Free Article of the Week + Surveys
The weekly roundup for 4/12
Welcome to the Saturday roundup of surveys, plus as promised, a paywall removed from a free article for some weekend reading! Thank you for being a free subscriber, and if you feel like upgrading to paid, you can enjoy my entire book available on Substack, in addition to 5+ paid articles per week. (Feel free to read two chapters (1, 2) from my book for FREE if you aren’t sure.) Founding members (aka Sicko/Gooners get access to the exclusive Discord, which is turning into a really fun place to socialize.)
Free Article
Today, the article whose paywall I’m removing so you can all enjoy it for free is The People Who Feel Bad For Words and Objects, one of my earlier articles about a strange phenomenon where I (and many other people) have empathy for inanimate things.
Surveys
This week, please take the men’s fashion survey, available to everyone! Also:
Parenting Risk Assessment Survey, open to all American parents who at one point have had decision-making authority over a child’s upbringing (including if that child is now an adult) Fill it out here.
Relationship History Survey, available to all Americans over 18. Fill that out here.
Reddit Relationship Advice Survey, available to anyone of any country who has at any point asked Reddit for relationship advice. Fill that out here.
I feel like there should have been some actually dangerous scenarios in the parenting survey rather than ever more finely resolving degrees of extreme caution.
"A relative (grandfather/uncle) wants to take your child (10) hunting. The child will/will not carry their own gun."
"You spouse wants your child (7) to take up cart/motocross racing. They will need their own DoT helmet and fireproof clothing."
"Your child 15 wants to go to a bush party with their friends. Their friend will drive (There will be alcohol/drugs at the bush party)."
"Your relative wants your child (13) to work on their farm. They will be working alone."
"Your child (13) wants to go to the beach with their friends. There will be no supervision/life guard/maybe no one else's at all."
"Your child (13) wants to go on a canoe trip (wilderness camping) with their friends. They have been on a canoe trip before, but with supervision."
I wanted to comment (where else?) on the CHH survey of parenting. A prominent caveat: I'm almost 80. I think that's important because I responded both from the perspective of having grown up in the 50's in the time before suburbs, but in a safe non-urban neighborhood and as a parent in the 90's. A lot of the questions in the survey appear to appeal to parents who are decidedly afraid of their children getting hurt.
To take some examples, apparently a lot of parents are afraid of children and infants riding in cars. Well, we didn't have car seats or seat belts when I grew up and I never, ever felt unsafe. My real concern was getting car sick. We did use car seats in the 90's, and they always faced towards the front. In fact, it was common for me to take our month old baby for a twenty or so minute drive, while I sang to her (you wouldn't want to be there). It relaxed her and helped her sleep.
There were lots of questions about swimming. Now, if you know anything about child rearing in the 50's, you ought to know that children spent a whole lot of time unattended by adults. By the age of six, I was commonly walking several miles along a long stretch of the Atlantic Ocean, picking up God knows what, clamming at low tide, and, yes, swimming, without an adult within earshot. From the first grade on, we walked to school unattended, about half a mile. All of our social life was unattended with other kids our age. We invented all sorts of games that no one seemed to teach us, some of them naughty, some marginally illegal, and some likely dangerous of sorts. So, we did get bruised sometimes. It was common, esp. in the summer, to see adults of any kind for less than an hour over the span of a 12 hour day.
I hope I'm making myself clear. Many of these questions appear somewhat "neurotic" to me unless of course the environment in which these children are being raised is more like a war zone. Of course, there were no drugs, sexual activity was unheard of. We did have gangs of sorts, and fist fights, but no one was killed or maimed. By the time that we were raising our kids in the 90's (I got married at 44), things had changed. Drugs were prevalent, sex at an early age normalized. We did spend a whole lot more time with our kids than our parents had. We even homeschooled them, but for the most part we treated them a lot like our parents had treated us. Perhaps we were lucky living in a mountain top community surrounded by national forests. We let them wander freely, only many years later finding out things they did that we didn't know about.
As for social media, theoretically it sounds like it could be beneficial. But it now seems to me that it's a very bad idea for the young. They need the risk-taking and experience of person-to-person contact and socialization to mature. Social media is too disembodied, ok for the older, where it may provide opportunities that for some reason evaporate as we age and neighbors don't come out to play in the street any longer, looking for just anyone to play with.