Today I was talking with one of my coworkers about when I grew up. She is of my daughter's generation and doesn't remember a time when mothers didn't go outside of the home to work. I told her about growing up and having Daddy work and Mama stayed home, how I didn't know what store bought cookies were until I went to school, and how I thought we were poor because we didn't have everything that others had.
I know she couldn't imagine a life without cable tv or cell phones. It was so funny because I know that my children have been raised very similarly to the way I was. For years we didn't have cable television in our household... either as a child or as an adult raising my own children. There is a difference however. In my childhood home we got ABC and that was all. In my adult home we could usually pull in PBS but my children had plenty of videos they were able to watch to help keep entertained.
When I was growing up we went outside to play a good deal and used our imaginations or sat under a tree and read a book. I remember playing "Little House on the Prairie" with the neighbors and the log cabin play house we had in our back yard. We used to take sand and rocks and acorns and mix them up to make "cake". We would play jumprope and one of us would turn the rope that was tied at one end to the telephone pole while the others would jump. We would gather all the kids in the neighborhood and play redlight greenlight and mother may I or Simon Says. We all got along fairly well despite the age differences we had.
As my children have grown, they didn't spend a lot of time outside. There were times when it wasn't safe for them to play. We struggled to make ends meet and didn't always live in the best of neighborhoods. Of course by the time we did live in a better area where they could be outside, it was almost always too dark for them to be out once we were at home. My husband and I both had to work to make ends meet and the children went to afterschool care where they got their homework finished and waited for one of us to come get them. Now these same children are teens and they have many things that keep them busy... very little of it involves being outside. However one of the other things that I have instilled in my children is a love of books. My son doesn't read as much as my daughter does but both will read every book of a series if it is an author that catches their attention.
I look at life as it is now and wonder if my children have lost out on anything by not playing the childhood games with neighbor children. I don't think that they have but I think times were simpler when I was growing up than they are now. I have to wonder if life wouldnt be better if we could return to that simpler time and place.
