Growing concerns over safety mean most now wait almost two years longer than their parents did before experiencing life unsupervised.
A quarter of children aged 15 and under are not allowed to sleep over at a friend’s house, compared with just 4 per cent of their parents’ generation, the study says.
Treading carefully: Parents' growing concerns over safety mean they give their own children far less freedom than they had themselves when they were the same age, a survey has found
Six in ten are forbidden from using public transport without a parent present and 43 per cent are not allowed to visit their closest park alone.
Sixty-five per cent of the 6,100 adults interviewed – 1,464 of whom were parents of children under the age of 18 – viewed the world as a more dangerous place these days.
Just over half (54 per cent) said ‘stranger danger’ was their greatest worry, followed by bullying (74 per cent), mugging (47 per cent) and road danger (34 per cent).
As a result, a generation of children is now staying indoors for longer periods of time and is restricted to going out only with a parent present.
On average, children today can look forward to walking to school on their own by the age of 11, use public transport on their own at 12, and babysit their brother or sister by the time they are 14.
In contrast, parents say they were allowed to walk to school unaccompanied at the age of nine, use public transport alone by the time they were 11, and babysit a sibling by 12.
Of those adults who took part in the online survey, only 4 per cent said they were banned from sleep- overs at friends’ homes when they were 15 or younger.
Only 2 per cent were forbidden from using public transport and the same number forbidden from going alone to the local park or into the town where they lived.
A third of the adults who completed the survey said they were uneasy about limiting their children’s liberties but felt anxious about the dangers beyond the home.
Yet, according to hospital statistics, nearly a million children are treated every year after accidents in the home that could have been prevented.
The research was carried out on behalf of LV= Streetwise, a charity that educates children about safety.
- Childhood is being suffocated by a ‘just in case’ mentality that has saddled schools with a barrage of health and safety regulations, a leading headmaster will say today.
The Government has ‘lost touch with reality’, imposing 139 regulations on independent schools but with only 24 relating to education, according to Richard Cairns, head of Brighton College.
The rest cover health and safety, registering appointments, complaints procedures and checks on teachers, support staff and governors.
It might be only a matter of time before mattresses had to be laid out under trees in school grounds ‘just in case’ children fall, he is due to tell a conference organised by the Independent Schools Council.
He adds: ‘Every pound we spend on compliance is a pound we don’t spend on teaching and learning.’( dailymail.co.uk )
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