Doug Henwood
joanna wrote:
>--making the streets safe for kids to play in
There was a piece in yesterday's NYT about how suburban parents keep their kids under lockdown because they're afraid of dangers lurking outside. Additionally, no one knows any neighbors, so there are no naturally occurring friendships among kids who live near each other. Plus, play is a distraction from the work of preparing the kids for hypercompetitive worklives. Only organized playdates, and lots of educational events.
If this isn't a sad story of the sickness of American capitalism. People are frightened of their surroundings, alienated from their neighbors, andterrified of economic failure. Man, that's fucked up.
Doug ___________________________________
I have no children, so my observations are necessarily ill-informed and anecdotal, but one very striking thing that I've noticed in recent years is the tremendous decline in the number of children one sees playing outdoors. As it happens, I now live about a mile from an area of San Diego where I spent part of my childhood, from the ages 7 - 11 (about forty years ago.) When I was a kid in this part of town, which is about five miles from the city center, the place was absolutely swarming with children on weekends, after-school, and during the summer. We spent every available minute outdoors, riding our bikes, playing ball in the streets, climbing trees, throwing rocks, playing games, getting in trouble, just hanging out and doing things. There was never any adult supervision or guidance and we wouldn't have tolerated it in any event: for me and my young friends it was a severe punishment to be confined all day indoors in the company of our parents. However, today, one never sees any children playing outdoors in this neighborhood, NEVER. The place is more gentrified than it was years ago, but it may as well be a ghost town. I know that many of my neighbors have children because I've seen them walking to their autos to be driven someplace, or walking from their autos to reenter their homes, but you never see these kids just playing out in the street. It's weird. Do young bourgeois children really just stay indoors, watch television, and play computer games all day?