Kids and Freedom

Kids and Freedom

This essay from "Fred on Everything" about growing up without a "vindictively mommified" culture reminded me what we often discuss here, especially concerning the need of boys to explore:

[B]eing Southern kids, we boys knew how to handle guns, and the girls knew how to handle us, and though the country boys were physically tough from doing real work (consult a history book), we were not crazy in the head, as the phrase was. . . . The wretechedness we see today—the kid who shoots ten classmates to death, the alleged students strung out on crystal meth, the suicides, the frequent pregnancies—just didn’t happen. Why? Because (I strongly suspect) we were left the hell alone. . . . I do know that the boys needed, as plants need sunlight, to take canoes up unknown creeks, to swim and bike and compete—without a caring adult.

A fine book on a similar subject is "How to Build a Tin Canoe" by Robb White IV, the renowned boat-builder who also is the brother of humorist Bailey White ("Mama Makes Up Her Mind") and the son of author Robb White III, a Hollywood screenwriter who also wrote many adventure novels for young people. An excerpt from "Tin Canoe":

There were a variable number of my cousins, both boys and girls, some almost babies, and my two sisters, and the girl (best friend of the oldest sister) who would wind up as m wife. Altogether, the whole bunch of children at the coasthouse averaged around seven or eight, and usually all of them wanted to go. As I said, we were not supervised by our parents at all -- didn't even have to come home for meals, but if we did, there it was, if we could find it. We were even exempt from evening muster and often stayed out all night rampaging up and down the wild shore in that old Reynolds. When we ran out of gas, we just rowed and towed.

My cousins and I, too, benefitted from a lot of benign neglect from our parents, who just didn't seem that anxious about us, and indeed we never got into any real trouble.