My in-laws and new nephew are coming up for a visit this weekend. It's about a five hour drive, but will apparently take longer because they need to stop so the baby can feed on the way. When my mother in law heard this, she chuckled and said, "I remember the days when we'd just grab you from the back seat and feed you while we were driving." This kind of story cracks me up, because I feel like we were such a free-wheeling bunch back in the seventies. Things got so... careful after a certain point.
There was an image in a novel I like of speeding down the highway at seventy with the kids jumping up and down on the back seat and screaming their heads off with glee. There is something so lovely and free about it, even though the parenting gurus would bust a nut at the thought. I feel like the contemporary version of this image is the kid sitting in a car seat in the back of an SUV placidly watching a DVD while the parent stays calmly and rationally under the speed limit. They pass by one of those "Your speed is..." signs and adjust accordingly. All is calm. All is well.
I wonder if this shift is unique to child raising, or if it's simply reflecting broader cultural changes that have occurred since I was a kid. Has the need for this degree of safety pervaded other aspects of our lives, or is it just that people have become extra protective of their children, specifically? Has the significance of children themselves changed since, say, the seventies? Part of me feels like they've become the ultimate accessory in some people's thinking. Babies so in right now. Then again, it could be the fact that people like me are having fewer children, so we've become that much more protective.
Don't get me wrong. There's no way in hell my kid's going to ride without a seat belt. I think that part of me just likes the image as a romanticized image. Simpler times and all that. At least we have iPads now.
How's that for a random finish? Have a great, safe weekend, everyone!
There was an image in a novel I like of speeding down the highway at seventy with the kids jumping up and down on the back seat and screaming their heads off with glee. There is something so lovely and free about it, even though the parenting gurus would bust a nut at the thought. I feel like the contemporary version of this image is the kid sitting in a car seat in the back of an SUV placidly watching a DVD while the parent stays calmly and rationally under the speed limit. They pass by one of those "Your speed is..." signs and adjust accordingly. All is calm. All is well.
I wonder if this shift is unique to child raising, or if it's simply reflecting broader cultural changes that have occurred since I was a kid. Has the need for this degree of safety pervaded other aspects of our lives, or is it just that people have become extra protective of their children, specifically? Has the significance of children themselves changed since, say, the seventies? Part of me feels like they've become the ultimate accessory in some people's thinking. Babies so in right now. Then again, it could be the fact that people like me are having fewer children, so we've become that much more protective.
Don't get me wrong. There's no way in hell my kid's going to ride without a seat belt. I think that part of me just likes the image as a romanticized image. Simpler times and all that. At least we have iPads now.
How's that for a random finish? Have a great, safe weekend, everyone!
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