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Netflix has a Japanese show called Old Enough. It shows Japanese children doing their first errand. Example: walking a kilometer to the store (including crossing a busy street), buying 3 items and bringing them back. Age? 2 years, 9 months. It's wild. I grew up at a time and a place where I had a lot of independence. I rode a bike everywhere. I'd do things by myself and with friends. I actually feel sad for kids nowa…
> In some places, parents who allow young children to run errands or go places without adult supervision may violate local laws. Is this because some cities are no longer safe for children to go outside? I wonder how things got so dangerous and if anything can be done. Edit: Another post noted that there seems to be a general decline in walkability and pedestrian safety in US cities. This seems like something we coul…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think this is the main reason. It fails to explain why neighborhoods that kids played freely in decades ago now keep their kids inside. I'm talking about suburban neighborhoods in modest towns that haven't seen population growth or urban development. I used to walk to school frequently, every time I missed the bus it was a two mile walk down country roads. If the weather was nice, sometimes I'd choose to walk…
Well, that's not the only thing that has changed. 40 years ago when I was walking to elementary school nobody, absolutely nobody, was driving a pick-up truck except to a farm or job site. Now the majority of people are driving vehicles that are much larger than a 1982-model work pickup, and with 5-10x the engine power. Although I admit up-front that the national statistics are badly skewed by the fact that Florida is…
I think a combination of increased vehicle size and number of vehicles per capita probably explains why parents would feel less comfortable having their children walk down country roads to school.
[0]: https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-study-suggests-todays-s...
Disappointing that an article like this wouldn’t mention one of the main reasons children are given less autonomy in the US: our built environment. The vast majority of our children grow up in neighborhoods in which one can’t easily be a pedestrian at any age. Low density communities, in which almost all trips have to be taken in cars, are of course not friendly to non-drivers. Japan builds dense, mixed use neighborh…
Absolutely correct. The USA worships the car's speed above the child's freedom.
To be honest, this was never really a consideration in my calculus growing up, and I did so during the age of the super car going into hypercar era in SoCal and the presence of those cars around us would become a large part of our 'tuner' culture as it's literately the car mod capital of the World.
Never once did that deter us from hitting the street on skateboards, rollerblades etc.., in fact I like to believe I was part of a large collection of 90s kids who invented street luging on hills where lots of sports cars were hitting the canyons.
Honestly, this is peak over-regulation trying to pawn off the horrendous outcomes on cars because that is the convenient target de jure: I went from having a modest car and motorcycle collection to now simply having 3 must-haves and I honestly I've ridden 10000s more miles via public transportation this year (planes included) whereas I've only driven like 200 miles via car. And I did for environmental reasons as an environmental activist that traveled all over the World for projects where I could see first hand the damage of climate change, I didn't need some app or social media brigrading to change my mind as I was capable of seeing what government, petrol companies and Auto makers collusion can do: I worked at VW during Dieselgate.
The problem stems from parents deferring their responsibilities to the State when it comes to every facet of Life, and that is why these kids are soft and need safe spaces and feel threatened by anything that is against their idealized narratives. Universities pander to these clients because they often have the most resources as opposed to those who simply made their way up the hard way--excluding SATS was a red herring, most of the kids who got into Prestigious/Ivy Leagues didn't need them in the first place as legacy admissions plays a big part, and where that fails they'll just bribe them as we've ween before [0].
This is what happens when you allow and standardize nepotism, and it always back fires as the following generations are simply not capable of enduring anything after being sheltered their whole life.
This is one of the reasons that Silicon Valley is the cesspool that it is now, it's culture went from rugged entrepreneurialism in the 50s-90s when it was mainly an extension of Californian culture that changed the World to what is now a woke dystopia that caters and panders to the least capable form the right schools but is none the less optimized using lemmings to do the busy leg work for vulture capitalists with deep ties to VC that seek to mine your data as a business model.
Honestly, this is why I have no sympathy for what is happening in the Valley right now, you made your own hell now fix it if you really think you're so bright and deserve the acclaim that you think you're entitled to.
Sure, you've collectively made a feudal lords (FAANG) immensely wealthy beyond comprehension, but beyond that you've done nothing to' make the 'World a better place.'
In fact you're the useful idiot you speak down to here, but are oblivious to the fact you're the worst of the worst when it comes to that.
The sad thing is, it's mainly transplants that made it this way.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_briber...
Disappointing that an article like this wouldn’t mention one of the main reasons children are given less autonomy in the US: our built environment. The vast majority of our children grow up in neighborhoods in which one can’t easily be a pedestrian at any age. Low density communities, in which almost all trips have to be taken in cars, are of course not friendly to non-drivers. Japan builds dense, mixed use neighborh…
I think the biggest thing is parents have embraced fear over reason and are terrified something bad might happen to their child.
Disappointing that an article like this wouldn’t mention one of the main reasons children are given less autonomy in the US: our built environment. The vast majority of our children grow up in neighborhoods in which one can’t easily be a pedestrian at any age. Low density communities, in which almost all trips have to be taken in cars, are of course not friendly to non-drivers. Japan builds dense, mixed use neighborh…
I don't really agree with that. I grew up in a small rural town where things were quite spread out. I would run and ride my bike all over the "neighborhood", which would encompass an area of well over 4 square miles. We had small dirt roads with no shoulders or sidewalks and we would ride our bikes down them, if someone came up behind you would get out of the way. It was not at all uncommon to have a groups of 5 and…
...on which cars are limited to very low speeds and make a great deal of noise. Bicycles are barely safe on asphalt even when they have bike lanes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its not just personal risk tolerance that plays into it either. I would let my kids largely run free but I know I would probably have to deal with CPS if I did so.
This seems like a bit of an urban myth? Or at least hugely overblown. How often does this really happen?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the "Stranger Danger" panic that accelerated in the 80's is probably more responsible for people thinking that a 4-year old is incapable of running errands. It's not so much the lack of mental capacity as it is decades of cultural inculcation that you should not dare to let any child under the age of ___ wander the streets alone, or they will be immediately abducted, assaulted, and decapitated by dark forces.…
Well, and now the Internet - it doesn't help when Nextdoor is full of "suspicious person alerts" aka "there was a solicitor and I didn't like it", and a non-stop barrage of crime related stories. I live in a city whose broader region is almost 10000 square miles, and the crime feeds report all crime in this area as occurring in "Houston", even though this region is larger than some US states. I feel like this contrib…