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What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

stevemagness.substack.com

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Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#271

Post by breezybottom »

Poacher5 wrote: post #194
tshaddox wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Spain does sound lovely, I don’t think “having anything to do” was really in my generation/demographic’s mindset while we roamed around the neighborhood. This was small town Midwest in the 90s. We just roamed around doing nothing.

But there was a place in which to do nothing - whether it was a scrappy patch of land that's now a big-box store, or a permissive neighbour's garden who has now put up a fort knox of ring cameras, or a mall that used to tolerate kids just screwing around that now has a fleet of rent-a-cops. Third spaces aren't just trendy urban cafes, especially as a child. Having a place that feels like "your bit" is increasingly ra…

You think malls didn't have security on the past?

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#272

Post by breezybottom »

RHSman2 wrote: post #181
hibikir wrote: post #101

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…

Suburbia is the creepiest thing known to man.

This is something that could only be said by a sheltered suburban kid

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#273

Post by [deleted] »

giantg2 wrote: post #54
obscurette wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in my sixties and my experience is same. But now we live in the world, where my granddaughter (12) got into real trouble because a birthday present I gave her – a real Leatherman (pink of course). Of course she brought it to the school, it was confiscated, she, her parents and I was questioned by police etc.

I accidentally had a pocket knife in my backpack after a camping trip when I was a kid 20 years or so ago. Being a good/naive kid, I told the teacher. Luckily the teacher was cool and said just leave it alone and we never had this conversation. That could have ended very differently with no tolerance policies starting around then. In high school, many kids had rifles and shotguns in their cars to go hunting after sch…

[deleted]

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#274

Post by breezybottom »

swiftcoder wrote: post #190
ekianjo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The data doesn't necessarily bear that out. Yes, childhood accidents have declined, over a similar time period that childhood freedom has declined. 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 rese…

What data measures "childhood freedom"? That sounds more like conjecture.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#275

Post by spicyusername »

My personal opinion for the reasons for this:

- Less families with kids the same age in suburban neighborhoods

- Less community between neighbors

- More on demand entertainment inside the house

Basically it's more that there is less to do outside and more to do inside. Parents just want their kids to busy themselves, and inside is easier than outside now.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#276

Post by fatnoah »

dyauspitr wrote: post #154
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in walking distance of all these things, and the farthest I’ve gotten my kid to do things alone is to walk to and from school (a whole 8 minutes). But even in my dense neighborhood, it’s not dense enough, kids are hardly at the playground unless it’s nice out, the ice cream shop is a bit too expensive for kids on their own, the 7-11 is probably the sketchiest place they could go to. I’m not really sure what we…

Even in the early 2000s people were forced to be outside because the inside was boring. This was supercharged in the 70s. That’s no longer the case. People have endless, on demand entertainment inside now.

As a child in the late 1970s/early 1980s, I was FORCED outside by my parents. The same was true for other kids in the neighborhood. We were told that chilling indoors was not an option, so get outside and be back by the time streetlights come on or at least call to say where we were.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#277

Post by quacked »

obscurette wrote: post #116
human305893 wrote: post #62

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,…

I think that at least partly it's the consequence of the very same safetyism. If I look at my generation (in my sixties), we still start conversations with strangers, especially if they are our neighbours and things happen between us. But it doesn happen't between people in their thirties any more. And if I look at my students (highschool and college level), then for them it's very alien and even afraid of situation…

> Why?

In addition to not having practice as you said, my thoughts:

1. Camera phones and social media have trained all young people to be aware that anything they say or do could be reported on

2. A lot more overt moralizing about power, gender, and race dynamics by young people makes people hesitant to interact outside of their group

3. Racial and cultural diversity have increased, and people don't reach out across those barriers as freely and easily as within their own homogeneous culture(s)

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#278

Post by ACCount37 »

hibikir wrote: post #101

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…

"Nothing to do" is not how children think. They're new to the world. Just roaming around a neighborhood freely is a lot of "things to do" for them.

Having exciting destinations helps, but children are perfectly capable of making their own fun.

Whether that can compete with the modern day "pre-made" fun of YouTube, Roblox and the likes though? That's a different matter.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#279

Post by breezybottom »

TylerE wrote: post #164
keepamovin wrote: post #74

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.

Well yeah, but that's just selection bias. We shouldn't take precautions around strangers because it's more likely that daddy will rape you?

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#280

Post by breezybottom »

qsera wrote: post #88

We lost grownups. Modern establishments (businesses/governments) work by making people afraid. It is truly, the age of fear. Let me quote M.I.B >There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT! At some po…

Yeah no one was afraid during the Cold war
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