When I was a child, children across Europe were play outside for hours, unattended.
Today it's a quaint Scandinavian phenomenon.
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In some countries, parents risk jail time or loss of their parental rights over just letting their kids sit in the car for a few minutes.
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Despite the West in many ways being a safer place for a kid to play unattended today than it was 20 years ago.
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We have normalized a way of looking at child-rearing that is abjectly fascist, in the worst possible sense. But few people even realize.
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Irrespective of gender, parents who do not work full time after the 1st year of their kid's life (but preferably sooner) are judged harshly.
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The support network of friends, family and society are less available (tied up in labor power), while the demands are all-consuming.
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For older parents, more options like private childcare are available, but it's contingent on paid labor.
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Meanwhile socialist "paradises" like Norway, which are overall quite good, dump kids as young as 1 year old straight in kindergarden.
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The Norwegian state-funded approach to dealing with this is fundamentally behaviorist. Let the kid cry it out and get over it.
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None of these people seem to be aware that behaviorism has been discredited for going on 30 years or more, nor of the implications.
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Then when children go home, outside of Scandinavia, parents are expected to continue their work day and attend their child unfailingly.
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This is presented as responsible parenting, but the truth is it's literally driving those parents insane. An 8 hour workday is bad enough.
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Adults are not well-adjusted to dealing with the whims of little children and playing with them every hour, even less so after work.
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