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Smother Love
Every morning,Leanne Brickland and he sister would bicycle to school with the same words ringing in their ears:“watch out crossing the road.Don't speak to strangers”.“Mum would stand at the top of the steps and call that out,”says Brickland,now a primary-school teachet and mother of four from Rotorua,New Zealand.Substitute boxers and thongs for undies（内衣）,and the nagging fears that haunt parents haven't really changed.What has altered,dramatically,is the confidence we once had in our children's ability to fling themselves at life without a grown-up holding their hands
Worry-ridden Parents and Stifled Kids
By today'sstandards,the childhood freedoms Brickland took for granted practically verge on parental neglect.Her mother worked,so she and her sister had a key to let themselves in after school and were expected todo their homework and put on the potatoes for dinner.At the family's beach house near Wellington,the two girls,from the age of five or six,would disappear for hours to play in the lakes and sands.
A generation later,Brickland's children are growing up in a world more indulged yet more accustomed to peril.The techno-minded generation of PlayStation kids who can conquer entire armies and rocket through spacecan't even be trusted to cross the street alone.“I worry about the road.I worry about strangers.In some ways I think they're missing out,but I like to be able to see them, to know where they are and what they'redoing.”
Call it smother love,indulged-kid syndrome,parental neurosis（神经症）.Even though today's children have the universe at their fingertips thanks to the Internet,their physical boundaries are shrinking at a rapid pace.According to British social scientist Mayer Hillman,a child's play zone has contracted so radically that we're producing the human equivalent of henhouse chickens-plump from lack of exercise and without the flexibility and initiative of freerange kids of the past.The spirit of our times is no longer the resourceful adventurer Tom Sawyer but rather the worry-ridden dad and his stifled only child in Finding Nemo.
In short,child rearing has become an exercise in risk minimization,represented by stories such as the father who refused to allow his daughter on a school picnic to the beach for fear she might drown.While it's natural for a parent to want to protect their children from danger,you have to wonder;Have we gone too far?
Parents Wrap Kids up in Cotton Wool
A study conducted by Paul Tranter,a lecturer in geography at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra,showed that while Australian and New Zealand children had similar smounts of unsupervised freedom,it was far less than German of English kids.For example,only a third of ten-year-olds in Australia and New Zealand were allowed to visit places other than school alone,compared to 80 percent in Germany.
Girls were even more restricted than boys,with parents fearing assault or molestation(骚扰),while traffic dangers were seen as the greatest threat to boys.Bike ownership has doubled in a generation,but“independent mobility”---the ability to roam and explore unsupervised---has radically declined.In Auckland,for example,many primary schools have done away with bicycle racks because the streets are considered too unsafe.And in Christchurch,New Zealand's most bike-friendly city,the number of pupils cycling to school has fallenfrom more than 90 percent in the late 1970s to less than 20 percent.Safely strapped into the family 4x4,children are instead driven from home to the school gate,then off to ballet,soccer or swimming lessons--rarely straying from watchful adult eyes.
In the U.S.Journal of Physical Education,Recreation&Dance,New Jersey assistant principal and hockey coach Bobbie Schultz writes that playing in the street after school with neighbourhood kids--creating their own rules,making their own decisions and settling disputes--was where the real learning took place.“The street was one of the greatest sources of my life skills,”she says.“I don't see‘on-the-street play’anymore.I see adult-organized activities.Parents don't realize what an integral part of character development their children are missing.”
Armoured with bicycle helmets,car seats,“safe”playgrounds and sunscreen,children are getting the messageloud and clear that the world is full or peril--and that they're ill-equipped to handle it alone.Yet research consistently shows young people are much more capable than we think,says professor Anne Smith,directorof New Zealand's Children's Issues Centre.“The thing that many adults have difficulty with is that children can't learn to be grown-up if they're excluded and protected all the time.”
Educational psychologist Paul Prangley reckons it's about time the kid gloves came off.He believes parenting has taken on a paranoid（患妄想狂的）edge that's creating a generation of naive,insecure youngsters whoare subconsciously being taught they're incapable of handing things by themselves.“Flexibility and the ability to resist pressure and temptation are learned skills,”Prangley explains.“If you wrap kids up in cotton wool and don't give them the opportunity to take risks,they're less equipped to make responsible decisions later in life.”
Parents Should Gain Proper Perspective
Sadly,high-profile cases of children being kidnapped and murdered--such as ten-year-old Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in the United Kingdom;five-year-old Chloe Hoson in Australia,whose body was found just 200 metres from where she lived;and six-year-old Teresa Cormack in New Zealand,who was snatched off the street on her way to school--only serve to reinforce parents'fears.Teresa Cormack's death,for example,was one of the rare New Zealand cases of random child kidnap.In Australia,the odds of someone under the age of 15 being murdered by a stranger have been estimated at one in four million.A child is at far greater risk from afamily member or someone they know.
However,parental fear is contagious.In one British study,far more children feared an attack by a stranger than being hit by a car.“We are losing our sense of perspective,”write Jan Parker and Jan Stimpson in their parenting book,Raising Happy Children.“Every parent has to negotiate their own route between equipping children with the skills they need to stay safe and not restricting or terrifying them unnecessarily in the process.”
Dr.Claire Freeman,a planning expert at the University of Otago,points to the erosion of community responsibility as another casualty of that mutual distrust.Not so long ago,adults knew all the local kids and werethe informal guardians of the neighbourhood.“Now,particularly if you are a man,you may hesitate to offer help to a lost child for fear your motives might be questioned.”
More Space and More Attention to Kid's Needs
As a planner in the mid-1990s,Freeman became concerned about the loss of green space to development and the erosion of informal places to play.In a study that looked at how children in the British city of Leeds spent their summer holidays,compared with their parents' childhood experiences,she found the freedom to explore had been severely contracted--in some cases,down to the front yard.Freeman says she cannot remember being inside the house as a child,or being alone.Growing up was about being part of a group.Now a mother offour,Freeman believes the “domestication of play”is robbing kids of their sense of belonging within a society.
Nevertheless,Freeman says children's needs are starting to get more emphasis.In the Netherlands,child-friendly “home zones”have been created where priority is given to pedestrians,rather than cars.And ponds arebeing incorporated back into housing estates on the principle that children should learn to be safe aroundwater,rather than be surrounded by a barren landscape.After all ,as one of the smarter fosh says in Finding Nemo there's one problem with nothing ever will.
