Is it possible to still have a "Huckleberry Finn" childhood?

[EddieIzzardismyhero]

Have just finished reading "21st Century Boys" and found it a very interesting, if somewhat depressing read.

I have two sons, both under two at the moment so this is not something pressing. But I found myself musing on the type of childhood I would be able to offer them in comparison to the one I enjoyed myself.

I was brought up in the 70s in a small town in the west country and I remember long sunny days spent exploring the local fields and forests, hours spent playing out without adult supervision, running out of the house first thing in the morning and coming back only when you were hungry . . . Does this still exist anywhere in this country anymore?

We live in a market town in the SE of England. We live in a cul-de-sac but rarely see children playing out, partly because moronic drivers race up and down the road as if they're competing in F1 . We have lots of parks and open spaces but children are rarely unsupervised.

I would love to give my boys the kind of childhood I enjoyed but is it possible now? Does anyone else do it? Would I be on my own (and hence my children would be on their own too)?

Interested in your thoughts.

showofhands, that does sound lovely .

Lol expat, I know it's a work of fiction! As I said, it was just a euphemism for a childhood largely unsupervised by adults rather than the helicopter parenting that most childen have to endure nowadays.

eddie we are in Norfolk which is always decades behind everyone else My dp is from Essex and has been warned that we will never move anywhere busier!!

There's nothing new about so-called helicopter parenting.

It's just that a few folks found a new term to coin and sell books by blaming parents, mostly mothers, for society's rise in two-parents working outside the home long hours.

When, really, it's because the cost of living has gotten so high most have to work outside the home long hours, live away from extended family that in the past used to help with childcare, and no longer have the time to form the strong friendships that also provided strong childcare-sharing networks in the past.

In addition, councils have allowed a large number of so-called homes to be built that are not suitable for families - no gardens, pokey flats, dense housing, no parking so more cars on pavements - so there's less room for kids to roam about.

I never bother waxing nostalgic for my own childhood experience to be visited on my own children because, well, it was 30-40 years ago.

We've moved on since them, time hasn't stood still, and so I see little point in trying to replicate it.

Besides, society back then was beset by its own ills the way every generation is.

"My dd has the positive elements of a Huckleberry Finn childhood."

So does mine. We live out in the country on 20 acres, and she and her cousin spend hours out in the fields/trees playing. She'll go out after breakfast and I won't see her until lunchtime when I've hollered out the back porch "Elizabeth!!! Lunch is ready!!!" a few times. They have a very good time, but are usually within shouting distance if the need arises.

Eddie their parents are more concerned when the girls are teenagers there are more places to hide out with a secret boyfriend!

And we live in the Scottish countryside where, not surprisingly, a not insignificant number of girls fall pregnant as teens or young adults.

I live in a small working class village in a valley and the children seem to all be free. I can see two distinct types of 'free' children- those that are neglected and therefore seen to congregate in the town itself outside shops and in lanes, littering and loitering as it were. And then there are other children who i see playing 'fox and hounds' (think large scale hide and seek) on the mountain behind my house in groups of thirty or more.
There are also a few lads in my street who i have been watching trying keep an injured hedgehog alive in the lane, bringing it milk and indeed trying to put a plaster on its injured paw! So i think it is still possible. And i hope that my children will be playing on the mountains and down by the river like i did as a child.

I'm not trying to replicate my childhood and I'm very aware that it wasn't all wonderful and there are plenty of good things about modern childhood.

But, I think just dismissing it all as nonsense is blinding ourselves to the fact that current childhood does not appear to be very positive for alot of children (and no this isn't a tedious WOHM/SAHM debate - I work so that's not where I'm going with this at all), but I think, personally, that we need to do something quite drastic to rescue childhood from the television/computer/marketing based tedium it's become.

But that's just my opinion .

expat I live in a small scottish village too and there are very few teen pregnancies, alcoholism or poverty. In saying that I also know of many small villages were there is a lot of that stuff but there are many others were it isn't common.
I suppose it's a local commerce problem where there are no jobs or only low paid jobs such lifestyles tend to pop up.

'But, I think just dismissing it all as nonsense is blinding ourselves to the fact that current childhood does not appear to be very positive for alot of children'

There's no definitive way of knowing that because the collective view of childhood is always one of looking backwards, since children, as they have not the same perceptive capabilities, though processes or expressive capabilities of adults, can and will often see things entirely differently from adults going through the same experience or travelling through time the same way. Furthermore, when they become adults, those who are children now will remember or perceive their experiences in a different fashion from those who were adults at the time tehy were children, because adulthood is framed in its own place in time as well.

The collective, general view may be that this was a very positive time to be a child, but there is no way of knowing this as we know not how the future will be.

Not much poverty here, either.

But there's just as much sex, drugs and rock and roll going on as I experienced in the mid-80s as a teen in a very large city.

It's dangerous and a waste of time to wring one's hand over what was and what is now based on one's own set of circumstances.

Either change your set of circumstances if you find it disagreeable or think, 'Hmm, metaphorically, Huck Finn had to live in a time of terrible racism, persecution and intolerance. We are where we are now, let's see what are the best ways to make what are hopefully good experiences and go from there.'

I am lucky enough to live in a small rural village, and my DC have a similar childhood to the one which I had in a small rural village 30 years ago. I would hate to live somewhere that wasn't safe for a child to walk to school or play out with their friends.

Kids play out here, walk to school on their own, etc.

But this may not be as important to other parents.

I know a fair number of people who live in cities like London and Paris whose children get to school on their own once they are teens but for whom cultural exposure/opportunities and being in a place with a higher level of multiculturalism is more important.

These parents' may seem like helicopter parents to some because of the level of importance they place on developing certain qualities, but their values are no less valid than anyone else's.

Hi. Since it was a reference to my book that sparked all this off, may I chip in? (That?s 21st C Boys, not Huck Finn.)
My concern about the loss of children's freedom to roam relates to child development ? physical, emotional, social and cognitive.
My books aren?t born of nostalgia for blue-remembered hills, or hatred for modern life or anything. It?s just that I?ve spent twenty years working with people who work with children (teachers, nursery workers, psychologists, social workers, fosterers ? all sorts of people who see children en masse and over time) and they've been worried for over a decade about small but significant changes in behaviour. So I decided to try and find out whether there was anything in what they said.
And there is gathering evidence that modern lifestyles are impacting on children?s mental health and well-being, particularly in the UK. In a 2007 UNICEF survey of childhood well-being in the developed world, the UK came bottom ? 21st out of 21, just below the States. (I find that shaming.)
It was interesting that in the countries that came out best, there?s more widespread appreciation of the significance of child development than there is here ? not just among parents but politicians and the wider community. And the children tend to play out much more.
Outdoor play isn?t some Enid Blyton fantasy ? it?s been common to children, in all times and all cultures. Even when they worked in dark Satanic mills, they played out whenever they got the chance. A screen-based, sedentary, largely indoor existence is a new development? and in the opinion of all the experts on various aspects of development that I spoke to, it?s not a good one.
Sorry to go on for such a long time. But can I just agree with everyone who reckons traffic is one of the major causes of the problem. In the countries that come top of the well-being league, there?s far more attention to traffic-calming and car-free zones in residential areas. We care far more about our ruddy cars in this country than we do about our kids.

High housing costs. Again, here we go, let me beat this tired old drum I've been banging on here for the past 6 years.

When you have more and more housing in the form of dinky, overpriced flats with no outdoor space, you get both parents slaving away to pay for them, in the form of rent or mortgage.

And high fuel/power bills to go with this.

So child has to go into nursery or after-school care.

Throw in increasingly erratic weather on top of the normally quite short days here for much of the year.

Throw in cars, because public transport was decimated and is now cost-prohibitive and inefficient, meaning the work day is longer (on top of its usually being farther, too, since high housing costs mean an increasing number of people can't live near work at all).

It's a wider framework, and at its heart is capitalism.

Anything that doesn't earn money or increase profits, old people, children, the disabled, cheap public transport, quality and affordable family housing near hubs of work, etc. isn't valued.

Fixing that involves some radical paradigm shifts which are sadly far, far beyond the control of most individuals and even, most likely, a significant proportion of the collective.

As Expat said, you don't see many kids below, say, 11 or 12 here in Paris taking metro on their own or walking on their own to school. I also never see groups of young kids hanging out on the streets. DS is 8 and it's hard to see how I could let him out on his own yet- drivers are fucking crazy here.

I, OTOH, was raised in an Eastern European country, in the capital, but spent my childhood since v.young outside, playing Indians and pirates etc. There wasn't any concern for the kids' safety. I walked a mile to school from 6 years old. My father also would take me sailing or camping under a tent in the middle of winter in the forest for weeks at the time (school attendance not having been an issue if you were a good student).

I remember my childhood fondly and also I think it gave me a certain ability to be independant (maybe too much for my mum's taste when I moved to NYC at 16), while when I look at DS I can't help feeling a bit sad- he's this perfect urban kid, who is missing out on that adventurous childhood I had.

I missed out on this adventurous childhood, as I grew up in a large city with little public transport.

BUT the reverse of that is that there were some pretty amazing cultural opportunities that fostered a lifelong love of the arts and the ability to see the beauty of art and beauty in many, many ways.

And, the level of multicultural experience I had in school and in ordinary life there developed a world view I've found nothing but enriching.

I left home at 15 and lived for a year as a foreign exchange student on a farm in Alsace.

Later, I became a fairly serious rock climber and hillwalker who travelled all over the world to pursue this and spent many a night in the outdoors.

So I have always found it a non sequitur to generalise that not having a certain type of childhood or having attained a set definition of 'independence' in childhood is an equation for overall societal negativity.

I agree that it doesn't apply to everyone, Expat, but it seems safe to say that independant, imaginative play outdoors is great for kids and conversely spending your childhood at home in front of telly or never being allowed out without adult supervision is not that great.

And, yes, of course I'm generalizing here.

Still.

But that's just common sense, winny. How many books and 'research' do we need to state the obvious?

The issue is why this becoming more and more the case, and what each parent choses - and is able to chose - to do about it in his/her situation.

For us, it means a different definition of success and it still took a fair amount of luck.

This is not possible for many more people, wouldn't it be better to focus one's energies on making it so, if so inclined?

It's 'other people' though isn't it? That's the problem. I don't mean the abductors and the child snatchers apparently lurking on every corner. I mean the normal people who see a bunch of kids out on their own and think: 'those kids look up to no good. Where are the parents?'

That's what makes a parent wary: "Will I be seen as neglectful if my kids are playing out?"

That's what sends the kids running home: "Old Mr Grumpy from number 42 said shouldn't we be going back inside now?"

Sorry, Expat, I'm not following you. Are you saying that the sort of childhood I'm talking about is not available to everyone and so it's better to focus on whatever other benefits the kids can reap instead of bewailing the disappearance of it?

Sorry, but have been revising and my brain's not working anymore.

My children have an approximation of a Monica Edwards childhood - but I have to work very hard to create it for them. That"s the difference - I don't think it just happens anywhere any more. Simply because even if you are happy to give your children that soet of freedom, they need other children to do it with, and you are very lucky if you have like minded parents living near. So i suppose it's a bit Disneyfied.

Its interesting when people have talked about 'our' childhoods they seem to be talking about the 70s. I was born in 81 and so was out playing in the 80s and 90s, it was not that long ago. What has changed in that little time?
Others of course are talking about having given their children freedom and those children are the same age as some posters.

I think I'm going to bite to bullet. Send them out with rules, they'll always grass on each other and then see if they can collect friends on the way.