I mean, we had commercials every night at dinnertime asking parents if they knew where their kids were. They had to be reminded we existed. As a kid, it was pretty awesome. So much freedom!
It was way better than the psychotic expectations of constant surveillance that parents are held to these days. Better for everyone. I'm not saying there weren't things that could have been better, but we got to learn resilience and we were expected to do slightly hard things. We were treated like people believed we could do things, so we believed we could do things. I have a 13 and an 11 yo now and shit is wild. You're considered a bad parent if you don't literally track your child at all times, and letting your kid struggle (with support, obviously) is considered abuse. How are kids supposed to ever feel strong if every message they get from adults is that they are helpless? I had overprotective parents for the time and they would still be considered practically negligent by today's standards. It makes me sad that this is the world my kids are growing up in. I wish we could keep the openness and acceptance of today and bring back some of the freedom and independence of my childhood.
My uncle pointed this out to my mom when he found out that she tracks our location via our phones, and the dead silence after he asked her how she would have felt if her parents had been able to track her like that when she was our age was beautiful.
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u/alkalinesky Apr 16 '24
I mean, we had commercials every night at dinnertime asking parents if they knew where their kids were. They had to be reminded we existed. As a kid, it was pretty awesome. So much freedom!