I was interpreting the “good old days” in the OP as being the 1920s-60s.
My great-grandmother abandoned her husband in 1917; she went back to him when she realized that under the Spanish laws of the time she was a legal imbecile: she couldn’t enter contracts without her husband’s permission, couldn’t rent a flat, couldn’t get a job without her husband’s signature. So she negotiated “I’ll keep you fed and housed, you sign anything I give you to sign, we stay out of each other’s way.” And this was a woman who was in love with her man until the day she died (she wasn’t interested in paying for him to run around with his bohemian friends, though).
We marry later then we did before, and have fewer children. Does that mean we are more overprotective of our kids then before, because we have to be?
You’re being pretty vague about what you mean by the “good old days,” Askance. Here’s the real story about what has happened with the divorce rate in the U.S.: The divorce rate slowly rose from the late nineteenth century till the late 1940’s. What happened during that time was that divorce became at least possible and workable, if not particularly easy. It slowly became at least possible to get out of the truly messed-up marriages. Then for about a decade the divorce rate slowly dropped again. Then in 1958 the divorce rate began climbing quickly. This was mostly because the divorce laws were simplified to the extent that it was no longer a difficult job to get a divorce. This climb only continued to 1979, when the divorce rate peaked. So the period of rapid climb lasted only for twenty-one years. After that point the divorce rate has been slowly dropping. That drop has lasted for the past thirty years now.
Here’s the only chart I can find, and it only gives the years 1950 to 1997:
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/vanneman/socy441/trends/divorce.html
So what’s happened is that the divorce rate rose consistently from the late nineteenth century to 1979, except for a period of at most a decade from the late 1940’s to 1958. Arguably most of this change just happened because the divorce laws gradually changed to make divorces easier. Any “good old days” were simply times where divorce was hard to get.
They were around, but so were parents. When I was coming up in the 50’s, there’d be just as many parents in the park as children. The parents sat on the benches and talked while the children played. Playgrounds tended to be small, and embedded within the neighborhood, not placed out on the fringes as they tend to be today.
Neighborhoods were generally closer knit. Everyone knew who the neighborhood weirdos were and warned their children away. Plus, everyone paid very close attention to those weirdos. Some were beat up on a regular basis to keep them in line and the really dangerous ones would occasionally quietly disappear. Kids usually stayed with other kids and in very close proximity to their homes. Dinnertime was the end of a child’s outside play for the day, except in summer when parents usually accompanied their kids outside. No air-conditioning made being outside more attractive while the house cooled off from the heat of dinner preparation.
News didn’t travel as fast as it does today, and news of crime, drugs, child abuse and violence emanating from lower socio-economic neighborhoods wasn’t deemed important enough to report. In the upper echalons of society, the means were available to keep their business private. Plus, there were classes of crimes that were not openly reported in the news as they are today, especially crimes against children and domestic violence. Rape, of course, was the fault of the victim.
Husbands generally were not reported and arrested for domestic crimes or even child molestation, as an incarcerated husband could not support his family, leaving his wife vulnerable to eviction and pauperhood and the children being taken by Child Protective Services. Thus, women banded together to protect, as well as protect against, an abuser or child molester for the sake of his family.
The women were in tight control of the neighborhood and its inhabitants. They knew everything there was to know. The law was very rarely brought into matters. Husbands were very rarely brought into matters. Telling the husband that Mr. Smith touched your daughter was likely to lead to Mr. Smith being dead and your husband in jail.
Knowing who your neighbors are helps to identify strangers. I grew up in a 14-story building with 10 apartments on each floor, and I think my mother knew every tenant, what apartment they lived in and how many kids they had. A new face? The talk on the bench did not cease until it was figured out what apartment the new face belonged to. It usually wasn’t too hard because someone knew who had moved out! Moving wasn’t a common occurrence.
My dad would occasionally “get stupid” and go on a drinking binge or find himself a girlfriend. If my mom called his boss looking for him, the inevitable questions would ensue (has he been home? do you have money?), and ultimately, my mom would be told to come to the office and pick up his check! Of course, timing was important…you had to call the day before payday! It only takes a time or two for your boss to tell you that he gave your entire check to your wife to straighten your ass out! I can’t imagine this being an isolated scenario, so a man quickly learned to take care of his family before having his fun. Can you imagine an employer doing that today?!
Cullain said:
It’s possible, but I don’t think that’s really a significant factor. I think it’s the reverse of the justifications people would tell themselves to cope with the realities of infant mortality and childhood diseases.
Medical science has adjusted our expectations on childhood survival. Our expectations are set much higher. Couple that with a cultural shift in general about safety and liability. Look at legal warnings on products that look like anti-stupid clauses. Think about OSHA and workplace safety and the shift that has occured in the last 20 years with respect to workplace expectations. I don’t know about anybody else, but safety is a number 1 issue at my workplace, with campaigns for awareness and incident reporting and forms for conducting daily work safely.
Then look at the trend of “helicopter parents”.
I think we’ve just culturally entered a phase of more awareness and concern for safety and protection, and it spills over into every aspect of life. So of course that means parents are more protective and concerned, or at least more actively engaged in protectiveness.
I agree with everything except this, Cillasi:
> Kids usually stayed with other kids and in very close proximity to their homes.
It was, I’m pretty sure, more common for kids to bicycle long distances during the day. Riding your bicycle a couple of miles to do something (along with friends) and coming back that afternoon was more common. I believe that it was also more common to walk a few blocks in cities (along with friends) and come back that afternoon. It was probably more common for kids to take the subway with friends for an afternoon in those cities with subways.
YES! I think that’s a HUGE factor.
There’s normal parenting…and then there’s helicopter parenting with the parent wanting to make sure their kids suceed at everything, and that they need to avoid EVERY and anything that might mess up being an overacheiver.
Helicopter parents have to make sure that EVERY and ANY free moment is filled to the brim with formal learning…gotta make sure that wittle Smashlie goes to Name Brand College you know!
In Detroit in the 60s and 70s, we went on the bus to Tiger Stadium to watch baseball games. We went out after breakfast and played until dark.
We were aware of weirdos and were told not to talk to strangers. But news was not covering and sensationalizing every incident. Nancy Grace does nothing but talk about crimes every day. We have cop and CSI shows every night solving lurid crimes in 60 minutes, minus commercials. We have yellow alerts if a kid is missing for a few minutes. Usually it is a parent not taking them back to the divorced parent in time. The culprit is TV news .
Same here, but of a (slightly) more recent era. We did this in Chicago in the late 80s. I’ve been going downtown on the bus with my friends since I was in about 6th grade. Sox games, Cubs games, just to walk around downtown, etc. For fun, back in the days of the Super Transfer, (a bus ticket you could buy on Sundays for a buck fifty giving you unlimited use of the buses and elevated trains in the CTA), I used to just travel around town for the hell of it. And while I wouldn’t call my parents over-protective, they certainly weren’t laissez-faire, either.
'80s kid. During the summer, I’d frequently walk or ride my bike to and from the library, which was just over a mile away. I’d also go walking or biking in the nearest large park by myself or with friends, or play in the block-square pocket park that was even closer. Usually my little brother and I would be picked up after school, but it was not unknown for the two of us to ride the public bus home about three miles.
It doesn’t stop once they get in to college. My mother (who works in the advising center of the largest college of a pretty good university) regularly regales me with tales of parents who keep trying to do everything on behalf of their (now adult, college-attending) children. More often than not, they’re calling to whine about why their precious flower should be extended some special consideration after not following guidelines that apply to everyone else (Mommy and Daddy can’t do your homework for you or escort you to your classes when you’re living in another city, apparently).