A decline in supervision is not the entire story. Even in the fifties there were undersupervised children . . . who nevertheless d...id not become pregnant at thirteen . . . and who did not smoke anything stronger than an occasional Camel or Lucky Strike. . . . It took a combination of unsupervised children and a permissive, highly charged sexual atmosphere and an influx of easily acquired drugs and the wherewithal to buy them to bring about precocious experimentation by young and younger children. This occurred in the mid-seventies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The new concept of the child as equal and the new integration of children into adult life has helped bring about a gradual but cer...tain erosion of these boundaries that once separated the world of children from the word of adults, boundaries that allowed adults to treat children differently than they treated other adults because they understood that children are different.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The upshot of pervasive public belief in the uncontrollable sexuality of teenagers, and even of pre-teenagers, is that parents are... half-hearted in their efforts to supervise and control their children, even when they are filled with anxiety as to their children's ability to cope with a full-fledged sexual relationship. "How can we buck the tide?" parents say helplessly, often without making quite certain that the ocean they see is a real one and not a mirage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childh...ood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today's children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As today's children impress adults with their sophisticated ways, adults begin to change their ideas about children and their need...s. . . . No longer need adults withhold information about the harsh realities of life from children. . . . Rather, they begin to feel it is their duty to prepare children for the exigencies of modern life. . . . As adults act less protectively . . . and as they expose children to the formerly secret underside of their lives--adult sexuality, violence, injustice--those former innocents grow tougher, perforce, less playful and trusting, more skeptical--in short, more like adults. We have come full circle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The widespread fear among today's parents that their manageable children will turn overnight into dope fiends, school dropouts, or... voracious sexual voluptuaries reflects a certain anger and animosity towards the young, a fear and loathing that helps turn the myth into a self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, there were "bad" children and uncontrolled teenagers in the past; nevertheless, parents expected their own children to be good, to grow up well. . . . The fact that today's parents are amazed if their children do not turn into black sheep makes it clear that a less than optimistic, indeed a deeply distrustful and negative, attitude towards children exists today.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Perhaps an understanding that early childhood is not the only important stage of childhood, that the middle years are equally impo...rtant, may lead parents to . . . devote more time and attention, more care and supervision, to their post-toddler children, capable and unchildlike though they may seem. . . . Perhaps an understanding of the importance of play in children's lives . . . will provoke parents to take a stronger stand in controlling their children's television viewing, television being the greatest replacement of play among today's children. . . . Perhaps an understanding . . . that children do not prosper when treated as equal, will encourage parents to take a more authoritative, not authoritarian--position in the family. . . . Perhaps the recognition that a highly complicated civilization cannot afford the period of nurture and protection of its immature members will restore a real childhood to the children of coming generations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »