Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by didip » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 11:25 PM UTC

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…

Car-centric culture and gun-centric culture is making our society to be like this.

Also, most states defund mental health institutions. Finally, the 24/7 news cycle covers a lot of crazy behaviors, encouraging copycats to one-up the crime even more.

Is it a surprise if Americans are more paranoid than ever?

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

#162

Post by Reason077 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 11:26 PM UTC

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 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."

I grew up in New Zealand, and when I was a kid it was pretty normal to walk to school also. I spent my whole childhood walking 20-30 mins every morning and afternoon! Eventually I got a bike which saved a bit of time.

But now days, I think it's not as common. My nieces seem to get shuttled everywhere in their Mum's car. One issue is that there's a lot more cars on the roads now days so it doesn't feel as safe or as friendly for pedestrians as it used to.

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

#163

Post by favaq » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 11:28 PM UTC

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…

It's very unfair to compare Norway to the US, you just have to look at the racial composition of both societies to see why

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

#164

Post by granshaw » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 11:29 PM UTC

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #160

For some deep history on this particular cultural expression, I highly recommend reading Albion's Seed . This cultural folkway of extreme supervision traces its roots all the way back to the Puritans' child-rearing folkway: "breaking the will." It's no coincidence that the most egregious of these family harassment cases take place in Puritan colonies. I emphasize once more, for a very interesting and useful backgroun…

But it wasn't like this before tho... ~20-30 years ago it was perfectly normal for American kids to be all over outdoors playing by themselves... what caused the regression?

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

#165

Post by p0pcult » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 11:29 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #153

andrepd wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car-centric infrastructure and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

I am really surprised every time I see this vehement hatred of cars. I lived in NYC my whole life and didn't have a car, but now we got kids so we happily moved for the house-and-car-in-the-burbs life and it's absolutely better. People make this choice for a reason. Just curious, do you have a family and do you shlep them by bus everywhere?

Cars existing != car centric culture.

Have you been to, say, the Netherlands? There are plenty of cars in Amsterdam, but it is the opposite of a car centric culture. Bikes and pedestrians abound (including bikes with places to "shlep" your kids or cargo around), and they all have right of way, anywhere, and the drivers generally seem to respect it.

Contrast that with a big American city like NYC, and though probably the vast majority of New Yorkers don't own a car, it is still very car-first in the priority of who gets to use the streets.

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

#166

Post by aidenn0 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 11:29 PM UTC

dave78 wrote: post #104

Tostino wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how I grew up in the US (central FL) in the 90's. I was 6-7 when I was riding my bike down to the corner store ~0.5mi away, and ~10 I was staying home and watching my sisters when necessary. I was perfectly capable of cooking and looking after things. I just don't get this hysteria that seems to have gripped so many people. We are living in one of the safest times to be alive.

I grew up like this too (in the US in the 80s). I now have an 8 year old, and I think she would be fine at home alone for a while if necessary (especially with easy access to me via phone/Alexa/whatever). However, in my state (Illinois), the government has made it illegal to leave my kids home alone until they are 14 (14!) years old. This is insanity, but I don't dare risk it because on the off chance anything happen…

14 is insanely old. 1/3 of my class were latchkey kids by 6th grade, and my (very overprotective compared to my peers') mom got a job when I was in 7th grade so I came home to an empty house at 13.

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

#167

Post by yttribium » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 11:29 PM UTC

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.

That's obviously not the case when poverty levels are decreasing over time along with social trust.

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

#168

Post by alar44 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 11:30 PM UTC

SwetDrems wrote: post #94

A big perpetrator of this is the designed environment surrounding car culture. I moved somewhere where there's plenty of foot traffic, specifically so my kid will walk/bike to school and that is seen as completely normal. Most Americans do not understand how horrible car dependence is for personal independence, yet defend it to the end for some reason. It's really a shame.

[dead]

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

#169

Post by aidenn0 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 11:31 PM UTC

jollyllama wrote: post #7

There's some other fundamental problem if cops and CPS were pulling these stunts anyway. Maybe some better mechanism for recourse against overreach is needed?

In many places, cops will nearly always show up when called. I left an 8 year old kid in a car (parked in the shade) for 5 minutes when running an errand and as I was getting in the car, a cop showed up. Someone had called 911. Cop asked how old the kid was, I said "8" and they rolled their eyes and left.

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

#170

Post by legitster » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 11:31 PM UTC

It's important to point out that while these laws are showing up on the books, it can do little when the community or police department get involved: https://reason.com/2022/11/16/suburban-mom-jailed-handcuffed...

In this case, Texas had protections for "free range parenting", but that only applied to CPS. The local police department still threw the book at the parents as retaliation.

I think people need to realize that police departments themselves have a hand in propagating these myths. Terms like "sex trafficking" are loosely defined and used freely to convey a danger that is almost completely fabricated - that children are abducted off of their own lawn by complete strangers.

The reality is that the vast, vast majority of both child abductions and sex trafficking are done by people the children know, and completely unrelated from each other. And few of the these cases are actually solved by police!

And yet we are all victims of a kind of PR ruse intended to steer resources to a specific set of government agencies tilting after hypothetical problems.