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Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

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Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#71

Post by rootusrootus »

bedobi wrote: post #29

The design of the physical environment is in no small part responsible for this. Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school, to friends places and just in general play and exist outside unattended to a much higher degree than in the US. Because in the US they would be roadkill, and even if they somehow survived outside of a car, car centric design means there's now…

I live in the US and my kids walk and bike to school. You're making wide generalizations across a large country.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#72

Post by rootusrootus »

asdasdsddd wrote: post #39
bedobi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you seriously implying that immigration is responsible for a sudden reduction in public trust? american immigration has been a thing for 300 years

Public trust is a function of common values, as values diverge, trust plummets. Unassimilated immigrants is one of the bigger factors in divergent values among others.

And yet, the people with whom my values most diverge are other white people like myself who have been in the US for many generations. It's a cop out to blame this all on the brown people crossing the border.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#73

Post by sanex »

Loughla wrote: post #60
alfalfasprout wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The type of immigration the US has experienced has changed a fair bit over those 300 years, let alone the last 50 years.

How? Other than it's by land instead of by sea? My immigrant grandparents came here seeking asylum from persecution in their home country. The other side all came seeking jobs. How is that different?

I think the mentality is different. Our great grandparents did their best to make sure the kids spoke great English and tried to get them to become American as possible. Today we encourage the kids to speak their mother tongue. Sure it's great for job prospects and to keep it's not about what language they speak as much as the mentality about becoming an American and leaving the home country behind.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#74

Post by rootusrootus »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #9
ajma wrote: post #5

Does families having fewer number of children contribute to this? The most local community would be children that live under the same roof.

> Does families having fewer number of children contribute to this? It could have decades ago, when kids still had places to go. Not now. I had 5 who spent their childhood persistently locked away in one adult construct or another - because there was/is no local community. Within their reach were roads and private property and that's about it. They were in the same boat as most other US kids.

> most other US kids

Doubt that. The majority of kids in the US are living in suburbs or cities, both places with lots of community. What you're describing sounds distinctly rural.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#75

Post by InitialLastName »

richk449 wrote: post #69
jasonfarnon wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear a lot about excessive parenting on here but I wonder if it's just a segment of society. Can anyone but wealthy parents have time to occupy their kids 24-7? The freedom I and friends had as a kid was not a decision of my parents so much as a necessity. Parents dont get home from work until 6, school lets out at 2, we get at least 4 free hours of undisturbed freedom. Why would that be different now?

An event that happens much too often to me: My son is playing with other kids. I wander off. When I check back, all the kids are watching a screen. I say “what’s going on?” And some parent says “the kids were getting roudy, so I put on a show to calm them down”.

Related: Every single one of my toddler's grandparents defaults to sticking a phone in his face (and has since he was a baby).

Like, they all managed to raise children into moderately functional adults without heavy use of smartphones, and have had explicit instructions not to do that. Why do they think it's the thing to do?

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#76

Post by bilbo0s »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #70
bedobi wrote: post #29

The design of the physical environment is in no small part responsible for this. Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school, to friends places and just in general play and exist outside unattended to a much higher degree than in the US. Because in the US they would be roadkill, and even if they somehow survived outside of a car, car centric design means there's now…

In my prewar non-car-centric city, kids still walk to school. They don't play outside like previous generations. You'll see the Christmas bikes for a few weeks when it's warm enough in late spring then nothing all summer long.

As a parent, I can tell you video games and smart phones have a lot to do with this.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#77

Post by AlbertCory »

chris_va wrote: post #6

Apologies for being critical, but this reads like the author had a conclusion they wanted to reach and worked backward to some flashy graphs to make it work (the right side of the "lies, damn lies, and statistics" spectrum). There is no discussion of confounders, no control groups or paired studies, and there are million things correlated with the last 50 of societal development years besides the topics mentioned her…

Hear. It is totally a just-so story.

Possibly there IS no way to prove their assertions. I can tell you that I see kids biking past my house on the way to school every day, and the crossing guards guide many, many kids across the street. What are the numbers? Couldn't tell you. .

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#78

Post by fwip »

zmgsabst wrote: post #63
Loughla wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Other than it's by land instead of by sea? My immigrant grandparents came here seeking asylum from persecution in their home country. The other side all came seeking jobs. How is that different?

The volume of uncontrolled migration. Societies regulate the influx of strangers to protect their culture — and the rapid influx of people who don’t share cultural values has damaged American culture.

The Americas went for over 350 years (from 1500 to 1850) before there existed any kinds of controls on immigration.

Americans have only ever been afraid of "uncontrolled immigration" when it was non-white immigrants. It was for racist reasons that we passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, and it's for racist reasons now.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#79

Post by Dylan16807 »

zmgsabst wrote: post #63
Loughla wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Other than it's by land instead of by sea? My immigrant grandparents came here seeking asylum from persecution in their home country. The other side all came seeking jobs. How is that different?

The volume of uncontrolled migration. Societies regulate the influx of strangers to protect their culture — and the rapid influx of people who don’t share cultural values has damaged American culture.

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/imm...

Going by this chart (the first thing in google), the percent of immigrants between 1850 and 1930 was about the same as 2000-on, with a dip in the middle.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#80

Post by crooked-v »

bedobi wrote: post #29

The design of the physical environment is in no small part responsible for this. Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school, to friends places and just in general play and exist outside unattended to a much higher degree than in the US. Because in the US they would be roadkill, and even if they somehow survived outside of a car, car centric design means there's now…

My particular bugbear here is the absolutely insanity of truck and SUV heights, to the point that even full-grown adults are no longer clearly visible from inside new vehicles (https://i.imgur.com/1dHWVxn.png).
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