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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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Apparently my whole feed is late 30s bloggers writing about child rearing now, even the ones I subscribed to for the AI news.

Today it's Zvi, continuing last week's discussion from ACX about free range kids, with a side of Aella's very odd childhood and perspective on allowing children agency.

Zvi, as usual, has dozens of somewhat interesting links, and is worth checking out. A lot of it is related to the issue that reporting parents for potential abuse or neglect is costless and sometimes mandatory, but being investigated imposes fairly high costs, and so even among families that are not especially worried about their kids getting hurt walking to a friend's house or a local store, they might be worried about them being picked up by the police, and that can affect their ability to do things other than stare at screens or bicker with their parents. I have some sympathy for this. When I was growing up, inside the city limits, there weren't any kids I knew or wanted to play with in the immediate neighborhood, or any shops I wanted to go to, and my mother was also a bit worried about getting in trouble with the law, so I mostly played in the yard. But perhaps there would have been, if wandering were more normalized? I asked my parents about this, and they said that when they were younger, they also didn't necessarily have neighborhood friends they wanted to visit, and also mostly played in their own yards and houses, but they could have wandered around more if they'd wanted. That was in the 60s, and I'm not sure it's heading in the same direction as the ratosphere zeitgeist or not. My dad does remember picking up beer for his grandma as a kid, which is also mixed.

My impression of the past is mostly formed by British and Scottish novels, where lower class children would rove around in packs, causing trouble (a la Oliver Twist), and upper class children would have governesses, tutors, or go to boarding school, where they were supervised a bit less than now, or about the same amount, and the boys would oppress each other a bit. Upper class girls could go for a walk in the garden with their governess. The police probably have an interest in stopping children from forming spontaneous gangs, which the suburban families were seeking to avoid. The not firmly classed rural children (educated, able to become teachers, but not able to enter high society) are represented as roving the countryside a bit (Anne of Green Gables, Little House on the Prairie, George Macdonald novels), and get into a bit of trouble, but there were only a few families around, and everyone knew who everyone was. My grandmother grew up in such a place, then divorced before it was cool, and taught in the South Pacific. I can't tell if wandering through the heather or prairie a lot is better or worse than reading lots of books and playing in the backyard.

The free range stuff, while it may be important for some people, seems a bit orthogonal to the Everything is Childcare problem (probably more about lack of extended family), since the age at which a child could feasibly be wandering the countryside or neighborhood (8? 10?) is the same age when they can be quietly reading novels or playing with their siblings or being dropped off at events while their parents drink a coffee or visit a bookstore or something. Unless that's also not a thing anymore?

Anyway, I don't necessarily have a firm conclusion to present, other than that that people are talking about it. @Southkraut gave me a bit of pushback for writing on screens in my daughter's presence, which I felt a bit bad about, but also not. I do agree with Zvi and Scott that it's probably bad if Everything is Childcare, and parents aren't allowed to read an article and post about it because the children might be infected by the proximity to a screen. (The children are painting. They have used their agency to decide that they want to paint, asked for the paints and supplies they need, and the older one has made a little notebook full of concept sketches)

Man... I had so many dreams of giving my child the same childhood I had. Biking 15 miles to the nearest strip mall with my sister, playing in the woods all day, ranging through countless back yards. Once I found this weird heavily vandalized abandoned cabin in the middle of nowhere. My parents never cared, and it all seemed totally normal in the 90's.

Unfortunately, times have changed. Putting aside the sociological factors, apparently ticks in my area are up 4000% since a decade ago, and my daughter has already caught Lyme Disease and Alpha Gal Syndrome. Any tick bite she gets could make her AGS symptoms worse, and causes my wife to have a week long panic attack. I didn't appreciate how much the world had changed in that regard, and how much worse just playing in the fucking woods was.

Also, I swear to god if the rumors that Lyme Disease and AGS escaped from a bioweapons lab are true you may very well see me on the news.

That said we try our best. Lots of tick spray, twice daily tick checks, tick treatments for the yard. Breaks my heart that she can't play in the woods and the creek I bought. Virtually every time anybody goes into them they come out with 2-5 ticks, so that's not even a hypothetical problem.

That said she fucking loved the 2 acres of yard we do have. Climbs the shit out of trees, plays with the chickens, has her own garden with her mother. She loves to pick herbs and leafy greens to add to her fresh eggs in the morning. Skips around the yard in her night gown saying good morning to the chickens. Makes my heart swell.

Her peers... well... I donno man. A friend of mine has a kid about her age, a boy, tall as fuck. He spends an hour on a tablet at his preschool to get him ready for the tablet as a learning device in elementary. Cause I guess that's what public schools do now? He can't ride a bike, climb a tree, he still has an awkward toddler gait despite being 5, and still has very soft speech. I'm reading Lord of the Rings to my daughter, he's seen all the movies along with Star Wars, The Hobbit, and countless other shows.

My wife and I constantly discuss, is our daughter just "advanced" or have we just not hobbled her with screentime and being locked in a townhouse? We may never know, but the differences we notice are stark.

After they wipe out the malarial mosquitos, ticks should be the next target.