The playground across the street used to sit empty evenings and weekends (except for underage hookers at in the late eve), now it's active but it's all E. Indian immigrant kids.
Culture might be playing a role too.
At least there are kids are playing in the playground. That is what is was designed for after all. The kids will play if we just
let them, lol.
I think you might be on to something there. Many parents do too much for their kids, but in the wrong way, they throw money at them so they can appease the pressures placed by the corporate sector so they can sell more junk. I remember as a kid my dad building sleds and wagons etc. for us, but he never gave us more than a quarter. Of course all the stuff he built was from odds and ends of junk or from a chunk of cedar he brought in out of the bush. The problem today is we'll never get back to that sort of thing.
The parents of today are not the offspring of depression era children so a lot of these parents have not learned how to 'make do'. Everything has always been "right there" when you need it. Where there is no need, there is no creativity. Don't they say that necessity is the mother of invention? So if there's no necessity, why bother having to be creative?
But the impulse to make something/give something to your kids was the same.
Me and the wee platoon could play outside for hours with a friggin' stick. A sh!tty banana bike wannabe with Gump Worsley clothes-pinned to the spokes, goddamn bat and a tennis ball.
I don't even think the word 'device' was in the dictionary back then.
We had to play outside even if it was raining. My mother used to say "You're not made of sugar, you won't melt". Kept the house cleaner, for sure.
