My Little Town 20120201: Raising Children Then and Now

(8 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

There is tremendous betwixt how children were raised 50 years ago and now, whether in a little town or a large city.  Tonight we shall contrast how I was raised to how children today are.  I am not talking so much about the cultural evolution as I am the technology available, but the two are quite entangled.

This is going to be sort of a stream of consciousness set of recollections about how we did things back when I was little and how it is done now.  Most of the topics are everyday activities that families do routinely.  

First, let us think about children riding in a car.  Back when I was little, it was normal for a three or four year old to ride standing in the front bench seat betwixt her or his parents.  No one gave it a second thought.  There were still lots of cars on the road with only front seatbelts, if any seatbelts at all, and I rode that way many, many times.  Fortunately, my parents were excellent drivers, so I was never in an accident.

Now no one would even dream of putting a child in a car without a child restraint, and now always in a rear seat with the littlest ones facing towards the back.  Not only is it the law in every state in the US, it is just good sense.  Back in the day no one even considered it.

Talking on the telephone was a rare privilege to talk on the telephone, even locally.  Many people had party lines, so phone time was often limited even for adults.  The telephones were the old standard rotary dial ones, and when kids were old enough they were taught to dial “O” to get the operator in case of emergency.

My friend’s daughter will be three years old this month and she routinely uses her mum’s wireless device to play games, to listen to music, to watch videos, to view pictures, and sometimes even to talk.  Just yesterday I was visiting and the almost three year old had to show her grandmum how to go “home” on her mum’s wireless device!

Going to the grocery store was a different experience as well.  Most of the time back then we tried to avoid going to the store on Sundays, because there were so many things that could not be bought because of “blue laws” prohibited almost all non food items from being sold on that day.  In any event, back then grocery stores were not anything like supercenters of today, and the only real supermarkets were a half hour away in Fort Smith.  Usually my mum and I would get in the car and drive there, and make stops at other stores first if we needed other than grocery items.  For most people, ice cream and milk were the last things to be picked out, because not many cars had air conditioning.

Now we just pile the kids in the minivan (in their restraint, of course) and head to a Big Box and get essentially everything that we need in one stop.  Marketing researchers now have figured out how to place items for children to see easily, so there are lots of requests for things that are often bought just to keep them quiet.  That science was not nearly as well developed when I was little.

Being born is a whole new world now.  When I was born, the father could not be in the delivery room, and at some hospitals not even on the same floor as the delivery rooms.  Everything was kept very discreet, both for what we now consider prudish reasons and for mistaken medical thought.

When my eldest was born, by Caesarian section, not only was I in the delivery room, I was snapping photographs (on 35 mm film, since he was born in 1985).  By the way, his OB was the late Dr. William Harrison, a former Kossack.  My friend’s sister just had a baby on the 12th of January, and I was in her room only a couple of hours after delivery, this one also by Caesarian, and I am not even related.

Going to the pediatrician was different too.  Back in the day, going to the doctor was a really big deal, sort of like going to church or something.  It was all very formal, and generally only one parent was allowed.  What has really changed is the technology, however.  When I was born there were no PKU screenings, or any heal prick screenings really at all.  Now there around 30 (or more, since my data are for 2005) screening tests and more for target populations.

One thing has not changed that much, and sort of for the worst.  Back in the day, and even today, antibiotics are prescribed too often without doing proper isolation and culture of pathogens.  Back in the day, we were blissfully unaware of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, and we know better now.  This is one practice that should definitely change.

When I was small, the only vaccines that were given were polio, smallpox, tetanus, diphtheria, and maybe one or two others.  As a matter of fact, the Salk polio vaccine was released less than two years before I was born.  My mum made sure that I got it, and my elder brother as well.  People asked her if she were afraid of it, and she always told them that she was more afraid of the iron lung.

Now, there are at least different 16 vaccinations recommended for infants and children in the US.  These include infections that once were called the “normal childhood diseases” like chickenpox, measles, and mumps (all of which I had as a child).  This is a great advance, and it is pretty much the consensus of learned people that the “link” betwixt vaccines and autism has always been bogus.  How many kids with chickenpox have you seen lately?

TeeVee was also quite different.  Although color TeeVee existed when I was little, few programs were filmed (yes, filmed) in color before around 1962 or so.  We got two channels reliably, and two more when atmospheric conditions were right and the antenna rotator was working.  KFSA, channel 5 from Fort Smith, and KTUL, channel 8 from Tulsa were reliable.  KFSA was close, and KTUL has the tallest TeeVee broadcast tower in the US at the time.  KFSA was mostly CBS, about a third NBC, and carried a few of the most popular ABC programs.  KTUL was exclusively ABC.  Sometimes we could get KARK from Little Rock if we rotated the antenna just right and the weather was just right, I remember seeing in very snowy form the Star Trek episode “The Lights of Zetar” on first run.  By the way, if you missed the airing, too bad.  Of course, that was on the only TeeVee set in the house, one of those old, big console models that weighed a ton and drew hundreds of watts of power.

My friend’s daughter has hundreds of high definition channels on satellite from which to choose, and she can watch them in the living room, her room, her grandparents’ room, on in her cousin’s room.  And if her mum wants to watch something different at the same time, she can record Dora the Explorer on the DVR to see later, and to see over and over.  I have a feeling that the sensory overload is not such a good thing, however.

In keeping with the last statement, one thing that kids do not do as much as they used to do is use their imagination, and I think that this is a great loss.  My friend’s daughter constantly is exposed to electronic stimuli, and it is rare to see her pretend and make up her own fun.  She did this afternoon, for about 30 minutes.  They had watched her sister’s newborn, mentioned above, and the little girl found one of her dolls, put it in the bassinet, and started calling it by the baby’s name.  She talked to the doll like others were talking to the baby, and gave it a bottle.  When I was her age (I have a really good memory of my early life), when my grandmum or my mum were not reading to me or playing with me, I had an incredible imagination and played out all kinds of stories rather than watch TeeVee or use a wireless device.

This makes me think to a song by John Entwistle that appears on The Who’s album Who Are You?  The name of it is “905”, and one line in it goes:

Everything I know is what I need to know, everything I do’s been done before.  Every sentence in my head, someone else has said…

This is such a good song, I shall include it here:

Finally, there is physical play.  With all of the passive activities that are available these days, our children are becoming obese.  There is no pretty way of saying that.  My friend’s little girl is in the 99th percentile for weight, but she is also in the 99th percentile for height as well, so she is not obese, but she is over her ideal body weight.  Granted, it is winter in the Bluegrass now and playing outside is somewhat limited.  Back when it was warm her mum, her, and I would play outside a lot, and she is a very active little girl.  It was warm yesterday and today, and we were able to get outside and the three of us take long walks, and that is good for all of us.  It started to sprinkle less than halfway through our walk today, so we had to cut it short, be walk we did at least a little.  Come to think of it, we were also able to take a walk Sunday afternoon as well.

When I was a kid, I walked to school and back, and when I got old enough for a bicycle, I rode it back and forth.  I was out playing in the yard all of the time, going into the pasture to explore, and doing lots of other physical activities.  I burnt off lots of calories doing those things, and that has served me well.  At almost the double nickel, and at 5’11”, I still weigh only 168 pounds.  Of course, it is a bit more difficult to keep off the weight than it was when I was much younger, but I am sure that if I had been heavy all of my life that would be much more difficult.

I think that physical activity is important for everyone who are able, but especially for children, and here is why.  Kids who are obese tend to be obese adults, and we are finding children with Type II (“adult onset”) diabetes more and more often.  I am not trying to be gauche, but heavy kids are becoming more common, and they become heavy adults.  Whilst I have no problem with the new technologies, I think that it is important that our children get proper physical activity.  Besides, it wears them out and they go to sleep earlier and have more sound sleep, giving parents a bit of respite.

I am not sure why I chose this topic for tonight, but I am guessing that I have been a bit wistful after taking care of my friend’s sister’s baby over the past couple of days.  Yes, I remember how to hold newborns, feed them, burp them, and even change them.  I got to hold him a lot over the past couple of days, and that made me reflect on raising my own three boys and the interaction that I have with my friend’s daughter.  She can be hell on wheels sometimes, but is also a very loving little girl.  Last night she got tired and sleepy around 8:30 and crawled up onto my lap.  I held her until she was sacked out, then took her to her bed and tucked her in.  I remember doing that with my children, and I am honored that my friend and her family trust me to be, really, a father figure to the little girl.  Her birthday is coming up, and I think that she needs a book or some kind of something that will get her active.  Any suggestions?

Thank you for reading.  I appreciate comments very much, and also tips and recs.  I and my readers really enjoy reading anecdotes that you contribute about growing up, and it does not have to be about a little town.  Please comment freely.

Warmest regards,

Doc, aka Dr. David W. Smith

Crossposted at Daily Kos,

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