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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

#231

Post by Connor_Creegan »

mvc wrote: post #207
Connor_Creegan wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/12/u-s-childre... The problem is very-much downstream, not wholly-determined. Obviously this issue criss-crosses with other issues, such as race, infrastructure, compulsory education, et cetera. But I would rank doctrine of sex as the brightest star in this constellation. It isn't a coincidence that the UK is second behind us. Its founding event was the invention of divor…

Yeah, everything was so much better when women just had to put up with their abusive husbands

Not sure what constitutes "abuse" in your book, since it is an extremely vague charge and men and women tend to exercise their malevolence in ways befitting their own aptitudes (men typically with more brawn, women typically with more subtlety). But in any case, I hate to break it to you but divorce was not created for the purpose of "womens' liberation", it was created to justify serial monogamy.

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

#232

Post by jasonfarnon »

msla wrote: post #218
teawrecks wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had friends who should have been taken away from their neglecting parents, but never were. Turns out, if the child is not being literally beaten, all the parent has to do is not open the door when child services comes by. So if the child's teeth literally rot out of their mouth, they wear filthy clothes to school, they live in a house full of cat shit everywhere, and a rotted away caved in roof, all the parent has…

Yeah, the subculture of people who get incandescently angry about CPS aren't the kinds of people I'd want anywhere near children.

for those of us who ticked off at CPS, that's kind of the point. who you want "anywhere near children" should have nothing to do with my relationship with my kids.

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

#233

Post by jasonfarnon »

teawrecks wrote: post #182
cryptonector wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. federal government gives the States' child protection service agencies money grants that are conditional on those agencies actually taking children from their homes. You get what you subsidize, and if you subsidize petty tyranny, you'll get petty tyranny.

I had friends who should have been taken away from their neglecting parents, but never were. Turns out, if the child is not being literally beaten, all the parent has to do is not open the door when child services comes by. So if the child's teeth literally rot out of their mouth, they wear filthy clothes to school, they live in a house full of cat shit everywhere, and a rotted away caved in roof, all the parent has…

[flagged]

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

#234

Post by sfpotter »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #212
andrepd wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, a reasonable risk is tolerable. But, for instance, car-centric infrastructure has *intensely* exacerbated those risks: space is completely surrendered to cars, sidewalks are non-existent, crosswalks go across 8 lanes of 60+mph traffic. All of this, plus terrible public transport, makes it impossible to travel anyway except by car. This leads to lack of independence for children, and sedentarism.

It feels like this infrastructural risk is media driven to the extent of "pedophile kidnappers" or "razor blades in apples". For example I grew up in an Eastern MA "suburb" in the mid 90s - early 2000s, characterized by narrow winding roads, fast drivers, and no streetlights. Everyone too young or unconnected to have car access bicycled or walked everywhere; parents were a bit fearful but ultimately acquiescent ("bet…

I feel you, but this is clearly a “correlation is not causation” type situation. Infrastructure should be people-centric, and there’s nothing wrong with doing things to reduce car speed and make the built environment safe. It is unlikely that improved infrastructure resulted in people walking and biking less, which is what the wording of your post suggests.

(Also, love your username… I thought I was the only one. ;-) )

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

#235

Post by pengaru »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #123
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 a paranoid US millennial parenting thing. I'm a younger Gen Xer and my parents would lock me out of the house from the time I got home from school until the sun went down. I was at the bus stop for 6:30 every morning.

Fellow younger Gen-Xer here, when I was growing up this trajectory was already clearly starting.

My parents were oldschool Italian immigrants and let me run wild, often accompanied by a relatively small subset of neighborhood kids whose parents also didn't worry.

But there were already plenty of boomers panicking about child molesters reported in the news, locking their kids up inside. Then as minorities started moving into the predominantly white racist midwestern neighborhood, the fears went into overdrive.

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

#236

Post by trpv »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #219
doubled112 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give me your lunch money! No, that doesn't sound right. Other than gangs recruiting young and something accidental (kid caught in crossfire), I agree, I can’t see the very young being targeted.

Most schools have lunch accounts these days, stealing lunch money is no longer possible. We have a lot of unhoused neighbors in our neighborhood. When they are on bad fent trips, they can get pretty irrationally violent, though I've never heard of a kid being attacked before.

Is “unhoused neighbors” your term for homeless people?

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

#237

Post by notch898a »

gretch wrote: post #185
anigbrowl wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to believe either of you. What you offered was not responsive to his claim because it didn't address risks to children, which are the topic.

You can’t not believe either of us. He said a thing and I said it’s false. If you don’t believe him then you agree with me. This btw is the correct course of logic since the burden of proof is on the asserter.

"False" is your assertion. You have the burden of proof in that claim. If you just wanted proof you should have asked for that rather than make a new, different assertion. The person you replied to took the 3rd option of the tri-state, which requires no burden, which is to merely remain skeptical.

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

#238

Post by jasonfarnon »

acuozzo wrote: post #76
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. Here's my take on the issue from 5 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32680201 Summary: We don't have safe roads and in most American suburbs traveling by car is often the only reasonable option available.

so did something happen in the last 20 years to make roads unsafe? because the issues addressed by this type of legislation are recent.

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

#239

Post by sfpotter »

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?

Better how? You don’t actually say why you prefer your new lifestyle. Clearly lots of people prefer to live without a car. Have you ever bothered having a conversation with them? Maybe if you did, you’d be less surprised!

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

#240

Post by croutonwagon »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #228
croutonwagon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there are busy bodies that will involve third parties, possibly with good intentions, but still. For example > But people have very different ideas of what “proper supervision” entails (as you know if you have, say, a spouse). One parent lets their kids play outside at age 6, another not till 12. My kids play outside on their own now. At 3 and 6. My 6 year old has been doing so since about 3. Once…

I think that's a big point regarding parental expectations, both from the child's and the parents point of view. Lack of child Independence goes hand in hand with increased expectations on parents to provide for their children. If a child gets hurt, the expectations often that the parent failed for not helicoptering Enough and assuring a risk-free environment. I didn't live it but my impression is that earlier Genera…

Agree. And its important to find a doctor that would support that as well. For example our pediatrician actively looks down on parents that bring their kid in for every sniffle and has told me outright that it should be normal for kids to have bumps and bruises or even break a limb (of course in ways that are indicative of activity) as it shows the kid is developing across the board, including motor skills.

> I didn't live it but my impression is that earlier Generations took more of a s* happens attitude and hope that it would be a learning experience

I did and enjoyed that aspect and its one I want to allow my kids to experience. And the Pediatrician agrees.

It goes hand in hand with why we are also avoiding overly competitive extra curriculars too, like baseball etc. I want them to be free after school to go play in the woods and be bored enough to get creative and explore the world around them.

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