Offs.
Offs. When I was a kid, it was called "parenting". You have to have a special name for it now ("free-range parenting")? To justify it? Your kids have to carry ID saying you know where they are so they aren't accosted by police, and then CPS can threaten to take the kids away, anyhow? Bugger off.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-couple-want-free-range-kids-but-not-all-do/2015/01/14/d406c0be-9c0f-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-couple-want-free-range-kids-but-not-all-do/2015/01/14/d406c0be-9c0f-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-couple-want-free-range-kids-but-not-all-do/2015/01/14/d406c0be-9c0f-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-couple-want-free-range-kids-but-not-all-do/2015/01/14/d406c0be-9c0f-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html
I used to ride my bike all over town, sometimes reaching distances of 2 miles. I started at age 9. As long as I checked in at the appointed times, nothing ever came of it.
ReplyDeleteThe counterargument I've heard is that things are actually worse now and that we have to protect the next generation from new threats. Lenore does a great job of providing detailed stats about how this is false. Unfortunately, people are more interested in clutching their pearls than reading statistics.
This is a real problem for a friend of mine. She's recently divorced with two kids, split custody. She really wants to make them free range, but in today's climate she could lose custody over something like this. So instead she has to keep them on a strict diet of never leaving the yard unsupervised, even though there's a very safe neighborhood park a mere block away. The societal indoctrination is working quite well though: the kids don't WANT to do anything out of her sight, even on their own property.
I can only hope the next generation survives long enough to look back and go "What the heck were y'all so afraid of?"
It's pretty disgusting. It's also creating multiple generations of people who live in fear of EVERYTHING and can't do anything without being supervised or told it's ok. Which probably works just fine for conspiracy theorists and accepting invasive oversight of our lives. Or, you know, dystopian novel plots. Joking aside, I think this is ridiculous and damaging and will have real effects on people and society.
ReplyDelete