Fears: real or imagined?

Is the world worse than it was or are we just more aware?

An inner debate I often consider when discussing childhood amongst my friends. Once upon a time, there were no cell phones, just landlines and kids were free to go off into the unknown. Eventually we came home when the lights came on or when our stomachs rumbled. In retrospect, before the internet boom and smart technology, childhood was a lot more independent.

If you’re an older Millennial, Generation X, or better yet, a Baby Boomer, the chances are you’ll remember a considerable lack of parental supervision when you were growing up. You never thought about it much. It was normal. Age 7 riding your bike off into the abyss, maybe climbing trees and falling, with no one there to help when you hurt yourself. Limping home and pretending you’re not hurt, just so you don’t get scolded. That was me. That was us.

Fast forward twenty some years and things have changed dramatically. If you haven’t figured by now, I’m focusing on this one aspect: Childhood.

Today’s parents fear leaving their child unattended, and even more leaving them outside, alone. This is where the ‘Helicopter Parent’ originated. Always close by, always overseeing and always ready to come to the rescue. It doesn’t take a genius to see that such parenting can spoil or at the very least, limit a child’s growth.

How exactly? For one, confidence. When your guardian is always around to approve or disapprove of your choices, your natural instinct is ignored and thus remains undeveloped. Your young voice is not your own because your Mum or Dad can veto it or change it. So with a lack of authority in decision making, you reach the second detrimental effect: poor judgement. It takes practice to gain good judgement. You learn from mistakes by living with the consequences. Being told is not enough. I’m sure you touched a pot of boiling water even though you were told not to. Because first hand experience is how you learn.

The third effect is the child can become spoiled. Having a caregiver around at all times means the child will always have assistance nearby. That convenience makes people lazy. I say people because its not the kid’s fault. Its human nature to take advantage of our environment. So if I have a grown up helper I can use, I’ll probably do less myself, simply because I don’t have to. Its quite smart really. Think of your little human as your boss delegating tasks to their worker. The result however is less appealing. You get a jerk kid who grows up expecting too much from others. Years later, its a jerk adult. Wonderful.

There’s more. Fear of leaving your child unattended leads to less time outdoors. Children grow up in the house and due to technology and the easy ‘go-to-babysitter’…they grow up in front of screens. Technology really screwed the pooch on this one. Online games and cartoons are highly addictive and without control, they can dominate a child’s free time. This leads to a lack of imagination and creativity, skills born of boredom. And kids today really don’t know what that is. I’m speaking of children in developed nations above the poverty line of course. Kids with less strangely grow up with more. More of the essentials I mean and less of the nonsense.

Which brings me back to the nonsense of today’s parenting and why childhood is at risk of sucking these days…

The answer is fear. Thanks to the internet and the impact social media has on our lives, we simply know too much. Bad news spreads exponentially faster than good. And the good is still fast. We have so much information bombarding us at all times of the day, where we learn of a scenario that played out badly for somebody else. A scenario we could see ourselves in. A hypothetical scenario that we want to prevent. Then the seeds of fear plant themselves in our minds.

Sexual predators, kidnapping, violence of all sorts…all major fears. Injuries, bullying, allergies and getting lost…all great concerns. Then there’s the less severe worries, such as comfort and entertainment. Where do we draw the line? How do we draw the line?

To be fair, I must represent the opposing case. The one that justifies our fears. And I can think of two reasons. First, the loss of community. Before mobile phones, text messages and social media, you had to call your friend at home. You didn’t know who would pick up the phone. Mum, Dad, brother, sister, grandma, etc…and you learned to talk to them, nicely. Your parents knew your friend’s home numbers in case you didn’t come home for dinner. And people spoke to their neighbours. It was a different time. It was a precious time. There was a real sense of community.

Now look at us. Antisocial as hell. Social media did the opposite of what it promised to do. It distanced us. We click ‘Like’ and we type ‘LOL’, but this is not genuine interaction. We have drawn inwards so much that we rarely engage with people we don’t already know, even in our own neighbourhood. And this is the breeding grounds for distrust. When we don’t know our neighbours, we fail to trust them. In previous generations, many parents held the attitude that it took a village to raise a child. And the village did.

It doesn’t help that homes look more like revolving doors these days where more and more homebuyers see profit in buying and selling, rather than a commitment to their neighbourhood.

And my second reason to worry is population. 30 years ago the world was a heck of a lot less populated. Less people means less crime. Less crime means less chances of getting involved in trouble. And without knowing your neighbours, you begin to suspect your own backyard.

My mind keeps asking, ‘Is there a way to give children more freedom without sacrificing their safety?’ A daunting feat to say the least. I think that our increased general awareness of potential troubles and threats have us protectively overreacting. And yet our antisocial behaviours and population growth antagonize an already worrisome situation. It makes me uneasy just thinking about the dilemma today’s parents face.

And so my question remains, investigated though unanswered. Is the world today full of more real dangers? Or are we simply more scared than ever before?

Producer of offspring or not, I’d love to know what you think.