[HN Gopher] Where do the children play?
___________________________________________________________________
Where do the children play?
Author : casca
Score : 287 points
Date : 2025-11-16 13:45 UTC (1 days ago)
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| tartoran wrote:
| If children were to spend time in digital spaces they should be
| disconnected from adults (especially the adults who try to prime,
| turning them into next generation of consumers).
|
| I think offline spaces should be just fine.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think this heavily depends on location. At 7 my child can check
| nearly all the boxes for independent activities. My wife may not
| like it, but the surroundings are probably safer than anywhere
| else in the world. The only thing we don't have is forests.
|
| This is central Tokyo.
|
| Kids still spend a lot of time on Roblox because everyone tends
| to be deathly afraid of letting them ring each other's doorbells.
| rvrs wrote:
| I also live in Suginami! There's always a lot of kids running
| around together, especially after school, but that feels quite
| normal for anywhere in Japan, no?
| Aeolun wrote:
| I can't speak to the rest of Japan, but in Tokyo, yes.
|
| Suginami in particular seems to be very kid focused in terms
| of infrastructure development efforts. 6 years ago the was a
| wild sprouting of daycare facilities everywhere around, and
| these days new parks pop up everywhere. They were going to
| close the nearby jidoukan, and the new major seems to have
| reversed all of that. Japan is absolutely making an effort to
| reverse population decline xD
| djtango wrote:
| Seeing tiny tiny kids walking around is one of my favourite
| qualities of Japanese life, and on the flipside I sensed a
| quiet but shared responsibility/interest everyone took in
| making sure no harm befell the child on their journey. One the
| purest luxuries of living in such a high trust society
| mlrtime wrote:
| It's great, you just need to be Japanese.
| elgenie wrote:
| That feeling of shared societal responsibility probably has
| at least something to do with the birth rate. Japan is down
| to just 686K babies born per year from a population of 123
| million.
| mothballed wrote:
| This is why so many libraries, etc in US ban kids without
| parents. No one wants the slightest annoyance of even the
| possibility they could hypothetically be bothered to assist
| a child.
| rcpt wrote:
| In Los Angeles we let our 8 year old walk half a mile to school
| and someone called the cops on us.
| pmg101 wrote:
| What did the cops say?
| rcpt wrote:
| They followed them to school and told the teachers that
| someone called the police for escort.
|
| There's nothing illegal about this and nobody got in
| trouble but it still sucks.
| mothballed wrote:
| My kid was interrogated for walking about 50 ft 'alone' ( I
| was actually watching further away and intervened before the
| Karen got to the point of calling it in) _on our own
| property_.
|
| In the middle of nowhere, rural desert. Random Karen drove by
| at the wrong place and time, saw my kid, stops and
| questioned. Unbelievable. Literally the second you give a
| child independence a Karen will appear like clockwork, it's
| insane.
| seqizz wrote:
| Reading the US 8-12 year olds' stats made me flinch, because as
| someone grow up in the middle east this is inconceivable. I guess
| I'll dive into rabbit hole about modern-day stats of Europe and
| other places to compare.
| lnsru wrote:
| Same phone addiction in Europe as elsewhere. No way to fight
| addictive stuff. Most parents don't even try or care. Add
| tragic demographics and 8-12 year olds are all alone with their
| phones.
|
| Let's talk about special school system here in Bavaria
| (Germany). Kids from specific area go to same school for the
| first 4 grades. Afterwards they are divided between little
| geniuses going into ,,Gymnsasium", average ones going to
| ,,Realschule" and good-for-nothings going to ,,Mittelschule".
| For the first years kids move between schools and later between
| classes according their preferred specialization. No way to
| make friendships when kids come and go. Obviously there is
| nobody to play with left. Only reliable phone and games there.
| And nice videos there. Education system actively pushes kids
| into phones since real connections can't happen.
|
| I see lots of negativity here. Folks, do you really believe,
| that throwing a child into new environment every other year is
| the way to craft friendships in the real world?
| cachius wrote:
| The founders of the Miniaturwunderland Hamburg were in the
| media describing how they push back against smartphones and
| media in their family life:
| https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/ndr-talk-show/miniatur-
| wun...
|
| Strange coincidence: shortly after they were hacked
| https://www.borncity.com/blog/2025/11/12/miniatur-
| wunderland...
| lnsru wrote:
| Every morning I see dozens of kids sitting (this week in
| unpleasant cold) on pavement or standing somewhere in the
| rain with their smartphones on the way to school. No phones
| in/around school building! It's a plague and doesn't look
| normal at all for me. I would expect some regulations from
| government regarding this insanity. There are phone-watches
| and dumb phones to reach kids if really needed. It must be
| profitable to someone to hook kids like that. Weirdest
| poses in rain, cold just to have quality time with their
| smartphones. I want scream when I see this every day. In
| most discussions with adults I end up as a luddite, because
| I don't support technology. In my times modern technology
| was messing with autoexec.bat and we learned something from
| that for later.
| em-bee wrote:
| agreed. the whole system is bonkers and screams of elitism.
| like you are either born smart or you'll never make it.
| fortunately there is also gesamtschule. which does away with
| that, there is no distinction between levels. only your
| grades have to be good enough by grade 10 to make it into the
| oberstufe (yrs 11-13).
|
| i barely made it through, and i would not have made it
| without that because neither my parents nor me had any
| ambitions, so switching schools would not have worked for me.
|
| when i was younger we moved around a lot. different problem
| but same result, i didn't make any friends in school because
| we kept witching schools. by the time we stayed in one
| location it was already to late.
| WA wrote:
| The other side of the coin is that you have ambitious kids
| in a class who are distracted and sometimes even bullied by
| kids with zero ambitions.
|
| You think that's more fair to the ambitious kids when 2/3
| of the class think it's cool to NOT learn anything and
| playing pecking order games all day?
| em-bee wrote:
| that's not the other side of the coin. that's the other
| end of the extreme. there are other solutions that can
| accommodate both needs. the problem with splitting up
| schools is that kids are not always ambitions and faster,
| nor always slower or lazy. that changes over time. a
| better system needs to have the flexibility to adjust for
| kids as they are developing and growing. switching
| schools back and forth is the worst way to achieve that.
| i'd rather find extracurriula activities that keep the
| kids interested than force them to switch schools. the
| problem is teacher training and an inflexible education
| system. the ability to switch schools does not make the
| system any more flexible.
|
| a better school lets you choose a more or less academic
| focus if that is what the kids want.
|
| the best system btw is montesori where kids really can
| learn at their own pace. it is designed in such a way
| that even within a class different kids work on different
| projects. they even mix ages so that younger ambitious
| kids can work with older ones.
| WA wrote:
| I agree on the needed flexibility part.
|
| > the best system btw is montesori
|
| I disagree on that. See a recent HN discussion on
| Montessori: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45674002
|
| tl;dr: it works for _some_ kids, just like the current
| German system works for _some_ (other) kids.
| em-bee wrote:
| you may notice that i took an active part in that
| discussion.
|
| tl;dr: montessori really does work for almost all kids,
| not just for some. the cases in the discussion where
| montessori didn't work don't provide any evidence that
| they actually received real montessori education as the
| name "montessori" is not protected.
| mlrtime wrote:
| >like you are either born smart or you'll never make it.
|
| That is a bit dramatic. This topic has been talked about
| over and over. There is no perfect system. Treat everyone
| the same and high potential kids suffer. Split them up by
| ability and you get "unfairness" criticisms.
| em-bee wrote:
| the unfairness criticism is nonsense. it's just politics.
| and it doesn't even apply here because the existence of
| different school types would be unfair as well. splitting
| kids up by ability is not unfair. forcing them in
| different schools however is. because switching schools
| takes a lot of effort and it gets harder the older you
| get simply because the curriculum diverges to much. so
| even if i am bored in a lower tier school, i could not
| catch up to a higher tier one. for most kids the moment
| the school tier is chosen after grade 4, the kid is stuck
| in that tier, no matter how able the kid turns out to be.
|
| merging school types is not about treating everyone the
| same, but it is about acknowledging that kids develop and
| you can't evaluate the ability of a child based on their
| performance at age 9.
|
| as i said, i would not have made it in a tiered system
| because i would have been stuck in the lowest tier. my
| parents were to busy to argue with each other to even
| care and my performance suffered because of them.
|
| those are circumstances a tiered system can't handle. a
| merged system that can deal with children at all levels
| however can, and that made the difference for me. that
| has nothing to do with treating all kids the same. on the
| contrary, it has everything to do with treating kids
| individually and not stuffing them in boxes like a tiered
| system does.
|
| as for a perfect system, montessori gets pretty close.
| three years of age are grouped together in one class.
| that alone require that the kids in that class are not
| all treated the same. it allows all kids to learn at
| their own pace, so younger, faster kids can easily catch
| up to older kids and work with them or be given extra
| activities without disturbing other kids in the same
| class learning something else
| Tade0 wrote:
| > Afterwards they are divided between little geniuses going
| into ,,Gymnsasium", average ones going to ,,Realschule" and
| good-for-nothings going to ,,Mittelschule".
|
| I would totally land in Realschule because I had an
| educational slump in fourth grade.
|
| Over here they tried a similar system - middle school
| spanning classes 7-9 inclusively, named "Gymnsasium" as well,
| but it included everyone[0] and I recall having a similar
| sentiment, thinking: "why shove people around like that? So
| that we don't form lasting friendships and thus make better
| worker drones?"
|
| Ironically I'm still in touch weekly with the three guys who
| were my only friends at the time, even though we live in
| different cities now.
|
| [0] The split between college material and the rest only
| happened around high school.
| WA wrote:
| Your scenario paints an overly negative picture. Neither do
| the majority of the kids move between schools every year, nor
| do they switch up classes within a school every year. They
| usually stay with the same class 2-3 years and only switch
| for individual courses for a couple of hours per week.
|
| You can criticize the way how kids are separated into
| different levels by 5th grade, but this has nothing to do
| with being able to find friends.
|
| Furthermore, your argument doesn't make much sense, because
| the school system is like this way before smartphones even
| existed and kids were able to find friends back then. It's
| not like the school system forces them into escapism. Just
| that smartphones are simply addictive.
| lnsru wrote:
| The scenario is shit. I know. I don't paint it pink. But it
| is as it is today somewhere between Munich and Alps. The
| today's challenge is the demographics. The kids are rare.
| Retirees live in the majority of houses around us. The few
| kids of the street were divided between 3 school types in 4
| different locations. They meet occasionally, but
| friendships were lost. There are simply no other kids
| around to go out together. Some parents are really
| desperate to organize (paid!!!!) play dates.
|
| I am not scientist of society dynamics, but I don't see any
| positive aspects of Bavarian school system. Producing lots
| of factory workers from "Real-" and "Mittelschule"? Last
| factories are disappearing. Early separation of kids and
| continuous shuffling bewteen classes brings no positive
| effects for kids. Can a 10 year old boy have any idea what
| he wants to do in 15 years?.. Can a 10 year old boy know
| his strengths and weaknesses? I really doubt it. Sometimes
| I think Bavarian school system was CIA psyop after WW2 to
| cripple German society development. No close friends, no
| bonds in the society.
| emil-lp wrote:
| > _Consider some statistics on the American childhood, drawn from
| children aged 8-12: 62% have not walked /biked somewhere (a
| store, park, school) without an adult_
|
| This is really not representative for other Western countries.
| Where I'm from, I would say that 75% of 6 year olds walk/bike to
| school alone, and 100% of older kids do.
|
| > _In physical space, Western children are almost comically
| sheltered._
|
| I think the author should stick with "kids in the USA" when he
| means that.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Where are you from? I would say that seems accurate for
| Ireland, for instance.
| 317070 wrote:
| In Figure 13, there are some Western countries listed for how
| much children can roam, and Ireland is indeed near the
| bottom.
|
| But the Netherlands, Nordics and Germany are still very much
| on the other side of the spectrum in these studies.
|
| See for instance the books "The Happiest Kids in the World",
| "Achtung Baby" and "There is No Such Thing as Bad Weather"
| about raising children in the Netherlands, Berlin and Sweden
| respectively.
|
| Those places are very much not like the USA yet. Though as
| the article points out, they are definitely going in that
| direction.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Right, I'm raising my kids in the Netherlands, but sadly
| this sort of environment is increasingly the exception.
| unwind wrote:
| By the way the rest of the (actual) saying that is the
| title for the Swedish book is "Only Bad Clothes". In
| Swedish it rhymes [1] which of course increases its power.
| I know it from when I was a kid 40+ years ago, and I think
| both my kids would recognize it or at least get the
| meaning.
|
| That being said, obviously mobile phones etc are huge and
| (in my opinion) problematic among kids here, too.
|
| [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Svenska/comments/vj2630/no_su
| ch_thi...
| Vinnl wrote:
| > Those places are very much not like the USA yet. Though
| as the article points out, they are definitely going in
| that direction.
|
| In the Netherlands, some things are trending in that
| direction (e.g. car sizes/hood heights), but I wouldn't
| call it a general trend; infrastructure, for one, is still
| massively improving. Where it was bicycle-friendly twenty
| years ago, it's way more so today, and bound to be even
| more so tomorrow.
| CalRobert wrote:
| It's not a foregone conclusion though, in addition to
| higher and blunter hoods there's just more cars (over ten
| million now), and the EU may recognise US safety
| standards in trade negotiations. Not that the latter
| matters when you can import violating vehicles (like
| Dodge Rams) under individual vehicle approval.
|
| The Netherlands is in danger of resting on its laurels
| and getting complacent. Some places (Hilversum comes to
| mind) are still quite mediocre.
| Vinnl wrote:
| No, I indeed wouldn't say it's bound to end up in a good
| place - just that it's too pessimistic a view to think
| that it's generally trending in the wrong direction.
| We're seeing all the bad signs we're seeing elsewhere,
| but also many of the good ones, such as entire new car-
| free neighbourhoods being built.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I'm very excited to see how bloom merwede works out!
| Vinnl wrote:
| Yeah same, definitely going to visit when it's done.
| stevekemp wrote:
| I live in Finland, and here the kids mostly walk to/from
| their schools themselves and that starts around age 7.
|
| Sometimes the kids walk alone, sometimes they pickup friends
| en route, or they have to take a bus/tram.
| fainpul wrote:
| I think a lot of this simply depends on the distance between
| home and school (or other places kids need to go to) - so it's
| the difference between a compact city and sprawling suburbs.
|
| Where I live (central Europe), the density of public elementary
| schools in cities is high, so kids walk there alone. The
| density of secondary schools is lower, so most kids use
| bicycles or trams / buses.
|
| Interestingly, there are a few private elementary schools
| (usually english speaking) for children of expats, where cars
| queue up in the morning, while parents drop off their children.
| I've never seen this at public schools. I believe this is
| because there are only a handful of those schools, so they are
| further apart - and maybe also because the parents (growing up
| in the US or UK) are already conditioned that this is a normal
| thing to do.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Having grown up and gone to school exclusively in the USA I
| always thought it was crazy how many parents preferred to
| drive their kids to school instead of having them take the
| bus. By high school I would guess that less than half of kids
| actually got to school by bus despite them all being part of
| the bus pickup network.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Hundreds of 7 year old kids elementary are taking subway to
| go to school in my neighbourhood here in Tokyo. What you see
| is an American solution to an American problem.
|
| To be fair, I saw the same in Canada as well, so I understand
| USA isn't alone.
| gwd wrote:
| > Where I'm from, I would say that 75% of 6 year olds walk/bike
| to school alone, and 100% of older kids do.
|
| When I was growing up in the 80's in the US, I walked to school
| alone; but there was institutional support for that. There were
| adults paid to help kids cross major roads, and there were
| older children ("safetys") who wore an orange sash, trained and
| assigned to help younger kids walk to school.
|
| I don't see that same infrastructure here in England. I'd be
| happy to let my 5-year-old walk to a local school if it were
| present.
|
| EDIT: To be clear, I said "I don't see...", not "There are
| no...". It's possible I just haven't noticed, or that it's a
| quirk of my locality. And, my son doesn't go to a local school,
| so it's a bit moot; he can cycle to his school when he's older.
| etothepii wrote:
| In England you don't have lollipop ladies/men?
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| There are still lollipop ladies/men (crossing guards, if you
| will), here and there, but UK roads are nowhere near as
| dangerous as US roads: smaller cars, lower speeds, most of
| the roads between you and the school will be 20mph or 30mph
| limits, and so on.
|
| I'd say even then, five is a little low by UK standards. I
| think I started walking solo to school when I was about 7 or
| so. By 11 I was walking a mile to a train station and
| catching the train 15 miles to another town (nearest Catholic
| secondary/high school). 5 years old is not far off 7 or 11,
| but it's a big chasm - be ready for it to go by in a flash!
| :)
| djtango wrote:
| We used to have lollipop ladies back when I was growing up...
| apexalpha wrote:
| >When I was growing up in the 80's in the US, I walked to
| school alone; but there was institutional support for that.
| There were adults paid to help kids cross major roads, and
| there were older children ("safetys") who wore an orange
| sash, trained and assigned to help younger kids walk to
| school.
|
| This still exists in the Netherlands:
| https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkeersbrigadier
| neutronicus wrote:
| 6-year-olds, huh?
|
| I'm in the US and my almost-6-year-old and I bike to school
| together. We're exceptional in this regard - I don't see anyone
| else doing this and other parents are constantly commenting
| (positively!). It helps that he and his newborn brother are six
| years apart. Other families of our SES generally pump them out
| 2 years apart and move the brood around in a wagon for ease of
| supervising the oldest, while we had the luxury of forcing him
| to walk places without worrying about any other children's
| schedules.
|
| I'm almost more worried about him managing his possessions at
| the endpoint than the ride itself. Locking the bike up,
| actually bringing his backpack in, etc.
|
| Although I suppose I'm also a little worried about cars not
| seeing him at stop signs since (unlike me) he's below the hoods
| of a lot of cars.
| bawolff wrote:
| Weirdly enough, the thing this most reminded me of is
| https://phrack.org/issues/7/3
|
| If you look past the cringey, r/im14andthisisdeep edge, Its
| essentially saying the same thing. A desire for peer communities
| not available in the physical world.
| bilegeek wrote:
| Are there any studies on people who grew up with similar isolated
| childhoods in the 20th century (as in modern-day levels, even
| comparing with the late 20th declining average)? It would be
| interesting to see the similarities/differences between them and
| modern cohorts, and if surrounding culture made adult integration
| harder or easier (though I'm rather pessimistic on that). Any
| HNer willing to share a personal anecdote on this?
| kimovski wrote:
| Well, I think it's fine, building jumbo planes Or taking a ride
| on a cosmic train Switch on summer from a slot machine Yes, get
| what you want to if you want 'Cause you can get anything
|
| I know we've come a long way We're changing day to day But tell
| me, where do the children play?
|
| Well, you roll on roads over fresh green grass For your lorry
| loads pumping petrol gas And you make them long, and you make
| them tough But they just go on and on, and it seems that you
| can't get off
|
| Oh, I know we've come a long way We're changing day to day But
| tell me, where do the children play?
| CalRobert wrote:
| In the US cars jockey for space with guns to claim the title of
| leading cause of dead kids.
|
| But we often forget that cars kill kids at an astonishing rate
| -even though kids stopped playing outside-. In that light, the
| bloodbath that is American suburbia becomes much more clear. When
| pedestrian deaths go up even as miles walked (in aggregate) goes
| down, the situation is even more dire than it seems.
|
| My kids play outside. But we moved to the Netherlands so they
| could. And even here, large SUVs and even -bafflingly- giant
| American Dodge Rams are becoming distressingly common.
| AndrewDavis wrote:
| This is an aside. Yesterday I was in a shopping centre (ie a
| mall) and a bunch of kids ran through the food court, maybe 10
| of them all around the 9-12
|
| A grumpy lady shouted at them "kids you shouldnt be running!"
|
| I turned to whom I was eating with and our discussion could be
| summarised as "kids should be running. The problem isn't
| they're running, the problem isn't even directly where they're
| running. Where they're running is a symptom of them having no
| where else to run"
| Arainach wrote:
| Sorry, but no. You shouldn't be running in crowded areas like
| food courts (or indoor areas not specifically created for
| athletics), and playing smug semantic arguments like that
| doesn't help.
|
| The kids aren't running because they're unable to go outside.
| They're running because no one's been enforcing that they act
| within the standards of basic decency.
|
| Kids should be screaming and singing sometimes, but you
| wouldn't tell someone in the library not to hush them.
| bean469 wrote:
| > You shouldn't be running in crowded areas like food
| courts (or indoor areas not specifically created for
| athletics)
|
| I guess this is a cultural thing, i.e. what is expected of
| kids. Among my age-group in Eastern Europe (25-30 y/o), we
| joke around that our parents didn't let us stay in home,
| which has a lot of truth to it. Once we were out in the
| city, they didn't even have a idea where we went, and we
| didn't have mobile phones either. We used to run around
| everywhere without exception - malls, forests - you name
| it. That is still expected of kids nowadays, but the kids
| themselves are far more drawn to the digital world nowadays
| mlrtime wrote:
| And in Eastern Europe 25-30 years ago, other adults would
| have no problem yelling at you to behave in their own
| language/words.
|
| Very much different than today where people mostly mind
| their own business and judge in silence.
|
| I'm good with the former, it's inline with "It takes a
| village".
| bean469 wrote:
| > And in Eastern Europe 25-30 years ago, other adults
| would have no problem yelling at you to behave in their
| own language/words.
|
| Nobody yelled at us then or even thought that we were
| doing something wrong. If you would yell at a kid in a
| shopping mall for running around like crazy - people
| would look at your weirdly. It was expected of kids to
| behave this way in my culture, and still is to this day.
| This may not be the case elsewhere, hence why I think
| that there is a heavy cultural aspect.
| mlrtime wrote:
| You're right it is cultural, I was thinking more Slavic
| where bad behavior from other kids isn't tolerated by
| adults and they have no fear expressing it.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >and playing smug semantic arguments like that doesn't
| help.
|
| How is it semantic? They go outside and now they are
| running in a giant parking lot. They go a bit further and
| now you're a bad parent for not keeping an eye on your kid.
| Tell them to sit down and play on a tablet and you're also
| a bad parent.
|
| There's no winning here.
|
| >you wouldn't tell someone in the library not to hush them.
|
| I don't consider a mall the equivalent of a libary in this
| situation.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| If you let your kids run around in giant parking lots I
| would argue you are a bad parent. That seems like asking
| for an accident.
|
| > Tell them to sit down and play on a tablet and you're
| also a bad parent.
|
| Yes. If this is the alternative to playing in parking
| lots that comes to your mind first, I really wonder what
| kind of experiences you had.
|
| > There's no winning here.
|
| Ever heard of parks?
| rglullis wrote:
| I'm guessing you are talking with someone who is used to
| life in the North American suburbs, where kids need to be
| driven around and most of the options for activities are
| indoors.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Sadly, yes. The nearest park is 5 miles from me or the
| mall. The buses run on the hour and will get you within 2
| miles of the park. They stop running around 7pm.
|
| I wonder why more kids aren't at the park.
| CalRobert wrote:
| How do they get to the park?
| bean469 wrote:
| > If you let your kids run around in giant parking lots I
| would argue you are a bad parent.
|
| > Ever heard of parks?
|
| I remember being bored as hell when my parents used to
| take me to the city park. Many other kids thought the
| same, too. I couldn't wait to run around with my friends
| wherever else in the city afterwards. I'm thankful for my
| "bad parents" for letting me roam around anywhere I
| wanted, as was the norm back then for kids where I grew
| up in Europe
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Ever heard of parks?
|
| Yeah, my city did a great down tearing down amenities for
| the kids and yelling at kids to stay off the grass. I
| love my city.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Why is everything so black and white?
|
| Do kids need more places to run free, yes.
|
| Should they be running in mall food courts, no.
|
| Just because this trend of kids having less free play
| outside doesn't excuse parents of these kids from taking
| any space they want. Any reasonable person can see there
| are still boundaries, are we just disagreeing on what
| those are? Kids still can't/shouldn't run at swimming
| pools, it's been that way for decades (just an example).
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Why is everything so black and white?
|
| because you see the effects but fail to trace the cause.
| I'm beyond tired of people attacking the symptoms but
| ignoring the cause.
| bbarnett wrote:
| No? I grew up in a rural area, with fields and places to
| run... and run I did.
|
| A nearby huge city had a mall. City being 30k people. Yet
| left in that mall, with 10 friends, I'd run there too.. until
| chastised. No real difference 50 years ago, in a rural area
| with a mall than now.
|
| Groups of kids running tend to bump into things, fall into
| people, excited kids aren't known for taking care. It's been
| typical for at least going back to the 50s to stop that.
|
| It's also why kids are typically told to stop running around
| a house.. and to go outside.
|
| So strongly disagree that it is a symptom of no where else to
| run. Of course, I find it sad if kids have no place to go
| run.
|
| Local parks can help with this in urban areas.
| danielbln wrote:
| I don't disagree with you, but the fact that something has
| been done since the 50s when it comes to child care is not
| necessarily an indicator that it's good. We imposed many
| things on children during that time that would be widely
| considered damaging and counter productive today.
| Arainach wrote:
| Telling kids not to run around indoors where they can
| collide with objects or people, break things, injure
| themselves, and generally get in the way isn't damaging -
| or at least is significantly less damaging than the
| perception in this thread that telling kids not to do
| something is awful.
| alt227 wrote:
| This is just standard manners and teaching children how
| to interact with an adult society. Why does anybody think
| telling kids not to run indoors is wrong?
| danielbln wrote:
| No need to put words in my mouth. I specifically referred
| to the fact that just because something has been done
| since the 50s that it doesn't have automatic relevance
| when it comes to modern child raising, not that telling
| kids today to cut it out when running on public places is
| a bad thing.
| danielbln wrote:
| Ok, no disagreement there, but that wasn't my point.
| johnisgood wrote:
| It does not even have to be urban areas. We have parks all
| around the city. Our schools have playgrounds. Everything
| is still there from when I was a kid, i.e. ~20 years ago.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Kids should be running but not if they cause a nuisance -
| this is the part not highlighted in the article, societal
| oversight. When kids are out in the forests they aren't
| bothering or harming anyone, but when in public they will
| have to conform to some standards / rules.
|
| "It takes a village" is a well known saying, I've always
| interpreted that that it's not just the parents that raise
| kids.
| watwut wrote:
| Kids should be running, but not in food court. 9-12 old are
| big enought to recognize space full of plates and food.
| carlob wrote:
| There was an interesting plot I saw somewhere reversing the old
| thing about Halloween being the deadliest day for kids by
| dividing the number of dead kids by the number of kids on the
| street on a given day. It turns out that Halloween ends up
| being by far the safest day per capita.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Can you share a source? It doesn't match with my own reading
| (https://www.wpr.org/health/studies-show-pedestrian-
| fatalitie... for instance - """he average Halloween resulted
| in four additional pedestrian deaths, and the highest
| increase was among children. Pedestrians between 4 and 8
| years old saw a 10-fold increase in fatalities on Halloween.
| Risk was highest around 6 p.m. and in residential
| neighborhoods.""")
| cpursley wrote:
| One of the things I like about some of the overseas malls is
| they have places designated for kids to run around and play.
| I've even seen that as a common amenity in restaurants (play
| room).
| pseudonymcoward wrote:
| As a society we find violence or harm against children to be
| extremely shocking and tragic. As a society we would do almost
| anything to prevent it.
|
| Giving children the kinds of freedoms discussed in this article
| would lead to some harm coming to them. Accidents, violence,
| kidnap, etc.
|
| Therefore, society won't give them those freedoms.
|
| This tendency has been exagerated by mass media in the modern
| era. Every single case, every piece of anecdata, makes massive
| headlines and instills the fear into parents everywhere.
|
| It's impossible for society to reverse course because that would
| mean acknowledging, implicitly or explicitly, that some level of
| harm for some children is justified by the developmental benefits
| to all children of increased freedom.
| cpursley wrote:
| Well, this doesn't exactly check out when you compare to
| countries and cultures who already give children these freedoms
| and have the built environment to support it (transport,
| walkability, parks/spaces to play, etc). They are not only
| "just fine", but their children are generally much more mature
| and confident (as in skilled), than their Anglo counterparts.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Care to list a few examples that aren't Anglo?
| cpursley wrote:
| France, Netherlands, Denmark, former commie block come to
| mind. It was one of the things that really stuck out to me:
| how mature/well behaved and independent/confident the
| children were there (for the most part). There's even books
| on the topic (Raising Bebe, The Danish Secret to Happy
| Kids) which I was not aware of until after spending a lot
| of time in those places. At lot of it has to due with the
| built environment - kids can literally walk out the front
| door to parks and stuff unlike in suburban places, but also
| culture.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >As a society we find violence or harm against children to be
| extremely shocking and tragic. As a society we would do almost
| anything to prevent it
|
| The moment Sandy Hook happened and US society just shrugged at
| it, we relinquished our ability to use this dynamic for
| anything serious.
|
| We can't pretend to care about kids while treating their
| murders as an inevitability of life and not something to reform
| over.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There have always been people who went into schools to kill
| children. In 1927, a guy _blew up_ a school in Bath,
| Michigan, killing 38 kids
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
|
| The fact that you think heaven and earth have to be moved
| over a single school shooting (as terrible as it was) is a
| _symptom._ School is the safest place where children are.
| They 're more likely to be murdered and abused at home.
|
| I'm 50, but when I was a kid I took the _bus_ by myself: when
| I was 12, on the South Side of Chicago, which had an order of
| magnitude more violence than your kids will ever be exposed
| to. I ran around with my friends within a block or two, we
| were big into BMX bikes. Kids got hurt periodically, but
| sometimes kids will get hurt; sometimes kids will die. A few
| hundred years ago, _most_ kids would die. Now we (not _we,_
| but mostly a certain demographic whose aesthetic is imposed
| on everyone else) find it unacceptable to _hear about_ kids
| dying on television, nowhere near us.
|
| It was bad when 50% of kids died, but I've had the belief
| that whatever the number it now is _too few_. We need the
| number of kids who die through "death by misadventure" to go
| up. Raising kids in a box leaves them dumb and unsocialized.
| Kids need independence, and to be allowed the ability to make
| some bad decisions with real consequences. They need to be
| able to fall off the monkey bars.
| tptacek wrote:
| We're close to the same age and I grew up on the south side
| of Chicago, so I'm cheekily going to ask if by "a bus on
| the south side" you meant Hyde Park or Beverly. :)
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >The fact that you think heaven and earth have to be moved
| over a single school shooting (as terrible as it was) is a
| symptom.
|
| no, the symptom is that kids have to normalize lockdown
| drills and how to barricade a door to protect from
| shooters. I had earthquake and fire drills as a kid, but it
| wasn't culturalized to accept that school shootings are a
| thing.
|
| Now we can map out mass shootings by year: https://en.wikip
| edia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
|
| Now we can expect 4-5 school shottings a year, documented
| by year. Trying to make this equivalent to "well kids get
| hurt" completely misses the point. But I'm not surprised at
| this point.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| > Giving children the kinds of freedoms discussed in this
| article would lead to some harm coming to them. Accidents,
| violence, kidnap, etc.
|
| Not really most of the violence against children originates
| from adults within and near the family.
|
| The American public has allowed some rare stories that made it
| to the news and the Satanic panic of the 80s to form their
| world view.
|
| A survey in 2021 found that 15% of Americans that's 31 million
| people believed the government was run by Satan-worshiping
| pedophiles.
|
| To sum up children do face risks of violence and sexual abuse
| but it's mostly from trusted people in their environment, the
| risk of some random person kidnapping a child of the street is
| rather low.
|
| Now given that society has decided to keep children locked
| away, letting your kid run around is not really a viable option
| it's a collective action problem.
| mlrtime wrote:
| I think you're onto something here. We do a lot to protect
| children, but we've outsourced that protection to institutions
| --police, laws, politicians--rather than building it into our
| communities. If we had stronger communal networks where
| neighbors actively looked out for each other's kids, parents
| would feel comfortable letting them roam. Without that social
| fabric, we're stuck with a binary choice: either rely on law
| enforcement to intervene after something goes wrong, or keep
| kids sheltered at home.
| zkmon wrote:
| There were reasons for the contrast with Western world. Safety
| and risk aversion is a major reason. City living means we don't
| know what the other person on the road is thinking. This was not
| the case in small villages or tribal settlements. Everyone knows
| about every move of the others. The whole community is like a
| single creature with many arms.
|
| The other reason is, prosperity means more affordability to avoid
| risk and seek comfort. There is no need to take risk, develop,
| fight for survival or grow up with friction.
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| > City living means we don't know what the other person on the
| road is thinking.
|
| Usually something like "I hope I'm not late for my job" or "The
| weather is shit today". Other people aren't that scary.
| nerdponx wrote:
| "I how I'm not late" is a bad mix when operating heavy
| machinery like a car around places where children are
| supposed to be able to walk safely.
| graemep wrote:
| A lot of people do think that other people are scary.
|
| The UK has got to the point where a lot of people think
| parents cannot be trusted with their kids (in an IRL
| discussion multiple people supported the Online Safety Act on
| the grounds most parents will let their kids watch porn) let
| along strangers.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| To be fair, combine "I hope I'm not late for my job" with a
| 2.5 ton wheeled death machine, and it's pretty scary even
| without bad intent.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > City living means we don't know what the other person on the
| road is thinking. This was not the case in...
|
| I'd explain it this way: City living means that we don't know
| the other person, and they don't know us. The affects both
| driver behavior - 99% of people are more careful driving around
| pedestrians and other drivers who they know - and our
| perception of driver risks. "Chris who's always lived at 3rd
| and Cherry" is not some random stranger, to easily stereotype
| as a threat. Even if we know that Chris is not a good driver.
| Because humans are biased to judge members of "their" social
| group by very different standards than non-members.
| zkmon wrote:
| Actually, when I wrote "road" I was thinking of roads full of
| pedestrians. Not cars and drivers.
| mlrtime wrote:
| >Everyone knows about every move of the others.
|
| If you read a lot of commentary on urban vs rural living, this
| is usually the top criticism of living in a small town. I've
| lived in both, and I much prefer knowing my neighbors.
| retube wrote:
| As a parent, I relate to all this. Great piece.
|
| When the kids were babies we had the standard debate of move to
| the countryside for fresh air and gambolling in the fields etc.
| But so glad we stayed in London, the kids have so much freedom
| with public transport they can organise their own meet ups and
| activities and go running around all over town without any
| parental assistance or intervention at all. Whereas elsewhere
| we'd need to drive them everywhere, they'd be stuck at home way
| more, they'd have no real agency in their lives - I grew up like
| that and hated it.
| ensocode wrote:
| I can relate. Nice article. We had that same debate and ended
| up moving to the countryside. Surprisingly, it worked out well.
| + real forests. With today's e-bikes, even hills or longer
| distances aren't really a blocker for kids anymore. In the end,
| it feels like the bigger factor is how you organize daily life,
| not whether you're in a city or in a rural area.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Whitewashing motorcycles as e-bikes scares me more than
| anything else for the next generation.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Limited to 25 kph they seem fine (if only just, and a
| helmet is a good idea at that speed) but violations and
| disabled limiters are common
| goodcanadian wrote:
| Legal e-bikes are fine. The ones you are complaining about
| are probably illegal, not that there is any real
| enforcement.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Serious Q: What is the fundamental difference between a
| legal and illegal e-bike. This largely is differentiated
| by the location but I don't know what illegal e-bike
| means.
| awjlogan wrote:
| Maximum power output and maximum (assisted) speed are
| generally legislated. In the UK, an e-bike is up to 250 W
| and 25 kph. More than that, it would classify as a
| motorbike and you'd need a license (not particularly
| onerous). The bike itself is often built differently to
| accommodate the different power profile.
|
| As a pedal cyclist, I feel that's a reasonably sensible
| limit as much faster than that you should be more
| experienced as a cyclist to control the bike and
| anticipate the conditions.
| beAbU wrote:
| In addition to the other answer you got. E-bikes are
| pedal assist, so illegal ones usually have throttles in
| addition to more powerful motors. This depends on the
| region though.
| avhon1 wrote:
| In the United States, throttle-only ebikes that go up to
| 20 miles per hour (Class 2 ebikes) are legal pretty much
| everywhere. They're required to have functional pedals,
| but no pedal assist function is required.
| strix_varius wrote:
| E-Bikes are sold & regulated in "classes" (at least where
| I live in the US).
|
| A class 1 e-bike is pedal-assist and stops assisting
| beyond 20mph (mine, for instance, tapers off starting
| probably around 15 mph).
|
| A class 2 is the above, plus a throttle.
|
| A class 3 is anything that assists over 20mph. The
| "basically motorcycle" set exists here.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Your class 3 definition is inaccurate. Class 3 is limited
| to 28mph and cannot have a throttle, only pedal assist.
|
| Anything that doesn't fall in one of those classes is a
| motorcycle that is not street legal and can only be
| rudden of private property (unless you can convince your
| DMV to give you registration as a motor vehicle.)
|
| This can vary somewhat from state to state, but most
| states have adopted or are moving to adopt these classes.
| netdevphoenix wrote:
| >With today's e-bikes, even hills or longer distances aren't
| really a blocker for kids anymore
|
| Unlike public transport, with an e-bike, the chances of
| getting a puncture or a malfunctioning battery increase with
| usage. Plus, there is also the very common bike theft and
| road accidents if you live in a country where bikes need to
| go on the road (like the UK)
| Toutouxc wrote:
| It doesn't take much time to fix a puncture with a tiny kit
| the size of a matchbox. There are also tubeless tires with
| liquid sealant.
|
| An e-bike with a dead battery becomes a heavy bike.
|
| Theft and accidents, okay, but the first sentence is just
| fearmongering.
| netdevphoenix wrote:
| > It doesn't take much time to fix a puncture with a tiny
| kit the size of a matchbox.
|
| That's a dependency. Now you need to remember to have
| that kit with you. This is like solving the short battery
| life in phones with a portable battery charger. You still
| have to remember to charge the charger beforehand and
| bring it with you. Small kits are easy to lose sight of
| that by the time you need them so you don't know where
| they are.
|
| Tubeless tires are sadly not compatible with most bikes.
| I am not trying to be downer, this is just my experience
| (losing the kit and finding out that the bike I bought is
| not compatible with tubeless tires). I do agree though
| that bikes are definitely the way to go. But I wouldn't
| rely on them too much, especially on the electric
| components. Humans have a tendency to aim for convenience
| above all and being stranded in the middle of nowhere
| with dead phone and a bike with a dead battery in winter
| is not fun
| acdha wrote:
| > That's a dependency. Now you need to remember to have
| that kit with you.
|
| You put it on the bike and don't worry about it. This is
| less onerous than remembering your bus pass or cars keys.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| People have been stashing a puncture repair kit in a
| small saddle bag since the nineteenth century. The kit
| just sits there until it is needed, potentially for
| years. To depict this as a big stress and risk is a real
| reach.
| Xylakant wrote:
| We haven't had a malfunctioning battery in ~40 000km of
| ebike use in our family. We have one that failed to charge
| due to age. The number of times we ran out of battery due
| to forgetting to charge can be counted on one hand. The
| number of flat tires is in the single digits - modern
| general use tires are really sturdy, especially if you
| combine them with sealant.
| netdevphoenix wrote:
| Must have been a high end bike because the ones I have
| used have had multiple punctures within a year and
| running out of battery in the middle of trip has happened
| several times which is not great if you live in a hilly
| area
| Xylakant wrote:
| The bosch drivetrain is pretty much bog standard on the
| german market and available on almost all price classes
| and Schwalbe Marathon/Big Apple tires are aren't exactly
| restricted to the higher price classes as well.
|
| Now, if you're riding Mountainbike or Gravel tires, your
| tradeoffs are different - they sacrifice puncture
| resilience in favor of less weight.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| The "high-end"-ness of a bike and the likelihood of
| punctures are completely orthogonal. You can get a low-
| end e-bike and just put decent tires on it. Since weight
| is less of an issue with e-bikes than acoustic bikes,
| it's common for people to choose heavier tires like
| Schwalbe Pickups that offer very high puncture-
| resistance.
| reeredfdfdf wrote:
| There's a middle-ground between a big city and full
| countryside.
|
| I lived my childhood in a place with about 4000 people in it.
| School, friends and everything else I needed was within
| walking, or at least biking distance. My parents didn't have to
| drive me everywhere. Obviously there weren't as many possible
| hobbies and events as in big cities, but mobility wasn't an
| issue.
| qweiopqweiop wrote:
| Likewise. All my friends were within cycling distance and we
| had nature to play in. Personally I can't imagine growing up
| in a city like London.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Smaller cities with about 40k-200k inhabitants can also be a
| nice sweet spot: big enough to have a decent number of events
| and hobby opportunities, small enough that you have low-
| traffic sidestreets within walking distance of the city
| center, and nature is still very much in reach
|
| Assuming a European city layout where a city center exists
| and the 200k inhabitants aren't all spread out into suburban
| sprawl. Suburbia quickly kills the idea of walking and biking
| distances
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I live in suburbia in a sprawling European city of 200K
| inhabitants, and design can fix a lot of that. The
| neighbourhoods are designed like little towns themselves,
| each having stores, schools, day cares, sports / leisure
| activities, restaurants and other businesses of their own,
| as well as playgrounds and nature areas which are often
| used by local youths to build shelters and play in.
|
| The old city center - museums, historical buildings, big
| library, cinema, theater etc - is a longer trek, but still
| doable in ~20 minutes cycling. Plus there's trains and
| buses.
|
| TL;DR, suburban doesn't mean it should kill things being in
| reasonable distances. However, big caveat, it's all kind of
| built in a compact way; garden space is often limited
| (total ground is usually 2x the house itself, so 50m2
| ground floor space + 50m2 garden), roads are narrow (but
| this is good because it's bike / pedestrian optimized, cars
| can't go fast), etc. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinex-location for a
| superficial description, or look at a map of Dutch suburbs
| or houses (https://www.funda.nl/) to see what it's like.
| rayiner wrote:
| Right. Most people in "rural" places live in small towns. My
| wife went to high school in a rural Iowa town with 2,000
| people. You can walk from the high school to anywhere in town
| in 30 minutes.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| A lot of older small towns are good but newer stuff tends
| to be built along highways with no other connecting roads,
| and more spread out
|
| Also, a lot of the "rural" population in census data is
| actually living in outer suburbs and newer suburbs tend to
| be pretty unsafe for kids to walk/bike around
| paxiongmap wrote:
| I have just done the opposite - left London for the countryside
| and am currently very much enjoying it. As our toddler gets
| older it will interesting to see how we deal with the
| challenges of letting them find their own space.
| iso1631 wrote:
| There's two aspect of "country" relative to somewhere like
| London. There's an estate in various towns, where there's
| plenty of actual public space, playing fields and grounds,
| walk into town, to shops, bus/train to larger towns. Plenty
| of open space.
|
| Then there's the real country, where there's very little
| public space - nowhere to ride a bike other than narrow
| country roads, you can walk but only in restrictive footpaths
| over fields - some of which are sabotaged by farmers (I file
| 2 or 3 complaints with the right-of-way office each year as
| footpaths get blocked, barbed wire put over stiles, etc). We
| have an open forest area, but it's a 2 mile walk.
|
| There are 4 children in our village at the "local" primary
| school, across the 7 years. My youngest's nearest friend is 6
| miles away - again via 60mph roads. That means having to be
| driven to places. There is a school bus (which for americans
| reading is relatively rare in the UK -- you get one upto age
| 11 if you live more than 2 miles from the nearest school, or
| 3 miles for 11-16), but that doesn't help for after school
| clubs.
|
| A toddler isn't going to be independent with travel, so
| driving them places is fine. In a few years though, you want
| them to be able to travel and meet friends, go to the shop
| etc, independently. That's easy enough in a city or in a
| town, not in the country.
|
| That said, just having that access doesn't mean they will use
| it. My 13 year old's main social interaction is via minecraft
| sessions where they have a group call and yell at each other,
| doesn't matter if someone lives nearby (which one of the
| group does), or 30 miles away (which another does).
|
| (It's worth highlighting that UK suburbia is very different
| to US suburbia)
| windward wrote:
| You're right. Personally, now that it's getting wet and
| cold, I'm getting kind of landlocked by mud. There's one
| tarmac road out in both directions, but only one of them
| leads to somewhere that somewhat resembles civilisation, or
| has pavement.
| ctoth wrote:
| > There are 4 children in our village at the "local"
| primary school
|
| Four? How... What? How does any of this actually work (you
| clearly live there, so it obviously does?) That seems like
| you're living somewhere that's just like ... empty? How do
| any services/infrastructure/... How many old people live in
| this village?
|
| Is this the demographic collapse people are going on about?
| Macha wrote:
| That sounds like the village in which I spent my teens.
| Population of ~500, and for <18s there was myself, my
| sibling, and there was a "new" housing estate had a
| handful of kids around 5.
|
| We didn't have nice paths, there was a (former) main road
| going through the middle of the village. As far as local
| infrastructure, there was the pub, a car mechanic, and
| every few years a corner shop would open up and last
| about 2-3 years before shutting down again.
|
| If you needed groceries you went to the larger village
| (population ~1000) which was about a 40 minute walk along
| the main road (which only got dedicated pavements after I
| had moved out), or a 5 minute drive. For amenities that
| larger village had 2 bars, 2 churches, a takeaway, a
| supermarket, a primary school and a garden centre.
|
| If you needed anything more than groceries, you needed to
| go to one of the nearby towns which were ~20-30 minutes
| by car and (according to google maps) ~2 hours walk.
| iso1631 wrote:
| That's about here, although the town is only a 10 minute
| drive.
|
| And people moan that some kids get taxis to school,
| because the government has decided that it's not worth
| operating a school closer than 5 miles, but when you need
| to shift 2 people you don't put on a minibus.
|
| There's only two primary schools within 10 miles which
| have fewer than 50 pupils on the (7 year) roll though,
| it's not an overly rural area. I suspect townies would
| have palpitations when they find out about state boarding
| schools, because if you live on Tresco you can't commute
| to the high school every day
| dukeyukey wrote:
| You're more thinking suburban, or _super_ rural. I grew up in a
| rural Welsh town (~3000 people), and was is walking distance of
| basically everyone we knew. I walked to school, to the pool, to
| the shops, my friends, everything.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Same, somewhat bigger town but it had everything within
| walking or cycling distance, it was only when I was 17 or so
| that I had to cycle to the next town over for school. But
| small towns are emptying out too, a lot of aging, elementary
| schools are merging and closing, local shops and amenities
| are closing down. The town used to have a bank, post office
| and police station, but banking and mailing changed to the
| point where it was no longer viable to have those services in
| town.
| startupsfail wrote:
| When I was growing up 90-ies, a mix of using public metro and
| buses to roam the city (since I was in second grade, when I
| was allowed to take metro to do afterschool karate) and
| spending summers in various countryside locations where my
| grandparents resided was a good mix.
|
| I disagree that the kids need or want to roam without
| grownups all the time. Grownups are not the problem. Kids are
| fun for the parents, the company of parents and their peers
| is kinda amazing.
|
| Systems and institutions are the problem. When kids are stuck
| in the daycare or school, in a very limited space, grownups
| are stuck at the office and grandparents are in a different
| state for tax purposes - that is the problem.
|
| I don't know if this is true, but Patagonia claimed at some
| point that they used to maintain daycares and allow kids to
| roam the campus...
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| Rural in Wales is not like rural in most of North America.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| Cities feel riskier, but in many ways they offer more room to
| grow. Kids don't just need nature; they need space to navigate
| the world on their own terms
| mlrtime wrote:
| I'm going to get criticism because I feel HN is mostly urban
| based... but I don't think kids need "cities" to grow. They
| need nature.
|
| I picture rural/suburban areas that aren't fully built out
| with small wooded areas , creeks and playground 5-10 minute
| walk. They need to get dirty, play in water etc.
|
| When I think cities, I think dense urban areas that rarely
| offer this unless living in a expensive or unique
| neighborhood (like within 1-2 blocks of Central Park or
| Prospect Park).
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| The thing that cities provide that's harder to access in
| the countryside is exposure to people other than you, with
| different (not necessarily incompatible) perspectives and
| value systems. I think it's actually really important for
| kids to be exposed to people that disagree with their
| parents and learn that people can disagree with their
| parents while still being reasonable, kind people that
| their parents more or less trust in their presence.
|
| Rural and suburban communities are far more likely to be a
| monoculture than cities, which, if you're not careful, can
| make your child's social development trickier.
|
| It's by no means universal or impossible, just a
| consideration I don't see verbalized a whole lot.
| cons0le wrote:
| I also really like that you can find groups of people
| doing the same thing you like to do, no matter how niche
| it is.
| bluGill wrote:
| You can find mono-culture in both cities and rural areas.
| In cities there are more options, but in rural areas you
| can really get into it. In cities you can select from
| several different mono-cultures and ignore all others. In
| rural areas you can really get deep though because a
| commune can ensure you never encounter anything else,
| while in cities you still see them on the streets you
| just don't interact (though my experience is communes
| have outsiders come in for various supplies from time to
| time). If you don't live in a commune though rural areas
| don't provide choice - your neighbor is the only option
| no matter how strange they are.
| volkl48 wrote:
| I think the problem with your thought is that it really
| requires a "stars to align perfectly" kind of thing for
| that to actually be achieved, especially over the long-
| term.
|
| Many people had that sort of experience in say....the
| 1950-2000. You had a lot of smaller new developments
| bulldozed into new areas, and for the first 20 years
| especially - almost everyone who moved in to those new
| homes, moved in at a similar time and with young children
| of a similar age.
|
| In this way, those pockets of suburbia had a bunch of
| temporary features. You had a much higher quantity of local
| children within walking distance than would naturally be
| the case in the long-term for that number of mid-sized SFH
| homes, and you had a highly developed area with a highly
| undeveloped area nearby. (land not yet turned into
| subdivisions like your own).
|
| But a few decades down the line, even without the large
| behavioral shifts in society - now you've got an endless
| sea of divided-up suburbia with no nearby wilderness
| accessible by children on foot/bike, and there's only 2
| nearby kids of the same age range rather than 20.
|
| Which is to say - I think it's very difficult to achieve
| that as as a stable long-term environment, at least with
| the typical US SFH subdivision density.
|
| And once you get out to rural you run into the problem of
| the kids not being able to see each other without parental
| involvement.
|
| -------
|
| Anyway, I _did_ grow up in a "goldlocks zone" environment
| like you describe. It _was_ very nice, and I was
| particularly adventurous + had more relaxed than average
| parents.
|
| But I actually found in (Upstate NY) college that the kids
| who had the most similar levels of life experience to me
| were the...NYC kids. The city enabled and outright required
| them to be much more independent than the more normal US
| suburb experience was. They'd be taking transit all over
| the city, many even just to get to school by middle/high
| school - and then after school they'd be going out with
| their friends to get snacks or hang out in the park or
| whatever.
|
| In contrast, many of the "average" suburb peers had
| basically never been able to go a single place in their
| lives without an adult driving them until maybe they got a
| license at 16-17 and seemed very limited in their
| development for it.
|
| -------
|
| tl;dr - I think the idealized version of a suburb can be
| good for it, the average US suburb can't stay that way, but
| I also think major cities offer a lot of potential for
| them. Denser + walkable medium towns + nature outside them
| could also be good - but that's more of a EU than US
| development pattern.
| archagon wrote:
| Why do they "need" nature?
|
| Looking back on my childhood, I think I got tremendous
| value from the _diversity_ of experiences I was exposed to,
| not any one specific thing. The nature at my grandfather's
| dacha was lovely and enjoyable, but so was urban life in a
| 4m+ population city. Both contributed equally to the adult
| I've become.
| gyomu wrote:
| Wait, how old are your kids, that they gallivant around London
| on their own? Are we talking about teenagers?
|
| Because yeah, I agree with you that in that sense cities are
| better than the often car-centric countryside for teenagers;
| but for young kids (elementary school and below, which is what
| the article covers) it's a very different equation.
| jddj wrote:
| Why? Plenty of elementary aged kids use the tube
| djtango wrote:
| Do they? I don't think I've seen anyone younger than 12
| unattended on the tube
| jddj wrote:
| The DLR at some hours between some stops is practically a
| school bus.
|
| I guess it's possible they're small but not <12yo
| Symbiote wrote:
| I used to live round the corner from a private school in
| London (ages 5-16 or 5-18, not sure).
|
| They were never on the tube with me, but plenty of
| children would be arriving at about 8:15, as I was
| departing to get to work for 9:00. Private school
| children are more likely to have a longer journey to
| school, therefore less likely to have a direct bus, and
| presumably more likely to have parents who will pay for
| the tube/train. (Only buses are free for children.)
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| Not really. I live in Zone 4/5 West London (postcode TW
| area), and kids as young as I'd say around 9 or 10 are
| getting themselves to school on buses, trains and tubes every
| day. Not much different to my day - I was taking myself to
| school around 7/8 years old living in a small (10k pop.)
| semi-rural town.
|
| After school they're getting themselves home as well, often
| in groups causing the traditional nuisance in newsagents and
| supermarkets (thank god the energy drinks are now not sold to
| kids!), and going to parks and whatever.
|
| I think they have to be a little older to confidently get
| their way into Zone 1 on their own if they should need to,
| but I regularly see youngsters I'd guess are 11-12 years old
| going into town on their own, clearly to meet friends.
|
| Despite what the media (and for crying out loud, the US
| President), says, London is actually a remarkably safe city.
| Murder/homicides are at a low they haven't been at for
| decades (possibly centuries), and while sexual assaults are
| rising, that is seen as mostly attributable to more reporting
| (victims coming forward more). In the case of assault on a
| child, that's more likely to occur in a family setting than
| it is in a public place during daylight hours.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| I relate to this as the parent I am and the kid I was.
|
| I went to boarding school in the 80's and 90's. There were
| houses, there was the school, the masters, the usual abuses -
| but there were also the gangs. They'd all have a name along the
| lines of "The Orcs" or "The Goonies", and a clubhouse built of
| scrap and brush somewhere in the woodland attached to the
| school, usually accessible only by crawling through tunnels of
| brambles and a hidden trapdoor, and knowing where the tripwires
| and murderous sash weights were concealed. Most would have a
| few dozen boys in them, spread over the five years of the
| school. Younger boys would be skivvies, diggers, and by the
| time you were 12 you'd be a war chief, and organising and
| leading raids against other camps. Old pool cover was a
| particularly sought after commodity during raids - not only did
| it keep the rain out, but it kept the place warm in the
| winters.
|
| Outside of term I'd go and saunter around abandoned factories
| and rail yards near our home.
|
| Anyway. I think they cut the woodland down decades ago to
| replace it with more playing fields.
|
| That thing, however - that little, tribal community of kids -
| is very much live and kicking, but non the west, very much no
| longer in the physical world.
|
| My kid is being raised in a forest - and I'm acutely aware that
| sooner rather than later she is going to need a gang.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| I grew up in a town outside of London (100k pop.) and it was
| pretty decent as I could walk pretty much everywhere.
|
| I live in a massive city now (1.5m pop.) and I'd be nervous to
| let my kids walk around alone because there's quite a lot of
| crime.
|
| I feel a town is probably the sweet spot.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| The other comments already pointed out that there is plenty to
| do for kids growing up in villages - it's not until they're
| teenagers that it becomes limiting, really (speaking from
| personal experience and what I was told by friends who also
| grew up in the countryside).
|
| Funny that you're talking about having to _drive_ them
| everywhere though, because the main worry I have as a parent is
| the impact of car traffic on child safety.
|
| I grew up in a Dutch village of 1500 people, and my parents let
| me wander about from when I was five, six years old or so. If I
| still lived there I would feel completely comfortable with
| giving my child the same freedom (once she's old enough - she's
| only a toddler now).
|
| The main reason for that is that there is only one road that
| goes through village. Everything else is a street (see the wiki
| page on "stroads" for a clarification about the distinction
| [0]). And anyone driving through the village knows there might
| be kids playing there.
|
| Contrast that with where I currently live: in apartment block
| in a city that is right next to a crossing of two stroads. We
| actually have very nice parks and playgrounds within walking
| distance. But to get here we have to cross at least one road or
| stroad. The thought of letting a six year old do that by
| herself scares me.
|
| On a rational level I'm aware that this is probably my
| sheltered upbringing and that she will understand the dangers
| of car traffic better than I did at the age of six _because_
| she 's growing up in a city, but I can't help but worry that
| she'll underestimate it until she's a bit older - a voice in my
| goes "it doesn't matter how often she _does_ do it right, she
| only has to absentmindedly cross the road and get herself run
| over once. "
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad
| dgacmu wrote:
| I dunno - I have a seven year old whom I try to allow to be
| as feral as possible. We let him go alone to the neighborhood
| park, which requires seven small residential street
| crossings. But I would hesitate also about a multi-lane
| stroad if there wasn't a lot of pedestrian traffic. Kids are
| small and cars have gotten huge and drivers are very
| distracted, especially post-pandemic.
|
| (We're in the US, and I draw the line at letting him cross
| ordinary 25mph residential streets but not the "25mph" artery
| road on which many of the drivers go 40mph. It's only one
| lane in each direction but there are no lights or crossings
| and the effective speed is quite high.)
| vanderZwan wrote:
| That seems like a sensible cut-off point. You would
| probably (and probably rightfully) laugh at what I consider
| a stroad in the Swedish city of Malmo where I live, with
| traffic lights and zebra crossings everywhere. Like I said,
| I know on a rational level that my fear is irrationally
| heightened from my own memories of being extremely careless
| at a young age because I safely could be.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >On a rational level I'm aware that this is probably my
| sheltered upbringing and that she will understand the dangers
| of car traffic better than I did
|
| She can understand it all she wants, it won't make a
| difference to a driver who is texting in a huge suv/pickup
| truck with a hood twice your daughter's height.
|
| It is objectively more dangerous to be a
| pedestrian/bicyclist/even a person in a smaller car than in
| previous decades.
|
| And if it's dark or raining outside, forget about it.
| Crossing a 50ft wide road with a 40mph speed limit (which
| means people are actually distracted driving at 50mph) as a
| kid is daunting.
|
| A 50ft wide road is just 5 lanes, 2 in each direction, and 1
| turning lane. Very common in the US, even in small
| communities.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| My parents like to tell the story about me getting bored at
| kindergarten class one day.
|
| I grew up in a residential area in a city of several million
| people.
|
| The teachers had let the kids out for recess. But even that
| amount of playful distraction didn't diminish my boredom that
| day.
|
| So I went home.
|
| In the middle of the school day.
|
| Without the teacher finding out...
|
| I had to cross a stroad to get home - two lanes each way. I
| can't recall if I crossed at the street light or at a
| crosswalk a few blocks away. But I made my way home
| unscathed. My mom was surprised when I showed up at home a
| few hours early.
|
| The next few days at school, I could feel the teacher's eyes
| boring into my back as I played during recess. Definitely
| felt like I was being watched for awhile. :)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Didn't you have a bicycle?
| m463 wrote:
| This sounds really different from present-day America where
| helicoptering seems to be the new default. sigh.
|
| I grew up with something different - "go out and play", coming
| back for dinner.
| abbadadda wrote:
| Curious what age you started letting them ride the tube on
| their own? I'm in London as well and we're starting to have the
| "walk to school" conversation but it is still early days and a
| 15 minute jaunt so not nothing.
| bamboozled wrote:
| We live in the mountains , our kids ski all the time , lots to
| do in the summer, can bike and walk everywhere, not sure what
| you're on about?
| straydusk wrote:
| > digital space is the only place left where children can grow up
| without us
|
| What an observation. I agree with this.
| pjc50 wrote:
| .. which era is of course also being shut down, with the
| widespread implementation of age verification.
| ensocode wrote:
| a bit off but it sometimes feels like a self-reinforcing loop in
| Western societies: We have fewer children because we optimize so
| hard for money, stability, and personal security. But because we
| have fewer children, each child becomes "economically and
| emotionally precious." And the more precious they become, the
| more afraid we are to let them take risks, explore freely, or
| just do their own thing.
|
| The end result is kids who grow up with less independence, less
| trust in the world around them, and fewer peers out on the
| streets to learn from. In a way, our desire for security creates
| the insecurity we're trying to avoid -- and the cycle keeps
| feeding itself.
| manc_lad wrote:
| This summarises my thoughts as well. People used to give away
| children that were too much of a burden. With higher mortality,
| some were also not expected to make it.
|
| We're in a societal place where we have set the bar high in
| terms of an expected level of education and quality of life for
| our kids. kids are expensive and we've grown the population
| massively. There is also a social stigma associated with having
| lots of kids in Western countries.
|
| I worry about my kids. But im always fascinated when they
| stretch the boundaries and show me how resilient they are. So I
| let them push limits but explain the pros and cons hoping they
| build their own feedback loops with some sense of perspective.
|
| It's a delicate balance as a parent. I'm consistently
| fascinated how others parent. It's amazing how changes in
| parental style can be generational and show how long the
| changes will take to change.
| bluGill wrote:
| > People used to give away children that were too much of a
| burden. With higher mortality, some were also not expected to
| make it.
|
| Don't confuse that for them not loving their children or not
| being devastated by the deaths when they happened. We don't
| know how often kids were given away, but there isn't strong
| evidence it happened often.
| eastbound wrote:
| This is not a standalone loop, it is initiated by external
| factors which are bigger: De-industrialization of the West,
| with the social changes it implies (feminism, gentrification,
| many things including the single-child phenomenon). It will go
| away if the world changes its equilibrium -- maybe with AI --
| for the better or worse.
| ceayo wrote:
| Don't you think AI, for example, will just be another facet
| of de-industrialization? I think the way we are headed now,
| this loop will only grow bigger...
| pmontra wrote:
| I think that something else changed and should be added to the
| analysis: the number of children. There are less of them so there
| are less chances to reach a critical mass that lets kids play
| together every day. When I was little it was common to have
| between 10 to 30 of us within the fence of our city building.
| Parents and grandparents were looking at us from the windows but
| they were probably hearing us scream and play, a sign that all
| was good, and we were left alone to do what we liked to do. Where
| do you find 10 kids together now, if not at a school or in
| another organized context (organized by adults) ?
| Aeolun wrote:
| > Where do you find 10 kids together now
|
| Walk to the park at the corner, have your child shout a few
| times, they'll all pop their heads out of the door at the sound
| of others playing, desperate to do anything other than sit
| inside with their parents.
| pmontra wrote:
| Yes, my mother walked me to one of those parks sometimes but
| it was a little pointless when I could play with my friends
| outside my home or my grandparents' home. The kids at the
| park were strangers. We played together but we did not create
| any relationship. It was like playing with the other kids
| while adults were busy inside the restaurant after a
| marriage. A fun afternoon but it ends there if you don't meet
| them regularly.
| elgenie wrote:
| This working is a function of density. First, imagining a
| park at the corner is a huge assumption.
|
| Second, if the park isn't within shouting distance of the
| necessary number of kids, half of the ones within shouting
| distance are at parent-scheduled activities, and half of the
| remainder aren't allowed to brave street crossings because of
| the six-foot-tall hoods and inattentive drivers of passing
| ChildMurker1050s, no amount of park yelling will be
| sufficient.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Where I grew up, Rural UK, there was a kid my age who lived a
| mile away. There was noone else for 5 miles. We used to cycle
| to see each other all of the time, go on adventures. But were
| always outsiders at school to the kids from areas with more
| kids, especially those where there was a girl! Another boy
| moved in once we were older and it transformed our group.
|
| Every other house had older adults in it.
|
| In 1940 you could imagine there would have been many more kids
| in the local village.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| A peer culture needs peers and it's hard to form one when there
| aren't enough kids around to organically gather and create
| those little "societies" of play
| paulorlando wrote:
| I've noticed the critical mass issue also. If your kids do free
| range as described, who else is out there to meet?
| paxiongmap wrote:
| I highly recommend Peter Gray's writing:
| https://petergray.substack.com/
|
| Relevant to the discussion about online spaces and autonomy in
| childhood, I'd jump into this discussion about teen suicide
| rates: https://petergray.substack.com/p/d3-why-did-teen-suicides-
| es...
|
| We have robbed our children of autonomy and freedom and then
| wonder why anxiety and depression are rampant.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| The tragedy isn't just that they're doing this online, it's that
| it's the only place left. We paved over their physical freedom,
| then panic when they carve out virtual freedom we can't
| supervise. And ironically, we moralize their digital behavior
| while ignoring the real-world conditions that pushed them there
| in the first place
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| We literally punish them for loitering around anywhere without
| paying. Or worse, parents are chastised by authorities if they
| let their kids try to do something on their own.
|
| We really can't be surprised when we close down society and the
| youth proceed to find the only space not heavily regulated.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| Seriously. I always hated that mall hanging was organized
| around an icon of capitalism, but we don't even have those
| anymore (in many places). The US just doesn't consider public
| space a thing.
| npteljes wrote:
| >They noticed that the children liked to roam through bomb sites,
| where they would build fires and play hide-and-seek.
|
| This reminded me of one of my all-time favorites, the Animatrix.
| There is a story in this anthology, _Beyond_ , that centers
| around this exact concept. I still get goosebumps just from
| reading its Wikipedia entry.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Umm, do most of those kids have distended bellies?
| losvedir wrote:
| I was wondering about that, too. It means they're malnourished,
| right?
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Yeah well, we have one kid, and we're too old to have another.
| He's the _only grandchild_ on both sides of the family. He has no
| cousins, first or second. That 's apparently the new normal in
| many countries.
|
| Of course he's going to live a sheltered life!
|
| It's easy to tell parents to let their kids roam free, but that
| advice is to copy the behaviour of parents that had ten kids.
|
| I said "had", because on average, _two_ of them will survive to
| adulthood and procreation. That 's _natural_. That 's the way
| things were for our species for megayears.
|
| Does that make it sad that it's not like that any more?
|
| Maybe. Maybe not.
|
| If you want to change it, recognise that first, society and our
| very civilization would need to change back to the era of every
| family having half a dozen or more kids. Then, _then_ you 'd have
| to figure out what to do about the excess population:
| unsustainable exponential growth _or_ mass child deaths. You
| choose!
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > It's easy to tell parents to let their kids roam free, but
| that advice is to copy the behaviour of parents that had ten
| kids. I said "had", because on average, two of them will
| survive to adulthood and procreation. That's natural. That's
| the way things were for our species for megayears.
|
| We still roamed pretty free as kids in the 90s. That's long
| after the decline of childhood mortality and large families - I
| don't know more than a handful of families from that era who
| had more than 2 kids.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I was an only kid that roamed pretty free as young as four,
| wandering the neighbourhood with similarly aged kids.
|
| I chalk that up to the inertia of social behaviour. My
| parents grew up in a generation where they all had many
| brothers and sisters, and their parents were one of eight.
| They learned parenting from their parents, and I learned
| parenting from mine.
|
| We adjust with each generation, but not completely.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| What a take...so if you had 3 kids and lost one it would only
| hurt a third as much as losing your one child now?
|
| Kids can play with other kids that are not in the family too...
| jiggawatts wrote:
| > losing your one child now?
|
| You have likely not lived in a society where every family has
| many kids, so extended families have dozens of
| grandkids/cousins. It gets to the point that in times of
| plenty there's an "excess" and societies go to war in some
| sense just to see if they can carve out a bit of territory at
| the "mere" cost of some tens of percent of their youth. I
| mean.. why not? If you have half a dozen that "made it" and
| enough land for only two to inherit, flip the coin on the
| rest of them and maybe they'll find glory and conquer some
| new patch of land. Or not. What other option is there?
|
| That's how people used to think and behave for _millenia_.
|
| Modern life is very, _very_ different to even just a couple
| of hundred years ago, let alone for most of human existence
| pre-history!
|
| I read a statistic that before modern times something like
| 15%-60% of men died due to violence! For comparison, if
| you're an adult male in Ukraine, you've had about a 0.5%
| chance of death from violence, 30x to 120x safer _in the
| middle of a war_ than during peacetime in pre-state tribal
| life.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >our very civilization would need to change back to the era of
| every family having half a dozen or more kids.
|
| Let's try improving public transportation, making more walkable
| communities, and encouraging independent exploration first. If
| those don't work, then sure. We can try the Shinzo Abe
| initiative to make big families.
|
| Japan has had this issue for longer than the US, but it is not
| impacted the same way in terms of kids socializing.
| mlrtime wrote:
| I wish people would come up with examples that are more than
| 'Just look at Japan'. Japan is great, and I think we could
| learn a lot from them. However, their society is extremely
| homogeneous (98%+ ethnically Japanese) with deeply shared
| cultural norms that have been reinforced over centuries. This
| creates a fundamentally different trust environment than what
| exists in diverse, multicultural societies.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Focusing on Japan is a non-sequitr. This is pretty much all
| of Asia and half of the EU.This isn't unique to them. Japan
| was only mentioned because it's probably the first country
| to have needed to make national population crisis
| initiatives (as the GP wanted to suggest).
|
| >deeply shared cultural norms that have been reinforced
| over centuries
|
| Yes and Americans had this too, once upon a time. We did a
| good job tearing that down in the last 60 years to push
| consumerism instead.
|
| It took 60 years to get there, we aren't going to fix it
| overnight. And that's also part of the problem. No one
| wants to put the time in for the effort.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| > I said "had", because on average, two of them will survive to
| adulthood and procreation. That's natural. That's the way
| things were for our species for megayears.
|
| Where are you getting that stat? For the majority of human
| history the childhood mortality rate has hovered around 50% not
| 80%.
|
| Back in the second century BC if you had 10 children you
| expected half of them to reach adulthood.
|
| In addition I can't find specific stats but I would wager that
| the vast majority like 90% of those deaths happened at infancy.
| So it doesn't really factor in how they would be raised.
|
| And as others have noted. We were free to run around as much as
| we wanted in the 90s and the average family had like 2ish
| children.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| > Where are you getting that stat?
|
| Basic population dynamics. For a population to remain steady,
| a breeding pair can only have on average two surviving
| children that procreate themselves.
|
| If you want to get into the weeds, there's obviously some
| "fudge factors" that bring this _a little bit_ up above two.
|
| 1. Not every kid that survives to adulthood will go on to
| procreate themselves, so the remainder need slightly more
| than two to make up the slack.
|
| 2. During periods of population growth, the average
| survivorship has to be higher.
|
| 3. The percentage surviving depends on how many were born per
| family to begin with. I didn't state a percentage, I said
| _two_. Okay, fine 2.4 or whatever, but not a fraction, that
| "depends" on too many variables.
|
| > For the majority of human history the childhood mortality
| rate has hovered around 50% not 80%.
|
| _RECORDED_ history, which is a short blip in our
| evolutionary history as a species. I said _megayears_ ,
| a.k.a.: millions of years, for most of which we have scant
| evidence. Extrapolating from our wild animal cousins and just
| observing how these "uncontacted" tribes live, it's pretty
| obvious that for 99% of the time we could be called human, we
| had five+ kids per couple, and ten+ wasn't uncommon... of
| which two-point-something survived.
|
| That's just the way it is, for essentially all species. It
| _has to be_ , otherwise populations would _explode_ in
| numbers until it 's standing room only for the entire surface
| planet.
|
| PS: Next time you watch some BBC documentary about some
| species giving birth to hundreds of offspring, well... now
| you know. They didn't make it. Certainly, _statistically_ ,
| most of them must not have, because if they could and did,
| then that species would have their population numbers grow
| astronomically fast!
|
| PPS: You hand-waved away a 50% loss rate as if it's a detail.
| That in no way undermines my argument that if you have an
| only child, or even two or three, that losing _half of them_
| is not considered acceptable parenting in this day and age.
| There is _absolutely no way_ anyone I know would trade _half
| of their children_ so that they can have a wild, carefree,
| and unsupervised childhood like "nature intended"!
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| > That's just the way it is, for essentially all species.
| It has to be, otherwise populations would explode in
| numbers until it's standing room only for the entire
| surface planet.
|
| Human population has been increasing for at least thousands
| of years. Our best estimates put the human population 30000
| years ago to about 8 million people, at about 1 ad the
| population is estimated at about 200 million people, in the
| 17 hundreds the population is estimated at about 600
| million.
|
| That is not a stable population, that's a growing
| population. You also have to take into account pandemics,
| widespread violence, etc. The black plague killed 1/3 of
| the population of Europe, you can be pretty sure that the
| reproduction rate was above 2 both before and after the
| pandemic. Millions of people died when Europeans colonized
| the Americas again the population growth rate would have to
| be much larger after the event for the population to bounce
| back.
|
| Additionally adult mortality before procreation does not
| factor in child rearing behavior. Because why would it?
|
| And lastly all that is pretty much irrelevant especially
| the habits of prehistoric people, because the change in how
| Americans raise their children happened in the last 20
| years. Not in the 1900s when child mortality went way down.
|
| The thing that changed between the 80s and now was not the
| acceptability of losing children, what changed was how
| Americans in particular assess risk, the Satanic Panic of
| the 80s, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in 2007, the
| revelation of how widespread childhood sexual abuse is
| (before the 90s it was estimated at about 1% of the
| population turns out it's over 16%), all of these factors
| made the American public incredibly afraid about their
| children safety.
|
| It's not that people in the 70s and 60s were okay with harm
| coming to their children it's that they didn't believe harm
| would come to their children when they were with other
| children alone running around. Which by the way was mostly
| a correct assessment.
|
| In Japan the fertility rate is 1.2 per woman and yet 6 and
| 7 year olds got to school on their own. Because the culture
| there believes that is a safe practice, mostly because it
| is.
|
| Go watch Old Enough, obviously it's a television show
| exaggerated and not how life really works in Japan, the
| production team and the parents are essentially watching
| over the children, but it clearly demonstrates that the
| culture there expects children to roam the cities safely.
|
| Oh and by the way on average preindustrial families had 5
| to 7 children not 10 so 50% survival rate is 2.5 to 3.5.
| Which taking into account occasional widespread population
| collapses fits much better with the observed long term
| growth.
| luxurytent wrote:
| I'm trying to raise confident, independent kids. It is
| exceptionally more difficult to allow them to play outside on
| their own, walk to the grocery store, etc, for mainly two
| reasons:
|
| 1. There are no other kids outside. We live in a neighbourhood
| with many young families, at all age ranges (littles to teen). We
| rarely see kids outside, and if we do, it's mainly kids walking
| with their parents somewhere (eg to the local grocery store)
|
| This is a walkable neighbourhood 5km from city centre of a city
| of 500,000. The same applies to other neighbourhoods even closer
| to the city, those known as "family friendly". I do runs through
| these neighbourhoods and they are ghost towns.
|
| When my kid has friends over, they can run to the park up the
| street (600m) and play together. I'm not worried, as they are
| together. Sometimes other kids will show up and join them. I
| think it's a sign that kids are inside, not sure what to do: they
| crave play with others their age.
|
| 2. Large, speeding vehicles.
|
| We live in an area where we can walk to a few smaller grocers and
| restaurants, which is fantastic. My kids only need to cross a
| local retail strip to get to most of these. The crossing is two
| car lengths, and I feel pretty good about this. There are bike
| lanes which act as a buffer to the sidewalk as well and vehicles
| can't travel fast.
|
| Now if my kid wants to go to their friends house? They have to
| cross two arterials. These are four lane roads with fast moving
| traffic, uncontrolled signals, lots of road rage, fast cuts on
| corners, etc.
|
| My kids are gaining confidence and the skills in navigating these
| tough roads, but I struggle with the transition to full
| independence for this particular area. That one mistake can end
| it all.
|
| My kids are 9 and 5, for reference. The five year old is still
| attached to me, but the oldest is beginning to crave more
| independence.
| casey2 wrote:
| >Now if my kid wants to go to their friends house? They have to
| cross two arterials. These are four lane roads with fast moving
| traffic, uncontrolled signals, lots of road rage, fast cuts on
| corners, etc.
|
| Well why did you choose to live there if you wanted to raise
| independent kids. Baffles the mind.
| luxurytent wrote:
| Narrow minded response. Perhaps it was cost, availability of
| housing?
|
| The neighbourhood I speak of is objectively quite walkable
| (per my other points). It's just the shape of the city I live
| in: It contains a number of these arterials which glue the
| city (for vehicles) together. Less so for humans.
| wffurr wrote:
| Good luck finding a North American city without roads like
| that. Our cities are terrible and laid out for cars not
| people.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| It's cars. It was always cars.
| api wrote:
| Plenty of cars in the 90s and we played outside all day.
|
| The biggest change since then is two things.
|
| One is that there's way more to do inside now, mostly games and
| shows.
|
| The second is that baseless kidnapping panics convinced society
| that children can never be unattended. The main vector was
| daytime TV and now true crime podcasts. The reality is that
| kidnapping is statistically extremely rare and more than 95% of
| all child sexual or other abuse is perpetrated by someone the
| child knows. Most kidnappings are also by someone the child
| knows.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| While I mostly agree with you, cars then and cars now in the
| US are not the same.
|
| The typical car back then was a 5 door sedan, think ford
| crown, Chevrolet lumina, etc. These days almost everyone is
| driving pretty much a light truck.
| mlrtime wrote:
| I'll give you a hint about statistics... there will always
| be a #1 killer of children. Today it's car accidents, 100
| years ago it was disease. After disease it was other
| accidents, and 100 years from now it will be something
| else.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| Listen I agree with both you and the poster I replied to.
| What I am saying is that the risk from cars really did
| increase. Not that it's the only reason that the change
| happened.
| bean469 wrote:
| Totally unrelated, but awesome username!
| Earw0rm wrote:
| We did, but some kids got killed or badly injured as a
| result. It was pretty common where I live.
|
| And while speeds are a bit lower now, the median driver
| attitude and aggression level seems to be a lot worse. I'm
| not sure whether that's because of phone distractions, or
| they're stressed out by exploitative employers, or have
| cooked their brains online, or some demographic change in who
| does the most driving, but when I'm on foot, being driven AT
| is not an uncommon experience at all.
| peebeebee wrote:
| I'm Belgium it was Dutroux. It changed everything and is a
| cross generational trauma that still has its effects.
| kitd wrote:
| One thing not mentioned is the effect of Covid and lockdowns.
|
| On the one hand, my youngest was just getting into gaming with
| friends when the first lockdown started. I will be forever
| grateful that he did as his social life hardly seemed to suffer
| and he just carried on playing online, shouting and yelling with
| them just as much as if he was outside at a playground.
|
| My teenage daughters had a much harder time of it though, as
| neither were into gaming and lost a lot of treasured contact with
| friends. Both suffered poor exam results as a result and have
| struggled to stay in touch with friends since.
|
| The other aspect is those babies and toddlers who grew up in
| lockdown with no peer interaction at all. AIUI, they are still
| having a terrible time adjusting to school and normal social
| interaction.
| arcade79 wrote:
| I don't know how folks did it elsewhere, or what the rules was.
|
| Here, a friend and I created ourselves a "bubble". My family
| and his family hanged out with each other. My kid was playing
| with his kid. We went on long forest walks, with the kids, and
| they could roam and play.
|
| We didn't have contacts with lots of others, and if we did, we
| stayed away from each other for ~4 days or so, until we shared
| the same social bubble again.
|
| Worked wonderfully well.
| duderific wrote:
| As another data point, my son was 5 when the lockdowns hit and
| missed the end of his kindergarten year and the entirety of
| first grade. He's doing fine.
|
| My daughter was 18 months and went back to preschool at age
| three. She's also doing fine.
|
| In fact I don't know any of their peer group who I would
| consider to be "having a terrible time adjusting to school and
| normal social interaction" which could be directly tied to
| Covid. There were some kids who had already been identified as
| having developmental challenges, and that hasn't changed.
| apexalpha wrote:
| While I understand the general sentiment I think grouping kids in
| a cohort from 8 till 12 is a very wide cohort.
|
| The statistics presented have very different implications whether
| the kid is 12 or 8, I think.
|
| That said, as a Dutch parent we tend to let our children grow up
| _relatively_ unsupervised. At least many foreign parents are a
| bit startled at first.
|
| This article helps me understand them better.
| wffurr wrote:
| 3rd grade, the year kids start at 8 and turn 9 during, is when
| our city schools will allow them to self dismiss. 8 seems like
| a reasonable benchmark age to start with.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The traditional US thing is to charge parents with negligence for
| letting their kids walk to the store if someone else kills them
| while they cross the road
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/parents-are-charged-son-...
|
| I live in San Francisco, about a block from when a speeding
| driver killed a little girl by driving around the outside of a
| car that was waiting for a family to cross the road. The family
| had the light, yes. The killer will attend a driver's safety
| course and do some community service.
|
| In general, in this city there are people who call themselves
| "natives" who promote the idea that children should live highly
| constrained lives. Others, who call themselves "progressive
| activists" have fought for the rights of pedophiles to be
| released early. Unsurprisingly, often such pedophile immediately
| assault people days within release.
|
| Because of the asymmetry in outcome, those with children slowly
| cede ground to those without by simply leaving. This feedback
| loop accelerates until little enclaves start forming. Inside SF
| this is the Mission Bay / Mission Rock area where today I saw a
| gaggle of unaccompanied 10-12 year olds. This isn't a common
| sight elsewhere in the city where the "natives" and "progressive
| activists" have sway.
|
| For our part, we have a plan to buy some undeveloped land where
| we can reliably camp. The current constraints are that
| maintenance of this in fire-prone California isn't
| straightforward. There are minimum standards for defensible space
| and so on that regulate newer purchases that often require a
| great deal of time and effort to meet. I'll find a way, however.
| jkl12 wrote:
| What an eye-opening article. I fully agree with the fact that the
| kids become more and more constrained and having a hard time
| seeking their freedom and independence.
|
| But perhaps not so everywhere in the world... We are in the
| middle of Europe and specifically moved to a smaller town outside
| the big city when our kids were born. We live in a kid-rich
| neighborhood with only quiet side-streets/walkways and amble play
| opportunities in a 300 m radius around the house. Our kids roamed
| the neighborhood playgrounds already at a young age with large
| groups of their friends. And when primary school started (age
| 6-7), we were told, that it is recommended for the kids to walk
| without adults to school after the first two months of settling
| in. Also, being in boyscouts is an amazing experience for the
| kids. Our little one participated in a first camp at age 6 for a
| whole week. I am pretty confident they have/had their "forests"
| to roam. The older one now games a lot on the computer with a
| group of friends. The younger one is almost permanently in video
| calls with friends when not outside the house. Reading about
| private digital spaces with peer groups makes a lot of sense
| now...
|
| I admit that our situation is pretty ideal. And it cannot be
| generalized, not even for our country or even our region. But we
| did actively seek an environment, where our kids could grow up
| this way and were incredible lucky to find one.
| mcv wrote:
| > Why do our children spend more time in Fortnite than forests?
| Usually, we blame the change on tech companies. They make their
| platforms as addicting as possible, and the youth simply can't
| resist -- once a toddler locks eyes with an iPad, game over.
|
| > I want to suggest an alternative: digital space is the only
| place left where children can grow up without us
|
| I still think it's the addiction of digital media. I have tried
| to get my kids to play outside, to visit their friends, etc. They
| refuse, because they're addicted to the screen. In fact, friends
| with stricter limits on screen use are more likely to come here
| looking for my son to play. Outside, or, if they can, on a screen
| here.
|
| I'm fairly sure the kids from the article can also be made
| addicted to digital media if you start them young. Let's not, and
| let's give our kids stricter limits.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| While the point is valid. I believe the experience described is
| mostly American not "western".
|
| And I find the anti-modernity sentiment embedded in the
| fascination with hunter-gatherer cultures obnoxious.
|
| Is the author aware that child mortality in hunter-gather
| cultures is like 50%?
|
| Not that its correlated with childhood independence, we used to
| have plenty of independence when I grew up in the 90s and the
| mortality rate was about the same as it is now. But the point is
| kids need independence, not woods nor machetes. You can be
| independent in the park, in the streets, the undeveloped lots,
| the empty parking lots, your friends basement, and their yard
| when their parents are away.
| braza wrote:
| > There's no point in whining about the impulses endowed to them
| by several hundred thousand years of evolution. Don't hate the
| player; hate the game. And if you really hate the game, make a
| better one.
|
| I have contact with kids from 3 different places, 2 with high
| independent mobility and 1 with low independent mobility, and as
| much I like to agree that kids needs to be free, there's an
| important parental argument that needs to be talked about that is
| risk vs reward function if the kids get hurt.
|
| In places with high mobility (at least 2 of them in the chart)
| there's some state support in terms of children's sick leave if
| something happens, plus work protections if you need to be absent
| for more than 6 weeks, and the education system has mechanisms to
| not let this kid be left behind (for example, if a kid breaks
| his/her legs).
|
| In those places with low independence, I talk with some parents,
| and all of them are scared of the possibility of something
| permanent happens or something that can demand continuous support
| during working time; in those cases I can see why they play safe.
|
| In the other hand, another second-order effect is that in those
| places with low independency, one thing that I noticed is that
| the motor coordination takes way more time to develop, and it
| cascades down for instance during sports activities (of the lack
| of), physical development and so on.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Wait, so you're saying the major factor in the parents decision
| making on letting kids run free is not if they'll get hurt or
| not, its if they get hurt enough to miss school and not being
| able to take off work?
|
| Sounds very situational.
| arcade79 wrote:
| Scary statistics from the US. Here's some anecdotal data from
| Norway (my daughter being the data, she's 11):
|
| - Walked in a different aisle at a store. My daughter started
| going to the store alone from she was about 7.
|
| - Talked with neighbours without parent. Uhm. That's just weird.
| I'm assume she was around 4? That's when we moved here..
|
| - Made plans with friends, yeah, from she was around 5/6 or
| thereabouts.
|
| - Walked/biked w/o parent: From 6/7, to/from school, and to
| friends.
|
| - Built a structure outside: She's been part of building various
| structures in scouts.
|
| - Sharp knife: Since she was about 6 or 7.
|
| And now I realize I need to wag my hands a bit back and forth
| with all the 6-7 stuff.
|
| Anyhow; one of the best things we did was ensuring she joined the
| scouts. Creates incredibly independent kids. I've seen threads on
| reddit where people are wondering if it's OK to leave the 9 year
| old at home alone for 30 minutes, and I'm wondering what kind of
| lunacy that is. My daughter has been capable of walking / biking
| home from school since she was 6 or 7, and proceed to make her
| own afternoon snack before we arrive home from work. She's been
| baking since she was 8. Making toasts, omelets and whatnot since
| the same age. Scouts taught her how to use a gas burner outside
| when she was about 8 or 9.
|
| I mean; come on.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There's been a destruction of the commons in general, and no
| place where people are allowed to loiter outdoors without falling
| under suspicion or actually being arrested. Children are also
| people. When I was a child, I hung out in the streets _all day._
|
| The trapping of children was just the prelude. Adults are also
| trapped at home, especially when they don't have any money to
| spend. Even if they do have money, there are no places they can
| go where they are expected to interact with strangers. The number
| of adult virgins has gotten absurdly high.
|
| We have a tool that we could use to fight that: adult education.
| We have state colleges that we could be trying to attract adults
| to, rather than acting like people are done learning at 22.
| Chicago had/had a network of "Field Houses" that are community
| centers associated with parks where you could teach a class, or
| have a local group meeting, etc.
|
| Instead, people are isolated and atomized into perfect little
| consumers who can't share things and can't organize politically
| except through an online petition encouraged by a "social
| network."
| graemep wrote:
| The article only discusses the west and hunter gatherer
| societies. Most of the world is neither. That is a big omission
| because it avoids the comparison with other developed and
| urbanised societies.
| Weryj wrote:
| As an ex-child. The best years I remember are with a small group
| of kids who would wander all over the suburb playing at different
| parks, or whatever crazy idea someone came up with, finding bee
| hives, climbing trees or exploring past the boundary of what we
| always stayed inside of. They were only a few years, but a major
| highlight.
|
| (Australian suburbs ~2004)
| loughnane wrote:
| > Consider some statistics on the American childhood, drawn from
| children aged 8-12: 62% have not walked/biked somewhere (a store,
| park, school) without an adult
|
| At least in the US, my guess for the cause of this is goes
| something like:
|
| 1. Housing is expensive.
|
| 2. People move to where housing is cheap (ie plenty of land, easy
| to build). In the last few decades that's more often than not
| been in the south.
|
| 3. Big population changes in those areas demand more schools.
|
| 4. Big school is built on the edge of town, because that's where
| the land is and one school has better economies of scale than
| multiple neighborhood schools
|
| 5. No one lives close to the school anymore, so everyone has to
| drive.
|
| Throw in the sprawl that often accompanies new development in
| areas with wide open land and its easy to see how we end up here.
|
| I live in Brookline, MA (in the North, next to Boston) and it's
| very much a walk-to-school town. The structural reason for that
| is our schools are in the neighborhoods, have been around for a
| long time, and there's nowhere "on the edge of town" to build a
| new one. Our town has financial pressures like everyone else and
| I few government's are able to resist the temptation of cost
| savings---we just don't have the option to build that way. Thank
| goodness.
| slumberlust wrote:
| Inner city, especially in the oldest and most established, is
| an outlier experience. My friends on Melrose drive to their
| schools, and here in Southern NH it's driving or buses.
|
| The main reason I wouldn't let our gradeschooler walk/ride .5
| miles to school is a lack of consistent sidewalks and drivers
| who are constantly distracted and/or road raged.
| uahajakka wrote:
| I don't say this for downvotes, but much of the west is no longer
| white. Diversity creates low trust society, and the changes in
| children playing are downstream of that.
|
| I grew up in a nearly all white suburban neighborhood. I ran
| around with a gaggle of kids and we had pretty much free rein.
| When I was about 12, my father took me to a nearly all black
| theme park and I was sexually assaulted the only time in my life.
| When low income housing was built in our neighborhood, I soon
| learned I had to lock my car door at night after it was broken
| into. I'd gone years before that without locking my door.
|
| I've since started a family in the whitest area I could find
| (lower income, but it's still one of the safest areas in our
| state) and we don't lock our doors. I want to give my kids the
| childhood I had, and this seems like the best way to do it.
|
| I don't say this to garner downvotes. I know it's a taboo topic,
| but it's also my lived experience and I believe is an important
| aspect of this issue.
| clove wrote:
| What should families with mixed-race children do, then?
| casey2 wrote:
| Americans think they are free. In reality they are free to do a
| very limited subset of basic necessity and socialization tasks.
| You can drive your tank to the the local shopping center, maybe a
| shooting range. And you wonder why people freak out when you try
| to take away their guns and trucks.
|
| You are free to travel to some business that has taken care of
| all the legal requirements for you. Some freedom. You aren't even
| free to connect some fiber to "your" house you only have the
| freedom to choose which product to buy and maybe if you are one
| of the lucky few which product to sell (not fiber though that's a
| state funded monopoly)
| Gazoche wrote:
| Pretty insightful article, it resonates with what I remember of
| my experience as a kid.
|
| But while I believe the general trends outlined here, it's
| important to remember that "the world" != "the West" != "the US",
| and even within a single country, the situation can be vastly
| different from one place to another, one socio-economic stratum
| to another, or even one family to another.
|
| I also think kids escaping to digital places is not a very recent
| phenomenon, and has been happening for at least a generation.
| It's just that the platforms have changed. Back in my days, that
| place was Facebook, and we had entire digital lives there that
| our parents knew little about. And it's no coincidence that we
| started migrating elsewhere at the time when the adults started
| joining as well (though the general enshitification of the
| platform certainly didn't help either).
| Yhippa wrote:
| When I let my kids have freedom in the various stores we go into,
| I get nearly instant looks of disgust from people. It's like
| everybody has forgotten what it's like to be a kid and why that
| kind of independence is necessary. Socially it's verboten.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| When I grew up, in the late 80s/early 90s, we'd be outside like
| 90% of the time. This was in rural northern Europe, and from my
| memories, parents there just used to send their kids out. The few
| times we were allowed to be inside, we really had to ask nice.
|
| Outside activities included playing soccer, biking around,
| exploring places, building stuff.
|
| It is such a huge contrast to my peers / people my age are
| raising their kids now. Some of the parents are basically
| hovering over their kids from 7 in the morning to 9 in the
| evening. It's non-stop.
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