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The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

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Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#111

Post by jMyles »

scelerat wrote: post #12

My biggest fear of letting my young kid play alone outside is getting hit by a car.

Of course; that's the only reasonable conclusion from a straightforward reading of the risk profile for children after they age out of drowning and before they age into opioid overdose.

The lion's share of loving a child is intervening in proportion to actual risk.

As a society, that means, more than any other single reform, relieving our cities of the burden of maintaining lethal, taxpayer-funded compatibility with the auto industry's machinery.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#112

Post by keybored »

Loughla wrote: post #14
homeonthemtn wrote: post #8

I think this is more a data point towards the quiet disappearnce of community / the steady march towards pervasive isolation

Correct. There are no communities anymore, just groups of houses. You see it in the death of social and civic organizations, churches, and other community groups. Everybody is an island. I don't know what has caused this, but it seems like it's happening in most 1st world countries. Anyone have insights about this?

Bourgeoisie society. Not values, not culture, not mindset. It’s rooted in how society is structured. But values, culture, and mindset reinforce it.

This very individualistic society can only critique itself in terms of individual failings. Which leads to the catch-22, anti-communal, ankle-deep critiques: people are on their phones, people are asocial, why don’t “people” all get a clue individually and fix this via some spontaneous autoenlightenment.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#113

Post by cindyllm »

keybored wrote: post #112
Loughla wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. There are no communities anymore, just groups of houses. You see it in the death of social and civic organizations, churches, and other community groups. Everybody is an island. I don't know what has caused this, but it seems like it's happening in most 1st world countries. Anyone have insights about this?

Bourgeoisie society. Not values, not culture, not mindset. It’s rooted in how society is structured. But values, culture, and mindset reinforce it. This very individualistic society can only critique itself in terms of individual failings. Which leads to the catch-22, anti-communal, ankle-deep critiques: people are on their phones, people are asocial, why don’t “people” all get a clue individually and fix this via so…

[dead]

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#114

Post by pickledish »

skrrtww wrote: post #69

> “We work in tech,” she says. “Our kids [aren’t] getting any cell phones, no smartphones, no Instagrams. I write the algorithms. I don’t want my kids to touch those algorithms.” It's disgusting that this has become a casual attitude and admission by the tech worker class. No one should be getting this free pass. "I am actively harming children and society with my livelihood (except my own, because I am so smart). He…

Don't know why you were downvoted -- I scoffed at that part too. The least we in tech can do is have some self-awareness

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#115

Post by zkmon »

It's not isolated phenomenon.If we look at the larger scale of, say, 100 years, a lot of things are rapidly disappearing. It's actually some sort of extinction that is underway, but you don't feel it on a smaller scale of time. Similar to how Romans wouldn't have been aware of the Fall of Roman empire while it was happening, because it was too slow to notice.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#116

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #9
spicyusername wrote: post #4

I don't know. Maybe this is going away in some places, maybe I just have my own anecdata, but my kids play outside unsupervised all the time, as do all the kids in my neighborhood. I live in just a regular suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of small Metro. Nothing special about it at all. Every time I see one of these articles I always wonder who they're talking about. I always feel like this is just one of those…

This behavior is probably overrepresented in the bougie places reporters live. I dropped my daughter off at the mall to hang out with their friends and one of the moms followed them around the whole time. They're all 13!

[deleted]

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#118

Post by mothballed »

xyzelement wrote: post #95
MichaelRo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> But there are no other kids out there. I'm sending him out into streets empty of kids. This. It's a number's "game". My father, born in rural Romania, had 8 siblings, one of them died of an accident in his childhood (yeah, during "free range stuff"). I was born in a town and have 2 brothers. Live in a city and have one kid. I can't send my kid out carelessly because I don't have a backup.

One of the many reasons you should have more kids.

If one in 8 has that kind of accident in America they will seize all the kids and you will lose all of them, so other than just spreading your DNA that approach won't work. There are many, many documented cases of people having all their kids seized because they had a child with a brittle bone disease, and after their brittle bones break (happens easily with such child) the government blames the parent and takes all the other children too.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#119

Post by mothballed »

eweise wrote: post #54

When my child was an infant, my wife parked in a parking lot and starting chatting with a friend about 10 yards away. Minutes later a woman came by and starting claiming the child was not safe and was going to call protective services. This freaked both of us out that a stranger could potentially have the power to cause the government to become involved with our family. Fortunately, we didn't let that experience prev…

I had something like that happen I was out of town and forgot most places in America have a way more fascist child snatchers than where I live. The police contacted a national database check, their local child services, and my hometown child services. Thankfully my hometown child services told them to go fuck themselves (the place I live in now thankfully doesn't usually get involved unless there is serious abuse) and the ones in the place I was at didn't have time to deal with it before I left, but they certainly would have if I were a resident there.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#120

Post by macNchz »

coldtea wrote: post #84
paulryanrogers wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diversity doesn't make places more dangerous (if i understand the stats). But humans are naturally tribal and fear those who look and act significantly different.

Because humans are tribal they will also go on to attack and prey on those who are outside their tribe, making diversity more dangerous. Especially when diversity is not merely some people of different ethnic/racial backgrounds living and working together, but a population split into isolated cultures with different circumstances. Unless there's a big strict enforcer to keep everyone in line of course.

This is something a lot of people seem to believe that is not borne out in the research. Plenty of specific counter examples like Queens NY, a densely populated and exceptionally diverse place with crime rates comparable or better than many much more homogenous places in America. Poverty and income inequality are much better predictors. I felt this reddit comment from a while ago did a pretty good job rolling up sources on this: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueUnpopularOpinion/comments/1jxff...
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