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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

#151

Post by hueving »

Kluny wrote: post #114
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 y…

This isnt it. The town I grew up in had precisely the same number of interstates and major roads as it did 30 years ago (flat population) and children today have nowhere near the freedom that I did as a child.

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

#152

Post by orthoganol »

Kluny wrote: post #114
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 y…

Reminds me of "Taken for a Ride", a somewhat famous documentary about the auto industry seeking to gut forms of public transportation in many cities.

Having traveled quite a bit I believe the US's public transportation systems, within cities and between regions, is a national embarrassment.

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

#153

Post by saurik »

Kluny wrote: post #146
freehunter wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading the parent I was about to say "I'm almost 30 and I barely feel safe wandering alone". Not just crossing major roads (I live downtown in my little city, but I have to cross a major road to get to any shops, which puts a big damper on my walking) but just one person walking down the road, by themselves? It's almost a scandal. And if I'm biking around town, especially not dressed in spandex like a bicyclis…

Yeah, it's weird as hell to be the only person walking on an empty street.

I actually got stopped by the local police a year or two ago for going on a walk during a holiday, as they received reports of some strange guy walking alone.

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

#154

Post by frankosaurus »

xiaoma wrote: post #127
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 ye…

My claim is that persons' own recollection of their childhood is inherently biased. As kids, they weren't privy to many of their parents' protective actions. Never mind nostalgia, selective memory, etc.

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

#155

Post by pharrlax »

freehunter wrote: post #140
Kluny wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

After reading the parent I was about to say "I'm almost 30 and I barely feel safe wandering alone". Not just crossing major roads (I live downtown in my little city, but I have to cross a major road to get to any shops, which puts a big damper on my walking) but just one person walking down the road, by themselves? It's almost a scandal. And if I'm biking around town, especially not dressed in spandex like a bicyclis…

This is one of the biggest reasons it was refreshing as hell to move to the big city, as paradoxical as that sounds.

Rural/suburban life is like living in a barren wasteland marked by occasional oases you have to travel between in a metal spaceship.

Living in an area where commuting to work and activities by foot is completely normal feels like rediscovering a lost sense of communal society, and there's a relief and a comfort to it that's difficult to articulate.

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

#156

Post by credit_guy »

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…

(Parent of a 6yo and a 1yo). I feel the same, I was orders of magnitude freer as a kid as my children are now. One day the nanny of my 1yo found my 6yo outside of our school (which is across the street) almost ready to cross the street on the pedestrian crossing. We wrote to the teacher, who told us she couldn't sleep that night. It's very likely that if we had reported the incident to the principal she would have been fired. At end of the day, the main function of the schools nowadays is to keep our children safe, not to educate them.

But here's the thing, I feel the same as you. Part of it could be the PG observation of asymmetry of benefit vs risk for kids and parents ([1], paragraph before "Discipline"). But part of it is that the whole "world is tough, so toughen up" is a big misconception. I'm struggling to articulate a good argument, but I think it's worth shielding our children from danger for as long as possible, so they can focus on learning. Life will come at them, that's for sure. And then they'll have the motivation to learn how to deal with all the bad stuff. But until them they'll learn more of the good stuff if we remove the distraction of having to look out for themselves.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

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

#157

Post by kasey_junk »

wallace_f wrote: post #135
kasey_junk wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What? Go click on the links to the datasets I provided you. Look at the datasets. Notice that 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 po…

Ok, I get where we are crossing wires now. Your "ourworldindata" citations show a decreasing crime rate through basically every period of data except the 1960s and 70s. The period between 1940-1950 show a lower period than now in that it is around 4 p100k then and around 6 p100k now.

You are then comparing that to certain city numbers in the USA that are ~50 p100k now. That makes more sense as a thesis and I think I now understand what you are saying.

That said, I think it is an entirely incorrect way to interpret the data, as the aggregate numbers that have sub 4 p100k in the historical record do not break out p100k numbers per city. So you have no idea if St. Louis (for instance) is worse now than it was in the "ourworldindata" data set as it isn't broken out that way.

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

#158

Post by uxp100 »

saurik wrote: post #153
Kluny wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's weird as hell to be the only person walking on an empty street.

I actually got stopped by the local police a year or two ago for going on a walk during a holiday, as they received reports of some strange guy walking alone.

That's a bummer.

One of my favorite things is to walk down the middle of the street in my Grandma's town on Thanksgiving or Christmas. Small town, shops are closed, quiet except for a few bars and people's homes. Also a good break from family, and a walk on a day where I eat a lot.

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

#159

Post by [deleted] »

kasey_junk wrote: post #125
wallace_f wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#160

Post by christophilus »

ahoy wrote: post #11
valuearb wrote: post #5

When 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 swimmin…

I had a similar experience in the rural south in the 90s, for what it's worth. I was largely given free reign to tromp around the (expansive) woods, had a bb gun that I liked to tote around, and at one point had a motorcycle - a ratty little 50cc honda dirtbike that I repeatedly wrecked into ditches and briar patches. Point is, at least for "country" millennials, I think plenty of roaming did happen.

This was my experience in the suburban south in the 90s. I think the south tends to be more hands off in many ways.
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