Back in my day I walked 3 miles to school, in the snow...

I am currently watching the John Adams mini series on HBO. (Highly recommended). As I am watching it I was reminded of the speech I saw David McCullough give at a corporate event regarding history. He was speaking of the difficulties people faced in the 1700's and was talking specifically about the Adams family. While John Adams was participating in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia he would write letters to his wife Abigail regularly. The task of picking these letters up in Boston fell to his son, John Quincy, who I believe was 9 or 10 at the time. J.Q. would get on his horse and ride alone from what is now Quincy to Boston and back. This is about 10-15 miles each way on dirt roads. See here

What struck me about this story is that in today's culture we are very hesitant to let our kids do anything by themselves presumably because we feel that the world around them is unsafe. At 9 years old we rarely leave a child home alone while we go out for errands. We live 1/3 mile from my daughters school and only now are we just letting her walk home alone. When mentioning this to some friends they told me that when they were 10 they would get on the T and ride into Boston and sneak into Celtics and Bruins games but they wouldn't let their kids do the same today. Many parents site the fact that today's world is more dangerous that the one that we lived in 30 years ago. Is this true?

My theory on this is that it is not true. That the world we live in today is no more dangerous that the one we lived in 30 years ago and certainly less dangerous that the one that J.Q. Adams lived in 230 years ago. It is only the perception that today is more dangerous than yesterday. My guess is that proportionally to the population there are no more violent criminals or child abusers now than there were 30 or even 230 years ago. Recent statistics suggest that crime has been decreasing (although I don't put a ton of faith in stats) here You just hear about the case that do occur wherever they may occur on a regular basis. Local new no longer reflects local stories. All you see are sensationalized accounts of negative stories that happen globally not locally. Since the distinction is never made with any conviction that the story is not happening in your town, we assume that danger is all around us when in most cases it is not. The truth is that today's 9 year old is just as capable as J.Q. Adams was 230 years ago. If the expectation is set that they needed to ride a horse 10 miles from Newburyport to Topsfield there is no doubt that they could accomplish the task for they are capable. So if they can do that then why can't they do common tasks, like their own laundry for example, around the house. The fact is that they can and more than likely they should but for whatever reason, we just don't expect them to do it and that lack of expectation ultimately short changes the kid.