Where do the children play? • Hacker News Board

Re: Where do the children play?

#261

Post by retube » Tue, Nov 18, 2025, 1:56 PM UTC

abbadadda wrote: post #212

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…

Curious what age you started letting them ride the tube on their own? I’m in London as well and we’re starting to have the “walk to school” conversation but it is still early days and a 15 minute jaunt so not nothing.

for travel to school was 10, but was direct no changes and only a short walk the other end. then for social etc from around 12, by 13 travelling all over london on trains, buses, tubes, albeit always with friends, then alone probably 14

Re: Where do the children play?

#262

Post by wffurr » Tue, Nov 18, 2025, 4:23 PM UTC

eulgro wrote: post #237

wffurr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck finding a North American city without roads like that. Our cities are terrible and laid out for cars not people.

Then don't live in North America.

Yeah I'll get right on that. Move away from all my family and friends and also negotiate visa hassles, etc.

Re: Where do the children play?

#263

Post by HeinzStuckeIt » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

netdevphoenix wrote: post #256

HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been stashing a puncture repair kit in a small saddle bag since the nineteenth century. The kit just sits there until it is needed, potentially for years. To depict this as a big stress and risk is a real reach.

> To depict this as a big stress and risk is a real reach. Yet here we are, living in a world where most parents would NOT let their kids travel around unsupervised even though it has been going on for longer than the 19th century. People have also been making fires for far longer than that. Both of these are depicted as big risks. You might find it a real reach or not but the overall point is that we don't live in a…

Man, your post is just so out of touch. Puncture-repair kits are cheap, you can find them from hardware stores for just a couple of euro even in countries seen as expensive. And those kits work just fine regardless of how cheap they are, because the tech is so simple and unchanged since a century ago: rubber patch, chunk of metal to work as a tire lever, tiny piece of sandpaper or other abrasive, rubber cement. As long as that rubber-cement tube stays unopened, that kit will last years inside a saddle bag.

I spend a lot of time traveling the world by bicycle (hence the HN username), and I have bought cheap Chinese puncture-repair kits around the developing world, whether in China itself, Central Asia, or Sub-Saharan Africa. They have always served me fine.

Re: Where do the children play?

#264

Post by loughnane » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

slumberlust wrote: post #163

loughnane wrote: post #162

> 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 At least in the US, my guess for the cause of this is goes something like: 1. Housing is expensive. 2. People move to where housing is cheap (ie plenty of land, easy to build). In the last few decades that's more often than not been in the south. 3. Big popu…

Inner city, especially in the oldest and most established, is an outlier experience. My friends on Melrose drive to their schools, and here in Southern NH it's driving or buses. The main reason I wouldn't let our gradeschooler walk/ride .5 miles to school is a lack of consistent sidewalks and drivers who are constantly distracted and/or road raged.

> Inner city, especially in the oldest and most established, is an outlier experience.

Totally right. I called out the south explicitly, but the same stuff is true in suburbs. We lived in Nashua for 5y and it was just as you describe.

I'd submit though that the lack of sidewalks and dangerous drivers aren't really a cause, rather a symptom of the same cause: towns laid out in such a way where things are too far to walk and so everyone must drive to everything.