Changing nature of childhood....

Childhood back in “The good old days,” is more like a pleasant dream compared to what our kids are faced with today. Children experience more pressure to get good grades, go to a certain college, get a certain job and maintain a certain standard of living; certainly don’t forget about all those detour signs along the way.

I interviewed my maternal grandmother who just turned eighty this year. She grew up during the Depression in the 1930’s in a coalmining town in rural Pennsylvania. She was the youngest of fifteen siblings. Seven of those siblings died in infancy. She has no recollection of any of her other brothers or sisters ever looking after her. She did recall one event. When she was a toddler her mother had one baby younger than she. Her mother sat the baby up next to her, my grandmother was told to watch the baby. The baby fell over and hit her head and began to cry. This scared my grandmother and she hid in a closet. That was the last memory she had of that baby.

The family lived on a small farm with chickens, two cows and a few hogs. Her chores consisted of scrubbing floors, dishes and milking cows. They were poor but still had enough to eat. Their free time was spent outside swimming in the river in the summer or skating on ice in their shoes in the winter; this was simple yet still fun.

When she graduated high school she moved to Michigan (where the jobs were) with her sister and brothers who were obtaining employment in the auto industry. She recalls her first job in 1943 was working in a donut shop making $18.00 per week. Later she and many other women were hired at a local General Motors factory during WWII making parts for airplanes while the men were overseas. She made approximately $39.00 per week. After the war was over, the men came back to their jobs and she married and started a family.

Today growing up is much more complicated. The majority of households require a two person income, leaving Johnny and Sally to fend for themselves until Mom or Dad get home from work. Their free time can be spent unsupervised on the internet, watching television or even playing violent video games which in studies has been shown to cause aggressive physical behavior in young children and adolescents. Both children and adults today have to worry about natural disasters, terrorism, the child molester that lives down the street and toxins in our food and environment.

It’s simply impossible to go back in time to the day where everyone simply had fun swimming the river with no worries about what would happen tomorrow or next month or next year. I now realize why my mother was so protective of my sisters and me. I can only pray that my daughter and her children will have a decent life to look forward to.