On Fri, 8 Jan 2010, Chuck Grimes wrote:
> So I ask, have things changed that much? Do parents really worry over
> safety and un-warranted after school fucking around?
I was just outside during the morning migration of kids and parents to school. And, waving to a couple of kids I know, I realized something that got left out of the discussion is love. It's not just fear that makes parents accompany their little kids everywhere. It's an excuse to spend a little more time with them every day before they grow up forever.
And even the fear factor is mostly love. Most parents know perfectly well that the odds of anything going wrong is a million to one. But they also feel that if that happened, they'd never forgive themselves if being there could have stopped it. In the old days, both those things were just as true, but rationality and convenience won. And now it doesn't. Parents didn't let us run free because they thought it was better for our development. They didn't think about such things 1/100th as much as parents do today. They let us run free because it made their lives easier.
And overall, I gotta say, there is no comparison: my friends have 100 times better relations with their kids on average than my generation (50) had with our parents. They're closer, they trust each more and they know each other better.
And I wouldn't be surprised if all this mother-henning made some unintentional but crucial contribution to those improved relationships.
Michael