When I was a kid we played outside after school, after dinner, all weekend and all summer. We ran through alleys, through parks and fields, always together.
All of that is now a thing of the past (in the West, anyway).
Children's parents must now arrange "playdates" for children to play (with parental supervision, of course) and the rest of the time children are always within 100 yards of their concerned, correcting, micro-managing parents.
Are things really more dangerous now, or does it just seem that way?
Be a 'bad' parent and let your children out
By Alice Thomson
Be a 'bad' parent and let your children out | Dt Opinion | Opinion | Telegraph
I asked my mother yesterday how much freedom she had as a child. "Well," she replied, "I walked to my nursery school in Cambridge alone, aged three, and by four I was roaming the fields behind my house on my hobby-horse."
After that, she explained, came the war. "Your grandfather was away and your grandmother was organising the Women's Voluntary Service; no one knew where the four children were.
We broke into requisitioned houses and made camps; we spent our afternoons canoeing down the Cam without life-jackets, eating sausages out of tins and, when it rained, we slipped into the cinema to watch unsuitable love stories and horrifying images of the liberation of the concentration camps.
No one worried about us, they had more important issues on their minds. Her childhood sounded idyllic. My mother explained that it wasn't always perfect.
She had once been accosted by a man while bicycling to her friend across the water meadows. "He tried to force himself on me but I managed to get away. I carried on cycling to my friend's house and ate my tea; it never occurred to me to say anything until I went home.
The police were called but I was back on my bike the next day. My mother took a similar attitude to my childhood.
My younger sister and I were allowed to take the Tube home from school across London every day from the age of five.
My sister was hit by a car once when she crossed a busy road to go to a sweet shop. She broke her leg but, as soon as it had mended we were walking home alone again.
If we wanted to go to ballet or Brownies, we biked on our Choppers. It was frightening going under the subways of busy streets when it was dark, but it never occurred to us to ask our parents to drive us to after-school activities.
My brothers took the train to my grandmother's in Suffolk on their own from the age of six and spent all day without adults in the park playing football.
When we moved to the countryside to live we had even more freedom to mess around in boats and with ponies. There was a local flasher, but as long as he didn't scare the ponies, he didn't trouble us.
Now, according to the Good Childhood Inquiry, children have everything - iPods, computer games and designer clothes - except the freedom to play outside on their own.
A poll commissioned as part of the inquiry found that just under half the adults questioned (43 per cent) thought that 14 was the earliest age at which children should be allowed to go out unsupervised.
Two-thirds of 10-year-olds have never been to a shop or the park by themselves.
Fewer than one in 10 eight-year-olds walk to school alone. After the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, we have become even more obsessed with eliminating risk.
I'm just as neurotic as other parents. I walk my three-, four- and six-year-old to school every day, clutching their hands. Their every moment in London is supervised, with playdates and trips to museums.
I drive them to football and tennis. No wonder they love going to the country where they can spend all day making camps in the garden, pretending to be orphans.
It isn't just because I fear they may be abducted or run over, it's because I'm also worried about being seen as a bad parent.
When I let my eldest son go to the loo on his own on a train, less than 20 ft from where I was seated, the guard lectured me on my irresponsibility.
When we go to the park there are signs in the playground saying that parents may be prosecuted if they leave their children unsupervised, and at the swimming pool (where as children we spent half our holidays dive-bombing each other, without a grown-up in sight) there must now be an adult for every two children.
It is insane. My children still end up in the A & E department as often as we did. The inside of a house can be more dangerous than the street, and sitting at a computer all day, eating crisps, carries more long-term risks than skateboarding alone to a park.
The "terrifying" outdoors is actually safer than it was 30 years ago. In 1977, 668 children were killed on the roads, either in cars or as pedestrians. That number has now dropped to 166.
The number of children murdered has remained consistent at around 79 murders a year. The number of children who drown in rivers or swimming pools has halved. The only place your child is now more at risk is on a trampoline.
So let your children out: they are less likely to harm themselves bicycling to the swings than they are bouncing up and down in their own back yard.
Let children learn by taking risks, says RoSPA
Let children learn by taking risks, says RoSPA | Uk News | News | Telegraph
By Sarah Womack, Social Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:17am BST 13/06/2007
Britain's safety charity suggested yesterday it would be better for the occasional child to fall out of a tree and break their wrist than develop repetitive strain injury from playing computer games.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said parents were too risk-averse, particularly after the abduction of Madeleine McCann in Portugal, and youngsters should be allowed to bruise and cut themselves.
Peter Cornall, the head of leisure safety at the society, said children would learn "valuable life-long lessons" by scraping knees, grazing elbows and bumping heads - not least how they would avoid hurting themselves in future - whereas they would learn little from getting RSI from playing games day in, day out on a PC.
Around 21,000 children a year under the age of 15 break their wrists while playing outside, excluding those injured playing sport.
As yet, no significant research has been carried out in Britain into the risks of RSI among children who spend hours on computers doing homework or playing games, but doctors report an increasing number of children with computer-related injuries. Children are increasingly unfit as a result of being immobile for long periods on a PC.
Mr Cornall's comments came after a study by the Children's Society found 43 per cent of adults thought children should not be allowed out with their friends until they were 14 or over.
RoSPA called for the introduction of specially made "wild" areas where children could wander around and take risks.
"We need to ask whether it is better for a child to break a wrist falling out of a tree, or to get a repetitive strain wrist injury at a young age from using a computer or video games console," Mr Cornell said.
"When children spend time in the great outdoors, getting muddy, getting wet, getting stung by nettles, they learn important lessons - what hurts, what is slippery, what you can trip over or fall from."
RoSPA, which holds its International Play Safety Conference at Loughborough University on Thursday, wants to encourage parents to talk to their children about risks and how to cope with them.
Last year nearly half a million people in Britain were estimated to suffer from some form of RSI.
Chris Dalton, 31, a graphic designer from Coventry, said: "I wouldn't encourage my kids to climb trees because they could do more harm to themselves than a broken wrist."
Tony Wilkens, 37, of Kingstanding, Birmingham, said: "Surely Rospa is meant to be preventing accidents not arguing which bones are acceptable to break or which injury is good for them."