We grew up poorish but I didn’t realize that until I was an adult. We were always slightly better off than many of the other people in our trailer court or housing complex. We weren’t on welfare and drank frozen juice from concentrate, never Kool-Aid. My mom made a big deal out of that.
And my generation was, statistically, the worst for it. Teenagers of the 90s had the highest rates of crime, drug use, and pregnancy. But we were fortunate in that we were the last generation to have free time to explore the world with our friends—the essence of childhood.
Mom left Dad when I was young and worked at least one job and often two. I don’t remember her much, but I do remember roving outside with other feral children.
We crashed our bikes, raided gardens, played with fire, and worse, but beyond getting into more trouble than previous generations, we had normal childhoods. We created endless games together. Some games, like building forts, gave us the confidence to try building other things as we grew up. Other games, like bike tag, gave us a buckshot scattering of scars on our knees and palms.
Most importantly, like every previous generation of children, we learned how to be with each other, how to give and take and fight and forgive. We learned how to navigate the real world and deal with real relationships. We may not have always liked the other miscreants we played with, but we knew that without them, we’d lose our most essential source of fun. Kids today are lost to that reality. They can occupy themselves completely with naught but their thumbs and a steady stream of electromagnetic radiation.
Parents today tolerate this because they live in perpetual fear of what could happen to children left unattended outside. They may regret the time their children spend indoors on devices but take a sour comfort in the fact their child is home and mostly safe.
Fortunately, children learn easily and develop quickly. We just need to find a way to give them back a proper childhood, where they learn how to deal with each other and all the bumps and bruises life will give them. And compared to my generation, a little more parenting—and less playing with fire—would be good too.
