To ask what happened to parenting?

[Justaskingopinion]

Dd17 works on a restaurant. Dd18 works in a soft play.
Tonight they both came home with horrific stories about, what I deem, lack of parenting.
Dd17 spotted a young girl about 3yo wandering her restaurant. She spoke to her and child said she couldn't find her dad. DD remembered serving them and dad had paid and left. She sat with child, colouring etc whilst her manager called security (it's a shopping centre).
56 minutes after DD found child, dad came back to the restaurant 'ah thanks for looking after her, our taxi is here..'
No explanation, management allowed child to leave with dad, security hadn't turned up.
Dd18 works in the same shopping centre in soft play. Her stories are endless. Mainly parents not enforcing rules or backing staff because they're too busy on their phones but today, a couple left their 4 kids under 6 there despite the 'parental supervision at all times' rule, for 2 hours then went ballistic when they were told they were barred from the facility.
I brought up 5 children as a lone parent and can't even imagine any of the many scenarios my DDs encounter.
Do parents now just assume kids on minimum wage are there for childcare?

In the first instance, the police should have been called and they would have referred this to social care. Anything could have happened to that child and she is being neglected.

'Parents now'.

This is a fallacy. Some parents were always less good, more neglectful and absent. The 70s parenting I had wouldn't have involved soft play. We were set loose on bikes and in the park and our parents ignored us entirely.

The parenting we got would have met the criteria for neglect. I walked home from primary alone. Children aren't allowed now.

Yes I agree, I'm 90's and we played out everyday without parental supervision and when we went to soft plays our parents would go in the dining bit and smoke whilst we played 🤣🤣

We also walked 20 minutes to school by ourselves everyday but if we were lucky our friends dad would offer us a lift in his van... which had one deck chair screwed into the back of the van 😅 we would all fight over who got to sit in it

From my experience, most parents are very hands on nowadays compared to when I was growing up

I understand this but the rules are very clear. Health and safety now is ridiculous. Had any of the children even grazed a knee the parents could sue, despite sneaking out and leaving their kids

I applaud the centre for barring them. These places need to enforce the rules for everybody’s safety.

Individualism trumps society. Money rules.

Why on earth the manager of the restaurant didn’t call the police I can’t think but that doesn’t help either.

That’s a really interesting point. You can argue that neither are ideal.

Parents are now forced to do more of their parenting in society, but are also more individualistic. That’s an unhappy marriage.