16 ms·

From the article: "Two or three decades ago, children were roaming neighborhoods in mixed-age groups, playing pretty unsupervised or lightly supervised. They w

by AmVess 8y ago

From the article: "Two or three decades ago, children were roaming neighborhoods in mixed-age groups, playing pretty unsupervised or lightly supervised. They were able to resolve disputes, which they had a strong motivation to because they wanted to keep playing. They also planned their time and managed their games. They had a lot of autonomy, which also feeds self-esteem and mental health." Neighborhoods used to be packed with kids running around all the time. Now they are empty. There are quite a few kids in my neighborhood, but the only time you see them is when they get off the school bus. None of them roam the neighborhood or anywhere. There is a huge park in my neighborhood, too. It's always empty. I never see packs of kids walking on the sidewalks going to the theater or to corner stores. School playgrounds are empty and stay empty unless school is in session. When I was growing up from age 6, my mom would tell me to be home by dinner, and I'd spend all day running around with friends or adventuring by myself. This was the norm for every kid I grew up with.

nighthawk1 8y ago
As a youth I definitely had the experience of going off on my bike and being home by dinner. The difference though now is there is a lot more for kids to do inside the house. Video games, netflix, smart phones and the like are heavily influencing behavior.
- LoSboccacc 8y ago
  A lot of kid grew up playing at home and reading books it’s not just a technology problem even if for sure it’s not making thing better Introvert kids still had to socialize and learn to cope in school. Now that any negatove expression is heavily suppressed and everyone is interacting on social trough technology with a moltitude of aliases there’s little feedback a kid gets to correct his behaviour
aedocw 8y ago
We are pretty lucky to live in a neighborhood with kinds in the same age range as ours. All the parents know each other and the kids know where they're allowed to go. This includes a few acres of forest. Our kids are allowed to go out and roam, they just have to give us a general idea of where they're going to be playing (or they just bring a cheap walkie-talkie and check in occasionally). It's exactly how I grew up and I'm grateful for it. It makes me sad to see how many kids are growing up without the autonomy they need.
- brightball 8y ago
  Walkie talkies are under utilized IMO
  - remarkEon 8y ago
    For my birthday one year (in the spring) I got a set of walkie talkies. The neighborhood kids across the street had got the same set for Christmas that year (our parents probably coordinated it). The next two summers (age 11-12) were probably the most fun I’d have as a kid. Climbing up trees to “spy” on the neighborhood and calling in “intelligence reports” to “home base”. Just being a young boy in a neighborhood with lots of kids. Incredible fun.
    - mythrwy 8y ago
      I got a set of walkie talkies at about age 10 but one broke. So one night I was trying to fix it (testing it with the good one) when I heard a foreign voice crackling through. After getting over the initial surprise I talked to the person and found out it was the neighbor kid playing with his. I didn't even know he had walkie talkies. We were both quite excited. Such a rare and magical event at that age.
- jaiprabhu 8y ago
  Do you mind sharing where you live? State will do - just curious :-)
dominotw 8y ago
> Neighborhoods used to be packed with kids running around all the time. still the case in my puertorican neighborhood in chicago.
- spamizbad 8y ago
  Yep. Same for me in boring old Jefferson Park. I’m looking forward to when my kids are old enough and I can just send them out of the house and play.
- selectodude 8y ago
  Cities are remarkably old-school. It's the suburbs that are the scourge on childhood development. Which is ironic because the whole reason people moved to the suburbs was that they were "safer for children".
  - hsljekskfh 8y ago
    i just moved to portland from sf and my experience has been the opposite. the city west of the river is almost entirely suburbs with 20mph speed limits where bikers, teenagers, house cats and kids walking dogs all feel pretty safe.
erentz 8y ago
And this overprotection of children is now beginning to stretch into their college years too: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/opinion/nature-students-risk.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/opinion/nature-student...
- agumonkey 8y ago
  I live near a forest, we were unattended.. we all survived. Sometimes I laugh.
  - matte_black 8y ago
    Isn’t this survivor bias? Plenty of kids were killed or died gruesome deaths in older days.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      > Plenty of kids were killed or died gruesome deaths in older days. How "old" are you talking about here?
      - carlivar 8y ago
        Probably referring to the Black Forest of medieval Germany.
    - paublyrne 8y ago
      Some, sure, but there was hardly an epidemic.
      - PrimHelios 8y ago
        Meanwhile, there were literal epidemics of children dying when my mother was a kid.
    - rco8786 8y ago
      Yes, accidents happen. But this is precisely the type of thinking that got us where we are today. Millions of kids playing in the forest and a few get hurt so we keep them inside now.
dominotw 8y ago
George Carlin joked about this 'child worship' years and years ago. :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0MKBdD2FGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0MKBdD2FGA
abalone 8y ago
Since we're doing anecdotes I have exactly the opposite experience. Nearby parks are full of kids, mixed ages, playing lightly supervised, making up their own games. But so goes anecdotal evidence. Anyone know if the book cites evidence supporting the premise that kids these days are "worse behaved"?
- rdlecler1 8y ago
  Where do you live?
  - abalone 8y ago
    SF!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bonniemuffin 8y ago
In my area, school playgrounds are usually locked up during non-school hours, but there's been a recent movement to change that. Soon the elementary school near my house will be open for general use on weekends, which seems like such an easy and obvious win. I can't believe it took them so long to do it.
- protomyth 8y ago
  It’s a liability issue. Look up “inviting hazard”.
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    Here in Poland, explicit public spaces are excluded from this specific hazard unless they install really dangerous implements. Instances where operators of such spaces were sued over some kid climbing on a basketball hoop or soccer goal and the thing breaking have been dismissed summarily because there was no negligence involved - the warnings were there, the items in question in good shape. Oversight is not strictly required in a public space either. This is a simple difference in law. Inviting hazard would be if you installed for instance a tall climbing wall, where the primary use is dangerous. This is also a reason that anything walkable higher than a certain height needs guardrails.
mirimir 8y ago
Same for me. I could range as far as I could get on my bicycle, as long as I was home on time for dinner. And that meant that I had a lot of privacy. My behavior wasn't being monitored, 24/7.
Dowwie 8y ago
It's not just the children who don't socialize outside. I hardly see adults either. They pay landscapers to manage the property.
makewavesnotwar 8y ago
I think a lot of this comes from the general movement of America towards a police state. I have heard several stories of people having the cops called on them for allowing their children to play unsupervised. Some places consider it neglect to do so. Pair that with the fact that we're giving kids hyper-addictive computer terminals with access to games and the internet and an endless landscape of different things to explore with an understanding of anonymity/privacy that they can't get anywhere else and no judgement because all the other kids are doing the same thing and you've created an environment where parents are more likely to try to keep their kids inside, and the kids distracted enough to accept their imprisonment.
- smelendez 8y ago
  Adults get the police called on them for walking in the suburbs, too. It's obviously worse for people of color, but it happens to white people as well. Maybe most famously to Bob Dylan about a decade ago: https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/GMA/jersey-homeowner-calls-cops-bob-dylan/story%3fid=8331830 https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/GMA/jersey-h...
  - NLips 8y ago
    What's sad is that the focus of the article is how a young person didn't recognise Bob Dylan, and there's an implication that if the police don't know you're a famous musician, it's no OK to walk in the rain.
- Clubber 8y ago
  >America towards a police state. I think this and what the article discusses are symptoms of the same thing: constant fear of everything. I'm not sure if it's that Americans scare easily, or they are constantly barraged by hyperbolic worst case scenarios everyday by the news (current business model), or a mixture of both. When FDR said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," he was keenly aware of this fear. Americans are easy to manipulate through this, there are many examples both current and historic. I'm not a big worrier about the boogieman; I realize chicken little when I hear him. The main thing I'm scared of with the kids is internet weirdos, so I tell kids never to put their real information online other than an email.
subpixel 8y ago
There was a great radio program a few years ago - which I cannot find at the moment - about a sociology study that focused on a small town in Vermont or New Hampshire in the 1970s where kids essentially ran free and just came home to eat. The program went back to the same town and interviewed the same kids, now parents, to find out how they were raising their own children. Fascinatingly, they had all become strict parents who never let their kids out of their sight.
- wolfgke 8y ago
  > The program went back to the same town and interviewed the same kids, now parents, to find out how they were raising their own children. Fascinatingly, they had all become strict parents who never let their kids out of their sight. Just some kind of hypothesis based on personal observation: The children who were really untamed have a tendency not to become parents later on when grown up (I really don't want to try a shot in the dark for the reasons). Those who were "tamer among the wild" as children were tamed even more by society, procreated and are now strict parents.
  - ako 8y ago
    I blame televion, continuously watching crime, both real and fiction, conditions us to continuously be afraid.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- taneq 8y ago
  The kids who roamed free know how many scrapes and near misses they got into, and they don't want to expose their own kids to the same hazards?
old-gregg 8y ago
It's been like this since early 2000s, meaning that the generation of overly protected, caged and "play-dating" children are now adults and entering the workforce. Sadly, we don't have anyone in their 20s in our small company, but I'm wondering what kind of consequences this upbringing style has inflicted on people. Young HN readers, what do you think?
snarf21 8y ago
There is another change too. Houses used to have porches, elderly people sat on them. They knew every kid and who they belong to. Now they don't, everyone is inside on their electronics. People don't even know their neighbors names. Today's kids are not encouraged to be kids. They are playing "travel" soccer at age 6, 5 nights a week and traveling on the weekends. I not claiming one or the other is a panacea but there are lots of factors and even more we can't even truly know.
- rubidium 8y ago
  That and there were a lot more moms at home. Fall off your bike and gash open your arm and some adult would probably see you pretty quickly and come to help if you needed it. And likely know or be able to locate your parents. Eyes on the streets is a Jane Jacobs concept that applies here.
- csomar 8y ago
  Yea I wonder why no one is paying attention to this. If you don't know you environment, you can't let your kids go "there". I don't know even my next door neighbours in my building. Have never seen them. Sometimes I hear their TV plays but that's about it.
  - tonyarkles 8y ago
    > I don't know even my next door neighbours in my building. Have never seen them. That's a regret that I have from my youth. I lived in several apartments and didn't really make much of an effort to get to know any of the neighbours. At one place, only after having lived there for 9 months, did I discover that my next door neighbour was someone I went to high school with! It's really nice to be able to just walk over and knock on the door (at reasonable times, of course) to have a chat with someone or borrow a cup of sugar or whatever. We've been really making a conscious effort at our recently bought house to get to know all of the neighbours. It's really awesome! We're not close with anyone yet, we're going to have a BBQ together in a couple of weeks and get to know each other better. It's a really great feeling knowing that, even if you're not close, the people around you have got your back.
microcolonel 8y ago
You know the weird thing about CPS is that well they won't arrest the people who are going to kill their kids by running them off a cliff but they'll sure as hell bug you if you leave your kids in the backyard without watching.
lighthazard 8y ago
The children I know are now playing online games with their friends. Instead of going to the park and still playing, they're at home talking on mic/chat and doing things online. Are things like 'resolve disputes' and 'planning time' still possible? Seems like it'd be even easier to communicate and discuss with the added benefit of less violent/aggressive confrontation.
musage 8y ago
> Neighborhoods used to be packed with kids running around all the time. Now they are empty. There are quite a few kids in my neighborhood, but the only time you see them is when they get off the school bus. None of them roam the neighborhood or anywhere. There is a huge park in my neighborhood, too. It's always empty. I never see packs of kids walking on the sidewalks going to the theater or to corner stores. School playgrounds are empty and stay empty unless school is in session. Everybody, watch "Momo". Or read it, but the movie is a wonderful, too. Anyway, just like 1984, it was NOT supposed to be a handbook.
toastermoster 8y ago
Until recently we had a few families in my neighborhood that had kids that played outside just like my brothers and I did as kids. They all recently upgraded their homes and moved out of the neighborhood though. Those kids were my dog's best buddies.
slykar 8y ago
I had the same feeling in my area, until I came out of the house myself, just to see a lot of youngsters in parks, chilling on the bench, playing on the playground. But it's just in the summer. I think back when I was a kid we didn't have anything better to do on colder, moody days. Heck, I myself preferred to stay home and play video games.
teekert 8y ago
And the bad thing is that now people are getting used to the empty streets, driving faster, paying less attention, assuming the streets will be empty. It will be very hard to go back.
scandinavegan 8y ago
My parents have five siblings each, but I only have a sister. I know it sounds bad, but I wonder if having less kids makes you worry more about keeping them safe. Perhaps my parents just sort of continued with how they grew up, but limited me and my sister a bit more, and I'm limiting my kids even more? Or it could have to do with media, where my grandparents wouldn't get news about abductions in the US and walk around worrying about that in their small Scandinavian village. Or it could be a time thing, where my grandparents just didn't have time to supervise the kids full time, so the older siblings had to guard the younger. Now, me and my wife will take turns to bring them to the park, and if we don't have time, the kids (at least the 5-year old) will have to stay indoors. I try to give my kids more freedom than I'm comfortable with, but I just know that if something happens, people around me will think I'm a neglectful parent if I let my 9-year old stay out until 8 PM on her own. I want to give her the opportunity to explore the neighborhood on her own, and learn how to navigate the world. I mostly worry about cars hitting her, because I've almost been run over a couple of times where cars should have stopped, but she has to learn to look out for herself.
- fangsout 8y ago
  I absolutely think this is at least one factor. Just look at how parents treat their first baby. Myself and all of my friends obsessed over the sleeping schedule and eating and fear of every little illness. Then child #2 comes along and you're less worried about everything. One of my friends has 3 children and we were just talking yesterday about how he manages, and he and his wife basically laughed and said that they try their best and just make sure the children are fed and clothed. There's only so much time available, you can't micromanage every detail and still have a healthy marriage and personal life.
snowwolf 8y ago
This is a steady trend that is down to numerous factors the least of which I’d ascribe to overprotective parents. I saw a map a while ago showing the reducing radius from the home children could range over the last 100 years. And a lot of it boils down to overpopulation. 1. Cars. There are significantly more and faster cars on the roads. As a child I could play on my street without a car passing in a couple of hours. Now a car passes down our street every few minutes. And there are more congested intersections for kids to cross these days. 2. Green spaces. We used to have multiple green spaces to roam and cross through. Nowadays those are all built up with property developments. 3. Crazy people. The amount of violent crime against children has increased.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Cars are the big one. More and more our cities are optimized for cars, not for people. Children and the elderly suffer most from this development.
- ztjio 8y ago
  1. Despite a massive increase in traffic, deaths have stayed flat. So whatever you are interpreting here, it’s not based on the reality you claim it is. 2. This will be highly variable depending on area, but, nearby us where it looks from the door to be devoid of green/open space, are 3 parks within short walking distance, a nature preserve, and 100 miles of interconnected isolated paths for cycling which then connect to many, many other greenspaces. And that happened largely by accident (and partly by occasional spikes of local effort to fill in the gaps.) Maybe you need to look more closely to see just how much opportunity there is for play. And 3. That can’t possibly be true, given the MASSIVE decrease in all crime and especially violent crime in the last 30 years. Please back up your claims with citations or you just contribute to the same hysteria that is ruining future generations.
  - casefields 8y ago
    Glad you call him out because it's absolutely not true.
  - neumann 8y ago
dingaling 8y ago
> School playgrounds are empty and stay empty unless school is in session. The kids at my local school used to play for hours after classes but last week were told they have to leave within 10 minutes of the bell for 'liability reasons' Combined with the volume of traffic nowadays and the conversion of local parks to pay-per-use 'sportplexes', most parents unfortunately just decide to coop their children in their gardens. Kids don't want AstroTurf pitches and climbing walls, they just need quiet residentual streets or a brownfield site with sticks and ponds. But they're gone.
- gtlondon 8y ago
  This is a great point that kids don't want AstroTurf and climbing walls -- ultimately they just want to play. Its the same in the UK. Schools close within 15 minutes unless you pay extra to stay. On the plus side: the over population and diversity in London specifically means that kids here are actually quite good at behaving / communicating as they tend to be in transitional groups.
  - fatnoah 8y ago
    "This is a great point that kids don't want AstroTurf and climbing walls -- ultimately they just want to play." My son's school goes daily to an amazing playground with a 20ft high climbing structure, swings, rock wall, zip line, and other school stuff. He and his friends usually end up playing with sticks in the dirt in the one part of the playground not covered in wood chips or a rubberized ground.
fatnoah 8y ago
"Neighborhoods used to be packed with kids running around all the time." Exactly how my childhood was, too. "Be back by dinner, call if you'll be late" were my instructions as a kid. My wife and I are about to buy a house and we drove all over our target town, and eventually settled on the neighborhood where we saw the most kids outside playing and/or roaming around in a group.
dagw 8y ago
I know it's trite, but I blame computers. I have an 8 year old and getting her out of the house is often a struggle. I'd love of her to head out into the woods behind our house with her friends have adventures, but the truth is that there is nothing in those woods that can compete with Minecraft of Fornite or whatever.
madshiva 8y ago
"They had a lot of autonomy, which also feeds self-esteem and mental health." Yes, they had too much autonomy that resulted of violance, harassment of other kid. Maybe you was living a perfect life, but it's not the case of every kid. Anyway the old guy will every say : It's was better in the past, insert one of two arguments. Also maybe if you take a dayoff you will see these kid playing again on the park and stop telling that is worst now because it's not the case at all. It just that you, like everybody only remember the good part of their childhood.
dragonwriter 8y ago
The key and accurate part of that is this: “Two or three decades ago, children were roaming neighborhoods in mixed-age groups, playing pretty unsupervised or lightly supervised.” The rest is pretty dubious differences, but this is key because kids were misbehaving all the time then, too, they just had lots of opportunity to do it without adult supervision. Which made it easier to conform to restrictive rules when they were supervised, because the opportunity to act without constraints was usually right around the corner.

by AmVess 8y ago

nighthawk1 8y ago

As a youth I definitely had the experience of going off on my bike and being home by dinner. The difference though now is there is a lot more for kids to do inside the house. Video games, netflix, smart phones and the like are heavily influencing behavior.

LoSboccacc 8y ago
A lot of kid grew up playing at home and reading books it’s not just a technology problem even if for sure it’s not making thing better Introvert kids still had to socialize and learn to cope in school. Now that any negatove expression is heavily suppressed and everyone is interacting on social trough technology with a moltitude of aliases there’s little feedback a kid gets to correct his behaviour

aedocw 8y ago

We are pretty lucky to live in a neighborhood with kinds in the same age range as ours. All the parents know each other and the kids know where they're allowed to go. This includes a few acres of forest. Our kids are allowed to go out and roam, they just have to give us a general idea of where they're going to be playing (or they just bring a cheap walkie-talkie and check in occasionally). It's exactly how I grew up and I'm grateful for it. It makes me sad to see how many kids are growing up without the autonomy they need.

brightball 8y ago
Walkie talkies are under utilized IMO
- remarkEon 8y ago
  For my birthday one year (in the spring) I got a set of walkie talkies. The neighborhood kids across the street had got the same set for Christmas that year (our parents probably coordinated it). The next two summers (age 11-12) were probably the most fun I’d have as a kid. Climbing up trees to “spy” on the neighborhood and calling in “intelligence reports” to “home base”. Just being a young boy in a neighborhood with lots of kids. Incredible fun.
  - mythrwy 8y ago
    I got a set of walkie talkies at about age 10 but one broke. So one night I was trying to fix it (testing it with the good one) when I heard a foreign voice crackling through. After getting over the initial surprise I talked to the person and found out it was the neighbor kid playing with his. I didn't even know he had walkie talkies. We were both quite excited. Such a rare and magical event at that age.
jaiprabhu 8y ago
Do you mind sharing where you live? State will do - just curious :-)

dominotw 8y ago

> Neighborhoods used to be packed with kids running around all the time. still the case in my puertorican neighborhood in chicago.

spamizbad 8y ago
Yep. Same for me in boring old Jefferson Park. I’m looking forward to when my kids are old enough and I can just send them out of the house and play.
selectodude 8y ago
Cities are remarkably old-school. It's the suburbs that are the scourge on childhood development. Which is ironic because the whole reason people moved to the suburbs was that they were "safer for children".
- hsljekskfh 8y ago
  i just moved to portland from sf and my experience has been the opposite. the city west of the river is almost entirely suburbs with 20mph speed limits where bikers, teenagers, house cats and kids walking dogs all feel pretty safe.

erentz 8y ago

And this overprotection of children is now beginning to stretch into their college years too: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/opinion/nature-students-risk.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/opinion/nature-student...

agumonkey 8y ago
I live near a forest, we were unattended.. we all survived. Sometimes I laugh.
- matte_black 8y ago
  Isn’t this survivor bias? Plenty of kids were killed or died gruesome deaths in older days.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    > Plenty of kids were killed or died gruesome deaths in older days. How "old" are you talking about here?
    - carlivar 8y ago
      Probably referring to the Black Forest of medieval Germany.
  - paublyrne 8y ago
    Some, sure, but there was hardly an epidemic.
    - PrimHelios 8y ago
      Meanwhile, there were literal epidemics of children dying when my mother was a kid.
  - rco8786 8y ago
    Yes, accidents happen. But this is precisely the type of thinking that got us where we are today. Millions of kids playing in the forest and a few get hurt so we keep them inside now.

dominotw 8y ago

George Carlin joked about this 'child worship' years and years ago. :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0MKBdD2FGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0MKBdD2FGA

abalone 8y ago

Since we're doing anecdotes I have exactly the opposite experience. Nearby parks are full of kids, mixed ages, playing lightly supervised, making up their own games. But so goes anecdotal evidence. Anyone know if the book cites evidence supporting the premise that kids these days are "worse behaved"?

rdlecler1 8y ago
Where do you live?
- abalone 8y ago
  SF!

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

bonniemuffin 8y ago

In my area, school playgrounds are usually locked up during non-school hours, but there's been a recent movement to change that. Soon the elementary school near my house will be open for general use on weekends, which seems like such an easy and obvious win. I can't believe it took them so long to do it.

protomyth 8y ago
It’s a liability issue. Look up “inviting hazard”.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Here in Poland, explicit public spaces are excluded from this specific hazard unless they install really dangerous implements. Instances where operators of such spaces were sued over some kid climbing on a basketball hoop or soccer goal and the thing breaking have been dismissed summarily because there was no negligence involved - the warnings were there, the items in question in good shape. Oversight is not strictly required in a public space either. This is a simple difference in law. Inviting hazard would be if you installed for instance a tall climbing wall, where the primary use is dangerous. This is also a reason that anything walkable higher than a certain height needs guardrails.

mirimir 8y ago

Same for me. I could range as far as I could get on my bicycle, as long as I was home on time for dinner. And that meant that I had a lot of privacy. My behavior wasn't being monitored, 24/7.

Dowwie 8y ago

It's not just the children who don't socialize outside. I hardly see adults either. They pay landscapers to manage the property.

makewavesnotwar 8y ago

I think a lot of this comes from the general movement of America towards a police state. I have heard several stories of people having the cops called on them for allowing their children to play unsupervised. Some places consider it neglect to do so. Pair that with the fact that we're giving kids hyper-addictive computer terminals with access to games and the internet and an endless landscape of different things to explore with an understanding of anonymity/privacy that they can't get anywhere else and no judgement because all the other kids are doing the same thing and you've created an environment where parents are more likely to try to keep their kids inside, and the kids distracted enough to accept their imprisonment.

smelendez 8y ago
Adults get the police called on them for walking in the suburbs, too. It's obviously worse for people of color, but it happens to white people as well. Maybe most famously to Bob Dylan about a decade ago: https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/GMA/jersey-homeowner-calls-cops-bob-dylan/story%3fid=8331830 https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/GMA/jersey-h...
- NLips 8y ago
  What's sad is that the focus of the article is how a young person didn't recognise Bob Dylan, and there's an implication that if the police don't know you're a famous musician, it's no OK to walk in the rain.
Clubber 8y ago
>America towards a police state. I think this and what the article discusses are symptoms of the same thing: constant fear of everything. I'm not sure if it's that Americans scare easily, or they are constantly barraged by hyperbolic worst case scenarios everyday by the news (current business model), or a mixture of both. When FDR said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," he was keenly aware of this fear. Americans are easy to manipulate through this, there are many examples both current and historic. I'm not a big worrier about the boogieman; I realize chicken little when I hear him. The main thing I'm scared of with the kids is internet weirdos, so I tell kids never to put their real information online other than an email.

subpixel 8y ago

There was a great radio program a few years ago - which I cannot find at the moment - about a sociology study that focused on a small town in Vermont or New Hampshire in the 1970s where kids essentially ran free and just came home to eat. The program went back to the same town and interviewed the same kids, now parents, to find out how they were raising their own children. Fascinatingly, they had all become strict parents who never let their kids out of their sight.

wolfgke 8y ago
> The program went back to the same town and interviewed the same kids, now parents, to find out how they were raising their own children. Fascinatingly, they had all become strict parents who never let their kids out of their sight. Just some kind of hypothesis based on personal observation: The children who were really untamed have a tendency not to become parents later on when grown up (I really don't want to try a shot in the dark for the reasons). Those who were "tamer among the wild" as children were tamed even more by society, procreated and are now strict parents.
- ako 8y ago
  I blame televion, continuously watching crime, both real and fiction, conditions us to continuously be afraid.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
taneq 8y ago
The kids who roamed free know how many scrapes and near misses they got into, and they don't want to expose their own kids to the same hazards?

old-gregg 8y ago

It's been like this since early 2000s, meaning that the generation of overly protected, caged and "play-dating" children are now adults and entering the workforce. Sadly, we don't have anyone in their 20s in our small company, but I'm wondering what kind of consequences this upbringing style has inflicted on people. Young HN readers, what do you think?

snarf21 8y ago

There is another change too. Houses used to have porches, elderly people sat on them. They knew every kid and who they belong to. Now they don't, everyone is inside on their electronics. People don't even know their neighbors names. Today's kids are not encouraged to be kids. They are playing "travel" soccer at age 6, 5 nights a week and traveling on the weekends. I not claiming one or the other is a panacea but there are lots of factors and even more we can't even truly know.

rubidium 8y ago
That and there were a lot more moms at home. Fall off your bike and gash open your arm and some adult would probably see you pretty quickly and come to help if you needed it. And likely know or be able to locate your parents. Eyes on the streets is a Jane Jacobs concept that applies here.
csomar 8y ago
Yea I wonder why no one is paying attention to this. If you don't know you environment, you can't let your kids go "there". I don't know even my next door neighbours in my building. Have never seen them. Sometimes I hear their TV plays but that's about it.
- tonyarkles 8y ago
  > I don't know even my next door neighbours in my building. Have never seen them. That's a regret that I have from my youth. I lived in several apartments and didn't really make much of an effort to get to know any of the neighbours. At one place, only after having lived there for 9 months, did I discover that my next door neighbour was someone I went to high school with! It's really nice to be able to just walk over and knock on the door (at reasonable times, of course) to have a chat with someone or borrow a cup of sugar or whatever. We've been really making a conscious effort at our recently bought house to get to know all of the neighbours. It's really awesome! We're not close with anyone yet, we're going to have a BBQ together in a couple of weeks and get to know each other better. It's a really great feeling knowing that, even if you're not close, the people around you have got your back.

microcolonel 8y ago

You know the weird thing about CPS is that well they won't arrest the people who are going to kill their kids by running them off a cliff but they'll sure as hell bug you if you leave your kids in the backyard without watching.

lighthazard 8y ago

The children I know are now playing online games with their friends. Instead of going to the park and still playing, they're at home talking on mic/chat and doing things online. Are things like 'resolve disputes' and 'planning time' still possible? Seems like it'd be even easier to communicate and discuss with the added benefit of less violent/aggressive confrontation.

musage 8y ago

> Neighborhoods used to be packed with kids running around all the time. Now they are empty. There are quite a few kids in my neighborhood, but the only time you see them is when they get off the school bus. None of them roam the neighborhood or anywhere. There is a huge park in my neighborhood, too. It's always empty. I never see packs of kids walking on the sidewalks going to the theater or to corner stores. School playgrounds are empty and stay empty unless school is in session. Everybody, watch "Momo". Or read it, but the movie is a wonderful, too. Anyway, just like 1984, it was NOT supposed to be a handbook.

toastermoster 8y ago

Until recently we had a few families in my neighborhood that had kids that played outside just like my brothers and I did as kids. They all recently upgraded their homes and moved out of the neighborhood though. Those kids were my dog's best buddies.

slykar 8y ago

I had the same feeling in my area, until I came out of the house myself, just to see a lot of youngsters in parks, chilling on the bench, playing on the playground. But it's just in the summer. I think back when I was a kid we didn't have anything better to do on colder, moody days. Heck, I myself preferred to stay home and play video games.

teekert 8y ago

And the bad thing is that now people are getting used to the empty streets, driving faster, paying less attention, assuming the streets will be empty. It will be very hard to go back.

scandinavegan 8y ago

My parents have five siblings each, but I only have a sister. I know it sounds bad, but I wonder if having less kids makes you worry more about keeping them safe. Perhaps my parents just sort of continued with how they grew up, but limited me and my sister a bit more, and I'm limiting my kids even more? Or it could have to do with media, where my grandparents wouldn't get news about abductions in the US and walk around worrying about that in their small Scandinavian village. Or it could be a time thing, where my grandparents just didn't have time to supervise the kids full time, so the older siblings had to guard the younger. Now, me and my wife will take turns to bring them to the park, and if we don't have time, the kids (at least the 5-year old) will have to stay indoors. I try to give my kids more freedom than I'm comfortable with, but I just know that if something happens, people around me will think I'm a neglectful parent if I let my 9-year old stay out until 8 PM on her own. I want to give her the opportunity to explore the neighborhood on her own, and learn how to navigate the world. I mostly worry about cars hitting her, because I've almost been run over a couple of times where cars should have stopped, but she has to learn to look out for herself.

fangsout 8y ago
I absolutely think this is at least one factor. Just look at how parents treat their first baby. Myself and all of my friends obsessed over the sleeping schedule and eating and fear of every little illness. Then child #2 comes along and you're less worried about everything. One of my friends has 3 children and we were just talking yesterday about how he manages, and he and his wife basically laughed and said that they try their best and just make sure the children are fed and clothed. There's only so much time available, you can't micromanage every detail and still have a healthy marriage and personal life.

snowwolf 8y ago

This is a steady trend that is down to numerous factors the least of which I’d ascribe to overprotective parents. I saw a map a while ago showing the reducing radius from the home children could range over the last 100 years. And a lot of it boils down to overpopulation. 1. Cars. There are significantly more and faster cars on the roads. As a child I could play on my street without a car passing in a couple of hours. Now a car passes down our street every few minutes. And there are more congested intersections for kids to cross these days. 2. Green spaces. We used to have multiple green spaces to roam and cross through. Nowadays those are all built up with property developments. 3. Crazy people. The amount of violent crime against children has increased.

adrianN 8y ago
Cars are the big one. More and more our cities are optimized for cars, not for people. Children and the elderly suffer most from this development.
ztjio 8y ago
1. Despite a massive increase in traffic, deaths have stayed flat. So whatever you are interpreting here, it’s not based on the reality you claim it is. 2. This will be highly variable depending on area, but, nearby us where it looks from the door to be devoid of green/open space, are 3 parks within short walking distance, a nature preserve, and 100 miles of interconnected isolated paths for cycling which then connect to many, many other greenspaces. And that happened largely by accident (and partly by occasional spikes of local effort to fill in the gaps.) Maybe you need to look more closely to see just how much opportunity there is for play. And 3. That can’t possibly be true, given the MASSIVE decrease in all crime and especially violent crime in the last 30 years. Please back up your claims with citations or you just contribute to the same hysteria that is ruining future generations.
- casefields 8y ago
  Glad you call him out because it's absolutely not true.
- neumann 8y ago

dingaling 8y ago

> School playgrounds are empty and stay empty unless school is in session. The kids at my local school used to play for hours after classes but last week were told they have to leave within 10 minutes of the bell for 'liability reasons' Combined with the volume of traffic nowadays and the conversion of local parks to pay-per-use 'sportplexes', most parents unfortunately just decide to coop their children in their gardens. Kids don't want AstroTurf pitches and climbing walls, they just need quiet residentual streets or a brownfield site with sticks and ponds. But they're gone.

gtlondon 8y ago
This is a great point that kids don't want AstroTurf and climbing walls -- ultimately they just want to play. Its the same in the UK. Schools close within 15 minutes unless you pay extra to stay. On the plus side: the over population and diversity in London specifically means that kids here are actually quite good at behaving / communicating as they tend to be in transitional groups.
- fatnoah 8y ago
  "This is a great point that kids don't want AstroTurf and climbing walls -- ultimately they just want to play." My son's school goes daily to an amazing playground with a 20ft high climbing structure, swings, rock wall, zip line, and other school stuff. He and his friends usually end up playing with sticks in the dirt in the one part of the playground not covered in wood chips or a rubberized ground.

fatnoah 8y ago

"Neighborhoods used to be packed with kids running around all the time." Exactly how my childhood was, too. "Be back by dinner, call if you'll be late" were my instructions as a kid. My wife and I are about to buy a house and we drove all over our target town, and eventually settled on the neighborhood where we saw the most kids outside playing and/or roaming around in a group.

dagw 8y ago

I know it's trite, but I blame computers. I have an 8 year old and getting her out of the house is often a struggle. I'd love of her to head out into the woods behind our house with her friends have adventures, but the truth is that there is nothing in those woods that can compete with Minecraft of Fornite or whatever.

madshiva 8y ago

"They had a lot of autonomy, which also feeds self-esteem and mental health." Yes, they had too much autonomy that resulted of violance, harassment of other kid. Maybe you was living a perfect life, but it's not the case of every kid. Anyway the old guy will every say : It's was better in the past, insert one of two arguments. Also maybe if you take a dayoff you will see these kid playing again on the park and stop telling that is worst now because it's not the case at all. It just that you, like everybody only remember the good part of their childhood.

dragonwriter 8y ago

The key and accurate part of that is this: “Two or three decades ago, children were roaming neighborhoods in mixed-age groups, playing pretty unsupervised or lightly supervised.” The rest is pretty dubious differences, but this is key because kids were misbehaving all the time then, too, they just had lots of opportunity to do it without adult supervision. Which made it easier to conform to restrictive rules when they were supervised, because the opportunity to act without constraints was usually right around the corner.