Mountain Bike Leader Jobs
Do you think today’s parents have a more difficult job than in the past?
As a parent of an 8 year old son and a 6 year old daughter, I really believe that it more difficult to raise children today than it was 30 years ago.
Parent’s today are so much more involved in the upbringing of their children. I can recall spending long summer days where the only time I saw my mom was at breakfast and dinner. I would pack my own lunch and spend the entire day up in the mountains building a fort.
Now I find myself chauffering my kid from activity to activity and volunteering my time as a coach, team parent, and volunteering at school. When I was young, the most my mom or dad ever did was to drop me off for practice and they NEVER attended my games. No one’s parents did. In fact, now that I think about it, I actually rode my bike to most of my practices and games.
Stand up and be proud if you are a parent that is going above and beyond to raise the future leaders of tomorrow!
Yes, we as parents have a tough time now with safety issues that did not exist as prevalently as they do now. In some towns across the country, it is still safe to ride your bike to town, and in many cities it never was safe to do even when we were growing up. Some parents in past generations were involved in chauffering and going to kids’ events and spending real time with their kids, and some weren’t. It’s the same now. If you can afford the time to get out there for your kids, that’s great. If you never carpool with other parents, then maybe you should do this more – think of the environment. I think maybe fathers are doing more with their kids now than in past generations as more mothers have joined the work force than years ago. Does this mean parenting is tougher now? I’m not sure about that.
Consider this… While technology brings new challenges to our generation as parents (Internet, TV, cable, video games, computers) as we consider how our kids spend their time and their safety doing it, the lack of tecnology had other challenges for our parents’ generation. Think of a world without computers to send email to teachers and other parents, to sign up for soccer leagues or other activities, to research and share information with a wide audience on health, safety, and general parenting issues. My mom was part of “phone trees” to contact the softball team or the PTA or whatever. Also, think of how many quick snacks we have now, microwave ovens, and more take-out dining options (in my town we only had pizza, Chinese, or fast food chains when I was growing up – that was it – no Mexican, Thai, Japanese, or other good food). There’s some cool stuff that we can expose kids to on the Internet and so much research they can do easily instead of buying an expensive set of encyclopedias that gets out of date in 5 years.
While we have new dangers and challenges, we also have new conveniences. There’s give and take. Some things are harder now, and a lot of things are easier too. Every generation thinks they have it tough because they probably didn’t take the time to consider (or ask about) the previous generations’ challenges. We have it pretty good now, in my opinion. I wouldn’t want to live in my parents’ generation or the one before that either. I would have to give up too much. Let’s enjoy what we’ve got now and not complain about it. Get out there and do your best for your kid, for your family, for your community, and for your environment.
Just my two cents…
Ray’s Mountain Bike Park (Ohio)
