Cunningham, Jenny, Play on; 3 January 2002, spiked-online.com
A significant body of research evidence now indicates that there has been a drastic decline in children's outdoor activity and unsupervised play [...]
An open debate is required among parents, professionals and local authorities about the negative impact of 'litigation culture' on children's play opportunities
Families for Freedom Child Safety Bulletins: Safer than you think & Stranger Danger fact sheet
Families for Freedom was set up in June 1996 [in the United Kingdom], by a group of parents and professionals involved with children. We believe that the risks to children are grossly exaggerated. All the evidence points to the fact that children are safer, healthier, better fed, better read and more computer-literate than ever before. Prenatal, infant and child mortality rates have continued to decline over the past two decades. There has been no increase in the minuscule risk of child abduction and murder in the post-war period. And juvenile crime, despite all the scary headlines, is low and declining.
Instead, we would argue, children do face very real problems today. They are over-protected and prevented from developing any life separate from their parents. They are driven to school, watched at play and their activities are organised by adults. As a result, they have less and less opportunity to explore the world for themselves, to choose their own friends, and to learn what it means to be independent.
Furedi, Frank, Paranoid Parenting, published in March, 2001 by Allen Lane, Introduction.
Tony is giving up teaching. Although he would not use the words, it was 'parental paranoia' that drove him out of the West Sussex primary school where he had taught for three years. During his teacher training, Tony had anticipated that he might be stretched by the challenge of dealing with rowdy children. But he was not prepared for the task of coping with 'difficult' anxious parents. The most taxing moments of his working life were to be spent dealing with 'worried mums'. He sighs as he tells of the mother who insisted on driving behind her son's coach to France to ensure that he arrived safely. He wearily recalls how a school trip to the seaside, planned for a class of 5-year-olds was cancelled because two parents were concerned that the trip would involve their children in a 45-minute journey in a private car. Would the cars be roadworthy? Who would accompany a child to the lavatory? Who would ensure correct fitting seat belts? Were these normally non-smoking cars, or would the children be made victims of passive smoking?
Furedi, F., Robbing kids of their childhood and teaching parents to panic; Let children be children and adults be adults, Living Marxism, issue 113, September 1998
Parental paranoia impacts on the very quality of childhood. Supervised play is virtual play. Children need to play on their own, and unsupervised activity is crucial for their development. Some of the most character-forming childhood experiences occur in peer-to-peer situations. Such unsupervised opportunities have allowed children to make mistakes, to learn from them, and to acquire important social skills.
Furedi, F., Watch out, adults about, August 1999
Our obsession with child abusers risks destroying the traditional trust between generations.
About:
Furedi, Frank, Paranoid Parenting: Abandon Your Anxieties And Be A
Good Parent:
 | Freely, Maureen, & Bright, Martin, Stop
being paranoid, Britain's parents told; Controversial book says obsessive fears about children's safety are a bigger threat than bullies or paedophiles; in The Observer, March 11, 2001 A controversial new book on child-rearing to be published this week will urge parents to let their children take more risks and stop panicking about playground bullies and paedophiles. The book's author, Frank Furedi, Reader in Sociology at the University of Kent, argues that parents' obsession with the safety of their children is more damaging than the risks themselves. Paranoid Parenting: Abandon Your Anxieties And Be A Good Parent says parents should be wary of traditional 'child-centred' experts and urges the Government not to meddle in the family and parenting. |
| Scared silly, 14 March 2001 [...] In particular, what he noticed was that children were no longer left to their own devices. He describes it as a "colonisation" of the world of children by adults. As a consequence, he says, adults not only inhabit but control the lives of children to an alarming and unhealthy extent. |
Hinsliff, Gaby, It's who cares wins for the male nanny; March 9, 2003, The Observer
Move over Mary Poppins: a £4 million drive for more male childcarers will be launched this week to shatter the myth that it is a career for wimps.
Male nannies have become increasingly fashionable, with Liz Hurley said to have been seeking one last year. Working mothers want someone who can play football with their sons, while single mothers are seeking masculine role models for their children.
But just 2 per cent of those in the childcare industry - nursery nurses, childminders, out-of-school club workers and nannies - are men.
Home Office Report says: Most child sex attacks committed by relatives, family friends, 1999 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
Children are at much greater risk of sexual abuse from relatives and family friends than they are from predatory paedophiles, according to new British government research out Friday. [...]
The research found that only one in five men jailed for molesting children was likely to be caught re-offending, compared with reconviction figures of 50 percent for non-sexual offenders within two years of the original crime.
Jarvie, Jennie, Paedophilia scares threaten future of music teaching, Sunday Telegraph, 6 May 2001
THE headmaster of England's most renowned classical music school has warned that the creative development of young prodigies is being undermined by a culture of suspicion that discourages teachers from touching pupils. Nicolas Chisholm, the headmaster of the Yehudi Menuhin School for young musicians in Cobham, Surrey, told The Sunday Telegraph that the quality of teaching is under threat as tutors are widely discouraged from touching children because of growing paranoia about paedophilia. [...]
Close bonds between gifted pupils and their tutors were crucial, said Mr Chisholm, and necessarily involve physical contact. "Teaching gifted children is tricky because of the modern fear about relationships between adults and children," he said. "There's a constant looking over one's shoulder and a fear of litigation.
Males, Mike, Freedom: For Adults Only, From Youth Today, November 2002, Vol. 11, No. 9
[...] By American expert thinking, European, Canadian and Latin American adolescents should be developmentally damaged alcoholic felons. American experts rarely let reality affect dogma.
[...] America, whose anti-youth repressions - mass curfews, media censorship, punitive drinking ages, constant suspicion, groundless policing, violent punishments, compulsory drug- testing - occur nowhere else in such malicious totality.
Where Public Agenda surveys find that two-thirds of American adults display "stunning hostility" against kids [...]
Phillips, Angela, Boy's self-esteem depends on 'Highly Involved Men', The Guardian/17 March 99
FORGET the sensitive New Man and his lager-fuelled opposite, the New Lad. A newer and more positive masculine role model has emerged - the Highly Involved Man (HIM). He is a key factor in building the self-esteem and success of boys, according to a report published on Tuesday. It is the quality of his relationship with the man in his life which marks out the supremely confident boy from his peers. The man doesn't have to live with him, he doesn't even have to be Dad, but he does have to take an interest
Streets safer for children than ever before; 11th June 2000, Author & source unknown
New research has established that the frequency of child abduction, murder, attack and injury in car accidents is lower than for a decade - but parents are increasingly anxious. The myth of lurking danger behind every street corner has so alarmed the children's charity Play Scotland that at a conference in Glasgow yesterday it set out to convince parents that they are damaging children by being unnecessarily overprotective.
Sunday Times, Articles about the overprotection of children in the UK:
| a. 'Stranger danger' warning to young - draws criticism. " CHILDREN as young as two should be taught the rudiments of personal safety and advised never to talk to strangers, a children's charity will say today." |
| b. Paranoid parents' denying children freedom to play, 3rd August 1999. "CHILDREN are being denied the opportunities for play enjoyed by previous generations because of their parents' paranoia, research will confirm this week." |
| c. Comment in the Sunday Times. {..} " Had I been a man, she'd have called the police. Nowadays, the only unpaid adult interested in our children is expected to be a paedophile." |
Swallows, Amazons... prisoners, July 15 2000, author & source unknown
We take away our children's freedom, something which for adults would be called a right. Each time I write about this subject I get letters from fellow mothers who say they have been shunned by the parents of their children's friends because they are deemed to have an "irresponsible" attitude to safety. I say the responsible way to behave is to keep your fears in proportion, train your children to cope with danger and allow them to reclaim the streets
Violent Media May Be Helpful For Some Kids; June 28, 2000, source unknown
At 13 I was alone and afraid. Taught by my well-meaning, progressive, English-teacher parents that violence was wrong, that rage was something to be overcome and cooperation was always better than conflict, I suffocated my deepest fears and desires under a nice-boy persona. [...]
The character who caught me, and freed me, was the Hulk: overgendered and undersocialized, half-naked and half-witted, raging against a frightened world that misunderstood and persecuted him. Suddenly I had a fantasy self to carry my stifled rage and buried desire for power.
Waiton, Stuart, Fear goes with the fences, 04/01/2002 Times Educational Supplement
Most of the teachers I speak to feel uncomfortable with the development of prison camps once known as schools. Surely something must be done to stop the future generation growing up to be even more paranoid.
About
Waiton, Stuart, Scared of the Kids? Curfews,
crime and the regulation of young people, May 2001.
Scared of the Kids? is a thorough examination of the lives of and relationships between young people and adults within communities today. The book is recommended as an important overview or anybody working within the community – especially those working with children, young people and families.
A key question the author addresses is "How should those of us working in the community deal with the levels of fear and insecurity that exists between the generations?"
What Ever Happened To Play? 22nd April 2001, Time Magazine, Author unknown
Theresa Collins lives next to a park, but her kids don't play there all that often. For one thing, all three of her children lead busy lives, what with school, piano lessons, soccer practice and the constant distraction of the home computer. What's more, she fears that the park is dangerous. "I've heard of people exposing themselves there," says Theresa, a 42-year-old special-education teacher in Sarasota, Fla. And while she's not sure if the scary stories are true, she would rather be safe than sorry, like so many other contemporary parents. Her daughter Erica, 9, isn't allowed to visit the park without her brother Christopher, 11, who wasn't permitted to play alone there until about a month ago. As for Matthew, 16, who might have supervised Christopher, he avoids the park by choice. He favors video games.