940 News’s Ken Connors talked this morning about the good ol’ days, when children ate lead-encrusted dirt, played with fire, sniffed spraycan propellant and shot each other with BB guns. And somehow they’re still around to whine about all the safety measures society has put in place for children.
Well, there’s a few things wrong with that argument. First of all, we can’t talk to all the people that died from those things since they’re, well, dead. Just because all the people we find now survived those days doesn’t mean the survival rate was 100%.
Secondly, life expectancy at birth has increased by about a decade over the past 50 years. Part of that is due to new medicine and treatments, but increased safety can’t be discounted as a part of it as well.
Finally, if you want to go back to the good ol’ days with none of society’s current overprotections, you’re welcome to emigrate to a developing country and eat their lead-encrusted dirt.
That said, some points are worth considering. It’s becoming common knowledge that the increase in allergies today is due in part to the sterile lifestyle of some children who aren’t exposed to small amounts of toxins at an early age. And the drop in outdoor play activities (has this really occurred among children?) is making us fatter and lazier.
I think we can find some middle ground between sterility and Darwinism.
My eldest son ate tons of dust bunnies and dirt when he was small (he loved it, which says something about my culinary skills I guess) and he is NEVER sick. Good old times or not, there is something to be said for not being so damn clean all the time. So what if the floor is a little crunchy ; )
Increases in life expectancy since 1950 are attributable to two things: (a) the polio vaccine, and (b) the development of a range of antibiotic therapies to treat bacterial, fungal, and other infections. Dirt doesn’t even come close.