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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 neig

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?

pvg 10y ago
In the 20s, poorer American children worked. Flappers were a thing. So I think pretty far, in all cases.
- kasey_junk 10y ago
  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.
  - pvg 10y ago
    I think the point of the article is that, societally, we are perhaps too focused on children's safety to the point of depriving them of some perfectly harmless freedom. The argument is not, as you seem to interpret it, strictly geometric. In the 20s, the world was far less safe for children yet far more independence and agency was required of many of them. I'm sure not every shoeshine or newspaper boy was engaging in these activities in their ethnic ghetto.
    - kasey_junk 10y ago
      I guess I just don't understand the point of the article. To me it seems an indictment of current parenting modes, based on the amount of geometric freedom allowed a very small subset of the population in comparison to the amount of geometric freedom allowed another, different very small subset of the population. I guess what I'm saying is, its a pretty ridiculous article that doesn't line up with reality now or then.
      - pvg 10y ago
        It's anecdotal but it doesn't seem that ridiculous, at least, not in the face of your criticism which seems to be 'think of the disadvantaged kids'. Disadvantaged kids may have had even greater constraints and lived in a more dangerous world but that's a point in favour of the article - they had to get around and so did anyway. I'm going straight to hell for using this as an example in a pointless forum argument but since we got here (and I'm rationalizing it to myself that it's somehow your fault, sorry) - Emmett Till's mother put him on a train in Chicago and sent him, by himself, to visit relatives in Mississippi. At age 14 he was expected not only to travel solo cross-country but to safely navigate an actually dangerous, pointedly racist world. The demands on disadvantaged kids were even greater but the fact that they couldn't ride their bikes to the municipal pool doesn't mean they just sat at home under the watchful eye of their governess.
        kasey_junk 10y ago
        So this actually gets to 2 different readings of the point of the article. One reading, the one that maybe I'm reading into it, is that parents now are viewing the world as more dangerous than it is, and are ignoring the dangers that existed in the past to get to this viewpoint. This viewpoint is then informing their view about what is appropriate for their children. That is, I took the anecdote to mean, parents are misjudging the risks currently and were viewing the past to be less risky than it was. The other viewpoint, which I think you are presenting is, parents now don't have any different assessment of the risks, they just have less appetite for risk. Given that interpretation, I'll buy the lesson of the anecdote is just have more appetite for risk.

pvg 10y ago

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

kasey_junk 10y ago
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.
- pvg 10y ago
  I think the point of the article is that, societally, we are perhaps too focused on children's safety to the point of depriving them of some perfectly harmless freedom. The argument is not, as you seem to interpret it, strictly geometric. In the 20s, the world was far less safe for children yet far more independence and agency was required of many of them. I'm sure not every shoeshine or newspaper boy was engaging in these activities in their ethnic ghetto.
  - kasey_junk 10y ago
    I guess I just don't understand the point of the article. To me it seems an indictment of current parenting modes, based on the amount of geometric freedom allowed a very small subset of the population in comparison to the amount of geometric freedom allowed another, different very small subset of the population. I guess what I'm saying is, its a pretty ridiculous article that doesn't line up with reality now or then.
    - pvg 10y ago
      It's anecdotal but it doesn't seem that ridiculous, at least, not in the face of your criticism which seems to be 'think of the disadvantaged kids'. Disadvantaged kids may have had even greater constraints and lived in a more dangerous world but that's a point in favour of the article - they had to get around and so did anyway. I'm going straight to hell for using this as an example in a pointless forum argument but since we got here (and I'm rationalizing it to myself that it's somehow your fault, sorry) - Emmett Till's mother put him on a train in Chicago and sent him, by himself, to visit relatives in Mississippi. At age 14 he was expected not only to travel solo cross-country but to safely navigate an actually dangerous, pointedly racist world. The demands on disadvantaged kids were even greater but the fact that they couldn't ride their bikes to the municipal pool doesn't mean they just sat at home under the watchful eye of their governess.
      - kasey_junk 10y ago
        So this actually gets to 2 different readings of the point of the article. One reading, the one that maybe I'm reading into it, is that parents now are viewing the world as more dangerous than it is, and are ignoring the dangers that existed in the past to get to this viewpoint. This viewpoint is then informing their view about what is appropriate for their children. That is, I took the anecdote to mean, parents are misjudging the risks currently and were viewing the past to be less risky than it was. The other viewpoint, which I think you are presenting is, parents now don't have any different assessment of the risks, they just have less appetite for risk. Given that interpretation, I'll buy the lesson of the anecdote is just have more appetite for risk.