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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

#181

Post by KaiserPro »

kannanvijayan wrote: post #37

I have a 10 year old boy and I'm facing these issues right now. I'm also in Canada so culturally adjacent to the US and similar enough with regards to this topic. I don't see child welfare agencies personally as a particular threat when it comes to this topic. Maybe they ARE more likely to get involved in cases of more free range parenting where before they weren't, but it doesn't register as a real worry. The major…

Where I am in the UK its the "problem" kids that are seen out and about on their own.

I was freerange growing up in rural england, so I have no problem with the youth roving about. My wife is horrified by the idea, so our kids are somewhat coddled.

In the UK at least, children are objectively safer in every metric apart from getting fat. Kidnap, abuse, getting lost, car accidents are all way way down.

The interesting thing is that here you wouldn't be threatened with child services, You'd have to be pretty abusive or get your kid picked up by the police for the state to get involved. Mostly its pure classism, nice middle class kids aren't allowed to walk about on their own until they are 16, at least.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#182

Post by dublinstats »

mothballed wrote: post #118
xyzelement wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

statistically you'd only need about 0.0002 additional children to counter the risk of accidental deaths prior generations of children experienced.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#183

Post by altairprime »

mmooss wrote: post #169
altairprime wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone and their gang pulled a knife on me as a kid when I was riding the bus forty years ago in a university town, but that doesn’t make what they did normalized, it just makes an anecdote. As it happens, though, that is quite normalized in the U.S., especially if you’re not white. A lot of U.S. residents inure themselves to random acts of violence because they either feel helpless to change the societal contexts o…

> I’ve been upset about this for thirty years Completely normal. Trauma at a certain level, unlike other memories and emotions, doesn't seem impacted by time. I'm sorry to hear what happened to you. > that is quite normalized in the U.S., especially if you’re not white. / A lot of U.S. residents inure themselves to random acts of violence This part seems to universalize the experience, though. What is the basis for i…

> Trauma at a certain level

No, not traumatized for thirty years; that’s not a valid substitution here. Upset, in the way that people that want to effect societal change are upset at acceptance of the status quo. The alternative is apathy and hopelessness, and I refuse to adopt salves (such modern rationalism) that would let me stop caring about difficult ‘uphill’ battles.

> I'm sorry to hear

I refuse your apology; instead, exert your own form of societal pressure against, say, bullying. It’s a more approachable target than lynching and will help you switch your instincts from irrelevant sympathy to relevant action. (And if you already do, bully for you, pun intended :)

> I've used public transit in cities uncounted times and I have never seen a crime; that's what is normal for me.

Mixed-wealth U.S. cities, in daytime and at night? In exclusively downtown, college, and/or affluent neighborhoods? (So excluding for example Stanford, Palo Alto, and Mountain View, which are tilted quite high-wealth and thus low-crime, Brock Turners notwithstanding.)

Also: Are you a white man of middle-class or greater wealth? That generally matters greatly when evaluating anecdotes on this topic, independent of all other factors, and is strongly correlated with ‘I have no matching anecdotes from my own experience’ annotations.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#184

Post by array_key_first »

mikestew wrote: post #75
rayiner wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

This behavior is probably overrepresented in the bougie places reporters live. I live in Redmond, WA. Bougie? My rube Midwestern ass thinks so. And there are feral kids all over my neighborhood. Plenty of kids walking to school in groups, or solo. Neighbor kids talk about riding the bus/train to places. Granted, there are a lot of immigrant families around here (hello, Microsoft, et al.), and I'm sure that skews thin…

I've noticed the less American and less wealthy people are, the more normal their kids interact with the world, i.e. "free range".

I don't know what it is about rich white people and freaky helicopter parenting. I also notice it with homeschooling and those crazy borderline eating disorder diets. There seems to be an association there between rich white people and pushing self-destructive behavior on kids.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#185

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

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…

A friend of mine was outside with his kids. He read a book and a woman who drove by yelled at him to always watch the kids and not read a book.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#187

Post by shawn_w »

amazingamazing wrote: post #20
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…

> my kids play outside unsupervised all the time, as do all the kids in my neighborhood. I live in just a regular suburban neighborhood Your kids are hardly free-range. Let me guess, there's no way for them to actually meaningfully leave the area (no train, bus, etc)? It's like dumping kids on a 5 acre farm and saying they can do whatever they want. hardly free-range in the way described in the article. Presumably yo…

Redmond has decent (though not great) bus coverage and light rail stations to Seattle and points beyond in the core downtown area and next to a huge park.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#188

Post by jemmyw »

GerryAdamsSF wrote: post #55
sfifs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia is fairly mono cultural too. Is it safe?

Yes. Russia is inarguably safer in terms of street crime than the USA. Philadelphia in 2025 had a higher murder rate than Belfast during the height of a civil war. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_countries_result.jsp?co... Crime in the USA is also extremely regional and local in pattern.

I don't think numbeo can be a good source, it seems to be self reported metrics. I asked it for comparison of NZ to USA and it told me that NZ was about the same or worse on most numbers. But actual crime rates are lower in NZ. The murder rate is 5x lower.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#189

Post by NicuCalcea »

pessimizer wrote: post #134
garbawarb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do journalists live in bougie places? It's not a particularly well-paying job.

Yes. Journalists don't make a living from journalism, they live on family money. That's why working class journalists have disappeared along with working class perspectives. It was once a job where many if not most of the practitioners didn't have a college degree, now it is the most expensive graduate school program you can do. I think the median price is something like $250K. If you don't pay writers, you eliminate…

TIL I and my friends and colleagues live on family money.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#190

Post by testing22321 »

kannanvijayan wrote: post #71
testing22321 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small town Canada here. In winter all the kids above school toboggan and slide down the roads (GT racers). All the kids below trudge up carrying their slider of choice. In the afternoon the roles are reversed. Not an adult in sight. At the ski hill kids 5+ roam free- it’s always fun getting on the chairlift and a little kid says “ can you help me get on?” And you have to physically pick them up onto the moving (fixed…

I learned to snowboard in Wapiti Valley which is a little river valley skislope setup way out in the middle of nowhere saskatchewan. I know what you're talking about. I took the lift up with both 6 year olds and 86 year olds and both would offer advice to a new learner. I drove 3 hours in from "big city" Saskatoon but most of the attendees were kids and adults from the nearby towns. Loved the literal 30-second wait t…

It’s still like that today, and it doesn’t have to be Saskatchewan either.

I have a family and a kid

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