Cotton Wool Kids
"Has politically correct, overprotective parenting created a generation of "cotton wool," kids so removed from risk and adversity that they are left incapable of dealing with the social and physical demands of adult life?"
The number of socially and physically incapable children in New Zealand society is rapidly growing. The overprotective and politically correct parents of these children have been influenced by the media, through television coverage of the danger in their surrounding communities, and the parenting advice that the media feel they have the right to distribute. "Cotton Wool Kids," that the media have cleverly named these children as, is defined as an act "to protect someone completely from the dangers, difficulties etc of life," and has been argued over as to whether it is a positive or negative method parenting, which has led to publicised battles between different groups on opposing sides, who all think that they are right.
"Cotton-wool kids are having their development hampered." The amount of children who are being "protected" from all the dangers in today's society is growing very fast. Parents are constantly controlling every aspect of their child's lives. They are no longer allowing their child to travel to school alone anymore, because of the paranoia they are suffering from 40 years ago things were very different.
"In Britain in 1970, 80% of primary school-age children made the journey from home to school on their own. It was what you did. Today the figure is under 9%. Escorting your children is now the norm- often in the back of SUVs.
This is terrible. The "risk of abduction in Britain remains tiny, and half as many children killed every year in road accidents as there were in 1922- despite a more than 25-fold increase in traffic."
Those statistics match up nearly perfectly with New Zealand’s. There has been no increase in child abductions in New Zealand over the years which makes you question whether all of these precautions
The number of socially and physically incapable children in New Zealand society is rapidly growing. The overprotective and politically correct parents of these children have been influenced by the media, through television coverage of the danger in their surrounding communities, and the parenting advice that the media feel they have the right to distribute. "Cotton Wool Kids," that the media have cleverly named these children as, is defined as an act "to protect someone completely from the dangers, difficulties etc of life," and has been argued over as to whether it is a positive or negative method parenting, which has led to publicised battles between different groups on opposing sides, who all think that they are right.
"Cotton-wool kids are having their development hampered." The amount of children who are being "protected" from all the dangers in today's society is growing very fast. Parents are constantly controlling every aspect of their child's lives. They are no longer allowing their child to travel to school alone anymore, because of the paranoia they are suffering from 40 years ago things were very different.
"In Britain in 1970, 80% of primary school-age children made the journey from home to school on their own. It was what you did. Today the figure is under 9%. Escorting your children is now the norm- often in the back of SUVs.
This is terrible. The "risk of abduction in Britain remains tiny, and half as many children killed every year in road accidents as there were in 1922- despite a more than 25-fold increase in traffic."
Those statistics match up nearly perfectly with New Zealand’s. There has been no increase in child abductions in New Zealand over the years which makes you question whether all of these precautions