When Gen X writers started writing YA novels, we kept hearing, "Where are the parents? Why are the parents so absent from YA?" One reason was: that's how we grew up. Then we also had to learn how to write for a younger generation whose parents are around much more.
Schools back then also didn't expect parents to be nearly as involved as they do now. There was one "open house" per year where parents could talk to teachers, and there was an award ceremony and graduation, but parents were not expected to constantly show up at school during the day, nor to monitor every assignment, nor to prepare special outfits for theme days.
On the downside, bullying was also seen as "just the way things were." We were expected to tough it out, and it wasn't taken seriously by most adults.
But I will never regret having free hours that I had to figure out for myself how to spend. I will never regret having to decide for myself how to schedule my own homework-doing and term-paper-writing, and I'll always be glad for those "let's play in the woods until dinnertime" days. If I had every hour scheduled for me, the way kids often do now, I would've been miserable.
I made the parents of the young time travelers in my first novel absent and substituted a British WWII woman who gave the kids a lot of responsibility (but there was hell to pay when they screwed up) That's about right. Now reminiscing about the British WWII era teacher who took in hand a certain difficult Gen X teenager. What a coincidence.... 😂 Btw, we have fairies in Scotland, scary fierce creatures. Don't doubt it, Brent.
Oh! I never made that connection! You're absolutely right.
You're right about the involvement, but there's ALSO the constant contact with their kids via their phones.
The bullying thing is very true...but even that is complicated. I think certain kinds of bullying are less now, but of course humans being humans, we've invented whole new ways to bully each other. Oy.
Yes, everyone generally is so much more "monitored." We grew up reading 1984 and thinking surveillance was bad, and I've been astonished at how fast society has given up so much privacy. With that comes the expectation of instant answers and constant contact, including knowing exactly where one's kids are and what they are doing every minute.
"there is no one moment when you “grow up.” Nah. It’s an ongoing process, a bunch of little moments and things." -- Absolutely!
Also add the fact that kids are not given enough unplanned time to get bored and have to figure out how to get themselves UNbored. There are important life skills to that too.
Loved this. It's part of the reason we moved to where we are — the kids are absolutely feral here, and we cherished that freedom (and problem-solving) when we were kids. Good work, Bill!
As I was reading your post, I reminded of what both of my daughters had to say about various people in the different European countries. They both said, on separate occasions that people, "smoked like chimneys, drank like fish, and partied like rock stars", and still led healthier and happier lives. I was reminded why I became so protective of my daughters when they were little. GMA had an interview with a man named Callahan Walsh about protecting children from stranger abduction after a 9-year-old child was found safe. I Googled Callahan Walsh and found out he's the son of John Walsh, the longtime host of "America's Most Wanted" and one of the authors of the "Missing and Exploited Children's" law. All of this came about because of the kidnapping and killing of Adam Walsh, the oldest child of the Walsh's. That incident happened shortly after my older daughter was born and, soon, attention was brought to many other child abductions which were happening nationwide at that time. Being a Boomer, I was a latchkey kid before the term became fashionable. I walked home from school to an empty unlocked house with the windows left open. My Mom was one of the few Moms who worked during the Baby Boomer generation, so it wasn't unusual for me to go outside all the time and play unsupervised by adults. Due to a distinct lack of technology, we had to communicate the old-fashioned way, with our voices and our actions. Those were some great days! Take care.
Hahaha all very very true! Especially about Europeans, but I think it's because they're MUCH more social with each other (and with their families) and much more active in general.
I think the American media is a HUGE part of this picture. Some of the "news" is real but I fear Americans have gotten a wildly skewed picture about the safety of their children, and the helicopter parent thing is the result. Because this IS about America, and not the rest of the wworld (yet).
Similar childhood in the 60s. Days spent off in our bikes, exploring and doing who knows what. Developing suburb, lots of half built houses to crawl around in after school. Complete with a woodsy swamp! No quicksand, though I did lose some new shoes in mud at a Halloween event at age 13. My mom DID find out, I was in trouble! Amazing that your walking stick grew into a tree.
The tree lasted many many years and got very large. Then it fell over in a storm. That's what it gets for growing in some mud! But I guess I'm responsible for that, ultimately....
What a wonderful essay, moving from the micro to the macro like you did. My favorite part is that Bill had no memory of his heroics. This prompted ME to remember why I am so invested in staying in touch with friends from all stages of my life. Their memories and experience of not just events but of ME can vary from my own memories in stark and dramatic ways. The perspective these friendship-yardsticks provide help me understand myself better and better as the years go by.
Isn't that interesting? Yes, it's a real honor to have witnesses to my life -- and to remember different PARTS of it, and remember the same parts differently. So fascinating!
Different suburb, but our Mud Island was The Woods (clever). It was maybe a dozen acres still undeveloped but... there was a mental hospital deep inside! One day we walked all the way there but as we got near there a man came charging at us screaming. Well you have never seen kids run so fast. It was the talk of the school for weeks. Never found out if he had been an escapee. Of course, many other memories of playing there.
Ah yes! Yours was abandoned as it was perhaps post-Reagan, the POS that threw all the patients to the street, hence where the mental/homeless problem began.
I was also raised in the suburbs of a major city and me and my friends always played in the woods and creek and never had any issues with molesters and we did work out our issues together. Thanks for this reminder, also had some fun in those woods as a teenager...lol
I remember a "whisper network" very clearly -- we KNEW who the local molesters were, even if they adults didn't. We watched out for each other, but that was still very sobering.
You *actually experienced* the nightmare of every 70s kid -- quicksand -- and lived to tell the tale! We had a natural creek like this near my house we used to play in all the time, hunting for tadpoles and frogs and snakes... this is such a great reminder, as I have a son who just turned 10 and so I feel all the feels of what you're writing about here. And, it's not too late for him to experience things that aren't a digital abstractions. I'd like to say we do a pretty good job of that -- he's always loved playing in our backyard, and getting out in nature more than being inside. (But he does love his Roblox games, because he gets to play those with friends.) This is what I needed to hear today, though.
Quoting: "... honestly, giving developing minds unlimited access to screens and social media that are designed to be addictive seems way riskier to me that letting kids play in some woods."
Spot on! We seem to be losing the distinction between actual and synthetic experience. So we feel anxious and lost.
wanted to comment on your hidden people in Iceland -- but this seems to be something else with an old date??? I think what you encountered in childhood & what the Icelanders believe in is a manifestation of the soul of place, the genius loci, a sort of intelligence operating in landscape with which we can interact on various levels....
I don't believe in Hidden People, but I do believe in THIS. I think it is much more likely. Alas, I think these forest "souls" are in ill health lately. 😞
I don't know what's worse: helicopter parenting or never being allowed to be terrible at something and failing without fanfare. And I don't understand why a "graduation ceremony" is necessary after each grade. I am totally not qualified to be around kids or the parents who are raising them today. This was such a great read on so many levels. There is much to be said about being a kid, learning resiliency ,and what it's like to have genuine friends while growing up.
Same kind of childhood - and then there was the time a friend and I (4th graders) lit a fire to roast hot dogs and roasted about 1/2 acre which quickly swept up a hill toward a neighborhood. Grounded for a month, visit from the fire chief, but a bit of a badge of honor with the guys.
Amen! Life was even more free range in the Fifties. There was always a Mom somewhere as we all played in each others' yards. There were limits, like I couldn't ride my bike anywhere but Redondo, and when Dad caught me one street over, the bike was locked up for a week. But Moms would push us out the door after breakfast. We'd eat lunch then outside again. Every adult was familiar and safe. The only stranger that ventured into the neighborhood one day was leading a pony on a lead line and he took pictures of all of us sitting on this pony. I still have that picture.
yes, yes, yes, ALL the adults were our surrogate parents. -- especially the moms. It was very informal but also very specific. Expectations were clear. And yes, I remember the "stated rules" very clear: you could ride your bike HERE, but not to HERE. And the parents all knew this too, and if we violated the rule there was hell to pay. (But we sometimes did it anyway -- that was part of it.)
It was a beautifully guided free range life. What happened? Who thought it was such a good idea to replace it with what we have now? Oh wait! Maybe Gloria Steinem et al had a say in the matter. Babies thrown out with the bath water. It's great that women have greater opportunities for personal success and income, but the vilification of motherhood and homemaking was a disaster. Apparently, from what I read just yesterday, Gen Z women are taking another look at the power of homemaking and what can or can't be gained from other work. Even the kibbutz movement got slammed with women's rebellion when they expected mothers to hand over their infants to the children's house on the kibbutz so they could work in the kitchen. HA! A major lead balloon!. So compramises were required before a lot of women would join the kibbutzim.
When Gen X writers started writing YA novels, we kept hearing, "Where are the parents? Why are the parents so absent from YA?" One reason was: that's how we grew up. Then we also had to learn how to write for a younger generation whose parents are around much more.
Schools back then also didn't expect parents to be nearly as involved as they do now. There was one "open house" per year where parents could talk to teachers, and there was an award ceremony and graduation, but parents were not expected to constantly show up at school during the day, nor to monitor every assignment, nor to prepare special outfits for theme days.
On the downside, bullying was also seen as "just the way things were." We were expected to tough it out, and it wasn't taken seriously by most adults.
But I will never regret having free hours that I had to figure out for myself how to spend. I will never regret having to decide for myself how to schedule my own homework-doing and term-paper-writing, and I'll always be glad for those "let's play in the woods until dinnertime" days. If I had every hour scheduled for me, the way kids often do now, I would've been miserable.
All of this, 100%
I made the parents of the young time travelers in my first novel absent and substituted a British WWII woman who gave the kids a lot of responsibility (but there was hell to pay when they screwed up) That's about right. Now reminiscing about the British WWII era teacher who took in hand a certain difficult Gen X teenager. What a coincidence.... 😂 Btw, we have fairies in Scotland, scary fierce creatures. Don't doubt it, Brent.
In Scotland? I believe it 😉
Wait. I didn't know your wrote novels. 😳
Links?
I was ahead of my time 😂Details here. New copies from us, used on ye dread Amazon, or Kindle (Book 4 not on Kindle) https://annettelaing.com/books/
Oh! I never made that connection! You're absolutely right.
You're right about the involvement, but there's ALSO the constant contact with their kids via their phones.
The bullying thing is very true...but even that is complicated. I think certain kinds of bullying are less now, but of course humans being humans, we've invented whole new ways to bully each other. Oy.
Yes, everyone generally is so much more "monitored." We grew up reading 1984 and thinking surveillance was bad, and I've been astonished at how fast society has given up so much privacy. With that comes the expectation of instant answers and constant contact, including knowing exactly where one's kids are and what they are doing every minute.
I'm old enough now to understand that sweeping fundamental change only takes one generation to implement.
"there is no one moment when you “grow up.” Nah. It’s an ongoing process, a bunch of little moments and things." -- Absolutely!
Also add the fact that kids are not given enough unplanned time to get bored and have to figure out how to get themselves UNbored. There are important life skills to that too.
Oh yes yes yes! That is SUCH an important skill, overcoming boredome.
Loved this. It's part of the reason we moved to where we are — the kids are absolutely feral here, and we cherished that freedom (and problem-solving) when we were kids. Good work, Bill!
Hahaha, yes, very good work.
We feel the same way about kids overseas -- basically, any other country other than America.
Dear Brent:
As I was reading your post, I reminded of what both of my daughters had to say about various people in the different European countries. They both said, on separate occasions that people, "smoked like chimneys, drank like fish, and partied like rock stars", and still led healthier and happier lives. I was reminded why I became so protective of my daughters when they were little. GMA had an interview with a man named Callahan Walsh about protecting children from stranger abduction after a 9-year-old child was found safe. I Googled Callahan Walsh and found out he's the son of John Walsh, the longtime host of "America's Most Wanted" and one of the authors of the "Missing and Exploited Children's" law. All of this came about because of the kidnapping and killing of Adam Walsh, the oldest child of the Walsh's. That incident happened shortly after my older daughter was born and, soon, attention was brought to many other child abductions which were happening nationwide at that time. Being a Boomer, I was a latchkey kid before the term became fashionable. I walked home from school to an empty unlocked house with the windows left open. My Mom was one of the few Moms who worked during the Baby Boomer generation, so it wasn't unusual for me to go outside all the time and play unsupervised by adults. Due to a distinct lack of technology, we had to communicate the old-fashioned way, with our voices and our actions. Those were some great days! Take care.
Hahaha all very very true! Especially about Europeans, but I think it's because they're MUCH more social with each other (and with their families) and much more active in general.
I think the American media is a HUGE part of this picture. Some of the "news" is real but I fear Americans have gotten a wildly skewed picture about the safety of their children, and the helicopter parent thing is the result. Because this IS about America, and not the rest of the wworld (yet).
Similar childhood in the 60s. Days spent off in our bikes, exploring and doing who knows what. Developing suburb, lots of half built houses to crawl around in after school. Complete with a woodsy swamp! No quicksand, though I did lose some new shoes in mud at a Halloween event at age 13. My mom DID find out, I was in trouble! Amazing that your walking stick grew into a tree.
The tree lasted many many years and got very large. Then it fell over in a storm. That's what it gets for growing in some mud! But I guess I'm responsible for that, ultimately....
What a wonderful essay, moving from the micro to the macro like you did. My favorite part is that Bill had no memory of his heroics. This prompted ME to remember why I am so invested in staying in touch with friends from all stages of my life. Their memories and experience of not just events but of ME can vary from my own memories in stark and dramatic ways. The perspective these friendship-yardsticks provide help me understand myself better and better as the years go by.
Isn't that interesting? Yes, it's a real honor to have witnesses to my life -- and to remember different PARTS of it, and remember the same parts differently. So fascinating!
Different suburb, but our Mud Island was The Woods (clever). It was maybe a dozen acres still undeveloped but... there was a mental hospital deep inside! One day we walked all the way there but as we got near there a man came charging at us screaming. Well you have never seen kids run so fast. It was the talk of the school for weeks. Never found out if he had been an escapee. Of course, many other memories of playing there.
Oh my! There was an ABANDONED mental hospital not far from our "Woods." That was very chilling. But all so formative....
Ah yes! Yours was abandoned as it was perhaps post-Reagan, the POS that threw all the patients to the street, hence where the mental/homeless problem began.
Haha yes, exactly.
I was also raised in the suburbs of a major city and me and my friends always played in the woods and creek and never had any issues with molesters and we did work out our issues together. Thanks for this reminder, also had some fun in those woods as a teenager...lol
I remember a "whisper network" very clearly -- we KNEW who the local molesters were, even if they adults didn't. We watched out for each other, but that was still very sobering.
You *actually experienced* the nightmare of every 70s kid -- quicksand -- and lived to tell the tale! We had a natural creek like this near my house we used to play in all the time, hunting for tadpoles and frogs and snakes... this is such a great reminder, as I have a son who just turned 10 and so I feel all the feels of what you're writing about here. And, it's not too late for him to experience things that aren't a digital abstractions. I'd like to say we do a pretty good job of that -- he's always loved playing in our backyard, and getting out in nature more than being inside. (But he does love his Roblox games, because he gets to play those with friends.) This is what I needed to hear today, though.
Hahah, I did!
Good for you! You're fighting the tide, but he will thank you in the end.
Quoting: "... honestly, giving developing minds unlimited access to screens and social media that are designed to be addictive seems way riskier to me that letting kids play in some woods."
Spot on! We seem to be losing the distinction between actual and synthetic experience. So we feel anxious and lost.
Thank you! Yes....
wanted to comment on your hidden people in Iceland -- but this seems to be something else with an old date??? I think what you encountered in childhood & what the Icelanders believe in is a manifestation of the soul of place, the genius loci, a sort of intelligence operating in landscape with which we can interact on various levels....
I don't believe in Hidden People, but I do believe in THIS. I think it is much more likely. Alas, I think these forest "souls" are in ill health lately. 😞
Great story in so many ways, absolutely resonates with me and my childhood even though I’m a few years older (68)!
Thank you 🙂😍
I don't know what's worse: helicopter parenting or never being allowed to be terrible at something and failing without fanfare. And I don't understand why a "graduation ceremony" is necessary after each grade. I am totally not qualified to be around kids or the parents who are raising them today. This was such a great read on so many levels. There is much to be said about being a kid, learning resiliency ,and what it's like to have genuine friends while growing up.
Thank you. Yes, I feel very very out if sync with today's parenting too (but only in the US. This really isn't a world wide phenom, at least not yet)
Same kind of childhood - and then there was the time a friend and I (4th graders) lit a fire to roast hot dogs and roasted about 1/2 acre which quickly swept up a hill toward a neighborhood. Grounded for a month, visit from the fire chief, but a bit of a badge of honor with the guys.
🤣🤣🤣
We were lucky: we managed to put out all the fires we set before the adults found out
I couldn't agree more with every statement in this piece.
Thank you! 🙂
Amen! Life was even more free range in the Fifties. There was always a Mom somewhere as we all played in each others' yards. There were limits, like I couldn't ride my bike anywhere but Redondo, and when Dad caught me one street over, the bike was locked up for a week. But Moms would push us out the door after breakfast. We'd eat lunch then outside again. Every adult was familiar and safe. The only stranger that ventured into the neighborhood one day was leading a pony on a lead line and he took pictures of all of us sitting on this pony. I still have that picture.
Oh, interesting!
yes, yes, yes, ALL the adults were our surrogate parents. -- especially the moms. It was very informal but also very specific. Expectations were clear. And yes, I remember the "stated rules" very clear: you could ride your bike HERE, but not to HERE. And the parents all knew this too, and if we violated the rule there was hell to pay. (But we sometimes did it anyway -- that was part of it.)
It was a beautifully guided free range life. What happened? Who thought it was such a good idea to replace it with what we have now? Oh wait! Maybe Gloria Steinem et al had a say in the matter. Babies thrown out with the bath water. It's great that women have greater opportunities for personal success and income, but the vilification of motherhood and homemaking was a disaster. Apparently, from what I read just yesterday, Gen Z women are taking another look at the power of homemaking and what can or can't be gained from other work. Even the kibbutz movement got slammed with women's rebellion when they expected mothers to hand over their infants to the children's house on the kibbutz so they could work in the kitchen. HA! A major lead balloon!. So compramises were required before a lot of women would join the kibbutzim.
I agree that motherhood and staying at home never should have been vilified. Big mistake. But I also think it was corrected.