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Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

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Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#41

Post by lolinder »

vuln wrote: post #27

This law will not give "poor kids more independence", it absolves the parent or guardian of legal responsibility for their children being unsupervised. I can't be the only one that's seen the hundreds if not THOUSANDS of children (under 18) fighting, causing mayhem, attacking innocent people, and property destruction videos that circulate all over the internet. Will this help edge cases? The mom working at the pizza…

You haven't read the text of any of the bills, have you?

> A CHILD IS NOT NEGLECTED WHEN ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN INDEPENDENT ACTIVITIES THAT A REASONABLE AND PRUDENT PARENT, GUARDIAN, OR LEGAL CUSTODIAN WOULD CONSIDER SAFE GIVEN THE CHILD'S MATURITY, CONDITION, AND ABILITIES

Which part of this language triggers your apocalyptic fears?

https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb22-1090

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#42

Post by henrikschroder »

pilarphosol wrote: post #31
kwhitefoot wrote: post #26

The US seems to be the only country that has this problem. Children here (Norway) walk to school on their own at the age of five or six, some of them take buses. "Ashley Smith, a foster dad, testified about being investigated for neglect because one afternoon his daughter, 8, was doing her homework on the front lawn. A passerby reported an “unsupervised” child (not knowing Ashley was actually inside). The upshot: “We…

The US is a low trust society, because of all the poverty. You really notice the difference if you travel to Europe. It turns out that having half of the population be economically unsafe makes everyone and everything unsafe.

I made the same observation when I moved to the US, it was so weird to me that SF the city is pretty much devoid of children. They're all effectively locked up and prohibited from roaming. No-one trusts children, no-one trusts adults around children, no-one trusts strangers.

But I went skiing in Lake Tahoe one weekend, and suddenly all of that disappeared. Suddenly, you have children freely interacting with strangers, there's much less adult supervision, and a whole lot of trust in others again.

It's such a contrast, and you can experience it by simply driving for a couple of hours.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#43

Post by HDThoreaun »

henrikschroder wrote: post #42
pilarphosol wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is a low trust society, because of all the poverty. You really notice the difference if you travel to Europe. It turns out that having half of the population be economically unsafe makes everyone and everything unsafe.

I made the same observation when I moved to the US, it was so weird to me that SF the city is pretty much devoid of children. They're all effectively locked up and prohibited from roaming. No-one trusts children, no-one trusts adults around children, no-one trusts strangers. But I went skiing in Lake Tahoe one weekend, and suddenly all of that disappeared. Suddenly, you have children freely interacting with strangers…

SF is actually a city that is devoid of children. They're not hidden, they just don't exist because housing is too expensive. People with kids mostly leave.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#44

Post by em-bee »

popcalc wrote: post #34
pilarphosol wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is a low trust society, because of all the poverty. You really notice the difference if you travel to Europe. It turns out that having half of the population be economically unsafe makes everyone and everything unsafe.

Hungary is extremely low trust and extremely poor, yet no one fears public transit nor letting their kids wander about.

that's not a contradiction. if society in hungary is low trust (which i doubt btw, unless something changed since i was there last more than a decade ago) then this low trust does not extend to the safety of their children.

letting kids wander about shows high trust in their kids not getting into danger. in the US people don't even trust that.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#45

Post by jvanderbot »

henrikschroder wrote: post #42
pilarphosol wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is a low trust society, because of all the poverty. You really notice the difference if you travel to Europe. It turns out that having half of the population be economically unsafe makes everyone and everything unsafe.

I made the same observation when I moved to the US, it was so weird to me that SF the city is pretty much devoid of children. They're all effectively locked up and prohibited from roaming. No-one trusts children, no-one trusts adults around children, no-one trusts strangers. But I went skiing in Lake Tahoe one weekend, and suddenly all of that disappeared. Suddenly, you have children freely interacting with strangers…

The kinds of strangers you are likely to meet in SF are not to be trusted. It's not irrational on an individual level, it's just a societal madness in the USA.

I lived in LA, and would not let my wife walk around after dark let alone my daughters. There were a few individuals who lived under bridges that would regularly assault women. And we lived in a "good" area. We moved to an even better area and within a couple months there was a shooting, high speed chase, and a drunk driver rolled his car into our neighbor's yard.

Needless to say, we moved away.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#46

Post by itronitron »

ryanobjc wrote: post #2

"kids these days aren't independent" Oh look its literally illegal to be independent. If you have kids this is both a relief and the source of the problem isn't exactly a shock.

Instead of defunding the police we should just turn half the police force into traffic cops. Take away their squad cars, give them bicycles, and just have them run speed traps in every neighborhood.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#47

Post by hn_version_0023 »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #40
pilarphosol wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is a low trust society, because of all the poverty. You really notice the difference if you travel to Europe. It turns out that having half of the population be economically unsafe makes everyone and everything unsafe.

US is a low trust society because of a culture that reveres individualism and independence to the detriment of everything else, especially community and freedom from being abused in favor of freedom to abuse. Every man for themselves means kids need to constantly be supervised.

That culture is created by a media environment manufactured by companies whose employee base are well represented on this site. This line is pushed on us, ad nauseam. Unsurprisingly, most of us are sick from it.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#48

Post by dragonwriter »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #30
ZainRiz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over 50 percent of Black children in the U.S. will experience a child welfare investigation before their eighteenth birthday (nearly double the rate of white children). Nearly 10 percent of Black children will be removed from their parents and placed into foster care (double the rate of white children) While the numbers above sound horrendous (and they really are!) I wish they normalized the data to only consider p…

>> Over 50 percent of Black children in the U.S. will experience a child welfare investigation before their eighteenth birthday (nearly double the rate of white children). So more than 25% of all children experience a child welfare investigation? That's mind boggling.

>> Over 50 percent of Black children in the U.S. will experience a child welfare investigation before their eighteenth birthday (nearly double the rate of white children).

> So more than 25% of all children experience a child welfare investigation?

Yes, 37.4%.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227926/#:~:tex....

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#49

Post by anon291 »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #26

The US seems to be the only country that has this problem. Children here (Norway) walk to school on their own at the age of five or six, some of them take buses. "Ashley Smith, a foster dad, testified about being investigated for neglect because one afternoon his daughter, 8, was doing her homework on the front lawn. A passerby reported an “unsupervised” child (not knowing Ashley was actually inside). The upshot: “We…

Some context is likely needed, as the fact that the child is a foster child most certainly played a part in how seriously they took this allegation.

In the US (and actually all over the world), children in foster care situations are at higher risk of abuse. Moreover, foster children are wards of the state and placement decisions are up to the state. The law about non-foster children (children with parents) is much more strict in what parents can and cannot do with their children. That means that it is extremely easy for the state to decide to move a foster child, whereas they cannot just take someone's adopted or biological child away. At the end of the day, the state is the foster child's guardian. For example, the state makes medical decisions for foster children. When we did our foster parent training, we even learned that sometimes the foster parents cannot make decisions on haircuts!

However, I'm going to guess that the state is hyper-vigilant about foster children because (1) they are often victims, (2) the state is directly in charge of foster children.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#50

Post by notch898a »

pilarphosol wrote: post #31
kwhitefoot wrote: post #26

The US seems to be the only country that has this problem. Children here (Norway) walk to school on their own at the age of five or six, some of them take buses. "Ashley Smith, a foster dad, testified about being investigated for neglect because one afternoon his daughter, 8, was doing her homework on the front lawn. A passerby reported an “unsupervised” child (not knowing Ashley was actually inside). The upshot: “We…

The US is a low trust society, because of all the poverty. You really notice the difference if you travel to Europe. It turns out that having half of the population be economically unsafe makes everyone and everything unsafe.

The people living in poverty very very rarely hurt a stranger's children. It's the cops who show up and take them, absolutely destroying their sense of security and growing independence.
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