this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2026
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I'm a parent, and I will say that I was not feeling any real nostalgia when we were making the decision to have kids. I still kind of felt like a kid myself, to be honest.
The thing is, now my oldest is heading into middle school, and I'm starting to see parents my age who are doing that kind of thing to their kids. I think mostly it comes from a good place (i.e. "the world kinda sucks these days, and we did middle school in a much nicer time, so whatever of that I can pass down to them is good"), but there are definitely some people who have poured everything into "my children must have exactly the same childhood that I did," and I'm baffled by that sentiment. I hope I'm more the former than the latter.
Even worse are the parents who subject their children to total surveillance and dont allow them to do anything they perceive dangerous, even if the real risks are negligent. A friend of mine married, she already had a child from a prior relationship. That child had some issues learning english in school, so my girlfriend at the time offered to give her some lessons.
They lived a bit outside of town, but with good public transport connections. They absolutely denied that this 14 y.o. takes the train, switches into the subway (not even leaving the station, transfer would have been direct) and walks about 4 minutes from the station to us, because the district we live in is "so dangerous and full of immigrants" (The way would have passed a small tower which served as apartments for medical personell of a hospital and a childcare facility). They insisted on driving her everywhere - and this behavior was the default. In comparison, when i grew up, the first 2 weeks of my school life my mother accompanied me, made me learn the path and told me on which corners i should watch out, and that was it. I switched school in the 3rd year, which included taking public transport at the age of 8 - one day of training was enough.
This girl suffered from having no fucking clue about the world because she never was allowed to experience the world on her terms, which was also her main issue regarding learning - her mother (who did not have any higher education) insisted on learning with her even when the material was more than mom could handle, but never teaching her HOW to learn, which is a damn important skill to have. All forms of responsibility for her own life were held back from that poor girl. She was so naive that would bet my left arm that she will be scammed and fucked over on a regular basis.
These fears came from her mom being a teen mom, which meant she wanted to "protect" her. In reality she laid the groundwork for another generation of teenage pregnancy.
They then had a son, and as soon as he was able to run around they slapped a goddamn GPS watch with automatic alerts if he should move a bit outside of very restrictively defined borders (which means they went off far too often and they would call him on this watch every time, ingraining into the child from as young as possible that his parents watch his every movement) and with the option to listen in at every moment of his life.
Some people shouldn't have kids.
Ooof. Yeah, I've met other parents like that. "so dangerous and full of immigrants" definitely paints a picture, for sure. There are folks all over the place who feel, despite evidence to the contrary, like the world is so much more dangerous than it used to be. I think that those two things have to go together--the whole "Fox News makes people afraid of immigrants for fun and profit" thing, though I have also met some left-of-center people in that same boat, so who knows.
If you compare the times I grew up and when that girl grew up, i lived a lot more dangerously: traffic was very heavy around my home and noone gave a shit about things like "school areas", speed limits were a higher and were violated by a lot more people, and crime rates were insane compared to her childhood. I actually grew up in one of the worst areas in town with peep shows, sex workers, gambling and drugs being a lot more prevalent than in most parts of the city (and the criminal activities weren't driven by immigrants, but by the autochthonous people around) . These days the traffic is still insane (it is THE main artery of the city after all), but the side streets have all been made 30 km/h zones and seedy establishments have been replaced with specialty shops and higher-end night clubs (who have the advantage that they can crank up the volume, because it won't even register with people next to the heavy traffic)
Is this in the US? There was recently a case where a woman was convicted of something like child endangerment for letting her kid walk to the pond half a mile in her own neighborhood. Which means now the parents have to protect themselves from the law.
That terrifies me as a parent, I'll be honest. I have an 11-year-old, and he's totally responsible to be able to go to the library and back on his own. It's just on the other side of our neighborhood. And I want him to have that opportunity, so we let him. But I'm terrified that someone will decide for us that we're taking too much of a risk.
Nope, Austria. The US has always been mental regarding their kids and what they are allowed to see and do - comes with the prudishness and religious fanaticism. If your society is thinking that showing female nipples corrupts children (even tho the majority of children know exactly how nipples look like because they were fed by them - male nipples are fine btw!), but slaughtering hundreds on TV is fine, something very basic is not ok.