Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe. But we all agree that American suburbs are peaceful, heaven-like places compared to many places in the world. In Australia it is poisoness animals, in many countries it is the availability of drugs, in some crime, kidnapping and rapist. And God forbid you live in a war zone. Most parents would love their kids growing up in a safe place like in the US, the EU or Japan. But they are not and are faster independen…
Minor quibble: Australians generally aren’t afraid of our poisonous animals, and it generally doesn’t factor into whether we let our kids play outside.
Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills
511–520 of 531 posts
Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills
#512The 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…
Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
I walk my kids to school in the US, but I definitely see kids as young as 6 walking without a parent. I choose to walk with my kids because I enjoy it, and it's easy exercise. That said, a lot of parents still drive their kids - the vast majority I would say. Even people who live within walking distance. It definitely is faster if you look at it in a vacuum: you save 10 minutes round trip! And when casually discussin…
I live about a half mile from my kid's school and we walk most days, or I bike. However, it has been... eye opening. We live in a fairly urban area of Nashville, but my street doesn't have sidewalks. We've been yelled at multiple times (me, my wife, and our kindergartner) by drivers to "Get out of the road!" (This is on a 25 mph street.) There are ditches and uneven ground on both sides of the road. Even the sidewalk…
My daughter's school is under two miles away, but I can't let her ride her bike alone because it is terrifying. I will sometimes ride with her though.
To get there one has to cross a huge stroad and motorists frequently ignore all traffic regulations. They look at cyclists and pedestrians as obstacles and their hatred is visible in how (and what) they drive. My daughter's bus driver told us that people don't stop at the red stop lights on buses here and I have seen first hand motorists pass and honk at buses that are actively picking up children.
Cities don't need to be built this way, Nashville is just an especially bad place to raise a family. A sibling called it a nightmare society and that is close to correct.
Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills
#514Earlier quoted context omitted.
No offence, but that sounds like a terrible place to live.
Yes, but sadly still better than 99% of the US.
It's a tourist town in a red state. Their priorities and funding do not align with making a pleasant built environment for residents.
Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills
#515Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live about a half mile from my kid's school and we walk most days, or I bike. However, it has been... eye opening. We live in a fairly urban area of Nashville, but my street doesn't have sidewalks. We've been yelled at multiple times (me, my wife, and our kindergartner) by drivers to "Get out of the road!" (This is on a 25 mph street.) There are ditches and uneven ground on both sides of the road. Even the sidewalk…
I live in the Nashville area as well. I’m sorry this is the state of things where you are. The walkable areas have all become super expensive because everyone wants to live there.
I live in Nashville right now too and it's just a mystery to me why people want to live in a place built this way. I guess Nashville residents simply do not share my values, and they want to drive their big cars on big roads. The idea of their kids walking to school must be completely alien.
Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills
#516Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you use email ~2000? It was a nightmare in sheer spam volume. Zero cost of copying + zero cost of sending = send worldwide all by default, or as close to it as they could get. I'm sure the amount of email that isn't even seen in modern webmail services would still boggle our minds. And as far as I see it, platforms are part of the problem. Marketplaces are better for the customer in the long run. That is to say,…
Sure, the not so early days were rough, everybody and their dog could run a self hosted email server, a lot of us actually did, and the spammer jumped on the bandwagon x1000. But trying to solve these kind of situation with marketplaces only solve them monkey paw style. Marketplaces are for discoverability and supply and demand issues. Fundamentally I don’t want my personal communication to be supply and demand regul…
App stores, ad markets (as they exist today, namely Google/Facebook/Amazon), and Facebook user feeds are all beholden-to and -enrich a single operating party. And specifically, an operating party that also competes with many of the offerings in their own "marketplaces". That makes them owned platforms in my book.
That sets up some screwy incentives (e.g. caring about volume over quality, self-preferencing) that substantially degrade the entire experience for buyers/users.
To the email case though, the problem with penalties is that they require a centralized manager. Which is how you get back to Gmail being a de facto standards body. Ugh.
We could always have done net-zero charging on email fees, that I think would have solved the accessibility issues. $0.05 paid to send an email -- $0.05 earned on receipt of an email.
Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills
#517Earlier quoted context omitted.
SF is devoid of kids because it is a super expensive place to raise kids in SF, and the schools are so messed up you need to go private or move. Also, a lot of same sex couples don't adopt. https://www.aaastateofplay.com/the-u-s-cities-with-the-most-...
Nitpick: approx. half of same sex couples don't need to adopt. Sorry for digression
Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills
#518Earlier quoted context omitted.
poor families have less resources/time to provide for continuous supervision for their children. so they use this parenting style by default. what helps them is that this style gets legal protection, so they are not targeted for letting their kids run unsupervised.
This parenting style isn’t exactly the same as unsupervised parenting. It is still very mindful, and can still require a lot of thought and effort on the part of the parent, something that poorer families might not have the time, energy, or resources to execute on. How is this differentiated from neglect due to just simply being too exhausted to parent?
that would be a bold claim to make. sure, being poor means less resources, but it does not automatically lead to neglect. even a very busy parent can be mindful about their children in what little time they get to spend together. what matters here is quality, not quantity.
letting children run around alone is not and should not be an indicator of neglect. therefore such a law does help poor families as it reduces the chances that they will be harassed for letting their children play unsupervised.
there are enough other ways for eg. teachers in school to observe and notice when children are actually being neglected.
the primary problem is that we are applying our middle class standards to what should be proper parenting, and that is wrong. parenting in poor families is naturally different, but that does not mean that poor parents can't make the effort or be mindful about their childrens upbringing.