P
Peter Cole
Guest
Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> "Peter Cole" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:eCw3k.5599$LN.664@trndny03...
>> [email protected] wrote:
>>
>>
>> We've turned our children over to their peers and Madison Ave. to raise,
>> the "hovering" is just compensation. Our society has gone through a
>> major transition in the past 30 years with women in the workforce. The
>> issue of who was going to actually raise the children got glossed over.
>> It's the elephant in the room.
>
> Not anymore. The mothers these days who are having kids themselves
> were latchkey children, with their own mothers working. They understand.
>
> You need to learn some history. The Industial Revolution triggered a
> huge backlash, some of which formed labor unions, but one of the
> ideas that came out of it was this idea that children are incapabable of
> looking after themselves.
I'm only going back a few decades, not centuries.
The change I'm talking about is shown here:
http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2000/feb/wk3/art03.htm
> The mothers today realize that while it's important to allow a child to
> have a childhood, at the same time, children are capabable of bearing
> responsibility, and in fact it's needed for their development.
While I can't speak for "mothers today" myself, the trend (and the
context of this thread) seems to be that children are becoming less
responsible.
> A child can
> watch themselves at home, after school, by themselves. Their mothers
> know this because those mothers themselves watched themselves
> after school, by themselves.
Depends on the age, obviously. The past couple of decades have seen a
huge rise in daycare, it's become the norm to start this after a brief
maternity leave. Even older children today are typically engaged in
after-school programs so that supervision covers the adult working day.
Summers and even school vacations are becoming filled with structured
activities like camp.
Latchkey kids are nothing new, but many things have changed to have
shifted things away from that mode -- lack of extended family & at-home
neighbors, smaller families (fewer older sibs) and rising affluence, to
name a few.
Sure, kids can learn independence by being left alone, but it's kind of
like learning to swim by being tossed into the deep end of the pool.
Human development is a slow process, the brain is not mature for 20
years or so. Children need both their IQ and "EQ" developed, to reach
intellectual and emotional maturity. By relegating most of their
interaction during developmental years to peers and TV, we are stunting
maturity. Children simply need to spend more time in the company of
adults -- as large a selection of adults as possible.
> "Peter Cole" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:eCw3k.5599$LN.664@trndny03...
>> [email protected] wrote:
>>
>>
>> We've turned our children over to their peers and Madison Ave. to raise,
>> the "hovering" is just compensation. Our society has gone through a
>> major transition in the past 30 years with women in the workforce. The
>> issue of who was going to actually raise the children got glossed over.
>> It's the elephant in the room.
>
> Not anymore. The mothers these days who are having kids themselves
> were latchkey children, with their own mothers working. They understand.
>
> You need to learn some history. The Industial Revolution triggered a
> huge backlash, some of which formed labor unions, but one of the
> ideas that came out of it was this idea that children are incapabable of
> looking after themselves.
I'm only going back a few decades, not centuries.
The change I'm talking about is shown here:
http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2000/feb/wk3/art03.htm
> The mothers today realize that while it's important to allow a child to
> have a childhood, at the same time, children are capabable of bearing
> responsibility, and in fact it's needed for their development.
While I can't speak for "mothers today" myself, the trend (and the
context of this thread) seems to be that children are becoming less
responsible.
> A child can
> watch themselves at home, after school, by themselves. Their mothers
> know this because those mothers themselves watched themselves
> after school, by themselves.
Depends on the age, obviously. The past couple of decades have seen a
huge rise in daycare, it's become the norm to start this after a brief
maternity leave. Even older children today are typically engaged in
after-school programs so that supervision covers the adult working day.
Summers and even school vacations are becoming filled with structured
activities like camp.
Latchkey kids are nothing new, but many things have changed to have
shifted things away from that mode -- lack of extended family & at-home
neighbors, smaller families (fewer older sibs) and rising affluence, to
name a few.
Sure, kids can learn independence by being left alone, but it's kind of
like learning to swim by being tossed into the deep end of the pool.
Human development is a slow process, the brain is not mature for 20
years or so. Children need both their IQ and "EQ" developed, to reach
intellectual and emotional maturity. By relegating most of their
interaction during developmental years to peers and TV, we are stunting
maturity. Children simply need to spend more time in the company of
adults -- as large a selection of adults as possible.
