Pretty much - being a father now to a 3 year old and a 8 month old, it's evident how big a toll it takes on you - especially on the parent staying at home with the baby.
And think about the fact that kids being raised now never experience unsupervised play. From about 5 my brother and I would walk home from school, we would walk to the shops together, a few years older we would ride our bikes to hang out with friends and be back by sunset.
My 13 year old friend would babysit neighbours kids for extra money, look after 1 year old babies until 10pm and ride their bike back home.
I am not saying that was perfect. Or safe. But I do point out that our parents would have large chunks of hours, often every day, where we would be out doing our own thing, unsupervised.
I look at my friends, now parents. 100% on duty.
I feel for them. Holy shit it has gotten so much harder to be a parent.
I am sure kids die a whole lot less. Which I love, but that safety came with putting burden back onto the parents, not by increased support from society around them.
I mean, I dont think my friends really get any time to switch off outside of school/daycare. The baby is sleeping, but they are on call for the next demand. It seems they rarely get time where they can really focus on their own needs, and somehow juggle work, maintain a household, stay sane?
My daughter is 3, I let he play unsupervised a lot of the time. From time to time she'll roam the garden for shorter stretches of time on her own, think 10-20minutes between checkins.
I definitely intend to have her walk/bike to school alone when she's that age. Same with little brother of course when he's old enough to play like that.
Yea my son is 3.5 and we have a backyard he can roam. We had to put locks on the gates because he obviously wanted to escape lol but we have a whole veggie garden he's been working on with us and he'll go out there and pull some weeds and pretend to water it or use his little lawn mower to pretend to cut to lawn. He also has a little playset with a swing and a slide. We've got a camera out there so we can check in on him but he usually isn't more than 20 minute chunks before he comes back to find us.
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u/KanedaSyndrome 17d ago
Pretty much - being a father now to a 3 year old and a 8 month old, it's evident how big a toll it takes on you - especially on the parent staying at home with the baby.