Looks interesting...

I tend to agree with the premise here. As a kid we had teeter totters, the metal push merry go rounds and other "hazardous" play ground structures as well as plain old free time to run off and create kid style mayhem. Those days are gone and I think kids are worse off due to the loss.

Now free online, No Fear: Growing up in a risk averse society.

"No Fear argues that childhood is being undermined by the growth of risk aversion and its intrusion into every aspect of children’s lives. This restricts children’s play, limits their freedom of movement, corrodes their relationships with adults and constrains their exploration of physical, social and virtual worlds."The wife and I were speculating on what it must be like for kids today as opposed to how it was for our son. A great many of the drawings he made, either at school or brought from home, showed weapons, mainly guns, mostly ours. Nobody ever even said "boo" about any of them, twenty years ago.Hell, forty years ago, we kids would get together to go shooting by walking from town out to the nearby hills. Openly carrying our rifles, no one ever said anything, although once a cop asked what we were up to. Just asked, he didn't even bother to check our guns.Shooting everything from .22's to the occasional .38, no one cared. Today they'd probably sent a SWAT team after us.Sometimes I'd ride my bike to the range on the other side of town. Savage .22 bolt action rifle slung over my shoulder, nobody paid any attention to me. I bought that rifle, by myself, at the local sporting goods store. Often when I went to rent a big rifle, the range master would just hand it to me and wink.Later, in High School, I didn't join the rifle club because it was so unremarkable and boring. Pulled over driving out to an open range in my fathers Corvette one day, the officers asked if they could search the car and I let them. Not finding anything evil (like beer) and letting me go on my way, one of the officers complimented my dad's 1914 Enfield, which he also hadn't touched [Pop bought that rifle when he was still on active duty in the Navy (as war surplus) in 1945, for $10.00!].It's really amazing how much this country has changed, in my own experience and not for the better, in a remarkably short period of time.
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From Ride fast and shoot straight