No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk-Averse Society

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 18 No. 1 (2008) ISSN: 1546-2250 Growing up in a risk averse society Gill, Tim (2007). London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation; 94 pages. ISBN 9781903080085. If you want to do something nice for a child, give them an environment where they can touch things as much as they want. —Buckminster Fuller Anyone interested in childhood and how it is currently being undermined by increasing adult intervention and control will find No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society a timely and provocative call to action. Tim Gill, one of Britain’s foremost experts on play, provides unique insights into the changing lives of young children and haunting predictions of the consequences. Focusing on society’s ubiquitous view of the world as increasingly dangerous, he cautions that overly protective adults may actually be denying the experiential learning opportunities children need to grow and develop into confident, resilient adults. The book is compelling. I read it in one sitting and continue to reflect on and share its contents. Of particular note is Gill’s emphasis on redirecting societal energies from regulating existing environments to developing child-friendly communities where children are free to explore and learn. The primary take-home message is the urgency for parents, teachers, and child advocates to develop a more balanced understanding of what childhood is all about. It is not a plea for the total deregulation of childhood, but a call for a thoughtful examination of the types of experiences needed for children to grow and develop. He warns that the current “culture of fear”’ and “safety first” mentality may actually be producing a 516 sanitized world in which children’s creativity and personal growth are stifled. Gill’s focus is on children from the beginning of formal education to the onset of adolescence. This age has been referred to as “the years we ignore,” often marginalized by theoreticians, clinicians, researchers, and parents who are enjoying the calm before the storm of adolescence and are less interested in listening to children than in having children listen to them. However, Gill reframes these years as pivotal periods in social and personal development. He emphasizes the need for children this age to encounter risk on their own terms and to negotiate risky activity among their peers. He uses a discussion of playgrounds to argue his case. He claims increasing adult restrictions and supervision are decreasing the amount and types of unsupervised activities available with which to accomplish the developmental tasks of childhood. The book introduces the concept of shrinking horizons of childhood. While many adults would agree that children today seem to be growing up too fast, Gill explains this impression is primarily due to the blurring of the boundaries between children and adults in terms of dress, activities, and behaviors. However, while children appear to be more adult-like, their everyday experience of autonomy, their freedom to negotiate and to act on their own, is shrinking due to growing adult control and supervision. The importance of this is that children now enter adolescence with less confidence in managing and negotiating social relationships that involve teenage pressures to engage in risk activity. The quandary for parents, teachers, and child advocates is in determining how to strike a balance between accepting minor hurts and emotional setbacks on one hand, while identifying real hazards and preventing serious injury and psychological distress on the other. Increasingly, adult risk-averse attitudes prevail, fueled by a culture of fear, despite the fact that children are statistically safer than at any point in human history. The book contends that adult intervention should not be only about protecting children, but also about teaching children the skills they need to protect themselves. Gill proposes that children gain short and long-term benefits from 517 experiencing activities with a degree of risk, whether or not they succeed at them. However, these benefits are not as easily measured as the more easily quantified consequences of risk. The geographic context for Gill’s narrative is the United Kingdom, where risk aversion may be greater than in other European Union countries. At the same time, the level of risk aversion in the UK may be...