Driven To Be Less Driven
link Lenore Skenazy: Whatever Happened to Walking to School? – WSJ.com.
A sentiment which is probably shared by most of my admittedly older generation. But I also add that we chopped wood, fed the animals and drew water from the well before our mile long jaunt to school. Uphill of course, both ways. In a related article from a little while back, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37399539/ns/health-behavior/ there is an obvious pattern of smothering the current generation of children and ironically creating young people that are ill-equipped to deal with life’s vicissitudes.
At some point over the past few generations, it became unseemly to make kids endure ‘hardship’, whatever that definition means. For some kids, hardship may mean working at a part time job to help with school costs, whereas for others, it may mean appearing at school in the BMW instead of the Mercedes. The consequence of over parenting is a society of people somewhat insulated from the realities of life. Suffering is an abstract notion.
Kids should suffer. In all of the animal kingdom, at some point, the progeny gets pushed out into the cold hard world and the cycle repeats itself. You don’t see birds bringing worms to feed middle aged birds in the nest. You don’t see lionesses bringing freshly caught wildebeest to teenage lions at home. Unlike the natural animal world, humans, at least in western society, have moved towards sheltering their children from every imaginable event that can cause harm. The result is a world full of people like Prince Charles of Windsor, wholly out of touch with reality and insisting on the Grey Poupon at dinner.
It’s really debatable whether the world is a more dangerous place for kids now than in the ’50’s or 60’s when kids were allowed to be kids and not faberge eggs requiring delicate handling. It’s a wonder that Johnson and Johnson stays in business given that collapsing skinned knee incidents must mean the implosion of band-aid demand. Nowadays, a cut finger means a trip to the local hospital, a fee to the HMO and a week’s rest in bed.
Admittedly, my comments are a bit self serving. I’m annoyed that the charming days of cheap child labour to mow lawns, paint garages and washing cars are gone. As well, the cleaning of chimneys has to be done by hired professionals. Oh well, maybe they’ll be kind to us when choosing our retirement homes.