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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

#441

Post by ghaff »

jghn wrote: post #307
bluGill wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US the city is not a safe place for kids. Great for the 21-30 year old crowd (and older folks that didn't "grow up") since there are many great bars and parties, but there are no kid friendly places. I know several people out here in the suburbs who loved city living until they had kids. One kid under 5 isn't too bad, but as soon as the kid is school age you look at how bad the schools are and you get out thus…

A large problem in discourse like this is relative terms. Specifically what people consider to be "city" or "urban" vs "suburban" vs "rural". I live in an area of the US that the vast majority of US citizens would describe as "city" yet it doesn't conform to your description. The kids here get along just fine. But it's an important distinction because it would have been described as more of a suburb 100 years ago in…

And part of the problem in the US is that the US census has a very binary definition: urban and rural. Myself and two neighbors live on about 100 acres (not counting adjacent conservation land). We're considered urban. because we're about an hour drive of a fairly large city.

But a lot of people will pop up and say that 80% of the US is urban with the implication that 20% of people are living in the back of beyond in Wyoming and it's simply not true.

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

#442

Post by abalashov »

mattmiller wrote: post #427
elevation wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> existing somewhere without spending money Existing without spending money works a lot better when you perceive and comply with social norms. At a mall, you're unlikely to meet loitering enforcement for reading a book in the food court all afternoon while sipping a drink you brought from home. You can meeting your local walking club there too and walk for miles chatting without purchasing anything -- if you're not b…

"Antisocial behavior" You are describing teens being social. You dont get to define what antisocial means.

Well, you do to some extent, and having people define what antisocial is for them is how teens learn to be prosocial (inshallah).

Not a Karen -- it's about striking a balance.

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

#443

Post by GeekyBear »

incompatible wrote: post #141
GeekyBear wrote: post #18

The notion that children are not allowed to play outside within a couple of blocks of their home seems like a mass delusion to me. However, I'm GenX and having all my friends and I roam the neighborhood from the time we got out of school until our parents got home from work with no supervision seems perfectly normal. "Come home when the street lights come on" and television PSAs asking "It's nine o'clock, do you know…

Maybe it's a local thing. I often see random kids roaming on the streets.

I first became aware of how insane things could be when a single mother was arrested for allowing her child to play at the park a couple of blocks from their home while she was working.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arreste...

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

#444

Post by travelalberta »

Grew up surrounded by farms in rural Ontario. My parents did a great job of driving me to friends houses to socialize, but when there wasn't an organized play date I had two options: stay at home or go wander. I usually opted to stay at home and read or play video games but I did often just pick a direction and go walking. My parents made me take a hunting knife with me and only let me do this around the age of 12. While it is great to romanticize my wandering in the wilderness, it was typically pretty boring. As a result I played more video games as I got older.

My best friend lived in a sort of suburb (still very rural) but we'd spend all day biking around, meeting other kids, getting up to trouble, and making grand adventures to the store to buy mountain dew. This was all the way up until high school. After 14 I was too busy with school and sports in the academic year to do anything else, and in the summer I worked at a camp.

I talked to my mom about this recently and she said that 'kids can't just wander around anymore it's unsafe' and I'd argue that a child with a smart phone that constantly pings their location is a million times safer than whatever the hell we were doing.

I think the challenge is that parents are more anxious and video games and social media are way more convenient than anything outside the house, making a perfect storm. I don't remember leaving the house as much as a kid because there was that much to do outside, but rather we had exhausted all the activities at home. I feel like now you have unlimited options for entertainment at home so why bother, especially if your parents would rather you be at home anyways.

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

#445

Post by anthonypasq »

collectedparts wrote: post #132
delichon wrote: post #2

A large part of the protectiveness of children is about the fertility trend. Parents with four children think about safety very differently than parents with probably ever only one. I saw this on my home street growing up. The girl next door was an only child who her parents hovered over relentlessly. When I was ten, with three brothers, and told mom I was going exploring, she made sure I had a quarter to phone home…

I can't help but think that thee's some sort of tragedy of the commons type thing going on here. Probably the wrong metaphor. But: it seems like a lot of what the article is getting at is that we can all intuitively agree that the population of children in society being more independent is good for a healthy society (or not just intuitively I suppose, he backs it up with mental health data). Any given parent can know…

then why did every previous generation of parents do it?

most parents can, its just illegal now.

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

#446

Post by d1sxeyes »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #396
d1sxeyes wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely yes, but there's a bit more nuance than it seems. For example, 40 years ago, most families had one car, no computer, no mobile phones, no Netflix, DoorDash, etc. Houses are bigger, foreign holidays, expensive white goods, etc. On the other hand, property costs have definitely increased massively. Folks are having kids later and less frequently, so there's a higher percentage of dual income couples looking…

Higher household income doesn't necessarily have to mean higher property prices. It's a factor, but that's only one half of the demand/supply equation. Long term, the price of housing is driven by how much it costs to build more.

Good point. Building more housing is indeed part of a possible solution, although it’s hard to convince folks whose mortgages are baselined on inflated prices not to oppose building more.

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

#447

Post by ghaff »

contubernio wrote: post #378
treis wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really true. Almost every neighborhood in Atlanta has a cluster of shops or food hall kind of thing to walk to. It's true that it's a massive lifestyle leap to go to no car. But walk to the park. Walk to get ice cream. Ride bike to school are all easily doable in atlanta.

It's certainly true in Atlanta. That "cluster of shops" can be a long way walking (10-15 minutes) from where one resides. It's small, incomplete, inadequate, etc. I grew up in Atlanta proper, so know the city well, and later, by choice, lived there for a few years as an adult without a car and it was genuinely complicated. I chose a place to live near my place of work (near = it was 30 minutes solid walking). I had a…

There are some places in the US--probably Manhattan most obviously--where there's a culture that doesn't have the expectation that you have a car. But, while people living in most other cities can basically do a post-university lifestyle without one even in cities with relatively good public transit, a lot of their friends probably live outside the city, a lot of activities depend on cars, etc.

I do know an adult couple in SF who gave up their cars but I'd observe that they rely on Ubers and various rentals a lot. I don't think I know anyone in the Boston/Cambridge area who doesn't have a car. Of course, they exist but I don't know one.

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

#448

Post by tonymet »

Facebook/Nextdoor has been a curse for kids. Parents gossip, moan and report kids constantly. Recently hysteria over e-bikes. But really it’s any trivial annoyance.

I think adults / elderly completely lack perspective and compassion for kids. Berating them for using iPads, berating them for playing outside.

In reality there aren’t that many kids out socializing, and not many avenues for them to be free and be themselves. They are constantly monitored directly via their phones and indirectly via the E-Stasi .

When I was a kid in the 80s/90s there were kids just everywhere: parks, streets, malls , playgrounds, school facilities. We had to sneak into abandoned yards to find our own space.

Now adults are whining about a few kids roaming around being kids.

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

#450

Post by hylaride »

bluGill wrote: post #301
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But life is full of safety vs. living tradeoffs. That's not even the issue. Suppose that more people wanted to live in a city than currently do. The market implies that -- the price per square foot is higher in cities. And that's the problem, when the city isn't allowed to grow. The existing city already has tall buildings, so if there is more demand than supply, to create more of it you need to add more somewhere…

In the US the city is not a safe place for kids. Great for the 21-30 year old crowd (and older folks that didn't "grow up") since there are many great bars and parties, but there are no kid friendly places. I know several people out here in the suburbs who loved city living until they had kids. One kid under 5 isn't too bad, but as soon as the kid is school age you look at how bad the schools are and you get out thus…

No kid friendly places? Like parks, museums, their school (I admit public school quality can vary enormously in urban areas in the US), bakeries, candy stores, etc all within a 20 minute walk for me? If all one sees in urban areas is bars and parties, maybe it is the people that leave that don't grow up.

My daughter has slept under the shark tank at the aquarium as well as with the mummies at the local cultural museum. The local university runs summer camps for everything from engineering to gymnastics. The Museums run programs, too. Her grade school has a thriving parent community because the parents stand together when school is let out instead of forming a long line of cars, I've made new friends myself this way (the number one complaint I get from parents that do move out is that they know no other parents in their kid's school). Because I walk everywhere, I don't ever deal with traffic.

I'm not saying it's perfect, either. Urban areas vary a LOT, including within any single city and within the country. My child's been directly exposed to poverty, homelessness and mental health issues, etc. I'm comfortable enough to explain the complexities of this to her, but some people would rather not.

This is not to criticize people who want to live in a rural or suburban life. I grew up in a small town and got myself out of there very quickly, mostly because I felt isolated and trapped growing up. But cities are very much places you can live in, kids and all.

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