It’s something that parents have to teach their kids, just like anything else. If your kid is so spoiled that they whine and complain that they don’t have a cell phone, then something is wrong with the way that they were raised. Maybe you shouldn’t have taught them that cell phones and video games were more important than experiencing life.

“”"At least soccer moms are getting their kids involved in “real” activities as opposed to artificial ones.”"”

Running around, kicking a pleather ball on the pesticide-sprayed, chemically fertilized, mowed remains of what used to be a forest … doesn’t sound too “real” or healthy to me

I think Wilson is hinting in the right direction … but yuppie soccer moms are a very small piece of the problem … there are many more things that need to be done besides taking your kids to the beach with a pail … like maybe teaching them about how to grow a garden after talking about the pesticides in their food, or maybe telling them that their cell phone was made in a sweatshop overseas, or telling them about the torture camps and death squads that are funded by your tax dollars … not wrong, just not telling the whole story.

–J. Taylor

A “soccer mom” would mean the kid is of the age to at least join a soccer team, usually a bit older than your average bucket and shovel weilding toddler/preschooler. And who’s to say that the mom whose kid is on the soccer team is not also taking them to the sea shore, the mountains, or a non-labeled garden, in her mini-van? Maybe it’s the Non-soccer-moms who have kids that spend more time watching TV and playing video games that he should be criticising.

I think the overall point is good; get your kids outside, let them explore and learn. The soccer mom reference is inflammatory without being useful.

Overly protecting children is the best way to ensure that they don’t have a life and end up spoiled.

Yes I blame mom and dad. They are the ones to blame. I am a parent and if my kid does not get to have the experiences that Wilson describes then it is absolutely the my fault. Same to ever other parent. You are responsible for raising your kids and providing them with new experiences in which they can learn and grow. Your comment shows a closed mind and an unwillingness to accept responsibility as a parent for molding and shaping your children. I found your comment much more inflammatory then Wislons.

I could be wrong, but I get a sense that those who are so quick to defend EO Wilson have never actually raised children, and so they agree with him in more of a theoretical than practical sense. When you have kids of your own, lets see how easy it will be for you to ignore “stranger danger”. I’m not defending paranoia, but I also know that as a parent, my own kids were allowed to roam unattended (but I will admit their “free-range” wasn’t as far from our home as mine was when I was a kid).

I will also admit that, as a parent, I’ve let my kids get far too involved in television, video games and the Internet. But both of my kids were also very active in Scouts (my daughter earned her Silver as a Girl Scout, and my son is currently a Life Scout). Both learned an appreciation of the outdoors by camping in it and experiencing it first-hand, not via some “catalog” developed by a professor on the Internet.

If you want your kids to appreciate nature, its better to do it locally by camping in your back yard, or with the Scouts, than it is to sign an online pledge as part of some classroom exercise to save the Amazon rain-forest.

As I see it, part of the problem with kids today (and some learned professors) is that there is far too much “appreciation-at-a-safe-distance” (and usually on a global scale) when it comes to nature, and far too little actually going out and experiencing it on a local scale (like the neighborhood park or stream).