{"id":22985,"date":"2011-04-15T09:22:14","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T13:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp\/?p=22985"},"modified":"2011-04-15T09:22:14","modified_gmt":"2011-04-15T13:22:14","slug":"childhood-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/2011\/04\/childhood-lost\/","title":{"rendered":"Childhood Lost"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\" class=\"first\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-22984\" title=\"brita and laura 058\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/brita-and-laura-058-885x1024.jpg\" alt=\"brita and laura 058\" width=\"356\" height=\"412\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/brita-and-laura-058-885x1024.jpg 885w, https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/brita-and-laura-058-129x150.jpg 129w, https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/brita-and-laura-058-259x300.jpg 259w, https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/brita-and-laura-058.jpg 901w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 356px) 100vw, 356px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>MUCH OF <\/strong>the inspiration for this website comes from my own happy childhood.\u00a0Here is a photo of me from my days as a scheming, plundering, lawless barbarian.\u00a0Not long after\u00a0I became a mother 22 years ago, I made an unsettling discovery. Childhood is fast disappearing. It is not the same cultural institution it was when I was young.\u00a0For one, it is not conducive to the sort of reckless abandon, the freedom from constraints within the confines of unwavering structure, that I knew.\u00a0Travel along the streets near my home, and you will see. There are no children outside playing. I spent hours outside, a suburban anarchist plotting for the overthrow of boredom, reveling in the scent of boxwood and rotting crab apples, making little puddings and stews from mud and berries. I spent hours playing inside too, endless idle, exhilarating\u00a0hours as\u00a0a\u00a0strict mother forcing vegetables on her dolls or a debutante attending balls or Anne Frank in her bedroom. I even pretended to be a\u00a0cashier at a grocery store, such was the variety of interesting roles to play. Whatever I did, there were always other children to play with and to be annoyed by, with\u00a0mothers nearby to disobey or subvert.<\/p>\n<p>Childhood has changed for many reasons, and there are far more serious issues than the lack of time or opportunity for children to play in an unorganized and unregimented fashion. Some of\u00a0the change\u00a0has been\u00a0brought on, as Neil Postman argued, by the sheer force of the\u00a0technological\u00a0revolution. The written word\u00a0has lost its central position as the means of communication. And, with that, there is much less of a clear need <em>for<\/em> childhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Technology has changed our lives. But only a moral revolution can make\u00a0our world more welcoming\u00a0to children. Please <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp\/support-the-thinking-housewife\/\">give to this website\u00a0<\/a>so that I may continue to articulate the principles necessary to\u00a0recapture innocence and the institution of childhood. Childhood\u00a0has been destroyed by the enemies of all that is good. The goal is nothing short of more\u00a0scheming,\u00a0plundering, lawless barbarians. Let anarchy loose upon this sad and beautiful\u00a0world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 MUCH OF the inspiration for this website comes from my own happy childhood.\u00a0Here is a photo of me from my days as a scheming, plundering, lawless barbarian.\u00a0Not long after\u00a0I became a mother 22 years ago, I made an unsettling discovery. Childhood is fast disappearing. It is not the same cultural institution it was when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22985"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22994,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22985\/revisions\/22994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}