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How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

freerangekids.com

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Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#111

Post by Reason077 »

m_mueller wrote: post #22
FrancoDiaz wrote: post #10

I 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…

As a Swiss with a small child, this is the main reason why I couldn't move to the US or UK. Your 70ies examples are still common enough in Switzerland. 6 year olds are sent to Kindergarden on their own (after a bit of training with their parents). Put the visibility triangle on and off you go. Parents are discouraged by the school authorities to bring by car. Today looking back at this I can see the value. Maybe it h…

As a Swiss with a small child, this is the main reason why I couldn't move to the US or UK.

There always seems to be plenty of children, of various ages, running around my London neighbourhood unsupervised. The noisy little blighters!

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#112

Post by dbancajas »

I came from Philippines. Now in the US. When I was young I had a bike. I would go out in the morning anywhere I want to go, come back for lunch to eat lunch. Go out again and comeback before dinner. These days, this is not possible anymore. I don't know why. I think people have less kids and are more afraid of kidnappings etc. I miss those days and I wish I could give my children that kind of freedom.

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#113

Post by wallace_f »

kasey_junk wrote: post #102
wallace_f wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you looking at? According to Wikipedia(1), it is 3.9/100,000 in the USA, and 16 in the Americas. From the source(2), it was less than 1 in the USA by 1800. There also variable crime by region in America. Baltimore, St Louis, Detroit and New Orleans have homicide rates around 50. That's higher than any country in Africa or the Middle East. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... 2…

I mean, I guess maybe I'm taking quotes like "The homicide rate in the US has fallen dramatically over the past few centuries." out of context?

If you look at the data sources they linked to, they don't support that -- although the data source linked immediately after that quote is from the 1600s - 1800s where the rate did fall dramatically, so maybe that was what was the intended meaning? I don't know what the author's intention is, but the actual data that is not supportive of that, and you can look at it.

Edit: to below: go click on the links to the datasets I provided you. Look at the datasets. Do you see historical murder rate in the USA around 1 - 5 in the USA, and that it is now over 50 in some parts.

>nor the crime rate in the USA historically compared to now

My thesis was that some parts of the USA have higher crime rates than historical (they do). That was my thesis. An additional thesis is also true: At some points in history the historical murder rate in the USA was lower than it is today.

You need to link to actual data. The data I linked to supports my thesis.

Click on this link and look for yourself. I honestly don't know what your problem is. Are you not clicking the links or being intentionally difficult or something?: https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/homici...

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#114

Post by Kluny »

FrancoDiaz wrote: post #10

I 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…

Media is part of it, but the other part is this, taken from the first comment on the linked article:

"I can’t help but notice how many freeways and roads are between Sheffield and Rother Valley. We can’t blame parents alone for the loss of childhood freedom. Since 1919 We have purposely designed our cities to maximize vehicle throughput and require car ownership and the result is an environment that is lethal for 8 year olds. You can’t blame parents for wanting to keep their children safe when it’s barely safe to cross the street."

I hardly feel safe roaming my own town as an adult, and it's mostly due to the rivers of high-speed traffic that cut up the city, that I have to cross to get to anywhere interesting.

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#116

Post by zizzles »

Early-mid 2000's kid here. I roamed without second thoughts: Explored forests, cities, trespassed on forsaken enchanted lands and everything in between. I admit there has been stark differences in outdoor activities; but this isn't a "it's too dangerous for Johnny to go outside" scenario, it's a "Johnny is too glued to his iPad 8.0 to enjoy going outside" scenario.

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#117

Post by fryguy »

m_mueller wrote: post #53
NamTaf wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, in a recent brief visit to Switzerland I stayed with some friends in a small village near Zug and saw examples of this sort of attitude throughout more aspects of life than just child-raising. For example, many farmers were leaving produce out with price tags on and relying on an honour system for payment. Some did a 'pay what you want' system for their produce and just relied on people to do the right th…

Forget farms, this is even how the supermarket produce section works in Switzerland. You pick your stuff, you weigh it yourself, you choose the right tag (without anyone looking over your shoulder) and then you go to a (nowadays potentially automated) cashier. Heck, it's how the tax system works as well. Government has no way of knowing how much is actually on your bank account, well at least not officially (gov was…

You can still do this at hardware stores in the US. You put your nuts and bolts in the plastic bag and write down the price and quantity and then they add them up at the register. I was really shocked as a teenager when I realized they just "trusted" you to do it correctly.

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#118

Post by pvg »

kasey_junk wrote: post #95
pvg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 20s, poorer American children worked. Flappers were a thing. So I think pretty far, in all cases.

Its my impression from the histories I've read of my city (Chicago) that black people certainly didn't have 6 miles of uninterrupted neighborhoods where it would be safe for them to meander in. Further, Italians, Jews, and Eastern Europeans were still very much segregated into smaller enclaves than that. The Irish were only recently able to move about freely at that point, and there were certainly places they couldn'…

I think the point of the article is that, societally, we are perhaps too focused on children's safety to the point of depriving them of some perfectly harmless freedom. The argument is not, as you seem to interpret it, strictly geometric. In the 20s, the world was far less safe for children yet far more independence and agency was required of many of them. I'm sure not every shoeshine or newspaper boy was engaging in these activities in their ethnic ghetto.

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#119

Post by julienmarie »

One thing lacking though is a view on the evolution of the area between the times of the great grand father and the son. How did the urbanization evolved ? I remember 25 years ago, aged 9/10, when I was living in ( really ) rural France, I was riding by bicycle at least 10 kms around, walking in woods, building tree houses.

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#120

Post by wcunning »

organsnyder wrote: post #89
randlet wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For example, many farmers were leaving produce out with price tags on and relying on an honour system for payment" FWIW this fairly common in rural Ontario and probably other parts of Canada too. I imagine it happens in parts of the US too.

Yep. Happens in Michigan, just 15 minutes outside of a city with 200k people.

And up in the thumb, too.

Edit: But not in Ann Arbor, the purportedly safest city in the state... Go figure.

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