I grew up in a time where in a big city like Louisville, at 7 years old, I could take the city bus with my twelve year old brother and take 2 transfer buses or we'd ride our bikes 8 miles just to get to the city pool.
All summer long kids would play outdoors away from home, all day, all evening, everyday. We'd never be home, unless all the other kids who weren't at their home where over in your yard having a blast.
Kids had two rules, be home by dinner-time and after dinner the 2nd rule was to be home when the street lights came on.
The freedom kids had in the 70's and 80's would be unthinkable to parents today.
I do not believe kids were any safer in the 70's or 80"s than they are today, I think the availability of information access has increased and parents who can read have legitimate concerns about letting their kids out of eye sight.
The stranger danger campaign really started in the 80's. In 1979 a six year old boy in Manhattan was abducted on a two block walk to his school bus stop. The main stream media turned it into a multi year frenzy of educating us all to not talk to strangers, or accept gifts, etc.
I can a agree, a more watchful eye should be kept on your kids and there are very real dangers, some of us understand how deep the rabbit hole goes with this.
However, as I look back, I see that campaign doing far more harm than good. It took away the freedom and innocents of childhood and parenthood. The days of a Tom Sawyer youth evaporated and were replaced with over protective fear programmed asshats whose children stayed living in their basement into their 30's and 40's.
In the 70s and 80s a lot of Moms were at home because the Dad could make enough for the whole family. Lots of eyes in the neighborhoods, even though the kids were out and free, I believe they were more protected because a lot of adults were home during the day. Also because the kids tended to be in packs, riding bikes, playing sports, etc.
I remember, 60's 70's, heck if the sun up we weren't allowed in the house, LoL.
Maybe that's why we all built forts and treehouses in the woods!
I suspect it was because we did not have air conditioning and video games yet> :)
Yes, great observation. Atari wasn't even out yet, but when it did come out my Mom was smart and realized the impact it could have. She limited 4 of us kids to one hour total, 15 min. each, per day.
Kind of ironic she later became addicted to Tetris! She played that game for days on end.
Atari had just come out, one game... Pong! A massive console that not only had to plug into the wall but also took 8 D batteries. When the batteries died (which was within two days of us kids fighting over who got to play next) and Dad would not buy us more batteries, we went back out to go sledding at Cherokee Park.
LoL! That sounds about right from what I can remember.
PONG, oh my goodness! Guess they have advanced a little since then. Wish I had it to show my grandkids.
Agree, I fondly remember those days. BUT the number of murders, sex trafficked kids have exponentially exploded as society rules have collapsed, typical families are no longer plentiful, drugs have increased and boundaries re acceptable behavior have blurred. I believe it's real - Sound of Freedom is real... its very sad. Children now don't experience many of the wonderful, simple things we took for granted.
Agree, but what is cause and what is effect here?
I believe in the law of attraction, I know we co-create our realities, I know we, as a collective, can effect our environments profoundly, especially through our unconscious thought.
As an example, in the late 90's there where raging wild fires tearing through the south east US.
A late night AM radio broadcaster named Art Bell wanted to try a collective thought experiment. He told his audience of 1 million plus listeners to focus on rain and intent for rain to put out those fires.
Out of nowhere a storm not only put out the fires but caused mass flooding. After that Art repeatedly said he would not try anything like that on the air again.
For arguments sake, let's say that was cause and effect.
What would a decades long campaign like Stranger Danger do to the subconscious minds of the kids who would then grow up to be parents?
The campaign was fear based programming, sure it made you fearful for your kids but it also subtly told us as adults (subliminally) to not talk to strangers, or to accept generosity, it taught us to recoil from the most gracious gifts humanity has to offer and made us doubters suspicious and fearful.
I disagree wholeheartedly. The reason caring parents are naturally cautious is because their children haven't yet learned discernment. By the time humans are adults, they have learned at least some discernment. They are no longer 'afraid' of strangers. In fact, the concept is preposterous to me. I don't know anybody who is afraid to strike up a casual conversation with someone they have just encountered. Virtually all 8 billion people on the planet are strangers. We quite naturally have to interact with people we don't know well, and do so daily.
Spoken like a person who didn't or won't get their last child to move out until they are 38.
I'll tell you, over protective sheltering parents create creepy pedos, who live in mom's basement and never have real relationships and because mom was there to; as Pink Floyd said it, put all of her fears into you. The over protected child greatly delays the development of their pre-frontal cortex, and fall pray to more programming from porn, mass media and video games.
Prove me wrong. I agree with the individual points of your post but you are blanket discounting the long term subliminal effects of fear based programming in conjunction with all the other mass programming pushed through our radios, phones, computers and TVs.
Coming from the late 50s and early 60s, I do testify THEY were the golden years, riding my Hopalong fat tire bike like an Armstrong, going to parks and my memories of the streetlights (old fashioned globes) and neighbors that talked to us and watched out for us. In spite of all the dysfunctional aspects of my family, I was grounded in ways that the kids today would not understand; imagination was vivid use of ordinary things around the house, no phones to distract our attention to details. and we could play sojers, cowboys and injuns with no approbation from anyone. I miss those days because today is unrecognisable to me..
It's the dumbing down of everyone and every thing....
Let's get one thing straight - The neighborhoods belonged to the kids - nobody else. We knew EVERYTHING that was going on AND knew every little nook and cranny - escape path - where you could hide things adults would never find - where YOU could hide for hours and NEVER be found etc etc. They were OUR neighborhoods.
We had serious street smarts. We knew if some perv was creepin' - and the make, model and often license plate - by memory. If we were getting too rammy on our motorcycles - we could easily evade the po-po and NEVER get caught no matter how many units they'd send out to appease the Karen that called them out.
I used to ride my bike (at 10 yrs old) - 7 miles to the train - then take it go get parts for my mini bike - I worked on it myself - rebuilt the entire engine MYSELF - and then come back like it was nothing - before dinner, thanks to my trusty Casio. It wasn't unheard of to WALK or ride a bike a good 20 miles out at he age of 12. I had MY OWN money that I earned via paper route, farm work and odd jobs. We didn't get allowance....
Houses were SMALL. They were for eating, sleeping and bathing - THAT'S it! NOBODY lived in a damned mcmansion - and I wasn't exactly in a poor neighborhood - there were plenty of expensive vehicles around, including italian exotics - in people's driveways - along my paper route.
Now people are in HUGE houses that cost insane amounts of money to have & maintain - everyone is in their own room/cell getting programmed by the box and generally pretty miserable. I think there's more to the "stranger danger" bs - because it has shaped society and ruined humanity in ways that few care to think about.
No fault of their own - but the kids today are dumbed down pussies terrorized by these stupid bitch mothers and cuck fathers that bought into the fearmongering and totally discount the brilliance of their own kin. Maybe THEY were dumbasses to begin with...WE WEREN'T!!!
Ditto! You articulated my point better than I did.
Except, I would offer that our fear of a thing created more of the thing we feared.
For sure....
Just look at this single fear-based belief and what it has done to our ENTIRE society!
It's lead to:
Kids 'sentenced' to being inside & vitamin D deficiency & God only knows what mental illnesses...
Kids totally disconnected from "basic survival school " (as a boy anyway) - by not being able to naturally develop basic skills for living *(more below)
Greatly increasing the amount of capital required to "fit in/keep up with the Jones' " so your kids don't have to be the poorest of the bunch - Nothing is ever enough - especially for most women these days - nobody knows how to go without and be ok - Small house no good - everyone needs a PC, a TV and AirCon - Open a window? Pfft...
We could go on and on....
How to build and light a fire...what burns and doesn't burn..."Adventures with WD40", Raid can shoot fire 20 feet, The importance of a sharp knife and how to NOT stab yourself in the leg or lacerate every inch of your fingers and hands, The art of bicycle maintenance, how to paint your bike, patience - the importance of waiting for paint to dry - the importance of lube (comes in handy later in life) and how to crash your bike without a helmet and walk away unscathed, avoiding landing on the frame cross bar...Not catching your bag on the front edge of the seat (or burning on black vinyl) on a hot day...How to piss outside, How to shit outside if you absolutely HAVE TO and learning what leaves you absolutely must NOT ever wipe with!, Righty-Tightly, Lefty-Loosey and which way the selector switch goes on a ratchet & understanding WHY it's backwards, How to air up your bike tires...patching a tube, replacing a tube and tire with only 2 regular screwdrivers, How to true a rim because you layed it down in the driveway and your ditzy freind's mom ran over it, Understanding the difference between cheap tools and good ones, How to drive a nail and not hit your thumb while building a fort or treehouse, Letting water run for a bit and drinking from a hose, why you shouldn't drink from a creek or downstream from that cattle farm, getting lost and finding your way back - How the sun moves, etc etc etc
Kids are missing out on a LOT of lessons...Notice how they totally ruined boy scouts, where you'd learn a lot of this stuff - especially if you lived in the city.
It was the Adam Walsh killing for us... his body was found in the county I grew up in, when I was very young. We still had a safe neighborhood loaded with kids around my age that hopped from house to house, pool to pool my entire childhood. We always were outside riding our bikes or exploring the woods/trails around us.... but I guess we only had a few channels on the tv back then and my parents did not allow video games. We would spend some time indoors reading or playing board games, but most of my memories are outside as a child. Even as a tween/young teen we would get dropped off at the small local mall or movie theater and picked up many hours later. Childhood was much different back then, much more freedom.
It seems like the nation has lost it's (religious) morals, it's identity. There is no cohesion or feeling of safety anymore. You have to lock your doors everywhere you go. Not sure if it is the "immigrants", the rampant drug use / homelessness, the gun-free zones or what, but this is certainly not the america I grew up in. You really can't trust anyone anymore, even neighbors.
I am often overwhelmed with sadness when I think of how children have been robbed of the best times of their lives, and have little to look forward to. (Until the plan reaches completion that is.)
One truth that is skated over is that homogeneous societies are high trust societies, and diverse societies give you more dining choices.
Married parents were the norm. Divorced parents were whispered about.