By the time I had my first child in the mid-80’s, the sense of community and shared oversight of kids I’d known as a child was evaporating. You couldn’t let your kid out to play freely in the neighborhood because there was literally no one around except transient strangers, hence no safety in numbers, no responsible eyes. There were almost no parents home during the day anymore. The few who were home didn’t let their kids out much and didn’t want to be responsible for other kids.
At the same time that this sense of a community safety net was dissolving, as others have said, we were bombarded more and more by the media with sensational scare stories. And maybe once the Cold War ended, it left a “fear void,” since we no longer lived with the dread fear of the Bomb. Maybe germs, kidnappers, and poisoners just help fill the void.
Once I started having kids, I realized that so much of our culture is negative for children–too much glamorized violence, sexualization of kids, materialism, unhealthy foods and lifestyles. Those were and are some of my boogeymen. But I also don’t let my youngest kids have the run of the neighborhood. The fear infected me, to some degree.
There’s also so much pressure in parenting to get everything perfect, maybe because we don’t have as much community and available family to share responsibility for our kids. So we go overboard trying to control for every imaginable issue. This is why you see little kids on tricycles, wearing helmets and knee pads. And parents hovering next to 10 year olds who mince around the playground smothered in Purell and sunscreen.
I wonder what kind of adults these kids will be, (even if they escape the other modern childrearing curses of inflated self-esteem and entitlement). Maybe not pioneers?
Think of parental worrying as the lottery in reverse. People buy lottery tickets for a small chance at a big windfall. It is stupid, but millions of people do it. Parents go overboard protecting their kids to prevent a small chance of the worst possible thing happening. Most know in the hearts it is stupid, but fear is a great motivator.
I was a germophobe before it ever became popular and trendy!
People thought I was nuts because of the hand washing.
Having family members with compromised immune systems will do that to you.
I carry hand sanitizer in my truck and purse. When kids come in, they get a squirt of it. No one complains and my kids are the only kids that haven’t been sick all year, tyvm.
The entire protect the kids from the BOOOOOGIE Man thing is beyond my scope of rational thinking, however. ( and I grew up in the Oakland Child County Killer height of paranoia, and my mom still let me walk to school by myself despite the fact these kidnappings happened less than a mile from our school. )
Our daughter attends school A. She has an afterschool function at School B
( where her brother attends and will be attending the same function.) School A and School B are about 150 yards apart and one road to cross. One lane each direction/ cross walk and 25mph. On a curve. The school advised me that she couldn’t walk over there after school because , and I quote "you never know what may happen. " I told them that on no uncertain terms was I driving 7 miles from my house so I could pick up my daughter and drive her over to the other school (which would take 20 minutes of sitting in traffic because of our roadway here and walking would be about the same amount of time) . but it was perfectly cromulent to let the kids who live in the village who walk that exact same way as my daughter WALK HOME EVERY DAY BY THEMSELVES.*’
