit bad men to get away with harming us.
I left a note for the kids today. Ages 12 and 10. Both girls. "It's a beautiful summer day. Go outside and explore. Enjoy freedom! "
They both said it was a great day.
Of course, the nanny was here, but they still got to he kids a bit.
I walked to kindergarten in Chicago. After the first day, when the nun punished me for something I don't recall, i decided to quit going.
My father was friends with people who owned a florist shop next to the school. I walked over there and helped the old uncle in the nursery until I heard the bell ring at noon. I walked home and my mother was never the wiser.
I was saved from exposure (literally) when my parents moved to a new house a few blocks away. That was in November. I don't know what I would have done once winter came.
I finally told my mother about it 40 years later.
Extensive use of spent, bright-red Winchester 12 gauge shells helped me pass my 8th grade science project. I also shot .22LR rounds at age 12 in the same Middle School classrooms to earn my Hunter's Safety permit.
Good times.
At the age of four, I tried to hitchhike from Detroit to Canada. Nobody would give me a ride.
At the age of six, I walked a mile to school in the deep snows of northern Wisconsin.
At the age of eight, I roamed the streets of Manhattan without adult supervision.
At the age of nine, an FBI agent taught me how to shoot a handgun.
When I turned eleven, my parents gave me a shotgun for my birthday.
I was in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. Afterward, I was operations manager at an African wildlife preserve. Later, I sold defense products to militaries in developing and undeveloped countries. As an adult I never had a problem on the mean streets, back roads, or in the dark alleys of the world because I had learned how to survive in every kind of environment when I was a kid.
Rural VT here. Come summer and a good bike I'd be miles away from home. The only inviolable commandment was to be home in time for dinner (6:15PM on the dot).
There were many abandoned slate quarries in the area with about 200' of water depth. Guess where I spent my summer days.
My mother used to write a note to the local grocery store reading something like "Dear Such and Such Market. Please allow my son, Will, to buy two packs of Kents. Thank You."
I would ride my bike to the store and buy the cigarettes and maybe a candy bar, then ride home and give my mother her smokes and eat my candy bar. It seemed like a win-win situation.
I guess nowadays my mom would be in the clink and I would be a ward of the state.
Yet look at the accomodation of parents who put their children in the hands of Mexican cartels.
HA! Michael K, you ditched kindergarten for 3 months? Did you wind up going to a new school when your parents moved?
Will, I too, was sent to the store for my mom's cigarettes.
Didn't need a note though. Nobody gave it a second thought. Nine year olds didn't smoke. That usually started in jr. high and then in highschool, students had a designated smokers hall. City public.
LOL, I don't know what happened to America, but I remember having complete roam of the small city I grew up in, and its outskirts, and the woods and hills surrounding it, to include rivers, ponds, swamps, railroad bridges, etc etc etc. I remember one time coming home with a sprained ankle after jumping off a railroad bridge into a creek and my mother said, "it is a good thing you got it right into the cold water."
The only time I ever got yelled at for it was when I missed my afternoon paper route and my brother had to do it.
Now I have raise two cossetted daughters, I don't know how it happened.
Oh yeah, my favorite part was that if we wanted a snack, we simply hunted up some deposit bottles in hedges and ditches until we had enough money for a little candy.
My kids get jealous when I tell them stories like this. They want the freedom and independence.
One important purpose of blogs is to provide perspective and help us see past the daily onslaught of trivial information. This article and the article about the messy mother Mel are useful in that regard.
I suspect Althouse is a Drudge fan for the same reason. Drudge's aggregation of articles is purposeful and provides view points buried by the mainstream media. His "flashbacks" remind us of our short memories and of the hypocrisy of our political leaders.
That's a great way of putting it. "My childhood has become illegal" captures what so many middle-aged people feel when we read these outrageous stories of parents getting in legal trouble for letting their kids engage in activities that were once normal.
And the most stunning thing to me is that all these petty tyrants and concern trolls who harass and judge the parents are judging them for letting their kids do things they themselves did as kids.
I agree with the article that part of the problem is that people don't know their neighbors, don't trust them and their kids are not known to them.
Everybody on the block new all the kids. Even the ones elderly/kids grown new "that's the Dee's kid." When I got invited into someone's pool, I just ran through the house shouting "going to Steven's pool!" while I changed into my swim suit.
When I was 9 and my mom was at school until 4:30pm, so I was home alone, I new the neighbors to call if something happened. Once my afterschool toast went on fire in the toaster and I pulled the plug and called the neighbor - over in a flash.
I could also be scolded by other adults and my parent's would never say, "Don't talk to my kid that way!" even in their presence. I remember I said "shut up" which was a no-no in a neighbors house (not mine). My mom was right there and her friend scolded me and asked if I wanted hot pepper on my tongue, because that's what happens in her house for bad words. I said I won't do it again, nothing happened, but my mom respected this was her friends house and her friends rules.
"..I could be unsupervised from 10 in the morning until 8:30 at night, when the streetlights started coming on..."
Horsefeathers! He stuck his head back in his house at least five times yelling "Mom, I'm hungry."
That's how she knew he was alive and well.
...watching soap operas with their mothers.
"A boy's best friend is his mother."
I haven't seen a pick-up game - of anything - since I was in one,....
Just as surely a lot of males would no longer put themselves in the position of being alone with a young boy or girl.
This is something I really worry about. I'm not sure what I would do if a child got into a (relatively minor) tight spot and I was the only one to help. Whatever I would do it would be extremely minimal.
Which contrasts slightly with my experience in Nairobi earlier this year. A little girl was looking forlornly at me from the gate of the compound I was staying in, and when I waved she came dashing over and said she couldn't find her mom. So we held hands and went out and looked for her mom and finally found some people who knew her. Apparently, it's not all that uncommon for kids in Nairobi to get separated from their parents and never find them again. Not necessarily through nefarious means, they just never find their way back. My sponsor's wife had a sibling that got lost and they never found them again.
But yeah, as an older-than-30 male I tend to keep my distance from children.
It helps that I don't particularly like them anyway, but that's neither here nor there.
I hate all this busy body nanny state stuff. On Mondays, when I was 9 or 10, I would go out after school or in the summer and play until I got home. Inevitably, I would have missed dinner, be grounded until the next Monday and do it all over again. Good times.
Add me to the list. As a child of the 70's and 80's, the rule on Sun-Thu was "be home at dark" (because it was school the next day -- we got dispensation during winter because it got dark so early and so could stay out until 7). On Fri-Sat it was "be home for dinner" (at 7) and then we could go back out to "be home at 10". No one cared, and all the neighbors knew all the kids and kept an eye out. No one complained when we climbed to the tops of trees (one kid broke his arm falling twenty feet through branches) and the only people who complained when we climbed on the boxcars parked in the rail yard were the maintenance guys who worked there. It was marvelous -- that's how to be young.
This was before 24 hour news and the (false) impression the media gives that a John Wayne Gacy lurks on every block.
The OP is correct: these days my childhood would be illegal.
It is, of course, easier to keep your children on a leash than to teach them to behave responsibly when on their own. Then when the kids are grown the parents can just hand their end of the leash over to the State. Works for everyone, unless you think we should be raising autonomous citizens.
What's funny to me is that my own mother, who left me to myself all the time, won't let her grandchild out of her sight. It's not a generational change, but a societal one. The exact same people treat children differently.
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