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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

#241

Post by watwut »

insensible wrote: post #228
sfifs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia is fairly mono cultural too. Is it safe?

Good morning from Russia, where I moved my large free-range family (from the US) with the topic of free-ranging children very high on the list of reasons why. My children cross town by themselves to attend classes, it’s normal to see children walking or riding public transport by themselves once they turn about age 7. There’s crime and bullying — we have always homeschooled successfully and have had negative experien…

Russia has higher incarceration rates and higher criminality then EU and USA.

Also, French, German, Swesish, you name it do all the stuff alone. And third, they have less bullying in schools.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#242

Post by watwut »

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.

Maybe you should stop believing those bullshit sites.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#243

Post by watwut »

mothballed wrote: post #207
shigawire wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It actually can't be determined if it's "overstated", because the child snatchers have intentionally hidden the data (under seal, "think of the children") so you can't determine the ratio of "overstating." It is illegal to pull the data, so instead you just have to rely on the many many articles you can pull up of people speaking up on their own accord despite the fact their adversary is usually using their children…

Missing kids statistics exist.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#244

Post by ip26 »

semiquaver wrote: post #149
ip26 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally onboard with some managed risk of injury being ok. Very much not onboard with the parents who trust their six year olds to face mortal peril alone and make good choices.

I read through the comment you replied to multiple times and I’m not seeing any mortal peril referenced. What are you referring to?

all risk comes with some small chance of tragedy

This part. I’m not going to assume what that person meant, but there’s always a few people about in these conversations lamenting that when they were six, they were certainly never hit by a car, and really you have to let your children take a few risks etc…

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#245

Post by lesostep »

sfifs wrote: post #51
NordStreamYacht wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan is a monocultural civilisational state. That is a big factor.

Russia is fairly mono cultural too. Is it safe?

Russia isn't mono cultural thought. It has muslim regions, buddhist regions, official jewish jurisdiction (it was created by USSR to segregate jews, so it basically has no jews left. But it's mostly because they moved to other regions). There is a duoreligion regions, where having two religions is a mundane thing. And even christian regions are various in traditions.

I wanted to write that the requirements to teach in russian language in russian schools is relatively new one. But turns out, you could still do it. Not like in private schools, you can have a government school in another language.

It can be argued that there is unifying postsoviet culture, but since different regions were treated differently under Soviet regime, there is a lot of differences.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#247

Post by KaiserPro »

left-struck wrote: post #221
KaiserPro wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think mentioning those safety metrics is really important because for any person, not just in the UK but in many countries like it, the thing that will most likely kill them are diseases related to being unfit and overweight. So while kids might appear to be slightly safer in their childhood, the reality is that those other dangers were never a serious statistical danger to begin with, but not creating health habit…

I definitely agree that child inactivity is something that is really bad in multiple ways.

Deaths from inactivity are going to show up in 40s and 50s after long and expensive periods of medical treatment. THats a problem because we are only really going to see significant issues around about now. But that trend of inactivity isn't equally distributed over time.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#248

Post by SapporoChris »

pandaman wrote: post #222
Grappelli wrote: post #102

[flagged]

How are abduction rates extremely low? Where did you get the rates? I could only find FBI NCIC reports, which do not differentiate the reason, but it shows 300K+ missing children in 2025. That's quite a lot. It does not say what fraction of those are abductions, but I doubt it makes a big difference for the parents looking for the missing child if the reason for the child missing is an abduction or something else. Al…

Certainly the differences matter. If the vast majority of the abductions are 'Parental child abduction' and very few children are abducted by strangers.

"On average, fewer than 350 people under the age of 21 have been abducted by strangers in the United States per year since 2010, the FBI says. From 2010 through 2017, the most recent data available, the number has ranged from a low of 303 in 2016 to a high of 384 in 2011 with no clear directional trend." https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wisconsin-missinggirl-dat...

I would say that abduction by stranger rates are very low.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#249

Post by burnt-resistor »

As a kid in the 80's and 90's, I biked up and down deserted, steep mountain fire roads before cell phones were widespread.

I hear that risk-tolerance normalization and freedom of kids in the 70's was even greater, so this trend appears to be a multi-decade decline.

What I miss most though is cool stuff like interactive art installations and improvised playground features made for kids that were ripped out in the 90's and 00's. Decommissioned Korean war jets, telephone pole obstacle courses, and a myriad of other things without so much as a web page anywhere lost to history.

Re: The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

#250

Post by marton78 »

mynegation wrote: post #43
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.

The only people who find this joke funny don’t have any children.

As a father, this is false.
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