I grew up in Europe, where we didn't have child-proof medicine packaging or cleaning/chemical/... supplies, whose lids sometimes barely can be pried off, if someone has arthritis or is a bit clumsy. I never experienced all these weird contraptions until I moved to the USA and suddenly was faced with safety features that seem utterly ridiculous to anyone outside of America.
How did children in the rest of the world survive without these precautionary features added to everything that could possible pose a danger to a child of any age? So many times, I ended up cussing at an item I had bought but could not easily use because I had to adapt to the weird opening ritual that was supposed to keep youngsters safe. Yet I wondered how an elderly person could take their much needed medicine, if it required some considerable strength and coordination to get access?
What really caused all these features to be added?
Litigation is a favorite pastime in America, and it seems that frivolous lawsuits have long been a hobby to many.
So, in the end, is it more the fear of manufacturers going bankrupt over endless lawsuits by money greedy individuals who have learned how to play the system, or is this true concern for the safety of others? Having lived in the USA for many years now, I tend to think it is the first more than the second. Yes, we need to keep children safe - many adults too - but how about teaching everyone what to stay away from, taking responsibility as parents to prevent kids from playing with items they should not touch?
How about not letting anyone sue a company because they poured hot coffee in their lap, or because they ingested a harmful substance without anyone else participating or making them swallow the poison?
Here in America, we prefer to point the finger at someone else, even if no one else took part in our own mistakes. It seems that for many people almost everything needs to come with a warning label or special safety feature, yet those will find other ways to harm themselves, because heck, you can stumble over your own feet and knock a hole in your head on the way down. Will you sue the shoe manufacturer?
I sure have done stupid stuff in my life, but I am glad that I was raised to know that my mistakes are mine and no one else's, even if they involve a product that I purchased somewhere. There is a place for safety features and liability. If the braking system in my car fails due to a glitch in our highly advanced computerized vehicles and causes an accident - yes, that would be the time to contact the manufacturer. If I drive into a tree or hit a person because I was distracted for a second by my phone, my drink or anything else of my own choice...why would I blame anyone but myself?
I don't like to be controlled like a mindless serf, yet special protection comes with unsolicited control.
With the demands to have everything in our life overly protected by special features, so we can go about our day believing that kids (or some adults) won't be able to harm themselves, while we don't have to teach appropriate handling of items, we are only deceiving ourselves. While it might be harder to open a medication bottle for some, the same individuals will easily ingest one of the infamous bath bombs or sniff glue, if they set their eyes on a high or are 'adventurous'.
Little kids might not be able to get to the content of a weed killer, but they can burn their hands to a crisp if they touch the hot stove or open oven. There is no guarantee of safety if we don't explain and literally train our loved ones to be careful and understand the dangers that surround us. Sometimes, lessons are only learned with the pain from our own mistakes. Hopefully, the consequences are not severe and give us much needed insight from an early age on that we have to be careful and must heed the advise from others.
You brought up so many points that I would love to comment to but this would lengthen my reply too much.
It is time that we bring personal responsibility and accountability back. It has to be taught, acknowledged and exercised. Our society would be so much better off with that type of safety feature!
'Sometimes, lessons are only learned with the pain from our own mistakes'
So true! Kids brought up in an ultra safe environment will have no idea how to survive when exposed to the Real World later on. We're raising a generation of snowflakes.
Great observations; I agree with all of your comments. The first sentence of the final paragraph is what it’s all about: Personal responsibility and accountability.
As another commentor mentioned, it's all about the litigation. Warning labels do nothing except provide a CYA liability shield for the manufacturer.
A friend of mine purchased a rather large handgun, with a (paraphrased) warning stamped on the barrel: “Caution, improper use may cause injury”. Duh.
Another example: I lived in the Wyoming mountains, where it was not unusual for the roads to be covered with ice-like-you-put-in-your-drink for weeks on end. Residents coped by simply driving slower. One year a visitor from California, with overworn slick tires, spun out in a head-on collision with a box truck. Her family sued the state. Thereafter, the highway department added a lot more salt to the sand they were already putting on roads, leading to greater environmental damage as well as creating a new rust problem for car owners.
Years ago I saw a news story, where a father of a baby had tossed his child into the air in their living room; the child was severely injured by the ceiling fan (which the father had thrown his baby into), and the father sued the ceiling fan manufacturer, claiming the fan wasn’t ‘safe’. 🤯
I don't know where to nominate it, but "perma-coddle" gets my vote for neologism of the year. This word and concept has been straining to be born all these decades since about the 1960s - and now has a life of its own.
Jonathan Haidt and Peter Gray write extensively on how reduced opportunities for play, especially involving outdoors, with risks, and without adult supervision, has blighted the development of whole generations and driven mental health problems, including youth suicide:
"Lady Allen of Hurtwood a landscape architect from England became involved in child-centred causes during World War 2, and established the World Organisation for Early Childhood Education in 1948.
"Commenting on the safety of these playgrounds, she was heard to have said “Better a broken arm than a bruised spirit,” and urged New York parents to sue the city fathers “for emotional damage to their children because they failed to provide suitable and exciting playgrounds for them"."
Thanks for the comments - they're great!!
I grew up in Europe, where we didn't have child-proof medicine packaging or cleaning/chemical/... supplies, whose lids sometimes barely can be pried off, if someone has arthritis or is a bit clumsy. I never experienced all these weird contraptions until I moved to the USA and suddenly was faced with safety features that seem utterly ridiculous to anyone outside of America.
How did children in the rest of the world survive without these precautionary features added to everything that could possible pose a danger to a child of any age? So many times, I ended up cussing at an item I had bought but could not easily use because I had to adapt to the weird opening ritual that was supposed to keep youngsters safe. Yet I wondered how an elderly person could take their much needed medicine, if it required some considerable strength and coordination to get access?
What really caused all these features to be added?
Litigation is a favorite pastime in America, and it seems that frivolous lawsuits have long been a hobby to many.
So, in the end, is it more the fear of manufacturers going bankrupt over endless lawsuits by money greedy individuals who have learned how to play the system, or is this true concern for the safety of others? Having lived in the USA for many years now, I tend to think it is the first more than the second. Yes, we need to keep children safe - many adults too - but how about teaching everyone what to stay away from, taking responsibility as parents to prevent kids from playing with items they should not touch?
How about not letting anyone sue a company because they poured hot coffee in their lap, or because they ingested a harmful substance without anyone else participating or making them swallow the poison?
Here in America, we prefer to point the finger at someone else, even if no one else took part in our own mistakes. It seems that for many people almost everything needs to come with a warning label or special safety feature, yet those will find other ways to harm themselves, because heck, you can stumble over your own feet and knock a hole in your head on the way down. Will you sue the shoe manufacturer?
I sure have done stupid stuff in my life, but I am glad that I was raised to know that my mistakes are mine and no one else's, even if they involve a product that I purchased somewhere. There is a place for safety features and liability. If the braking system in my car fails due to a glitch in our highly advanced computerized vehicles and causes an accident - yes, that would be the time to contact the manufacturer. If I drive into a tree or hit a person because I was distracted for a second by my phone, my drink or anything else of my own choice...why would I blame anyone but myself?
I don't like to be controlled like a mindless serf, yet special protection comes with unsolicited control.
With the demands to have everything in our life overly protected by special features, so we can go about our day believing that kids (or some adults) won't be able to harm themselves, while we don't have to teach appropriate handling of items, we are only deceiving ourselves. While it might be harder to open a medication bottle for some, the same individuals will easily ingest one of the infamous bath bombs or sniff glue, if they set their eyes on a high or are 'adventurous'.
Little kids might not be able to get to the content of a weed killer, but they can burn their hands to a crisp if they touch the hot stove or open oven. There is no guarantee of safety if we don't explain and literally train our loved ones to be careful and understand the dangers that surround us. Sometimes, lessons are only learned with the pain from our own mistakes. Hopefully, the consequences are not severe and give us much needed insight from an early age on that we have to be careful and must heed the advise from others.
You brought up so many points that I would love to comment to but this would lengthen my reply too much.
It is time that we bring personal responsibility and accountability back. It has to be taught, acknowledged and exercised. Our society would be so much better off with that type of safety feature!
'Sometimes, lessons are only learned with the pain from our own mistakes'
So true! Kids brought up in an ultra safe environment will have no idea how to survive when exposed to the Real World later on. We're raising a generation of snowflakes.
Great observations; I agree with all of your comments. The first sentence of the final paragraph is what it’s all about: Personal responsibility and accountability.
As another commentor mentioned, it's all about the litigation. Warning labels do nothing except provide a CYA liability shield for the manufacturer.
A friend of mine purchased a rather large handgun, with a (paraphrased) warning stamped on the barrel: “Caution, improper use may cause injury”. Duh.
Another example: I lived in the Wyoming mountains, where it was not unusual for the roads to be covered with ice-like-you-put-in-your-drink for weeks on end. Residents coped by simply driving slower. One year a visitor from California, with overworn slick tires, spun out in a head-on collision with a box truck. Her family sued the state. Thereafter, the highway department added a lot more salt to the sand they were already putting on roads, leading to greater environmental damage as well as creating a new rust problem for car owners.
Years ago I saw a news story, where a father of a baby had tossed his child into the air in their living room; the child was severely injured by the ceiling fan (which the father had thrown his baby into), and the father sued the ceiling fan manufacturer, claiming the fan wasn’t ‘safe’. 🤯
I don't know where to nominate it, but "perma-coddle" gets my vote for neologism of the year. This word and concept has been straining to be born all these decades since about the 1960s - and now has a life of its own.
Jonathan Haidt and Peter Gray write extensively on how reduced opportunities for play, especially involving outdoors, with risks, and without adult supervision, has blighted the development of whole generations and driven mental health problems, including youth suicide:
https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/the-play-deficit
https://petergray.substack.com/p/d4-the-decline-in-kids-freedom-from
https://petergray.substack.com/p/d6-can-increased-use-of-digital-technology
Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Well-being: Summary of the Evidence Peter Gray, David F. Lancy and David F. Bjorklund, Journal of Pediatrics https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(23)00111-7/fulltext (Paywalled. PDF: https://www.petergray.org/_files/ugd/b4b4f9_f2cb98d004af4ebf9644c8daa30b040e.pdf .
In comments on https://petergray.substack.com/p/d4-the-decline-in-kids-freedom-from/comments I wrote some accounts of my childhood (born 1955) experience with monkey bars, fireworks, diving platforms. We used to ride our pushbikes all over the place when we were 7 years old - which would be a cause for alarm and a visit from child protection if attempted now. I link to sites concerning monkey bars and the like, including: http://www.architectureofearlychildhood.com/2012/01/post-war-adventure-or-junk-playgrounds.html .
"Lady Allen of Hurtwood a landscape architect from England became involved in child-centred causes during World War 2, and established the World Organisation for Early Childhood Education in 1948.
"Commenting on the safety of these playgrounds, she was heard to have said “Better a broken arm than a bruised spirit,” and urged New York parents to sue the city fathers “for emotional damage to their children because they failed to provide suitable and exciting playgrounds for them"."
You have perfectly posed what I call the Nanny State.