I don't have any kids, so I don't really feel comfortable telling folks how to raise theirs.
But I will tell you my perspective.
As someone who grew up in the "be back home in time for supper" 1970s, today's world seems completely foreign. When I started kindergarten, Mom walked me to school on the first day so that I'd know the route. And after that I walked to school on my own until I learned to ride a bike.
I rode to junior high, where there was parking for hundreds of bikes. Recently I drove by that school, and the bike racks were gone. This whole concept of waiting in traffic to pick up or drop off your kid wasn't even a thing.
And I'm so supremely grateful that I was raised that way. I'm absolutely certain that early autonomy paid off later in life in countless ways.
I'd encourage you, if you're raising kids, to consider the upsides of so-called "free range". Or, as we called it in the 70s, "being a regular kid".
> Recently I drove by that school, and the bike racks were gone.
This is the thing: the bike racks are gone because so are the kids walking/biking to school. If you let your kid do it, they'll be the only one. I walked to school in the 80s and there were lots of kids in my neighborhood walking to school at the same time. That's a very different experience. I also lived in a neighborhood that was laid out in the early 1900s. How many more kids are in car-centric culs-de-sac today? Some of these streets don't even have sidewalks. They're not even safe for adults to walk on.
You can't combat this enormous societal change by making an individual effort to let your kids do more by themselves. Their physical and social environment is very different from what it was like when kids did that.
I guess it depends on what part of the 1900s... I grew up (also in the 70s&80s) as a "latchkey" in an area that was built in the 50s and 60s and had the same experience of walking and riding to school. This seems like a "reality TV" phenomena of the last 25 years. Certainly, there are suburban deserts that are completely unwalkable, but most housing is not like that (certainly not "affordable" housing) simply because it was built earlier. Of course this is almost entirely dependent on where you live.
High growth Tech areas like Seattle, San Jose, Austin, Phoenix are ~10x bigger than they were ~40 years ago. So those are much more likely to have this low density housing than Boston, SF, NYC.
What I find weird is that even completely walkable schools/neighborhoods have parents that almost all drive kids to school every day. Parents legitimately worry about being labeled as endangering their kids, if they don't drive them. Interestingly for me this is more acute for immigrant families, who are worried about fitting in, than local families who will tell the vice principal to "shove it" when warned about the dangers of walking to school.
Does the remark about immigrants make sense? The typical immigrant can't be more concerned about fitting in that the typical native. Because the typical native's behavior determines what "fitting in" means.
There is a saying in Ireland called "More Irish than the Irish" and refers to immigrants and non-locals who take up all of the local culture to extreme (compared to the average) levels.
Immigrants are statistically the most law abiding and often times, even conservative, members of a a community and it probably is one measure of long-term survival (esp. in the U.S. while living under the microscope of a work visa) so they need to go to great lengths to fit in and avoid even the appearance of impropriety - something the natives (and in all likelihood their children, if raised there) would take for granted. Meanwhile local citizens gather on the street corner protesting mask wearing or whatever nonsense they feel like.
Similarly, the Jewish Talmud considers "Ba'alei Teshuva" — Jews who either were born not-religious and became religious later, or who were born religious, left the community, and later returned — to be generally more "righteous," aka, rule-following, than people who simply grew up following the rules of the religion. Part of the explanation given in the Talmud is that Ba'alei Teshuva made a concrete choice to follow the religion's rules, whereas someone who was raised in that environment and never left is just doing what they feel is natural.
Outsiders (after a few years) are more aware of in-group rules since they don't feel natural, and for those there by choice — whether it be immigrants to a different country, or the newly-religious — presumably they're there because they want to be a part of the group, rather than taking it for granted. So they're often both hyper-aware of the rules, and place a higher value on them.
Not true in Western Europe.
They are heavily overrepresented in crime statistics and their own communities have grown big enough that there’s no need anymore to try to fit in.
> They are heavily overrepresented in crime statistics
Judging from my own anecdotal experiences as someone who "doesn't look like a German", i'm willing to take a wild guess why: Because everything they do is under a microscope.
I got my bags searched, because i "walked suspiciously through the isles" in a store (woman thought i'm a foreigner) and i got a false accusation by a police officer who said he "knew people like me".
Also the German BKA crime statistic, as an example, shows reported crimes. It doesn't exactly show how many where actually convicted. So i guess i'm also somewhere in the stats from a few years ago.
Research shows that even corrected for what you’re describing the numbers still show an overrepresentation compared to their % of the population. Just an example, they were 63 % of prisoners in The Netherlands a couple years ago. Similar numbers in other Western European countries.
What follows is a generalisation from the Australian experience (my experience - I'm a child of first gen migrants i.e. a 2nd generation Australian). For the first generation and some of the second generation this is true. Migrants often don't know the language, and don't have pre-existing connections in the community, so they tend to cluster in areas where there are more people like them (often cheaper places to live). Working, they are more likely to work for other migrants, prolonging the "bubble" and deferring the need to integrate. This generation tends to live productive if somewhat fearful lives - "look at those locals with their degenerate customs!", "They don't like us!", "Be careful! Don't trust them! They'll take advantage!". These attitudes are of course almost exact mirrors of what the locals thing about the migrants. Attitudes primarily born of ignorance and lack of first-hand experience with the "other".
The second generation - children of first gen migrants - go to school, the local language is the one they're more proficient with. Perhaps its true that this generation feels the weight of anti-immigrant feeling more than any other. Mainly because inside, they don't feel that different. They grew up here, went to school here, understand the local culture. They straddle a cultural divide. They bear the weight of anti-immigrant feeling as well as the parental expectations to stay within their original cultural norms. This is rarely achievable. This generation often achieves well due to the over-emphasis on "Get an education! We never had the chance! You have opportunity! Don't squander it!" They feel the burden to do better than their folks very acutely. For those that can't achieve academically, or in business, or in sport - they are easy prey for ethnically aligned gangs. They can "retreat" into their origin culture and use anti-immigrant sentiment to justify bad behaviour.
By the third generation (e.g. my kids), a lot of the anti-immigrant feeling has moved on... to the new groups of migrants. My parents came from Southern Europe to Australia in the 60s. They were the "wogs" and "dagos" of the era. I remember being told in primary school to "go back where you came from!", which confused the hell out of me because I was born in Australia. Now, people from my ethnic origins are considered part of the wallpaper here. No one thinks of them as anything other than Australian (ok, maybe a handful of hardcore racists). In the 70s, the southern Europeans were replaced as the anti-immigrant bogeyman by the Vietnamese. Then the Lebanese. Then the Somalis. Then the Syrians. With each wave, the crime wave moves to a new group. Within a generation (or at most 2), any such spikes have dissipated.
As a fellow aussie with caucasian lineage from 1800's I grew up a few generations on the "already settled" side of this equation. I'd like to think I'm not racist but I struggle with being a product of my environment in a competitive world too. Your insight is appreciated.
The only other weird thing is how immigrants can pick on each other as much as any racist aussie seems to. I would have thought having gone through it would make people more sensitive to flinging that crap. But I guess the "product of environment + competitive social pressures" gets to us all.
Haha indeed! Plenty of racist immigrants, more so among 2nd/3rd generation (then it all becomes a bit of a blur). It still churns my stomach to hear adult children of migrants - some of my peers, who themselves have done quite well - making disparaging comments about newcomers e.g. "they live on top of each other!", "they don't make an effort to assimilate!" etc - forgetting that they are describing the stories of our parents and grandparents (many of whom can still barely speak English). People have short memories and little empathy for "others"/"strangers" I guess.
I think the frustration of "competitive social pressures" combined with a desire for "simple solutions" is an achilles heel that gets ruthlessly exploited by fear mongers and outrage merchants, who use racist dog whistles to translate the resulting fear/anger into political capital. It appeals to the reptilian/emotive parts of our brain, and is very, very hard to shift via appeals to reason.(Don't know about you, but I can't wait for this election to be over just so I don't have to see another UAP billboard or cop another UAP robocall).
That second paragraph resonates. Particularly "simple solutions". To some degree I wonder if the modern pace of change is a destablising force in peoples lives too, which is why they want simple solutions.
With UAP, irksome as they are, I take consolation knowing the money they spent to reach me is money wasted and not spent reaching someone else. Somewhat spiteful I guess, and not healthy but is what it is.
> Not true in Western Europe. They are heavily overrepresented in crime statistics and their own communities have grown big enough that there’s no need anymore to try to fit in.
you can't just say something like that without any supporting facts.
> who take up all of the local culture to extreme (compared to the average) levels.
What does this mean? My dumb brain goes straight to “even more alcoholism and fighting” but that might just be on account of being Irish diaspora myself.
The best example I heard from a friend who was a recent immigrant from India.
He had quite a few friends who were the children of immigrants who arrived from India a generation earlier.
When my friend’s parents visited (from India where they still lived) they were shocked when these 2nd generation American-India kids greeted them in a super formal way that had disappeared in India decades ago.
Basically the immigrants to the US held onto old customs more strongly than the ones who never left India. And they passed that onto their kids. So they were “more Indian than people from India”.
The "more Irish than the Irish themselves" phrase originated as a description of mediaeval Irish history. Norman-ruled England conquered Ireland, and introduced Anglo-Norman settlers – Irish society became divided into two social castes, an English/French-speaking ruling caste and a subordinated caste of indigenous Irish-speakers. (This was prior to the Protestant Reformation, so everyone involved was Catholic – indeed, the English monarchy's conquest of Ireland was approved by the Pope.) The English became concerned that, after a few generations, the Anglo-Norman upper caste began to speak Irish and intermarry with the native Irish-speakers – they saw (quite accurately) that this would lead to weakening of English rule and eventual demand for independence. "more Irish than the Irish themselves" was really meant as a somewhat hyperbolic/ironic reference to this process of cultural assimilation. The English responded with anti-Irish legislation, prohibiting the speaking of Irish, intermarriage between English-speakers and Irish-speakers, and formally subordinating the theoretically independent Irish Parliament to that of England – however, the legislation largely failed to be enforced, the blurring of the boundaries between the native Irish and the Anglo-Norman newcomers continued, and English rule became (in much of the country, especially the parts furthest from Dublin) more theory than fact, as local lords found they could basically ignore the edicts of the English administration in Dublin and do whatever they liked.
This is arguably the earliest historical roots of the Northern Ireland conflict, although with various other layers added on top – the introduction of a religious dimension to what was originally a purely cultural/ethnic/linguistic/political conflict due to the Protestant Reformation; further waves of settlement from Britain; the Irish theatre of the English Civil War and the later Jacobite-Williamite War in which many Irish (especially, but not exclusively, Catholics and Irish-speakers) supported the deposed King James II against the regime of William of Orange.
I don't know how much sense the phrase has in the context of immigrants to contemporary Ireland. I suppose some users of it must have found some way to connect it to contemporary affairs–probably there is some immigrant somewhere who is obsessed with teaching their children to speak Irish when the majority of Irish people don't make much of an effort to do so themselves–but I think some use of it may also be motivated by its long history and memorable phrasing rather than genuine contemporary applicability.
There are many cases of immigrants saving the life of small children in trouble. Men are brain-wired to protect and rescue any children in distress. The problem is that we slowly assumed that other people is dangerous or insane by default just by a few outliers and just to be sold things.
And that when you progressively restrict what people can do in a society, or everybody feels watched and judged 24/7, at some point you will start to encourage perverted conducts of escape.
If you live downtown you are unlikely to have a grade school in your area from what I can see of any American cities. Families with school aged children don’t tend to live in the downtowns. Older suburbs are much more walkable in terms of kids walking to school with sidewalks and fewer vehicles than an urban center.
I grew up in a fairly large and fairly dense (by suburb standards) suburban city of Boston and it was quite walkable as a child (and also had the benefit of having a few MBTA stops). I live in the middle of downtown Boston now and while I find it fantastic as a somewhat immature adult, I wouldn't say it's especially child-friendly.
That being said, I have seen many other suburbs (looking at you, various places in Connecticut) that don't even have sidewalks. That cannot be good for anyone. And Boston certainly has more child-friendly neighborhoods as well.
You can ask your DOT to close the street in front of the school, but, at least where I live, even if they are supportive it is likely that your child will be out of school before something actually happens. Increasing the density of an area also takes years or even decades.
Heh, my neighborhood doesn't have sidewalks and it's very safe to walk in because _everybody_ walks in the middle of the street. Can be frustrating when you drive through sometimes, but I'm always mindful of the great benefit this has. Everyone in the neighborhood sees and expects people (and kids) "playing in traffic", so traffic is relatively quite calm. I've developed a bit of the view that sidewalks turn neighborhood streets into freeways. I can imagine many scenarios where this system wouldn't work as well, but in a SFH residential neighborhood without much in the way of through traffic, it works pretty well.
Yeah. In residential areas you shouldn't need sidewalks, but it requires that the street is designed for it. It must be narrow, trees along the street or other street furniture helps make it appear even narrower than it is. Naturally drivers will slow down.
In Germany we have the concept of a "Spielstraße" (translation: Playing Street?), where walking speed is the max. accepted driving speed and playing kids have the priority in everyway. I grew up in one, it was great!
I assume you mean they don't know enough yet? You can improve their state so that crossing the street is quite safe. What do they need to know to avoid being a pedestrian fatality? Here are the top three things.[0]
1. Don't walk under the influence.
2. Don't walk at night.
3. Only cross at an intersection.
I’m going to assume you misinterpreted the GP. I read “their current state” as referring to the roads, not to the kids. For example: lack of sidewalks, roads with high speed limits, distracted drivers on phones, lack of other children walking.
++ A lot of people in this thread either live in wonderfully walkable places or have simply never actually tried. Y'all, Google Maps giving you walking directions is not the same thing as walkable lol.
The local high school where I grew up was not exactly walkable. There were multiple uncontrolled crossings (with speed limits over 30mph) and missing sidewalks all over the place that force you to walk on the shoulder/in the gutter.
That's not particularly relevant to this discussion because walking under the influence is not a major contributor when children are hit or killed by drivers.
Children also have different risk factors, for example many trucks and SUV drivers have poor visibility and cannot see sufficiently short road users that are close to the front of the vehicle, for example when stopped at a stop sign or traffic light.
Worse yet, most cars now are lifted high enough to where the block line-of-sight for pedestrians and cyclists (and even people in reasonably sized sedans and compact cars) from being able to see oncoming traffic from an intersection when they’re parked on a corner.
This is pretty much it. I'm a parent now, but I recall my parents telling me to walk to get to appointments and activities when I was in school back in the 90s and 00s. I never did, because it was 5+ miles through car centric roads.
In the city, I see kids walking places on their own. Most places they would go are within a quarter to half mile, all of the schools that they could go to from age 3-18 are within a third of a mile.
I mostly agree. The majority of neighborhoods in the US are designed to support enormous vehicles driving as fast as they can and are therefore an unnecessarily hostile environment for everyone else. I would not choose to risk my children walking on their own just to make a point or "be the change" in a place like that.
However you can choose where to live. there are still plenty of walkable neighborhoods in cities, suburbs, small towns, etc. The issue is that you will have to find them and then you will have to pay more for the privilege of living there.
With respect to finding them, we used national commuting mode share and various websites to pick a handful of regions that had a reputation for walkability, spent a bit of time on Google Maps, called the schools to inquire about their mode share (e.g. percent of children who walk/bike minus the percent driven by parents), chatted with the folks who run the state's Safe Routes to School program, and rented an apartment while we spent a couple months biking around the candidate neighborhoods/towns, especially during rush hour.
With respect to cost we were priced out of the really walkable areas but were able to find something where many kids walk or bike to school on their own in our price range. Based on price premium for walkable areas it seems that a lot of home buyers prioritize the same things we do but not a lot of new neighborhoods are built to prioritize walking. It felt like there were a lot of people competing for a relatively fixed pool of (typically old) neighborhoods.
I think it's also a result of car ownership. It wasn't until the 1980s that multi-car households started being really ubiquitous.
I imagine people slowly started driving their kids to school because they could, which led to other people driving their kids to school because walking/biking was unsafe due to all cars on the road.
My childhood in the 90s kinda sucked by comparison because I was in small neighborhood with no kids my age locked in by a busy road that was too unsafe for me too cross on my own.
To add to that - the way we do sports and extracurricular activities is absolutely mind blowingly different now, too.
Back in my day, neighborhood kids played baseball and football and basketball together as they could. Now everything is structured and scheduled. There are travel teams for kindergartners. There is a coaching structure for 5 year olds. Kids play for competition, winning, and opportunity, not just for fun.
Maybe this is just me being old, but it's very depressing. It adds a layer of pressure to childrens' lives that just doesn't need to exist. Parents complain about it, I can't imagine it's healthy for kids, but it still exists.
Getting the kids into structured, college-application-fodder activities early enough, so that the kids can get into Stanford and get a job that pays enough so they can repeat the cycle of abuse, err, pattern of success with their kids.
> Getting the kids into structured, college-application-fodder activities early enough, so that the kids can get into Stanford and get a job that pays enough so they can repeat the cycle of abuse, err, pattern of success with their kids.
Those of us who grew up poor are eager to make sure our kids are on a path for success.
Working hard at the rat race sucks, but it sucks a lot less than the alternative.
There are exceptions, though. I wound up being a track and field coach for kids aged 6-9 in the local athletic union.
Much to my surprise and delight, the culture from the national association and down is that kids this young will NOT compete in the traditional sense - sure, they may join local games, but the results will not be published in ranked order, and everybody gets a medal.
During training, coaches are encouraged to focus on the competition with oneself - 'Good, you long jumped 3" longer than you've ever done before!' Rather than 'Wow, Anna jumped longer than everybody else!'
It can get serious later on. When they're kids, let them be kids and have fun.
(This, though, is in egalitarian to a tee Scandinavia)
Isn't competition with oneself also detrimental at that age? It puts them under the pressure of constant improvement from their previous best. Shouldn't the process be just letting them build a habit/system and enjoy the process rather than focusing on personal records?
What balance we've struck is that coaches keep track of their results - say, to the nearest 4 inches in the long jump pit, we've labeled the edge in 4" increments and see how they fare without making a fuss of it.
Then, at the close of the season, we typically note that everybody has made significant progress, and then it's time for 'Listen, Ken, when we first started outdoor season, you jumped here - and now (big stride!) - now you jump HERE.'
I would be most surprised if any kid felt under pressure to improve from their previous best; however, kids, like adults, tend to like both to make progress and to know that others notice, too.
They aren't going to make that High School sports team if they aren't practicing while still in diapers.
In the old days schools were small enough that pretty much everybody who bothered to show up could make the team. These days they have to turn away most of the kids and the level of play is much higher. Academics are the same way, if you want your kids in the good school they need to be hounded throughout their entire childhood. If you want to see this in action, just check out the parents who were apoplectic over the change in admissions policy at Thomas Jefferson High School. They kept their kid under huge pressure for 15 years and suddenly some slackers that even played outside in unstructured activities might make it instead?
A major difference between when I grew up and now is the prevalence of the severely mentally ill living on city streets. Would you send your 5 year old self down the streets of San Francisco or Seattle? As a 45 year old I’m frightened often enough - I can’t imagine my daughter being forced to navigate those situations alone. The assault and murder rates due to the untreated mentally ill in the cities I’ve lived in is high and visible.
In the 70’s and 80’s we still had a functional mental public health system an a relatively small population living on the streets.
Case in point a clearly disturbed person walked into my daughters school grounds and began exposing himself last week. The teachers corralled him and the police took him to jail, but they said more or less he will be back in a week or two and to be more careful securing the school grounds.
If that’s the environment at school, what about the sidewalks and streets between home and school?
"Would you send your 5 year old self down the streets of San Francisco or Seattle?"
Yes.
We live in San Francisco, and our kids went to a daycare in the Civic Center. We walked [with the kids] by many homeless people every weekday for years. Our interactions with them were almost universally positive; they'd clear the sidewalk to let kids through, try to keep kids from seeing drug use, chat and share candy, etc. On cold days when our kids would refuse to wear shirts [love that young metabolism], homeless folks would yell out, "Put a jacket on that kid!".
Most homeless people are just people in terrible situations, not boogiemen to be afraid of. Sure, some of them are mentally ill--if they weren't when they became homeless, it can make you so--but that doesn't make them dangerous.
Every assault makes the news, but cities are safer than they've ever been, and I'm very glad to be raising my kids in SF. The public transit and density of services will give them much greater autonomy than if we lived somewhere where you need a car to get anywhere.
My older kid's first errand was at age 5.5, to get a loaf of bread IIRC, from a market 1 block away, crossing 1 street. He was stopped by the police. The cop told him to tell his parents that he was too young to be out alone. No CPS, no arrest, fortunately, and he let my kid complete his errand alone, but that's the biggest danger around our neighborhood, not the homeless. We're not in the Civic Center, granted, but we're still in SF proper.
> Every assault makes the news, but cities are safer than they've ever been
Reminds me of one of my favorite pieces of data.[0] Pew tracks both crime rates and perception of crime rates. There's been an overwhelming declining trend crime (especially violent) in the past 30 years. But if you look at perceptions of crime, people think year over year it is on the rise. There's even a bias that it is on the rise more nationally rather than locally. What I like about this is how it shows the biases that we develop. You're right that _every_ assault makes the news (also there's 350m people in the US, even a 1 in 10k event is likely to occur frequently at the national level). Also, pareto plays a role. Most crime is limited to a few states, and really just a few cities in those states, and even more so specific areas within those cities (pareto is fractal in this way). We humans are typically bad at risk analysis.
I should add to this that I grew up and walked to school in the 90's. So it is safe to say that me walking to school as a kid was statistically substantially more dangerous than it is for kids to walk to school today.
I was recently chatting with a friend who (like me) grew up in the 90s and they were reminiscing on how great walking to school was because “you could do that back in the day.” They then went on to say that they would NEVER allow that for their children “these days”.
I pulled up the Pew study and it blew their minds. That said the news cycle, perception, parental instinct, etc is too powerful and fear (however irrational) is extremely powerful. After the initial shock they thoughtfully considered it and essentially said “Well, whatever. The kids are still never going to just walk around outside.”
Those kids are never going to be out “in the wild” even though it’s substantially safer today than it was in the 90s when we were doing it.
It is an interesting response to me (without kids) because I think this doesn't give kids the chance to explore. Kids SHOULD be doing dangerous things, just not TOO dangerous. That's how I learned a lot of valuable lessons. It is also how you learn independence.
Crime stats are a difficult thing to make comparisons with between jurisdictions and over time. I grew up in 1980s NYC. They flat out didn’t respond to take reports for certain types of crime, and may deliver a beat down to some weirdo following kids around.
Unless it’s a clearly serious felony like a murder or burglary, you aren’t really getting any information.
I would say that what people worry about is random freakshow people and the petty crime form other kids or teens. Folks are more aware of the freaks, and the evidence of in front of them that there are consequences for most petty crime.
We walked to school about 12 blocks in those days. It was fine. I live in a small city today; my kid won’t bike to school alone until about 12, mostly due to traffic issues and idiots riding ATVs in the afternoon.
> Unless it’s a clearly serious felony like a murder or burglary, you aren’t really getting any information.
Good news! The numbers reported in my citation are specifically about: Larceny/Theft, Burglary, Aggraveted Assault, Motor Vehicle Theft, Robbery, Rape, and Murder/Non-Negligent Manslaughter. Every single one of these has drastically decreased since the 90's (90's increased in crime since the 80's but current levels are below that).
I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but I can't but help but feel that this could have better been resolved by clicking on the citation I included.
It’s kinda hilarious that you’re chiding me for not reading the link when you didn’t read the comment.
Those are index felonies, and have nothing to do with walking to school. Quality of life crime, non-criminal bad behavior, sidewalks, and traffic hazards all have more impact and aren’t measured in a uniform way.
In fact, I’d argue that there’s an increase in petty street crime as policy has changed and we no longer pursue most minor stuff as it makes stats look better and pts lip service to various social goals.
I'm sorry, it's difficult to take your responses in good faith. You first start by saying that you can only meaningfully measure violent crimes and burglary, which I pointed out were the measurements in the citation. Now you say that those don't matter and that petty crime has increased based on gut feelings. But by your own claim that's impossible to measure accurately. You put me in a spot where you've said that no data would be convincing to you. I think that's the end of this conversation then.
I interpreted the comment you're replying to such that while the statistics for the serious crimes show a marked decline, parent are not only concerned about those crimes when letting their children walk alone to school and we have poor data about less serious crimes.
My comment was two parts. 1) that crime overall is decreasing. As far as I can tell this is true for every measurable metric. The only two I'm aware of that aren't are opioid use and sexual assault. Though the latter one isn't commonly believed to actually be increasing but just higher reporting. 2) that locality of crime is non-uniform. As a kid we knew which areas of town not to go to alone. Stay out of those parts of town and you'll be fine. In addition to this, most crime is not evenly distributed across the country and your suburban town isn't that dangerous. I'll strengthen my claim even more though, though this still isn't controversial. The richer your zipcode, the lower the crime rate. I think what people in this thread are more discussing is wealthy suburbanites picking their kids up in Teslas saying it is too dangerous to walk. No one is questioning the same sentiment for kids in Detroit or the bad parts of Chicago.
> Most crime is limited to a few states, and really just a few cities in those states, and even more so specific areas within those cities (pareto is fractal in this way).
What is that based on? Some tangential data leans in the other direction: The most recent FBI/DoJ report (that I'm aware of) said recent increases in gun crime were spread pretty evenly, urban and rural, across the country - though that's just one kind of crime, and only the increases. Another report said crime is worse in 'red states' than 'blue states', and the latter tend to have larger cities (I think). Hardly conclusive data, I know, and I'd love to see some.
This is pretty common in pareto distributions. Here's a heat map from 2020 data with state level resolution[0]. You'll notice that crime is in fact not evenly distributed (my claim). Here's a similar map but with county level precision[1]. And here's a heat map for crime in San Francisco[2].
Nothing I've stated is really that controversial and is pretty well known by anyone that looks at crime statistics. I think it is also relatively easy for the average person to buy because everyone knows where "the bad part of town" is. Really that's all I've said. That "the bad part of town" exists fractally. There's the "bad states," "bad cities," "bad counties," "bad towns," and "bad parts of towns." I think this all should be rather unsurprising.
To clarify on your FBI/DOJ statement, this doesn't have to be in disagreement with what I said. You can have increases in violent crime over the last year (or even 5) and a dramatic decline in the last 30. The Pew study that I cited does specifically look at violent crime and uses FBI statistics. But let's add more. Here's a DOJ 1993-2011 showing a large decrease in both fatal and non-fatal gun violence[3]. Here's a Reuters article that shows homicides (and the pareto effect I mentioned above) from 1980 to 2019[4]. Notice the trend towards declining (I never said it _strictly_ declined).
Thanks for doing all the research. I will keep this tab open and catch up on it later. One comment:
> Nothing I've stated is really that controversial and is pretty well known by anyone that looks at crime statistics. I think it is also relatively easy for the average person to buy because everyone knows where "the bad part of town" is.
'What everyone knows' is not knowledge; that's why we need data, research, etc (which you have amply provided). Look at what BS people 'know' about all sorts of things. IME the 'bad part of town' is usually not so bad, if at all, and it's often conflated with race.
I think the standard has changed, right? People want everything nerfed up. We have helmet laws where there used to be none, you can't use the Uber app without being bombarded with messages about 'safety', kids aren't left on their own outside. The mentality is that the world is scary - if not outright ending - constantly a threat. We wonder why we're raising kids with anxiety problems.
Sometimes it does. I like not needing a car in SF too, but I do notice my kids being affected negatively after seeing a violent deranged person. I bike the long way to school instead of walking because it was impacting their mood so much. Maybe your kids deal with it better than mine, or maybe you're just not noticing how it's affecting them?
I grew up in a 3rd world country (now I live in Europe) in a city that by HN comments seems similar to SF (big and full of harmless homeless people/drug addicts everywhere). I remember when I was a kid and I was with my mother I stared to a homeless man for some time. Of course he just seemed peculiar to me, I was a little kid, but this guy got mad and screamed "Do I owe you money or what? why do you keep looking at me?"
My mother grabbed me in her arms and we just went away quickly. She told me to not look at homeless people for so much time. Of course I was very scared, I don't remember exactly how old I was but I still remember the episode some decades later.
Maybe it's a cultural difference between where I live and where you live, but it's definitely not normal for people to get mad at a child for staring. They're fairly inquisitive by nature.
> Our interactions with them were almost universally positive; they'd clear the sidewalk to let kids through, try to keep kids from seeing drug use, chat and share candy, etc.
With an adult present, sure, but holy moly would I not leave my kid alone around drug users offering candy and a chat. Hell, I might be one of those hypothetical CPS callers that everyone is worried about if I saw that taking place!
As someone also living in the Midwest, what's your issue with it? A bunch of people are doing a thing. They see a kid. They stop doing it while the kid is in sight, so they're spared seeing it.
What could possibly be the issue? If anything, it demonstrates Midwestern values pretty well: Freedom, and a moral, not legal, code that people voluntarily follow to prevent kids from being exposed to potentially-harmful things, without any government needed to enforce it!
If anything, it's more considerate than where I live, where people will openly smoke in front of children, which is arguably more harmful, because smoking has second-hand effects, unlike intravenous drug usage.
> As someone with kids and living in the Midwest, I just don't even have the words to describe my reaction to this. Wow.
I'm not sure what you mean: Do you live in a large Midwestern city, like Chicago, and have different experiences? Do you live in a suburban or rural environment and are surprised to hear it?
Personally I spend lots of time in cities and I'm not surprised. If you don't have experience there, realize that the horror stories fit a long-term political campaign to denigrate cities in 'blue states' (note that you don't hear anything about crime in Miami, Houston, etc.), which are a political power base of a one party.
OK, since some folks have commented on the candy thing:
That was a one-time event, on the Muni, with both parents there, and with the giver asking our permission to give our son a sealed lollypop. I don't recommend kids take candy from strangers without parents there, but I do talk to strangers in front of my kids, and encourage them to also.
I don't tell my kids that all strangers are dangerous. First, because it leads to a culture of fear and disrespect. Second, because I obviously don't act as if they are, so it would lead to distrusting my advice.
They have to learn the difference between "stranger who seems reasonable and nonthreatening with whom you can casually chat" and "stranger telling at clouds whom you should avoid". They figure that out pretty young, if you let them.
I'm also not a parent so I'll join the top-level commentor in not telling you what to do, but I know that I personally will draw the line well short of letting them share a homeless stranger's 'candy'!
(Related but not exactly a reply - I think this is a fairly uniquely North American phenomenon, my experience in the UK in the 00's matches these American 70's etc. experiences, and I see no sign that it's changed here. More evidence that it's to do with the way towns are structured I suppose. Or 'towns' - you don't really have them and that's the problem.)
As a parent, I wouldn't do this in busy areas. I've seen people get hit from drivers running stop signs and red lights. I have to look at drivers turning right on red to make sure they see me, not sure that all children are tall enough to do this. Too much of a risk.
It doesn't take too much searching to find examples of horrible accidents:
Motor-vehicle crashes account for 20%[1] of child and adolescent deaths in the US.
I'm not nearly as terrified of strangers or homeless drug users as the legion of SUV drivers scrolling on their cell phones. Distracted drivers are several orders of magnitude more dangerous and several orders of magnitude more common.
>Motor-vehicle crashes account for 20%[1] of child and adolescent deaths in the US.
Yep, 20% of something that almost never happens. .025% of adolescents die each year, .005% of them due to motor vehicle crashes. Further, the paper suggests most of adolescent vehicle deaths happen as passengers and/or drivers.
Note that this number only includes fatalities. Injuries are typically a couple orders of magnitude more common than fatalities (both for bystanders and occupants) but they are harder to count as they are not tracked as consistently. Besides the lasting damage, in a place like the US they can be financially ruinous for a family.
(I would be interested in statistics that break out bystander vs occupant and injuries as well if you know of any.)
Finally, I'm not quite sure what your point is with respect to the overall fatality rate of adolescents. It should not be particularly surprising that the vast majority of children survive into adulthood in modern times, but that doesn't mean it's not worth continuing to take precautions against the most common sources of injury and death.
I've been involved in various "free-range kids" groups and kid-friendly maker spaces where children can learn to responsibly use power tools. But I've never met a parent who decided not to bother protecting their kids from the most common sources of injury or death just because childhood deaths "almost never happen". Frankly I'm not sure I'd let someone with such an interpretation of statistics anywhere near either kids or power tools.
>Finally, I'm not quite sure what your point is with respect to the overall fatality rate of adolescents.
By saying "20% of adolescent fatalities are to vehicles" you make it seem like a terrifying threat. It's not. Certainly not worth keeping your child from walking outside.
You're involved in groups that teach kids to use power tools safely. As in you let them use power tools despite there still being a risk after taking such a class. Do the same with regards to vehicles. Teach them how to stay safe as a pedestrian, passenger, and driver.
Right on red has massively increased pedestrian fatalities. The “research” claiming to show it was safe was so shoddy it’s fair to just call it fraudulent.
Honestly I’ve never seen it as bad as in certain parts of Seattle. The meth use is very readily apparent and it has people behaving way out of line and highly erratic or aggressive.
That said, I still worry more about car traffic and reckless drivers than the homeless. But having aggressive people on drugs yelling at passers by is not an ideal or safe environment for kids to be in. For one thing, it distracts the people in cars. . .
While there has been a rise in violent crime in the last few years, which is bad, Seattle is still less violent than it was historically. Right now, we're at approximately 2006 levels of violent crime:
> It's pretty stable, though, and the rise isn't actually that large (just about at 2008 levels, and far below 2004 levels):
I walked through Cap Hill and DT Seattle to catch a bus at 2am back in 2003. No worries at all.
A lot of crime isn't reported now days, e.g. my mothers truck just got stolen and she is not going to report it because the police are likely not going to even bother talking to her about it. I've had plenty of friends with stolen cars where the police told them "well you should be more careful with your car" and up and leave.
That sort of attitude sure makes the crime stats look good though.
> How is your mother going to make an insurance claim for a stolen car without a police report? Or is she just going to eat the loss?
It is a 1992 ford ranger, in theory worth a fair bit in the current used truck market, but insurance will value it at next to nothing, so I presume she'll eat the loss.
I don't have comprehensive insurance on my old car, so insurance wouldn't pay for it being stolen.
The reason is pretty simple. The comprehensive insurance premium adds up to more than the car is worth.
Also, the way insurance works, is your rates go up to reimburse the company for payouts to you. Insurance is only worthwhile for losses you cannot cover yourself.
This is why downtown businesses have largely stopped reporting shoplifting to their insurance companies. It just makes the losses more expensive.
The chief difference is that the segment of the media dedicated to keeping people fearful, particularly of their neighbors, is enormous now. It was always the case that media liked stories of conflict, but this was moderated by a sense of propriety and responsibility to the community. Now, certain voices have enormous megaphones and no restraints and the paranoia and anger they are actively promoting against their own society has taken root generally.
My wife grew up in the city, and I grew up in the country (not the pretend 'doctors commute to the city and have 10 acres they pretend to farm and raise horses on' but 'white trash, holy shit there's no work' county) and my wife is HORRIFIED by how much violence and random crime there is where I come from. My family still asks how we can live in the city since its so dangerous while meth heads are stealing anhydrous ammonia from fertilizer tanks and will shoot you without blinking if you get in their way just down the street from them.
Yep. Born and raised in a picturesque small town. Went on to live in cities.
I know more than a few people in my small town who got arrested for burglaries and robberies. I know a lot of victims too. Rape basically isn't reported because if the neighbor's boy gets in trouble, that'll ruin the relations between half the town. There are the town drunks who got pulled over more times than you can count and eventually killed someone in a car accident.
You're passing by hundreds if not thousands of people in a few hours in a city. A methhead dancing naked on the street corner is going to catch your eye. The thousands of normal people won't.
In a small town, you're not seeing anyone at all some days. Maybe you're just passing by 5 cars. The opportunity to witness anything is lower.
Of course, plenty of small towns are nice and safe. But the ones that have any problems are proportionally going to be way worse, due to lower population.
If it's anything like my experience in a rural town, they'll bemoan the dangers of the cities while Tom's kid got into meth and conned/robbed ten people they know, Dick's kid goes to the bar every night then drives home drunk to beat his family, and Harry's kid was hiding that he had HIV to sleep with several women in town.
Yup. My best friends dad would stop at the gas station every night after his shift (2nd shift at a foundry) to get a 6 pack of Labatt that he'd drink while driving home, get home and keep drinking. On a good night he'd smoke, drink more beer and eat warmed up dinner. On a bad night, he'd come home, keep drinking, and get into it with his wife and smack her around for awhile.
As an adult I realize why they always wanted me to stay over was he wouldn't lay into them while I was there. He'd just leave and go to brothers house. Or as we found out later, his girlfriends.
> The chief difference is that the segment of the media dedicated to keeping people fearful
Also, there is the Citizen app. I wonder if it's driving perception more than anything else. When I've talked to people in safe cities who nonetheless were ranting to me about crime, I've asked them if they have Citizen, and very many do. Not strong data, but I would love to see some research.
Safer than what? Suburbs with nice sidewalks and tree lined streets and friendly neighbors who know each other? Safer than rural areas where everyone knows everyone and there’s enough law enforcement to work on a 1:1 basis? I’m sorry but this just seems like an absolute nonsense claim.
To reply to anecdata with anecdata my experiences with suburbs have been a complete lack of sidewalks in favor of cars and neighbors not talking to each other except in the form of HOA violation notices. For the country, where I grew up, everyone did know everyone else, but that was only a benefit if you were friends with the town sheriff. Good luck taking a walk anywhere when the local hooligans would charge at you with their lifted pickups or roll coal right next to you, and the sheriff threateningly asking you if you are starting a problem when you try and file a complaint
The comment said cities are safer now than they were before, which is true.
> Suburbs with nice sidewalks and tree lined streets and friendly neighbors who know each other? Safer than rural areas where everyone knows everyone and there’s enough law enforcement to work on a 1:1 basis?
No, no real place can possibly be safer than a fantasy land.
If so, I live in that fantasy land. Except, we never see any on-duty law enforcement, as it is virtually never needed. The neighbours that are police work in the city.
I've been living here for 10 years, and I've seen 2 on-duty police cars so far, one was on the first day of school several years ago, when they stopped every car on the way to school/day-care to make sure seats were safe, and one was due to a traffic accident where an electric scooter had hit a car.
My third grade daughter has been walking/cycling (depending on weather) the 2km trip to school for over a year, with a friend, but no adults. The benefits are considerable, both socially, physically and emotionally. 4km/day on top of normal playtime and sports is a nice exercise boost. Spending time away from adult supervision strengthens friendships and boosts self confidence and mental stamina.
Sometimes I miss the city, but for the freedom of my kids, living where I do is night and day in terms of safety and health compared to where I lived before.
> Safer than rural areas where everyone knows everyone and there’s enough law enforcement to work on a 1:1 basis?
I remember talking to one farmer who said he had a gun because, where he's from, the police are only there to clean up. They can't get to a crime scene in time unless they are lucky to be nearby, and have very few resources for investigations or other operations.
Have you lived in rural areas? Despite the romanticism portrayed in the media around rural live, it's absolutely not like that. It can take an hour for police to show up when you call them, if they show up at all. Most of the people in your area are probably on, or cooking meth. Crime is just as bad, and often more violent than it is in the city. Sure, people aren't stealing your bikes, but they are stealing parts from your car. They're stealing your air conditioners. They're breaking into places and ripping the wiring out.
In general, I worry more about crime when I'm in the country, than when I'm in a city.
No. There are some rural towns where every single town member, including the police, firefighters, etc. are addicted to meth. Rural areas are where most meth is cooked because it makes it considerably less likely to be detected.
A considerable amount of heroin addicts in the US are also in rural areas.
Drug use is rampant in rural areas, but it doesn't get the press that it does in cities, because it doesn't present the same way. You don't have to walk over junkies in rural areas.
Which are some of these towns? I assume you're not talking about one of those towns with two residents (either way it doesn't mean that any rural area probably has more than half the residents using or making meth which is obviously balderdash, I'm just curious about these alleged towns).
I don't know what you're trying to tell me so I'll have to guess... you're retracting your initial claims after reading the data and anecdotes in those links?
Because from those links it sure doesn't look like rural areas are likely to have more than half the people on meth, or that you've managed to find any actual towns where everybody is on meth.
The issue is finding published articles about it. Having family members and friends who live in some of these towns is how I know about it. A friend was a ferry pilot in a Michigan town for about a year and described his normal day through town, and how it was impossible to date anyone, because every time he tried to date someone he found they were addicted to meth. I have family that lives in Alabama, and they haven't met anyone in their town that isn't addicted to meth.
That was years ago. Seems heroin is more of a problem.
The articles I linked mention ~34% of the testing in a state showing positivity for meth, so I'm not sure why you'd be surprised that entire towns in that state may be addicted.
The claim by GP was that US cities are safer than they’ve ever been before, which is basically true, at least for recent history. Google it. Stats show violent crimes and pedestrian deaths on a decline for decades. (IIHS says pedestrian death have had a minor recent uptick, but for adults not children, and the 40-year trend is very downward. Crime in general has been declining since the 90s.) No need to express incredulity over an imagined interpretation, just hit the “parent” button.
> Most homeless people are just people in terrible situations.
No one cares about averages, and this is not a game of statistics where I'd be interested in playing out the game just because the odds are in my favor.
We don't need to care about the state of "most" strangers when all it takes is one outlier that turns out to be a psychotic.
I am usually a supporter of 'free-range kids', but I'd draw the line with Skid Row. Sure, the vast majority of homeless folks may be relatively harmless, but I'd wager that the density of less-than-harmless people is higher in that environment.
Statistically, kids are most likely to be abused and hurt in any imaginable way by people in their social circles, be that family, coaches, youth group leaders, teachers,... I'm not worried about my children seeing a poor drug addict or homeless in the streets. It actually is a great opportunity to talk about what this means, how it can happen and not to be afraid of it. And it can show them to be careful, without supervision, on certain things.
> Statistically, kids are most likely to be abused and hurt in any imaginable way by people in their social circles
Sure. But I can't make them social recluses just so they never encounter that high-risk group. That does not mean I need to encourage them seeking out another high-risk group on top of that.
Not wanting your kid to walk alone through Skid Row does not mean you are hiding the issue of homelessness - you can still talk about that at other opportunities.
Sure, that's something to consider. What I've read leads me to believe that less crime is reported due to increasing lack of faith in the criminal justice system.
Here in Canada, it's hard to trust any crime stats because of this:
A few friends of mine have bought houses in the gentrifying parts of port richmond over the years, and I've biked through several of the intersections in that video. Yeah parts of Kensington Ave are open air drug markets, you avoid those spots. The surrounding neighborhood is run down and pretty low income, but mostly quiet and residential. I assume SF is similar in that outside of downtown you can find a path to anywhere you want to go that avoids the most obvious dangers. Similar to the parent comment, the grocery store I walk to in west philly always has a homeless woman out front and the interactions aren't scary. She says hello to me and my dog who she recognizes and asks for change, I typically say "no but have a nice day" she says "god bless" and that's that.
Speaking as a non-parent, if I had a kid near kensington ave and they walked to school (which they mostly do) I would just tell them to walk down Frankford Ave a few blocks south, which is much less scary. Teaching kids those basic "street smarts" is one of the objectives of having "free range" kids. Although I would also add that living a little ways away from the street infamous for being a drug market is within the means of the majority of the Philadelphians, and the vast majority of the hacker news crowd.
You've picked one of the most famous sites for drugs in the country, and a video edited to show how bad it is. That's not representative of city streets any more than a highlight video of the mansion of biggest lottery winner ever is representative of lottery ticket buyers.
It sounds to me like you're purposely downplaying the dangers of overwhelmingly mentally-ill, drug-addicted, societal outcasts just so you can post about how enlightened you are.
Normal people do not want to put their kids into dangerous situations. And doing so does not make you a good person.
The person answered “yes” to a question that implied they would send their 5yo child alone down the street. Then described the reason why they would be comfortable doing that is because they have walked it with them.
I think it’s reasonable to question that decision based on what they described happening on that street. Your response acts as if the question is whether it’s fine to take your child with you down that street, but that’s not what is under discussion.
But the thought of letting my kids (5 and 2.5) run errands by themselves (in a city like Berlin with its abundant number of homeless and mentally-ill people everywhere) gave me goosebumps.
"It's only one block away" and "most homeless people are harmless" would never be words of consolation in case of any calamity.
Of course it is extremist thinking! We are talking about the survival of your own children, not some utility maximization function.
Imagine a game of Russian Roulette with one bullet in a gigantic chamber (N slots) where you get to win a small prize every time the gun doesn't fire. Is there any sense in asking if there is a N large enough to make you consider playing this game consistently for 2-3 years, when the gun is pointed at your kids?
Mind you, I am not defending helicopter parenting and I do believe that we should err on the side of autonomy vs safety. But I can think of other ways to exercise this autonomy (e.g, drop the kid at the door of a local supermarket and say "here is 10€, can you please go get X, Y and Z while I am outside looking for something else?") without worrying about is the worst possible thing that could happen.
> Of course it is extremist thinking! We are talking about the survival of your own children, not some utility maximization function.
Extremist thinking does not improve the likelihood of your children's survival.
> Imagine a game of Russian Roulette with one bullet in a gigantic chamber (N slots) where you get to win a small prize every time the gun doesn't fire. Is there any sense in asking if there is a N large enough to make you consider playing this game consistently for 2-3 years, when the gun is pointed at your kids?
You do this all the time when you take your kids for a drive, on a plane, outside, when you feed them, etc. Hell in your supermarket example, someone inside the store could just kill them there after you dropped them off.
Like I said, this is not a maximization function. It is a filter.
The idea is to avoid things where the upside (even if highly likely) is small but the downside is (even if highly unlikely) catastrophic.
> You do this all the time when you take your kids for a drive, on a plane, outside, when you feed them, etc.
Kids need to go outside, occasionally get on a car or plane and they certainly need to be fed. These are all things were the upside is significant, so of course they need to be done and we do it without wondering about the downsides.
Going on the streets of Berlin by themselves at age 5 is an unnecessary, avoidable risk with very little benefit. It doesn't need to be done, so we don't. It's simple as that.
The whole point of the article is that the benefits are actually enormous.
I think we also need to consider other, less obvious bullets here, namely suicide, or even just a less happy and fulfilling life. Kids have been getting less happy year over year in America and while there are likely many reasons, I strongly believe the inability to be independent is one. I won’t claim to know the best age to let kids wander a city street (and it likely depends on the neighborhood), but when you let them out on their own, you also potentially prevent suicide, something that’s far more likely to kill a kid than a stranger.
I am not disagreeing with the article, and I definitely agree with you that the american combo of (a) suburbia, (b) car-oriented urban planning and (c) heterogeneous/low inner-trust communities makes for a horrible existence for kids and teenagers.
My point though is that there are ways to develop kids' sense of autonomy without putting them in unnecessary risk, and also that while the benefit of letting them walk by themselves depends on many repetitions of the event (i.e, doing it once a year is not really that helpful), it takes only one single dangerous/malicious person to cause irreversible damage.
And yes, of course this depends on the neighborhood. I wouldn't object the kids roaming around if we lived in a smaller city or a generally nicer area of Berlin, but I could not in good conscience say that any parent should feel totally fine in letting 5 year-olds by themselves in any area full of homeless people and mentally unstable people, and justify it with "most homeless people are just people in terrible situations".
When I first moved to San Francisco I walked from 10th & Mission to Bessie Carmichael School at 7th & Folsom then took MUNI to Commodore Stockton Elementary in Chinatown every weekday. That was in first grade in 1972. At the time SOMA was an extremely bad place, the TL was the same and HP was a place you didn't go if you had light skin (except for MLB & NFL games).
I find that having that autonomy as a child is what has lead me to not be fearful of most things.
btw - not that it's ok, but people exposing themselves has been around for a long time. I've experienced it myself as a child.
I should add that my parents bought me my first bike while we lived in SF. The reason they say we moved to Marin when I started second grade was because my parents had nowhere in The City to teach me how to ride it.
My point wasn’t about seediness or drug use, but about the number of severely mentally ill living on the streets. That has objectively gotten worse since the barriers to commitment went up substantially in the early 1980s and the Reagan dismantling of the national public mental health system and subsequent collapse at the state level. I feel less worried about drug dealers who have a rational economic reason for what they do than an untreated and unhoused paranoid schizophrenic with violent tendencies. IMO, that’s the really big change in at least the urban landscape. (N.b., I see this in NYC, Seattle, SF,and a number of other cities I’ve lived in).
Folks have noted the helicopter behavior permeates even suburbia, but I wonder if that’s more because of sprawl and lack of meaningful pedestrian infrastructure than anxiety.
> gotten worse since the barriers to commitment went up substantially in the early 1980s
That was 40 years ago!
> I feel less worried about drug dealers who have a rational economic reason for what they do than an untreated and unhoused paranoid schizophrenic with violent tendencies.
I've spent a lot of time on city streets and I've never seen these putative people. The good news is that these bogey-people are unicorns. I've seen some people acting unhinged, but they are very easy to avoid - much easier than cars and unwanted aquaintences. Just cross the street, or if the sidewalk is broad enough, just walk around them. Better, get them some help. They are completely lost in their own world, and are not able to follow, much less chase or assault someone. They are, in fact, very vulnerable, the weakest people out there.
You should worry more about the drug dealers, who are not making rational decisions (thus their jobs), and may have guns (gun crime being the only kind that is increasing). And even they will be perfectly friendly if you don't have business with them.
Which just means the homeless population had 40 years to be - for the lack of a better word - 'enriched' with people who should have gotten psychiatric help (and them being on the street is unlikely to have made them become better).
> They are, in fact, very vulnerable, the weakest people out there.
I agree, and I think they ought to get the help they need, and what happens to them in the US is criminal. That still doesn't mean I would let my kid run unsupervised in an open-air forensic psychiatric ward.
I wouldn't like that either and thankfully, that's not the reality. Do you have any direct experience? As many people here who have experience, and have said, that is not at all an accurate description.
How is Reagan responsible for decisions made at a state and local level? Mental asylums had already lost their credibility as news of medical abuse was documented in the 60s. O'Connor vs Donaldson had rendered involuntary commitment as a violation of personal liberty. By the time Reagan became President, it was quite clear asylums were little more than medical prisons.
I feel like the Richmond and Sunset districts of SF are pretty safe places to ride bikes. Plus both of them are near Golden Gate Park. I ride in those areas on weekends and except for a few hot spots there aren't that many cars and streets are quiet
"people exposing themselves has been around for a long time"
well that is the harm many parents are trying to avoid. you can say it hasn't had a negative effect on you, but that's subject to debate. nothing personal.
speaking for myself, I would say there is nothing good, and some definite bad habits, that came directly out of what I saw as a middle schooler in my city's local red light district.
(Using throwaway, because people can't have rational discussions anymore).
47yr old with 12yr old twins. Live in a million dollar neighborhood in Capitol Hill Seattle. Kids go to private school about a mile south of home. When the school year started, they wanted to walk to and from school alone.
We had to stop this in the last month and accompany them on the walks. My daughter saw multiple fentanyl od's on the street, my son asked me what that guy he saw was doing with the torch under the aluminum foil.
I grew up in the 80s in NYC and took the subway from Queens to Manhattan for HS (Stuyvesant). Plenty of homeless but mostly alcoholics, occasional mentally ill. The havoc from meth, fentanyl, heroin is too much for us to let our kids stay as independent as we want.
> I grew up in the 80s in NYC and took the subway from Queens to Manhattan for HS (Stuyvesant). Plenty of homeless but mostly alcoholics, occasional mentally ill.
You didn't see drug users in 1980s NYC? And when did crack show up there?
> For another... your 12 year olds can handle seeing homeless people. I promise you.
Did you miss the part where he said people are passed out, possibly dead, on the sidewalk?
I remember going into a Walgreens in Boston and walking out 15 minutes later to a body being put into an ambulance. A few hours later I got on a plane to the UK, made my way to Edinburgh, and was blown away by how clean the city was in comparison to anything I'd seen in the US.
Yeah. I've been on those sidewalks too. "People are passed out, possibly dead" is...hyperbolic. It's a real issue, I grant you, but there's a looot of hyperbole. It's not that bad, except in a few specific corners across an entire city of 700,000 people. So I disagree with the assessment.
I know SF in the last decade has gotten pretty bad, but dad also didn't let me walk around SF in the 70s, either. (We didn't live there, we just visited.)
Big city life has always been a bit different, so I'd grant an out there for a little more helicoptering.
But most of the country isn't SF. (And most of SF isn't SF--if that makes any sense. Sunset isn't the Tenderloin.) In the town I live in now, things are easily as safe as they were in the town I grew up in. And yet--lines of cars in the schools every day.
If it's necessary to protect your kid, do it. But I think what we're seeing here is a lot of additional protection being applied in circumstances that have not changed appreciably in the last 50 years.
To be perfectly honest a lot of peoples perceptions about cities back then was highly rooted in race. It was a time when white people literally sold their homes and moved if a black person moved in on the street, or they even threw stones at black people they saw walking around who in their head they villified, or worse. Anytime someone has an anecdote where they have some adversion to the city, especially back then, I can't help but imagine a lot of that has to do with racial biases rather than lived experiences and actual perspective on how much crime is really happening.
I spent my first few years of life living in a city near a downtown. My friends were a mix of colors, nth-generation residents, immigrants, and refugees. Race had nothing to do with why my parents left. It had everything to do with the serial rapist attacking our neighbor and still on the loose, the markets down the street getting repeated drive-by shootings, etc.
I know the city has gotten a lot of bad press lately, but I'm pretty sure SF was more dangerous prior to the rich people moving in. It's just that more rich people started complaining after they came. My Uber driver's was always talking about how the high school near Dolores park used to be a gang hotspot or something.
I have a lot of trouble accepting this. One of my more vivid memories of the late 80s and early 90s is the nightly news always having some girl buying ice cream caught in gang crossfire. It was always the ice cream truck. We were banned from wearing blue, red, or Raiders jerseys because supposedly kids were getting shot walking home from school. We had smog days pretty regularly where we weren't allowed to play outside because the air quality was so bad.
I'm pretty sure in every real, quantifiable way, children are much safer on city streets today than they were 30 years ago. We're just also more afraid. It's not like skid row and homelessness didn't already exist back then, along with much worse drug and gang problems.
I'm sorry your daughter had a naked man wander onto the school grounds, but my middle school was shot at during recess by drive bys three separate times in the three years I was there. Things have not gotten worse.
My point was more that the rate of severely mentally ill living on the streets leads to a very different dynamic. In the 70’s and 80’s we had a functional public health system for the mentally ill. That was dismantled and the situation today is very different. The difference between a hobo and a paranoid schizophrenic is immense. Seedy areas are often simply where poor people live, and poor people have kids and families - they’re just poor, not dangerous. Folks with serious mental Illnesses are frankly considerably more scary for a kid than seeing drug dealers on the corner, and are by nature erratic and unpredictable.
The story of the disturbed man exposing himself wasn’t particularly about him exposing himself, but about the fact there’s no where for him to go to receive help, or if he’s untreatable, somewhere for him to live where his tendencies don’t hurt society at large. The only place for him today is untreated and on the streets - and that changed in the late 80’s and accelerated through the early 1990’s.
> The assault and murder rates due to the untreated mentally ill in the cities I’ve lived in is high and visible.
And far lower than it was when children generally roamed freely. The late 70s to the early 90s are when US violence peaked, so in the spirit of spurious correlations, a functional mental health system must have caused violence:)
edit:
> Case in point a clearly disturbed person walked into my daughters school grounds and began exposing himself last week.
This happens when you live in a place that has men in it. It certainly happened when I was a kid. The only way to keep occasional masturbators from cruising the streets doing their thing is to ban men.
I never lived in the US, but from the outside that is quite interesting. While we don't see that many people exposing themselves at schools over here, there certainly are in parks and the like. I don't worry about that, really, sexual predators aren't exposing in public. The one thing I would be worried about so, if my kids went to school in the US, would be some other student showing up with a gun and shooting up the place.
I now live in the neighbourhood that I grew up in; when I was a child there were no transients, no unhoused drug abusers living in the bushes that lined the path to the school.
Now there is.
It's _not_ the same; and based on the stats here in BC, Canada: I can safely state it's not the same as it was anywhere in this province.
> The assault and murder rates due to the untreated mentally ill in the cities I’ve lived in is high and visible.
Could you point to data that support that? I've heard it, but in many, many interactions over many years with people who appear to be homeless, including people showing signs of mental illness, I've never had problems. They are like everyone else on the street, friendly if you are friendly. They're just people, like you and me - really, no exaggeration.
I hypothesize that generally (I don't know the parent commenter at all) these stories come from fear of the unknown - a natural human reaction, but so is compassion. Just try overcoming alarm and treating them like normal people, and you'll soon learn the reality. I'd be much more worried about a-holes driving SUVs and using their phones, running over my child in an intersection.
> A major difference between when I grew up and now is the prevalence of the severely mentally ill living on city streets.
It seems to me like there were many more in Manhattan, at least, in the past. City streets used to be far more dangerous - I remember my parents teaching me how to walk, not look like a target, not look people in the eye, etc. All things I don't need to worry about now.
I don't think real danger completely explains it. I live in a completely tame neighborhood. Kids definitely walk and bike to school. Yet, there is also a much higher prevalence of kids being driven to school than when I was a kid.
And I grew up in true car culture: The coolest kid had a Cobra jacket, which meant his dad worked for Ford. That kid walked to school.
One difference is that there's a lot more car traffic in neighborhoods today.
> Would you send your 5 year old self down the streets of San Francisco or Seattle
No.
And I would avoid raising my kids there to begin with. Those two cities in particular have done everything within their means to alienate families.
I get that some parents believe that exposing their kids to people living in squalor on the street due to mental illness or addiction is an enriching cultural experience, and maybe it is. But I’m going to pass on that.
You’re right, Seattle is much more livable for families. My perspective is from SF, and it adopts similar policies as Seattle (which is why I unfairly lumped the two together) but SF has implemented them with much worse effect. I think it’s partly because SF is more compressed and usually lacks clear boundaries between neighborhoods that are good for families and those that aren’t, with a couple exceptions (e.g. Noe Valley).
More kids probably live in suburbia than in urban environments, given the extra space in the US. I think the point is moot because even in well-to-do neighborhoods people stop walking to school, even if they can (that is, the route is close enough to be walkable).
Please accept my apologies in advance. I don't mean to sound crass. But, after the incident at your daughter's school, she's still alive, right? Are you suddenly worried she's scarred for life and gonna grow up to be a meth-head? Like I said, sorry to be insensitive, but as a fellow Gen-Xer, it kinda disappointments me that we've adopted this attitude that kids should be protected from, well, *everything*. We all saw shit as kids, and we all lived through it.
We have a 5yo and 8yo. Most of the time, the question for whether they can handle something is less "are they capable?" and more "will someone call CPS?"
Yeah. I'm thinking back to the early 70s. I was IIRC 7, trusted to handle major streets safely on my own, trusted to take the city bus safely on my own. (Although getting the bus to stop so I could get on was problematic! Typically I went to the bus stop with someone, but I would not be met on the other end.) Back then it was notable, now it would be a CPS call.
Even around 1980 an incident comes to mind--like 3am, walking down the street with a backpack on. The idea of getting my father up to take me to the rendezvous for the backpack trip didn't even occur to me. Now, what would happen? (I was IIRC 15 at the time.)
Agree this is mostly dead in America. It's one of the reasons my family settled down where we did.
Phoenix Arizona has many master planned communities designed around this lifestyle. Our neighborhood has an "interior" grassy/park like section with trails that wind and twist for 22 miles connecting all of the streets. In the center of that is our local school. Most houses are within two blocks of an entrance to the trails, and you'll see kids out running and playing all day. In the mornings you see the kiddos all commuting by foot to school - many wait on the corner to meet up with their friends before starting off on the walk.
I know of at least two other master planned communities that have the same setup with a central school. Wish more of suburbia was built like this.
It's a way of life that is worth more than the value of my home to me.
Where can I do this without drivers who will kill my kid? Cars (or SUV's and trucks, really) are faster, heavier, taller, more numerous, and driven far more miles now. They are why my kid can't walk/cycle to school.
In many European cities young children still walk themselves to school, teens take the trams, etc. It is much safer than in the US for a number of reasons. The speed limits are much lower, 30 kph (19 mph) is the standard speed limit for a residential road, 40 kph (25 mph) is typical for commercial roads with wide sidewalks, etc.. Most streets have a buffer of parallel parked cars between the driving lanes and sidewalks. Right turn on a red light is universally banned in some cities. The cars tend to be smaller and even the heavy trucks have better visibility since the driver is sitting above the front axle. Most importantly though there are always pedestrians on the streets so drivers are vigilant.
Is there data on this though? I'm against the out of control car culture in the US, but cars have generally gotten safer for both drivers and bystanders, right? Yes a giant SUV is bad for pedestrians, but so was a rigid metal box like cars used to be. And drinking and driving is more socially unacceptable than ever.
Cars have become less safe for bystanders. There are huge SUVs and trucks with front grilles at head height everywhere in North America now. No chance of a pedestrian or bicyclist surviving a collision, and massive blind spots. It’s unconscionable.
Definitely depends also where. I grew up in the 90's, in Estonia, and had the exact same childhood as you did. Now it's the 20's and from what I can see, not much has changed here. There are certainly more rules and regulations to stop speeding cars near schools and kindergartens, but I regularly see kindergarten children roaming around freely. I'm pretty sure this is a culture thing.
I know this sounds scary to most, but I was doing local hitchhiking to go fishing, or bring our bikes up Mt Tam, starting at 7-8 yrs old. I walked, rode a bike, or took the bus everywhere else.
My parents rarely took me anywhere that didn't involve them. And I was always told to be home when the streetlights came on.
I too am very grateful that I was raised way in the 70's.
We do this now, about 20 miles outside one of the highest per capita shooting/murder cities in the US. When I lived in said city I was jumped and beat up, and my car broken into 3 times… in a year.
There is research on this, and basically people have gone from a model of concentric circles to a model of connected island.
What does this mean?
Back in the day, you explored the area around yourself by foot or bike. Your model of your surroundings grew in concentric circles, which included more and more places of interest. Your friend's house, school, the library, and so on.
Nowadays, you drive everywhere, by train or car, and it is like warping to that location. The way is just a wait, which you spend on your phone, or sometimes driving (but really (auto-)piloted by your navigation system).
Worse yet is the GPS navigation pointing forward instead of north and telling you which way to turn in relative space (left or right). Many folk aren't building an intuition about the layouts of their towns and cities because everything is relative.
My Dad got my a US Atlas for Christmas around my 16th birthday and told me to always trace out the route is was going by hand and understand in absolutes where I was going. Eventually it all clicked now and I find it odd that people sometimes compliment me on my navigation of cities and ability to use maps—but I'm not sure how people do it otherwise without being glued to a phone. Getting slightly lost has always been the fun part.
A big difference is that today every kid has a mobile phone. So besides the fact that the world is a much safer place than in the '70s, kids have unprecedented communications for emergency situations as well.
Too many cars moving too fast and too much information coming at us from all over. It’s hard to slow down. Everything is coming at us faster than before.. tv, ads, social media.
The negative news cycle, violent tv and movies paint a world that is different than things really are.
Hardly anyone knows their neighbors anymore and everyone is stressed trying to pay the bills.
People live far away from their extended families and even the local babysitters are $$. We want credentialed babysitters etc…
Desirable places to live with job centers are expensively unaffordable and require long commutes.
Then with the internet and cell phones your job never really ever ends. It’s a blessing and a curse that you can work from anywhere at any time.
Change how you choose to live. That’s all you can do. But most people will just shrug and keep living a way they claim to hate because they don’t care that much.
My 15 years old daughter was taking public transportation to go to her sport club 20 km away when she was in primary school. Needless to say she was the only child alone in the train. She has all latitude to go where she wants as long as she tells us if it's far. Some friends of her just can't get out of their home alone excepted to go to junior high school (maybe it is even their parents who bring them?), such a gap!
People will absolutely call child services on kids that free range. You can be arrested and have your kids permanently taken away. Rare, but it happens.
I have an adult daughter who thought I was stupid for my constant talks about walking to car in groups, Etc.
She moved back home after a kidnap attempt in a parking lot.
At work, She now deals with teenagers that think her lectures are stupid.
> I don't have any kids, so I don't really feel comfortable telling folks how to raise theirs.
Before I had my kids, I was same way. Or maybe even worse. I would bring up statistics and showed my friends with kids that odds of kidnapping are so much lower than many other bad things.
Then I had my kid.
I am not worried about neighbors judging me like some other commenters are. But my perspective has changed a bit. When it is not your kid, it is very easy to make logical decisions based on statistics and probabilities. But when it is your kid, emotions get in the way. You think of worst case scenario.
It is the same reason why many people make money when paper trading but lose when using real money.
I was a kid in the 90s, and I had similar upbringing. Although I got to school using a bus up until highschool, I was generally allowed to roam around outside as much as I wanted, and most of my close friends had the same liberties. I have fond memories of dragging my friends into the woods for adventures, catching lizards and picking berries. I'm happy I wasn't a victim of the "it's too dangerous to let children be alone outside" approach to parenting that seems to be getting more and more popular, and I lament the lack of freedom many children have these days.
One of my biggest disappointments as a parent was choosing the wrong neighborhood for our son. We picked one that we thought was going to have lots of kids, but it ended up not happening. It has some kids, but the problem these days is that a minority of neighborhoods have the critical mass combination of number of kids X number of free range parents. We can kick our son out of the house, but there is really no one else to play with. We've tried it, and the only kids regularly outside are 3-4 years younger, and he tried to play with them but got bored quickly.
It's really depressing as I am all for the free range parenting. But our location is just the wrong match of things to do around and number of kids :( In hindsight I would've moved elsewhere, although my wife moved when she as a kid and she is still scarred by that experience.
Our son is 13 now and we need to keep him in camps because the only other option is for him to sit at home and screens all day - last summer he had almost no camps, and we tried to get him outside, but he'd go house-to-house and see if he could get friends to go do anything, and it basically never worked. And if it did, they'd go sit on some swings at the school, chat for 30 minutes, and then the friends would leave.
Depressing as all hell. Pandemic didn't help the situation. When I was a kid, it was "out of the house" after breakfast, and then maybe stop by for lunch, and then "be home when the streetlights come on or if Dad whistles".
I grew up with two handfuls of siblings. I may not have kids, but I was the eldest and that... that gets pretty close sometimes; since things land on your shoulders when the parents are unable to pick up the slack. Etc etc.
My mother gave us the 'free-range' approach; but with every adult knowing to report back whatever we were doing. heh. More like CIA free-range. Looking back, I think she made the right choice overall; but maybe could have dialed it back on the community watch part. Not that we didn't get away with anything we shouldn't have, but rather her 'eyes and ears' were really quite bad at passing along what actually happened due to the outside observer effect.
So we would get these situations from time to time where adults needed to be corrected, and of course adults always take corrections from children really well. Always. lol. (Sarcasm for those who are missing it)
Long story short, if you are going to let your kids be free-range, actually let them be free-range. And if you are going to take 'hints' from the neighbors; make sure those neighbors aren't lying asshats.
Just my two cents as the eldest of ... 11? Pretty sure it's 11.
I rode to junior high, where there was parking for hundreds of bikes. Recently I drove by that school, and the bike racks were gone. This whole concept of waiting in traffic to pick up or drop off your kid wasn't even a thing.
When I was in elementary school (in the 1970's), I thought the school was far away - I rode the bus to school and if my parents had to take me to school or come to school for any reason, they always drove.
It wasn't until I was grown that I realized that the school was only about half a mile from home -- I could have walked there in less time than it took to walk to the bus stop and wait for the bus. There was a 4 lane road between me and the school, but it had a traffic light and a crossing guard could have helped ensure safety.
>>if you're raising kids, to consider the upsides of so-called "free range"
you can't. It's basically illegal in USA and Canada, and your neighbours and school will report you and child services will have a nice chat first time, less nice next time.
Above was typed on phone late at night and may sound abrasive, so for context: I live in the Toronto, Canada area. On regular basis, local or national news will have an article about child protection services being engaged for items such as 12 year old left at home alone or a 8 year old being alone on sidewalk etc. Schools and Neighbours are typically the ones who report the incident. Culture is one of protection, and a child seen alone on the street raises immediate alarm bells amongst bystanders. Three provinces have legal limits of either 12 or 16 years old for children to be left alone for any period of time; but in all provinces and federally, canadian social services organizations "advise that children under 12 should not be left unsupervised". This is typically pursued under "supervisory neglect" and "placing children under risk of harm".
In my province of Ontario, the statutory limit for leaving a child without adequate supervision is... sixteen years old. Fine of up to $5000 and up to 12 months in jail.
Which is insane to me, having walked to school since age 6, taking buses solo since age 11 or 12, lived through civil war at age 12 and flying unspervised over three airlines and four countries to another continent at age 15. But there you have it.
So a suggestion to raise kids free range is just not an option where I am, unfortunately :(
True. I grew up 'free range' as you mentioned and there was a lot more freedom to go around the city n my bicycle, take the bus/train and even the airplane before I was 16. It is hardly the case anymore.
That was still true 25 years later and for a few lucky ones it still is today. I think parents compensate the time they cannot spend with their children with exaggerating measures for their safety. Or for social signaling people are very concerned about safety in general because they have no other channel to show that they care.
I can understand it in a large cities though, traffic has indeed become more dangerous because the density increased massively. Not from the US, but the usual horror story you hear is that you cannot leave your kids running around or risk getting called CPS on you.
Someone who grew up in the 1920s would say something very similar about the way you grew up in the 1970s. This is what getting old looks like. Thinking that the old way was better and the new way is worse.
My biggest concern with how much freedom to give my son has not been his safety out in public on his own, but the potential risk of interference from other people who might think he'd be at risk.
We live two doors down from his primary school, which did not even allow children to leave without being picked up until year 5, and only then with signed consent.
Meanwhile, I had a half hour walk to and from school from my second day of school onwards.
"officials placed two brothers into foster care after one, 11, was found playing basketball alone in his own yard."
He'd gotten home early from school and his parents came 90 minutes later. He was in his own yard. The family lost their children to foster care. Ironically in foster care ACTUAL abuse rates are pretty darn high!
"When Cindy and Fred arrived home they were arrested for child neglect — then fingerprinted, strip searched, and held in jail overnight.Their kids, meanwhile, including their 4-year-old boy, were removed from the home and from their parents’ custody"
Mom worked in the school district ironically.
"We still do not have our children, we are fighting for our own freedom and due to the nature of my employment I am no longer employed,” she wrote. “My son was in his own yard playing basketball, not in the street or at the park. The authorities claim he had no access to water or shelter. We have an open shed in the back yard and 2 working sinks and 2 hoses. They said he had no food. He ate his snacks already. He had no bathroom, but the responding officer found our yard good enough to relieve himself in while our son sat in a police car alone."
Being accused of child abuse / neglect is a career ender. The idea of my 4 year old being taken is beyond belief. What is so ironic is so many real / terrible things are happening (crime of all sorts / abuse in the traditional sense / financial fraud online) where nothing happens. But your kid shoots some hoops in their own yard, you lose custody. You are jailed and strip searched. You lose your job.
I realize big government is here to protect us, I just wish they would focus on the harder problems.
That's a horrible story that resulted in the Maryland CPS issuing the following statement clarifying that what those parents did was not neglect:
> And in fact, as Donna St. George reported in yesterday's Washington Post, Maryland's CPS has just issued new guidelines, saying, "Children playing outside or walking unsupervised does not meet the criteria for a CPS response absent specific information supporting the conclusion that the child has been harmed or is at substantial risk of harm if they continue to be unsupervised."
This is a big country and that was a rare and particularly egregious case; it's not the norm.
Even if it is not the norm, people hear about situations like this, and become fearful. Fear of CPS taking kids is enough to make many parents not willing to allow their children freedom.
I sort of understand that someone might call something in.
My issues is the govt, arresting, strip searching parents, take away a young child from them and putting them in foster care, getting folks fired.
What are they trying to accomplish here. There is insane abuse IN the foster care system. What is the great harm to an 11 year old child playing outside in their own yard that requires this govt response.
On the other hand, that something is rare does not mean we should dismiss it because it is rare. If humans get together to set up a system then edge cases that are high risk like this (high risk because risk == chance of occurrence * effect) should not be able to happen. Do NASA just shrug every time a rare occurrence ends someone's life? I hope not, and the care system is not rocket science so there's even less excuse for an heedless attitude.
Created by people who mean well perhaps, but subsequently captured by another sort.
> Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
No. As a manager I embrace process that aids my team in achieving our goals, and eschew process that hinders it. For me the process is a means to an end.
I meet lots of bureaucrats who literally only care that the processes they oversee are carried out. For them the process is the goal.
When I was 5 my parents went on holiday abroad for 2 weeks and left me alone at home with 2 dogs. We had great fun after I learnt how to use analogue camera
>due to the nature of my employment I am no longer employed
This is an overlooked problem. Lack of employment protection. Nobody should be able to be fired for being arrested. That doesn't mean they committed a crime. It's not their fault they can't show up to work. There should be employment protection for that. In my country, even schoolteachers being investigated for sexual abuse aren't fired. They aren't allowed to go to work but they still get paid while the justice is being worked out, because they might turn out to be innocent!
If they're paid while the justice is being worked out and their trial takes years, that is potentially a burden that the employer can't bear.
Also, you're describing a situation where bad behavior becomes a protected class as soon as you get arrested for it.
In my high school, a teacher was caught raping one of his teenage students. He was fired for it.
In your opinion, if he had been arrested, he should have had his paycheck legally protected until his trial ended.
That's absolutely, totally insane. I don't know what country you live in, but I'm glad to live in the US where I can fire someone I know has committed a crime. It is possible to know things before the criminal justice system decides they are true.
Hooray for people having their entire lives destroyed because someone decided they 'know' something which might not even be true.
There are plenty of cases of trials over rape or assault allegations which were entirely fictitious.
This isn't even really the point being discussed. It's more that someone could be fired for an arrest over a an offence which has absolutely nothing to do with their job.
> Hooray for people having their entire lives destroyed because someone decided they 'know' something which might not even be true.
People are not entitled to due process to keep their jobs. Where do you draw the line? Should it be illegal to fire someone for failing a drug test (which are not 100% reliable) until a jury finds them guilty?
> There are plenty of cases of trials over rape or assault allegations which were entirely fictitious.
There are very, very few[1]. You're just more likely to hear about the false ones.
This makes logical sense. It is personally costly to the accuser to accuse someone of rape, even when the accusation is completely true.
The accuser is subject to people calling them a slut, liar, etc.
> In my country, even schoolteachers being investigated for sexual abuse aren't fired.
> It's more that someone could be fired for an arrest over a an offence which has absolutely nothing to do with their job.
So you're moving the goalposts. First, you said that even a teacher accused of sexual abuse (which is very much related to their job) shouldn't be fired. Now you're saying that should only be true if the crime is related to the job.
Does that mean I shouldn't be allowed to fire someone for being filmed murdering someone on camera? That person hasn't been convicted yet. The legal system considers them innocent.
You say you want a blanket ban on firing people for accusations of crimes, but then you don't address what we should do for the edge cases. Nothing you're asking for makes any legal sense.
I should be able to fire someone for any reason that isn't my own prejudice. Freedom of association is important.
Paid by the government, so the burden isn't directly on the employer.
Yes, a rapist should be protected before his trial is over. If you're so sure he's guilty, why even have a trial? Just do summary justice. There's a reason we have due process and countries like Russia and China that don't are seen as human rights violators.
That's an argument for a speedier judicial process, not allowing a lack of employment protection to act like a non-judicial punitive action (that then also likely hinders the actual defence within the justice system).
> I'm glad to live in the US where I can fire someone I know has committed a crime. It is possible to know things before the criminal justice system decides they are true.
That's the opposite of what the constitution sets out to provide.
> That's the opposite of what the constitution sets out to provide.
The Constitution does not include "accused criminals" as a protected class. Please point to the exact section of the Constitution that includes them.
I'm going to be charitable and assume you meant that presumption of innocence is in the Constitution, which it actually isn't[1]. As set forth elsewhere and respected in the US, presumption of innocence applies only to the legal system. You do not have a right to the presumption of innocence by your fellow citizens.
And as I asked in another comment: if I witness someone committing a crime and decide to fire them, should the government force me to wait until they are convicted of the crime?
What if the victim doesn't want to press charges? What if the criminal abuses to legal system or repeatedly appeals, resulting in a delay of multiple years before they are convicted?
This is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard. No one should be forced to keep someone on payroll that they have good reason to suspect is dangerous or dishonest.
Should've started and ended with that and I might've believed you, but
> This is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard.
It seems fitting to place those quotes next to each other.
To your charitable assumptions and questions:
> The Constitution does not include "accused criminals" as a protected class. Please point to the exact section of the Constitution that includes them.
As you wish. The 5th and 14th amendments[1] provide a right to due process. The "protected class" you're looking for is “All persons within the territory of the United States are entitled to its protection, including corporations, aliens, and presumptively citizens seeking readmission to the United States”.
> if I witness someone committing a crime and decide to fire them, should the government force me to wait until they are convicted of the crime?
No, and I certainly wasn't suggesting that. Was anyone? I made sure to put the most important objection in the very first line of my response:
> That's an argument for a speedier judicial process
and I continued with its de facto opposite, the one that you appeared and appear eager to support:
> allowing a lack of employment protection to act like a non-judicial punitive action
because you were arguing this:
> If they're paid while the justice is being worked out and their trial takes years, that is potentially a burden that the employer can't bear.
They're turning up to work, right? The employer could bear it the day before their arrest so they can the day after.
> Also, you're describing a situation where bad behavior becomes a protected class as soon as you get arrested for it.
Your strange fantasy about being able to fire a rapist that you know did it when you were surely also the one that hired this reprobate is at once amusingly ironic and the setup for one of the worst straw man arguments I think I'll have the misfortune to witness for a good long while.
This is confusing, because you are linking here to a story about a couple in Maryland. "Cindy and Fred", as quoted in the post you replied to, are in Florida.
It's a similar situation, so the confusion is not surprising. I had to bounce back and forth a couple times myself because it didn't quite seem to line up. Thought maybe one was an updated version of the other with the false names revealed as actual people, but it turns out the situations are different. One of the kids is a different age, and in one case the kids were going to the park and back and in the other one the older kid was walking home from school playing ball in his own yard waiting for his parents to arrive.
I have a strong suspicion that "Cindy and Fred" are in fact minorities and this is just plain vanilla southern racism at play. This is the state terrorizing minority communities to remind them who is in charge. That's usually what is going on when you see gross miscarriages of justice like this in the south.
Florida. There are two cases being discussed in this thread and at least one post explicitly conflates them. "Cindy and Fred" are in Florida. The other story is a different couple in a similar though different situation. They are actually named, and live in Maryland.
As a parent, none of the risks are as profound as that of some other member of the public calling the police to inform on your “dangerous parenting”.
I’ve deliberately chosen to live in a walkable part of the Bay Area in the hopes that my kids can be more independent when they get older, but I’m more worried about the social pushback than I am about their safety.
I let my three kids walk to school, the park, around the corner to friend’s houses. Neighbors complained to my face multiple times, and threatened to call CPS twice. My children all survived to adulthood.
I was walking to school with other kids when I was four, no one had a problem with it then. Teaching kids to fear everyone and the world they live in doesn’t do them any good — it just causes anxiety.
One of our neighbors screamed at my wife and me because our six year old son wasn’t wearing a helmet on his Razer scooter to (slowly) go around the corner. That same neighbor let her dog run around off-leash at the park, assuring the parents there that the dog didn’t bite, though it did like to jump on the children. We raised our kids in Portland, where dogs have more rights and freedom than children.
This risk doesn't seem worth it. You are playing CPS roulette. Even if 9/10 CPS agents are going to make the right decisions, that's a 10% chance of having some kind of issue with CPS. If I recall correctly, people have had their kids taken over stuff like this.
I think if this is such a big deal ( I think it is too) you should move out of the city. That's just too big to gamble with.
I understand the risk of busybody adults and CPS. We chose to let our kids have some freedom of movement. I have lawyers in my family so we were less worried than other parents we knew. In Portland specifically CPS overreach got a lot of negative press and pushback from parent’s groups — there’s strength in numbers.
Texas, Oklahoma, and Utah have enacted so-called “free range” laws to allow kids to do unthinkable things like walk to the corner store or park without a security detail and body armor. Oregon will probably be among the last states to ease up — dogs will get the right to vegan CBD-infused meals there first. I no longer live there.
The thing that gets me is that people do this stuff all the time and it's not a problem until CPS gets dragged into it, while at the same time the system is massively overburdened. They should be punishing the people calling in mundane issues and wasting their time. But! That might dissuade someone from reporting something, and the first time a bad case is missed the outrage and subsequent overcorrection lands us back to where we are now.
That, and the fact that like any institution it exists in part to keep itself and its budget justified, if there aren't enough problems then you can always make some 'easy' cases (legally easy but morally more than a little bit ambiguous) so they can serve as a chunk of that justification.
When I was in 5th grade, I had a friend with bent legs, who walked with supports attached to his arms. (Well, gripped in his hands, but with a partial ring that went around the arm; I assume to make them easier to hold on to.)
The school considered us bad influences on each other - we got in trouble a lot, which hadn't been true before we knew each other. But his mother thought I was great, because one of the activities we did together was go for long walks around the neighborhood. She thought the exercise was beneficial, given his condition.
I can only imagine how she would have responded if someone had complained to the police that she was letting her son walk around unsupervised.
Yep. I used to be park of a park advisory council in Chicago. At one meeting, police were there to field questions about park safety. One of the attendees mentioned their concern for the times they saw "unsupervised 10-year-olds" playing in the neighborhood park. The cop encouraged the person to call 911 when they observed that happening!
In Chicago, it's pretty much illegal to be a kid without an adult present in most places. In the Southern California suburb I live in now, it's better in that respect. Unfortunately, it's not walkable or bikeable outside of the housing development.
>In Chicago, it's pretty much illegal to be a kid without an adult present in most places
Funny story about this. In highschool I had a teacher who lived with her 12 year old daughter in Chicago, where the legal age for leaving your child home alone is 13. If she needed to run errands alone she'd just leave her daughter to do a loop on the L train (which doesn't have as tight age restrictions). Bizarre.
> The cop encouraged the person to call 911 when they observed that happening
The optimist in me thinks that's just the cops way of dissuading the crazy person from getting personally involved, encouraging them to instead call the adults.
In CA there's laws specifically against leaving a child in the car due to risk of overheating.
There's no laws about leaving them at home alone.
That being said, there have been lots of horror stories of other adults calling the cops out of concern for child "neglect." And this creates a huge hassle for the parents. Try to figure out our neighborhood's feelings on the topic, and obviously look into the Free Range Kids movement for resources.
Politically speaking, it's also good to push back on any legislation or system where parents lose power on their kids education and upbringing, even in the name of their well-being.
It's important as a society that we have autonomy and diversity in the upbringing of the next generation.
Unfortunately vocal people on both sides of the spectrum hate that. The people calling CPS hate it because they think parents are being negectful. Certain people hate it because they imagine kids getting indoctrinated into religions they don't like. I have several friends and families that were raised via home schooling or raised their kids homeschooled. All the kids are amazing, none of them had any religion involvment.
I had home schooling myself. My parents took me out after the school wanted to put me in special ed due to my autism. (Of course, they tried Ritalin first.)
After being taken out of school, there weren’t any actual problems. My parents let me spend the day programming and biking, and deal with the standardized tests myself. It was one of their best parenting decisions.
I don’t have autism.
Lately I’m letting my daughter try home schooling, after they started doing six hours a day of Zoom meetings. It’s not going as well, but I think the main thing is she knows I’m on her side.
I guess you will need to find another avenue for her to socialize with her peers. Maybe extracurricular activities like sports or music or something. Socialization and social kills are super important, especially for introverts who need to "work out" that muscle.
So basically a normal childhood? Just wondering, because as a European I find this whole discussion enlightening (learning something new) and bizarre at the same time. Heck, our kids are picking up groceries and bread at the two shops near by every week-end. Which is great, because it means us parents can sleep in longer. Just thinking about someone calling CPS or the cops for that, I think they would be laughed out. At least I hope that cops would even refuse to show up in such cases, because honestly, if the caller sounds worried enough they just could.
That being said, we have a community youth center and sports / playground right across the street. There, kids and teenagers of all sorts are hanging out well into the night. I just wished I could motivate my elder son to do so as well, because that would be so much better than spending his time indoors. There is only so much screen time limiting you can do.
A huge part of it is talking to neighbors, even if just a little bit. If you see "Suzy's kid" walking down the street you're much less likely to freak out than if you see "unknown kid".
But the easiest is to just move to somewhere where people aren't as freaked out.
The Bay Area is not immune to anti-walking nonsense. At the elementary school that was formerly close to my home (which my children did not attend, specifically due to said nonsense) the children who were walking home had to stay at school for 45 minutes while "pick-up time", i.e. parents with cars picking up children, was conducted. This was deemed a safety measure.
If you're outside SF itself, look for the old parts of a town, with houses built in the 20s or earlier. There's probably a "main street"/downtown area near by, and because it's an old part of town, the streets are narrower and traffic moves slower.
Much of suburban Marin County is a paradise in this regard - the Ross Valley cities of Ross, Larkspur (not larkspur landing), Kentfield, San Anselmo and Fairfax[1] are full of kids of all ages riding their bikes and walking to school every day.
Berkeley and Albany. My neighbors told me they can't get their teenager to finish his drivers ed course because he just doesn't care that much about driving. His school, the park and his friends are all walking and biking distance away.
Thanks for the link. This goes in the right direction, but so far I have not been able to identify truly walkable neighborhoods through websites. The main problem is that the metrics usually being used, do not reflect the type of walkability that would be beneficial for raising children.
As an example, I randomly picked a particular address on walkscore.com (https://walk.sc/37yZciv) which gets a walk score of 91 (walker's paradise), but that particular address is on a large 7-lane street with not a lot of walking infrastructure around. I'm guessing the score might mostly be driven by proximity to stores, which doesn't necessarily matter in this case. Better metrics may be such things as amount of car traffic, noise levels, size of sidewalks (in comparison with size of streets), amount of small streets and distance to larger roads, etc..
I wonder if a website exists that puts more emphasis on how nice it is to walk in a neighborhood vs. mere practicality?
Milpitas really is not walkable, although you can somewhat decently navigate it with a bike. Walkability mostly is a function of density, which you can just glean by eye from a satellite picture. Unfortunately, many otherwise pedestrian-friendly places in the Bay Area have homeless camps set up on them, which might be a deterrent.
Anything south of Oakland/SF is mostly strip mall hell, but parts of Alameda County, Contra Costa County, Marin County and San Francisco might be what you're looking for.
Noe Valley/Bernal Heights is quite good. There is also schools in Noe but I guess SF is some kind of lottery system so it's not guaranteed your kids can go that school.
We recently started letting our 9 year-old walk down to a nearby park alone to meet and play with friends. It’s helping them build independence and confidence and I have no concerns about kidnapping, etc, because it’s only a couple of blocks away and we live in a safe neighborhood (they also have a phone they take with them and know to call/text us when they change their plans and go to another nearby park).
What I DO have concerns about, however, is overzealous adults who see a kid playing alone at a park and decide to call the police or child protective services.
That last part is WAY more common and likely than anything else.
> Fewer than 350 people under the age of 21 have been abducted by strangers in the United States per year between 2010–2017.
> According to the NWS Storm Data, over the last 30 years (1989-2018) the U.S. has averaged 43 reported lightning fatalities per year.
So letting kids walk to the park is way less risky than a thunderstorm (though perhaps they shouldn't walk to the park IN a thunderstorm).
> In 2019, 608 child passengers age 12 and younger died in motor vehicle crashes, and more than 91,000 were injured. Of the children 12 and younger who died in a crash (for whom restraint use was known), 38% were not buckled up.
I haven't done the numbers, but driving a kid to the park when not buckled up may be more dangerous than letting them walk.
It's only the end of the free range era among the whites. Other populations in my city have no issues letting their children range around. It's common to be on the bus and hear school aged children talking in various languages around me on the bus.
Annual under 21 abductions by strangers are 8 times more likely than death by lightning strike for all groups.
But there’s lots of confounding variables there. A kid that’s not outside won’t be abducted by a stranger and you won’t be struck by lightning if you’re inside as well. Thunderstorms don’t happen everyday but a kid may walk alone twice a day. So what’s the right equivalence? Is walking alone through a bad neighborhood the same as going into the lightning storm and grabbing a flag pole?
Along these lines I am curious about the number of innocent families affected by the harassment of overzealous adults (my son has had this happen twice) or CPS (zero, fortunately). Given the somewhat subjective nature of "innocent" it's probably not quantifiable, but I sometimes wonder what the risk actually is. Being struck by lightning is unlikely, but the potential effects are serious enough to warrant taking precautions— I wonder how similar the analogy truly is.
>>>What I DO have concerns about, however, is overzealous adults who see a kid playing alone at a park and decide to call the police or child protective services.
Ding ding ding! This is exactly it. I'm not worried about my 6-year-old walking around the neighbourhood alone, or staying in the car (in proper weather) while I do an errand, or going into a store and grabbing something. I'm not worried about kidnapping and murder and all that stuff, since it's so vanishingly rare that it's worth worrying about as much as lightning.
What I am worried about is some busybody calling CPS because they think kids are stolen and sold if they're left unsupervised for 5 minutes.
Absolutely need to plug Not Just Bikes, a youtube channel done by a Canadian living in The Netherlands about urban planning using Dutch infrastructure as the gold standard. Key points he makes are how bad North American environments are for child freedom. Its almost entirely due to NA urban planning prioritizing cars over everything else, making it just dangerous for anyone to try and walk anywhere, let alone children. A general difference is that Dutch urban planning prioritizes pedestrians, bikes, transit, then cars, in that order. Whereas in NA cars are really the only thing prioritized.
My favorite video of his is about this exact topic, Why I Won't Raise My Kids in Suburbia [0]. This video completely changed my own life, motivating my family and I to move to a city from the suburbs, and fingers-crossed, eventually to The Netherlands.
I don't think it's really a "gold standard"; it's more that everything else is so unbelievably atrocious that it looks like a "gold standard", but it's still incredibly car-dominated. I watched the video and it's not wrong: it's extremely common for children to cycle to elementary school on their own and it's mostly safe, but it doesn't really "prioritize pedestrians, bikes, transit, then cars, in that order"; cars are still very central in most traffic.
Things are very slowly beginning to change, in some areas, sometimes. But it's very slow progress.
I live near one of the cities shown in the video (Assen). Look it up on Google streetview. Most streets are dominated by bikes and pedestrians, not cars. Cars are mostly routed through streets are designed to accommodate them.
Society's risk tolerance, especially for kids, has fallen pretty dramatically. This is probably related to just how many fewer kids US society has in general (births per woman has fallen in half since 1960, and it takes a culture some time to catch up). If you have fewer, then the individual ones become that much more valuable. Your attention and time is divided much less.
A hot metal playground slide was no big deal in the 1970s, nor was a merry-go-round, and kids could get injured relatively easily. But our tolerance of such risk has completely disappeared.
I think the "Stranger Danger" panic that accelerated in the 80's is probably more responsible for people thinking that a 4-year old is incapable of running errands. It's not so much the lack of mental capacity as it is decades of cultural inculcation that you should not dare to let any child under the age of ___ wander the streets alone, or they will be immediately abducted, assaulted, and decapitated by dark forces.
America has never really recovered from Adam Walsh's murder, IMO.
Well, and now the Internet - it doesn't help when Nextdoor is full of "suspicious person alerts" aka "there was a solicitor and I didn't like it", and a non-stop barrage of crime related stories.
I live in a city whose broader region is almost 10000 square miles, and the crime feeds report all crime in this area as occurring in "Houston", even though this region is larger than some US states. I feel like this contributes to panic because people feel like the crime is in their backyard. My local news station targets me on Facebook with stories because I'm in this MSA, but the story they hit me with could be a shooting that's easily a 1.5 hour drive from me.
Heck, here in Texas, my phone has buzzed from what they are calling "Blue Alerts" now, which is a riff off of Amber Alerts, where I've gotten notified that an officer was shot at, literally over 4 hours away from me, almost 300 miles away. It's not surprising that our society is inundated with panic.
Nextdoor is very revealing. I had no idea how racist my neighbors were until I read the Nextdoor post about a suspicious cherrypicker truck driver in the neighborhood, who suspiciously claimed to work for the power company.
Nextdoor post in my neighborhood complained about a "suspicious car" that "scouts the area" around 11pm at night. Whipped enough people into a frenzy to where someone decided to block the car and confront the driver one night. They wound up being a neighbor who gets off late every night, driving straight to their house. The driver made a post chastising the community for targeting them, but it got removed because it was too "political".
It's funny because you'd think this watchfulness + technology like Nextdoor would let kids be more independent, e.g. if anybody tried to snatch your kid they'd be reported by half a dozen busybodies watching through their windows.
This assumes that most users of Nextdoor or have video cameras dotting their house are interested in protecting kids. Nextdoor is a cesspool of racism, and everyone I know who has "security" cameras is afraid of people stealing their stuff. Despite crime in our area being at an all time low and property theft very uncommon.
I think it has much less to do with any particular murder, and is actually related to the rise of cable news that needed to find some way to fill an entire day, every day of the week, with national news. There just isn't that much national news, not the sort that keeps people tuning in. So instead they started taking local news stories that had some sensational elements and presenting them as national news stories. Stories about serial killers, kids getting hurt, etc.
We know for a fact that pedophiles, kidnappers, and murders exist. I think we just always thought we could sniff them out by knowing our community. That was probably a false sense of security all along. Now we mostly live in communities too plentiful to know everyone so our fear is unchecked.
I grew up in a small community, and while a few people were usually thought of as not to be trusted, they didn't turn out to be the dangerous ones. So I agree that there is a false sense of security in small communities. At the same time, I'm sure that overall, like shark attacks, we very much overestimate the danger.
Read about the BTK serial killer. Dude was a "pillar" of his community. Look at all the priests the Catholic Church continually protects when they commit abuse. Besides, most abuse (like most murders) is committed by someone the victim knew.
"stranger danger" isn't just a delusion of over-protective parents...my own daughter has told me numerous times over the years of being followed and approached by males she did not know (a car following her slowly, a middle-aged man "asking her out" repeatedly in a park, etc)
we didn't respond to these instances by locking her up, but I'm not going to dismiss parents who are protective
I don't doubt for a moment that your daughter encountered creeps in public spaces. I'm just not sure that the solution that was impressed upon my generation (I was born at the tail-end of the 80s) really helped. The default behavior shifted from "View some people with suspicion" to "View everyone you are likely to encounter as a potential serial rapist-pedophile-murderer." And don't think just avoiding contact is enough, because you could just be walking down an empty street by yourself when Mr. Serial Killer pulls up beside you in his car, jumps out, pulls you into the vehicle, and we won't hear from you again until your severed head is found in a well.
Could it happen? Sure. Is it likely to happen? Probably not. Is it worth keeping your children unable to leave the house without an escort until they're 18?
It's also about some collective trust/fantasy, in addition to the tolerance.
For example, I don't think Tokyo is particularly safer than a (walkable) US city.
But since people there collectively believe Japan is a safe country and are proud of it, they let their child go out.
But I agree that the risk tolerance points too. I have talked to a handful of Japanese parents and none of them let their small kids go out without the supervision anymore. So the lower risk tolerance isn't a US-only problem. I guess it's a symptom of modernized society in general (although would love to be proven wrong.)
> For example, I don't think Tokyo is particularly safer than a (walkable) US city
on what do you base this opinion? I looked up a couple of crime stats sites and the assault and murder rates per capita in the US are like, 10x higher in the US than in Japan.
Average assault and murder rates are massively inflated by a handful of exceptional cities. St. Louis (usually highest murder rate in the US or close to it) is pushing 70 murders per 100k. That is roughly double the rate of Cleveland (rank 5). Cleveland has a murder rate over 10 times higher than a city of around ~40k people that I live fairly close to. However, another city (population ~45k) that is about a 20 minute drive away from the one I'm near has a murder rate over 15 times higher than the city I live near.
Crime is experienced incredibly unevenly in the US. I won't say much more past that because it's where the politics starts to kick in and I don't think that will add anything to the conversation.
That 3.5 is almost without exception crime-related. Your odds of being a victim of extreme violence even if you weren't involved in what started it are effectively zero. Miyazaki prefecture probably experiences this same phenomenon. If even that is too much for you to risk, there's a city a couple of hours away with a population of 100k and a murder rate of 0.00. We haven't even mentioned the Japanese tendency to only prosecute slam dunk cases.
The major point is that although Tokyo might be "safer" on paper, the risk profile of letting your kid walk around Tokyo vs. letting your kid walk around the city I mentioned is pretty much the same in practice, and this goes for thousands of American cities. There are millions of Americans who could let their kids walk around their community and not have to worry about them being murdered or seriously assaulted.
You argue that most murders are criminals killing each other. Suppose you're right. So let's look at robberies instead. Those are primarily directed towards random people not towards other criminals.
The safest US city in that respect is Irvine with ~20 per 100k (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...). Irvine is indeed a very safe city, and I doubt parents would be concerned too much with letting their kids walk to school (if only the school was within a walking distance away).
Now move out of Irvine. Pick a city. San Francisco is ~360, NYC is ~160, Seattle is ~210. Even Mountain View, near Apple, Google, and many other high tech companies is ~60.
And btw, people in Tokyo generally do very little protect themselves from violent crime, since it's so rare. They walk around late, alone, often drunk, paying no attention to their surroundings. I'm pretty sure if people behaved like that in SF, the robbery rate would jump significantly.
Huh. I should've done some research first. Thanks for the catch!
It was based on my personal experience but looking at [1], I realized that I'm in the one of the safest county in the US. The murder rate is very comparable (2x) to Tokyo here.
I think there are a lot of myths about Japan, but I don't think public safety is one them.
In over a decade of living in Japan I've only encountered aggressive begging/panhandling once. Street violence is very rare, muggings too. One week in London and I'll see more than in 10 years in Japan.
Pure anecdote: I was jogging on my regular running route and I saw a wallet on the ground with 5000 yen hanging out of it. It was wet so I picked it up and put on a visible dry spot on a nearby wall. I ran past it the next day and it was still there, same spot, same cash sticking out. Finally on the third day it was gone. Maybe the owner came back for it, maybe it was stolen, maybe it was handed to the police. I don't think visible cash on the street would have lasted so long in most places.
> A large component here is simply risk tolerance.
Cheap, hand-held TVs delivering custom-tailored traumatic word-salad clickbait videos to kids would have created so much paranoia among suburban moms in the 80s they would have forgotten to be terrified about crack/cocaine.
Its not just personal risk tolerance that plays into it either. I would let my kids largely run free but I know I would probably have to deal with CPS if I did so.
It was a several months long ordeal when a neighbor reported me and my siblings playing "unsupervised" in our own front lawn when I was a kid. Looking back on it, the caseworker was very obviously trying to seperate us from our parents. The kicker: I was old enough to be a babysitter at the time.
437,283 American children were removed from their parents last year. Meanwhile fewer than 350 people under the age of 21 have been abducted by strangers in the United States per year between 2010–2017
Now of course CPS handle actual cases of child neglect in that 430k, but it certainly seems that the most likely people to take a child are either
1) The other parent
2) CPS
3) Death from Road traffic, Firearms, Suffocation/Drowning, Drug overdoses
+1 for the playground merry-go-round (a small manual carousel) as a “litmus test” here. It’s exactly the right level of danger that kids should encounter.
Disappointing that an article like this wouldn’t mention one of the main reasons children are given less autonomy in the US: our built environment. The vast majority of our children grow up in neighborhoods in which one can’t easily be a pedestrian at any age. Low density communities, in which almost all trips have to be taken in cars, are of course not friendly to non-drivers.
Japan builds dense, mixed use neighborhoods. As a result, children are empowered to walk to the store or a friend’s house.
I don't think this is the main reason. It fails to explain why neighborhoods that kids played freely in decades ago now keep their kids inside. I'm talking about suburban neighborhoods in modest towns that haven't seen population growth or urban development.
I used to walk to school frequently, every time I missed the bus it was a two mile walk down country roads. If the weather was nice, sometimes I'd choose to walk without even missing the bus. My mother retired from that school district last year, and she tells me things are very different. She would be required to report any kid who was walking to school, it simply isn't allowed anymore. So what changed? Did the town get bigger? Nope, it actually shrunk a bit since the plant was sold. Did the roads get narrower? Twistier? Nope, they're the same as they ever were. The school? Still the same place they ever were. The only thing that changed was people became more fearful.
> The only thing that changed was people became more fearful.
People absolutely drive considerably faster. There are many reasons for that, but they do. When I was a kid roaming around on my own in the 1980s and 1990s, the roads simply weren't as dangerous as they are now.
People not only drive faster, but driver visibility is much worse--because A frames, because SUVs, etc.
I agree fear has grown considerably. But not all that extra fear is irrational--at least some of it is justified.
Maybe in US but not in eastern Europe. Speed limits and road restrictions are significantly hardened last two decades, as well as casualties per capita.
I read somewhere that some states are passing laws now specifically to protect parents from prosecution for letting 9 year olds play in parks unsupervised. I guess people see kids playing without parents now and think it's some kind of child abuse.
In our rural school district, you're probably not even going to be on the school bus schedule if you live within a mile unless you're still in elementary school. In middle school/high school you can have up to a 1 mile walk to the bus before they will add a new stop. Elementary school kids have to be farther than 1/4 mile from the bus stop before they add a new stop.
Bear in mind though, that a lot of these rules are because it gets so cold here and they don't want 6 year-olds walking a mile to school in a blizzard when it's -20F.
Elementary school through highschool. All those schools were within about a mile radius of each other and were served by the same school buses for all grades.
> It fails to explain why neighborhoods that kids played freely in decades ago now keep their kids inside. I'm talking about suburban neighborhoods in modest towns that haven't seen population growth or urban development.
This is a good point, although I would like to see some data to know whether this is actually common, or whether it's merely a common perception. If you actually control for things like population density, demographics (most notably age distribution), traffic, road design, city design (distance to schools, playgrounds, etc.) do you see a clear pattern of reduction in the number of children playing freely outside?
I have no doubt that there are plenty of places where this has happened, but I also have anecdotes of places where this hasn't happened (at least in the area I grew up in since I was a kid in the 90s).
As a teacher, my anecdotal opinion that is kids have much more available - and higher quality - indoor entertainment. As a kid in the 90’s, I didnt want to be inside. It was boring.
I also do believe kids are over-scheduled and that youth sports require wildly excessive investment compared to my era.
> As a kid in the 90’s, I didnt want to be inside. It was boring.
Exactly. We had Super Nintendo, which was great, but you were limited by the carts you owned or rented. You had to sit down in front of the TV at a specific time each day to catch the show you liked, and that was it—one episode, now go find something else to do.
The Internet is an infinite supply of everything. You can watch an entire season of your favorite show nonstop in one sitting, or download ROMs of every SNES game ever created and play through them one by one. And as soon as a kid figures this out, it’s game over.
In my city in Canada I noticed a lot of kids playing outside last summer. However, they were all East African or Arabs: I assume refugees from Eritrea and Syria. They were doing the stuff I did (playing with sticks, climbing the sand piles, widening the fence holes) and stuff I didn’t (parking lot soccer).
I’ve started seeing more white kids out in my neighborhood this spring though, maybe things are going back?
Many people trace the inflection point back to the kidnapping of Etan Patz in 1979. The case was highly publicized and made many parents afraid of child predators in a way they really hadn't been before. That case and a few others led to putting pictures of missing children on milk cartons so then the fear was in their faces every day.
As a child in the US in the 1980s we were told over and over by the TV and school to never talk to strangers, to run away from people offering us candy or asking us to help them find their lost puppy. But there was essentially no education about how to avoid abuse by teachers, sports coaches, and family.
Hmm, do they? I believe everyone has tales like this but I was visiting Grover Beach a couple of months ago sitting on my friend's porch and you know what happened? A small group of kids came flying down the road on electric scooters. I saw them a mile away later when I went to get a haircut with no sign that they were going back. No helmets or anything. One of them said to the other "I think mine is in low speed or something" and the other said "Why would you do that" and then disappeared over the hill screaming "I AM SPEEEED!". It reminded me of my childhood and that maybe 5% of these kids are going to die of traumatic brain injuries and the rest are going to have incredibly fun memories of childhood.
Fascinating to me.
I wouldn't want a child of mine doing that without a helmet, and I'd prefer a bicycle, but if he's going to break a bone doing a jump over a little hump on the side of the road, haha, more power to you little fellow. Go break that bone. Learn the limits of your power. And I think I could do that in Grover Beach if I wanted.
> She would be required to report any kid who was walking to school, it simply isn't allowed anymore.
This is definitely true, here in BC. Kids under the age of 11 should not be unsupervised at any time; the rules aren't clear, but the case precedent make it not worth the risk.
I think it is two factors: admins in full cya mode and the perceived value of a child increased (going from a necessary nuisance of society to planed single child (not finding the 100% right word here))
Well, that's not the only thing that has changed. 40 years ago when I was walking to elementary school nobody, absolutely nobody, was driving a pick-up truck except to a farm or job site. Now the majority of people are driving vehicles that are much larger than a 1982-model work pickup, and with 5-10x the engine power. Although I admit up-front that the national statistics are badly skewed by the fact that Florida is the most dangerous place on earth for pedestrians, the national pedestrian fatality rate doubled in the 20 years to 2020. Part of this is the built environment and part is what that built environment enabled: people barreling down roads that are far too wide in cars that are far too large, and doing it while browsing Instagram with one hand and both eyes.
> Now the majority of people are driving vehicles that are much larger than a 1982-model work pickup, and with 5-10x the engine power.
The 1982 F-150 had around 200 horsepower, depending on the configuration. If you believe the majority of people are driving between 1,000 to 2,000 hp cars today you are badly mistaken. An Abrams tank has around 1,500 hp but not too many of my neighbors drive those to work.
Yeah this is an overlooked factor, people may not be driving actual tanks as sibling comment mentions but they are driving death machines almost perfectly designed to cause maximum injury to children [0].
I think a combination of increased vehicle size and number of vehicles per capita probably explains why parents would feel less comfortable having their children walk down country roads to school.
I think it's hard to get a read on this and it really depends. For example, where I live there's an elementary school in the neighborhood, low traffic (even though it is the suburbs), and there's a walking path and a playground at the school. When the weather is halfway decent, there are kids streaming through there all day. During the pandemic it was just a party back there, in a good way.
But not all suburbs are like this, and I do think that low density and focusing on cars over people makes kids unlikely to go outside. Where I live, yea the school is nice, but I've seen kids standing in the middle of 5 lanes of traffic (they are standing in the turning lane) trying to pass and standing there with, say, a skateboard.
This is definitely a problem.
On the other hand, I think kids are just staying inside and playing with electronics more too. But why are they doing that? Is the neighborhood not stimulating enough? Is there anything to do outside? Again in the suburbs I'm in, what is a kid to do? You can't really walk to any store, park (besides the school area), or anywhere else. You can't even bike anywhere. You'd definitely get hit by a car at some point.
So I think it's a bit of a cultural shift, sure, but I think that doesn't account for poor urban planning. Most likely in the past kids were just so damn bored that they'd overcome crappy neighborhoods because there was literally nothing else to do. Now? Why risk riding down a country road on your bike and getting hit by a car when you can just sit at home and text your friends?
> I think kids are just staying inside and playing with electronics more too. But why are they doing that? Is the neighborhood not stimulating enough?
Well, that one is easy: their parents permit it. The rule in my home was simple: if you start a video game, you also start a 30 minute egg timer. If you forgot the timer and got caught, you lost the privilege for a week. The egg timer could be upgraded to an hour if I was getting good grades, but the thought of playing games for several hours a day was almost inconceivable. I only got away with that when I was home alone.
Sometimes when I was feeling mopey and started complaining about being bored my mother would get sick of it and yell at me "GO BE BORED OUTSIDE"
> On the other hand, I think kids are just staying inside and playing with electronics more too. But why are they doing that? Is the neighborhood not stimulating enough?
Taking for granted this is true for the discussion:
Electronics are way more prevalent, stimulating and social than ever before.
Growing up, my indoor entertainment options were basically reading books, reading comics, watching four channels of often rather snowy TV, or doing other random indoor activities like drawing poorly or playing various physical toys/games depending on age. So things like climbing trees were often more interesting even without usually having other people around--I grew up in the country. (Not that I disliked reading in particular.)
I live in the suburbs and the school bus stop is in our subdivision in front of the entrance. Its a 80 house subdivision and you can walk from the front to anywhere in less than 10 minutes at even a slow pace.
Every morning and afternoon there's a crowd of parents waiting with their kids in the morning or for their kids in the afternoon.
I don't know why. The kids are old enough to walk to and from. In elementary school I walked home, middle school I waited at the bus stop with only other students, no parents and it was only a few of us on the corner.
I also get a kick of parents driving there on a perfectly good day and blocking the roads...a whooping 30 second drive.
I feel if I have my kids walk the few minutes by themselves I'll be labeled a bad parent.
School teachers are 'mandatory reporters', they are required by law to report any evidence of abuse or neglect. Teachers in her district were all told that a child walking to school by themself was evidence of neglect.
However, if I understand correctly, the law is the mandatory reporting of abuse or neglect ... but the directive she received, that " ... a child walking to school by themself was evidence of neglect ..." is not a law.
What school district is this, by the way ? What ages are we talking about ?
There are multiple news stories of busy body neighbors and passerbyers calling the cops when they see children walking to places like parks and schools if they don't immediately see a parent, often times with major consequences for the parents
What we really need is some kind of Mind Your Own Business law to punish these busy body neighbors. There should be civil or criminal penalties for someone calling the cops on someone else doing nothing wrong. Or enforce existing laws. There must be some kind of Abuse Of Public Services law that can be used to deter these nosey ninnies. Make people think twice and be 100% sure before they stick their nose into other people’s lives.
I know this would severely reduce the content on NextDoor, r/PublicFreakout and r/byebyejob, but it’s a price we should be willing to pay.
I grew up in Bulgaria, but my experience as a kid (80s-90s) seems like similar to what my (future) boss (in Los Angeles) when he was growing up in SF Valley (60s-70s) - get on the bike, go places, school, etc.
We had much smaller amount of cars. For one we had these self-made wood carts with ball-bearings as "tires", and we would slide with them on the streets while other cars were driving. Ok, not on the main street, but somewhere on a hill. If I get bloodied, my gramma would be - yaaah it's fine. Go to the doctor (by myself, 2nd grade) and get tetanous shot (I vividly remember this when I stepped on a rusty nail). They were still worried, but I guess due to lack of phones (even land line wasn't covered well), that's the best they can do.
One day, I was 4, maybe 5, me and my cousin (year older) decided (well it was my decision apparently, lol) that we need our plastic toy truck from my grandparents, and decided to take it. So we took off from a small city (Tzhernomortez) nearby my home city (Burgas) - and decide to walk it - I haven't checked - but the distance is 20-30km. So we walk, put some signs down, ate some really bad grassy looking thing, a bus of janitors/workers picked us up and left us somewhere, so probably from 9:00AM somewhere to 2, 3pm was our "trip". And we end up knocking on my grandparents door - we need our truck! :) - Well, yes everyone was spooked (normal), but that was it. It was later just told as funny story. Now many years later, in US, with my son (~15 soon) I'm still spooked where he goes, we have the tracker (he's okay with it) and track each other in case something happens. I wish I had less available information...
But also the streets in the US, even in neighbourhoods where people live, not work are just too damn wide :) - and cars, while observing most of the time the speed limits, when comes traffic time and they look for shortcuts, some of them go way too fast (and yes, I probably did the same in other places, when in a hurry). We had our neighbour's two dogs killed, because someone was swerving too fast, where you should slow down to a crawl really.
What do you think smart phones are? That's exactly what they're optimized for, in addition to mass distraction and aimless and feckless doom scrolling for dopamine that is.
I can't post because i triggered the algo:
> My wife and I use Apple's "Find My" feature to keep tabs on when each other will be home. Makes it easy to time dinner so it's hot for everyone.
The Silicon Valley TV series was great not just because it called out the Valley's BS tropes and made fun of it's absurdity, but because Judge really had the best material write itself: this is a prime example of what I could see an episode's plot being based on.
A (smart) phone being used not to actually call each other, but as the spy device that it is.
Sadly, in it's latter seasons it went into a territory it's writers neither understood or articulated well but appealed to the lowest common denominator: Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
> Now many years later, in US, with my son (~15 soon) I'm still spooked where he goes, we have the tracker (he's okay with it) and track each other in case something happens. I wish I had less available information...
You wish you had less available information? So turn the the tracker off?
Agreed. I sometimes feel tense crossing big box parking lots where mostly no space has been designated to walking. Imagine a small person surrounded by pickup trucks and SUV’s from which they’re completely invisible.
> Absolutely correct. The USA worships the car's speed above the child's freedom.
To be honest, this was never really a consideration in my calculus growing up, and I did so during the age of the super car going into hypercar era in SoCal and the presence of those cars around us would become a large part of our 'tuner' culture as it's literately the car mod capital of the World.
Never once did that deter us from hitting the street on skateboards, rollerblades etc.., in fact I like to believe I was part of a large collection of 90s kids who invented street luging on hills where lots of sports cars were hitting the canyons.
Honestly, this is peak over-regulation trying to pawn off the horrendous outcomes on cars because that is the convenient target de jure: I went from having a modest car and motorcycle collection to now simply having 3 must-haves and I honestly I've ridden 10000s more miles via public transportation this year (planes included) whereas I've only driven like 200 miles via car. And I did for environmental reasons as an environmental activist that traveled all over the World for projects where I could see first hand the damage of climate change, I didn't need some app or social media brigrading to change my mind as I was capable of seeing what government, petrol companies and Auto makers collusion can do: I worked at VW during Dieselgate.
The problem stems from parents deferring their responsibilities to the State when it comes to every facet of Life, and that is why these kids are soft and need safe spaces and feel threatened by anything that is against their idealized narratives. Universities pander to these clients because they often have the most resources as opposed to those who simply made their way up the hard way--excluding SATS was a red herring, most of the kids who got into Prestigious/Ivy Leagues didn't need them in the first place as legacy admissions plays a big part, and where that fails they'll just bribe them as we've ween before [0].
This is what happens when you allow and standardize nepotism, and it always back fires as the following generations are simply not capable of enduring anything after being sheltered their whole life.
This is one of the reasons that Silicon Valley is the cesspool that it is now, it's culture went from rugged entrepreneurialism in the 50s-90s when it was mainly an extension of Californian culture that changed the World to what is now a woke dystopia that caters and panders to the least capable form the right schools but is none the less optimized using lemmings to do the busy leg work for vulture capitalists with deep ties to VC that seek to mine your data as a business model.
Honestly, this is why I have no sympathy for what is happening in the Valley right now, you made your own hell now fix it if you really think you're so bright and deserve the acclaim that you think you're entitled to.
Sure, you've collectively made a feudal lords (FAANG) immensely wealthy beyond comprehension, but beyond that you've done nothing to' make the 'World a better place.'
In fact you're the useful idiot you speak down to here, but are oblivious to the fact you're the worst of the worst when it comes to that.
The sad thing is, it's mainly transplants that made it this way.
I don't really agree with that. I grew up in a small rural town where things were quite spread out. I would run and ride my bike all over the "neighborhood", which would encompass an area of well over 4 square miles. We had small dirt roads with no shoulders or sidewalks and we would ride our bikes down them, if someone came up behind you would get out of the way. It was not at all uncommon to have a groups of 5 and 6 year olds out and about.
I think the biggest thing is parents have embraced fear over reason and are terrified something bad might happen to their child.
I grew up in a small rural town as well, and this post gave me major nostalgia. When I was 7 or so, my parents limited me to a pretty small area (it was our "block", but that had a pretty different meaning from what most city folk would think of when they hear "block").
At some point, my limits were updated, and I was allowed to go anywhere that did not involve crossing the main street in the town (which at the time was a reasonably busy section of OH SR 30.) I'd ride to my grandma's house for a Coke or some ice cream and chat with her for hours at a time. There was a local playground near her house with the old school kind of swings that really let you get high up in the air.
I remember vividly the day when I discovered that I could ride my bike to the local Dollar General via a back route without crossing that street and the sense of freedom that gave me. I could also make the 2 mile ride to my best friend's house.
When I was a bit less than 10, the restriction on crossing that street was lifted, and the whole town was open to me. My friends and I rode our bikes absolutely everywhere and explored creeks, parks, and country roads like there was no tomorrow.
Now I live in a medium sized city, and every once in a while, I think about the proximity to family and the freedom to roam that I enjoyed growing up. More than anything else about home, I miss these things, and I have to wonder if I'm denying something to my kids by living in the city. Sadly, there aren't many software dev gigs in rural Ohio, and now that my kids are entrenched in the local schools (which, to be fair, are miles ahead of what exists back home), their upbringing as city kids seems to be written in stone.
Anyway, sorry for the rant - waxed nostalgic for a bit there.
Low density is not the reason you have to walk a long way to get to a house that it would take you seconds to get to if you climbed a backyard fence. It's just the stupid tree-of-cul-de-sacs layout.
Most of Japan isn't dense; it's single-family, detached dwellings. Those neighborhoods are walkable in spite of that. In metropolitan areas like around Tokyo, sure the houses are on small plots and close together; but houses are houses. It's still pretty low density.
Even in my relatively walkable suburb (Reston, VA), it's not really walkable by a child. And things are far enough that a bike is better.
But, just around the beltway in Silver Spring, there was a family that made the news a few years ago because they let their kids walk to/from the playground. This was a few city blocks, in an urban area. Somebody saw the kids, went full Karen and called the police, and child protective services got involved. It was a mess.
Reston is hit and miss for pedestrians. It was built during the height of automobile centered development, but the primary constituents were artists who cared about aesthetics. It has a lot of housing developments that are fully equipped with sidewalks, but are also not near much of anything. You can walk, but not really go anywhere.
At least it's not Tysons Corner. They're going to be spending decades trying to undo the damage done by the car centric design.
Yeah, not as bad as Ashburn, but not as good as Ballston or Clarendon (both of which now qualify as fully urban).
They added bike lanes to the major road outside my subdivision. Great, except they stop for 2 blocks near the school complex (ES, MS, HS on same big plot) because they needed extra turn lanes for cars. And then stopped the bike lanes again for 2 blocks near the shopping center for the same reason. So, the two places you'd want to ride a bike aren't connected. Massive failure. I sometimes wonder if VDOT/Fairfax planners half-ass these things on purpose just to prove "but nobody uses the bike lanes, see, empty!"
I think another part of it is that people don't know their neighbors as well as they used to. Here in Seattle there is a problem called the Seattle freeze and when you encounter other people who won't even say hello back to you in passing let alone can have a conversation with you become weary of who they are in private and how they could be a threat to your children.
You said that mixed-use neighborhoods lead to empowered children. Really? If that were the case, there'd be empowered children in mixed-use neighborhoods all over the world, including in the US. But that clearly isn't the case.
Most of Japan is rural. It's not uncommon to walk or bike up to an hour away to get to the nearest store. Yet children are still given responsibility and agency. In fact, it may be much more common in rural areas around the world rather than in dense mixed-use neighborhoods.
But that's not the reason either. It's clear that both urban mixed-use neighborhoods and rural communities have nearly the same consideration about children, within a single country/culture. If a society perceives it as safe and a good idea (or even necessary) for a child to run errands, then that's what happens. If the society perceives it as unsafe or irresponsible, then they don't. It's nothing more than a culture meme.
> Most of Japan is rural. It's not uncommon to walk or bike up to an hour away to get to the nearest store.
This is exaggerated. There are some people live in such rural area, but definitely not majority in every prefecture. I agree latter part, since such rural area is very few risk.
This is true, but it’s not like they have an alternative. The population density and mountainous terrain pretty much dictates the urban design.
I’d say the UK is a better comparison, I was quite surprised to see tightly packed row houses even out in the countryside where open space appeared to be plentiful.
That's wrong. Perpendicularly opposite arguments for the same questions are in the well-crowded cities in exUSSR eastern europe. It's just a result of masses controlling. By the fear.
Nonsense, kids have met up in car centric suburbs in the US for decades now. The problem is a combination of stranger danger, nosy, entitled neighbors and the incredible powers of CPS and the internet/video game indoor culture.
It was 1968 during what was called (at the time) the Hong Kong flu outbreak. I was 5 years old. I was the only person in the house who was not stricken by it - my parents, uncle, sister, cousin all had it and it seemed to hit them pretty hard. But I was fine. I recall several days where I was pretty much on my own as the adults who had it were bed-ridden. At one point my mom sent me to the store about 1/2 mile away with a note I was to hand to the grocer and $5 for milk, eggs, bread and soup. I was able to complete the mission.
A lot of the comments make great points but honestly I think the biggest problem no one has addressed is the massive expansion in population since the 70s.
This has lead to much larger "towns" and suburbs where the sense of community is essentially gone. At best you might know a few neighbors on your street. So risk tolerance has gone down for a good reason. And when you see a strange kid out playing and you don't know who's kid they are, you're going to naturally worry about them and just assume the worst.
Another factor too astutely mentioned by someone below is the car dependent nature of most non urban environments, especially in North America. I see lots of kids playing near their homes on their own in the neighborhoods I live in. Parents aren't too far away and they're with the other kids of the neighborhood. Maybe the safe distance a kid can travel on their own hasn't changed, it's what you could actually accomplish in that distance that has changed.
Today's society, especially western society, is much less community focused. So now, not only do I not know what strange adults exist in my 200 home open air neighborhood with a single playground, none of the adults there know me either nor my family and therefore a perceived sense of risk and maybe even actual risk is higher that my kids are in danger.
That's what happens when population explodes and population density increases. All that's happening is the West is finally experiencing what many Asian and Middle Eastern Countries already knew.
As a someone living in the UK I find a lot of these comments by people in the US mind blowing. People calling CPS / police because they see kids playing alone in the park? What the hell is going on over there!
I completely agree, it's wild to hear as an Australian as well. I've never ever heard of anyone having any issues with social services being called on them. If anything, it's really hard to separate children from their parents...
Sometimes I also catch threads/tiktoks/comments talking about sex trafficking in the US as well. Where there's an ever present fear their child is going to get abducted and sold into prostitution? And I can't tell if that's a genuine fear or a completely manufactured one. Seems implausible to me.
It's sad/funny, there are all these reports about the younger generations having increased anxiety and depression. Social media is the boogie man and I'm sure it's not psychologically good for young people, but we all but ignore the fact that kids and teenagers now have essentially zero autonomy and unsupervised time. Should we really be shocked they feel anxious about being able to solve their own problems when we've never given them the practice time to learn on their own?
The Karens that call CPS are the worst. If the kids aren't in any danger and aren't neglected it's just nobody else's business how they're raised.
Netflix has a Japanese show called Old Enough. It shows Japanese children doing their first errand. Example: walking a kilometer to the store (including crossing a busy street), buying 3 items and bringing them back.
Age? 2 years, 9 months.
It's wild.
I grew up at a time and a place where I had a lot of independence. I rode a bike everywhere. I'd do things by myself and with friends. I actually feel sad for kids nowadays. Being a kid now seems to be being at home or getting shuttled from preplanned activity to preplanned activity in a car.
Almost everywhere in the US, it's really not possible to do it any other way because the entire infrastructure is predicated on car ownership.
Fears of abduction and worse are real of course but the risks are overstated. I actually think these risks are made worse by the ubiquity of cars. I mean think about it: it becomes a lot more difficult to abduct someone without a private vehicle.
- Most of the kids live in quiet country towns or rural areas
- Most of the errands avoid crossing roads, or:
- If they do, then the assistants are checking for and controlling traffic
- It shows kids doing their first ever errand, it's not their everyday life
I live in Tokyo and just today on my way to coffee, saw several kindergarten-aged children crossing busy main roads to go to school. It does happen and happens nearly every day.
This show likely does help prevent accidents (and yes 2 year olds aren't running errands every day) but the main point still stands, kids are living more autonomously in some ways in their every day life.
Japan as a haven for children is an exaggeration, at last in Tokyo.
Sure, we can see young children take the train and walk to school - but it is not common to see that. In 12 years of living in Tokyo (Nakano-ku mostly), I didn't see that very often. It might be more common in smaller parts of the country or for very specific use cases.
My two elder daughters went to kindergarten while I lived there. Their teacher walked to a spot near our house, where we took the kids, and then they walked together to school. They always had adult supervision. (Some parents would also take their kids by bike to school).
Japanese people have their own security concerns. Japanese schools have large walls and closed off school yards because the locals have their own safety concerns for children. (I believe there was a famous stabbing incident that led to that, but don't recall the details)
It should be clear that Japanese parks (at least in Tokyo) are actively hostile to children. Playing with balls, for example, is completely banned in many parks in Tokyo. Free parks are more for the old and enfeebled than for the young; silver democracy at its worst.
In my case, at least, my children are more free in Calgary than they were in Tokyo.
I can't say what's an exaggeration, and I don't know I'd call any place a haven. Japan isn't perfect, and raising kids here has issues, sure.
It seems we've had completely different experiences. Through shibuya/yoyogi area, I pass a half dozen parks (kids are playing double dutch, soccer, pitching baseballs), 2 rec sports field and countless kids of all ages walking alone or with friends. Not to mention the preschool children being wheeled around in those huge laundry carts.
Often topics on here and reddit become "Which place is best?" but I don't think that way. I'm happy for you and your family's move to Calgary, and have no doubt it's better for your kids.
Compared to when I lived in the bay area (and then rural America before that), it's a stark contrast and I appreciate any city that where most people can feel safe walking around just about anywhere, whether that's Calgary or Tokyo.
I usually chime in with Tokyo talk not say "yay Japan is the best!" but rather "America deserve at least a little better than it's getting."
Oh it happens, I'm not saying it doesn't. But my comment was more about how the TV show sets it up. I think kids should have more autonomy and be allowed to fail in a safe way, and shows like this do well to show what they're capable of.
It's still extremely low in terms of the odds. Even right in the middle of whatever hood you fear most your odds of anything happening to you are slim to none.
Adults are not often rational when it comes to real vs percieved risks of crime. Tons of bias there. If you look at the actual odds your kid is probably just as likely to experience some crime living in the suburbs vs an urban area.
https://text.npr.org/1093153651 Link that actually loads in the EU. Also, as a german citizen: isn't that public knowledge? When seven years old I walked to my school and visited neighbors afterwards without telling anyone where I was going, as long as that I was not delayed too much.
(When 27 years old and moving back in with my parents, that actually changed, but after a few years I trained them to let me live my own life again.)
The difference is that you likely grew up in a strong permanent community, where your neighbours weren't constantly moving in/out.
In Mediterranean cultures its completely normal for kids to stay up late playing with their friends and staying over at each others houses without any parental coordination required at all.
When you have a strong community, trust is more easily built.
This image from a daily mail article of all places shows the trend over multiple generations in a family very well: https://i.imgur.com/YcjjsiI.jpg
It's from the UK but it's probably even worse in the US (I think in the US now most kids aren't allowed out of the yard of their house on their own until they're old enough to drive basically.)
I can't figure out what it is doing this - I'm UK-based too, and I know logically that everything is now safer - I used to walk two miles to the woods with friends at the age of eight or nine, but I wouldn't trust my own children to walk to the bottom of the hill here.
I don't really understand what has changed. Why were my own parents less paranoid? There are lots of people giving lots of reasons on here. The most credible is the constant "stranger danger" message pumped out in news, but I honestly wonder if there's been a baseline increase in people's general paranoia - my concerns are more around them doing something stupid and getting into trouble.
I'm the same - growing up I was allowed to roam freely, within reason. For example, I would hike and camp overnight with my parents having only a rough idea where I was.
But like you, I don't think I'd be happy with my kids doing things like that (my kids aren't quite old enough yet anyway).
I think part of it is realising that some of the things I did were pretty fucking stupid, and could have ended very badly. For example, I recall exploring a dilapidated house that was falling to pieces - in the middle of nowhere in rural Scotland. I could very easily have died if something had gone wrong.
I'm certain the media is a large part of it too - the overwhelming focus on doom and gloom feels very unhealthy for society as a whole.
That doesn't explain all of it though; I realise we live in safe times, but still find myself being overprotective, sometimes seemingly irrationally.
I think standards of what is or isn't considered "safe" have shifted quite a bit too, and I don't think that's entirely a bad thing too. I lived in Asia for a while and some of the things I saw people do there... Yikes! From entire families (wife, husband, 2 young children) on a single scooter without helmet to the guy repairing my roof by stacking a chair on a wonky table and standing on top of that. They think it's perfectly fine though.
The UK in particular is somewhat obsessed with "health and safety", which is probably #2 on the favourite thing to complain about (after the weather, of course) but at the same time people gleefully participate in it too.
I lived in England for a while (as a Dutch person) and my English girlfriend was always paranoid about things I didn't see as a problem, for example I was perfectly comfterable carrying stuff from the car to the house and leaving the car unattended on the (enclosed!) parking lot for a minute, but she'd insist on locking it. N=1 of course, but I observed a number of other similar things over the years I lived there with different people. When it snowed for a bit the British were in a state of near-panic, and things like the Met announcing "there may be power cuts and shortages" didn't exactly help calm fears. It's 5cm of snow people, announced a week beforehand. We don't get snow that often in NL either, but I've never seen it anywhere near as chaotic as in England.
I guess I'm rambling a bit here, but my point is I think the problem is wider than just "kids". Partly, I think that's good: we're more aware of risks and deal with them a bit more consciously, but you can go too far in this; a risk-free life is a boring life hardly worth living.
"It's dangerous" or "it's a risk that [..] will happen" is almost always true in a sense and hard to argue against; "yes but no life can be without risk" comes of as weak, especially when it concerns something like your children.
When I was 5, my mother and I had just moved from Croatia to the Netherlands. She sent me down to the shop to buy her some beers. I came home empty-handed, so she went back to the shop and laughed at the shopkeeper—"what, do you think he's going to drink it?"
(The shopkeeper was not amused.)
Similarly, she took me to see Kill Bill when I was 11. That was during a trip to Croatia, of course. In the Netherlands such a thing would have been illegal—and worse, immoral!
Now that Croatia's in the EU, the country is essentially being financially bribed to pretend to care about such issues.
FYI check your local law before attempting this. A few states in the US have legal minimums for allowing your kids to roam/be alone and they vary, but many do not!
The US, for all its democratic ideals, has some weird cases of "The vast majority of us all agree that this is a bad outcome, but we aren't ever going to change anything meaningful about it." This is one of them; seemingly nobody can do anything about the overreaching child-protection agents, or the busybody neighbors, or the lousy suburban neighborhood design, or the frenetic activity-planning. Why not??
A lot of interesting discussions are taking place here, but one thing I wonder the most is this: Why is the U.S. and Canada seemingly the only country where this shift took place?
Sure, in Europe nowadays more people drive their children to school than before, for whatever reasons, but I have never heard a child or parent get in trouble for being outside by themselves.
It feels like it's happening here too, just some years behind the US. Certainly kids today have much less freedom than I did 25 years ago, even if we're not at the point of protective services taking custody for playing on the street without adults.
Just as note, but the Japanese show mentioned in the article ("Old Enough") is absolutely delightful. Episodes are usually between 10-20 minutes (the longest being the one with the fish / apple disaster). AFAIK there are currently 20 subtitled episodes available on netflix.
In the 80s my mom would give me dollar to go buy milk from the store two blocks away. Then I was taught to use a pay phone and go to the local grocer 3 blocks away. Then I walked to school a mile away. Then I learned to use the bus and I would take myself to the municipal library to read, I have no idea how far it was, but I needed a quarter. The bus driver would change me a dime and a nickel, so I used the dime to get home. We moved out of Omaha in the fall of my fifth grade year. I checked, their crime rate was 3x higher at the time than where we raised our kids. They were barely allowed to walk the six doors to school. Crazy.
I grew up on a farm in the US Midwest. When I was 4 (early 1970s), I was given my chores of watering livestock. I also started bottle feeding my first orphan lambs, and started getting other orphans from neighbors. It became quite an income stream.
When I was 5, I started driving an older tractor. When I was 6, we were fixing
a pasture fence when my dad told me to go drive the pickup the 50 yards or so to
where we were at. He verbally walked me through it, and let me go get it. I remember that moment like it was yesterday.
And that was not a unique experience, for farm kids at least.
Now, parents would be criminally charged with something.
Holy cow. I was just thinking about all the crazy people in my neighborhood, drug dealers, etc. and how I probably wouldn't want my kid walking around alone. And then I realized that there is a middle school down the street and there are dozens of kids walking home from it, playing in the field, cussing up a storm. Kids come by and ask if we need yard work done. We just moved there last year and I genuinely teared up when the first trick or treater came to our door, every other place I've lived in the parents drove their kids to rich neighborhoods.
Once in high school I was at a friends house in a subdivision that didn't even have sidewalks. We wanted to go out for a walk but the dad gave us a warning that the neighbors would probably call the police because people don't ever walk in this neighborhood.
A 4-year-old on reality TV is being followed by a camera crew, and is therefore by definition not alone.
That being said, it is common in urban areas (at least in LA) to see relatively young children commuting or running errands by themselves. But I never see that when I go back to surburbia. It's not an issue of neighborhood safety; the suburban areas are far safer. It's a parental risk tolerance issue.
I would love to let my kids free range and as they got older I did but not my smaller kids. Even though statistically small compared to other risks a child faces I would be too concerned about a kidnapping or possible rape. When I was a kid we free ranged. Then one day a kid named Michael Dunahee, on May 12 1986, was kidnapped to never be seen again. We live on an island and no one felt safe. He was just a little boy. That changes everything. Parents stopped letting their kids go so far and everyone was worried. We still look for Michael to this day. Then in 1996 another little girl by the name of Jessica States went missing. She was later found murdered. It was too much for parents to accept and again kids were not left to roam the way they used to. Again I know the statistics are small but I think it is a very parent emotion to not want to let your kids wander too far. The world just has too many creeps and it’s not a risk a lot of parents could bear to live with.
The real reason people don't let their young children outside is because they might get killed by an inattentive driver. It's the most tangible, innately felt thing out in America's public realm, how crazy dangerous it is on foot, constantly having to be on the lookout for cars. And of course getting blamed if they do happen to be struck. A kid got killed in an apartment complex parking lot in my city by a driver. The comments were horrifying, people felt sorry for the driver, blamed the parents.
It's not. There are a ton of comments about people reminiscing about doing exactly that.
The problem is the corner shop no longer exists. And if it does, it's a chain, and the rotating staff won't recognize the toddler as being yours. Or going there will get your kid run over by an SUV. Mainly the latter.
It really is. Because it's man adapting to the measure and not the other way around. The 5 year old isn't going to drink that beer. It's gangly teenagers up to no good. The shopkeeper should totally give the wine bottle to the little kid running an errand for their parents, but not to the teenager looking to impress their friends.
My mom asked me to pick up prescriptions at the local pharmacy starting I was 6-7 (we lived a few blocks away). The pharmacists gave them to me because she knew me and my parents. Blanket laws are easy to enforce, but they remove precisely this individual agency.
My wife grew up in Japan and starting when she was 4, her regular errand was walking a few blocks down to the corner store alone to get her dad a beer, she was allowed to buy a small treat for herself with the change.
She did say that culture has changed since then and few parents would allow a 4 year old to do an errand like that alone anymore.
Japan is pretty lax about age verification for buying alcohol (you still even see some alcohol vending machines) but I'd be at least a little surprised if a 4 year old could buy a beer in a konbini today - but maybe the staff would make an exception if you're a regular customer.
It all comes down to the risk you're willing to accept. Back in the 70s when 4-5 kid families were common, population density was much lower and bad things happening to individual kids wasn't as widely reported? Doing this kind of thing in a nice suburban neighbourhood was fine.
Nowadays with far more 1- and 2-child families the risk we're willing to accept is far lower. Population density is higher which directly multiplies the chances of your kid encountering someone who will hurt them. Traffic is busier and drivers are more distracted, increasing the risk of accidents. Distances are greater, there's no "5-minute walk down to the corner shop".
All of these factors combine to make the expected cost of letting your kid loose unsupervised much higher and the expected benefit much lower. A 10-year-old would be fine. A 4-year old? Hell no.
While the most prevalent narrative in threads like this sounds something like, "back in my day, we weren't so scared!", there's a few assumptions being made. The primary one: people are overestimating the risks associated with autonomy we had "back in the day" as kids.
It's also just as possible that we are adopting a lower tolerance for that risk, or that the risk is better clarified than it once was.
When I was growing up, I was allowed to roam the neighborhood. I lived on a military base in my youngest years, but later I lived in a suburb of a small town.
Nothing seriously bad ever happened to me, but that's anecdotal.
I wonder what is more likely: my parents were more risk tolerant, risk ignorant, or the world has become more dangerous. Both are possible, but I think the former two are broadly more likely than the latter.
>my parents were more risk tolerant, risk ignorant, or the world has become more dangerous
almost certainly not the latter given that a significant drop in crime since the 80s and 90s is an almost global phenomenon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_drop). Drunk driving fatalities are down 90% since the 80s despite miles travelled having doubled etc. I mean just remember the culture a few decades ago, people did not give a fuck about anything.
People really have become comically anxious even though many places are considerably safer and cleaner. Maybe because of it.
I have two young kids and I'm very sympathetic to the philosophy of free range parenting. But jeez, when it comes to actually letting my 6-year old walk to the grocery store alone? It's... really scary... just being honest here. Maybe I can get over that? I don't know.
The key is you work up to it, and allow it when the time is right. The article talks about the kid learning to not run into the street, learning to safely cross the street, going to the store, etc.
Heck, with modern phones and watches it’s even easier to keep track of what’s happening.
By all means, let the kid run around town and have fun. I think most of us realize that by the numbers, 'stranger danger' precaution went too far years ago. But errands? They'll have a lifetime of errands when they're older; four years is too young, let them have at least a few years of fun first. Maybe the occasional errand is fun for kids, but I think I know how this ends. Before long it's no longer an adventure and becomes a chore, an obligation. The excitement of buying tomatoes subsides and the kid starts to get scolded for playing before getting his chores done.
Here's my idea: give kids bikes and tell them to be back before dinner.
The difference between "the occasional errand is fun for kids" and "becomes a chore, an obligation" cannot be emphasized enough!
I vividly remember watching my dad mow the front lawn one afternoon. I was 11 I think? It looked so fun pushing this loud machine over the messy grass and leaving a path of perfectly neat turf behind.
I asked him if I could try it out. He hesitated for a bit, then said, "Sure." So I did, and it was fun.
And it was now my obligation once a week for the next 8 years.
The fun was short-lived, but the chore remained. And the mechanism was identical to how I assumed vacuuming duty at the age of 8, which means I didn't learn my lesson from that fiasco either :)
For me, the first of these adventures-turned-chores was washing the car. It was great fun in the summer; we didn't have air conditioning then so any excuse to go outside and spray the hose was great as far as I was concerned. But before too long that chore extended into the fall and spring when it was chilly and not remotely fun. It only ended when I was 16 and had the idea to drive the car to the local carwash instead.
The thing is, errands make kids happy, on the most part kids want responsibility and to feel useful. I agree not every adventure should be an errand though.
Risks number 1 by far is cars. They get more than enough adults. Even if kids practice waiting for lights or looking both ways, drivers are nuts and toddlers are not very visible.
I feel like a natural parent-brain thing is that the brain just sits there in the background kind of brainstorming worst-case scenarios and then you make efforts to protect against the ones you've thought about the most, because they're giving you the most anxiety and you want to stop thinking about them.
Protecting against that one thing doesn't stop this brainstorming process; it's a creative endeavor limited only by the imagination.
Meanwhile, yes, the more constant the news is the more it fuels our imagination, and the more global it is, the more we're feeding it with statistical outliers.
My experience of growing up in the UK in the late 1970s was heavily influenced by road safety drills, which we had in school from age six or even earlier - see [1] The Green Cross Code.
We also had to pass a cycling proficiency test in order to ride our bikes to school, and had to pass swimming tests in order to get in the deep end of the local pool. Maybe there're aren't many formal safety campaigns any more?
In Switzerland kids are walking to the kindergarten and school by themselves, starting around the age of 5. The parents will take them there the first few time, but after that they have to go on their own.
Can confirm - our daughter started walking to Kindergarten about 9 months ago and she just turned 5 a few weeks ago. She’s very proud of her independence, you can see it does something good for the kids.
My wife grew up in eastern Europe. At that age when her parents had visitors over they used to send her to the store to buy beer. She was too small to carry enough so had to make two trips.
Yes but you also gotta keep an eye on them if you choose to do so. This article assumes that all shopkeepers are good people. In my experience a lot of them happened to be pedos.
Turns out it wasn't just something I experienced. A lot of my friends who grew up in different towns had the same experience.
The whole purpose was to teach your child to interact appropriately in public but your child ends up being molested by these monsters, it's just so traumatic. Take care of your kids!
I used to walk to and from school by myself, and after school I'd walk to the bookstore by myself, apparently most other kids aren't interested in reading at all, before heading home for dinner. It was a merely ten minutes walk, but other parents are somehow surprised. Fortunately, I've only encountered nice strangers who gave me free snacks and all that, but now I think about it, I just felt super lucky nothing really happened.
> In some places, parents who allow young children to run errands or go places without adult supervision may violate local laws.
Is this because some cities are no longer safe for children to go outside? I wonder how things got so dangerous and if anything can be done.
Edit: Another post noted that there seems to be a general decline in walkability and pedestrian safety in US cities. This seems like something we could try to fix by improving both environments and vehicles.
It's not dangerous. The middle-class suburban "zero tolerance" mentality took over and any possibility of injury became equivalent to child neglect. We (and I) also tend to blame this on individuals, but this sea change was also enforced by the state.
I was somewhat worried about child protective services (CPS) or neighbors in letting my kids have some independence around the neighborhood, but we haven't had any problems with CPS and neighbors have been supportive. Examples of what we've let them do in their own in public and when:
* Playing on the sidewalk near our house (4y)
* Playing at the playground (5y, walkie talkie for backup)
This was true in New Jersey in the 1970s. When I was 5 years old, I had to walk to school on my own, just like all the other 5 year olds in my neighborhood. We would walk to school together. The school was not quite a mile away. At the time, it was considered normal that kids would walk to school on their own, starting at age 5. this is still normal in some countries, but it is no longer normal in the USA.
I pretty much forced my kids to doing things unsupervised starting around 5. I'd have them go to the mailbox at the end of the street, around the corner just out of view, and get the mail. 1 out of 3 kids was hesitant but I sent her anyway. Then they branched out to the park a couple blocks away, by then they were asking if they could just go - they had learned to be comfortable alone in the world.
Please keep in mind that the kids who didn't survive because of a horrific accident are not here to convey their stories. I've never been a fan of stories from people who present "anecdotal evidence as ideal solutions".
As a parent, I do think children need some level of autonomy, but this doesn't need to be an all-or-nothing issue. Parents can apply various degrees in various situations.
When I was around 10 years old on Holiday overseas with my parents in Australia, my Mum tasked me with fetching cigarettes and milk from the convenience store one street over.
I managed to somehow fuck up the straight line trip home, and returned nearly 2 hours later to my mother in hysterics on the phone to the police.
I think that was the end of my independence and parent's faith in me.
Now imagine letting 7-8 years old buy groceries in a zone with actual gun fights -sometimes weekly-, bombs -one 2 or 3, blocks away, not worry- and gangs -next door live some people rumored to do fast-kidnap!. And go to school hanging from the doors of the bus.
I think I end ok!
P.D: I walk with friends (10-15 old) from city center, detouring from an attempt to reach some small mountain after the zone get red, so we decide find other place and end in a close park [Aprox. route here](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/La+Milagrosa,+Medell%C3%ADn,...), kilometers away...
P.D.2: This not about being badass. Normal stuff by a nerd guy. Actual crazy stuff I avoided. Too dangerous!
I am fortunate to have raised kids in a town where they could bike to friends' houses at an early age and even take boats out on a pond. We gave them mobile phones so they could stay in touch. But they could be miles away on their own.
In 1967 (when I was 8) my mom sent me on a Queens (NYC) bus to a neighboring commercial area to buy a pair of pants for school. As I recall the worst thing that happened was the pants were actually a little small.
Check out Jared Diamonds book 'The world until yesterday'
Looking at how some other non-industrialised societies do stuff and is there anything useful we can take from them. There's a chapter on childrearing
Plenty of countries just model their suburbs after the U.S.. Canada is just like the U.S. most modern suburbs in europe are built with stroads and highways like modern suburbs in orange county, too. American style suburbs are found all over the world to be honest. You can find pockets of huge homes and stroads from Indonesia to Pakistan.
India sure felt like it... no such thing as a sidewalk, and the street is a nightmare of cars, tuktuks dodging around the cars, and motorcycles dodging around the tuktuks and cars. But I was just visiting; maybe if you live there it feels safe, I don't know.
Although by the numbers the roads in India are certainly much less safe than e.g. the US, it's not as unsafe as it looks for people who are used to it. Along with other countries with 'chaotic' roads, staying safe on the road in India comes more from drivers (and pedestrians) generally having very good situational awareness, rather than from strict adherance to a set of rules.
It's and/and. Should also teach that driver to slow down, and be prepared to come to an emergency stop at any given time. Or have streets that naturally slow down traffic by their design, if that's too hard for the driver.
Your comment comes from a value system which I find sociopathic. I think it's much more important that the public realm is safe for all, which includes toddlers running errands alone, than that cars should be able to travel at high speed. And beyond that, when piloting 3-ton heavy machinery, one has more responsibility. It's something drivers seem unwilling to accept, rather let's blame the child on foot instead.
Didn't sound like blame to me. The reality we live in has too many cars, too fast cars, too large cars. The kid lives in that reality now and probably won't get a chance to be a kid in a different reality. Therefore, it would be a good idea to help them to learn to safely explore their world, with some independence, in the reality that they actually live in.
But no matter how well you teach that toddler to be careful, there are few places in the US where it would be safe from inattentive drives to send them out on an errand. That's the problem.
> But, and this is key, I didn't simply hand Rosy some money, a grocery bag, close my eyes and send her to the market up the street.
The article does note that there was a whole process leading up to sending the kid out on an errand. Lots of out-and-about skill acquisition in gradually more-independent settings, culminating in the trip to the store. One assumes that if the child was particularly prone to distractions like that, it'd have come up and been worked on.
The article describes the child was already engaging in dangerous behaviour (climbing the roof) and pushing boundaries. By giving errands you are (gradually) setting new boundaries for the child you have at least some control over, instead of them suddenly discovering they can go into the neighbourhood or wherever that you don't know about. At least that is what I understand from it. The alternative would be more/stricter boundaries I think. But that would just lead to more undesired and dangerous behaviour from the child to break those boundaries.
Having seen 1 though 5 year old children in save indoor spaces at a nursery and the woodlands with rusty fences: the latter group moves more up a muddy hill with bolders then the protected group walks over a carpet.
But okay, the amount of bruises increases in the wilderness. The amount of crying over that decreases by 99 percent.
And 4 yr olds are harder to see for drivers. I guess rear cameras have probably made suburbia safer for unaccompanied small children (less reversing out of drive risk) but the growth in large trucks with poor visibility [0] has probably otherwise made roads less safe.
But I will tell you my perspective.
As someone who grew up in the "be back home in time for supper" 1970s, today's world seems completely foreign. When I started kindergarten, Mom walked me to school on the first day so that I'd know the route. And after that I walked to school on my own until I learned to ride a bike.
I rode to junior high, where there was parking for hundreds of bikes. Recently I drove by that school, and the bike racks were gone. This whole concept of waiting in traffic to pick up or drop off your kid wasn't even a thing.
And I'm so supremely grateful that I was raised that way. I'm absolutely certain that early autonomy paid off later in life in countless ways.
I'd encourage you, if you're raising kids, to consider the upsides of so-called "free range". Or, as we called it in the 70s, "being a regular kid".