In relatively recent times, with the decline in need for child labor and the renaissance of democratic values, the directive-domineering style of parenting, with its regular beating of children to drive the willfulness out of them, has declined. For a while—-peaking around the 1950s and ‘60s—-trustful parenting seemed to experience a rebirth, but the decades since then have seen trustful parenting swamped out by a new kind of directive parenting, which I have been calling directive-protective parenting. Directive-protective parents direct their children’s activities and limit their freedom not to force them to labor in fields or factories, or to make them servile, as directive-domineering parents did. Rather, they do so because they fear for their children’s safety and for their futures, and they believe they can make better decisions for their children than their children can themselves. While trustful parents view children as resilient and competent, directive-protective parents view children as fragile and incompetent. While trustful parents believe that children develop best when allowed to play and explore on their own, directive-protective parents believe that children develop best when they follow a path that has been carefully laid out for them by adults.

In last week’s post I quoted Hillary Clinton on the freedom that she experienced as a child in the 1950s, and I described the freedom and trust that my friends and I enjoyed during that same period in our grade-school years. Clinton and I are not the only adults today who regret the decline in children’s freedom over the past few decades—-a decline that has been accompanied by a sharp rise in childhood obesity, depression, and suicides. Several surveys conducted in the UK and the United States in recent times reveal that many adults today express sadness that their own children are growing up with less freedom than they themselves enjoyed when they were growing up.[1] Yet, most feel that they cannot allow their children such freedom. They feel that the world has changed and that children today need more protection and adult direction than they needed when they were children.

What societal changes have occurred over the past several decades to create the perception that children today need more adult-direction and protection than they did in the past? I’m sure that a full answer to this question would describe a large number of interconnected changes in the social world. Here are a few of them that seem to me most relevant:

• The decline of neighborhoods and loss of children’s outdoor play groups

In the 1950s, when I was a child, most people—-adults as well as children—-knew their neighbors. This was partly because many women were home during the day and formed friendship networks with others, but men too tended to be home more then than now. Workdays were not as long, on average, and people were home on weekends. Nowadays out-of-home work has come to dominate adult life for both men and women, and most adult friendships are formed at work rather than in the neighborhood. Since children are not part of that work world, they are not part of the same friendship networks as their parents. The result of all this is that parents are uncertain about the character of other people in the neighborhood, and other people in the neighborhood, even when they are home, typically don’t know or keep an eye out for children that are not their own. The neighborhood therefore seems less safe, and maybe really is less safe, than it was in times past.

When some parents stop allowing their children to play freely in the neighborhood, the neighborhood becomes less inviting for those children who are still allowed to play outdoors. Few children want to play alone. The biggest attraction of children to the outdoors, or to any place, always, is other children. The neighborhood also becomes less safe when fewer children are outdoors. There is always safety in numbers. It’s a vicious cycle:  Fewer children outdoors playing means that the outdoors is less inviting and less safe than before, which means that there will be still fewer children outdoors playing. To make neighborhoods once again inviting and safe for children’s outdoor free play, something has to be done to break that cycle.

• The decline of local common sense about parenting and the rise of a worldwide network of fear

In times past most adults had more familiarity with and understanding of children than they do today. Families tended to be larger than today, and extended families tended to live in the same town and share time together. By the time adults had their own children, they already had lots of experience with children. They knew, firsthand, something about child development. They knew something about children’s competencies and the value of play and adventure to children, and so they tended to be trustful of their own children when they had them. They also were often parenting in the context of a network of other parents, who were their friends and who shared stories about their children. They could see that the children of neighbors, who were allowed to play freely, were growing up well and doing just fine. Neighborhoods and extended families were places of shared common sense about children and parenting

With the decline in family size and in closeness of extended families, and with the decline of neighborhoods, adults today often start their families with little firsthand or even secondhand experience with real children. The ideas and information that they have about children, often, come from what they read or hear from experts and the media, and that is biased information. Experts commonly write to warn people of dangers, danger is their field of expertise; and the news every day reports on some terrible thing that has happened to some child somewhere. The fact that millions of children went outdoors today and played without adult supervision and came home healthier, wiser, and more responsible as a result is not news, but the fact that one child somewhere was abducted today, or drowned, or was run over by an automobile is spread quickly by the media throughout the state, or even throughout the nation or world depending on how lurid the story. The information that parents get does not reflect statistical reality and it feeds into every parent’s worst nightmares.

• The increased uncertainty about the future

The world seems less stable now than it did a few decades ago. Many of the old ways of making a living have disappeared. It is impossible to predict what jobs will be available in the future or what job skills will be required. A result of this is that parents worry about their children’s futures far more than they did in times past. Many parents today see childhood as a time of résumé building. Children can’t just go out and play and explore on their own, because that doesn’t count on a résumé. Somehow, parents believe, if they can get their children to develop impressive résumés, get them to score high on various tests, and get them into the most prestigious schools, they can protect their children’s futures. They are wrong, of course; but the perception persists.