“What an interesting book.
I think what would prevent most people from reading this is probably some version of a sentiment that can be summed up as “Okay Boomer.” But if that’s how you’re feeling, I would encourage you to give it a shot.
Although there are lots of examples from college campuses, they’re pretty balanced between things that overly-sensitive people are doing and things that crazy people are doing (usually white power weirdos). And while there is some condemnation of behavior, I felt like the author was very empathetic towards people and wasn’t saying anything remotely like, “These snowflakes need to shape up!” or “These iGen kids are ruining everything!” If you read it that way, that’s probably your preconceived notion and sensitivity lenses at work, not the real content of the book.
The most interesting portions to me were related to parenting and how much it’s changed in just a few decades. There was a section that listed a checklist for parents for school readiness for young kids. 30 or 40 years ago, the list was a lot of things like, “You child can ride a two-wheel bicycle, Your child can walk alone to a store or home 2 or 3 blocks away…” where now it looks more like, “Your child can spell phonetically, Your child can understand basic mathematical concepts…” So where once it was “Is your child capable of managing their physical safety?” now it’s more “Can your child fill out a worksheet?” Which seems profoundly stupid to me.
This is my Okay Boomer moment, so buckle up.
When I was a kid we used to roam around the town in small groups of 2-4 kids. Sometimes on bikes, sometimes just walking. And it wasn’t like we had to check in every hour with our parents. I rode the bus to the mall. I would go to the grocery store alone or with a friend. In the summer, this was basically all we did, screw around during unstructured time.
You learn a lot without realizing it. You learn to avoid true danger, like weirdos and creeps. You learn how to do simple shit like walk into a grocery store, pick something out and pay for it. You learn how to take a bus. You learn the geography of where you live.
I had a coworker who lived in a very safe neighborhood and wouldn’t allow her son to walk to the bus alone. It was like a block. Eventually, she did let him do it, but he had to be on a walkie talkie and talk to her the whole time until he got on the bus. I’ve had a number of people tell me that when their kids are learning to drive, they have no idea where they are inside of their own towns. They don’t know how to get from home to school.
Every day, the school I work next to, parents line up their cars to drive up to the door of the school, at which point their child is released, gets in the car, and then the parents drive them home. Like they’re goddamn diplomats in need of a secure escort. This line of cars extends several blocks, and parents will wait up to an hour in a line of cars to pick up their kids. The kids can walk or bike or whatever, but very few, if any, do this, and if they do want to do it this way the parents have to sign a waiver.
I can already hear the parents: You don’t have a kid, so you don’t understand. If you don’t have kids, you’ll hear this all the time. And I totally agree, I don’t have the emotional understanding of a parent. However, I would proffer this: I probably have a more realistic assessment of danger to children because I’m NOT a parent. I’m not emotionally invested, which means when I’m looking at the realistic dangers, my thinking isn’t tainted by my personal stakes.
There are some parents who agree with me, that kids should have a little more freedom. There was the mom profiled in the book, the sort of mother of the Free Range Kids movement, who let her young son ride the subway home by himself at one point, which turned out great.
I do think kids probably need a little more room, a little more agency, and a little less structure.
One of the more profound insights in the book had to do with the level of discourse we’re experiencing today. In short, people suck at discussing things because they never had un-referee’ed disagreements as kids. When you’re a kid, if you’re playing a game with 4 other kids, you have to learn how to argue or disagree without the other kid getting up and leaving, at which point the game is unplayable. Newer parents tend to referee everything, jumping in if things get intense. But letting kids work these things out themselves might be a way to help them learn the skills of discussing things without getting to the point that everyone takes their ball and goes home.
The best part of the book, however, is that it offers a lot of potential solutions. I’ve found that I’m a solutions-based thinking, so solutions speak to me. Even when I disagree with the solutions, I think solutions-oriented thinking speaks to me and gets me thinking along the lines of productive movement. Way too many books that I might put in the sociology category seem very focused on talking about the problem. I usually hear what the author is saying and think, “Okay, I buy that this is a problem, but what now?” To borrow an analogy from another book, a problem that’s well-explained is great, but if you went to the doctor with a pain, and if that doctor could explain why you’re feeling this pain, does knowing the pain’s origin solve the problem? No. You go to the doctor not for an explanation of the history of the pain, but for the cure.
It’s how I feel when a cold is being passed around the office, and everyone wants to trace back to patient zero. As if it’s really that person’s fault. Sidebar: it’s my pet peeve that people come in when they’re sick. Don’t do that. But once you’re sick, figuring out who “got you sick” is a complete waste of time and energy. Once you know, does that help your symptoms? Does it speed your recovery? Absolutely not.
Yes, I think the history of some things can be valuable in understanding them. But the history and origin of a problem without solution is not terribly useful.
I think a lot of people don’t have the guts to offer a solution. Because that’s the easiest thing to attack. You can nitpick someone’s solution, which will be seen as an effective way of discrediting their entire argument. Which is stupid.
I deeply appreciate the solutions offered in this book, especially because they’re solutions based mostly in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (which totally works) and because they’re solutions that any individual can choose to apply. It’s not a set of solutions that goes “You motherfuckers need to stop doing X.” It’s a set of solutions oriented towards, “If you want to be a better person and have a better life, here are some realistic options.”
Great read, and I’d definitely call it a must-read for parents of young kids who haven’t given a lot of thought to giving their kid some rope. And parents who feel pressured by other parents, who are afraid of being seen as bad parents.”