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The observation
She walked up to psychologist Peter Gray after a talk he gave in Florida and described what she saw. Kids and dogs and everybody in Kenya are much freer, she told him. People there live in poverty and suffer from it, but they do not suffer psychologically the way people in the United States do.
Others from what are now called developing countries offered the same observation. They had come to America seeking a better life and found the children less happy than in the countries they left.
The question
Gray began to ask what adults were doing to make children so unhappy. That question led him into the history of the changes that cut children's chances to be free and do what children need to do, and what those changes do to who they become.
How did American childhood become so supervised?
In 1979, six-year-old Etan Patz disappeared on his way to a bus stop in New York City, and the case drew national attention. In 1984, photographs of missing children began appearing on milk cartons across the United States. Parents across the country started to think of the walk to school and the neighborhood park as risky places, even though most missing-child cases involve someone the child knows.
How do researchers compare children's wellbeing across countries?
In 2013, UNICEF's Report Card 11 ranked 29 wealthy countries on child wellbeing using indicators in five areas: material wellbeing, health, education, behavior and risks, and housing and environment. The Netherlands placed first overall. The report also included surveys in which children rated their own satisfaction with life.
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