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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

#81

Post by myself248 »

fl0ps wrote: post #55
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.

The US is a low trust society because we're told not to trust people through highly negative news stories. The result is the US being primed to think there are child murderers and rapists under every bush, etc, etc. Ancedent to this unintentional effect was the incentivised "if it bleeds it reads" motivation for promotion of the highly negative.

Both of these things can be true at the same time. The news can overemphasize the worst, AND we can have an epidemic of drug problems, mental illness, and the crimes that those bring.

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

#82

Post by dang »

Jtsummers wrote: post #25
crazygringo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: dang fixed it, thanks! Orig comment below ---- What/who are you replying to? Your quoted text isn't in the article and also isn't in any of the comments on this page.

They're responding to the article kyoob linked in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34916150

Ok, we've moved the GP to be a child of that one now. Thanks!

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

#83

Post by GauntletWizard »

jvanderbot wrote: post #45
henrikschroder wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Once upon a time, Trolls lived under bridges. Now they call you a troll if you complain about those living under bridges.

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

#84

Post by rhino369 »

swatcoder wrote: post #65
wonderwonder wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF is full of mentally ill homeless people and drug addicts. Some literally camping in the doorways of homes. It's also covered in vomit and human feces. No way I would let my kids run around unsupervised there

Historically, people teach their kids how to navigate their local environment safely. In rural environments, that can include wildlife dangers and natural hazards and in urban environments, it can include human dangers and industrial/sanitary hazards. Environmental danger is not new. The culture of isolating kids rather than educating them is. Whether the new strategy is better for the kids is an open question, but s…

>Historically, people teach their kids how to navigate their local environment safely.

And historically, society would drive insane and homeless people out of nice areas. Middle and upper middle class people weren't letting their kids hang out with drifters in the past.

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

#85

Post by geoelectric »

IMO, three things need to happen to make this go.

First, the media needs a sea change towards not making parents hysterical. We've seen this happen in waves ever since there was mass media (D&D, satanism, metal, gangs, etc., in my personal lifetime) but this is the first time I think it's actually caught on as a cultural standard for something like 2 decades straight.

Second, social media needs a sea change towards not making parents hysterical. I think that's where the 2 decades straight came from.

Since neither media nor social media will change anything that lowers their viewership, that means the audience needs to reject the hysteria. That leads me to the third thing.

Third, California needs to explicitly adopt play outside laws, and free range parenting needs to become the normal standard in Hollywood movies that -don't- involve kids falling into drugs or other trouble, and -don't- portray the parents in question as overwhelmed or neglectful. As a country, we seem to take a lot of our impression as to what's "right" from California, particularly for parenting and other age-related things, irrespective of local laws.

I think CA adopting the laws may happen eventually. They don't conflict with our normal legal standards for parenting. I think it'd just have to be an explicit and well-publicized adoption to spark much of a landslide elsewhere, much like with CO and recreational cannabis.

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

#86

Post by throwaway049 »

gretch wrote: post #59
notch898a wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is very false. National studies show more violent crime happens in poor areas: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf

There's a section about poor people more likely to be victims of _stranger_ violence, which backs up your point. I didn't see much about children specifically, but I guess all other things being equal... Just such a sad thing to think about that I don't _want_ to think it unless there's hard evidence.

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

#87

Post by wonderwonder »

swatcoder wrote: post #65
wonderwonder wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF is full of mentally ill homeless people and drug addicts. Some literally camping in the doorways of homes. It's also covered in vomit and human feces. No way I would let my kids run around unsupervised there

Historically, people teach their kids how to navigate their local environment safely. In rural environments, that can include wildlife dangers and natural hazards and in urban environments, it can include human dangers and industrial/sanitary hazards. Environmental danger is not new. The culture of isolating kids rather than educating them is. Whether the new strategy is better for the kids is an open question, but s…

I let my 11 year old ride his bike to the park, 7-11 etc on his own or with friends. I don't live in SF though. I think it's a little different when the danger is another human and they are mentally ill or addicted to drugs. You can tell the kids to stay away from them but the kids are kids they can't necessarily outsmart an adult looking to cause them harm.

Adults are killed by homeless people in SF. They are an irrational danger that is difficult to prepare for. There are also a lot of them. It's one thing to say if you see a homeless person stay away but it's another when there are dozens of them camped on the sidewalk. Telling my kids to instead walk in the road is not a great option either.

You are not wrong and 99% of the time doing as you suggest is valid. Hordes of crazy people are a danger of a different breed.

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

#88

Post by r3trohack3r »

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…

I lived in the Bay Area for two years. It’s a shit hole. It’s dirty, dangerous, and expensive.

I’ve lived in NYC (the Bronx), Seattle, and Saint Louis. Never felt anywhere close to the terror I felt living in San Jose and commuting to Los Gatos and San Francisco.

We fled from San Jose to Phoenix a year after having our daughter. Kids walk to school in our neighborhood. A bunch meet up at the corner near our house and all scooter together to the local school.

SF is not the U.S.

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

#89

Post by standardUser »

tristor wrote: post #77

I recently moved from a very low average income city to a very high average income city. In my former city it was nearly unheard of for children to unsupervised, despite most people having large families, because there was a very real concern about kidnapping/human trafficking and other issues (and this concern wasn't unfounded, this city made national news for masked men in a van grabbing multiple children while the…

This is interesting to me because growing up poor and with a single parent, I was allowed to run wild at a very young age. There was a whole crew of young kids in our apartment complex that would hang out and wander around unsupervised during daylight hours. Our parents were busy working and they probably needed some occasional time alone in those tiny apartments (my mother and I shared a 1 bedroom).

As for "high income cities" it doesn't get much higher income than Manhattan and I would be shocked if I saw some under-10 kids wandering around here on their lonesome!

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

#90

Post by satvikpendem »

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 grew up in India, a much poorer nation than the US, and I played outside all the time, walking to relatives' houses and going to hang out with friends. I highly doubt it's the poverty causing this kind of thing in the US. Seems more to me the high amount of media "stranger danger" affecting people's viewpoints.
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