We've ruined childhood and parenting. I suggest we factor that into falling birth rates and youth mental health issues.

[Chum]

I salute whoever posted the below map on Reddit. It brilliantly illustrates what kids have lost.  And it does so in ways I struggle to describe. 

Summary:

• My diatribe is exclusively focused on the ruining of childhood and parenting.
• No one seems to be factoring it into birth rate declines or youth mental health issues. Until they do, I can only share that I believe they're tightly related.
• This is a USA perspective; it's all I know.

In the most critical ways, my childhood was like my parents' childhood. And it was like the childhood of their great x1000 parents.
Conversely, my children grew up is a much diminished world - a world where their vital growth opportunities were eradicated before they were born. From what I can tell, the loss is irreversible.
Equally bleak was my experience as a parent. I see no path to improving that either. 

Here are the differences.
Me: GenX.
My parents: Silent Gen, WWII vets.
My kids: Millennials-ish. 

Parenting time -> My parents: Occasional. A few hours per week inc family meals most nights, occasional family activity, handling me when the school called, chore reminders. Past that had jobs, hobbies and other kid-free leisure time, regular kid free social lives w/ peers. 

Parenting time -> Me (excl school hours): Nearly ceaseless. Most every hour I wasn't working and many hours I was. Past that I had work and church responsibilities. What we called a social life was still parenting but with slightly less focus on kids. Same for recreation. No hobbies. Combined kid-free, leisure hours across 20 years = not many.

Childhood time -> Me (excl school hours): Playing.  Ranging and exploring - many miles in all directions, safe from cars, safe from trespassing charges, safe from well meaning adults in general. This is when I grew my curiosity and developed ambition. The same with peers (~always adult-free) it was when I developed social interaction skills, problem solving skills, exercised risky+instructive behaviors, pushed boundaries and just grew.

Childhood time -> My kids (excl school hours): Their lives were spent in a series of adult-populated, adult-curated boxes. Playing happened in adult-curated, adult-populated spaces.
They surely wanted to roam but In every direction there was 

• very high risks of cars,
• high risks of trespassing charges
• numerous other harms supplied by poor thinking, well meaning adults (ex: calling police on unsupervised kids)
• and that's it. 

Quote

One important thing wasn't ever a meaningful risk.
Stranger kidnappings of unaccompanied kids. Kids are (and always were) safe from was stranger kidnappings. FBI data is authoritative and clear on this. 
sidebar:  I assert that John Walsh actively and extensively harmed millions of US children. He did this by fueling and nurturing a culture that made extremely unlikely stranger kidnappings be perceived as imminent risk. That perception is a lie as delivered.  The lie was believed and acted on by agenda driven politicians, unthinking police, uncritical media and hapless parents. I can't overstate the harm this lie has done to US children.

Recap
My kids had ~0% of the critical growth opportunities (adult-free + roaming + peers) that I (and kids back to prehistory) had. 
Providing this low-quality, low-growth upbringing to my kids cost me >20x the time (compared to my parents). 

Objectively, my parenting was massively more difficult and taxing, than what has constitutes healthy parenting. 
Objectively, my kids grew up in a constant state of mental growth starvation.  Their substandard growth was minimally supplimated by whatever complex, curated experiences we parents could hack together.
While I do recommend parenting, I do not recommend the above bargain.

Going forward, when we consider modern issues like lowering birth rates and youth mental health struggles,
I suggest we factor in the profound sea changes that have radically reshaped parenting and childhood.
Otherwise, it seems unlikely that we'll wind up with anything but unhelpful conclusions. 

[The Nehor]

Accurate, the stranger danger panic combined with the Satanic panic and the Gay panic to spread a generalized fear about children and that fear never went away. Just the targets. Now you have to protect your kids from the evil queers who are “grooming” them or the immigrants or some other group that is out to get them.

I am among the youngest Gen Xers and we went out and played on our own and we had places to go and experience things. We had hills to explore and treasures to find and rode refrigerator boxes down slopes into brick walls. We usually jumped off before hitting the wall.

My youngest siblings didn’t fully get that childhood. My nieces and nephews couldn’t have that if their parents tried to give it to them. Except for when one of my brothers lived in pretty rural Alaska for a while. Then the kids roamed a lot.

I was talking to a 20 year old whose parents panic if he turns tracking off on his phone. He is planning to bolt economically and socially from them soon. That sounds exhausting.

[Stargazer]

6 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Accurate, the stranger danger panic combined with the Satanic panic and the Gay panic to spread a generalized fear about children and that fear never went away. Just the targets. Now you have to protect your kids from the evil queers who are “grooming” them or the immigrants or some other group that is out to get them.

I am among the youngest Gen Xers and we went out and played on our own and we had places to go and experience things. We had hills to explore and treasures to find and rode refrigerator boxes down slopes into brick walls. We usually jumped off before hitting the wall.

My youngest siblings didn’t fully get that childhood. My nieces and nephews couldn’t have that if their parents tried to give it to them. Except for when one of my brothers lived in pretty rural Alaska for a while. Then the kids roamed a lot.

I was talking to a 20 year old whose parents panic if he turns tracking off on his phone. He is planning to bolt economically and socially from them soon. That sounds exhausting.

During summer in 1966 my younger brother and I (12 and 15 years old, respectively) rode our bikes from our home in Garden Grove, California, to Huntington Beach, about 18 miles round trip as the crow flies. It was on the weekend and both parents were home. We didn't tell them where we were going, or even that we were going anywhere. We were gone for hours, and when we returned mom and dad hadn't noticed a thing, and we didn't tell them about it, either. Except a couple of months later when I told them (like "See? That didn't hurt, did it?") and we got grounded for two weeks. Taught me one thing: keep it secret; keep it safe. <- Lord of the Rings reference...

 

[bluebell]

One of the problems, besides not being as able to count on the village around you to help watch out for children who are away from home as we could in the US in times past, is that there is so much more at stake now than there used to be when it comes to kids learning how to navigate the world.

I'm a gen. X'er and you could do something stupid and illegal (like wander onto someone's property, spin donuts in the school parking lot, break something that belonged to someone else, etc.) and get in trouble but not destroy your life.  The local cops would haul you home to your parents, you'd work to pay off damage, get to have a stern lecture from a property owner, stuff like that.  When kids (even young kids) today do that kind of stuff they can be hit with felony charges that will require a lawyer, time in the court system, and maybe even a record to still haunts them after they turn 18.  There used to be room for kids to grow and mature but there's not much room for that anymore.  There is much more at stake.

[Chum]

12 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Accurate, the stranger danger panic combined with the Satanic panic and the Gay panic to spread a generalized fear about children and that fear never went away. Just the targets. Now you have to protect your kids from the evil queers who are “grooming” them or the immigrants or some other group that is out to get them.

My memory had filtered this aspect of the panic out. I had close gay, trans friends; I (now) remember dismissing gay panic as the latest ginned-up, grown-up lie in a neverending string of the same.
That distrust of adults followed me into adulthood and it never stopped getting reinforced.

[Chum]

5 hours ago, Stargazer said:

brother and I (12 and 15 years old, respectively) rode our bikes from ... about 18 miles round trip ... We didn't tell them where we were going, or even that we were going anywhere. We were gone for hours

House was in a rural area but the next county south was built up.  I started bicycling there ~9yo. About 5mi to the river (dirt roads, then traffic) and then spent all day there. There was a retired TV repairman my brother once rented a room from and I'd stop there for tea and bathroom. I did a few trips alone before I convinced friends to come with.

My mom worked in Chinatown in DC. It was a ½doz blocks to the Mall. At 7 I went with my sister and her friend. At 8 they ditched me quick and I could go where I wanted. By the end of the summer I'd go on my own and did that until 12 or so. I leveraged my kidhood and snuck into everywhere I wasn't allowed. DC police let me play with their punchcard computer. I nosed all over the Capital, museums, monuments, Library of Congress, galleries, Archives, gardens. National Cathedral once. Tried the WH a few times but couldn't stand the line. The subway opened when I was 9 and that was awesome.  Tractorcade happened with I was 11. The area as snowed under hard. I'd never seen a closed cabin and he let me in. We had big fun while he slid all over the mall and drove over the gardens, etc outside the old Smithsonian bldng. 

[Chum]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

you could do something stupid and illegal (like wander onto someone's property, spin donuts in the school parking lot, break something that belonged to someone else, etc.) and get in trouble but not destroy your life.  The local cops would haul you home to your parents, you'd work to pay off damage, get to have a stern lecture from a property owner, stuff like that. 

Absolutely. I'd get shamed and have to fix what I did or work it off another way. Once I dug the foundations for a new sign (Methodist church). 
The county police were pretty far away; the locals handled everything in-house. Hill people could be harsh but even those outcomes were better than today.

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

When kids (even young kids) today do that kind of stuff they can be hit with felony charges that will require a lawyer, time in the court system, and maybe even a record to still haunts them after they turn 18.  There used to be room for kids to grow and mature but there's not much room for that anymore.  There is much more at stake.

Again, absolutely.  Redemption is the core of Christianity but the War on Redemption has been underway for generations. Christ's plan is built on clean slates and those are increasingly impossible. Instead we punish repeatedly and often ceaselessly. Minor transgressions are trivially leveraged to lock people out of legitimate jobs and housing.

It's all about mainstreaming harsh control - and that is indistinguishable from the Adversary's plan for us.  If Law and Order junkies had their way, I would have spent my life in prison and denied every opportunity to redeem myself. 

[Robert F. Smith]

21 hours ago, Chum said:

I salute whoever posted the below map on Reddit. It brilliantly illustrates what kids have lost.  And it does so in ways I struggle to describe. ............................

Going forward, when we consider modern issues like lowering birth rates and youth mental health struggles,
I suggest we factor in the profound sea changes that have radically reshaped parenting and childhood.
Otherwise, it seems unlikely that we'll wind up with anything but unhelpful conclusions. 

Not every jurisdiction in America is the same, and a kidnapped or murdered child is of huge concern to the immediate parents.  Telling them that it is rare may not only be false, but also not a valid way to mollify them.

Part of the problem is lax law enforcement, and the gutting of mental health programs for adults -- many of whom are sexual predators.  Many more lockdown psychiatric facilities are necessary to prevent problems before they get out of hand.  Religious communities usually have replacement birth rates, and fewer mental health problems.

[Chum]

3 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Not every jurisdiction in America is the same

Yes.

4 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

a kidnapped or murdered child is of huge concern to the immediate parents. 

Yes!

4 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Telling them that it is rare may not only be false

Telling them it is rare will not be false.  In the US, the risk of stranger kidnapping is extraordinarily rare. It is comparable to picking the correct inch between The Astra Tower and the Wells Fargo Center, in SLC (11mi).  It is comparable to an asteroid strike. 

17 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

but also not a valid way to mollify them.

When we don't bullhorn false risk messages, the need to mollify folks about those risks drops to it's lowest levels. 

[The Nehor]

13 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Not every jurisdiction in America is the same, and a kidnapped or murdered child is of huge concern to the immediate parents.  Telling them that it is rare may not only be false, but also not a valid way to mollify them.

It is not false though. The child abduction and satanic panic (with the fear of child sacrifice or sex slavery) were blown out of all proportion by bad actors. The solution isn’t to indulge those who fell for it. It is to correct the misperceptions.

13 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Part of the problem is lax law enforcement, and the gutting of mental health programs for adults -- many of whom are sexual predators.  Many more lockdown psychiatric facilities are necessary to prevent problems before they get out of hand.  Religious communities usually have replacement birth rates, and fewer mental health problems.

Law enforcement is not lax. It is incredibly overfunded. Its competence can be questioned but there is no lack of funding. Better mental health access would be helpful. We don’t need a bunch of pseudoprisons though. We are already over incarcerated.

What do replacement birth rates have to do with this?

[Benjamin McGuire]

On 5/24/2025 at 8:00 PM, Chum said:

In the most critical ways, my childhood was like my parents' childhood. And it was like the childhood of their great x1000 parents.

See, this is where it all goes off the rails. Childhood is a relatively modern invention. Childhood, as the sort of thing you are thinking of, didn't exist before the 17th century (it didn't exist either conceptually or materially). So the idea that your childhood was similar to the childhood of those in the past is a problem. There is little doubt that your childhood was similar to your parents. And to some extent that theirs was similar to their parents. But at some point, those similarities kind of stop.

At the same time, there are cultural issues that we should also bring up. I spent a month in Japan last fall (much of it in Tokyo and Kyoto, with a trip south to Hiroshima). And, true to expectation, I saw small children getting themselves to school. I myself (along with my siblings) spent a great deal of time wandering the neighborhood (and by neighborhood, I mean that we lived in rural Michigan, and had four homes on our road when I was a child, and we could walk miles through the woods without encountering other people). The US has a relatively high child homicide rate. It peaked in the early 1990s, with huge increases starting in the mid-1980s. This coincided, by the way, with a large surge in media representations of this - CSI started in 2000 (my family watched it pretty regularly for years). In 1990, the US homicide rate for children was 7.4 per 100,000. This is below the overall homicide rate which was 9.4. Japan's overall homicide rate in 1990 was 0.5 per 100,000 - and estimates of child homicides (where we don't have exact data for that year) are closer to 0.2 per 100,000. So, I think that you can make a strong argument that there is correlation here (not necessarily causation of course) between child murders and child freedom. Even though homicide rates for children are declining, this is a change that takes a long time to sink in. At least most of our kids today don't have the drills that we had as children. Getting under that little school desk with our heads between our legs wasn't really going to do all that much if we were near something targeted by a nuclear weapon ...

At the same time, there is a separate issue. Going back to my anecdotal experience, I was the 5th of 13 children in my family - which was unusual even at that point in time. While US birthrates have been in steady decline, Japan had already experienced much more significant birth rate declines. It seems much more likely that the close connection between the shift in treatment of children is caused by the increased value placed on children caused by scarcity. What I mean by that is that my parents provided absolutely nothing in terms of financial support for me once I moved out of the house (which I did just before I turned 16). On the other hand, I have continued to provide support for my kids as my resources have allowed. Michigan Tech cost about $40,000 a year. When your great grandparents were in school (assuming that they finished high school) they didn't have robotics competitions, band camp, the school plays or musical productions. They didn't travel across the country for school competitions. And, of course, day care didn't cost an average of $10,000 a year (as it does in Michigan right now). It is because we invest so much in our children that we tend to have an interest in protecting that investment (especially since we can't afford to keep pumping out kids after the first two or three). Estimates are that raising a child to 18 costs between $300,000 and $400,000. Who wants to sink $250,000 into a kid only to lose it all to an accident caused by a drunk driver.

Our child homicide rates have been declining consistently since that peak in the early 1990s. And our valuing of children (as a society) has been growing as fertility rates have been declining. It is these things that make us able to start asking the questions that you are asking. And yet, at the same time, we should also be questioning other things. Consider, for example, the fact that in Japan, with its super low homicide rates (0.23 per 100,000), there were only 178,140 legally owned guns in 2023. There are just under 18 million children in Japan. In the US, the number of guns privately owned is estimated between 400 and 500 million. We have 72.8 million children, and a current overall homicide rate of 5.7 per 100,000. We could also make the suggestion that guns in our country have ruined childhoods - the correlation is certainly there.

So could we create both actually safer communities for children and the perception that our communities are safer? Probably. But, I think that our political environment is such that those who want to most aggressively promote increases in fertility rates are those that are least interested in taking the steps to make communities safer and to reduce the costs of raising children. It is a catch-22.

[Chum]

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

See, this is where it all goes off the rails. Childhood is a relatively modern invention. Childhood, as the sort of thing you are thinking of, didn't exist before the 17th century (it didn't exist either conceptually or materially). So the idea that your childhood was similar to the childhood of those in the past is a problem. There is little doubt that your childhood was similar to your parents. And to some extent that theirs was similar to their parents. But at some point, those similarities kind of stop.

As I clearly and somewhat repetitively stated, my framing of childhood lies wholly within trivial ability of children to 1) roam, 2) associate with peers and 3) do both without adult interference. I am speaking entirely within the scope of what children gain from unsupervised roaming and peer association and what they've lost with its eradication. 

I assert the modern environment of 24/7 adulting, with incarceration-like boundaries, does not reflect the most ubiquitous environments that children grew up in, including before the 17th c.  I assert children roamed prior to the 17th century. I assert children associated with peers prior to the 17th c. I assert they routinely did both at a distance that removes their adults from the equation  - and did so prior to the 17th c. 

edit: yeah okay. I'll segment this.  In fairness you've mashed a lot together. It's hard to parse it into discrete bits. 
I will take the blame for the rant about the inferred lies + stranger kidnapping risks + harm done. My fault for letting it burst outside of useful boundaries.

Edited May 26, 2025 by Chum

[Chum]

I have to go to the airport. Back to it when time allows.

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 hour ago, Chum said:

I assert children roamed prior to the 17th century. I assert children associated with peers prior to the 17th c. I assert they routinely did both at a distance that removes their adults from the equation  - and did so prior to the 17th c.

While this is all very interesting, it is also interesting that the subject at the root of all this is this report. What is interesting is that while the newspaper article author is the one who introduced the map and the individuals that get named, the report itself isn't particularly interested in specific examples. It notes this:

Quote

Spontaneous unregulated play in neighbourhood spaces, particularly in affluent areas of cities, is becoming an activity of the past. Children have lost access to traditional play areas including streets and wild spaces 46 . This is due in part to:
1. Parental fear of: traffic, bullying and stranger danger,
2. Loss of natural spaces for play,
3. Perceptions of what is best for children.

As a result, children are encouraged to participate in regulated play environments in homes or commercial “play and recreation”.

The mental health issues that are addressed in the paper are specific - the exposure to natural environments helps with mental health. However - and I think this should be obvious - the loss of available natural play areas is going to be a factor. This study deals with a secondary issue that I really didn't touch:

Quote

Successive governments, and motoring organisations, would have us believe that the story of children’s road safety in recent years has been one of unqualified success. The statistics appear to bear this out: the number of children killed on our roads has fallen dramatically, from almost 700 deaths in 1976 to just 81 in 2009.

But these raw figures conceal the true reason behind the drop in deaths: that nowadays children are rarely allowed to venture outdoors. In 2007, the Daily Mail reported on a single Sheffield family who neatly demonstrated this. Great grandfather George, brought up in the 1920s, had almost unlimited freedom as an eight-year-old, regularly walking six miles to go fishing on his own. But 80 years later, his great-grandson Edward enjoyed none of this freedom: he was taken to and from school by car, and was only allowed to roam within a radius of 300 yards from his home.

The fact that limiting children's unattended time in public roads resulted in an almost 90% drop in child fatalities caused by automobiles is not an insubstantial thing - and far more important to parents if you are planning on having only one or two children (rather than the thirteen that I grew up with).

Look, there's no question that parenting has become more difficult. There is more pressure on parents to be perfect. Parenting is far more expensive than it was generations ago. We have shifted from single family income jobs to the general necessity for two parent wage earners. There are the complexities of the digital age (in the research, children could identify Pokemon much more accurately than native British wildlife). And of course, in all of this, there is the problem of trying to find some sort of personal balance. It may be tongue in cheek, but this opinion piece suggested:

Quote

apparently parents never get their houses clean, never have sex, never read books or have adult conversations, never shower, and never, ever have a moment to themselves.

What are the things that are causing all the problems? You aren't going to give kids back playtime in the streets. You just won't. Perhaps we can give parents more time to parent. But that would require us to start paying people real living wages. Let's raise the minimum wage substantially ($25+ an hour). Let's require mandatory paid vacation time, and paid parental leave time - maybe even a 32 hour work week. Let's radically reduce mandatory overtime. Let's subsidize good daycare - and better yet, let's do so by encouraging it in spaces connected to the workspace. Let's create more public nature spaces (accumulate instead of getting rid of public land). Let's extend free education another four years - to include a 4 year degree - so that the need to drive over-achievement for that scholarship will drop, and the financial concerns are reduced. Let's provide better curated time for children (free summer camps - especially for urban families). Let's invest in quality public media programming (more PBS) - if there is going to be screen time, let's create a range of commercial free quality options. Let's invest in more bike and walking paths - that don't share space with automobiles. And let's stop trying to make children wage earners. When I mentioned that childhood is a relative new thing - it is because it marked the beginning of the end of child labor. Yes, this is all an oversimplification - but I am trying to point to the size and scope of the problem. It isn't just about getting the kids out into nature - so that they become a bit more healthy. It's about trying to make parenting more manageable since we are doing our best (collectively) to make it as difficult as we can.

The thing is, parental and social concerns that have led to these circumstances are reasonable and rational in the context in which these decisions have been made. If we went back to children playing in the streets today (as they did four generations ago), child deaths would skyrocket. The profound sea changes that have shaped parenting today are not this sort of shrinking space in which children play - that's only a symptom. The sea changes are the economic changes (the push for women to enter the workspace after WWII, the loss of the family wage, the necessity of advanced education, the costs of childcare, the increases in poverty and economic inequality), the drops in fertility rates are closely associated with those economic changes, and finally we have the increase in technological complexity. Screen time made an easy substitute for playing in the streets. The fact remains that we will be unlikely to make any real headway in these areas ...

Edited May 27, 2025 by Benjamin McGuire

[InCognitus]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The fact that limiting children's unattended time in public roads resulted in an almost 90% drop in child fatalities caused by automobiles is not an insubstantial thing - and far more important to parents if you are planning on having only one or two children (rather than the thirteen that I grew up with).

You make your point well.  And the implications of your statement above would be humorous if it wasn't so horrifying.  Sure, if you have thirteen children, it's not as big a deal if one happens to get killed in an accident.  You still would have twelve children left. (Now you can argue with your siblings about which one of them would be the least missed, that would be a fun conversation at a family dinner).  

Edited May 27, 2025 by InCognitus

[Benjamin McGuire]

49 minutes ago, InCognitus said:

You make your point well.  And the implications of your statement above would be humorous if it wasn't so horrifying.  Sure, if you have thirteen children, it's not as big a deal if one happens to get killed in an accident.  You still would have twelve children left. (Now you can argue with your siblings about which one of them would be the least missed, that would be a fun conversation at a family dinner).

This brought to mind two things that are a bit macabre together. When we were younger, we lived an hour from the Church. We would drive to church in that big Ford Econoline van. And routinely, we would be halfway home, and it would be unusually peaceful and quiet in the van, and then someone would ask ... "Where's Fred?" Our home teacher would bring him over later in the evening.

On June 29th, 1998, at the age of 23, Frederic passed in a boating accident when sailing on Lake Michigan.

The rest of us have all aged, but he will remains 23 years old.

[InCognitus]

1 minute ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

This brought to mind two things that are a bit macabre together. When we were younger, we lived an hour from the Church. We would drive to church in that big Ford Econoline van. And routinely, we would be halfway home, and it would be unusually peaceful and quiet in the van, and then someone would ask ... "Where's Fred?" Our home teacher would bring him over later in the evening.

I just logged on to edit my post to add one thing, and your comment above adds to what I was going to say.  There are other advantages to having large families, such as the siblings watching after each other.

3 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

On June 29th, 1998, at the age of 23, Frederic passed in a boating accident when sailing on Lake Michigan.

The rest of us have all aged, but he will remains 23 years old.

I'm horrified to hear that, and I hope my comment didn't add to that pain.  I didn't mean it that way.

[Benjamin McGuire]

11 hours ago, InCognitus said:

I'm horrified to hear that, and I hope my comment didn't add to that pain.  I didn't mean it that way.

It's been almost 27 years now. It's good to be reminded sometimes.

[Robert F. Smith]

On 5/25/2025 at 4:24 PM, Chum said:

.......................

Telling them it is rare will not be false.  In the US, the risk of stranger kidnapping is extraordinarily rare. It is comparable to picking the correct inch between The Astra Tower and the Wells Fargo Center, in SLC (11mi).  It is comparable to an asteroid strike. 

When we don't bullhorn false risk messages, the need to mollify folks about those risks drops to it's lowest levels. 

27.6 million victms of hiuman trafficking worldwide
Human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal enterprise, currently worth $236 billion annually.
Within sex trafficking,  78% are women and girls and 22% are men and boys
92% are adults and 8% are children
73% of all human trafficking profits come from sex trafficking (prostitution, porn, stripping, etc.)

The Univ of Texas at Austin estimates that there are around 313,000 victims of human trafficking currently in Texas, of whom 79,000 are minors who are being sex trafficked.

[Robert F. Smith]

On 5/26/2025 at 5:02 AM, The Nehor said:

..................Better mental health access would be helpful. We don’t need a bunch of pseudoprisons though. We are already over incarcerated.

What do replacement birth rates have to do with this?

Stable communities tend to foster good mental health, and they reproduce themselves (as with the Hutterites, for example).  Broken, unstable communities foster despair, suicide, and psychosis.

Having adequate lockdown psychiatric facilities is costly and unpopular, but allowing mentally unstable people to run amuck is dangerous to them and to ordinary people.  Under Governors Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan, the excellent mental health facilities were closed down as a cost-saving measure.  Now California has become a zombie-state, with half the homeless now mentally unstable veterans.  The ruling commissars of California only pretend to have compassion.  Most of the billions spent on homeless in California ends up in the private hands of the elite.  Waste, fraud and abuse is as American as apple pie.

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

27.6 million victms of hiuman trafficking worldwide
Human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal enterprise, currently worth $236 billion annually.
Within sex trafficking,  78% are women and girls and 22% are men and boys
92% are adults and 8% are children
73% of all human trafficking profits come from sex trafficking (prostitution, porn, stripping, etc.)

The Univ of Texas at Austin estimates that there are around 313,000 victims of human trafficking currently in Texas, of whom 79,000 are minors who are being sex trafficked.

Most human trafficking doesn’t involve child abductees. That is mischaracterizing how human trafficking works. I remember when I was a teenager adults confidently talking about how (white) children were being abducted and trafficked by sexual predators. That is just not how it works in practice and casting this as a threat scares people unnecessarily and leads people to look for the wrong solutions to the problem.

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Stable communities tend to foster good mental health, and they reproduce themselves (as with the Hutterites, for example).  Broken, unstable communities foster despair, suicide, and psychosis.

Having adequate lockdown psychiatric facilities is costly and unpopular, but allowing mentally unstable people to run amuck is dangerous to them and to ordinary people.  Under Governors Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan, the excellent mental health facilities were closed down as a cost-saving measure.  Now California has become a zombie-state, with half the homeless now mentally unstable veterans.  The ruling commissars of California only pretend to have compassion.  Most of the billions spent on homeless in California ends up in the private hands of the elite.  Waste, fraud and abuse is as American as apple pie.

The excellent mental health facilities of the 1970s and 1980s that Reagan shut down? I don’t think I would describe those as “excellent”.

I am not denying there is a problem with a lack of access to mental health care but wanting back the asylums of the past is silly.

The Hutterite growth rate is pretty marginal.

Commissars? What?

[Amulek]

On 5/24/2025 at 7:00 PM, Chum said:

My kids had ~0% of the critical growth opportunities (adult-free + roaming + peers) that I (and kids back to prehistory) had. 

When my wife and I moved into our current home, roughly 15 years ago, our house was the de facto meet-up place for all of the kids in the neighborhood. In fact, I remember my wife telling me to go and tell them not to hang on our tree, but I refused to go out and tell them to get off my yard.  

Anyway, fast forward to today, and I rarely see any kids hanging out together in the neighborhood - regardless of the time of day or year; it's just not something that happens as much as it used to. 

I think a big part of it is technology driven. When I was a kid (Gen X here), hanging out with the kids in your neighborhood was pretty much your only option for socialization. I mean, sure, you could use a land line to call and talk to a friend on the other side of town, but you probably only had one phone line in your house, and you weren't going to be allowed to monopolize that.

Compare that with today where elementary schoolers have all got cell phones and access their IRL friends plus anyone who shares their same interests. My tween-age son is perfectly happy to go outside and meet up with his friends for a Pokemon Go raid, but he's equally happy to fire up Discord and hop on the Minecraft server that he and his orchestra friends are on. 

It's different from what I grew up with, but I don't know that it's worse. All of the people he's growing up with - the people he's going to be interacting with in life - are all going through the same sorts of things, so he'll be well positioned to operate in that environment. 

 

[bluebell]

21 minutes ago, Amulek said:

When my wife and I moved into our current home, roughly 15 years ago, our house was the de facto meet-up place for all of the kids in the neighborhood. In fact, I remember my wife telling me to go and tell them not to hang on our tree, but I refused to go out and tell them to get off my yard.  

Anyway, fast forward to today, and I rarely see any kids hanging out together in the neighborhood - regardless of the time of day or year; it's just not something that happens as much as it used to. 

I think a big part of it is technology driven. When I was a kid (Gen X here), hanging out with the kids in your neighborhood was pretty much your only option for socialization. I mean, sure, you could use a land line to call and talk to a friend on the other side of town, but you probably only had one phone line in your house, and you weren't going to be allowed to monopolize that.

Compare that with today where elementary schoolers have all got cell phones and access their IRL friends plus anyone who shares their same interests. My tween-age son is perfectly happy to go outside and meet up with his friends for a Pokemon Go raid, but he's equally happy to fire up Discord and hop on the Minecraft server that he and his orchestra friends are on. 

It's different from what I grew up with, but I don't know that it's worse. All of the people he's growing up with - the people he's going to be interacting with in life - are all going through the same sorts of things, so he'll be well positioned to operate in that environment. 

 

As long as the rec time is fairly equal with in person no electronics fun and electronics fun, I think you are right. The studies are now showing that it’s being on social media even while hanging out with friends that is really causing a lot of the problems. There is an epidemic of loneliness in kids right now, even kids with a lot of friends who see them often. Studies are showing that when they get together they are often still just staring at their phones. They’re not having real life experiences together and bonding by physically, emotionally, and mentally navigating through those real life experiences.

It seems to be creating a lot of superficial friendships that don’t know how to support each other in both difficult and good times.

I have benefited from having two mini families within my family. My oldest two children are 23 and 20 and my youngest two are 10 and 11. We had a few years there with some unexplained infertility that we really didn’t pay too much attention to until it suddenly stopped in a couple of surprise pregnancies.

One of the upsides to that is having a chance for a do over with my younger kids. There’s not a lot that we do differently but electronics and social media are definitely one of them. Our oldest two got smart phones when they were around 12.  They did OK with them and we didn’t really have any serious problems, but I think I’m just wiser now than I was then.  My younger two have a flip phone. All the contact and none of the stress. We will get them smart phones eventually because we are big believers in being able to practice learning how to use phones and social media while you’re still at home and under the guidance of your parents. I know too many kids who weren’t allowed very much freedom as they were growing up and then when they moved away from home, made all of the same mistakes other kids were making when they were much younger. Only since they had zero oversight, their mistakes and bad choices were a lot more serious.

This time we will probably wait until the younger ones are 14 or 15 before throwing them into those waters. 

Edited May 27, 2025 by bluebell

[Robert F. Smith]

On 5/27/2025 at 10:52 AM, The Nehor said:

Most human trafficking doesn’t involve child abductees. That is mischaracterizing how human trafficking works. I remember when I was a teenager adults confidently talking about how (white) children were being abducted and trafficked by sexual predators. That is just not how it works in practice and casting this as a threat scares people unnecessarily and leads people to look for the wrong solutions to the problem.

79,000 minors being trafficked currently in Texas is not a small number.

Elitists often pooh pooh threats with statistical arguments that claim rarity.  Police take the same view, and even refuse to take a missing child report until a reasonable period has gone by.  Why?  Because runaways are so common.  In practice that does save precious resources, but it also means that crucial time is lost in recovering an actual abductee.  In one case, the parents had the mans to hire a private investigator who specialized in missing/abducted children, and he was able to recover the child within two weeks by monitoring online prostitution sites (which had photos).  The police didn't have the resources.