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This is largely an American problem. When I lived in Europe I didn't see people being "fearful" about letting their children roam the streets. During my recent

by buf 8y ago

This is largely an American problem. When I lived in Europe I didn't see people being "fearful" about letting their children roam the streets. During my recent trips to Japan, I also felt that same vibe. Children under the age of 10 taking the trains by themselves or with friends, even in Tokyo. American isolationism creates fearfulness.

magduf 8y ago
Exactly. I was in Germany recently and saw small children walking home from school alone. In America, this can get parents arrested in many states. In Japan, they basically force kids to walk to school without parents when they're 7-8 years old. If I ever have kids, I'd want to raise them someplace like that, not in a country where I'm legally required to be a helicopter parent until the kid is a legal adult.
- GuiA 8y ago
  Raising kids in Japan means that you’re raising them in a culture that has an alarmingly high youth suicide rate [0], and that your daughter taking the subway on her own is likely to be sexually assaulted [1]. And since the original link is about quality youth playtime, let’s not forget all the hours spent at cram schools in the evenings and weekends if you want a shot at a decent university. I’m not a big fan of the US either when it comes to parenting/educational trends, but there’s no silver bullet. (Unsurprised by the downvotes, given how fetishized Japan is in the West and how most are incapable of looking at the country through a critical lens) [0] https://www.humanium.org/en/child-suicide-in-japan-the-leading-cause-of-death-in-children/ https://www.humanium.org/en/child-suicide-in-japan-the-leadi... [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/sexual-assault-japan-girl-victim-170307101413024.html https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/sexual-as...
  - gumby 8y ago
    Not that this doesn't happen in the US: Palo Alto pays to have human guards at each rail crossing to discourage high schoolers from jumping in front of trains.
- wil421 8y ago
  I walked to school for 4 years in the US. Not to mention I biked or walked anywhere I could from about 6-16. No one is stopping kids and then arresting parents, it’s absurd to say. It did happen in Maryland. Guess what? The CPS completely changed their rules after the justified outcry.[1] Not a single person was arrested in this matter. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitiv_incidents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitiv_incidents
  - MBCook 8y ago
    People usually don’t hear the retraction, only the initial story. Because this happens every once in a while it’s very easy to get the idea it’s an official policy and you can get in trouble for it. And the consequences are so high people don’t want to risk it. Add that to internal fear about stranger danger and the kid getting lost or hurt and is it any wonder people tend towards not allowing this stuff?
    - wil421 8y ago
      You’re right, I had to go to Wikipedia to find the end result. USA Today had the initial incident but no follow up.
  - magduf 8y ago
    I walked to school as a young kid too in the US, but that was decades ago. Things have completely changed so you and I were children.
  - magduf 8y ago
    I'd also like to point out that the entire state of Utah felt it necessary to pass a law making "free range parenting" (letting your kids run around outside unattended) legal, because they had so many problems with people calling the police. Remember, any time the police are called, even if it's stupid, they have to show up and investigate, and when there's no parents around, that means they have to find them, and at the minimum you have a giant hassle on your hands. Even in the incident you cite, the CPS did act badly, and that was just in one place. Why did they ever get to the point where they acted like that in the first place? It would have been unthinkable in other developed nations. And in your own link, the last line is: "The encounters between the Meitivs and the government have led to an intense debate among parents and educators.[" Why is there an "intense debate" about this? Obviously it's a big, big issue in the US, or else there wouldn't be any "intense debate" about it.
- briandear 8y ago
  I live on a NASA/military base near Mountain View, my 4, 6 and 7 year olds routinely ride their bikes to the other side of the airfield — pretty much all over the place and the NASA and military cops just wave at them. The entire enclave is like that: kids can explore and do whatever and as long as they don’t try to leave the base. They’re not only safe, but everyone around her keeps an eye on everyone else. My 4 year old thought he was going to ride his little scooter to downtown Mountain View and the gate sentries stopped him and pointed him back to safety. I point this out as a contrast to their school neighborhood in Palo Alto: if they roamed around like that there, they’d likely be run over by a Tesla, hit by a bus or some Palo Alto matron would call the cops and have me arrested for negligence. This isn’t meant to be too political, but in very “rich white liberal” places, the propensity for collective freak outs over “neglect” is much greater than anything I have experienced living in more “red” or minority areas. Anecdotal certainly, but it does feel like areas like Palo Alto or Upper West Side NYC would be more likely to call CPS/Police or kids that weren’t properly ensconced in their Mandarin or ballet classes.
  - magduf 8y ago
    As a liberal, I hate to admit, but you're totally correct here. For one thing, military bases are not at all representative of regular USA; they're operated by the DOD and rules there are entirely different than in civilian places, and are largely up to the discretion of the base commander, not the local police department and courts. Also, the way things are in small towns ("red") is completely different than in both urban areas and also in rich suburban areas. Where I expect people to call the cops is in the rich suburban areas, which aren't exactly what I'd call "bright blue", they're really their own weird version of purple (lots of Republican voters in those places, but they're not like the Republicans on military bases or in small town USA).
ChuckMcM 8y ago
Agree with this, I wonder some times if the top 50 schools put on their entrance requirements "We prefer students who have spent there early youth camping, playing energetic games with friends, and pursuing exploratory activities." If that wouldn't create an entire cottage industry of 'get kids out of the house' services.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  People would still manage to spin these into highly competitive activities that constantly need to be monitored and controlled :-(.
  - siphor 8y ago
    Sounds like the Boy Scouts. Although, still worth it
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    That's pretty much it. Then it would be a matter of maximizing the "having fun" scoring rubric and then back to piano lessons and remedial math!
zepto 8y ago
It’s nice to make this just another problem with ‘American isolationism’, but I’d say this is true in the U.K. too after years of pedophile scares in the media.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
zby 8y ago
Europe is behind - but it goes in the same direction. It is not that this is very new - my father (in the 1950s) used to wander whole day in the forests, I did not have exactly the same freedom (in 1980s) - but still a lot of it, a few years ago when I let my 5 years old daughter to go outside alone (we live in a fenced off condo, a couple of hundreds of meters long) then other parents wanted me to stop this because their children wanted too.
- BariumBlue 8y ago
  I suspect this may be the result of a lower fertility rate - if you have less children, you're bound to spread your affection/attention across less children meaning that you get "overly attached" to the ones you do have.
capkutay 8y ago
> Children under the age of 10 taking the trains by themselves or with friends, even in Tokyo. that has a lot more to due with safe transit. I would NOT send a 10 year old kid to take BART or MUNI by themselves. In fact i literally know a couple who's 12 year old son basically got intimidated into giving away their iPod on MUNI.
- gumby 8y ago
  This kind of thing happens on the Berlin or NYC systems and kids seem to survive. That's the city environment.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  > In fact i literally know a couple who's 12 year old son basically got intimidated into giving away their iPod on MUNI. While I'm sure the financial loss was irritating, if this is the worst that comes from letting children ride transit alone, I'd consider it an acceptable cost. Depending on the details, it could even make for a good learning experience.
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    This is the attitude that leads to people shitting on the street and shooting up in front of police being acceptable. San Francisco is a special place.
    - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
      I'm not defending the caper! I just don't think the incident by itself should be enough to bar the child from riding public transit. (Additional details, such as how the child was intimidated, might change that assessment.)
      - barry-cotter 8y ago
        This kind of shit just does not happen in Shanghai, where I live. People get pickpocketed but I have heard of exactly one incident of violent robbery in six years here and they were professionals after a great deal of money, not petty crime. Equally this just does not happen in Tokyo. You may not have defended what happened but if you don’t think it’s acceptable either my reading comprehension or your writing needs work.
griffinkelly 8y ago
I was on a business trip to Japan for over a month, and in that time I got to know a few of my associates on a pretty personal level. We talked a few times about this exact issue, and I wondered if in the younger generation there was any erosion of the language, or inability to write the language, particularly Kanji, with the mass adoption of technology. They said that many schools and parents prevent the use of computers and tablets until high school.
pjc50 8y ago
> isolationism Don't mention the R word.
potta_coffee 8y ago
Japan is more isolationist than America, aren't they? They don't allow much immigration at all.
- buf 8y ago
  Japan is homogenous. (Generally speaking) Americans are isolated against not only the world but also each other as a result of sparely populated areas, car culture + tech (no interaction with others), and media feeding the average American fear stories all day.
  - hnuser1234 8y ago
    Robert Putnam studied[0] the civic engagement and social trust of diverse/homogeneous societies and found that factor alone sufficient explanation. Fewer Americans live in places as sparsely populated as those our ancestors did. [0]: http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/ http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...
burlesona 8y ago
It’s not isolationism, that’s been around forever and this fear for kids thing is more recent. I’d argue it has a lot to do with the increasingly far-flung suburban housing that most people live in, and how dangerous the roads are. 1. Parents don’t want their kids getting hit by cars. 2. As they get older parents let them walk around the neighborhood —— but there’s nothing there except boring locked houses and front yards that, if you try to play in, you’ll get yelled at or worse. 3. The sprawl means even in these burbs there often aren’t many other kids around. This terrible sprawl creates the reality that if you want your kids to get to hang out with other kids, or go to school, or go to a friends house, or do ANYTHING, you have to drive them there. And that’s such a time suck it’s not realistic to do all the time. Thus the helicopter parenting shuttling kids from one activity to another and then when exhausted saying “just watch Netflix.”
thirdsun 8y ago
> During my recent trips to Japan, I also felt that same vibe. Children under the age of 10 taking the trains by themselves or with friends, even in Tokyo. It's my understanding that it's a big part of their process of growing up - as it should be. There are actually TV shows in Japan secretly filming and celebrating young kids' first errands. It's adorable really. edit - here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5k5XTZy0rA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5k5XTZy0rA

by buf 8y ago

magduf 8y ago

Exactly. I was in Germany recently and saw small children walking home from school alone. In America, this can get parents arrested in many states. In Japan, they basically force kids to walk to school without parents when they're 7-8 years old. If I ever have kids, I'd want to raise them someplace like that, not in a country where I'm legally required to be a helicopter parent until the kid is a legal adult.

GuiA 8y ago
Raising kids in Japan means that you’re raising them in a culture that has an alarmingly high youth suicide rate [0], and that your daughter taking the subway on her own is likely to be sexually assaulted [1]. And since the original link is about quality youth playtime, let’s not forget all the hours spent at cram schools in the evenings and weekends if you want a shot at a decent university. I’m not a big fan of the US either when it comes to parenting/educational trends, but there’s no silver bullet. (Unsurprised by the downvotes, given how fetishized Japan is in the West and how most are incapable of looking at the country through a critical lens) [0] https://www.humanium.org/en/child-suicide-in-japan-the-leading-cause-of-death-in-children/ https://www.humanium.org/en/child-suicide-in-japan-the-leadi... [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/sexual-assault-japan-girl-victim-170307101413024.html https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/sexual-as...
- gumby 8y ago
  Not that this doesn't happen in the US: Palo Alto pays to have human guards at each rail crossing to discourage high schoolers from jumping in front of trains.
wil421 8y ago
I walked to school for 4 years in the US. Not to mention I biked or walked anywhere I could from about 6-16. No one is stopping kids and then arresting parents, it’s absurd to say. It did happen in Maryland. Guess what? The CPS completely changed their rules after the justified outcry.[1] Not a single person was arrested in this matter. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitiv_incidents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitiv_incidents
- MBCook 8y ago
  People usually don’t hear the retraction, only the initial story. Because this happens every once in a while it’s very easy to get the idea it’s an official policy and you can get in trouble for it. And the consequences are so high people don’t want to risk it. Add that to internal fear about stranger danger and the kid getting lost or hurt and is it any wonder people tend towards not allowing this stuff?
  - wil421 8y ago
    You’re right, I had to go to Wikipedia to find the end result. USA Today had the initial incident but no follow up.
- magduf 8y ago
  I walked to school as a young kid too in the US, but that was decades ago. Things have completely changed so you and I were children.
- magduf 8y ago
  I'd also like to point out that the entire state of Utah felt it necessary to pass a law making "free range parenting" (letting your kids run around outside unattended) legal, because they had so many problems with people calling the police. Remember, any time the police are called, even if it's stupid, they have to show up and investigate, and when there's no parents around, that means they have to find them, and at the minimum you have a giant hassle on your hands. Even in the incident you cite, the CPS did act badly, and that was just in one place. Why did they ever get to the point where they acted like that in the first place? It would have been unthinkable in other developed nations. And in your own link, the last line is: "The encounters between the Meitivs and the government have led to an intense debate among parents and educators.[" Why is there an "intense debate" about this? Obviously it's a big, big issue in the US, or else there wouldn't be any "intense debate" about it.
briandear 8y ago
I live on a NASA/military base near Mountain View, my 4, 6 and 7 year olds routinely ride their bikes to the other side of the airfield — pretty much all over the place and the NASA and military cops just wave at them. The entire enclave is like that: kids can explore and do whatever and as long as they don’t try to leave the base. They’re not only safe, but everyone around her keeps an eye on everyone else. My 4 year old thought he was going to ride his little scooter to downtown Mountain View and the gate sentries stopped him and pointed him back to safety. I point this out as a contrast to their school neighborhood in Palo Alto: if they roamed around like that there, they’d likely be run over by a Tesla, hit by a bus or some Palo Alto matron would call the cops and have me arrested for negligence. This isn’t meant to be too political, but in very “rich white liberal” places, the propensity for collective freak outs over “neglect” is much greater than anything I have experienced living in more “red” or minority areas. Anecdotal certainly, but it does feel like areas like Palo Alto or Upper West Side NYC would be more likely to call CPS/Police or kids that weren’t properly ensconced in their Mandarin or ballet classes.
- magduf 8y ago
  As a liberal, I hate to admit, but you're totally correct here. For one thing, military bases are not at all representative of regular USA; they're operated by the DOD and rules there are entirely different than in civilian places, and are largely up to the discretion of the base commander, not the local police department and courts. Also, the way things are in small towns ("red") is completely different than in both urban areas and also in rich suburban areas. Where I expect people to call the cops is in the rich suburban areas, which aren't exactly what I'd call "bright blue", they're really their own weird version of purple (lots of Republican voters in those places, but they're not like the Republicans on military bases or in small town USA).

ChuckMcM 8y ago

Agree with this, I wonder some times if the top 50 schools put on their entrance requirements "We prefer students who have spent there early youth camping, playing energetic games with friends, and pursuing exploratory activities." If that wouldn't create an entire cottage industry of 'get kids out of the house' services.

maxxxxx 8y ago
People would still manage to spin these into highly competitive activities that constantly need to be monitored and controlled :-(.
- siphor 8y ago
  Sounds like the Boy Scouts. Although, still worth it
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  That's pretty much it. Then it would be a matter of maximizing the "having fun" scoring rubric and then back to piano lessons and remedial math!

zepto 8y ago

It’s nice to make this just another problem with ‘American isolationism’, but I’d say this is true in the U.K. too after years of pedophile scares in the media.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

zby 8y ago

Europe is behind - but it goes in the same direction. It is not that this is very new - my father (in the 1950s) used to wander whole day in the forests, I did not have exactly the same freedom (in 1980s) - but still a lot of it, a few years ago when I let my 5 years old daughter to go outside alone (we live in a fenced off condo, a couple of hundreds of meters long) then other parents wanted me to stop this because their children wanted too.

BariumBlue 8y ago
I suspect this may be the result of a lower fertility rate - if you have less children, you're bound to spread your affection/attention across less children meaning that you get "overly attached" to the ones you do have.

capkutay 8y ago

> Children under the age of 10 taking the trains by themselves or with friends, even in Tokyo. that has a lot more to due with safe transit. I would NOT send a 10 year old kid to take BART or MUNI by themselves. In fact i literally know a couple who's 12 year old son basically got intimidated into giving away their iPod on MUNI.

gumby 8y ago
This kind of thing happens on the Berlin or NYC systems and kids seem to survive. That's the city environment.
Wowfunhappy 8y ago
> In fact i literally know a couple who's 12 year old son basically got intimidated into giving away their iPod on MUNI. While I'm sure the financial loss was irritating, if this is the worst that comes from letting children ride transit alone, I'd consider it an acceptable cost. Depending on the details, it could even make for a good learning experience.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  This is the attitude that leads to people shitting on the street and shooting up in front of police being acceptable. San Francisco is a special place.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    I'm not defending the caper! I just don't think the incident by itself should be enough to bar the child from riding public transit. (Additional details, such as how the child was intimidated, might change that assessment.)
    - barry-cotter 8y ago
      This kind of shit just does not happen in Shanghai, where I live. People get pickpocketed but I have heard of exactly one incident of violent robbery in six years here and they were professionals after a great deal of money, not petty crime. Equally this just does not happen in Tokyo. You may not have defended what happened but if you don’t think it’s acceptable either my reading comprehension or your writing needs work.

griffinkelly 8y ago

I was on a business trip to Japan for over a month, and in that time I got to know a few of my associates on a pretty personal level. We talked a few times about this exact issue, and I wondered if in the younger generation there was any erosion of the language, or inability to write the language, particularly Kanji, with the mass adoption of technology. They said that many schools and parents prevent the use of computers and tablets until high school.

pjc50 8y ago

> isolationism Don't mention the R word.

potta_coffee 8y ago

Japan is more isolationist than America, aren't they? They don't allow much immigration at all.

buf 8y ago
Japan is homogenous. (Generally speaking) Americans are isolated against not only the world but also each other as a result of sparely populated areas, car culture + tech (no interaction with others), and media feeding the average American fear stories all day.
- hnuser1234 8y ago
  Robert Putnam studied[0] the civic engagement and social trust of diverse/homogeneous societies and found that factor alone sufficient explanation. Fewer Americans live in places as sparsely populated as those our ancestors did. [0]: http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/ http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...

burlesona 8y ago

It’s not isolationism, that’s been around forever and this fear for kids thing is more recent. I’d argue it has a lot to do with the increasingly far-flung suburban housing that most people live in, and how dangerous the roads are. 1. Parents don’t want their kids getting hit by cars. 2. As they get older parents let them walk around the neighborhood —— but there’s nothing there except boring locked houses and front yards that, if you try to play in, you’ll get yelled at or worse. 3. The sprawl means even in these burbs there often aren’t many other kids around. This terrible sprawl creates the reality that if you want your kids to get to hang out with other kids, or go to school, or go to a friends house, or do ANYTHING, you have to drive them there. And that’s such a time suck it’s not realistic to do all the time. Thus the helicopter parenting shuttling kids from one activity to another and then when exhausted saying “just watch Netflix.”

thirdsun 8y ago

> During my recent trips to Japan, I also felt that same vibe. Children under the age of 10 taking the trains by themselves or with friends, even in Tokyo. It's my understanding that it's a big part of their process of growing up - as it should be. There are actually TV shows in Japan secretly filming and celebrating young kids' first errands. It's adorable really. edit - here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5k5XTZy0rA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5k5XTZy0rA