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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

#191

Post by AussieWog93 »

array_key_first wrote: post #184
mikestew wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Might be different in Australia vs the US, but the white kids here are definitely more "free range" than the Asians.

That's not too say they're not helicoptered too, but Chinese parents are a whole other level.

Think strapping a 3-4 year old into a high chair and handfeeding them, or scheduling every waking moment of a primary school kid's life.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#192

Post by jditu »

bdangubic wrote: post #96
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…

I live in suburb of a metro area, as safe as it gets (my front door is unlocked overnight often and almost never locked during the day, my garage is also frequently open). my 12-year old (5’8” 125lbs) went to walk the dog to the park about 1/2 mile from my house, someone called the police and I had to deal with social services…

[dead]

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#193

Post by alexpotato »

As a relatively "free range" child in my youth and now the parent of children, even I find it hard to reconcile how I feel differently that my parents.

e.g. at 10 years old, my cousins and I were running around in the woods at my gradparents' home in rural Pennsylvania. I was the oldest of the group with my youngest cousin probably being 6. No cell phones. No Apple watches etc. We were outside of that house around 9am and would come back for lunch and then dinner when my grandmother rang the bell.

My oldest has an Apple watch and is both reachable able trackable yet the above still feels little strange to me.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#194

Post by shigawire »

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…

Many, many seems like overstating a rare corner case that can easily be proven.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#195

Post by ButlerianJihad »

NordStreamYacht wrote: post #38
delichon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you have an emergency backup child for redundancy in case of failure of the main child.

Ah, the Spare. You must be British royalty.

I had to go look it up, because in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort orders Cedric's murder with: "Kill the Spare!"

It turns out that Cedric, being superfluous to the "Resurrection Ritual" and Voldemort's plan of revenge, is actually a spare. In fact it was unexpected that two boys get through the whole thing with the Portkey and all. Harry was the only one who was supposed to end up there with the Death Eaters in the first place, so Cedric's appearance was quite unfortunate for everyone involved.

But Cedric's "spareness" certainly didn't have to do with expendability as far as his Dad was concerned, which you can clearly understand once his Dad gets going in the mourning for his death.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#196

Post by [deleted] »

KaiserPro wrote: post #181
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…

[deleted]

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#197

Post by ekropotin »

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!

Was the mom Asian? Asking because my pre-teen daughter has a lot of Asian friends and I clearly see a pattern of hyper vigilance among their moms.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#198

Post by keybored »

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…

Weird. I was told by HN that it’s not the worker’s fault. They have kids to feed. Oh my gosh the Bay Area rent/mortgage. Blah blah blah.

Software is eating the world they say but they can’t get an honest do-no-evil CRUD job apparently.

Low key looks like some sketchy that-happened journalistic rage bait though. I casually found some unscrupulous nerd that is making YOU doomscroll

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#199

Post by ekropotin »

array_key_first wrote: post #184
mikestew wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I personally don’t see its being a case, based on my observation.

There is this town nearby where I live - super white, gives old money type of vibe, very expensive real estate. It’s full of free range kids running around on the streets.

It was shock to me to see it, after our diverse suburb, where kids pretty much either locked at home doing homework or at classes all the times.

So in my opinion there is definitely a cultural aspect of it.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#200

Post by keybored »

tmseidman wrote: post #128
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…

I disagree- I think it's not much different than working at a distillery or cigar company (wrappery?). Social media is a vice not very different than whiskey or cigars- they're addictive, feel good in the short term, and are problematic to have too much or to do habitually. But we still let people indulge in them because they're fine in small quantities for responsible adults, and we expect that parents will not let…

> But we still let people indulge in them because

We want to make money.

> The overall point is, the law should assume that adults are reasonably intelligent and responsible people,

Over cigarettes and alcohol. The most inconsequential stuff.

But don’t say the words “direct democracy”.[1] Then people being reasonably intelligent and responsible gets forgotten. By the hive mind at least.

But people should be assumed to be reasonably intelligent and responsible. If that narrative allows us to make money off them. Not when it comes to democracy and political autonomy, of course. Shudders.

Where’s the option for people who are weak willed when it comes to something? Can they ban themselves from buying these goods? If not, where are the heroes that are working on that?

> and that parents should be the ones responsible for parenting their own children their own way.

There are whole studies of psychology weaponized against children to make them act as consumer proxies for their parents. To optimize nagging.

But every pair of parent for themselves. Against all of marketing. “Responsibility.” Because that makes money.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=b65e8bee43c2ed0

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