What year marked the end of the free-range child? Born in a different century in the countryside, I cycled to school along narrow, winding country roads from about the age of 10 on my own. (Sure, there was less traffic, but is there anything more terrifying than a farmer driving at speed in a two-tone Wolseley on a road that he knows well?)
Long before the age of 10, I spent hours evading work by the simple expedient of disappearing up the fields in the direction of the cliffs. I suspect that today even in the country, if an eight- or nine-year-old with a penchant for wandering along headlands went missing for two or three hours, search parties would ensue.
My farmer parents just silently indicated the work I thought I had dodged when I returned. I glumly completed it. It did not stop me from trying the same trick the following weekend.
It was pre-internet, pre-smartphones, pre-social media. There is not a single child in a primary or post-primary school who ever lived in those conditions and they would probably shudder in sympathetic horror at the prospect.
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There has been a great deal of discussion about the decline in mental health among young people. The decline in primary school age and adolescent mental health led in 2021 to prominent US paediatric and mental health organisations calling on the Biden administration to declare it a national emergency.
At one time, it was common for mothers (and it was mostly mothers) to throw their children out of the house and instruct them not to come back until dinnertime (or teatime, in the country)
The most common culprit is generally seen as social media, but a respected academic, Peter Gray of Boston College, disagrees. He says the evidence shows that mental health outcomes have been in steady decline for five or six decades and he lays a lot of the blame on one factor: “a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play, roam, and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults”.
At one time, it was common for mothers (and it was mostly mothers) to throw their children out of the house and instruct them not to come back until dinnertime (or teatime, in the country). Children spent long hours in the company of other children.
Eavan Boland has a beautiful poem called This Moment, which describes a summer dusk in a suburb, when “A woman leans down to catch a child/who has run into her arms/this moment”. Boland explained that it was written about when she lived in Dundrum in Dublin with her very young children. No one would have thought it odd that a young child would have been out until dusk, which is around half past nine in an Irish summertime. Boland’s daughter would have been with other children and the parents in the area would have been keeping half an eye. How long is it since you have seen children in either urban or rural areas playing together until late in the evening?
Independent play
Gray cites a book by Markella B Rutherford, Adult Supervision Required, which analyses parenting advice from popular magazines from the early 20th century into the 21st century. In 1966, it was believed that “a six- to eight-year-old can be expected to follow simple routes to school, be able to find a telephone or report to a policeman if he is lost, and to know he must call home if he is going to be late”.
Rutherford points out that children’s autonomy in relation to what they eat, wear and when they go to bed has risen while the expectation that they will do chores has fallen. Meanwhile, independent play – that is, play not mediated or overly supervised by adults – has declined enormously. For children, play is serious work, helping them fulfil three important psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
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Gray thinks parents have been bombarded with the dangers of allowing their children to roam and play but have heard very little about the impact of deprivation of this kind of freedom. Certainly, there is a great fear of child abduction and abuse. In reality, although each case is tragic, the majority of child abductions happen between estranged parents.
Gray and Haidt both say that the answer lies in lightly supervised play, parents banding together... to provide places where children can play with an adult nearby but not intervening except in cases of danger
Other academics, such as Jonathan Haidt, feel that Gray’s thesis about play and independent roaming is correct but that he underplays the impact of social media and young people constantly being buried in their phones.
Schools in Greystones and Waterford have introduced a voluntary charter – no smartphones or social media until secondary school. While this is an important move, it is only half the equation. What do children do if they are not on phones or other devices?
Gray and Haidt both say that the answer lies in lightly supervised play, parents banding together (or even better, grandparents, who tend to remember free-range parenting) to provide places where children can play with an adult nearby but not intervening except in cases of danger.
Everything conspires against the success of such initiatives – busy families with two working parents, the parental peer pressure to enrol children in multiple sports and other activities and the fearfulness that comes from parents doom-scrolling constantly on their phones. But, let’s just try it.