Comment 38543

By highwater (registered) | Posted March 02, 2010 at 11:12:16

Compound that with the vastly irrational fears spread by the media about rapists, gangsters and child molesters stuck around all corners. Whether the statistics really show that this risk is higher than it was (kids did indeed join gangs and do drugs back then, too) is largely irrelevant, since they are at far more risk at home People, by and large, get raped and murdered by people they know and care about, sadly enough, and isolating everyone will only make those things worse.

I dare say the pendulum is swinging back. My generation of parents (baby boomers), were the most guilty of the over-parenting you describe. Because I'm an older mum, I know many parents in their 20's and 30's and there seems to be a recognition among them that there are equal risks in not allowing our kids a level of freedom and responsibility. When I first started letting my son (now 13) walk to school on his own at the age of 8, I got a lot of flak from other parents. Four years later, when it was his sister's turn, I had other parents asking me if their kids could walk with mine. Now the neighbourhood is swarming with kids walking on their own to school, groups of kids (predominantly boys - hmmm) playing unsupervised in the park and the woods, etc.

My neighbourhood may not be the norm, but I'm definitely seeing a shift away from the hyper-parenting of the recent past.

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