4 ms·

I'd often seen kids on the tram in Melbourne. Rarely on their own though, almost always in groups. In Wellington, you'd see them occasionally too in the morning

I'd often seen kids on the tram in Melbourne. Rarely on their own though, almost always in groups. In Wellington, you'd see them occasionally too in the mornings. They had dedicated school buses (city buses with the "School" sign on the front), but if kids were running late and missed their bus, you'd often see them on regular public transport. One of the big problems is the lack of public transport in the US. Even with cities with good transit, the minimum age for kids on buses/trains is usually 12 (wasn't there an article on HN earlier about a New York man who's kids rode the bus in a group of three and how social services said he couldn't do that any more until one of them turned 13? I can't seem to find it now..) Crime is more perception then a real issue. You're always most likely to be a victim of a crime by a family member at home. Actual child abductions are more hollywood and rarely real life. When it does happens, it's usually someone who knows the child via family. I feel like this is yet another problem that could be solved via real transit and which will just be made worse by self-driving cars.

vim_wannabe 9y ago
There's perception for sure but crime rates are quite something else in US versus Australia or Japan.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  We need to make a clear distinction here between crime rates in general and crimes where a child is involved and the perpetrator(s) and strangers. As far as I'm aware the biggest dangers to children are their cohabitating relatives followed closely by non-resident family and friends. The solution to this issue for me was to move away from the big city I was in to a much smaller one, where the kids next door and a few houses down play in the street and my neighbors talk to me.
  - eru 9y ago
    > As far as I'm aware the biggest dangers to children are their cohabitating relatives followed closely by non-resident family and friends. Or getting hit by a car. Driven by a stranger or otherwise. Based on my anecdotal experience, prevalence of car culture seems to influence whether kids can roam quite a lot.
    - Thlom 9y ago
      I bet if there exists statistics on how much time children spend alone outside you will see it decrease as car use increase. Cars are my biggest fear when the kids go outside alone. Soon the oldest will begin school and I want her to go by her self, but the amount of cars on the road is scary. Especially around the school it's mayhem caused by parents driving their kids 400 meters to school.
    - smelendez 9y ago
      Yeah, kids walk more when adults walk more. It makes sense: more pedestrian infrastructure, and people are more used to pedestrians. When drivers aren't used to pedestrians, they don't look for them. A lot of places in the US people are wary of adult pedestrians. They see someone walking and assume something is wrong--a car broke down, or the pedestrian is somehow up to no good. If people have the attitude that walking is weird and a cause for alarm, they won't want their kids doing it. Plus, in lots of suburban areas, there's nowhere for kids to walk to. Wooded areas, if they exist, generally belong to somebody who doesn't want strangers messing around on their land. If there are Main Street shops, that could work, but a lot of Main Streets now are either pawn shops and check cashing outlets or high end restaurants and boutiques, with nothing really there for kids. And it seems less pleasant to send kids to a corporate store like CVS than to a mom and pop business. I also think there are fewer kids in lots of suburban neighborhoods than there used to be, with family sizes shrinking and fewer retirees leaving the neighborhoods where they raised their kids. And kids seem to form cliques around interests earlier and earlier, which means their friends could be halfway across town. Adults don't automatically hang out with their neighbors much anymore, and neither do kids.
Stratoscope 9y ago
I don't know if this is the article you're thinking of - it is a similar situation with a family in Vancouver, BC that I believe was discussed here recently: http://5kids1condo.com/very-superstitious-how-fact-free-parenting-policies-rob-our-kids-of-independence/ http://5kids1condo.com/very-superstitious-how-fact-free-pare...
- kleiba 9y ago
  I missed the discussion back then, but just having read the article, I can only shake my head. I know that the times are always changing, but if I think back what children were doing one or two generations ago on a daily basis... "the Ministry had [...] determined that children under 10 years old could not be unsupervised in or outside the home, for any amount of time." -- even myself, growing up, we were a bunch of kids who all lived in a cul-de-sac. I don't think our parents saw much of us from the age of six onwards or so, at least not during the summer months, except for the meals.
- slavik81 9y ago
  The minimum age for a child to be home alone in Ontario is 16? How did that become law?
  - ghaff 9y ago
    I've seen this reported on several occasions but it's not clear whether it's actually true. See, e.g. https://www.thestar.com/life/parent/2014/08/28/when_can_kids_stay_home_alone.html https://www.thestar.com/life/parent/2014/08/28/when_can_kids... Certainly, it would be pretty ridiculous in general if it were. That would have been a problem with my going off to college :-)
    - slavik81 9y ago
      The source seems to be 79 (3) of the Child and Family Services Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. C.11 [1]. I'm not a lawyer, but from my reading, it seems like specifying an age actually narrows the law. It's more like a maximum than a minimum: --- Leaving child unattended (3) No person having charge of a child less than sixteen years of age shall leave the child without making provision for his or her supervision and care that is reasonable in the circumstances. ---- Having read through a bunch of this stuff to find the law in question, things actually look pretty reasonable. If there's a problem, it seems it would be with the application or interpretation of the law by the bureaucracy or the courts. Legislation can correct those things, but I guess my point is that it looks reasonable, so there's no obvious easy fix. [1] https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90c11 https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90c11
eru 9y ago
When I was living in Sydney, it was striking that I never saw kids playing outside by themselves. Playgrounds always had more parents hovering than kids playing.
Piskvorrr 9y ago
Perhaps the lack of public transport is a significant factor ("if you-the-parent are driving the kids around anyway, what do you do at destination? Hovering like a helicopter is the easiest option") - I got a traffic pass, a watch and a time of curfew when starting 3rd grade, and that was it (no cellphones back then). Most of my classmates had a similar arrangement, what with 5-20 minutes of public transport commute; in a city where public transit is both cheap and plentiful, it would not make sense to even own a car for most people, other than a status symbol.
Feniks 9y ago
Yeah this is a big factor. Where I live everyone goes to school in their area. Dense population means kids can walk or at the most cycle to school. At least in primary.
somethingsimple 9y ago
It seems that the Seattle public school district gives out public transit cards to kids in middle and high school, depending on circumstances and school bus availability. I’m not sure how the system works, but I’m about to find out since I’m moving there next year and have a kid going to school.

vim_wannabe 9y ago

There's perception for sure but crime rates are quite something else in US versus Australia or Japan.

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
We need to make a clear distinction here between crime rates in general and crimes where a child is involved and the perpetrator(s) and strangers. As far as I'm aware the biggest dangers to children are their cohabitating relatives followed closely by non-resident family and friends. The solution to this issue for me was to move away from the big city I was in to a much smaller one, where the kids next door and a few houses down play in the street and my neighbors talk to me.
- eru 9y ago
  > As far as I'm aware the biggest dangers to children are their cohabitating relatives followed closely by non-resident family and friends. Or getting hit by a car. Driven by a stranger or otherwise. Based on my anecdotal experience, prevalence of car culture seems to influence whether kids can roam quite a lot.
  - Thlom 9y ago
    I bet if there exists statistics on how much time children spend alone outside you will see it decrease as car use increase. Cars are my biggest fear when the kids go outside alone. Soon the oldest will begin school and I want her to go by her self, but the amount of cars on the road is scary. Especially around the school it's mayhem caused by parents driving their kids 400 meters to school.
  - smelendez 9y ago
    Yeah, kids walk more when adults walk more. It makes sense: more pedestrian infrastructure, and people are more used to pedestrians. When drivers aren't used to pedestrians, they don't look for them. A lot of places in the US people are wary of adult pedestrians. They see someone walking and assume something is wrong--a car broke down, or the pedestrian is somehow up to no good. If people have the attitude that walking is weird and a cause for alarm, they won't want their kids doing it. Plus, in lots of suburban areas, there's nowhere for kids to walk to. Wooded areas, if they exist, generally belong to somebody who doesn't want strangers messing around on their land. If there are Main Street shops, that could work, but a lot of Main Streets now are either pawn shops and check cashing outlets or high end restaurants and boutiques, with nothing really there for kids. And it seems less pleasant to send kids to a corporate store like CVS than to a mom and pop business. I also think there are fewer kids in lots of suburban neighborhoods than there used to be, with family sizes shrinking and fewer retirees leaving the neighborhoods where they raised their kids. And kids seem to form cliques around interests earlier and earlier, which means their friends could be halfway across town. Adults don't automatically hang out with their neighbors much anymore, and neither do kids.

Stratoscope 9y ago

I don't know if this is the article you're thinking of - it is a similar situation with a family in Vancouver, BC that I believe was discussed here recently: http://5kids1condo.com/very-superstitious-how-fact-free-parenting-policies-rob-our-kids-of-independence/ http://5kids1condo.com/very-superstitious-how-fact-free-pare...

kleiba 9y ago
I missed the discussion back then, but just having read the article, I can only shake my head. I know that the times are always changing, but if I think back what children were doing one or two generations ago on a daily basis... "the Ministry had [...] determined that children under 10 years old could not be unsupervised in or outside the home, for any amount of time." -- even myself, growing up, we were a bunch of kids who all lived in a cul-de-sac. I don't think our parents saw much of us from the age of six onwards or so, at least not during the summer months, except for the meals.
slavik81 9y ago
The minimum age for a child to be home alone in Ontario is 16? How did that become law?
- ghaff 9y ago
  I've seen this reported on several occasions but it's not clear whether it's actually true. See, e.g. https://www.thestar.com/life/parent/2014/08/28/when_can_kids_stay_home_alone.html https://www.thestar.com/life/parent/2014/08/28/when_can_kids... Certainly, it would be pretty ridiculous in general if it were. That would have been a problem with my going off to college :-)
  - slavik81 9y ago
    The source seems to be 79 (3) of the Child and Family Services Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. C.11 [1]. I'm not a lawyer, but from my reading, it seems like specifying an age actually narrows the law. It's more like a maximum than a minimum: --- Leaving child unattended (3) No person having charge of a child less than sixteen years of age shall leave the child without making provision for his or her supervision and care that is reasonable in the circumstances. ---- Having read through a bunch of this stuff to find the law in question, things actually look pretty reasonable. If there's a problem, it seems it would be with the application or interpretation of the law by the bureaucracy or the courts. Legislation can correct those things, but I guess my point is that it looks reasonable, so there's no obvious easy fix. [1] https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90c11 https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90c11

eru 9y ago

When I was living in Sydney, it was striking that I never saw kids playing outside by themselves. Playgrounds always had more parents hovering than kids playing.

Piskvorrr 9y ago

Perhaps the lack of public transport is a significant factor ("if you-the-parent are driving the kids around anyway, what do you do at destination? Hovering like a helicopter is the easiest option") - I got a traffic pass, a watch and a time of curfew when starting 3rd grade, and that was it (no cellphones back then). Most of my classmates had a similar arrangement, what with 5-20 minutes of public transport commute; in a city where public transit is both cheap and plentiful, it would not make sense to even own a car for most people, other than a status symbol.

Feniks 9y ago

Yeah this is a big factor. Where I live everyone goes to school in their area. Dense population means kids can walk or at the most cycle to school. At least in primary.

somethingsimple 9y ago

It seems that the Seattle public school district gives out public transit cards to kids in middle and high school, depending on circumstances and school bus availability. I’m not sure how the system works, but I’m about to find out since I’m moving there next year and have a kid going to school.