Closeted in the home or constantly watched over by parents, children today lack much of the freedom they had only 50 years ago. Up until the early 1970s, there were few kids who didn’t spend much of their free time outdoors.
Kids were granted freedoms that seem inexplicable today – to set off in the morning and, wherever they lived, the surrounding streets, back alleys, old bomb sites, woods, parks, rivers or countryside were theirs for the taking.
They were unsupervised, given no guidance beyond “be back in time for tea” or “be home before the street lights come on”, and they were free to spend the day as they wished.
Sometimes hours could be whittled away doing no more than tadpoleing or collecting treasures such as feathers, bluebells or acorns; other times industriousness was shown by making dens or mud pies.
Sometimes children would organise games such as hide-and-seek or dare each other to climb the highest tree or cross the coldest river.
And if they fell out of the tree, or into the river, no matter – they would dust or dry themselves off, and eventually wander back home before the sun set and their tummies started rumbling.
Sadly, this world of independent children’s play has largely vanished today.
It was in the mid 1960s that the new threat of ‘Stranger Danger’ to children’s freedom really took hold of the popular imagination.
Child murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley helped change the nation’s attitude towards children’s outdoor play as their sadistic crimes became one of the most sensational television news stories of the 60s.
The fear that it was now unwise to allow children to play outdoors without parental supervision was heightened by some other major social changes that were increasing dangers on the streets.
A huge rise in car ownership and road traffic posed a major threat to children’s safety and to the way working-class communities used their streets as playgrounds.
Slum clearance and housing improvement schemes inadvertently added to the loss of a safe outdoor play space for children. They swept away many thousands of Victorian terraced streets where children had once played, to replace them with high-rise estates.
For generations, neighbours and extended family members had kept an eye on children playing in the streets, stopping them from getting into serious trouble and checking on any strangers passing by.
Modern high-rise estates broke up extended families and made this kind of informal policing of children’s play virtually impossible.
There are few reliable statistics on stranger danger and the increase in child molestation and abduction. It can be said with certainty, though, that the number of reported cases remained extremely small.
A much greater threat to children’s lives was road traffic accidents – ironically made worse by the increasing number of parents who began driving their children to and from school in order to protect them from the dangers of the outside world.
In parents’ minds, however, child abduction often appears as a greater and more insidious threat.
The flasher at the school gates and sexually motivated attacks on children are nothing new, but in the television and social media age, these fears have been fuelled by intense – almost obsessive – coverage of stories of child sexual abuse, abduction and murder.
The James Bulger case in 1993, the abduction and murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham village in 2002, and the Madeleine McCann disappearance in 2007 are three of the most dramatic examples. All had a significant impact on parents’ attitudes, making them more inclined to keep children indoors and carefully monitor their outdoor activities.
Growing affluence and the child-centred society have certainly not brought with them a richer outdoor play experience for children.
The physical and psychological consequences of this lost world of children’s play are now beginning to be felt, most obviously with the well-documented increase in child obesity, child aggression and the isolation of children who now spend most of their free time indoors.
Quite apart from the health benefits of children spending free time playing running, chasing and hiding games in the streets and fields, independent play also taught them important social skills.
There were inevitable disagreements and upsets over who the winners and losers were in all the games, but resolving them without parental interference helped the children grow up.
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Kids were granted freedoms that seem inexplicable today – to set off in the morning and, wherever they lived, the surrounding streets, back alleys, old bomb sites, woods, parks, rivers or countryside were theirs for the taking.
And if they fell out of the tree, or into the river, no matter – they would dust or dry themselves off, and eventually wander back home before the sun set and their tummies started rumbling.
A huge rise in car ownership and road traffic posed a major threat to children’s safety and to the way working-class communities used their streets as playgrounds.
In parents’ minds, however, child abduction often appears as a greater and more insidious threat.
The physical and psychological consequences of this lost world of children’s play are now beginning to be felt, most obviously with the well-documented increase in child obesity, child aggression and the isolation of children who now spend most of their free time indoors.
