As a parent of an 8-year old, I don't think this is it at all. I think it's a couple things.

1. Cutbacks of "scheduled creativity" time at school. This is a HUGE one. In the 70's, my school had an art class, music class, plenty of PE. Now, that's hugely, hugely cut. If I want my kid to do art? music? sports? (she wants to, after all). After-school scheduled activity time!

2. 2 working parents. We're pretty free range, don't need to hover over playing kids, but we need to be within walking distance (at home down the street, or whatever). Juggling that "freely" as opposed to strictly-set activities? Much harder. Even if you get 1 afternoon free a week, there aren't other parents to trade off with.

3. Basically, chicken-and-egg. If my kid doesn't have anyone to play with because they're all off at activities, better to have them doing these activities with their peers than sitting at home bored and idle (not that some down/idle time isn't good, but there can be too much).

Can't think of ANYONE in my peer group who's worried about college for their kids yet. Maybe in a couple years.

I think the 2 working parents in combination with commutes and non-walking friendly neighborhoods killed it.

YMMV. I went to school in mid 70's and both parents were working when I was in HS and before. As others have posted, I was unsupervised. Could ride a bike to/from school for 20-30 min etc. Not sure what all changed but the things I read now suggest its way different than when I started. I hesitate to say people seem younger but they do seem nastier and more self-focused. We had stoners and grinds and everything in between. I seem to recall sex. And the drug stories are legendary. Maybe the parents are trying to prevent their kids doing the same?

Which, of course, does wonders for the forbidden fruit aspect of things. Oh, and we had computers too. Big, slow things but they were there and just as fun to play with. But their relative rarity forced us to be social to a degree.

I'll go back inside so you can play on my yard now :-).

As I mentioned, it was two working parents and the move to surburbia. (Well, I said non-walking-friendly neighborhoods, and didn't elaborate). This was what changed.

These suburbs, often designed after 1950s, were designed for car travel, rather than walking or biking. Many suburbs are designed with streets as fractals, often without sidewalks. It might be a "safe" subdivision, but there was a real risk in being run over by cars. Kids living in suburbia had to be driven everywhere for activities.

It's no coincidence that the kids growing up in that environment and coming into adulthood have increasingly moved to gentrified neighborhoods (the ones designed for walking). There has been a decline in buying cars. Whether that means allowing the kids to have free play remains to be seen. (But I suspect, things like the popularity of the books, The Dangerous Book for Boys, The Daring Book for Girls are indicative).

Also have an 8 yo and I can't think of anyone in my peer group that isn't thinking about their child's college. Of course mine attends a private school, so we may have different demographics. As one of the parents told me, who's managed to send his other two kids to elite schools: if you wait until high school (to start working on the admissions resume), it's too late.

We'll take our chances.

> Admission rates for colleges have been dropping across the board, for top tier schools even more sharply

I do not see how this could be happening in aggregate. College attendance is way up over the last few decades, even at the graduate level. Sure, top schools are more competitive, but that is only because their is more to filter out, and newer schools would seemingly pick up the slack. Many of the less than reputable for-profit schools have pretty much no admission requirements (except $$$). I personally think this new evolving system is still extremely problematic, but not because of admissions.

I wouldn't think that breaking an arm or two while in elementary school would have much of an effect at all on college admissions. I mean, if anything, it should give the kid some more life experiences to draw upon while writing their admissions essay, right?

No, but excelling in high-school extra-curricular activities does. And the perception is you don't excel at extra-curricular activities unless you start young.

In my neighborhood, kids started working with professional strength coaches in middle-school in an effort to make varsity football or basketball. Excessive instruction in music was common. 2-3 sports a season on top of volunteer work or part-time jobs.

It's all in an effort to get a leg up at college admissions time. And it's absolutely insane.

I don't think volunteer work and part-time jobs really factor into the equation with the age group that I am picturing, though with teenagers they are important of course (Particularly I think finding a shitty part-time job that lets you goof off with your peers, then get yelled at by a boss (who honestly doesn't really expect better) is relatively important)

Starting them off in a sport or two seems fine, that's how I grew up anyway, but at least in my case there wasn't an excessively strong drive to excel there. I certainly wasn't going for a sports scholarship, so keeping fit and just being able to write "Sports, k-12" on my college application was good enough. One or two kids had really driving parents and I think the rest of us always felt bad for those kids, but it wasn't the norm.