I don't know about you but growing up more free has memories of a lifefime. We'd be at the park all weekend and only when the neighbours whistle blew (in ear shot), did we all disperse and go straight to our respective homes.

Funny though, it wasn't necessarily more safe then. I mean to say, I had a bloke do 'a flash' at me in the park. I am not warped for life. There has always been sickos in society out there. Some say it is much more unsafe nowadays. Interesting really as history says otherwise and media wasn't so 'fashionable'.

In short, children need to be outside and still. Parents aren't using the 'off button' finger enough. Where has the creativity gone, the communication skill building, the fun in getting dirty, the tree climbing and the cycling 5 miles to a decent public swimming pool. Where have the back yard fire crackers all gone. I am SO thankful I grew up in the 70s as a kid.

It is the few sickos out there that have insidiously affected society so todays young miss out on so much freedom and potential for fun. Parents are scared but who is to blame.

I would say the MEDIA has a lot to answer for. What do you think? The sickos of society behaviours and mentalities have always been there. There was as much 'baggage' in families decades ago as there is now (probably a different topic sorry), but I maintain the media playing on the minds of todays parents have shaped the thinking we now see. Too much doom and gloom 'advertised'. Children aren't better off for it.

There is more strange folks around today.

I watched over four decades... and there has been change.

I would say the 'sickos' come from the tidal wave of porn and lust promotions the printing/publishing/media people have hooked onto in recent times...i.e. early 70's onwards.

This gave rise to the sex criminal.
Once mostly an 'undergrounder' he now prowls in vans looking for children.

Try to get a 'letter to the editor' in most major newspapers about the porn industry creating sex criminals.
Its pretty hard.
Why?
Because in behind the scenes theres connections.

Gibo, I’m not sure that it isn’t more the other way around. I mean, our treatment of sex as taboo and private rather than normal and open human behaviour has IMO led to both the porn industry and deviant behaviour, or at least to a much greater level of both than there would otherwise be.

Cakers, I don’t know if the media have much to answer for. I can see good and bad aspects to increased media coverage, or the sort of coverage that we saw of paedophile Dennis Ferguson recently for example.

In what way do you think the media have worsened the situation?

Ludwig.
In the past society has opted for the sex issue to be guided by what the Holy Bible says.

And it has worked.

The Bible puts sex into marriage, with one man and one woman.
It outlaws homosexuality and all of the perversions because they are not Gods Will.
He's the Creator and... well... thats that.
He gets the right to choose.

When we deviate from the Holy Bible then the society hits problems.
Young girls get pregnant outside of marriage, children grow up without a parent father, more and more sex is required to fill the lusts of those who chase it, porn explodes to feed the lust, women get raped, kids get molested, disease spread like fire, society begins to crumble...
Its an old cycle.
It has brought down many a civilisation.
Theres a day coming when cops will lose it... and sex offenders will rule the streets.
Then they will have to deal with it.
It could then be the day of the gun.

Dear Cakers,

I don't have that much of a problem with the media.
But, television, yes. Though my children didn't
watch that much of it, what was presented mostly
fell under the heading of inappropriate or just
plain stupefying. Yet in families where television
viewing is an on-going part of daily life,
it has become the moral authority for children,
with mostly bad results.

Even if TV offered twenty-four hours of uplifting,
intelligent fare each day, a sound bite on moral
courage just doesn't penetrate. The medium delivers
information in a flash, then it's gone.

Stories found in books, by contrast, seep into our
very being. The printed word is pondered, and it is
received only when the mind is fully engaged.
Like no other medium it has the power to stay with us.

Like most parents I spent the first five years of
my children's lives diligently preparing them to read.
And then later comes the day when you discover your
child reading 'questionable material.'

It does make sense to be
aware of what your children are reading, and to make
sure that the best books, including classics old and
new, are also available to them.

Anyway, I'll now get down off my soap box. It's just
that I believe that books are not only good for the
child, they're a family resource beyond anything
that any medium has to offer. To me, children's
books remain what the best of them have always been,
a powerful transmitter of the culture and the
values of civilisation. And as I've said previously,
our role as parents is not to protect our children
from the truth, but to protect them from something
less than the truth.

And, as I told my teenage son a few years back, yes,
French kissing may be wonderful, but love is even
better. But that's another story ...

It would be difficult to quantify the safety aspect of childhood in today's world as compared to past generations.

We are certainly more aware of the dangers but whether they are greater today than before we may never know for sure or by how much. Child abuse statistics only tell us what is reported but not how many incidents go unreported.

I think the media is partly to blame along with other socio-economic factors. There is rarely just one contributing factor. Humans are easily de-sensitized to violence and other influences if they are saturated with it from a young age (eg.child soldiers in Africa). A developing mind is much more succeptible to media influences in shaping what is the 'norm'.

Clive Hamilton has written about the sexualisation of children through the media and I agree with his basic premise having raised girls in this current generation. It is difficult for parents, but not impossible, to compete with sexy music videos and the fashion industry where making money has greater emphasis than the wellbeing of children.

History shows we tend to go through cycles of excess one way or the other and I would suggest neither extreme are positive on our collective psyche. Neither the rigid and strict Victorian era nor the excesses of the Roman Caesars to use two extreme examples.

I would love to see more children scrambling up trees, making go-karts and the like but we also live in a more populated world and there was less likelihood of us being hit by a car in the 60s and 70s. There are more of them and they are faster. I guess parents have to rationalise and compromise within reason the safety considerations while allowing children freedom to play and experiment without fear.

I agree with most of Pelican's comments , particularly those which refer to the increase in car usage as being a factor . In earlier decades , there were indeed " dirty old men " about whom one was warned , though one did not know exactly what danger they posed . Though such dirty old men committed sex crimes in earlier decades ,it was not as easy for them to do so , as pedestrians , as it is now that they are motorised . The presence of more pedestrians [ adults and children ] made public places safer . Parents , often not owning cars , would walk to places with their children , instead of dropping them off from cars .Now , many parents claim that their responsibility ceases at the car door and the police / schools / somebody else then assume that responsibility , as the parents are all so busy , working " 24 / 7 " .

There seems generally to be a social trend amongst people over different generations to look back on their childhood and say things like ‘Remember when we were kids, ah you could run around...not have to worry about anything...it was such an innocent time a better time’.
This kind of nostalgic reminiscence has seems is a common human experience, even people from vastly different generations can agree that things have ‘gone to the dogs’ and there are ‘sickos everywhere’.
One thing that I have observed in my lifetime, is what is perceived as change has been largely superficial changes. Changes in technology, fashion, transport and communication make it seems like society has changed but has it? A child might feel as free playing a computer game as they did building a treehouse (this might be worth considering for older readers)
Yes my childhood was free, as humans our childhood is a free time. Children today are as free if not even more free as they were in the 1950’s.
This debate has no positive recourse and is only meant to dwell on negativity.

Do we all have an internet BIO? I hope so

mine is called Life of Brian and here is the start of my entry for year 1951:

"A J Milne (was it?) that wrote the poem "Now we are six". Whatever, this was best year of my life. In Pukoon by Spike Milligan, he says that you only know the best day of your life in retrospect. I got up early back then, and ran barefooted to the corner of Lodge Street and Balgowlah Road at about 6AM, climbed the tree at the end of the street and thought "it don't get any better than this" It never really did, nor will it!"

Need I say any more 'bout "them good old days" [but I probably will]

Dear bluealien,

"Whatever makes the past, the distant or
the future, predominate over the present,
advances us in the dignity of thinking beings."
(Dr. Johnson).

We can always learn
things from the past. It provides insights
into human nature.

For example, the value of historical novels for
children lies in the way they illuminate the
present through the past.

I remember the effect that reading Ruth Park's
novel, "Playing Beatie Bow," had on me.
Where the detail created gave me an effective
picture of the past. I really felt as if I was
a time traveller.

However, remembering the past doesn't necessarily
negate what we have today. Each era is different.
With its own set of minuses and pluses.

The past gives us the present, and what we do
with our future is up to us.

Times may change, but our inner needs and
aspirations - do they change?

I've been searching for a few years trying to locate some missing neighbours and I've just found them. A lovely girl in the family was 13 when the family left my area. I've just found them again and imagine my heartache when I found out that she had a baby at the age of 16, even though she told me when she was young she was never going to make that mistake. (She had no father, and her mother had several children, possibly all to different men). Please love our kids from underprivilaged backgrounds. Don't judge them because of the family they were born into. They've had enough of being told they are society's trash and they start to believe it themselves. I'm still trying to make contact with the girl I've mentioned, although I've managed to make contact with one of her sisters (who appears to be estranged from her family - and she's only 15). I've sent Emails of encouragement to the sister. This young girl with the baby is now 17, and as far as I'm concerned she's still as precious as a little princess.

Gibo, on this issue will you put aside our differences. Will you please pray for these kids? They are in real strife and need help. God's answered my prayers of three years trying to find these kids. That's why I've not been very active here over the last week.

Interesting topic. Certainly, my childhood in the northern beaches of Sydney was far 'freer' than the current experience of my younger kids living in Brisbane's leafy inner western suburbs. I actually had a conversation with them about this fact quite recently.

When I was a kid, when we weren't at school we roamed the neighbourhood, beaches and bushland pretty much at will - Mum would only worry if we weren't home by dinner time. Yes, there was the odd 'dirty old man' lurking in the sandhills behind the beach or offering us lifts, but I recall being well-schooled by my parents in the 60s equivalent of 'stranger danger'.

This is to be compared with the experience of my 12-year old daughter, whose 'helicopter' mother won't even let her walk the 1 km to and from school, and insists she wait in after school care to be picked up. She loves coming to stay with me, partly because I allow her to exercise independence and to take limited responsibility for herself.

While it's difficult to find any hard data, I tend to think that that children are at least as "safe" today as they were when I was a kid, but what seems to have changed is that people are more aware of crimes against them, and are more willing to talk about them. This is, of course, a good thing - but the flipside is that this can feed into the kind of hysterical 'moral panic' that we now have about 'paedophiles' etc.