How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by asolove » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 3:15 AM UTC

bigtunacan wrote: post #49

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…

What part of the US do you live in? I have 3 kids ages 7 to 12 and they and all of the neighborhoods kids wander together over a distance of several miles. We make sure they have a phone and a time they are expected to return. The kids always group up as there is more safety in numbers. Life isn't worth living if you don't actually live.

Yes, you can definitely find places where kids still play by themselves in the US! But it takes work and the regional and even neighborhood-level differences in kids' behavior are enormous.

We used to live in suburban Washington DC and I didn't let my kids out of sight of the house.

Now we live in suburban Denver. We cared about play a lot so we used it as the main criterion of where we bought a house. We drove through neighborhoods on Saturday mornings until we found one where kids were out riding bikes and playing without adult supervision. We found a neighborhood that was both well designed (pools, a network of walking trails away from roads, school in walking distance) and full of people who were culturally supportive of free-range kids.

If you want to find or help to foster such a neighborhood, I recommend the book we used, "Playborhoods": http://playborhood.com

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

#122

Post by noonespecial » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 3:15 AM UTC

I was thinking about this the other day. Ironically this is the safest time in all of history to let kids do this. Crime is historically very low and our kids want to carry around magical devices that lets us know where they are at all times and contact them instantly.

This should be a golden age, yet we've turned it into jail. What gives everyone?

Edit: And by "what gives" I mean literally, I live in the US and have children ages 7-12 and I don't let them do these things solely because I'm afraid of government busy-bodies. Not crime, not injury, not abduction. I'm frankly and bluntly afraid of the limitless power a bored bureaucrat will help himself/herself to over my family if given the slightest reason. That's what gives for me anyway.

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

#123

Post by m_mueller » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 3:15 AM UTC

TWAndrews wrote: post #84

m_mueller wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mostly trust Swiss people to be that honest. It doesn't work like that everywhere.

Isn't that a chicken-and-egg problem? IMO if a society treats people like responsible adults they'll rise up to the task. The question is of course how to transition there. I can't say to have any recipes, but I'm reasonably sure that taking away civic rights is counterproductive. Maybe try to get one electable political party that makes it their thing to protect and even expand citizen's rights and allow for more self responsibility? I don't like the Libertarians for some of their antisocial ideas, but at least that's where they seem to have gotten something right.

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

#124

Post by panzagl » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 3:18 AM UTC

guimarin wrote: post #14

I think there are a lot more roads/freeways now than back then as other commenters have pointed out. We've built our cities for cars, not for people. One possible side-effect of self driving cars, is it may make it safer for kids to wander again. I know I'd love to just attach a GPS tracker to my now 1yr old daughter in 5 years, and let her go where she pleases here in SF.

Even neighborhood roads are larger and faster- the street I grew up on in the 80's is about half the width of the street I live on now (2000's construction), and was short and straight compared to the wide sweeping arcs that seem to be in vogue in newer neighborhoods.

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

#125

Post by kasey_junk » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 3:18 AM UTC

wallace_f wrote: post #113

kasey_junk wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 datas…

I'm sorry, I don't see either of your thesis' supported by your citation. Neither the crime rate in the USA compared to medieval European rates, nor the crime rate in the USA historically compared to now, is worse. Are we just reading the same data completely differently?

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

#126

Post by Fuzzwah » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 3:19 AM UTC

irrational wrote: post #91

m_mueller wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't been to too many US supermarkets, but don't you get the vegetables in already weighed and tagged portions? IMO if you do that yourself, and there isn't even a cashier doing a bit of sanity checking, there's just more opportunity to cheat. With self checkout alone you can just not scan something, but it would seem a bit more obvious to catch (which I could see the chains doing with security cams). Almost cer…

Not exactly. Typically there will be a sign that lets you know how much the produce is per imperial pound. There are analog scales there that you can use to weigh your produce to give you an idea of how much it will be, but the real digital scales are at checkout. At self-checkout you put the produce onto a scale and then click on the picture of the produce your are purchasing so the computer can correlate the weight…

... and the staff member hovering around the self check out area.

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

#127

Post by xiaoma » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 3:20 AM UTC

frankosaurus wrote: post #99

I'm tired of this claim that kids today are less free-roaming. Such articles never seem to provide empirical evidence to back it up. The term "helicopter parent" is thrown around as if it has some sort of scientific definition. In actuality, it is just a pejorative used to label any parent we have observed being overprotective. These claims about a societal shift serve only to tickle persons' biases that kids today a…

I think your weariness at seeing a claim which from all evidence appears true not backed up by "empirical evidence" is a bit self-indulgent. I've met many N American adults whose own childhoods align with what the article says and almost none who said they had a shorter leash than children do now. I've seen more children taking the metro by themselves in Japan in a one week visit than I did living the US for three years. It's also undeniable that social workers taking children from families due to them having been unsupervised is something that the state barely had resources for 100 years ago even if, contrary to numerous historical accounts, it had the will.

No, I don't have statistics on exactly how far away the average 9 year-old was allowed to bike in various years. History books also don't come with a stack of empirical evidence to back them up. At some point, you have to either accept them until seeing more compelling conflicting accounts or dig into the sources and do the research yourself.

If numerous anecdotal claims and published accounts isn't good enough for you, then the onus is on you to provide a more convincing argument in the opposite direction.

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

#128

Post by kasey_junk » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 3:22 AM UTC

pvg wrote: post #118

kasey_junk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I guess I just don't understand the point of the article. To me it seems an indictment of current parenting modes, based on the amount of geometric freedom allowed a very small subset of the population in comparison to the amount of geometric freedom allowed another, different very small subset of the population.

I guess what I'm saying is, its a pretty ridiculous article that doesn't line up with reality now or then.

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

#129

Post by m_mueller » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 3:24 AM UTC

cowsandmilk wrote: post #108

m_mueller wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Does Switzerland publish where sex offenders live? One piece of information present now is that I can see all the child molesters within a mile of where I live. You see that half a mile away there is someone convicted of "Rape of child with force" and it messes with you.

I'm pretty sure it doesn't have such a public registry. Some of the legal system in the US are very foreign to Swiss (and probably most continental Europeans for that matter), for example the way court proceedings are published and the accused can be named in the media before conviction. In almost every case, Swiss law enforcement and their corrective measures are meant to be that - corrective, not revengeful. This can sometimes lead to bad results (with quite a few people getting angry when crimes go with no or only light punishments), but overall most people probably think it's better to go too soft rather than too harsh, because the latter makes the government into a bully that everyone needs to fear, which people really don't want (and which a very active direct democracy hopefully somewhat protects against).

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

#130

Post by akira2501 » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 3:25 AM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #80

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…

Has anyone considered that, like many things, maybe childraising knowledge has improved over time, and maybe it is true that it's dangerous and a bad idea to let them roam around far away unsupervised? It always seemed reasonable to me, even when I was that age myself. An anecdote is that the only bone injury I had as a kid resulted from riding bikes with some other kids who had a "fun idea" of biking down this steep…

> and maybe it is true that it's dangerous to let them roam around far away unsupervised?

...and maybe there are unseen benefits that outweigh those risk factors? It's true that in the past few years childhood mortality has lowered, and that the highest risk factor for anyone up to age 44 is "unintentional injuries;" however, other statistics may be more troubling.

For example, the teen suicide rate was steadily declining throughout 1985 to 2000, but since then, there has been a steady uptick in the suicide rate for children under 18. It's the second leading cause of death for people 10 to 34 in the united states, out-ranking even murder and cancer for these groups.