# What is the actual origin of today's overprotective parents/society with respect to kids?? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 20, 2015, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004 "2015-06-20T10:31:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2015, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/21 "2015-06-21T05:17:25Z")
I don’t think it’s the latter at all. Maybe it’s because I live in a warm climate, but when I see a kid alone in a car, I think “death by heatstroke”; “kidnapping” doesn’t occur to me. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2015, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/22 "2015-06-21T05:38:34Z")
I credit over-developed competitiveness. “My kids going to be GREAT!” (Thank you, Tony Tiger) “I am going to personally guarantee every second of the kid’s life is _Structured_”. With that mindset, feeding the kid breakfast and let him run until he stops by for the requisite PB&J sandwich, then out again until dark or called is unthinkable. The scary part is how the rest of the culture has now come to view a child further than 10’ from a parent is in critical danger. If anybody tried to raise a free-range child now, they’d be arrested for “Child Endangerment”. And that unbuildable lot kids played on for 4 generations is now enclosed with chain-link and barbed wire. Good thing newspapers are dying - I was 13 when I started my paper route, which took me a mile from home. And collecting meant actually knocking on every door on the route! And sometimes stepping inside! Horrors! ---
**Author:** ![LinusK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@LinusK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LinusK)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2015, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/23 "2015-06-21T07:39:46Z")
I agree with what others have said: the process of becoming more and more protective of kids didn’t start in the 70’s. It’s started long before that. It’s an on-going thing. Having said that, I was a free-range kid in the 70’s: in the summer we left the house after breakfast, and aside from quick trips for water and food, we did whatever we wanted until the sun went down. No adults, anywhere. We hurt ourselves, of course, but that didn’t change the rules. I think the parents were just glad not to have us underfoot all day long. As far as today is concerned, I think it’s mostly peer pressure, combined with more in-door entertainment, and a lower birth-rate. There’s no one at all in our neighborhood for my daughter to play with, much less the 6+ gang I grew up with. And she’s one of one. I was one of six. Plus, she doesn’t really want to go out. She’d rather play with us, or, as a last resort, watch TV. When I was coming up, TV was Saturday morning only. (And it was way worse than what’s on TV now.) Plus, our parents never played with us. That’s just not what adults did back then. Finally, parents want to be good parents. And letting your kid play outside unattended - today - would get you kicked off the “good parent” list permanently. ---
**Author:** ![Arrogance\_Ex\_Machina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/arrogance_ex_machina/32/192_2.png) [@Arrogance\_Ex\_Machina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arrogance_Ex_Machina)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2015, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/24 "2015-06-21T08:06:03Z")
I read an article about the dangers of a summer cottage trip in the 50s and now a while ago and among all the other stuff it mentioned that the chance for a kid to die violently or in an accident is roughly 5% now compared to what it was back then. I’m in Finland so the raw numbers were “only” 390 dead kids vs 20 dead kids. I’d imagine the progress has been similar in all Western countries. So … even if you survived, it doesn’t mean it was all that safe back then. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2015, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/25 "2015-06-21T09:38:20Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > The car part is the only part that I think is based more on rational risk analysis and changing technology… Oh yeah, that reminds me of another one - I totally thought the next thing in your post was going to be “traffic”. There’s way more cars on the roads these days, making it a lot less safe for your kids to walk to school if they’re going to cross any roads whatsoever. When my kids started school, our walking route took us over a three-lane road a hundred metres or so before the start of a freeway, and I quite often saw people doing extremely dumb and dangerous things in the “not obeying red lights/not looking properly for pedestrians when turning” line. If all 5’10" of me wasn’t obvious enough to stop people turning into me, no way would I have let a bunch of primary school kids, however responsible, do the trip without me. (We now live elsewhere - longer trip in, but much safer, and the older kids can get back without me) This was validated a couple of years ago when a classmate’s parent was run over crossing that very same intersection. He’s not properly recovered yet. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2015, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/26 "2015-06-21T12:29:55Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > When kids were working 12-hour days at textile factories and in the cotton fields, they were treated like miniature adults. Even in my parents’ day, lots of children were expected to pull their weight–especially farmer’s kids. Not to save up for a shiny red bicycle, but to support the household. You can’t baby someone while simultaneously benefiting from their labor. > > So I think the concept of childhood fragility and innocence has received a lot of attention over the past few decades simply because we can better afford to treat children as fragile and innocent. And with psychology and social science, we’ve learned what happens when childhood fragility is not fully appreciated. You get adult dysfunction. We know now that adult dysfunction isn’t caused by demonic spirits or character defects. It’s oftentimes caused by childhood trauma. Smacking a kid around used to be seen as harmless. We don’t assume that kind of stuff is harmless anymore. And I think this is a good thing. Nice. Well stated and observed. Humans will always be frail. The question is how will that Human Frailty manifest? As we connect via media, and find like-minded communities on the internet, a huge spotlight is being shown on risks and injustices. Excellent. But just because we can reduce some risks, doesn’t mean there won’t be other risks assciated with being able to afford a Fragile and Innocent Childhood. There’s always Frailty. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2015, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/27 "2015-06-21T15:17:38Z")
I see kids playing outside unattended all the time, both where I live in small-town Mississippi and in my parents’ much more urban and upscale neighborhood. I’m not really convinced that the rules have changed as much as people think. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2015, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/28 "2015-06-21T16:10:32Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > When kids were working 12-hour days at textile factories and in the cotton fields, they were treated like miniature adults. Even in my parents’ day, lots of children were expected to pull their weight–especially farmer’s kids. Not to save up for a shiny red bicycle, but to support the household. You can’t baby someone while simultaneously benefiting from their labor. > > So I think the concept of childhood fragility and innocence has received a lot of attention over the past few decades simply because we can better afford to treat children as fragile and innocent. And with psychology and social science, we’ve learned what happens when childhood fragility is not fully appreciated. You get adult dysfunction. We know now that adult dysfunction isn’t caused by demonic spirits or character defects. It’s oftentimes caused by childhood trauma. Smacking a kid around used to be seen as harmless. We don’t assume that kind of stuff is harmless anymore. And I think this is a good thing. I agree children should be protected and should not be treated like little adults (I’m not sure any rational person wouldn’t agree) but I also believe the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. You can expose children to life and independence of a sort without a great deal of risk to their safety. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2015, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/29 "2015-06-21T23:31:41Z")
When I was a kid, in the '40s, I would come home from school by myself (crossing US 1 on the way, although there was a traffic light), throw my school bag into the living room and go out and play until dark or dinner time, whichever came first. Summers, I would spend most of the day outside playing, coming home for lunch and dinner. When my kids were growing up in the '70s, it was largely similar. Except they often played indoors, for some reason. Summers, a lot of families lived in summer cottages and there was less opportunity for play. In the early '80s one mother drove her kid to and from school every day. The school committee was a little unhappy about that, but there was nothing we could do. Now, you cannot drive by the school at the beginning and end of the school day, for all the cars taking kids to and from school and kids are not allowed to come home for lunch. My grandchildren were in easy walking distance from school, but were almost always driven (or occasionally walked to school), even as teenagers, until they could drive themselves (the HS is a bit further than the elementary school, but not that much). But also their days are heavily scheduled. Soccer, baseball, acting, music lessons,… Reasons for this? I guess it is fear. Why haven’t we revolted against all the surveillance we are subject to? Fear. ---
**Author:** ![delphica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9a140/32.png) [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2015, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/30 "2015-06-22T02:13:42Z")
My personal belief was already mentioned, the 24 hour news cycle. This is my vote for the most significant reason. I also think family size has something to do with it – not that people with many children _care about_ each individual kid less, but it’s a lot more challenging to helicopter five kids at the same time, and the older kids in the family might be given more responsibilities at an earlier age than now. Based on my own 1970s childhood, another factor that strikes me as different now is the transition of the American neighborhood. I grew up on a street where my parents knew everyone by name, and they certainly knew all the kids and who they belonged to. Several adults on my street had gone to grammar school and high school with my parents. Even though I had the impression at the time that I was blissfully unsupervised when roaming the neighborhood with my pack of little friends, I think there was a bit of an “eyes out” collective mentality going on about major dangers. Another weird point, related to the above, is that when I was a kid, this is in the northeast, it was extremely rare for houses to be air conditioned. You would have to be really rich to have air conditioning, which my neighborhood definitely was not. So during all those summers, which I remember as being unsupervised, there were a ton of adults out on porches or sitting by windows. Of course this is all very specific to geographic location – my mom’s neighborhood is still a lot more like this, and when we are there, my kid gets even more latitude than we are able to enjoy at home. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2015, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/31 "2015-06-22T07:28:42Z")
Yeah, well, “I was raised that way, and I turned out just fine” is what Adrian Peterson said… Snarky, yes, but as other posts have brought up, I can’t help but wonder if a few of the examples of all the wonderful freedoms kids of the past had (being able to be left alone in a car for hours, having parents turn their kids out of the house and have everyone be satisfied not interacting with each other all day) are all totally good things. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2015, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/32 "2015-06-22T10:01:13Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > I don’t need to link to the stories of parents getting arrested for leaving their kids in the car or out in the yard for a little bit. That shit’s crazy. > > But I’m curious _why_ society got to be this way? I have a theory I’ll reveal below. > > I was born in 1971. It’s universally observed that parents kinda didn’t give a shit about safety when we were growing up. But it’s an odd mix at the same time. We definitely grew up with PSAs on TV about “stranger danger,” and there were other ones about safety in the home and whatnot. > > Moreover, it’s not as though people were unaware of danger. Every Halloween we got the “have parents check your candy” BS on TV. My family moved from Indy to Glenview, IL, in 1978, and John Wayne Gacy had just been caught for killing a bunch of young people. For that matter, four young employees of a Burger Chef were murdered in Indy in the same year IIRC. Nevertheless, here was my reality as a kid: > > • My mom would regularly leave my sister and me in the car “for a few minutes” when running errands around town. I would never think of doing that with my 9-year-old now. > > • We never wore seat belts until my dad almost died in a wreck in 1981 (he wasn’t wearing his and was thrown from the car). Of course we all wear seat belts now. I think this change can be ignored, since it really is due to greater knowledge of a genuine safety concern. > > • I remember when the Twix bar was introduced in 1979. There was a coupon for a free one in the paper. I walked by myself (with my parents’ knowledge) as an 8-year-old through Glenview (a pretty urban suburb of Chicago) to the Dominick’s and claimed my Twix. I wouldn’t let my kid do that now, and I don’t think she’d be comfortable doing it, either. I thought nothing of it at the time. > > • OK, this one is crazy. Halloween, 1979. A kid from school and I just kinda wandered all over Glenview, getting a mountain of candy. Two 8-year-olds totally unobserved, wandering around out late. > > • For that matter, my sister and I walked to school in Glenview starting in 1979. It was probably about a 20-minute walk from our house. > > • We moved to Crown Point, IN, in 1980, in a big sprawling neighborhood that was basically houses in the woods in the countryside. This led to a Tom Sawyer-ish existence, in which we would play in creeks and the woods, ride horses on the farmer’s neighboring property, build tree forts, crawl through culverts, um, play with fireworks and gunpowder, build fires, etc. You know, the classic “be home in time for dinner” followed by “come in after dark” level of supervision, which is to say, basically none. > > I’ll also tell a friend’s story of pure negligence. He came from a family of seven kids, and his parents had them all tucked into a hotel room and then went out with other adult friends, leaving the kids to sleep by themselves! > > * * * > > So, society has clearly changed. I would never think of applying the above safety “standards” to my daughter, and I’m not some huge helicopter parent, either. I’m not particularly frightened of a stranger carrying her off–that’s pretty rare, all told. And yet… I do feel a duty to make sure she’s safe. > > So what’s the reason for the change? Here’s my theory. We were raised Catholic. My parents really believed in it. And everyone I knew had a religion. And I think parents just really believed that God was looking after their kids. Things would be OK, since that’s how life is: things mostly turn out OK. > > And I think that, on the whole, we’ve lost our faith in such God-granted safety. I’m a New Ager, and I even think we do receive a certain type of protection from various sources. But I don’t have that easygoing “Jesus won’t let anything bad happen” type of naivete that my parents and society in general seemed to have back then. > > The funny thing is that parents of the time were right 99.9% of the time: they let us kids run wild, and mostly we survived. Even having lived through it myself and knowing that fact, nope, I wouldn’t give my daughter that level of freedom, and she doesn’t want it (nor do kids in general these days). > > Those are my observations and speculations. Although I have that theory, it’s not something I’m particularly confident about. I eagerly await your own observations and thoughts! Some of this, at least, is that you are very protective of your child/children, and are assuming that everyone is the same. For example, I don’t think most people would have problems with leaving a nine-year-old in a car for a few minutes while you run errands, as long as it really is a few minutes, heck, maybe twenty minutes depending on your kid and your location. The nine-year old can take off their own seatbelt, open the windows, operate the door lock, call for help using a mobile phone, etc, and is old enough to have learnt not to push down on the accelerator, etc. Leaving them in a car briefly would not be a big deal for most people. I don’t think parents, even good parents, are always as overprotective as you seem to assume. Otherwise, mainly it’s down to two reasons: 1. More only children - it’s natural to be more protective of your child if that’s the only child you have, and also you can’t ask older children to look after them. You are also less likely to have older neices or nephews to keep an eye out for them, partly because your siblings are more likely to have only children and partly because… 2. There’s less community oversight by way of extended families nearby, lots of stay-at-home moms, older kids around outside school time, etc. People you could expect to keep an eye on your kids because you’d do the same for them. They would if they could - people haven’t got meaner - it’s just that they’re either not there because they’re working or they don’t know it’s your kid, so don’t know he shoudn’t be walking along with that strange dog or whatever. I’ve lived in very poor communities (in England) where there were a lot of parents around and everyone did know each other, and we did keep an eye out for the kids who weren’t ours. We also didn’t have gardens and our homes were small so it was expected that kids would play out. We propped our flat doors open at the weekend so that the kids could roam from flat to flat or, with one of us overseeing, taking it in turns, out in the car park that had very few cars. The kids all went to the same school because nobody could seek out private schools or whatever. That’s one of the few advantages of living in that sort of neighbourhood. It’s not that those very poor people are better people or anything, just that they are physically there and they know the kids. If you and your neighbours all work long hours, and move house every few years, this just won’t happen. If your home is far from the nearest home with kids because you have an enormous yard and your neighbours are eldery or middle-aged people without children, then having your kids basically share homes at the weekends just won’t happen. Nobody is bad or wrong, but the situation has changed. And so you need to keep a closer eye on your kids because no-one else will and you get into that habit and everyone expects it of you. ---
**Author:** ![kiz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7feea3/32.png) [@kiz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kiz)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2015, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/33 "2015-06-22T11:17:45Z")
Things must be doing a 360-degree turn in my neighborhood: After years of seeing no children out by themselves, even at our park, there are now little packs of them everywhere. There was one group playing our neighborhood’s version of stickball the other night. We regularly run into a group of girls while walking our dogs who sing on different corners. Our back neighbor’s kids (ages 5-8) are regularly over at their friends’ house up the street. There’s a slightly older group which plays basketball after dinner every night. I live just over the city line, FWIW. There are SAHM here, of course, but there’s a good many of them who work FT outside the home too. I don’t know any of them well enough to ask what their childcare setup is, but I do see different SAHMs watchng over certain groups of kids or maybe an older sibling doing the same. Sometimes there’s a SAHF too. Seeing/hearing those kids, especially now on warm early summer nights, brings a smile to my face. It’s what we did growing up in the 60s in a neighborhood remarkably similar to **delphica** ’s upthread. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2015, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/34 "2015-06-22T11:52:33Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > So what’s the reason for the change? Here’s my theory. We were raised Catholic. My parents really believed in it. And everyone I knew had a religion. And I think parents just really believed that God was looking after their kids. Things would be OK, since that’s how life is: things mostly turn out OK. No to the religion angle. Firstly almost no one actually believes in that religious crap when it comes down to it. Show me a parent who actually believes their child is in danger yet does nothing because they think their deity will take care of it and I’ll show you a parent with mental issues. Secondly my childhood was like yours. Australia isn’t very religious and the modern middle class adults who were my parents - and who were my neighbours growing up - were pretty much totally secular, yet we kids were highly free range. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2015, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/35 "2015-06-22T15:12:32Z")
Society actually became alot more dangerous from 1960 to 1992. In [1960](http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm) there were 288,460 violent crimes in the US. In 1992 there were 1,932,270 violent crimes. That is a 569% rise in just 32 years. Population rose at the time so the rate increase was not as much, but still the rate for most crimes tripled during that time. Diversity made people feel alot more insecure. Increased immigration and decreased segregation made many neigborhoods alot more diverse. [People](http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/?page=full) who live in diverse neighborhoods are less likely to trust other people and engage with society and more likely to hunker down in their homes. Families are getting smaller. In [1980](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/wellness/story/2011/05/Does-size-matter-For-todays-families-it-does/46858842/1) over half of women had 3 or more kids and now a little over a quarter do. Fewer kids means more time to hover over each, and more emotion investment in each. More women working. If most women more stay at home moms, you could feel better sending your kids out because there was a woman in the neighborhood likely to be nearby to render assistance or be on the lookout for strangers. If all the houses are empty during the day then you don’t have the network of eyes looking out for your kids. Less housework. Parents today have lots of labor saving devices and food options that were either not available to or were too expensive for our parents. Thus people doing housework were not available to watch after kids. Now it is usually a choice between leisure time and watching children and so more people pick watching children. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2015, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/36 "2015-06-22T15:51:06Z")
> [@Alley\_Dweller](#): > > I think the missing children on milk cartons fad had a lot to do with it. Although the milk cartons were the most talked about medium, they also plastered missing kids all over junk mail, unrented bill boards, community bulletin boards, and schools. I think youngsters must have grown up believing there was an epidemic of missing children (and many older people were frightened too) and raised their children accordingly. > > And there was the tragic case of Adam Walsh, a child who disappeared in 1981. A popular movie called “Adam” in 1983 brought his case into the public consciousness. . This, combined with the 24-hour news cycle caused the perfect storm of a terrible boogey-man combined with instant coverage of every time something like this happens, which freaked parents the hell out almost instantly. By that, I mean that there’s a LOT of stuff that happens in say… Connecticut or Washington that is on the internet, CNN or Fox 15 minutes later, that in 1982, IF it would have been heard about in Houston, it would have been on page 4 of the Post, about a week after it actually happened. I mean, I was born in 1972, and things were cool up until the point that damn movie came out, and then my parents got nervous, and things got tightened up quite a bit, because you know, there were kid snatchers out there. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2015, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/37 "2015-06-22T16:30:36Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > I don’t think parents, even good parents, are always as overprotective as you seem to assume. Also keep in mind that the stories that get passed about/presented on the news, like “I left my kid in the car for 30 seconds and they called CPS on me!” are extreme cases being reported for the sole purpose of riling up the reader’s righteous indignation. Society as a whole does not expect that level of over-protectiveness – the whole point of these stories is that society disapproves. ---
**Author:** ![CinnamonBabka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bbce88/32.png) [@CinnamonBabka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CinnamonBabka)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2015, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/38 "2015-06-22T16:38:06Z")
Either that mentality existed into the 90s, or my parents were hoping I’d get kidnapped as I walked my 6 year old self to the drug store to buy some candy. ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2015, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/39 "2015-06-22T22:01:46Z")
It was very much the same in the 1960’s. I remember that at age 8 or so, living on a farm in the Dakotas, on a summer day I walked a mile down a rural gravel road to go “fishing” (caught a bullhead!). On the way back some car stopped and asked if I needed a ride, so I got in. Of course I got lectured when I got home! Maybe the difference is we didn’t have a “talk” about strangers, like kids do now. The first time I heard about kid danger was the Halloween razors in apples, about 1970. The excellent episode 3 of [Freaks and Geeks](http://www.ifc.com/fix/2010/07/tricks-and-treats) shows a well-meaning mother making homemade cookies to hand out, but parents make their kids throw them away. This was set in 1980, so was well established by then. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2015, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004/40 "2015-06-23T01:05:57Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > No to the religion angle. > > […] > > Secondly my childhood was like yours. Australia isn’t very religious and the modern middle class adults who were my parents - and who were my neighbours growing up - were pretty much totally secular, yet we kids were highly free range. Well, I’m talking about 'Murica, mostly, though inputs from other countries are welcome. Like yours. Australia probably also felt a lot safer in 70s than did the US. I mean, you didn’t have a crime wave going on back then, did you? And you had a much sparser population. We did, as **puddlegum** relates (thanks, good points!). So that could have made it easier on the mind for your parents to go free range with the kids. I can’t prove my point about religion–it’s impossible. You’d have to go back in time and cleverly poll people about how much they thought God was watching over their kids. But I think there _was_ a more cavalier approach to safety that came down to a belief in the normalcy of life and things working out that was in significant part due to the religion of the time. I think the other factors people have mentioned are just as important and certainly more concrete and provable. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-actual-origin-of-todays-overprotective-parents-society-with-respect-to-kids/723004.md?page=3)