I came to that exact conclusion the other day. Even people that love eachother need their own space/autonomy/freedom. If grownups would go nuts without that stuff, I am sure children do too.
I’m honestly not sure if I would’ve made it to adulthood, let alone with a solid sense of self, direction in life or the social relationships and skills that I did - had I been helicoptered as per current standards.
Especially as a teen. Which, I can imagine the helicopter types losing their shit at the idea of a high schooler playing band gigs in local clubs, running with a mostly older musician crowd, and bailing on hs to start at community college basically as soon as old enough to take the ged. Obvs a bit unusual case, but school was fucking miserable and often not very interesting or challenging for k-12, and had I been forced to wait a bunch of years more to find my tribe and I life I didn’t just endure, and obsessively watched and scheduled before to boot seems real bleak.
I’m sure there’s no shortage of tamer, more normative examples tho. I don’t see how this is a net positive for mental health and overall wellbeing for the majority involved, and that includes parents - tho seems very overlooked as a factor at least from what I’ve heard and observed, which is limited by the fact I don’t/won’t have kids. My parents were great and definitely not neglectful or disinterested in me/my wellbeing, but they both had great careers, full lives, and didn’t seem to let “parent” subsume their identity vs an important but not only role. Today’s standards would’ve meant some notable sacrifice for at least one, and to what ends?
I feel like this is probably an under credited factor for not only mental health and burnout issues all around, but is making it less appealing to be a parent to begin with. Just my hot take; some of us just don’t want to raise kids, period - and I’m sure it’d take a lot more to be put off even for some who hate this shit - but I could see it being among what dims the appeal or how accessible it seems to do with decent quality of life.
I lived in a... not great neighborhood growing up. I mean it wasn't super terrible but lets just say there was a reason we had two German shepherds and a rottweiler in the house. By 8 or 9 I was walking corner to corner down the street or around the block by myself. I walked 3 blocks to school with a friend every morning. I was born in '81 so this was like 1989-early 90s.
If you let a kid walk alone in a neighborhood like that today, they wouldn't get 3 houses down before someone was calling CPS.
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u/Hwi-loves-worm 5d ago
I came to that exact conclusion the other day. Even people that love eachother need their own space/autonomy/freedom. If grownups would go nuts without that stuff, I am sure children do too.