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Where do the children play?

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Re: Where do the children play?

#81

Post by PaulRobinson »

gyomu wrote: post #55
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…

Wait, how old are your kids, that they gallivant around London on their own? Are we talking about teenagers? Because yeah, I agree with you that in that sense cities are better than the often car-centric countryside for teenagers; but for young kids (elementary school and below, which is what the article covers) it's a very different equation.

Not really. I live in Zone 4/5 West London (postcode TW area), and kids as young as I'd say around 9 or 10 are getting themselves to school on buses, trains and tubes every day. Not much different to my day - I was taking myself to school around 7/8 years old living in a small (10k pop.) semi-rural town.

After school they're getting themselves home as well, often in groups causing the traditional nuisance in newsagents and supermarkets (thank god the energy drinks are now not sold to kids!), and going to parks and whatever.

I think they have to be a little older to confidently get their way into Zone 1 on their own if they should need to, but I regularly see youngsters I'd guess are 11-12 years old going into town on their own, clearly to meet friends.

Despite what the media (and for crying out loud, the US President), says, London is actually a remarkably safe city. Murder/homicides are at a low they haven't been at for decades (possibly centuries), and while sexual assaults are rising, that is seen as mostly attributable to more reporting (victims coming forward more). In the case of assault on a child, that's more likely to occur in a family setting than it is in a public place during daylight hours.

Re: Where do the children play?

#82

Post by apexalpha »

While I understand the general sentiment I think grouping kids in a cohort from 8 till 12 is a very wide cohort.

The statistics presented have very different implications whether the kid is 12 or 8, I think.

That said, as a Dutch parent we tend to let our children grow up relatively unsupervised. At least many foreign parents are a bit startled at first.

This article helps me understand them better.

Re: Where do the children play?

#83

Post by djtango »

jddj wrote: post #76
gyomu wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, how old are your kids, that they gallivant around London on their own? Are we talking about teenagers? Because yeah, I agree with you that in that sense cities are better than the often car-centric countryside for teenagers; but for young kids (elementary school and below, which is what the article covers) it's a very different equation.

Why? Plenty of elementary aged kids use the tube

Do they? I don't think I've seen anyone younger than 12 unattended on the tube

Re: Where do the children play?

#84

Post by throwawayffffas »

jiggawatts wrote: post #61

Yeah well, we have one kid, and we're too old to have another. He's the only grandchild on both sides of the family. He has no cousins, first or second. That's apparently the new normal in many countries. Of course he's going to live a sheltered life! It's easy to tell parents to let their kids roam free, but that advice is to copy the behaviour of parents that had ten kids. I said "had", because on average, two of t…

> I said "had", because on average, two of them will survive to adulthood and procreation. That's natural. That's the way things were for our species for megayears.

Where are you getting that stat? For the majority of human history the childhood mortality rate has hovered around 50% not 80%.

Back in the second century BC if you had 10 children you expected half of them to reach adulthood.

In addition I can't find specific stats but I would wager that the vast majority like 90% of those deaths happened at infancy. So it doesn't really factor in how they would be raised.

And as others have noted. We were free to run around as much as we wanted in the 90s and the average family had like 2ish children.

Re: Where do the children play?

#85

Post by jddj »

djtango wrote: post #83
jddj wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Plenty of elementary aged kids use the tube

Do they? I don't think I've seen anyone younger than 12 unattended on the tube

The DLR at some hours between some stops is practically a school bus.

I guess it's possible they're small but not <12yo

Re: Where do the children play?

#86

Post by api »

Earw0rm wrote: post #72

It's cars. It was always cars.

Plenty of cars in the 90s and we played outside all day.

The biggest change since then is two things.

One is that there’s way more to do inside now, mostly games and shows.

The second is that baseless kidnapping panics convinced society that children can never be unattended. The main vector was daytime TV and now true crime podcasts. The reality is that kidnapping is statistically extremely rare and more than 95% of all child sexual or other abuse is perpetrated by someone the child knows. Most kidnappings are also by someone the child knows.

Re: Where do the children play?

#87

Post by casey2 »

luxurytent wrote: post #62

I'm trying to raise confident, independent kids. It is exceptionally more difficult to allow them to play outside on their own, walk to the grocery store, etc, for mainly two reasons: 1. There are no other kids outside. We live in a neighbourhood with many young families, at all age ranges (littles to teen). We rarely see kids outside, and if we do, it's mainly kids walking with their parents somewhere (eg to the loc…

>Now if my kid wants to go to their friends house? They have to cross two arterials. These are four lane roads with fast moving traffic, uncontrolled signals, lots of road rage, fast cuts on corners, etc.

Well why did you choose to live there if you wanted to raise independent kids. Baffles the mind.

Re: Where do the children play?

#88

Post by schnitzelstoat »

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 grew up in a town outside of London (100k pop.) and it was pretty decent as I could walk pretty much everywhere.

I live in a massive city now (1.5m pop.) and I'd be nervous to let my kids walk around alone because there's quite a lot of crime.

I feel a town is probably the sweet spot.

Re: Where do the children play?

#89

Post by etothepii »

gwd wrote: post #32
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 I'm from, I would say that 75% of 6 year olds walk/bike to school alone, and 100% of older kids do. When I was growing up in the 80's in the US, I walked to school alone; but there was institutional support for that. There were adults paid to help kids cross major roads, and there were older children ("safetys") who wore an orange sash, trained and assigned to help younger kids walk to school. I don't see tha…

In England you don't have lollipop ladies/men?

Re: Where do the children play?

#90

Post by renewiltord »

The traditional US thing is to charge parents with negligence for letting their kids walk to the store if someone else kills them while they cross the road https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/parents-are-charged-son-...

I live in San Francisco, about a block from when a speeding driver killed a little girl by driving around the outside of a car that was waiting for a family to cross the road. The family had the light, yes. The killer will attend a driver’s safety course and do some community service.

In general, in this city there are people who call themselves “natives” who promote the idea that children should live highly constrained lives. Others, who call themselves “progressive activists” have fought for the rights of pedophiles to be released early. Unsurprisingly, often such pedophile immediately assault people days within release.

Because of the asymmetry in outcome, those with children slowly cede ground to those without by simply leaving. This feedback loop accelerates until little enclaves start forming. Inside SF this is the Mission Bay / Mission Rock area where today I saw a gaggle of unaccompanied 10-12 year olds. This isn’t a common sight elsewhere in the city where the “natives” and “progressive activists” have sway.

For our part, we have a plan to buy some undeveloped land where we can reliably camp. The current constraints are that maintenance of this in fire-prone California isn’t straightforward. There are minimum standards for defensible space and so on that regulate newer purchases that often require a great deal of time and effort to meet. I’ll find a way, however.

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