Dumitru Posted February 12, 2013 Posted February 12, 2013 This is to follow up on a recent recurring podcast theme. I think that's a simple question that doesn't have a simple answer. My version of the simplest possible answer is this: Good childhoods are getting phenomenally better, bad childhoods are overall not getting significantly worse. Perhaps a greater percentage of childhoods are not great, but the extreme to the downside is clearly not as bad. Good childhoods are getting phenomenally better: Just look at the childhoods Izzy, my boys and all the other listeners' kids are getting. There was simply no such thing even 10-15 years ago. The improvement in parent-child relationships, the improvement in the kids' access to information, their ability to interact with other kids via the internet is unparallelled. If they have abusive parents, they are much more likely to be able to get help or at least get a sympathetic ear from someone, even if via text chat. Many, many fewer kids will suffer in isolation today as compared to 10 years ago. Education wise, my 3.5 year old has all the acces he wants to the internet via a simple ipad. Right now he's mainly interested in Tom and Jerry cartoons, but that will change. Youtube practically taught him to count in romanian and english. He knows the alphabet, and he's known it for a while now, almost all by himself. I could go on, but let's look at the dark side too. There is no more foot-binding in China. There are no more hundreds of thousands of abandoned newborns being thrown in state orphanages in Romania. There are no more babies being swaddled and covered with lice in Germany. When a serious child abuse case is discovered, the whole planet knows about it via the internet. I haven't heard of any major civil war and genocide in Africa. I'm sure a lot more poor kids in China and India are having better childhoods just because more people there manage to get into the middle class. I agree, in the US a lot more kids end up in poverty, but when the next Hitler shows up, his crazy isn't going to resonate with as many people. It's very difficult to answer this question with any kind of precision, these are just my 2 cents.
Jose Perez Posted February 14, 2013 Posted February 14, 2013 Very good analysis! I agree with you a lot. I often think that things might be naturally getting better, and that the simple spread of information and communication will force humanity to look for the solution to its problems precisely where it hasn't been looking before (other times I think things will continue the same regardless of these external factors). In this sense childhoods are getting all better: children's brains are getting more exposure to a wide variety of stuff and constrasts, which nurtures the true self and stimulates values skepticism. The rational progress of humanity, even though not linear, probably does stick in an irreversible way and naturally improves society, the family...
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