8 ms·

I tend to agree with you. Although I also don't have any hard evidence, it seems to me that growing up in the 80's, there was far less parental supervision of k

I tend to agree with you. Although I also don't have any hard evidence, it seems to me that growing up in the 80's, there was far less parental supervision of kids then there is now. In the summertime during school break, even as early as elementary school probably 3rd grade, we would take off on our bikes and roam without any supervision. As long as we were home by sundown we wouldn't be in any trouble.

dragonwriter 9y ago
This is definitely true, and driven in part by media-driven hysteria that has led to the decades of the perception that child abduction and similar child targeting crimes are on the rise, while the reverse has been the case.
- thwiv 9y ago
  I mean, it could be that child abduction is falling because the media warns parents and they all keep better watch of their children.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    It could be, though it was falling for a couple decades before the media attention started driving the widespread belief that it was increasing, and the behavior changed that resulted from that belief.
    - mrguyorama 9y ago
      There's also the fact that children are typically hurt by people they know, not strangers
      - thousandautumns 9y ago
        Again, its hard to separate that phenomenon from potentially confounding effects. Is the fact that children are typically hurt by people they know the result of parents being reluctant to let their kids out on the street by themselves, thereby limiting the opportunities for potential strangers to harm them?
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        Again, the effect precedes the behavior change, so is unlikely to be a result of it.
- hrktb 9y ago
  I think it’s not just that. For instance 20 years ago there was public phone booths everywhere. A kid would just need a few coins and the house number to do a call, now you’d need a cell phone, and giving one to a 5~8 year kid is still not practical. Or I remember shopping at local shops enough to know their faces and names, or ask shop owner if the other kids where nearby. I don’t think my kid knows anyone other than the bakery people, because local shops have nothing for him at this point. Same with police or church member perception, I think our generation is less OK to just say to a kid “if there’s any problem just trust the police”. It becomes a weird and complex message of what the institution’s goal is, what’s OK and not OK for them to do, what’s the warning signs, what to do in case stuff gets weird etc. TL;DR: A lot of stuff changed in the last decades, we can’t just blindly do the same as before.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > now you’d need a cell phone, and giving one to a 5~8 year kid is still not practical. I'm not sure about that; there are phones specifically designed for that market (e.g., Firefly), after all.
    - hrktb 9y ago
      There are, but it comes with the baggage of contracting an additional phone line, and more importantly having it charged at all times and on the kid. Even just the risk of breaking, losing or getting it stolen is not negligeable. It’s a viable option depending on the kid and the environment , I just feel kids phone are still too clunky to be worth it. I’d prefer to go straight for a regular smartphone once the kid is big enough to properly take care of it.
  - appleiigs 9y ago
    > TL;DR: A lot of stuff changed in the last decades, we can’t just blindly do the same as before. When I was kid, I would get on my bike and wander too far. One time I was out and a thunderstorm came along. A nice lady invited me into her house to call home. Fast forward to university, a professor objected to me closing his office door with just the 2 of us in there (we're both male and I'm 6ft 200lbs). A colleague of his was falsely accused of being inappropriate to a student, so his policy is to keep the door open. The change in trust levels has changed pretty swiftly.
- mac01021 9y ago
  I'm not afraid of roving child snatchers. I'm afraid of all the cars that might accidentally run over a kid.
  - matte_black 9y ago
    This is the real reason I do not like kids wandering by themselves. Cars these days are way too fast and drivers are way too distracted texting or taking selfies or whatever and it is very easy to run over a kid who just happens to wander onto the road at exactly the wrong time. Even worse once all cars are silent and electric.
    - kgwgk 9y ago
      > Cars these days are way too fast Compared to the Ford Model T, maybe.
      - matte_black 9y ago
        No way, plot a graph of average horsepower and top speeds over time and you'll see it going up and to the right.
        kgwgk 9y ago
        If your point was that children should not wander along highways and race tracks I agree.
        astura 9y ago
        Your average driver drives way, way too fast on your average residential street and especially parking lots. I've noticed an uptick in the amount of times I've been illegally passed on residential streets in the last 10 years. My street is only around five-six small lot houses long and I'm almost impressed with how fast people manage to drive on it. Of course, I'm not sure that it has much to do with the speed of the car they are driving.
  - 9y ago
SirFatty 9y ago
It wasn't an 80's thing either... I grew up in the 70s/80s and we as kids were free to wander all day long (in the summer), just had to be home by dinner.
- toyg 9y ago
  Historically, kids were free to roam even more. Remember Sherlock Holmes “irregulars”? Packs of children roaming the streets used to be the norm in urban settings, where families were big but houses were not.
  - mac01021 9y ago
    1> The adventures of Sherlock Holmes are works of fiction. 2> I think the Baker Street Irregulars were homeless street urchins and did not have any choice but to roam the streets.
    - toyg 9y ago
      Conan Doyle wrote in this group of kids exactly because, at the time, it was a realistic and familiar sight to urban readers. There are lots of newspaper articles from back then (and if i remember correctly, even lots of Parliamentary tirades) about them. Over a certain size, they had become a matter of public order. More recently, I remember Dublin city centre in 1988, when Ireland was still pretty poor, being full of kids; and Marrakech or Fes in Morocco just 10 years ago.
AmVess 9y ago
My parents let me walk to the corner store alone when I was 5. By the time I was 8, I'd be gone all day doing who knows what; the big rule was to be home for dinner. Allowing your kids to roam around like that these days will get CPS called on you.
- toyg 9y ago
  That’s the thing: I’m very tempted to let my kids roam the neighborhood, like I did in Italy in the 80s. Where we live now, streets are pretty tight and have speed bumps, so it’s fairly safe. But if anybody gets nosey and calls child protection, I’m in a world of hurt from which I’ll probably never emerge. Yet another bit of the world ruined by Sun and Daily Mail.
  - Analemma_ 9y ago
    > But if anybody gets nosey and calls child protection, I’m in a world of hurt from which I’ll probably never emerge. I think this is a really overblown fear. Yeah, everyone "totally heard about someone" who had CPS called on them because they let their kid roam around, but I think this is mostly an urban legend about as likely as a terrorist attack. CPS usually has way more on their plate than they can handle with actual issues, I don't think they give a damn about free-range children.
    - abritinthebay 9y ago
      It happened to a friend of mine - twice even. However, and I think this is the important thing, CPS totally didn’t care after a quick 15min interview. The second time they even apologized and said they were mostly showing up because they had to. It was the same local busy-body calling them both times btw.
    - naasking 9y ago
      > CPS usually has way more on their plate than they can handle with actual issues Except they are required by law to follow-up on all reports. So you will be interviewed and inconvenienced at the very least.

dragonwriter 9y ago

This is definitely true, and driven in part by media-driven hysteria that has led to the decades of the perception that child abduction and similar child targeting crimes are on the rise, while the reverse has been the case.

thwiv 9y ago
I mean, it could be that child abduction is falling because the media warns parents and they all keep better watch of their children.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  It could be, though it was falling for a couple decades before the media attention started driving the widespread belief that it was increasing, and the behavior changed that resulted from that belief.
  - mrguyorama 9y ago
    There's also the fact that children are typically hurt by people they know, not strangers
    - thousandautumns 9y ago
      Again, its hard to separate that phenomenon from potentially confounding effects. Is the fact that children are typically hurt by people they know the result of parents being reluctant to let their kids out on the street by themselves, thereby limiting the opportunities for potential strangers to harm them?
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        Again, the effect precedes the behavior change, so is unlikely to be a result of it.
hrktb 9y ago
I think it’s not just that. For instance 20 years ago there was public phone booths everywhere. A kid would just need a few coins and the house number to do a call, now you’d need a cell phone, and giving one to a 5~8 year kid is still not practical. Or I remember shopping at local shops enough to know their faces and names, or ask shop owner if the other kids where nearby. I don’t think my kid knows anyone other than the bakery people, because local shops have nothing for him at this point. Same with police or church member perception, I think our generation is less OK to just say to a kid “if there’s any problem just trust the police”. It becomes a weird and complex message of what the institution’s goal is, what’s OK and not OK for them to do, what’s the warning signs, what to do in case stuff gets weird etc. TL;DR: A lot of stuff changed in the last decades, we can’t just blindly do the same as before.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > now you’d need a cell phone, and giving one to a 5~8 year kid is still not practical. I'm not sure about that; there are phones specifically designed for that market (e.g., Firefly), after all.
  - hrktb 9y ago
    There are, but it comes with the baggage of contracting an additional phone line, and more importantly having it charged at all times and on the kid. Even just the risk of breaking, losing or getting it stolen is not negligeable. It’s a viable option depending on the kid and the environment , I just feel kids phone are still too clunky to be worth it. I’d prefer to go straight for a regular smartphone once the kid is big enough to properly take care of it.
- appleiigs 9y ago
  > TL;DR: A lot of stuff changed in the last decades, we can’t just blindly do the same as before. When I was kid, I would get on my bike and wander too far. One time I was out and a thunderstorm came along. A nice lady invited me into her house to call home. Fast forward to university, a professor objected to me closing his office door with just the 2 of us in there (we're both male and I'm 6ft 200lbs). A colleague of his was falsely accused of being inappropriate to a student, so his policy is to keep the door open. The change in trust levels has changed pretty swiftly.
mac01021 9y ago
I'm not afraid of roving child snatchers. I'm afraid of all the cars that might accidentally run over a kid.
- matte_black 9y ago
  This is the real reason I do not like kids wandering by themselves. Cars these days are way too fast and drivers are way too distracted texting or taking selfies or whatever and it is very easy to run over a kid who just happens to wander onto the road at exactly the wrong time. Even worse once all cars are silent and electric.
  - kgwgk 9y ago
    > Cars these days are way too fast Compared to the Ford Model T, maybe.
    - matte_black 9y ago
      No way, plot a graph of average horsepower and top speeds over time and you'll see it going up and to the right.
      - kgwgk 9y ago
        If your point was that children should not wander along highways and race tracks I agree.
        astura 9y ago
        Your average driver drives way, way too fast on your average residential street and especially parking lots. I've noticed an uptick in the amount of times I've been illegally passed on residential streets in the last 10 years. My street is only around five-six small lot houses long and I'm almost impressed with how fast people manage to drive on it. Of course, I'm not sure that it has much to do with the speed of the car they are driving.
- 9y ago

SirFatty 9y ago

It wasn't an 80's thing either... I grew up in the 70s/80s and we as kids were free to wander all day long (in the summer), just had to be home by dinner.

toyg 9y ago
Historically, kids were free to roam even more. Remember Sherlock Holmes “irregulars”? Packs of children roaming the streets used to be the norm in urban settings, where families were big but houses were not.
- mac01021 9y ago
  1> The adventures of Sherlock Holmes are works of fiction. 2> I think the Baker Street Irregulars were homeless street urchins and did not have any choice but to roam the streets.
  - toyg 9y ago
    Conan Doyle wrote in this group of kids exactly because, at the time, it was a realistic and familiar sight to urban readers. There are lots of newspaper articles from back then (and if i remember correctly, even lots of Parliamentary tirades) about them. Over a certain size, they had become a matter of public order. More recently, I remember Dublin city centre in 1988, when Ireland was still pretty poor, being full of kids; and Marrakech or Fes in Morocco just 10 years ago.

AmVess 9y ago

My parents let me walk to the corner store alone when I was 5. By the time I was 8, I'd be gone all day doing who knows what; the big rule was to be home for dinner. Allowing your kids to roam around like that these days will get CPS called on you.

toyg 9y ago
That’s the thing: I’m very tempted to let my kids roam the neighborhood, like I did in Italy in the 80s. Where we live now, streets are pretty tight and have speed bumps, so it’s fairly safe. But if anybody gets nosey and calls child protection, I’m in a world of hurt from which I’ll probably never emerge. Yet another bit of the world ruined by Sun and Daily Mail.
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  > But if anybody gets nosey and calls child protection, I’m in a world of hurt from which I’ll probably never emerge. I think this is a really overblown fear. Yeah, everyone "totally heard about someone" who had CPS called on them because they let their kid roam around, but I think this is mostly an urban legend about as likely as a terrorist attack. CPS usually has way more on their plate than they can handle with actual issues, I don't think they give a damn about free-range children.
  - abritinthebay 9y ago
    It happened to a friend of mine - twice even. However, and I think this is the important thing, CPS totally didn’t care after a quick 15min interview. The second time they even apologized and said they were mostly showing up because they had to. It was the same local busy-body calling them both times btw.
  - naasking 9y ago
    > CPS usually has way more on their plate than they can handle with actual issues Except they are required by law to follow-up on all reports. So you will be interviewed and inconvenienced at the very least.