I don't have kids but..

[pbromaghin]

Are we off at a wild enough tangent yet?

Not yet. Keep going.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I try not to be a prude, but..

When I was in Frances at a public restroom, a women and her daugher came in while I was tinkling. I was shocked! But to the French, they have an attitude of "We all pee" attitude. On top of that, she's probably have seen a wee wee already. Americans are weird. And I'm one of them. I got over it.

 

[BrianShaw]

I wouldn't be able to. I've been American too long.

 

[benjiboy]

Interesting, but I'm afraid more than just the final suggestion fails to resonate with me. But then again, most of my non-US experience is in the UK and they aren't really European... are they?

I like Continental Europe a great deal and have travelled through it quite extensively, but like many British people I don't feel European although I know geographically Britain is in Europe and we are in the European Common Market, and I feel we should stay in it, but we are an island race and I have never really felt European

 

[MartinCrabtree]

pinko Euro liberal? That got to be the most redundant label ever.

 

[GRHazelton]

This thread just reminded me of a sad experience I had a few years ago.

I'm a male retired librarian, with about 40 years experience in public library work, mainly in administration, although I made a point of working with the public to know what was going on. One afternoon while working the desk I noticed a group of perhaps five little girls at a nearby table. They were giggling and whispering; suddenly all left but one kid, perhaps three or four years old. I was close enough to see that she was struggling to hold back her tears. I walked over, sat down across from her, and asked "What's wrong?" She whimpered, "They were mean to me!" As the father of a child, a daughter, I knew that she needed a reassuring hug, but I dared do no more than pat her hand FROM ACROSS THE TABLE! because to do more than pat her hand and offer quiet sympathetic words would be really dangerous for me, EVEN IN A PUBLIC PLACE in a town where I was well known and, I think, respected.

Our son Morgan is a male kindergarten and first grade teacher. He's about 6' 2", really buff and an excellent, "hair on fire" teacher, voted teacher of the year by his colleagues last year. He has the same sort of concerns. Working in Title I schools he has many students who need attention, ideally from a male role model, since so many of them have absentee fathers. He has to walk a narrow line, and has to avoid more than the most casual contact.

So many folks seem to feel that any attention from an unrelated adult male toward a child is automatically evidence of evil intent. As someone in an earlier post noted, many if not most child sexual abuse originates in the family or extended family, but receives little publicity. But we guys with cameras are suspect. And no, I have no answers. I wish I did.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

In an age of lawyers and cops..

So many folks seem to feel that any attention from an unrelated adult male toward a child is automatically evidence of evil intent. As someone in an earlier post noted, many if not most child sexual abuse originates in the family or extended family, but receives little publicity. But we guys with cameras are suspect. And no, I have no answers. I wish I did.

It's really the few that's spoiling it for the many. I work at a university and all managers are required have sexual harassment training. My wife worked for a optical corporation and manages people and she had to have the same training.

There's a good side and a bad side of course. The good is training will give with women that had to suffer harassment from men recourse, but on the other hand, we can't give hugs at work because it might be construed as sexual.

 

[winger]

Our son Morgan is a male kindergarten and first grade teacher. He's about 6' 2", really buff and an excellent, "hair on fire" teacher, voted teacher of the year by his colleagues last year. He has the same sort of concerns. Working in Title I schools he has many students who need attention, ideally from a male role model, since so many of them have absentee fathers. He has to walk a narrow line, and has to avoid more than the most casual contact.

So many folks seem to feel that any attention from an unrelated adult male toward a child is automatically evidence of evil intent. As someone in an earlier post noted, many if not most child sexual abuse originates in the family or extended family, but receives little publicity. But we guys with cameras are suspect. And no, I have no answers. I wish I did.

And it's not just teachers/students. My son will be starting kindergarten this fall and is going to a kids' thing at the Y a few days each week. The teacher for it is also a teacher in the school system (though in the high school). She mentioned that in school here, the kids are not allowed to give each other hugs. Period. At all. I know there are reasons for it, good ones even. But I think it comes down to people giving up on trying to put events into context. Rules have lost wiggle room based on circumstance and all must be absolute. Hugs are bad if one person doesn't want a hug, so therefore all hugs are banned. Etc….



As for accepting surveillance cameras, I think it's the potential end-use that distinguishes them from photos taken by unknown individuals with unknown intents.

 

[Doc W]

My cultural background is Canadian/Anglo/Celtic. If someone were to sneak photos at a public pool in my social milieu and get caught at it, he would very likely get his arse kicked and be told not to come back. Whether or not he was photographing children would be irrelevant. You don't hide behind walls to take photos of people in their swimsuits without their knowledge. There is something creepy about that. Period. Either announce yourself and your intent plainly and honestly, or bugger off.

This is not complicated and has very little to do with attitudes toward children and sex, at least from my perspective. It is simply a matter of respect toward others and their right to a certain degree of privacy. Now don't tell me that people in a public place have no right to privacy. If that man were to make himself visible, anyone who did not want their picture taken would then have the opportunity to avoid being photographed, cover up, leave, or whatever. It's the creepy and sneaky nature of this that is the issue.

 

[David Metis]

Tell me if I'm off base here, but here in the America, some if not most won't confront people of suspicious behavior. We're too quick to call the cops, a lawyer or surreptitious attack someone on line. I think there's too much of a culture of complaining instead of direct action to find out what's going on. We have a culture of "Someone else is going to handle it". We just pick up the phone.

Yep. We've become a nation of passive-aggressive betas.

Sent from my SCH-S968C using Tapatalk

 

[darkosaric]

I like Continental Europe a great deal and have travelled through it quite extensively, but like many British people I don't feel European although I know geographically Britain is in Europe and we are in the European Common Market, and I feel we should stay in it, but we are an island race and I have never really felt European

I consider UK to be part of Europa, but often in many countries where I lived (Balkan countries, Poland, Germany, Italy) - UK is in a joke considered to be USA's 51st state. The same does not apply for Ireland and Iceland - so I am not sure it is about being an island, or some other cultural/historical issue.

 

[pdeeh]

UK is in a joke considered to be USA's 51st state. .

Some of us who live here have come to the same conclusion. Though I don't consider it a joke ...

 

[MattKing]

Back to the American confusion of nudity vs sexuality, I was invited to play hockey a few months ago against a team from Austria, that was on vacation touring around the US and wanted to play at the Snoopy Rink in Sonoma County.

We had no idea how good they were so we put a team together, and played them. They weren't very good but they had a girl on the team of about 25, who was the daughter of one of the guys playing. Afterwards they all came into the dressing room and I talked a couple of minutes to the girl who was sitting across from me. Her English wasn't great but I asked about their trip.

Then she proceeded to strip down naked, walk without a towel down to the shower area where there are about 4 shower heads and then shower with her team and ours.

We did a double take and tried not to be obvious and sort of left them to their shower, and got back to the locker area. She nor the rest of their team had the slightest problem with their nudity or commingling.

I thought to myself, we are so fucked up in this country. So silly and sexually repressed.

So ...

How many of your team said to themselves: "What would Jesus do?"

And did you say to yourself: "What would Helmut Newton do?"

(For those who don't recognize the reference,check blansky's recent thread)

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I know how precious children are and they are our future, but are they over protected? Do they need wild play? Maybe kids should be coddled less. Maybe little boys and girls should know how to defend themselves?

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015...of-wild-risky-play-fire-mud-hammers-and-nails

 

[markbarendt]

And it's not just teachers/students. My son will be starting kindergarten this fall and is going to a kids' thing at the Y a few days each week. The teacher for it is also a teacher in the school system (though in the high school). She mentioned that in school here, the kids are not allowed to give each other hugs. Period. At all. I know there are reasons for it, good ones even. But I think it comes down to people giving up on trying to put events into context. Rules have lost wiggle room based on circumstance and all must be absolute. Hugs are bad if one person doesn't want a hug, so therefore all hugs are banned. Etc….

I think American society is so silly in this regard, IMO forbidding natural/normal/needed human behaviors is a recipe for creating insanity and destructive behavior in the "subject". Not only that, in kindergarten it denies the "subject" the opportunity to practice social skills in a relatively safe and supervised environment.

As for accepting surveillance cameras, I think it's the potential end-use that distinguishes them from photos taken by unknown individuals with unknown intents.

Not a good argument. The individuals are unknown in both cases. The end use isn't known in either case.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

The irony of all this to shelter children, technology has opened up a whole world that exposes them to internet porn, cyber-bullying and sexting.

 

[pbromaghin]

I know how precious children are and they are our future, but are they over protected? Do they need wild play? Maybe kids should be coddled less. Maybe little boys and girls should know how to defend themselves?

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015...of-wild-risky-play-fire-mud-hammers-and-nails

Looks like a typical backyard where I grew up.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I'm very grateful I grew up not only without a computer, but without even phones or TV. I think kids today are being deprived of a very great deal by all these electronic babysitters, not to mentioned how their eyesight and general health are being prematurely ruined. But Prof Pixel got one thing wrong. In small towns there is no such thing as privacy, so everybody knows everything about everyone else, and is therefore either your best friend of worst enemy. And out in the woods, people are suspicious of newcomers, even if they live ten miles away. People going around texting and doing idiotic selfies are too distracted to even notice when they're stepping right in front a traffic. A technological shortcut to the Darwin Award, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Let me elaborate. I grew up with cowboys and Indians, literally. Climbing cliffs, crawling thru caves, getting chased by bulls, disappearing for days on end into the deepest canyons on the continent with not much more than a rifle and a book of matches, all that was just normal. Many of us got more exercise on a daily basis than kids nowdays get in six months. I'm very grateful for that, in health terms. My idea of a gift was a puppy or kitten - no batteries needed! But I raised all kinds of other critters too, which came in handy when we wanted to terrorize substitute teachers coming up from the city. A tarantula in a pencil box worked wonders, as did a jackrabbit or possum or gopher snake in a desk drawer. We were thoughtful enough not to bring rattlensakes, hawks, or bobcats!

 

[GRHazelton]

"The Lot" in my childhood.

Looks like a typical backyard where I grew up.

That's about how the bunch of us in Raleigh NC carried on in the late '40s and early '50s. No organized baseball, we managed with only a few kids and no formal field. Roared up and down the street on bicycles, no wimpy training wheels, elbows and knees skinned and scabbed. We'd go bawling home to Mother, who'd daub the would with Mercurochrome, slap on a bandaid, and send us back into battle. Climbing trees, making pea shooters out of sections of bamboo and firing privet berries at each other. My father built what I remembered as a huge swing set with 2 x 8 timbers and the whole neighborhood used it, since it was much bigger and better than those stupid store sets. We tramped through the nearby woods, caught crayfish in a nearby creek, lightening bugs lit up jars and bedrooms. Some friends and I slept out in a little tent pitched, IIRC, in the front yard. No such things as playdates - you went to your bud's door and asked if he or she could come out and play. Just be home by dark or supper! We walked by ourselves to Five Points - I think every city has a Five Points - for the Saturday movie, 9 cents. For that you got a newsreel, a short subject, a cartoon, perhaps a chapter of a serial, and the feature. Walking home get a 12 oz Pepsi and a huge Baby Ruth, a belly ache for about 15 cents. A teenager up the block had a copper plating bath, that heavenly blue solution and a car battery. Probably "bronzed" baby shoes. A little mercury transformed dimes and quarters, which were real silver. We didn't have a TV - there were only two snowy channels, but our house was filled with books. My parents bought a Zenith "hi-fi" and we enjoyed 45s and LPs. One of my fondest memories is drifting off to sleep to Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Haydn.

Not all was good. In Raleigh the African Americans were strictly segregated. Lots of grandparents died in their early 70s. Cars rolled over easily, and offered their occupants little protection. No seat belts or shoulder harnesses? Air bags? Gotta be kidding! The public pool was lily white, and it often closed during the summer polio scares. The March of Dimes was prominent, alas. There weren't vaccines for measles, whooping cough, mumps, chicken pox, diphtheria.... Antibiotics were pretty much in their infancy, save for penicillin, I think.

Many of you of a certain age can add to this.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

GRHazelton. You look wistfully back at your childhood and so do I. I grew up in the 70's. But all this coddling and is not good for kids. Yes parents should protect their kids. I feel this is a result of helicopter parenting.

http://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-are-the-most-stressed-out-2015-2

Some kids today have every minute of their day scheduled with activities. They have to keep their minds occupied. What I don't get why soccer moms put AV systems in the back of minivans.

 

[blansky]

GRHazelton. You look wistfully back at your childhood and so do I. I grew up in the 70's. But all this coddling and is not good for kids. Yes parents should protect their kids. I feel this is a result of helicopter parenting.

http://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-are-the-most-stressed-out-2015-2

Some kids today have every minute of their day scheduled with activities. They have to keep their minds occupied. What I don't get why soccer moms put AV systems in the back of minivans.

I grew up in the 50s and 60s and there was lots I had to do like chores, paper route, piano lessons, baseball and hockey league but still tons of spare time away from home. We always walked or rode our bikes to school, on weekends and holidays we could leave home and do whatever we wanted as long as we were back by dinner time (we called suppertime). Our world was about 5-10 miles in any direction. Pretty much complete freedom.

What I wonder about kids growing up today is how they will/can handle silence. Their brains have been bombarded with visual and audio stimulation since birth and what effect that has on them. Their brains have no "down time" to just be still. Added to that is the ability taken from them to confront the physical world by playing outside and interacting with nature and dealing with the independence of making their own fun.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

So true

What I wonder about kids growing up today is how they will/can handle silence.

Why do you think there's such an existential crisis with this generation? Without a silent mind, they can't know themselves. They always have to be somebody else. Probably someone on TV like the Kardashians.

 

[pdeeh]

I still find it rather weird that so many people criticise "the current generation" without at the same time recognising that it is they themselves (along with their own children) who are responsible for producing "the current generation" and creating the world that generation lives in.

It sometimes seems as if everyone under 20 is being held to blame for things over which they could not have possibly had control ...

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

My generation is far from perfect. My mom and my grandmother's generation made sacrifices which I find my generation difficult to swallow. The real problem is taking things for granted and being victims of convenience and comfort. It's a challenge to appreciate what we have and how lucky we are. Once we forget or unaware of our privileges, we fall into a trap of constant wanting. The original thread is how sheltered the latest generation is. I feel I was sheltered to a certain extent. An eye opener for me was traveling overseas and how little some people have but yet find meaning and purpose in life. My goal is try to be a seeker of the human experience not just comfort. I do enjoy my air conditioning in the summer.