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How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

freerangekids.com

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Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#91

Post by irrational »

m_mueller wrote: post #71
usaphp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "You pick your stuff, you weigh it yourself, you choose the right tag" How is that different from self checkout in most of the big food stores in USA?

I haven't been to too many US supermarkets, but don't you get the vegetables in already weighed and tagged portions? IMO if you do that yourself, and there isn't even a cashier doing a bit of sanity checking, there's just more opportunity to cheat. With self checkout alone you can just not scan something, but it would seem a bit more obvious to catch (which I could see the chains doing with security cams). Almost cer…

Not exactly. Typically there will be a sign that lets you know how much the produce is per imperial pound. There are analog scales there that you can use to weigh your produce to give you an idea of how much it will be, but the real digital scales are at checkout. At self-checkout you put the produce onto a scale and then click on the picture of the produce your are purchasing so the computer can correlate the weight with the item. There isn't anything stopping you from clicking the picture of a cheaper produce item other than the honesty system.

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#92

Post by Reason077 »

m_mueller wrote: post #71
usaphp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "You pick your stuff, you weigh it yourself, you choose the right tag" How is that different from self checkout in most of the big food stores in USA?

I haven't been to too many US supermarkets, but don't you get the vegetables in already weighed and tagged portions? IMO if you do that yourself, and there isn't even a cashier doing a bit of sanity checking, there's just more opportunity to cheat. With self checkout alone you can just not scan something, but it would seem a bit more obvious to catch (which I could see the chains doing with security cams). Almost cer…

Here in the UK, like the US, the self-checkout machines have built-in scales that weigh your produce and calculate the price automatically.

There's no extra tags involved, you just have to select what the produce is if it doesn't have a barcode.

There is indeed an opportunity to "cheat" by weighing something expensive but telling the machine it's something cheap like onions or potatoes.

But the machines can be monitored remotely from a security station, so there is a small chance you'd get caught. That keeps most people pretty honest.

I'm sure a few cheats do slip though, but the losses from this sort of thing are presumably much less than the savings from employing less checkout staff!

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#93

Post by djsumdog »

rconti wrote: post #36
m_mueller wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Swiss with a small child, this is the main reason why I couldn't move to the US or UK. Your 70ies examples are still common enough in Switzerland. 6 year olds are sent to Kindergarden on their own (after a bit of training with their parents). Put the visibility triangle on and off you go. Parents are discouraged by the school authorities to bring by car. Today looking back at this I can see the value. Maybe it h…

I think you're right. Kids being randomly abducted is vanishingly rare, but the faster and further news spreads, the more 'real' it seems. A smaller country would be less likely to see it as a problem that "happens here". I was born in 1981 and from the age of 7 or 8 I remember walking to school (1.5mi and parts of it along a busy street). My friends and I would play in the drainage culvert under the road, walking ba…

I was born in the early 80s as well. I was way out in the suburbs and took the bus to school, but there were plenty of kids that walked. (Occasionally a teacher would forget to unlock the back gate and you'd see them all standing there in the morning when the first bell rang ... usually followed by an announcement of how none of the walkers should be counted late).

I walked everywhere, which even then, wasn't all that common. It was ~2 miles (4km) to church, and there were several times when other parents would stop and offer me rides.

In the mid-2000s I was in Cincinnati, and noticed a lot of the neighbourhoods close to the city usually had squares with the usual restaurants, ice cream shops, bars, etc. It was refreshing to see teenagers out in the evening in the weekend. They had places that were easily walk-able to meet up with friends (even though the bus there is less than ideal).

I would have much rather grown up in that kind of environment that way out in the suburbs where you needed rides eveywhere and few of your friends were in walking distance.

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#94

Post by cowsandmilk »

m_mueller wrote: post #71
usaphp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "You pick your stuff, you weigh it yourself, you choose the right tag" How is that different from self checkout in most of the big food stores in USA?

I haven't been to too many US supermarkets, but don't you get the vegetables in already weighed and tagged portions? IMO if you do that yourself, and there isn't even a cashier doing a bit of sanity checking, there's just more opportunity to cheat. With self checkout alone you can just not scan something, but it would seem a bit more obvious to catch (which I could see the chains doing with security cams). Almost cer…

> already weighed and tagged portions

generally no. They do sell stuff like that as well, but most is out in the open and you bag yourself. And then punch in the item codes or look them up at the self checkout. There's no real check, although sometimes they catch people cheating by reviewing video.

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#95

Post by kasey_junk »

pvg wrote: post #79
kasey_junk wrote: post #48

Honestly, this seems like a pretty short sighted view of the safety of roaming. In any American city how far could an African American kid roam from their neighborhood in 1926? How much space could an unmarried female white expect to have before societal conventions interfered in 1926? What about an urban Irish boy in 1926 NYC, how much space could he roam in safely?

In the 20s, poorer American children worked. Flappers were a thing. So I think pretty far, in all cases.

Its my impression from the histories I've read of my city (Chicago) that black people certainly didn't have 6 miles of uninterrupted neighborhoods where it would be safe for them to meander in.

Further, Italians, Jews, and Eastern Europeans were still very much segregated into smaller enclaves than that. The Irish were only recently able to move about freely at that point, and there were certainly places they couldn't go.

The larger point of this article seems to be, rural people have more space, which doesn't seem to have much value as an observation.

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#96

Post by megablast »

lotu wrote: post #52
simonsarris wrote: post #7

I suspect this is not just an American or British or solely cultural thing but also a number-of-children thing. This seems like it would also be the natural response to having fewer children. If you have 3-10 kids, you can "afford" to let them off the leash so to speak, if only psychologically. Your kids going missing or getting hurt is an eventuality anyway, maybe. If you have 1 or 2 kids, you are investing a lot mo…

I would say it isn't just that you can "afford" to let them off the leash more it's that you don't have the time/energy to keep track of them. If you are dealing with an infant a toddler and a 5 year old, you are simply won't be able to follow the 8 year old around. Let's say they run off with some frinds with out permission you can either leave the 3 other kids alone to find you 8 year old (who is going to be home w…

What? You could put them in the car and drive around. What else are you going to do, running on foot to find them?

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#97

Post by schlowmo »

ianbicking wrote: post #40

I was looking at this phone for kids recently: http://tinitell.com/ - just GPS and voice, but let's a kid be in contact. I'd be curious if people have tried this sort of thing, and if it works... mostly if it works psychologically. Do you find yourself really giving your kid more freedom? Does it address the anxieties that keep us from giving kids freedom? It doesn't address the highly structured time, but at least I…

I don't want to blame any parents for the desire of knowing where their kids are and that they're save. But at the same time I'm very glad that I was born two decades before parents started to think that making their kids carying a GPS tracker is the prequisite for "more freedom".

I'm sure my parents were better off many times with not knowing where I was. So I think the psychological part isn't going to play out well - at least for the kids.

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#98

Post by megablast »

jedberg wrote: post #78

The biggest issue is the courts. I have a two year old, and her grandma lives one mile away. I fully intend to let her walk there by herself when she is 6 or 7. Crime rate data supports me in that this is perfectly safe. But I'll always have this nagging feeling in my mind of some local busybody parent (and there are a lot) reporting me to CPS and then having to defend my decision and hope that I get a data driven ju…

You could get her a bike.

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#99

Post by frankosaurus »

I'm tired of this claim that kids today are less free-roaming. Such articles never seem to provide empirical evidence to back it up. The term "helicopter parent" is thrown around as if it has some sort of scientific definition. In actuality, it is just a pejorative used to label any parent we have observed being overprotective.

These claims about a societal shift serve only to tickle persons' biases that kids today are coddled, lack personal responsibility, and generally thin-skinned. (On the contrary, parenting styles are as diverse as children themselves.)

Never mind that adults' personal anecdotes about their childhoods are unreliable and subject to massive bias. Think about it: Most people have scarcely any vivid memories of their 0-5 years. Many claim that they were allowed to roam free back in the day. Adults remember being allowed to run around, seemingly unsupervised. They are oblivious to protective steps taken by their parents. Most everyone with children knows the parenting tactic of giving kids the impression of freedom while taking discreet steps to protect them from harm.

Re: How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations

#100

Post by kasey_junk »

For what its worth, the vast majority of children in my south side Chicago (gasp) neighborhood, walk to elementary school without a parent. They are often without adult supervision in the hours after school lets out, and before their parents come home from work.

There are frequently older siblings, but that doesn't seem like some vast generational sea change.

Instead, I think this story is more about multi-generational moves from rural to urban life, that resonates with parents who can afford to be over protective of their children and feel bad about it.

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