When did parents start waiting for the bus with their kids?

[RickJay]

@kushiel

SFD@%#SDFE$# I hate that. I lived out of town from K-12, so any extracurricular activities I did were during lunch hour because my parents couldn’t transport me. I only did a few, but I kept my marks up, and I’m pretty sure I could get into any university in Canada that had my program of choice.

You’re from Kingston, huh? Me too.

At least when I applied to universities in Canada, in 1990, there was no such thing as “Activities.” You got in based on your grades and nothing else. If your average was over their cutoff, you were in, and if it wasn’t, see you later.

[Dangerosa]

@jsc1953

I was going to jump in and attribute this phenomenon to mothers working – except for the opposite reason. My hypothesis is that the overstructured and paranoid child-rearing is the result of workimg Moms overcompensating for their absence.

Except working moms aren’t home for the bus. At least, not the ones working full time. We drop our kids off at their “before school” program on the way to work and pick them up from their “after school” program on the way home. Here, the bus doesn’t pick up until after 9, and drops the kids off before 4…which makes for a rather short workday if you work full time and have any sort of a commute.

Its possible that other symptoms of overstructured and paranoid child rearing are the result of overcompensating working moms, but a working mom who is waiting at the bus stop either works from her home, or won’t be a working mom for long. (And there, I’m not sure how much I believe that, since we haul our kids off to soccer, and I’m the only Mom I’ve seen around here who shows up at a 6:00pm soccer game is dress clothes - 6:00 soccer games are really inconvenient if you work until 5:00 on the other end of town).