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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

#291

Post by visarga »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #199
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…

> We have purposely designed our cities to maximize vehicle throughput and require car ownership This is just one specific example of the broader phenomenon, which is corporations seek to remove all of our abilities to take care of ourselves and our communities, so that they may resell those things to us as products. Requiring cars to move around is just the surface. We go to coffee shops and restaurants to see our f…

> corporations seek to remove all of our abilities to take care of ourselves and our communities, so that they may resell those things to us as products

That's an interesting thought. I was thinking that probably UBI won't come to pass (politicians corruptible, corporations greedy and short sighted) thus people will have to rediscover self-reliance in order to improve their situation.

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

#292

Post by daxfohl »

The strange thing is that CPS is considered the enemy here. It seems like CPS should be a group that listens to the needs of parents and helps build a community to cater to those needs, not some kind of self-important authority figure. Maybe it should be rebranded as Child Development Services or something.

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

#293

Post by nvarsj »

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 is very true in London, unfortunately. Cars destroy the city - both by polluting it, and making walking and biking dangerous. Boris Johnson's goal as mayor was to optimise traffic flow through London, which just encouraged more cars. Going to a city like Cambridge where the center is shut down to cars is quite eye opening - lots of kids and people walking and biking. In London it's just a sea of cars driving and parked on sidewalks so you can't actually walk anywhere safely.

Case in point: my daughter had a very near miss when she was about 2. She was walking down the side walk a bit in front of me, and this middle aged lady in a Range Rover went onto the sidewalk to get around a stopped car, barely missing my daughter. I yelled at her but she didn't even notice in her sound proof SUV.

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

#294

Post by daxfohl »

There's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma working here too. If you're the only family that lets their child wander, your child is far more likely to be the one that's abducted. Therefore nobody lets their kids wander, so everyone's kids have a substandard childhood.

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

#295

Post by jon-wood »

jimmaswell wrote: post #179
johngalt wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I ended up with a crushed wrist and internal bruising, and I was lucky I even lived. And I bet you wear a seat belt every day in your car as an adult. Invincibility is one of those myths you want to dispel when kids are young and the stakes aren't as high.

I wore my seat belt every day before that anyway, not even because I had to but because I wanted to. The only thing that really changed after that point was I didn't want to ride bikes anymore. I really can't be the only one who thinks brushes with death are not a good thing to have just because they can teach you a lesson when you're fortunate enough to walk away from them. Would you also say Russian Roulette is a g…

I can't help but think you're drastically overstating the danger of riding a bike, even in less than safe conditions. I was heavily into downhill mountain biking during my invincible teenage years and only even heard of someone doing major damage to themselves second hand (they managed to impact their spine flying head first off their bike into a tree trunk).

Scrapes, bruises, cuts, and even bones heal relatively easily in children. At least for me learning that things will probably be OK was a valuable thing which has made me more comfortable taking calculated risks later in life, and the times things weren't quite OK taught me a healthy level of caution in calculating those risks.

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

#296

Post by nicky0 »

espitia wrote: post #195
Kluny wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Reminds of a time when a friend Of mine was rollerblading to my home from hers (~5 miles). She called me mid way because she found 2 kids (maybe 12 years old) carrying a ton of stuff down an empty 3 mile road. She asked me to drive my car to them to help them out carrying all the stuff. When I got there, one of them hopped on right away but the other held back, almost with a scared face. My friend insisted that they…

Imagine the story from the kids point of view. "We were walking down the road in an isolated place, and this car came along and tried to make us get in"...

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

#297

Post by tqkxzugoaupvwqr »

ma2rten wrote: post #44
kqr2 wrote: post #17

This American Life had a funny anecdote illustrating the opposite extreme where a woman who doesn't quite understand the meaning of "summer camp" leaves her kids at a campground by themselves for a week. My mother emigrated to the United States from Germany in the '50s. And her understanding of American culture and traditions wasn't always quite clear. And one of her confusions was about summer camp. She knew that ki…

I feel like this more than a cultural misunderstanding. It would not be considered normal or acceptable to leave your children alone for so long in Germany either.

I actually share the same understanding of summer camp as the woman (I’m from Germany). For me, summer camp means I pay for the stay of my children, drop off my children and leave because there are employees that take care of all the children in the camp. I would also not expect a 1:1 care, just enough employees to take care of the children. Of those employees I would expect many to be just around 18–21 years of age because it is common summer job for students.

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

#298

Post by facepalm »

cel1ne wrote: post #240
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…

I see your point, but don't you think it's possible to teach children to cross traffic safely? When I was little, I regularly walked 3 or 4 miles to visit friends. I had to cross at least one "big" road on my way, where I just took extra care, because my parents had reminded me to.

Traffic is already the biggest killer of kids (afaik). You can only teach kids so much. They are kids - sometimes impulsive...

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

#299

Post by [deleted] »

solipsism wrote: post #265
cel1ne wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point, but don't you think it's possible to teach children to cross traffic safely? When I was little, I regularly walked 3 or 4 miles to visit friends. I had to cross at least one "big" road on my way, where I just took extra care, because my parents had reminded me to.

Never has a thread been more full of survivorship bias. If you had juggled chainsaws as a kid and survived it wouldn't be any more relevant.

[deleted]

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

#300

Post by cel1ne »

cel1ne wrote: post #240
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…

I see your point, but don't you think it's possible to teach children to cross traffic safely? When I was little, I regularly walked 3 or 4 miles to visit friends. I had to cross at least one "big" road on my way, where I just took extra care, because my parents had reminded me to.

For those interested: I live in Austria, the year of my story was about 1992.

These are the statistics about traffic-accidents back then. Unfortunately there's no distinction whether the children were in the car or walking/cycling.

* Austria had 7.8 million inhabitants back then, 24% were 0-19 years old.

* There were 4.682 accidents involving children 0-14 years old

* 4.843 times a child was hurt

* 56 children were killed

Source: http://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/energie_umwelt_in...

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