We Have Ruined Childhood
For youngsters these days, an hour of free play is like a drop of water in the desert. Of course they’re miserable.
To put it simply, our kids are not O.K.
For
a long time, as a mother and as a writer, I searched for a single
culprit. Was it the screens? The food? The lack of fresh air and free
time, the rise of the overscheduled, overprotected child, the
overarching culture of anxiety and fear?
Those
things might all contribute. But I’ve come to believe that the problems
with children’s mental and emotional health are caused not by any
single change in kids’ environment but by a fundamental shift in the way
we view children and child-rearing, and the way this shift has
transformed our schools, our neighborhoods and our relationships to one
another and our communities.
The work
of raising children, once seen as socially necessary labor benefiting
the common good, is an isolated endeavor for all but the most well-off
parents. Parents are entirely on their own when it comes to their
offspring’s well-being. Many have had to prioritize physical safety and
adult supervision over healthy emotional and social development.
No
longer able to rely on communal structures for child care or allow
children time alone, parents who need to work are forced to warehouse
their youngsters for long stretches of time. School days are longer and
more regimented. Kindergarten, which used to be focused on play, is now
an academic training ground for the first grade. Young children are
assigned homework even though numerous studies have found it harmful.
STEM, standardized testing and active-shooter drills have largely
replaced recess, leisurely lunches, art and music.
The
role of school stress in mental distress is backed up by data on the
timing of child suicide. “The suicide rate for children is twice what it
is for children during months when school is in session than when it’s
not in session,” according to Dr. Gray. “That’s true for suicide
completion, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation, whereas for adults,
it’s higher in the summer.” But the problems with kids’ mental and
emotional health are not only caused by what goes on in the classroom.
They also reflect what’s happening in our communities. The scarcity of
resources of every kind, including but not limited to access to mental
health services, health care, affordable housing and higher education,
means that many parents are working longer and harder than ever. At the
same time that more is demanded of parents, childhood free time and
self-directed activities have become taboo.
And
so for many children, when the school day is over, it hardly matters;
the hours outside school are more like school than ever. Children spend
afternoons, weekends and summers in aftercare and camps while their
parents work. The areas where children once congregated for
unstructured, unsupervised play are now often off limits. And so those
who can afford it drive their children from one structured activity to
another. Those who can’t keep them inside. Free play and childhood
independence have become relics, insurance risks, at times criminal offenses.
Tali Raviv, the associate director of the Center for Childhood Resilience,
says many children today are suffering a social-skills deficit. She
told me kids today “have fewer opportunities to practice
social-emotional skills, whether it’s because they live in a violent
community where they can’t go outside, or whether it’s because there’s
overprotection of kids and they don’t get the independence to walk down
to the corner store.” They don’t learn “how to start a friendship, how
to start a relationship, what to do when someone’s bothering you, how to
solve a problem.”
Many parents and
pediatricians speculate about the role that screen time and social media
might play in this social deficit. But it’s important to acknowledge
that simply taking away or limiting screens is not enough. Children turn
to screens because opportunities for real-life human interaction have
vanished; the public places and spaces where kids used to learn to be
people have been decimated or deemed too dangerous for those under 18.
And
so for many Americans, the nuclear family has become a lonely
institution — and childhood, one long unpaid internship meant to secure a
spot in a dwindling middle class.
Something has to change, says Denise Pope, a co-founder of Challenge Success,
an organization based in Palo Alto, Calif., that helps schools make
research-backed changes to improve children’s mental health. Kids need
recess. They need longer lunches. They need free play, family time, meal
time. They need less homework, fewer tests, a greater emphasis on
social-emotional learning.
Challenge
Success also works with parents, encouraging them to get together with
their neighbors and organize things like extracurricular-free days when
kids can simply play, and teaching them how not to intervene in normal peer conflict so that children can build problem-solving skills themselves. A similar organization, Let Grow, helps schools set up unstructured free play before and after the school day.
Dr.
Gray told me it’s no surprise that the program, which he consults for,
has been well received. “Children are willing to get up an hour early to
have free play, one hour a week,” he said. “It’s like a drop of water
if you’ve been in the desert.”
These
groups are doing important work, but if that kind of desperation is any
indication, we shouldn’t be surprised that so many kids are so unhappy.
Investing in a segment of the population means finding a way to make
them both safe and free. When it comes to kids, we too often fall short.
It’s no wonder so many are succumbing to despair. In many ways, America
has given up on childhood, and on children.