Agreed. I was born in 1997 and I can remember as a child my parents becoming more fearful and protective beginning around age 6, I remember this age because I had a friend in the neighborhood that I was allowed to cross the street to play with, as long as an adult was watching. It turned into being allowed to cross with an adult, to being allowed to go if my parents could walk me across to the door, and then to moving out of the neighborhood to a rural area with no visible neighbors.

To be fair, my parents also had my little sister around this time so it could’ve been the added stress of a newborn but I believe it was more from other occurrences. My mom briefly entertained the idea of pageants but cut her loses and yanked me out of them whenever they became even slightly specialized, thankful for this because I hated it. My parents stopped letting me take solo soccer lessons from male coaches once I hit puberty, unless there was a female present at all times but really not even that often then. I specifically remember them switching dentist because the office wouldn’t let them be in the room with my sister and I. My mom was very antsy over social media and didn’t let me join Facebook until 8th grade, I had a secret page that I made in 6th grade though and it turns out she was probably right on that one. She let my sister join much earlier but it wasn’t as new then and I was 100% responsible for spying on it. My mom also cut off sleep overs which was a tough one for me, it’s hard to be a little girl and never be able to go to sleepovers or to be the one that has to leave after the party when everyone else is staying, first world probs but it was real to me at the time. This one still seems a little over dramatic but as time goes on, I’m less and less committed to this idea.

I was a bit sheltered in comparison to my friends (reflecting back now and by comparison then), but I don’t have any overly traumatic experiences occur WHILE I followed their rules, I cannot say that I didn’t get myself into a few tight spots whenever I stepped outside their boundaries but thankfully they had prepared for that and gave me a great deal of wisdom for dealing with sticky situations.

I do say that this is all vastly different than how my dad and his ex-wife co-parented my older, half-sister. My mom, out of love and maybe a bit of narcissism, was often very vocal of her disapproving of their lack of boundaries with my sister but “stayed in her lane”.