The End of Community
I grew up in small town England in the 1970s. I can still remember moving house when I was five years old, and spending the first nights on bare floorboards. I remember the sound of footsteps on the landing, and the novelty of stairs. I also remember being turfed out into the neighbourhood – probably on the first night – to make friends with the neighbouring children.
We made friends instantly – in the way small children do. Within days we were visiting each other’s houses, running riot through each other’s gardens, and knocking on each other’s doors to ask opening gambits along the lines of “Hello Mrs Smith, can Claire come out to play?”, or “Can I go on your garden to get my ball back please?”
Now think about it. When was the last time you saw any young children playing outside, unsupervised ?
I watched an interesting video on the internet some time ago – detailing a list of dangerous activities that children should be allowed to do; among them “playing with fire”, and “using knives”. The presentation showed inuit children gutting fish, and cooking it on an open fire. It strikes me that the presentation missed something much more basic – letting kids play outside.
Do you know the names of your next door neighbours? How about anybody else in the neighbourhood? I’m willing to bet (if you are from a similar generation to myself, or older), you knew everybody in the street – adults by last name, and all children by either first name or nickname. Your parents didn’t arrange play dates for you – you figured it out yourself. The only rule governing your adventures and exploration was “Dinner Time”, and “Bed Time” in the summer. If you weren’t back when dinner hit the table, you were in all sorts of trouble.
Adults were allowed to reprimand other people’s children too – and the children didn’t answer back. You would never tell your parents if Mr Jones up the road had told you off, because the punishment would almost certainly have been multiplied.
Forgive me for stepping into crackpot theory territory, but I tend to think there is a link between not letting kids play outside, and community vanishing in front of our eyes. If you don’t learn how to make friends of your own volition, you are not going to naturally form similar bonds later in life.
Technology is supposed to have come to our aid in the form of “Social Networking” – with the likes of Facebook and Twitter providing a back channel to our daily lives through which we can maintain friendships that would otherwise founder.
Social Networking is a the solution to a problem that didn’t exist. It allows community to form between self selecting group of people who are already known to each other – which is quite different than a real world community, where the members are brought together randomly.
On another level, social networking was created to assist us, when in practice it causes the most basic forms of communication – speech, and physical interaction – to erode.
You could argue that modern communication methods – social networks, and instant messaging – are causing the beginnings of H G Wells Morlock and Eloi – which we can distill into the disparity between the “haves” and the “have nots”. Those with the iPhones, Blackberries, Laptops and other such gadgets hide behind walls – both real and imaginary – pretending to form friendships with many they will never meet. Those without such modern “essentials” will meanwhile be helping, supporting, and talking to each other. Visiting each other unannounced.
When was the last time any of your friends knocked on the door without calling first ?
Those were the days! Seriously.
As much as today’s technology “connects us” — it also disconnects us from the world, in a way.
I loved your post, thanks.
You are too kind :)
I got my own sami knife (if you know the sami culture? They live in the north of Norway, Sweden and Finland) when I was 6, I believe. I was EVERYWHERE and yes, the only rule was dinnertime and bedtime :) I wouldn’t dream of giving my step son (who’s 8) a knife, though – children now days seem far less mature then what they did back in the days – which is only natural because children now days have parents like us ;p
I try giving him and my own children more responsibility than they get elsewhere – like for instance going to the lacal grocery store by his own. I think he’s old enough to do that, but people tend to disagree with me. I was all over the place when I was young, unattended, and it went great, so why are people making dumbasses out of their kids?
They need help to do even the easiest of chores, and kids as old as 8 can’t even button their own shirt og tie their shoes themselves. They don’t know what time it is, or what 12 o’clock MEANS. All their DVDs are dubbed so they never learn how to pronounce words in english. My God, some even wear diapers until they start school! Because of the parents! Parents who believe they’re doing what’s best for their kids. This world is coming to an end ;p
I spent half my childhood climbing trees, and messing around with any old junk we found. Building ramps for our bikes out of rubbish, and visiting each other’s houses. None of it seems to happen any more.
Aww, this makes me so sad. It’s true! :( I want my kids to play outside!
It’s scary really, isn’t it – we spent countless evenings in the summer out with our friends – even when we were young – and there would be collective shouts of “awwww” when anybody’s parents called them in… along with shouts of “but it’s not dark yet!”, or any other excuse we could dream up.
Jon,
I agree with you. I grew up in a small farming village here in the states (which happened to be right outside a major metro area). Growing up, not only did we know everyone on our road (about 12 houses) but a lot of other people in the village (which was then around 3,000 people). There was one elementary school for the village, so as you can imagine it was a tight nit group. The old saying it takes a village was so true where I grew up.
For the most part, we were free to do what we wanted as long as we did not get in trouble and like you said, were home by when we needed to be. Living near the edge where the farming village and the metro area meet, we were even allowed to ride our bikes into the city alone and goto the local shopping area.
Now days I am an adult (25 years old anyway) and have moved into the the city. I have lived in my house almost 3 years, and really do not know any of my neighbors. I’ve met a few, but for the most part, all we do is wave at each other.
I am not sure where we changed, but we have. I think we have moved more into building up our own walls and letting fear control us. When I have kids, I hope I do not fall into that fear and let them be kids and have fun.
We don’t know our neighbours either – we invited some of them round for a house warming party a few years ago, but since then we just wave…
We struggle to remember the names of our next door neighbours, and they have lived there for probably five years now.
I’m older than you and I can definitely relate to everything you said. The world seems to be a much more dangerous place today than when I was growing up. Not to long ago I drove to my old neighborhood with my daughter (who never had to walk or ride her bike *anyplace*) and showed her how far I had to walk to school and how far it was to the stores from my house–and my friends and I walked everywhere! To be honest, I was a bit surprised myself at the distances I went on my own when I was 10-11 years old. My mother would send me to the store to get bread or milk or whatever. (Even when I was younger and lived “in the city” I can remember walking to the corner store by myself to get a quart of milk for my grandmother.) We never worried about anything happening to us. We were always told to “go out and play” and sitting in front of the tv all the time wasn’t allowed.
I don’t know if there are more deviants out there now preying on children than there used to be or if the media has just amplified what always has been, but parents are paranoid for their children’s safety. My own opinion is that the trouble started because both parents headed out to work and “latch key kids” became the norm. Instead of going out to play, they veg in front of the tv. Parents feel guilty because they don’t spend enough time with their children, so they don’t discipline them properly. Instead of teaching kids what to do, we put labels on things to keep them safe. Many of the toys I played with wouldn’t be permitted on the market today (the original Barbie doll included!) because they “might be dangerous”. But I digress. Your article was excellent, Jonathan, and as you can see, you touched a pet peeve of mine. :-)
PS–You daughters are lovely. Great photos of them.
Thanks for the great comment Elise. Wendy could tell you similar stories of the ground she covered when she and her brothers were young – walking for miles across the fields. We used to ride our bikes for miles out of town on an evening too…
I have a similar story about when I grew up in 1970’s and early 1980’s southern California. We rode our bikes, built forts in vacant lots (now covered with part of a freeway, shops, a long term hotel), and dug really deep holes in the ground and used our imaginations. By the time I became and adult and had kids of my own (my oldest is 26), God forbid we let the kids play outside, unsupervised! Some local do-gooder (i.e. busybody with no life) actually called child protective services on my (now ex-)husband and me to complain that our then-6 and 8 year old sons were unsupervised in their own yard!
And teachers actually taught when I was growing up. My two oldest sons had the same first grade teacher two years apart, and when the younger boy got to her class, she taught something called “creative spelling”… and it screwed this kid up so much that he still, at age 24, can’t spell his way out of a paper sack.
I was never called Mrs. (insert former married name here). I was either called (insert the appropriate son’s name)’s mom, “Ms. Stephanie” (something that I learned about living in Virginia) or Stephanie. To this day, that bugs me. That we as a culture have gotten so casual about proper address of elders that I’ll probably be the first grandmother to be called by her just her first name (and not “Grandma Stephanie”) by her grandchildren’s friends.
And the older I get, the more I sound like my parents. *Sigh*
We all sound like our parents. The worrying thing – if anything – is that I’m more strict than my parents ever were. Although they had boys – and we have girls. Not sure if that should make a difference or not…
I have followed your site off and on through it’s different incarnations and don’t normally have a lot to say until today.
Growing up, my brother and I were always outside playing with each other and the neighbor kids. If we got in a fight with each other, mom’s usual response was it you are not bleeding, then figure it out yourselves. As we got a bit older, my brother had his own friends and I was quieter and could usually be found in a tree with a book.
We called everyone by their last name unless told otherwise and we were allowed to answer the family phone when we were six and seven. I have friends whose 10 year old is told not to answer the phone, even when the parents are there.
As I got older and did theater in school, I used *gasp* power tools to build sets, scaffolds to hang back drops and crouched on catwalks hanging lights half as heavy as I was.
Today I use social networking sites to keep track of old friends i have made over the years and to try to reconnect with people who were once important to me, it is a jumping off point for me, not an end point. I have text messages disabled on my cell phone, if you want to send me a short meaningless message, that’s what e-mail is for, otherwise I make people call me and take two minutes for actual human interaction. Did I mention I still write letters, with actual paper and stamps.
I may only be 30 something-ish but I refuse to forget there is a world of people, most of whom are decent folks, and there are too many good trees for reading books in to give up the good fight for basic human respect and interaction that people and friends deserve. And my future potential children are not going to get a pass on it either. And yes, I’m going to let them play with power tools.
Thankyou for taking the time to write such a great comment Karin – really appreciated!
It’s funny you know – while reading your comment I started thinking about our kids – and their reluctance to do anything even slightly dangerous; it reminds us that children are not idiots – they won’t intentionally put themselves in harms way.
Great post, Jonathan. I think my mom’s directive was always “go outside and play!” and she was super over protective as far as I’m concerned.
I like to have my boys go play outside, too…but I will admit they mostly play in the backyard. Granted it is a big backyard and there is plenty to do, but still.
And you are right about the social networking thing – we can have a large community of friends, but really, they are mostly friends we choose, aren’t they?
The weird thing about Facebook is that it discourages the making of new friends – it only really serves friends we already have. I’ve got more to say about this, but will save it for a blog post :)
This brings back memories.lol Today it’s almost scary to let kids play outside without a parent somewhere around. But as for my friends calling… They won’t. But, it’s only because they don’t have a phone at the moment.lol
I remember when I was young we would regularly drop in on friends unannounced – and they would do it with us too. I wonder if we are *really* that much more busy now than our parents were then that we cannot stop what we are doing…
I wonder if part of the reason that neighborliness is gone has to do with people moving so darn much. I was listening to the radio this afternoon and heard someone saying that it’s unheard of anymore for anyone to buy a house and live there for ten to fifteen years.
FIRST, I thoroughly apologize for my absence and the lack of recognition for your wonderful new blog home … CONGRATS! I love what you’ve done and have enjoyed catching up with you from this end!
Second, I whole heartedly agree with your statements here. It is absolutely sad what we’ve done to childhood. I remember growing up in a community on the Potomac River outside Washington, D.C. and how my friends and I in elementary school would head out for the day on our bikes just us against the world … we’d come back in for lunch when the sun was straight up in the sky and we could hardly see our shadow and then immediately head back out into the neighborhood to explore and enjoy our surroundings. We played tag and catch and kickball and hide-n-seek and we hiked through the woods to catch tadpoles in the streams leading to the Potomac. Once we found a “big kids fort” with even a couch and table and thought how cool it was there and how cool it would be to have this fort. Of course it was probably a home for some vagrant and we were damned lucky that person wasn’t around at the time we found the place but that was all part of the adventure. If we were running through someone’s yard we shouldn’t have … a neighbor would call out at us with firm discipline and we wouldn’t hesitate to obey. The world was our parent and we understood the importance of respecting adults. Now no one knows their neighbors, no one has block parties, no one comes to the door to ask if little Johnny can come out to play. It’s sad really. What happened to our sense of community? Lawsuits, no involvement for fear of police reprimand, fear of our neighbors because of crime seen on the television. And what’s worse is that I don’t see a positive solution. I cannot see a community changing for the better and going back to the “good old days” … I don’t know where to find that community but I’m looking for it … if you find it somewhere please let me know!
Great to see you here – and thanks for relating your story too – this post seemed to strike a chord with a lot of people!
I recall those days too, however there were more children those days. If I went out of the house, there were always other children on the block who were outside, because those were the days before contraception and abortion.
I say this not to overtly get into a morality debate, but rather to point out that the higher number of children on the street meant the street was safer. It was a lot harder to snatch a child when there were five other children there.
I have one child and would not let him out in the front yard unsupervised. There is one older child on our street, most of the Moms work away from the home, and there are more drug addicts in our neighbourhood.
As for community, I do make sure my son develops strong community. He goes to a Catholic school even though we are Episcopalian so he has friends there. We may even convert due to being Conservatives since he then would have a connection with school and the parish.
At some point, however if he has friends with him, we will let him explore our city alone. There is not a high crime rate, with the exception of B&E’s so he is unlikely to get mugged by all the drug addicts around in the Summer.
Perhaps we think about community for him because he is an only child. We adopted him through friends at Church because my wife and I are infertile. We also moved to this city so he could know my extended family and find community through cousins.
Thanks for your thoughts on this issue. One last thought of my own, I read somewhere that there is a generational cycle of freedom for children. It cycles back and forth from lots of freedom to limiting freedom. Perhaps we are moving back to more freedom, however as I point out there are major social changes which have occurred in the last few decades which have a major impact on children’s ability to form community.
Peace.