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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

#381

Post by [deleted] »

jackmott wrote: post #211
manmal wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crime is not the problem, traffic is. I grew up in a blind alley, and the whole town was really low in traffic. I started cruising around with my bike together with the neighbors at age 7, and we met a car every 10 minutes, tops. They slowed down to a stop, mostly, when they saw us. Fast forward, we are living in a city of 30k citizens now, though on the outskirts; there is a major road about 200m away, and although…

more cars bigger cars faster cars cars in a hurry because they live 1 hour from work and hate life

[deleted]

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

#382

Post by throwanem »

icebraining wrote: post #378
throwanem wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried plinking cans in your backyard, or cleaning a deer, in a city?

That's a very specific case. Plinking cans would be illegal around here, except in a shooting range. As for deer, does boar count? If so, then definitively.

I don't know where "here" is. But drag is a very specific case, too.

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

#383

Post by mironathetin »

_benedict wrote: post #375
mironathetin wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is very true in London, unfortunately ..." I admire the Dutch. They use the bicycle everywhere and in all weather conditions. The result? Their cities even sound so different. It is calm, very little car noise. Amazing.

Dangerous as a pedestrian though - especially if you aren't used to it!

yes, I wanted to add that remark as well, especially because the topic is about kids. But I didn't.

And of course bicycles are far less dangerous than any car. So there is no reason to complain or criticise this great achievement.

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

#384

Post by thomnottom »

vkou wrote: post #264
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Rural >barren wasteland If you're a glass half empty person. Many people see it as freedom to do close to whatever you want without anyone caring.

I can assure you, your suburban HOA is extremely caring about what you do. Heaven forbid you change the colour of your curtains.

I've lived in suburbs most of my life and have never had a HOA.

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

#385

Post by icebraining »

mschuster91 wrote: post #307
jpatokal wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no evil corporation stopping you from dropping out of the rat race and moving to a farm to live life off the grid. What's stopping you from doing this and living the life you appear to desire? There is also no evil corporation ordering people to give up subsistence farming and move to cities. Why do people, all around the world, still do it?

> There is also no evil corporation ordering people to give up subsistence farming and move to cities Good luck growing modern plants, they're mostly hybrid and massively drop in yield if you decide to plant part of your harvest next year. Not to mention that Monsanto will be all over your field if they get wind of you violating their copyright by doing so.

So, don't get hybrid seeds?

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

#386

Post by oftenwrong »

citiguy wrote: post #133
kijin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was on article here a few weeks ago about how Japanese parents and teachers train children to be safe before letting them out on their own. https://savvytokyo.com/japan-prepares-children-independence/ Most American parents, on the other hand, don't teach their kids anything about being safe on the streets (other than basic theory, like "don't cross on a red light") because they're always shuttling them around i…

Maybe in the suburbs. Here in New York City kids are expected to make their own way home by the fifth grade. And take mass transit to school by themselves by sixth. I'm not sure if it's safe, but plenty of kids manage it themselves. My eight year old is eagerly awaiting the day he can walk home by himself.

New York City is one of the safest place to be a pedestrian.

See the "AMERICAN CAR-NAGE" section of Jeff Speck's Walkable City

https://books.google.com/books?id=kbfeAQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA37&ots=...

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

#387

Post by ddoolin »

NoGravitas wrote: post #371
vkou wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you, your suburban HOA is extremely caring about what you do. Heaven forbid you change the colour of your curtains.

Suburbs are really the worst of both worlds. City and rural both have their appeals. Suburbs have nothing .

Often newer housing that is closer to the urban center where people work (something you typically do 5 times a week) but is also so much more affordable than living in the city. I think they have appeal, but only for the budget-minded.

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

#388

Post by mlonkibjuyhv »

throwanem wrote: post #327
vkou wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of living a subsistence lifestyle is very low. Land in the middle of nowhere is cheap, and property taxes are almost non-existant, you don't need to pay 25% of the turnips you grow to the state as an income tax, and gasoline is very cheap in the US. There's that whole big-corporation medical care business, but if you're willing to forego it, the dream can be yours - for much less then the cost of a small sub…

> The cost of living a subsistence lifestyle is very low. As with Linux, this is only true if your time has no value.

Yes, you have to set that to zero or infinity, depending on whether you're a half full or empty kind of guy.

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

#389

Post by thomnottom »

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…

I grew up deep inside a suburban development in Pennsylvania. We could ride our bikes for miles and still avoid major roads. Street hockey games very rarely had to move nets for cars. A number of friends lived easily within walking/biking distance. Even leaving my development usually meant dealing with one "major" road before getting into the quiet streets of the next one.

I would love to let my 8 year old daughter roam our current neighborhood like that, but we get more speeding cars in an afternoon cutting through our street than I would see in a weeks at my parents'.

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

#390

Post by fpig »

DanBC wrote: post #376
fpig wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible. In fact, we have proof suggesting it's possible (me and millions like me who grew up that way and lived) while we have no proof suggesting otherwise. It's not like children died en masse due to being allowed outside, so people decided it was a bad idea. People just became obsessed with their children's safety and stopped letting them outside just in case. At no point was there some large-scale problem…

> It's not like children died en masse due to being allowed outside Do you know what the rates of accidental death were in the 1970s vs today? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just interested if you know the data. EDIT: indeed, most children killed in car accidents were inside the vehicles, so driving kids everywhere may be increasing their risk of death. And a decreasing death rate might just be better car safety fe…

I have no real stats, but I can tell you that from the hundreds of kids at my school zero died from getting hit by a car. There was exactly 1 accident-related death and it was while playing sports, and this was a much older kid (like 12-13).

Now that's not a very good sample size for a low-probability event, but it's not entirely insignificant either. If children had to dodge death at every turn like one commenter suggested, zero out of several hundred would have been unlikely.

As for non-fatal injuries, that's different, we were CONSTANTLY injured. Not from cars, but from just being clumsy stupid little fucks. It was normal for a kid to have bloody knees or scabs on their knees in my childhood. But I don't consider that a problem.

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