How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations
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How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations
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Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations
#2"When George Thomas was eight he walked everywhere. It was 1926 and his parents were unable to afford the fare for a tram, let alone the cost of a bike and he regularly walked six miles to his favourite fishing haunt without adult supervision."
Thought about this a lot. In kinder it was 400m for me. PS, 20km and by the age of 16 my range was more than 200 SqrKm. This was alone, on foot, by bike, train or bus.
Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations
#3[deleted]
Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations
#4I remember when I was a kid, I was allowed to roam and go on adventures. Especially at my grandma's house because she was next to the woods.
I thought I went so far. I thought I was so adventurous. Turns out the max I ever dared go was about 1km. Maaaaybe 2km. The distances that used to look so far and adventurous, don't even feel like a walk anymore.
Maybe that was just me, but it sounds like even if you give kids freedom to go wherever, they won't really roam that far. So maybe it's pretty safe to give them that freedom? They'll use it age appropriately.
By the time I would have roamed further than the 1 or 2 kilometers, I had discovered books and internet and computers and I was like "lol why would I leave the living room?"
Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations
#5When I was 6 or 7 years old, during the summers every morning my mom would give me $1.25, and I would get on my bike and ride to the public pool with my friends that was about 5 miles away in the center of our small town. We'd swim all day and go to the Burgerville for lunch where I could get a wonderfully tasty cheeseburger with fries and coke for my $1.25. Finally I had to be home by dinner.
If we didn't go swimming, there was a 40 acre woods/orchard behind our houses and we would search it for anything exciting, like bugs, squirrels or wild animals.
When I turned 8 we moved out into the country and I had to walk a few miles just to get to a friends house. We'd usually take our air rifles and go try to shoot things. By the time I was 10 most of us had our own motorcycles and parents who would let us borrow their shotguns for some real fun.
This was in the 1970s.
Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations
#6I remember when I was a kid, I was allowed to roam and go on adventures. Especially at my grandma's house because she was next to the woods. I thought I went so far. I thought I was so adventurous. Turns out the max I ever dared go was about 1km. Maaaaybe 2km. The distances that used to look so far and adventurous, don't even feel like a walk anymore. Maybe that was just me, but it sounds like even if you give kids f…
I think it depends upon the kids and how far you have to go for adventure.
I grew up in San Jose and when we were in elementary school, we would take our bikes to the surrounding hills all the time, anywhere from 1-10 miles. One of my brothers, when he was in middle school, would regularly bike to Santa Cruz, which is about 50 miles away.
Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations
#7I suspect this is not just an American or British or solely cultural thing but also a number-of-children thing. This seems like it would also be the natural response to having fewer children.
If you have 3-10 kids, you can "afford" to let them off the leash so to speak, if only psychologically. Your kids going missing or getting hurt is an eventuality anyway, maybe.
If you have 1 or 2 kids, you are investing a lot more mindshare per kid and are probably a lot more worried about such roaming as a result.
The easiest way to get back the right to roam, I suspect, would be to simply triple your number of kids. But almost no one is willing to do that for other reasons.
Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations
#8I remember when I was a kid, I was allowed to roam and go on adventures. Especially at my grandma's house because she was next to the woods. I thought I went so far. I thought I was so adventurous. Turns out the max I ever dared go was about 1km. Maaaaybe 2km. The distances that used to look so far and adventurous, don't even feel like a walk anymore. Maybe that was just me, but it sounds like even if you give kids f…
I grew up in a city of 100,000 in the Midwest I was biking to school 4.5 miles at age 12.
I soon figured out I could get detention, miss the bus, but still get home on my bike. Couple that with a habit of getting the mail daily, and I was able to to serve detention without my parents knowledge (I think).
Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations
#9I suspect this is not just an American or British or solely cultural thing but also a number-of-children thing. This seems like it would also be the natural response to having fewer children. If you have 3-10 kids, you can "afford" to let them off the leash so to speak, if only psychologically. Your kids going missing or getting hurt is an eventuality anyway, maybe. If you have 1 or 2 kids, you are investing a lot mo…
Only child, grew up in the 90's in a neighborhood of one and two child families. We were all wild roamers, generally disappearing on weekends and summer days from sun up to sun down. Usually at someone else's house or in the creeks and woods between people's houses.
Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations
#10I have a 4 year old, in my mid 40s, and think about this a lot for some reason.
In the 70s during the summer, when I was around 7, we would wake up, eat breakfast, go out and about wherever we wanted, come back for lunch, out again, come back for dinner, and then out again past dark to play flashlight tag.
I think I would be charged with child endangerment these days if my kid (3 years in the future) was doing stuff like that. And frankly, I think I've been conditioned to think that I would be a negligent parent if I did this.
The media is part of the problem. 24/7 news, social media, and channels like ID (real life murder 24/7) scare the bejeezus out of people. But besides that, we have an acceptance of nanny-state government - that the government should be a much closer "partner" in child rearing than 40 years ago.
I always say, there's a consequence for everything, including seemingly innocuous laws to protect people.
But as a parent of a 4-year old in 2017 (and a 7 year old in 2020), I know I would be gnashing my teeth if my kid was roaming the streets and woods all day long...even if I did it.