By Lenore Skenazy.
What do the DVDs Sesame Street: Old School and Showgirls have in common? Besides enduring popularity, that is?
Simple: They are both for adult viewing only.
Swear to God. If you go out and buy the deluxe DVD set of Sesame Street's early days — 1969 to 1974 — you will have a delightful night ahead of you, watching kids play follow the leader, and climb through a giant pipe in a vacant lot, and laugh as they go hide-and-go-seeking through laundry on the line. It is childhood at its most PBS pure. But be forewarned: you will be watching something labeled — seriously — "For adults only."
That's how much childhood has changed in just one
generation.
I should know. I let my son do a time-honored rite of passage here
in New York — that is, I let him ride the subway by himself, last
year, at age nine — and got labeled "America's Worst
Mom." Yeah, worst. Because I listened to my son, who'd
been begging me and my husband to let him do this "grown
up" thing for months until we finally thought, "Well —
okay." We made sure he knew how to read a map, gave him money
for the trip and quarters for the phone and then, one sunny Sunday,
I left him.
In the handbag department at Bloomingdale's.
What was wholesome just one generation ago is reckless
today. There's a subway station right underneath,
which he found, of course. But I didn't stick around to watch,
because I knew he would. In fact, if I'd thought he was in
mortal peril, I never would have let him go at all. But really — I
said, "Goodbye! Have fun!" because I trusted him, I
trusted my city (with its crime rate now on par with Boise, Idaho).
And I even trusted the training I'd given him in how to get
around in the world: "You can talk to strangers —
just don't go off with them." (A way better lesson than
plain old "Stranger danger!")
My son got home safe and sound — and practically levitating with
pride — about 45 minutes later. He knew he'd achieved a
milestone. But leaving our kids to their own devices is not the way
we are expected to do it anymore, at least not if we pick up a
parenting magazine, or turn on the TV, or venture into the great
maw of a baby superstore. The message we get from all
those places is that TIMES HAVE CHANGED! Our kids are in
greater danger than ever before.
From what? From everything! Risky rattles! Toxic toys! Or at least
not-developmental-enough toys! Or plastic toys! Or cribs! Or the
wrong food, the wrong bottles, the wrong stroller. Really — did you
read that flap a few months back about how our kids are going to
end up with less than 800 on their SAT verbals because in most
strollers, they sit facing the street and not their mother? And
that therefore, they are deprived of time that would have been
better spent discussing, I guess, Hegel? (And not the Knocked Up kind of Heigl, either.
Hegel Hegel.)
Every single second is presented as a chance for us parents to
either protect and perfect our kids, or leave them alone at their
peril. That's why the old Sesame Streets suddenly seem
so "inappropriate" (the favorite word of the parenting
establishment. Whatever happened to good ol' "wrong"?
Guess that's for another rant.). Now activities like walking to
school, playing in the park sans a security detail and even
babysitting are considered ridiculously, terrifyingly dangerous.
See-you-on-a-milk-carton
dangerous. Calling-Nancy-Grace-dangerous. It's one of the
fastest societal sea changes I can think of: what was wholesome
just one generation ago is reckless today.
But as I discovered in a zillion interviews with historians,
sociologists, psychologists, criminologists, teachers and even
children, it turns out that kids today are as safe as we were. So
maybe it's time to give them a childhood again — and give
ourselves a break from all that worry. Let's talk about safety
for a second, and then we'll discuss how kids might benefit
from a little loosening of the reins. (And how we parents might
benefit from having a second to breathe.)
Crime-wise, we are back to the levels of 1970. In the '70s and
the '80s, crime started going up until it peaked around 1993.
After that, it started going down again, steeply. So if you were
playing outside in the '70s or '80s (are you ready for
this?), your children today are actually SAFER than you
were.
Read more on
Babble.com.
