To think overprotective parenting means kids today have a much worse quality of life

[Rainingpigs]

I grew up in the 80s and so perhaps have a very skewed view on this and I completely get the instinct to protect your kids and parents do it out of love. But, I voulenteer at a Cubs group (so age 7-10) and the kids there can do literally nothing for themselves, (on camp) are fussy eaters and have restaurant levels of specificity (e.g just plain pasta with nothing on it), are never allowed outside by themselves to play out but instead are ferried about from one pre planned activity to the next by parents.

For older kids, those as old as 13/14 their parents won’t let them get a bus into town with friends because of the perceived danger, people find it shocking there is any suggestion they would do something like trying alcohol, they’re tracked on their phones by their parents to see where they are at all times and have to give constant updates ect.

I’ve even seen cases of parents still grounding and tracking their 16/17 year old “children” (virtually adults IMO)

I’m not in any way blaming the kids and I do blush to think back to some of the things I did when I was young. However, I think that those growing up now risk not having had much of a life at all until they’re much older. Surely, the whole way you learn and become a well rounded adult is by doing stupid and risky things and learning from them. In general today it seems kids are far more anxious and less happy than they used to be. Aibu?

Nah I’d much rather be a protective parent than free range my children and rely on chance for their survival, like so many did back in the day as they had no choice when bogged down 5 other kids etc survival of the fittest etc. esp as my daughter is on the spectrum.

It’s such a tough balance. I had an amazing childhood, me and my friends would get lost in the local woods, play out until it turned dark and started going into town in y7 on our own. That freedom definitely helped me become more independent and moving out at 18 seemed natural. However, I was lucky. One of my friends was groomed by an older man, another 2 were run over and a few were having sex in parks at a young age. If nothing bad happens then it’s idyllic, but that’s a big if. With my own children I’m more protective.

I used to take the train a few stops to the local small city to meet with friends for the day at 13. Which seems unthinkable now

Really @Cuppasoupmonster? Not trying to pick on you at all but I think that is totally thinkable. My DD went into town for the first time with a friend and without me the summer holidays after juniors - so she was just 11 (this is about 10 years ago). So a train trip at 13 seems fine to me for sure.

You're probably right, OP.

But the world has changed so much. I agree there is an attitude amongst some parents that is damaging to children and the best way I can explain it is...

I used to be a Forest School Leader. Obviously we liaised with the school and parents about expectations, clothing, hazards etc. But some parents would turn being stung by a nettle or scratched by a twig into a major disaster. I know that in my country childhood in the 70s I used to get into all kinds of scrapes (fell face first into a cowpat once...not recommending!! But on the other hand...probably great for my immune system...) and just shrug them off. I certainly wouldn't have got any sympathy from my mum if I'd cried about a nettle sting. She would have laughed heartily - not about the sting, but about an over-reaction.

Yes, I do think parents fuss over silly things when they need to model resilience and a bit of physical courage. But on the other hand, tightening up of safeguarding etc is a huge step forward...plus the presence of CCTV everywhere, in the UK at least, which I think makes it much harder for criminals to successfully abduct children. When i was young child abductions for pretty common and many cases are still unsolved. My parents did worry about that, and rightly so.

I think there are a lot of health problems, particularly mental health problems like anxiety, because children are over protected and told the world is more dangerous than it is. And research indicates that children today are way less happy than they used to be.

There are some harms that they are protected from and I wouldn’t want to lose all the benefits, but overall I think things have gone too far.

I do think there is a sort of survivors bias with these sorts of posts.

Several children at my primary school were run over, one fatally so.

We had to watch an absolutely harrowing video in what is now year one - five and six years old - about saying no to strangers. It was horrific and I cannot believe it was thought acceptable to show children of that age. I remember refusing to sleep alone the night after they showed that.

I found it on YouTube as an adult and what was interesting was that blame was very subtly put on the children. That’s true of all PIVs from this time: silly children are abducted and murdered, electrocuted, drown, mown down by trains. Sensible children are not.

But that is indicative of the attitudes of the time. And that’s not an attitude I like.

Theres also a lot more that is pretty awful about an 80s childhood. You could be smacked at home and school (I know smacking isn’t illegal but no longer socially acceptable in the same way) sexual abuse was rife - even now on Classic Corrie which is about twenty years ago abuse of a teenager it dealt with very differently - and anyone gay?? Anyone tried to come out in the middle of the AIDS pandemic?

No thanks. I’ll stick with 2022, for all it’s faults.

One thing I wish people understood on here is that acknowledging sexual abuse happens doesn’t mean children lose their innocence. Awareness of it allows them to keep their innocence for much longer.

I had unprotective parents and I got up to all sorts, groomed by older men (thankfully nothing ended up happening as I woke up to it but it was so close), tried smoking at a very young age, very early primary school, often ended up in near misses in terms of hurting myself or getting caught on a road. My dd probably will miss the feeling of exploring the woods but I don't know what the answer is. I don't explore the woods on my own either anymore!

I grew up in the 80's, raised children in the late 90's /early 00's and I'm raising a child now. I think on the whole parenting has massively improved. Children are more respected and their feelings considered and treated like a integral part of the family. (Obviously I'm generalising but just looking at parenting as a whole) Children's safety is considered more nowadays which surely is a good thing? Speaking as someone who had free rein and was sexually assaulted numerous times between the age of 11 and adulthood. Society has changed too there's more traffic making playing out harder. People can track other people via social media so it's more important to be safety conscious.

This is very true. I knew some children who died on a railway crossing. I know we got ourselves into vulnerable situations with alcohol at sleepovers - my parents didn't know. I was a young teen around the time of the Soham murders and remember being really shocked and upset after that agonising week of everyone searching for them.

Going further back, my parents used to leave us in hotel rooms with a reception listening service while they went for dinner. We wouldn't do this now after madeleine McCann

My careful but not obsessive parenting is shaped by my own knowledge and experience.

@shedwithivy There are still walking nannies available at many ski hotels. They go into all the rooms every 15 mins to check on the sleeping kids whilst the parents are at dinner. This is normally offered till 10:30pm.

I had the worst of both worlds. My parents were very overpowering and never let me do anything around the house or in terms of physical care- Mum still bathed me and got my clothes out at 11! But they let me walk around day and night at 13 plus in a pretty dodgy area. I was a very immature and vulnerable child and was taken advantage of many many times. I never learnt boundaries or how to keep myself safe really.
I hope to do the opposite with my daughter.

I had protective parenting and odd boundaries. Child of the 70s. No issue raised when dating and being manipulated a man well into his 20s at 16. But wasn’t allowed to stay over at my boyfriend’s house when I was back from university. First year so I would have been 18 or 19 at the time. Went to the pub from 15 regularly. But kept very much in sight until my teenage years.

With my dd, I am transitioning gradually from parent, who knows where my dd is at all times to giving her a longer and longer rein. She’s 14 and year 10 and has been going into town regularly with friends for some time. We took them a few times by car then on the bus with a group of friends, who’d done it before. This was perhaps 18 months or so ago and built it up from there. She has been cycling and walking to the next village from year 7 (perhaps the summer holiday before) with friends. In lockdown in year 8, she went walking for a couple of hours with a friend when allowed in the freezing cold, just to have company.

These are all the sort of things I did at this sort of age. I am not seeing much of a difference. There will be a difference from now on though. She won’t be groomed by older men or going to the pub, getting drunk, walking into town along the canal in the dark drinking cans from the off-licence and returning back to school half cut. All things I did whilst still of school age, some in the 4th but mostly in the 5th year so years 10 and 11. Ie her age now.

Cross post. This is the sort of parenting I had. I have had lots of therapy to learn about boundaries so that I can teach them to my dd.

I remember having the best childhood as I had no rules and was allowed to go anywhere and never had any structure.

My mum was pretty negligent though and I used to walk around on my own from a very early age in the dark and get lifts with complete strangers etc.

I’m very lucky that nothing worse happened to me as I put myself in very dangerous situations.

I ended up becoming pregnant as a teen and had no qualifications etc.

Because if this my DD has been wrapped in cotton wool which I thought was a good thing but I do realise that maybe I have been too overprotective.

I was talking to a friend the other day about how when we were 12 we used to hang out with drug dealers and smoke and had so much confidence.

Yet our older teens have anxiety and get embarrassed about buying things in shops.

I do think the overprotective parenting style has led to being much less independent but I do think that it’s good that parents are actually parenting properly now.

I think there’s a happy medium and I do wonder what it’s going to be like in 10/20 years time.

I find a lot of overprotective parents were children who knew only too well the dangers of the world too young.

I completely agree.

I wonder also if it used to be an individual thing, so if you knew something that happened to you personally or to someone close to you - you would be more overprotective about that danger.

However, now we hear about almost everything that happens all over the world because of the internet and TV - so I wonder if that’s why we’re becoming more and more protective.

Kids don't have road sense till around 8.
I live in a tiny village but even though it's a 20mph zone motorist seem the think it's a miter way speeding constantly! Even when they see kids in the school run. It's a real shame my eldest didn't get out till 9 on his own and my youngest has only turned 5 and will be a good while before he's out on his own

We have recently relocated and my young teens now have a level of freedom that is equivalent to what I had in the 90s, that I couldn’t, in all good conscience, give them in the previous crime ridden area we lived before.

A lot of it depends on where you live, IMO.

Surely, the whole way you learn and become a well rounded adult is by doing stupid and risky things and learning from them.

No, it’s actually possible to learn from positive rather than negative experiences although I see this attitude a lot on MN.

The world is a different place today to what it was in the 1980s so people are comparing apples and oranges. The same street I could safely play out on at 5 is no longer suitable for dc to play since every driveway and kerb has multiple cars parked up making it far more dangerous as drivers can’t see dc and dc can’t see approaching cars. Who’s going to shrug and say ah well, getting hit by a car will teach them for the future?

Fussy eating? It’s perfectly understandable that a child away from home might be reluctant to try something new/someone else’s cooking. Asking for plain pasta hardly qualifies as restaurant level specificity!

I’m sure I’m not the only poster who remembers being made stay at the table until I ate what was considered enough of whatever horrible meal I couldn’t stomach. It didn’t teach me to love liver and onions <feel free to insert own hated food> , it was wasteful and often it was more about the adult asserting their authority than anything else. Oh and my brother went more than 20 years refusing any vegetable other than carrots due to being forced to eat foods he didn’t like when he was young.

As regards teenagers and their levels of freedom, surely where they live is a huge consideration in what is appropriate? I can never understand why some on here seem in such a hurry to deem them “practically adults” and wash their hands of their responsibility to parent them. Teens still need guidance and boundaries.

These Oh the youth of today/the parenting these days type of threads come up quite often with lots of rose tinted memories mixed with a bit of Famous Five or the good old Didn’t do me any harm, school of hard knocks contributor’s. Our 80s childhoods are about as relevant to raising dc today as my parents we left school at 14 and worked full time, you kids today don’t know you’re born or my grandparents we walked 5 miles to school in the snow and it did us no harm bullshit.

Exactly this. Maybe if the adults around me were more "protective", I wouldn't have been repeatedly sexually assaulted at age 6.

I don’t have children but find it very odd that my friend’s and colleague’s children still believe in Santa at ages 11 and 12. This was certainly not the case when I was growing up in the 80s.

I'm with rocket panda...

YANBU OP

I often wonder if over protection as children plays a part in why so many teenagers/young adults, are suffering from anxiety.

I think there needs to be a balance and I honestly think it depends where you live. We are in a village and I'm totally comfortable with my 10 and 12 year olds going to the park, round their friends houses, out on bikes etc but I'd be very reluctant if we lived in a town centre. Some parents are totally OTT. A boy in my sons year 6 class isn't allowed to walk to school with friends, despite living 2 mins walk away with no roads to cross. All the others are walking together and he's being walked in by his dad, which is pretty embarrassing for the poor lad.

There are a lot of ignorant people on this thread who are bemused by parents caring for their kids. I grew up in a middle class area and our parents gave us the best of everything with safety in mind. I have grown up streetwise despite my mum being v protective. Whereas when we visited my cousins in Germany (suburban area in Düsseldorf) we would be out late on our bikes no adult supervision and were encouraged to take adventures, similarly in Oz etc. Two seperate lifestyles countries and community mindsets. People were always looking out for the neighbourhood kids. Here as we have seen on mumsnet people don’t give a shit about other peoples kids never mind keeping a kindly eye on the neighbours kids. One woman justified not helping her cousin out on her wedding day because it would have been an inconvenience for her what a load of shit. Your cousins kids are family - so if in our culture we can’t do that why would we rely on the general population to do the right thing when it comes to our kids. And yes they are ducking precious. Sorry to say this but our country has few places where kids can grow up like how you did in the 80’s. Stop telling people how to raise their kids and mind your own business. People will do as they see fit and what’s best for their own families.

I live in a neighborhood where (thankfully) crime is extremely low, virtually non existent. I literally haven't locked my doors and windows in years.

The people next door drive their 11-year-old to school every day, and pick him up. It's half a mile away.