Different+childhoods

What is the main difference between today’s childhood and yesterday’s childhood? According to a recent survey, most of the people enquired think that today children are overprotected, watch too much TV and don’t spend as much time as they used to do outside. Family structures have changed a lot over the last 30 years. During the 60’s or 70’s, families used to be much larger than today. It was not unusual to see families of seven members or more. It was consider a normal thing to have 4 or more children. Today is extremely rare to hear of a family with more than 5 members counting parents and children, although we know a lot of families with only one child. As a result, we tend to overprotect our one or two children more than if we had 5 of them, whereas, on the other hand, we really pay less attention to them and their essentials, because both mother and father usually work outside the home. Then, here we have what we can consider the main difference between our childhood and our children’s childhood: TV and new technologies. TV has become an essential item for most of us - our children can’t live without it mostly because we don’t want to live without it. The mere thought of a home without TV scares us. Moreover, TV has become a second teacher to many children as they spend a lot of time watching it as well as playing with their Nintendos or Video games, chatting on the internet and so on. We didn’t have those entertainments when we were children, so that’s why we can consider them the real novelty for today’s children. However, what about the lives of children growing up in small villages in the countryside? Are their lifestyles similar to those of children living in the big city? According to the survey, children of the countryside spend much more time playing outside than the ones living in the city. Their parents are less worried about their security because they feel the environment is safer for them, so children can feel free. In the countryside children can still run after the hens, pick up the eggs, sow their own seeds, smell, touch and probably eat the ground; their life is more tangible and real than those cyber-lives of children living in a big city. To sum up, we can say that childhood is different for the different generations, but it also makes a difference where you have decided to bring up your children.
 * (Mar Martínez, A1) **