Fear and Danger
First Draft - 'Chaperone' This is about a service called Chaperone, provided by Verizon in which parents can track the whereabouts of the children through global positioning/cell phone use. Read the post.
As we have seen in the years since 9/11, fear is contagious. It's a disease.
I grew up in New York City. My mother went to work when I was in kindergarten. My older sister was supposed to look after me after school, but you know that kindergarten is only half a day, so once I learned how to take care of myself, I wasn't about to let my older sister boss me around.
Were there dangerous people around? Of course there were. Even more dangerous in a way, because parents didn't talk a lot about the dangers out there. But a kid learns very quickly who is trustworthy and who is not.
After World War II, New Yorkers started to flee New York for New Jersey, presumably for the "fresh air", but that was a euphemism for "safety". Years later, the suburbs are just as dangerous as the city. When people don't confront both their fear and the danger, leaving a place doesn't rid you of the danger - the danger travels with you.
Don't misunderstand me, I'm certainly not in favor of deliberately putting a child in harm's way. But the overprotectiveness of the current parental culture is not only not protective, it's stifling. Children are over-programmed to ease the fears of their parents to the point where they don't have opportunities to learn give and take. This programmed world is not going to prepare them for adulthood.
Some time ago, I went to visit friends in Florida who bought a house in a gated community. I'm one of those people who have trouble sleeping away from home. So the first morning there, I got up around 5am. By 6am I was restless in the house, so I went for a walk in the gated community. After I walked through the entire estate, I came back to my friends' house only to find the door locked. It was too early to ring the bell (actually, they didn't have a bell, I would have had to knock), so I continued to walk aimlessly through the community. It was very boring. Everything the same. Stifling conformity. I thought - maybe I can go out and walk the local streets. Then I realized that I couldn't because this was a gated community and I did not have the numbered password to re-enter. What a beautiful, vapid prison, I thought.
I heard a news item recently that people who live in gated communities are more vulnerable to criminal attack because of their isolation.
You can't escape danger if you don't confront it.