We approach others’ children at our peril
Times Online
From The Sunday Times
August 16, 2009
Jenni Russell
There’s just one element of the stories of my childhood that fascinates my own children. It’s not the absence of mobile phones, or the idea of a world before the internet. It’s the fact that so many of my small crises ended in the same way: with my being rescued by the kind intervention of an unknown man. Whether I was a nine-year-old being kicked to the ground by a gang of girls in the park, a 14-year-old lost in the Welsh hills on a walking holiday or a 12-year-old who had taken a bad fall from a horse and couldn’t ride home, it was adult men who stepped in without hesitation to stop the fighting or give me a lift or bandage my grazed arms.
I might as well be telling my children about life with the Cherokee Indians. This isn’t a world they know, where children expect to explore by themselves and where passing men and women are the people you turn to when things go wrong. Their generation have been taught from the time they start school that all strangers may be dangerous and all men are threats. So children have become frightened of adults, and adults – terrified that any interaction of theirs might be misinterpreted – have become equally frightened of them.
When my offspring and their friends have been mugged on buses, or attacked on the street by teenagers, no one has helped. Every passing adult has looked the other way. The idea that it’s the responsibility of grown-ups to look out for one another’s young is disappearing fast. That isn’t making our children safer. It’s making their lives more fearful, more dangerous and more constrained.
Last week the charity Living Streets reported that half of all five to 10-year-olds have never played in their own streets. Almost nine in 10 of their grandparents had played out and so had many of their parents, but now children were kept inside, imprisoned by the twin fears of traffic and paedophiles. As the Play England organisation has found, parents keep them in because they believe that if they aren’t watching over their child, no other adult will do it for them. Older children, too, are affected. Two years ago research by the Children’s Society showed that 43% of parents thought children shouldn’t be allowed out on their own until they were 14.
What began 25 years or so ago as an understandable desire to raise awareness of child abuse is turning into something extremely destructive – an instinctive suspicion of any encounter between grown-ups and unrelated children. It has happened without any political debate or rational discussion. It’s starting to poison our society. And with every passing month it’s getting worse.
>>>>>>>>> CLICK HERE TO READ FULL ARTICLE
From The Sunday Times
August 16, 2009
Jenni Russell
There’s just one element of the stories of my childhood that fascinates my own children. It’s not the absence of mobile phones, or the idea of a world before the internet. It’s the fact that so many of my small crises ended in the same way: with my being rescued by the kind intervention of an unknown man. Whether I was a nine-year-old being kicked to the ground by a gang of girls in the park, a 14-year-old lost in the Welsh hills on a walking holiday or a 12-year-old who had taken a bad fall from a horse and couldn’t ride home, it was adult men who stepped in without hesitation to stop the fighting or give me a lift or bandage my grazed arms.
I might as well be telling my children about life with the Cherokee Indians. This isn’t a world they know, where children expect to explore by themselves and where passing men and women are the people you turn to when things go wrong. Their generation have been taught from the time they start school that all strangers may be dangerous and all men are threats. So children have become frightened of adults, and adults – terrified that any interaction of theirs might be misinterpreted – have become equally frightened of them.
When my offspring and their friends have been mugged on buses, or attacked on the street by teenagers, no one has helped. Every passing adult has looked the other way. The idea that it’s the responsibility of grown-ups to look out for one another’s young is disappearing fast. That isn’t making our children safer. It’s making their lives more fearful, more dangerous and more constrained.
Last week the charity Living Streets reported that half of all five to 10-year-olds have never played in their own streets. Almost nine in 10 of their grandparents had played out and so had many of their parents, but now children were kept inside, imprisoned by the twin fears of traffic and paedophiles. As the Play England organisation has found, parents keep them in because they believe that if they aren’t watching over their child, no other adult will do it for them. Older children, too, are affected. Two years ago research by the Children’s Society showed that 43% of parents thought children shouldn’t be allowed out on their own until they were 14.
What began 25 years or so ago as an understandable desire to raise awareness of child abuse is turning into something extremely destructive – an instinctive suspicion of any encounter between grown-ups and unrelated children. It has happened without any political debate or rational discussion. It’s starting to poison our society. And with every passing month it’s getting worse.
>>>>>>>>> CLICK HERE TO READ FULL ARTICLE
Comment
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Comment by Tara on August 31, 2009 at 3:58pm
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Don't you mean Tara, Marklar? You must be confused with the new profile pic I put up, lol! It's all good friend!
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Comment by Marklar on August 31, 2009 at 3:38pm
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Thanks Dee, I'm not a parent so maybe I just don't see the effects as often. I'm sure you probably have more personal experience of it than I do.
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Things have gotten just as bad in the states as they are in the UK when it comes to this very subject Mark. Being a parent myself, I'm around a lot of parents and see the paranoia when it comes to their children and keeping them safe. There is one couple in our apt building that can't possibly allow there daughter to even play with my daughter in the courtyard without parental supervision, out of fear that the big bad boogey man is going to take their daughter away. And let me remind you that this courtyard is fenced in, locked up and nobody can see in the damn thing! To me that's lunacy!!!!
This all reminds me of the War on Terror and the big bad alCIAda coming to a town near you to take away freedom and lives...... and everyone shudders in fear, stops there lives and is willing to give up anything and everything for the govt to come to their rescue. Nine times out of ten the only individuals responsible for taking any lives or freedoms are the ones that supposedly have our best interests at heart, the govt. Isn't it just like a parent who believes in the myth that every man out there might molest, stalk, kidnap or murder their child and ultimately does everything but put a collar and a chain on their child/children to keep them safe?????
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Well, they're actually talking about the UK here but it's easy to see that we are headed in much the same direction even if not quite this bad,.. yet.
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Yeah, I remember the days of being allowed to ride my bike pretty much anywhere, exploring the great outdoors with eyes wide open and a heart full of life. The only thing that my mom would tell me is to be back around suppertime! Long gone are those good ole days! Fear has taken over rational thought and kids can't be kids anymore!
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