181–190 of 632 posts
What I see in my deep suburbia is just far less interest in wandering past the front yard, because there's nothing to do: House after house where no front yard has anything for anyone, and quite long distances before you get somewhere you might be welcome, or have a chair. When my son, a pre-teen at the time went to Spain with me, things were quite different: A small town that even had stores targeting kids, places t…
I'm in my sixties and reflect sometimes on how much freedom I had as a kid, and why things have changed so much in terms of risks parents are willing to accept. One correlation with "safetyism" this article doesn't mention: the rise of the two income household ( https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/04/08/after-d... for the US; the UK appears to be similar.) In reality when we kids were running wild about th…
For those who grew up in a time and place where you were able to wander without supervision, how far away were your friends? Follow up, how much traveling did you do on your own? For me growing up in 2000's suburbia, the closest kids around my age that I knew of were about one mile and major road crossing away, but to get to a friend it could be a lot more. I think kids out in a group doesn't feel like a safety conce…
This is a product of making everyone and everything reliant on cars. Social control is out of the window if nobody wanders the streets. Not leaving the front yard is unthinkable in many countries outside the US.
That's not necessarily the whole story. While walkable villages and cities would be a huge improvement in many areas of society and community resilience, however kids in un-walkable US suburbia and urban sprawl have had bicycles, skateboards, skates, or some form of mobility device since at least the 1950's. There have been dedicated bike lanes in some areas since around 1985-1990 and many have bike or multi-use trails. While not as fast or efficient as cars, it was how we got around before 15 ½ when one could apply for a learner's permit. About age 9 or 10 was when we were let loose.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bike helmets mitigate one of the most serious and common forms of injury while riding bikes. A form that is still extremely rare. No-one seriously advocates helmets for car passengers, for example, even though the injury rates are very similar. > be hit by a car Cars don't hit people, drivers hit people. > They don't prevent you from doing anything you would otherwise do. They're annoying enough that they do, in pr…
Not that rare. When I was a kid (in the 90s) I lost two classmates to bike crashes. One actually dead, the other severely brain damaged for life. Neither accident involved a car. Both would have likely had a few broken bones at the absolute worst if they’d been wearing helmets. I wasn’t in an especially large elementary school, either.
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Spain sounds like a child's paradise. Too bad their birth rates are one of the lowest in Europe (and in the world) at around 1.1 births per woman.
Spain is particularly screwed in terms of housing. Access to mortgages is ridiculous, requiring sources of income that can be proved to be stable and ~35% of cost paid upfront, which means that most Spaniards rely on inheritance to reach a point where they can consider children. Tourism also balloons real estate prices even more than is usual everywhere nowadays. But the children friendly aspect of society described…
I’m from the Balkans, and for a time here when money was tight (breakup of Yugoslavia, but maybe even long before), a lot of families lived together in small apartments. For example, two families (grandpa+grandma & their son+wife+kids) in a 50m2 apartment. The big family took the son’s bedroom, grandparents slept in the living room. Sure, it’s not perfect, but people did it. Same story happened in villages, and even it was the standard for some time.
So, whenever I see this argument I say we’re too posh in thinking it. There are different less comfortable ways to start a family and have kids, we just don’t want to do it.
For reference, now in my country everywhere new apartments are built (overbuilding the main city in the process, but different topic), yet prices are still soaring especially relative to the average salary. So same issue of high prices like everywhere.
Yet no one here thinks about the other option. The same argument from the linked article applies - too much comfort.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tangential to risks raised in the article I guess, but I cannot understand something that's happening in the US: it's crazy how many demented people there are. That there is a market that captures children in order to traffick them for sex; that there are hundreds of people doing this regularly being wrapped up by LE raids, and dozens of children freed; that these raids happen on the frequency of weeks, or months; th…
The vast majority of child sexual abuse is committed by family members, not strangers.
A bit of searching suggests that it’s more often acquaintances than family, but you have to consider what goes unreported to LE I guess, tho hard to be sure: https://rainn.org/facts-statistics-the-scope-of-the-problem/...
What drives people to do this? It’s so crazy.
Anecdotally it seems a lot of teachers are involved in this.
But strangers definitely seem the minority.
I want to let my kids walk wherever they want to. It’s great for them. My 5 year old bikes to school, accompanied by an adult. It’s a bit more than half a mile away from the house. I’d like to tell him he can do this on his own next year, but there’s a single intersection he has to cross that makes this difficult. I’m not worried about him getting lost, abducted by a stranger or any host of movie plot scenarios. I’m…
I'm lobbying my city to make it safer to walk to school. But Traffic Engineers care only about the 85 percentile speed of car drivers and not equity in movement. Non-car users are not important in the United States to the only role cities have for managing road design. "Safe Routes to School" are programs in the US and there's one here in Washington; Seattle has their own partial adoption of this, and I'm hoping to l…
I can think of so many reasons but the biggest I think is the reduction of community. - When I was a kid mums worked part time or not at all. We had school fates and lots more community gatherings. - Dads didn't work as hard. Half of them would be at your soccer practice at 6pm to hang out - Parents were on local sports teams together or other social groups as well - You did most of your shopping at the local shops,…
Another aspect for sure is that parents did not think as much before too. Kids were given much more freedom while parents should probably have kept an eye on them a little more. I knew of countless domestic accidents that would probably not happen nowadays. Sure that made kids experiment more and all but we ended up with more dead kids too.
However a hefty portion of that accident reduction is attributable to other safety improvements. Cars are far safer now than in the 70s, so are kitchen appliances, electrical outlets, playground design, etc.
And at the same time, child suicide rates are way up, which research attributes directly to the decline in independence.