A terrific piece by Skenazy and Haidt at Reason. When is protecting your child doing more harm than good? Should policies be put in place which reinforce paranoid parenting, ultimately leading to children facing even more difficulties on their road to "success"?
This article hit's the nail on the head. Every single word. When I was growing up, society was statistically more dangerous than it is today and yet, there was no immediate notion of being under threat, enough to warrant staying at home and missing out on playing football with classmates after school. Today, crime rates are down and yet there is an irrational sense of fear harbouring in parents today, resulting in children becoming hermits, at the same time more fragile.
I could quote a paragraph at random and it would be great. Here's three:
"The principle here is simple: This generation of kids must be protected like none other. They can't use tools, they can't play on grass, and they certainly can't be expected to work through a spat with a friend.
And this, it could be argued, is why we have "safe spaces" on college campuses and millennials missing adult milestones today. We told a generation of kids that they can never be too safe—and they believed us.
We've had the best of intentions, of course. But efforts to protect our children may be backfiring. When we raise kids unaccustomed to facing anything on their own, including risk, failure, and hurt feelings, our society and even our economy are threatened. Yet modern child-rearing practices and laws seem all but designed to cultivate this lack of preparedness. There's the fear that everything children see, do, eat, hear, and lick could hurt them. And there's a newer belief that has been spreading through higher education that words and ideas themselves can be traumatizing."
I love Lenore Skenazy - I've followed her on Twitter, tweeted links to her columns, recommended her to parents everywhere. Hadn't heard of Jonathan Haidt - thanks for this.
https://reason.com/archives/2017/10/26/the-fragile-generation
Lenore Skenazy is founder of the book and blog Free-Range Kids, and president of the nonprofit Let Grow Foundation.
Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business, author of The Righteous Mind (Pantheon Books), and a co-founder and board member of Let Grow.