<i>A wallet-sized Let Grow “Kid Card” is meant to be carried by children when they are out on their own, to calm the fears of overly concerned adults.</i><p><a href="https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/B3-AQ358_INDEPE_M_20180531175517.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/B3-AQ358_INDEPE_M...</a><p>^This here.<p>Except the Concerned Adults will never get a chance to read it because they'll call the police to rescue the 12-year-old dropped off at the mall by her mom.<p><a href="https://www.brainchildmag.com/2014/01/guilty-as-charged/" rel="nofollow">https://www.brainchildmag.com/2014/01/guilty-as-charged/</a>
You can always tell when someone grew up like this. They are always afraid of doing anything that might even remotely be considered outside the box. They lack that ability and drive to find things out for themselves, and instead rely on others for help and guidance to a fault. Professional occupations are full of these people who were coddled from birth, through college, and straight into a high paying job with zero understanding of how life actually works. It makes relating to someone like that almost impossible.
As a counterpoint, Canada (and presumably the US too) has seen a dramatic decrease in unintentional injury mortality among children over the last 70 years.<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28026710" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28026710</a>
When I first moved my family (from Denmark originally) to New York we had to put our oldest son in a daycare.<p>We have always been fairly "free range" i.e. our kids have had their share of bruises from climbing and in general being allowed to do challenging things.<p>After a week at the daycare my wife went to pick my son up, one of the teachers pulled her aside and told her that they, unfortunately, had to report some of the bruises on his arm or shoulder (can't remember) and that they hadn't said anything about the bruises on his legs.<p>My wife and I freaked out worried that the social services would come and take him away.<p>Of course, we soon learned that it wasn't actually the bruises on our son they were worried about but whether we would report them for mistreating our son.<p>The primary problem in the US is the liability issue which certainly doesn't help.<p>People in general though are really weirdly paranoid about their kids. I always thought it would be counterproductive for them later in life. Better to fall when you are a little boy than when you are older.<p>Anyway who knows.
I wonder how much the built environment impacts the independence we can give our children. For instance, regarding the milestone of safely crossing the road that this article mentions, does the common milestone age decrease in more pedestrian-friendly places? It's one thing to cross a one-lane, slow-traffic narrow street in Europe versus a wide, high-speed one characteristic of most American suburbs.
The proliferation of these overprotective practices reminds me of the proliferation of simpler practices we impose on kids like showering regularly and wearing clean clothes that we just take for granted now. The link in my mind is how you can pick most any practice that is common amongst a majority of the population today and look back 50, 200, sometimes 2000 years and you can trace it back to a minority aristocratic or ruling class. You know, like medieval kings taking regular private hot baths but this not becoming feasible for the rest of Europe until the last century.<p>Another commenter made an observation along the lines of you see overprotected children nevertheless succeeding (or failing up, depending on your perspective) professionally as adults. That would make sense if what we are doing is slowly handing down practices from the higher classes to lower. The failing up phenomenon is clearly highly correlated with the privilege you were born into. As everyone becomes relatively more privileged, then practices would radiate out and be institutionalized amongst more of the population, i.e., everyone would start overprotecting because as long as your kid makes it, worse case, they will be able to succeed via the fail up method.
You do wonder how a contemporary American would read Herman Hesse's <i>Demian</i>. Emil Sinclair, the protagonist, he had a <i>protected childhood</i>!
Abraham Lincoln was left in a cabin for 6 months, responsible for his sister, when he was 9 and she was 11. There were some dried berries to eat, and Abraham Lincoln could go hunt with a rifle. The house didn't have power or water.<p>He turned out OK. Modern social workers would have taken him. Heck, they'd literally swipe baby Jesus.
Child poverty is the real problem.<p><a href="https://peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/02/16/americas-bizarre-income-distribution-for-children/" rel="nofollow">https://peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/02/16/americas-bizarre...</a>