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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

#601

Post by cindyllm »

ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #597
zwischenzug wrote: post #360

I don't believe people keep their kids 'safer' because they think the world has become more dangerous. It's slightly taboo, but I think people protect their kids more now because they are more precious to the parents. The average number of children per mother has plunged in the last 200 years, and investment required in them per child to get them to child-bearing capability is much higher also. Child mortality has dr…

There's probably some truth to this but it's hard to reconcile with the large number of parents who allow their kids to engage in behaviours known to be actively damaging and harmful at home.

[dead]

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

#602

Post by jhide »

streb-lo wrote: post #347
jhide wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How old were the homes when you were a kid?

They were all new-ish builds at the time, built a couple years before I was born.

Asking because I’ve seen the same dynamic in multiple subdivisions over several decades. I have very little love for subdivisions and the suburban built environment, but I wonder how many vocal urbanists’ opinions are colored because they experienced the aging of a neighborhood’s inaugural population. If you look at the neighborhood again in 50 years maybe it will have a healthier age variance.

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

#603

Post by adfm »

I pinpoint the start of “safetyism” with the kidnapping, rape, and murder of Polly Klaas in Petaluma, California in 1993. Overnight, nobody let their kids outside unattended. It was crazy that nobody talked about it. Terms like “helicopter parenting” sprung up to explain it, but it was obvious they were freaked out by the media’s 24/7 coverage. And the weird thing about it was the guy abducted her from inside her own home during a sleepover, not off the street, like most people assume.

https://www.ktvu.com/news/marc-klaas-close-foundation-3-deca...

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

#604

Post by nine_k »

forlorn_mammoth wrote: post #495
nine_k wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why all these trucks (with the size, these are not cars) don't have forward-looking cameras mounted somewhere near headlights and feeding a screen on the dashboard, which would offer a "window" through the motor compartment. It should be trivially simple to produce, and most vehicles already have a screen for the camera on the back. Its presence would likely lower the insurance premium significantly, due to…

So should the driver be watching out the windshield, or starting down at the screen?

When passing a pedestrian crossing, the driver should look everywhere, including the screen that shows the otherwise invisible space right before the front bumper. Looking at the mirror when maneuvering is a normal practice, and it takes more effort.

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

#605

Post by jaboostin »

keepamovin wrote: post #162
jaboostin wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100,000/yr is insane, where are you getting that stat? Best I could find is ~250 abducted per year in the US, not specifically for trafficking. There are 200-300,000 reported missing per year but >90% are runaways and return.

OK I did some searching and found I'm no expert and I didn't understand the numbers: I think I put the 100K+ "unaccompanied children" at border each year together with the FBI raid cadence and thought it was all trafficking. Quick searching indicates: there's maybe 85K "lost contact" children after placement from border, which also doesn't mean what I thought; and FBI/LE recovered maybe 1000s of trafficked children i…

Makes sense! Thanks for the follow up.

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

#606

Post by deafpolygon »

> Violent crime against children has fallen steadily since the early 1990s. Stranger abductions, the thing every parent imagines when they hesitate to let a 10-year-old walk to a friend’s house, were rare in 1985 and are rarer today.

Well, we stopped letting kids wander -- certainly that has an impact on the statistics.

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

#607

Post by throw0101c »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #562
throw0101c wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the idea is that it locks them out of owning real estate. How does urbanism lock people out of owning real estate?

It doesn't have to, but at least where I live, urban means apartments, and the great majority of apartments are rentals, not for sale.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condominium

?

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

#608

Post by throw0101c »

antiframe wrote: post #557
throw0101c wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Historically, probably more people had to work in cities and many of those people had a preference for not having a long commute. Commute time has been 30 minutes for a large portion of human history: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti%27s_constant It's just as technology has developed different means of transportation (from walking to rail, automobiles) the distances involved have gotten greater because spe…

A 30 minute commute by foot, where one passes interesting architecture, parks, is under the shade of trees, can pop into the corner store to get extra milk on the way home (2 minute detour), etc is far more pleasant than a 30 minute commute by car, surrounded by other cars on a seven lane highway with billboards. Quality matters just as much as quantity, and often more when they're close together. (I would of course…

Tell that to the folks that have built most of America in the post-WW2 era.

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

#609

Post by cryptonym »

somehnguy wrote: post #451
cryptonym wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ofc, it doesn't mean it's any safer outside.

I mean..if it mostly happens in families that does mean it's safer outside

When you basically don't allow kids to go outside, there is little exposition to potential predator other than family, teacher and similar. There is a selection bias. It doesn't mean it's any safer to generally keep kids outside of families.

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

#610

Post by Xirdus »

dyauspitr wrote: post #365
Xirdus wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is huge value in being acquainted with computers at a young age, especially if they end up in STEM or some white collar job.

There is no value. You can learn programming in months and that’s if it is even a real job in a couple of years.

I heard that the biggest struggle current CS professors have with college freshmen is teaching them about files and directories. It takes a full year before it clicks for most people.
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