Some call this the Digital Age. Others refer to it as the Age of Globalization. And then some say it’s the Post-Modern Age.
If you ask me, I see the times that we live in as the Age of Parental Paranoia.
For quite some time, I've wondered about this cloud of anxiety under which we subsist. It exists in our work environments where everyone is looking over their shoulders worried about getting the big promotion or the pink slip. It exists in our cities where petty theft and aggravated assault are all too common. It exists in our communities where distrust and apprehension can be found between neighbors.
But this sense of paranoia is most apparent and at its greatest intensity when it comes to our children. We're afraid to let our children out of our sights, fearful of the ever-present predator. We don't trust them alone with anyone, not even the Quran teacher (or is it *especially* not the Quran teacher?).
And then I counter this parental paranoia with my very own experiences as a child. I vividly recall the days of my childhood where my parents were completely oblivious of our whereabouts. My siblings and I would venture unimaginably deep into the woods behind our house - everyday brought forth a new exploration into uncharted territories. We would ride our bikes to the far corners of the county, sometimes even riding on the shoulder lane of two-lane highways, alongside speeding cars.
All this when I was between nine and eleven years old.
Granted we did live in a very white middle-class neighborhood where the local mini-mart was called 'Lucky's' and the nearby outlet road to the highway was called Quarterfield Rd.
No, Barney Fife was not our local sheriff. Although I'll admit that our only experience with the county police was when a bunch of high-schoolers were bullying a few kids at our school bus stop (one of them punched a kid in the face). So the parents contacted the police who setup a 'sting operation' (I kid you not).
They briefed us on how to act normal if the high-schoolers returned. And then when the bullies drove up the next morning, a police car was hiding around the corner waiting to pounce on them. True story.
Back to my point. Its true that my parents were recent migrants into the US and were not cognizant of the potential dangers of American society, so they didn't know any better. But how do you explain their white American counterparts who were equally unmindful of their children?
You can't just write off my experiences due to my three years in Smalltown, USA. At the age of twelve, we moved to the outskirts of big city Baltimore and our adventures continued.
Hurdling fences and crossing interstate highways on the way to the nearby mall to catch the afternoon matinée. Walking home from school taking shortcuts under highway tunnels and cutting through backyards. I'm bewildered by the insane activities of my childhood.
And I'm not talking about generations ago. These tales are a mere two decades old. Has society disintegrated so much so fast?
Although the film was set in the sixties, I could really relate to the story told in 'Stand By Me'. That type of coming-of-age adventure (minus the dead body of course) was very reminiscent of my childhood experiences.
The generational gap between the child of the eighties and his counterpart from the sixties seems to be very small.
But fast forward twenty years later to this day and age and it seems like those days of my upbringing were centuries ago. Can anyone imagine letting their child partake in such unsupervised escapades?
I may sound like such a grandpa when telling these stories, but I remember coming home from the woods with ticks stuck to our heads and our mother would heat up a needle to burn off the tick where it had dug into our scalp. It happened so often that we used to do it for each other.
I remember regularly getting eye infections (often referred to as a sty) because we weren't careful to wash our hands before rubbing our eyes. Nowadays, the moment my kids run into the house, my wife throws this anti-bacterial sanitizing liquid in their face before they touch anything!
As I'm writing this piece, I'm thinking that my type of childhood is probably found in the lower income bracket of 21st century America, where the parents are too busy struggling to worry about over-parenting.
Most of my current relations are with younger families living in well-to-do neighborhoods where soccer moms and metrosexual fathers are ever aware of the latest tabloid story or Internet urban legend of some crazed lunatic kidnapping babies from strollers as the mother is loading the groceries.
Add this mentality to the 24-hour news channels that are constantly publicizing fear and you have a recipe for instant parental paranoia.
So are the days of childhood (mis)adventures long gone? Are our kids doomed to supervised playtimes at the neighborhood park, never allowed to leave our sights? Will our children look back on their childhood and wax poetically about their 'exploits' in Chuck-E-Cheese?
Or will we buck the trend and allow our children to be children and let them grow up outside our artificially-created, sterile, secure bubbles of reality?
Sadly, I fear that its beyond our control and we have become victims of our societal circumstances. What a sad and sheltered existence we have created for our children.
WAW
2 days ago
7 comments:
Excellent post! I couldn't agree with you more. I am a paranoid lint picker!
keep up the good blogs!
Arif
I can really identify with this post. I almost shy away from telling my children stories of my childhood, because they see me as the Queen of Paranoia and know that I will not let them do anything near to what my mom allowed (or didn't know about) when I was a kid. While I was quite aware of my surroundings, strangers, etc., I explored my neighborhood and city and even other cities (we took a bus trip to Washington, D.C. from Alabama in 5th grade with my elementary school; they'd let us loose in the Smithsonian, unchaperoned, for 7 hours at a time. Yes, very safe!)
So while I'm saddened to see that life has changed so much, it is comforting to know that I'm not the only PP out there. Yet sometimes I wish my kids could experience a 'smidge' of the freedom I had.
wel...as a girl..i did have fun..lots of it..but i can't say i rode inside tunnels without my mom not knowing where i was. I think i'll take a slightly different slant on things.
I know most parents from my parents generation were generally oblivious to what their kids were doing cuz of lack of closeless and/or being unaware of the dangers of this society. so subsequently some auntie would tell my mom how her son had some study group on thursday nights at 1 am. yeh right.
Anyway, i had fun but my parents knew pretty much every inch of it. (not that this was fun lol but)Like the time I had this big fight with this girl cuz she thought i was tryna flirt with her cousin, who was a preverted moron who wuldnt leave me alone and here i was being accused. Ofcourse i gave it to her and then came home and told my mom all about it. Giving it to her was fun though. and she didn't dare mess with me again :-)
I couldnt do much in the way of lying cuz here was my mom in my first year of college signing up for classes for me. If I ever dared to lie about some 'class' at whatever time, all she was gona do was whip up the schedule of classes and catch me redhanded.
Whatever "lying" I did, i was either confronted :-) or they 'knew' about it and I guess felt that some things were phases in my teenage years and would pass and pass they did alhamdulillah :)
I think it also depends on where you live these days and how close you are to kids so in return like how honest they will be to you as parents.
For instance, for most kids growing up alongside me(desi that is) talking to guys in college/school was sort of this tabooish thing at some level even though it was so common. and most girls would hide this stuff. my parents knew of every guy i knew and i would even introduce them so there was no ooh and aah about hiding anything.
Now that one of my siblings has proposed to someone, her parents are either too strict or arent close to their child and so don't know when and where they are running into my sibling. Whereas alhamdulillah we are happy about how my sibling has gone about proposing and we hear about all their conversations and any run-ins.
back to your take on things, perhaps parents today can allow some of this stuff you talk about , as long as they know exactly whats up and if they can truly guage that some things are safe. And i think some things are safe, its just that some parents are so hyped up with paranoia they won't allow a dangit thing.
AA- Umm Farouq,
Nice to know that I'm not the only one saddened by the loss of childhood freedom. Wondering what you are doing to try and give your kids a taste of your childhood...
AA- Anon,
Wow, appreciate your thoughts! :-)
"And i think some things are safe, its just that some parents are so hyped up with paranoia they won't allow a dangit thing."
I think that's the crux of the matter - young parents have become too overprotective of their kids, never allowing them to experiment and get their knees scraped.
Salaam brother,
I wish all of our children did have the opportunity to live in the early 80s but I know those days are gone. My children most definitely scrape their knees and things but as a BAM I can afford them almost no opportunity to mess up on my watch. For Blackamericans in general here in the US, it is a catch-22. If we parent too much, we are overbearing and not fostering growth; if we are too lax then we are bad parents and are leading our kids into the system that eats many black men alive. In the past I've caught Whiteamerican women (non-Muslim) trying to assess our childrens' behavior. The women never know I'm an educator and that I've learned the tricks too. I just laugh at them. even when my family and I go to a restaurant it never fails that a Whiteamerican woman walks up to us to tell us how well-behaved our kids are. I get offended to a degree because there will normally be other white kids present who are behaving themselves too. Why single us out? At some point it would be nice to let them 'run wild' but unfortunately the culture surrounding these kids is too pervasive. My own non-Muslim family members know the rule: do not buy my kids hip-hop gear. I will seriously offend them. Bottom line is, until my kids get free-rides to Harvard, Yale and Princeton the focus does not change. Mine and my wife's parents did not stress the value of education or time well spent and for Blackamerican kids, picking friends can be too tricky. One wrong friend could end in disaster. I've said it before, I'm from 'da hood' and even though I'm an adjunct and a law student I still live in the hood (where else is there to go?) so my kids are exposed to the hood and we have to protect ourselves as though we are in the hood. We could cross over to the suburbs but my kids will not be seen as suburban and will be expected to emulate the hood for the suburbanites. Catch 22.
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