Go Out and Play-- No Don't

Talking to a friend last night about how children do not "go out and play" anymore. He had an interesting insight into the issue of children's safety. His insight-- children are less likely to go out these days because their mothers are working-- makes much sense. What has changed since the 50s and 60s when I was growing up? Many more women are in the workforce. This has changed the physics of the household. So kids stay in school longer and are transported to various places like soccer practice or dance lessons. And, he added with a bit of irony, mom actually puts her kids in greater danger by looking at her cellphone while she drives the car than they would ever face in the playgrounds.

I'm not picking on moms but more interested in my friend's notion of our lack of context for studying an issue. I get distracted by media stories of kids being plucked away by predators and miss the real issues. But the bigger picture, the shift in the dynamics of the household, remained invisible to me. Why so invisible? Because of its very prevalence. The fish never sees the water. How has society changed most profoundly since my youth? Women have moved into the workforce in a big way. The dynamic changed over decades. Our society has hardly noticed the profound influence of the movement of women to the workplace. Hence the famous "soccer mom" demographic. And now they say there are more single mothers than ever before! So that's even less people in the household!

Marissa Meyer, the CEO of Yahoo, got much attention for reaching the upper echelons of the company. Interestingly her first big move was to stop allowing people to do their work from home. I actually liked this decision. I always suspected the people "working from home" were usually the most assertive people in the office, the ones most capable of creating a cushy situation for themselves at the expense of their more passive colleagues. And Marissa Meyer had a baby-- and people complained that she would have a great team on nannies to help her with child care. But that is seeing the forest for the trees, because Marissa Meyer's child, like all the modern kids, will not have much time to just "go out and play."

And there's a new TV show on A&E, shot in my very own hometown of Austin, Texas called Modern Dads.



The dads are very telegenic, clever guys, seem like unemployed television comedy writers actually. Wait, now they're employed! But the dads-- veteran dad, step-dad, single dad, new dad, stud dad, fat dad... whatever, are all very funny and are house-husbands. So, society takes a look at the household shift in dynamics with these men taking the role of nurturer of the children while mom is out making a fabulous paycheck. But how prevalent is the house-husband phenomenon? Maybe it's a trend...  with women fitting more easily into the non-industrial American workplace better than the male of the species. We shall see...