Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Where do the children play?

unpublishablepapers.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 264 posts

Re: Where do the children play?

#11

Post by CalRobert »

In the US cars jockey for space with guns to claim the title of leading cause of dead kids.

But we often forget that cars kill kids at an astonishing rate -even though kids stopped playing outside-. In that light, the bloodbath that is American suburbia becomes much more clear. When pedestrian deaths go up even as miles walked (in aggregate) goes down, the situation is even more dire than it seems.

My kids play outside. But we moved to the Netherlands so they could. And even here, large SUVs and even -bafflingly- giant American Dodge Rams are becoming distressingly common.

Re: Where do the children play?

#12

Post by CalRobert »

emil-lp wrote: post #6

> Consider some statistics on the American childhood, drawn from children aged 8-12: 62% have not walked/biked somewhere (a store, park, school) without an adult This is really not representative for other Western countries. Where I'm from, I would say that 75% of 6 year olds walk/bike to school alone, and 100% of older kids do. > In physical space, Western children are almost comically sheltered. I think the author…

Where are you from? I would say that seems accurate for Ireland, for instance.

Re: Where do the children play?

#13

Post by rvrs »

Aeolun wrote: post #4

I think this heavily depends on location. At 7 my child can check nearly all the boxes for independent activities. My wife may not like it, but the surroundings are probably safer than anywhere else in the world. The only thing we don’t have is forests. This is central Tokyo. Kids still spend a lot of time on Roblox because everyone tends to be deathly afraid of letting them ring each other’s doorbells.

I also live in Suginami! There's always a lot of kids running around together, especially after school, but that feels quite normal for anywhere in Japan, no?

Re: Where do the children play?

#14

Post by pseudonymcoward »

As a society we find violence or harm against children to be extremely shocking and tragic. As a society we would do almost anything to prevent it.

Giving children the kinds of freedoms discussed in this article would lead to some harm coming to them. Accidents, violence, kidnap, etc.

Therefore, society won't give them those freedoms.

This tendency has been exagerated by mass media in the modern era. Every single case, every piece of anecdata, makes massive headlines and instills the fear into parents everywhere.

It's impossible for society to reverse course because that would mean acknowledging, implicitly or explicitly, that some level of harm for some children is justified by the developmental benefits to all children of increased freedom.

Re: Where do the children play?

#15

Post by zkmon »

There were reasons for the contrast with Western world. Safety and risk aversion is a major reason. City living means we don't know what the other person on the road is thinking. This was not the case in small villages or tribal settlements. Everyone knows about every move of the others. The whole community is like a single creature with many arms.

The other reason is, prosperity means more affordability to avoid risk and seek comfort. There is no need to take risk, develop, fight for survival or grow up with friction.

Re: Where do the children play?

#16

Post by 317070 »

CalRobert wrote: post #12
emil-lp wrote: post #6

> Consider some statistics on the American childhood, drawn from children aged 8-12: 62% have not walked/biked somewhere (a store, park, school) without an adult This is really not representative for other Western countries. Where I'm from, I would say that 75% of 6 year olds walk/bike to school alone, and 100% of older kids do. > In physical space, Western children are almost comically sheltered. I think the author…

Where are you from? I would say that seems accurate for Ireland, for instance.

In Figure 13, there are some Western countries listed for how much children can roam, and Ireland is indeed near the bottom.

But the Netherlands, Nordics and Germany are still very much on the other side of the spectrum in these studies.

See for instance the books "The Happiest Kids in the World", "Achtung Baby" and "There is No Such Thing as Bad Weather" about raising children in the Netherlands, Berlin and Sweden respectively.

Those places are very much not like the USA yet. Though as the article points out, they are definitely going in that direction.

Re: Where do the children play?

#17

Post by CalRobert »

317070 wrote: post #16
CalRobert wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you from? I would say that seems accurate for Ireland, for instance.

In Figure 13, there are some Western countries listed for how much children can roam, and Ireland is indeed near the bottom. But the Netherlands, Nordics and Germany are still very much on the other side of the spectrum in these studies. See for instance the books "The Happiest Kids in the World", "Achtung Baby" and "There is No Such Thing as Bad Weather" about raising children in the Netherlands, Berlin and Sweden r…

Right, I’m raising my kids in the Netherlands, but sadly this sort of environment is increasingly the exception.

Re: Where do the children play?

#18

Post by [deleted] »

317070 wrote: post #16
CalRobert wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you from? I would say that seems accurate for Ireland, for instance.

In Figure 13, there are some Western countries listed for how much children can roam, and Ireland is indeed near the bottom. But the Netherlands, Nordics and Germany are still very much on the other side of the spectrum in these studies. See for instance the books "The Happiest Kids in the World", "Achtung Baby" and "There is No Such Thing as Bad Weather" about raising children in the Netherlands, Berlin and Sweden r…

[deleted]

Re: Where do the children play?

#19

Post by retube »

As a parent, I relate to all this. Great piece.

When the kids were babies we had the standard debate of move to the countryside for fresh air and gambolling in the fields etc. But so glad we stayed in London, the kids have so much freedom with public transport they can organise their own meet ups and activities and go running around all over town without any parental assistance or intervention at all. Whereas elsewhere we'd need to drive them everywhere, they'd be stuck at home way more, they'd have no real agency in their lives - I grew up like that and hated it.

Re: Where do the children play?

#20

Post by ensocode »

retube wrote: post #19

As a parent, I relate to all this. Great piece. When the kids were babies we had the standard debate of move to the countryside for fresh air and gambolling in the fields etc. But so glad we stayed in London, the kids have so much freedom with public transport they can organise their own meet ups and activities and go running around all over town without any parental assistance or intervention at all. Whereas elsewhe…

I can relate. Nice article. We had that same debate and ended up moving to the countryside. Surprisingly, it worked out well. + real forests. With today’s e-bikes, even hills or longer distances aren’t really a blocker for kids anymore. In the end, it feels like the bigger factor is how you organize daily life, not whether you’re in a city or in a rural area.
Post reply on HN