Is it harder to be a child today than when you were growing up? (child support, party)
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Yes, I find it very hard to be a child today. Whenever I try, people give me funny looks. Still I manage to get away with it on rare occasions, but it is certainly harder now than it was when I was actually a child.
If this makes you feel any better you post like a child.
I think it's harder. I had a much more care-free childhood (born in 1972). Kids were basically "free-range" and spent our days playing in the woods with our friends, riding bikes, etc. We played Little League and such, but it was nothing like it is today. It was a practice a week and a game, no pressure. Kids these days are expected to be the best at everything. They have activities scheduled for them all the time. It's not enough to play Little League once a week, you have to have personal batting lessons just to be on the team. School is much more demanding. Everyone had a school yard bully, but now those bullies can hide behind a screen and so kids who would never have the stones to say such things about other kids to their face, have no problem doing it anonymously. It just seems like kids are allowed enough time to just be kids anymore.
Were 1970's kids childhoods really that easy. This was immediately after the sexual revolution when people were getting divorce left and right, and there was less child protection. I always thought that a good chunk of generation x'ers had a hell raising childhood, and grew up really fast.
I would imagine it is harder for a child to grow up in today's times for a number of different reasons. Due in part to technology and I'm sure you can point out a number of different reasons. But you may feel there is no difference.
What are your thoughts?
EdX
I have no children, either, but I recall being one.
I grew up in a mostly homogenous community, no language barriers for anyone, where the children in the neighborhood were all one year apart, and we all played together, and that made life easier and a lot more fun, no doubt about it.
It seems like every family has that one guy that tells the kids ... "When I was your age I walked to school 10 miles, in the snow ... with shoes full of holes ..."
While my older kids (21-30) walked to school some of the time, my younger ones (13-20) never have.
When I was a kid (70's-80's) I walked about a half mile to school in a new subdivision with family friendly greenways & the only street I had to cross was my own.
When my husband was a kid (50's-60's) he walked to school (farthest distance about a mile). BUT ... every year during spring break his dad withdrew him from school for the rest of the year & sent him to Kansas to work the family farm until September. This was from about age 8 to age 18.
His siblings are 11 & 13 years older than him & state they remember their mom loading the shotgun every morning to walk them to school; about 2 miles away in a rural area back in the 40's.
A quick glance at data charts tells me that now, as to compared to the 70's & 80's:
Rate of children as victims of violent crime is down.
Rate of drug/alcohol abuse by teenagers is down.
Teen pregnancy rate is down.
Children living in poverty has both spiked then dropped & is now just about the same.
Irregardless; suicide rates are UP. Divorce rates are up & so is the number of children living in single-parent households.
Bullying has been mentioned. I'm not sure if bullying itself is up or down but "awareness" is for sure up; way up.
We have full-scale "crisis intervention teams" now to handle bullying in schools & campaigns advertise on/in the media.
When I was a kid we were told "Work it out", first. Then next complaint we were told to "Stop being a Tattle-Tale".
Obviously; I'm biased because I only really have my own perspective to go on; so while I can't be sure if it's "harder to be a kid these days" it does seem like it's harder to grow up; these days.
I agree with this completely. There are some tasks that no longer need to be learned. I'm sure some probably disagree, but the time spent learning to assemble the bibliography could be better spent learning something useful. I doubt many people learn how to churn their own butter in cooking classes!
You're probably right, but my heart is with HighFlyingBird. Writing a bib was just one of those things you learned in high school.
I grew up in the 70's and it was seemingly idyllic, but it was extremely unsafe and violent.
It was really fun in some ways, but in other ways it was really awful. I had a bad series of events occur. That could be directly caused by the general lack of oversight, or supervision. Tragedy follows tragedy and I had to take care of myself from a very early age.
I don't think it is easy for kids now at all. It wasn't easy then, but in a different way. Some people have it easy, and some don't regardless of the era. This can be said about any time in history. There are good times and bad times.
Overall, I do worry about kids these days, and their future. I have kids but they are grown and they are doing well. That is not true for many of their peers. These are hard times to be a young adult.
"When" makes a difference, but also "Where"...Are the kids on a farm or in the city? In the Ghetto or the Penthouse?
I think being a kid would be ok in these times. They have food and shelter and laws to protect their safety. They have the internet and the freedom to explore the world in that way. The worry is not so much for when they are kids, it is what are they going to do when they aren't kids anymore.
Definitely harder today. I went to school in the 60's & 70's. We had freedom during the summer where we could take our bikes and ride miles away to the river. We never worried about being abducted, raped or murdered. We spent a lot of time outdoors, we ate healthier foods, we didn't have to worry about school shootings.
We didn't have cell phones or Facebook so bullying was almost unheard of. Teen pregnancies were also rare and most high school girls were virgins when they graduated (or at least they said they were). There was no drug problem in the schools back then. I knew one boy who smoked pot and that was my graduating year (1972).
Kids didn't expect a cell phone or car to be given to them unless your parents were rich. We all worked for our first car, most of us worked some kind of minimum wage job so we could buy ourselves things our parents deemed unnecessary.
It was definitely a different time. By the time my kids went to school 1990-2003 things had changed quite a bit but cell phones were still rare and FB wasn't around yet. Same for school shootings. Now here we are in 2016 and I can't say things are better at all. I feel sorry for people having babies today because the world is a lot different and scarier than it was even 20 years ago.
It depends on whether you picked the right parents or not.
I think it is harder now. Even when parents are supportive and loving, they tend to pamper the kids too much, which makes it harder for them in the end.
A kid who is raised today, without the advantage of a stable home life, has less chance to pull himself out of it.
Definitely harder today. I went to school in the 60's & 70's. We had freedom during the summer where we could take our bikes and ride miles away to the river. We never worried about being abducted, raped or murdered. We spent a lot of time outdoors, we ate healthier foods, we didn't have to worry about school shootings.
We didn't have cell phones or Facebook so bullying was almost unheard of. Teen pregnancies were also rare and most high school girls were virgins when they graduated (or at least they said they were). There was no drug problem in the schools back then. I knew one boy who smoked pot and that was my graduating year (1972).
Kids didn't expect a cell phone or car to be given to them unless your parents were rich. We all worked for our first car, most of us worked some kind of minimum wage job so we could buy ourselves things our parents deemed unnecessary.
It was definitely a different time. By the time my kids went to school 1990-2003 things had changed quite a bit but cell phones were still rare and FB wasn't around yet. Same for school shootings. Now here we are in 2016 and I can't say things are better at all. I feel sorry for people having babies today because the world is a lot different and scarier than it was even 20 years ago.
Just because you did not see these things does not mean they did not happen. Teen Pregnancy is at record low levels today - much lower than back in the 1970s when it was simply ignored or girls were sent away to have their babies so that other students did not know they were pregnant.
In 1980, there were 10,169 births to females under 15 years of age, a decrease of 18.8% from 1974. The percentage of all births to females in this group decreased from 0.4% to 0.3%. Between 1974 and 1980, the number of births decreased in 41 states and in D.C., increased in eight states, and remained the same in one state. Reported by Program Evaluation Br, Research and Statistics Br, Div of Reproductive Health, Center for Health Promotion and Education, CDC, assisted by KL Jensen, Summer Intern, Emory University Family Planning Program, Atlanta, Georgia.
Quote:
Between 1971 and 1982, the estimated percentage of never-married 15- to 19-year-olds with premarital sexual experience increased from 26.8% to 42.8% (4,5). Thus, analyses of pregnancy and fertility trends can be misleading if the extent of sexual experience is not taken into account.
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