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The stereotypical American helicopter-parent/soccer-mom can be viewed as a direct result of poor zoning practices & the resulting suburban sprawl. A typical chi
by rychco 4y ago
The stereotypical American helicopter-parent/soccer-mom can be viewed as a direct result of poor zoning practices & the resulting suburban sprawl. A typical child is completely incapable of going anywhere without the guidance of a car-driving parent. It is unlikely, either on foot or bike, that they are able to get to school, get to/from sports practice, meet with friends, shop at local stores, run errands, have a part-time job, etc etc. No wonder they're too sheltered & unable to navigate independence: they've never even had the option of independence.
- bobsmooth 4y agoAre all suburbs like this? There were plenty of things in biking distance in my neighborhood.
- brailsafe 4y agoNo, but many are, particularly modern cul-de-sacs
- bigmattystyles 4y agoCul de sac rollerblade hockey is how I spent much of my youth. So many good memories.
- jdpigeon 4y agoIndeed, the one upside of Cul-de-sac suburbs! But really, kids should be able to do that in a park instead of having to scramble whenever a car pulls up.
- brailsafe 4y agoTrue, but it was on more of a crescent. I don't think it was uncommon to see it on any side street as long as you had a certain amount of people
- JKCalhoun 4y agoI could bike (or even easily walk) to a drugstore and grocery store in the neighborhood where I grew up. A "five and dime" store was within biking distance as well. Where I live now? Nope. Some kind of generic suburbia park is about all a kid could ride to in this neighborhood. And although I have been here less than a year, I do not recall many kids on bikes. It's sad.
- heavyset_go 4y agoA deviation from this that I've seen are apartment complexes near town centers, where kids rarely have to travel via car to visit friends, go to a park, go to a store, go to school, etc.
- panick21_ 4y agoThere are comperativly few of these and walking and cycling even there is mostly bad.
- darknavi 4y agoNot that it _should_ be this way, but me and my friends would scooter/bike to school all the time in elementary/junior high (~2002-2008) and it was easily a few miles each way in Western Washington (not rural). I don't plan on having kids but I wonder if I'd let them do that today. Now that I think of it, I'm not sure I ever told my parents I did that.
- geysersam 4y agoBiking a few miles took 15-20 minutes I imagine. Why would you not let your 11+ year old kids bike that route? Sounds okay if there's not too much traffic.
- brailsafe 4y agoIn car-centric suburbia, there's always traffic at the same times every day, and often poor infrastructure for biking.
- john_the_writer 4y ago100% Most of the roads seem designed to prevent it. I grew up in a small town and we all took bikes to school or walked the ~2 miles. The drivers seemed more aware that they didn't dominate the road.
- brailsafe 4y agoYep. It would probably be fine and I'd let my hypothetical kid do it anyway, but the fact remains that the biggest risk along the way is.. car traffic. Parents stressed about getting their kid to school and then to work on time. Of course there's winter and that commute becomes even more insane by bike or car.
- another_story 4y agoJust let kids ride slower on the sidewalks and follow pedestrian street crossing rules.
- copperx 4y agoI wonder what happens in American cities where it is possible, such as New York.
- refurb 4y agoNot really. I grew up in the suburbs. Nothing but houses and maybe a strip mall 2 miles away. By the time I was 12 I was allowed to bike wherever. We rode all day long, to the strip mall, the even bigger mall (3 miles away), to each other’s houses, to hiking trails, etc. It was a great childhood. Lots of autonomy and a safe environement.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoAgreed. OP’s comment makes no sense in the suburb I live in now (built around 2000), and the suburb in which I grew up (built early 1970s). Both have nearby schools, supermarkets and plazas with retail businesses, working teenagers, playgrounds, parks, etc.
- lotsofpulp 4y agorychco’s comment makes sense in my suburb. Even I have anxiety crossing 5 lane roads with 40mph speed limits. There is usually a huge pickup truck or SUV going at least 50mph, who may likely be distracted by their phone. This was not as much of an issue a few decades ago. And that is just the 40mph ~30ft to 40ft wide crossings. The 7 to 9 lane wide, 80ft crossings on 40mph roads are incredibly scary to cross, and that is in daylight. Just the other day, at night, an old homeless woman was crossing it with her luggage, and we were stopped at the left turn lanes. The walk signal changed before the old woman could finish crossing the road, and she could easily have gotten hit by an inattentive or fast driver after she popped out as she passed the stopped cars. I would limit my kids crossing the 7+ lane roads until teenage years, and the 4+ lane roads until 9 or 10. And night time might even be more restrictive.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoYou have 7-9 lane roads in a suburb? That’s called a highway. Where I live, people cross highways on overpasses dedicated to pedestrians. Sorry you have to cross 9 lanes regularly. Sounds like you live next to a highway!
- 4y ago
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago> The stereotypical American helicopter-parent/soccer-mom can be viewed as a direct result of poor zoning practices & the resulting suburban sprawl. Is there any evidence for that? Because, every new HN thread seems to attack suburban "sprawl". The reasoning seems plausible but I can also present plausible reasoning that goes the other way.
- katbyte 4y ago99pi did a podcast on it sorta: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/first-errand/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/first-errand/ American vs Japanese views towards this.
- fallingknife 4y agoIt's not the reason. You see the same things in neighborhoods where you can walk places. And suburban sprawl was just as much a thing 30 years ago. It's an excuse that suburban parents use for their helicopter parenting, which is entirely anxiety driven.
- odessacubbage 4y agoit is highly specious reasoning at best especially when you consider that the advent of helicopter parenting and the boom of suburban development/white flight/etc are separated by decades. i would say the stranger danger panic of the 80s, 90s crime wave and columbine all served as cumulative frog boiling for children's autonomy.
- Tade0 4y agoI see this explanation a lot, but then I look at polls like this one: https://reason.com/2014/08/19/august-2014-reason-rupe-national-survey/ https://reason.com/2014/08/19/august-2014-reason-rupe-nation... Sprawl is just a scapegoat, the real reason is in the mindset. In my corner of the world the idea that 12 year old teenagers should be, by law, supervised would be laughed at. And mind you, I live in a country where 36% of the population doesn't have access to public transport due to how it was dismantled over the years in favour of cars and sprawl.
- saurik 4y agoYeah: I grew up in suburban sprawl, such that it was theoretically possible for me to get somewhere by bike but like... no, not really, and yet my parents just let me wander around the residential suburban community as much as I wanted, alone, until it got dark.
- syzarian 4y agoI don’t know if you’ve experienced American stroads. Theoretically you can walk from point A to point B but often times that involves crossing a stroad. Doing so is extremely unpleasant and dangerous. American car drivers just don’t expect pedestrians and are often times hostile to pedestrians. The idea of walking somewhere is an alien thought to many people.
- xboxnolifes 4y agoI agree mindset is the bigger problem. Zoning and roads in a lot of the US suburbia are bad, and even now I wouldn't want to bike or walk around most of the roads myself, but it's the mindset that every stranger is someone trying to steal their child that is holding parents back. There is no motivation to improve freedom of movement for children if parents don't even think children should have that freedom.
- kazinator 4y agoNo amount of zoning reform can fix the fact that it's not safe for kids in America, because it's crawling with predators. Even if you have school, shop, friends, and all that, within four blocks of each other.
- Swizec 4y ago> because it's crawling with predators Indeed. The vast majority of danger to kids comes from people they know and trust. Most kidnappings are custody disputes, for example.
- endominus 4y agoWe just need to get kids away from their parents and everyone else they know. Then they'll finally be safe! Maybe those nice Mongolians will take care of them...
- imtringued 4y agoWhat's wrong with having Mongolian friends of the same age?
- TylerE 4y agoAnd most child sex abuse is perpetrated by family
- jdpigeon 4y agoWhat the Fox News are you talking about?
- mindslight 4y agoBy uncritically repeating the nonsense that sensationalist mass media spews, OP does illustrate two of the main dynamics ultimately causing this. Parents are gobbling up this malevolent nonsense and then hovering over their kids to protect them from their own delusions, and the kids themselves are also being blasted with the apocalyptic media fire hose.
- comfypotato 4y agoThere’s something to be said here for neighborhood interactions among children of varying ages. I used to enjoy playing around building forts in the suburbs with some other young guys in friend’s neighborhoods that had lots on kids in the same age ball-park. It’s not life-changing autonomy, but it was definitely free from any sort of helicopter parents for afternoons at a time.
- JKCalhoun 4y agoMy 10-speed bicycle in 1978 (and on) was what gave me autonomy. As did my high-rise, banana-seat bike before that. My daughters had bikes since even before the age when I had got my first bike but they seemed to rarely ride them.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoThere are probably a lot fewer kids per neighborhood than when you were growing up.
- mro_name 4y agoautonomous mobility is huge for kids 6-12. It helps if they have not previously perceived the world only through a car window.
- solarmist 4y agoThis is a super big point. A lot of autonomy is realizing that you can do things and having experienced various ways of transportation makes a huge difference. If you never rode the bus or subway growing up they’re very intimidating to get used to.
- sandworm101 4y agoIndependence requires free time. Kids, at least those with parent who expect them to go on to higher education, dont have free time. They dont just play baseball on the school team a couple days a week. They play on literally ALL the teams. Then there are non-school karate lessons. And thier language tutor. And thier doctor visits. And thier therapists for whatever learning disbaility they are told they have. Middle class kids are cogs in a factory. Their greatest free time is chatting with friends via smartphones while being shuttled between appointments.
- tlogan 4y agoThe type suburb we build today are one of reasons. At least it enforces that behavior in parents. Then there is also “no screen time” so the kid will not learn how to behave online, not able to detect scammers, understand things like privacy and trust, etc. And there are also laws: you might get in trouble if you leave your 15 year old alone overnight. And when 17 not more than 2 nights. But they can join army at 18.
- giantg2 4y agoNot really true. Sure, some experiences require a car. But there are tons of things that don't, even in more isolated areas. When I lived in a fairly rural neighborhood, there weren't tons of kids, but one or two families typically. You learned how to get along with them and become friends. You could go anywhere in the neighborhood if you told your parents. You could even ride your bike on trails to the local college a few miles away (once you got older 12+ or so). You could shoot off model rockets in the local open space (not exactly a park, just an open field). Go fishing, build a fort in the woods at your friend's (yes, using sharp tools), play some sort of unorganized sport, etc. You couldn't have a real job without a car, but I certainly made money other ways such as babysitting, selling bird houses, etc. I later lived in a rural town. Even though there was more stuff to do there, I went out less. More of the things cost money there and there was less open space. But you could walk to stores and stuff. So the option is there, particularly if they aren't already biased to only participate in preconceived ideas of what activities should be.
- syzarian 4y agoRural areas are not typical in terms of where most kids live and grow up. Explaining how things are in rural parts of the country is not a valid counter point. In large parts of the country walking has more or less become criminalized and discouraged. I’m talking about areas where a large percentage of people live. We have also criminalized giving kids autonomy. https://www.texaspolicy.com/lets-not-criminalize-parents-who-give-their-kids-an-old-fashioned-free-range-childhood/ https://www.texaspolicy.com/lets-not-criminalize-parents-who... https://works.bepress.com/lewyn/125/ https://works.bepress.com/lewyn/125/
- giantg2 4y agoI'm not talking about truly rural areas. I'm talking about suburbs and developments where a significant number of children live. Living in town is in fact suburban or even urban depending on the density. Honestly the walking thing is BS. CA was the last hold out. I believe all states now take the reasonable approach of it only being a crime if you impede traffic, or if you choose to walk in the stret when there is a sidewalk available. Yes, there are parenting laws that are overbearing. This is not an urban vs rural thing given that those laws cover both areas (varies by state). The biggest factor is mindset. Kids can have varying levels of autonomy depending on a number of factors. Not having a car only prevents autonomy for those who lack imagination.
- 2devnull 4y agoThere is public transit, bikes and skateboards in the suburbs. That is not the case in rural areas. There was a time when more people lived in rural areas, and kids roamed about. I’d say living in the city, where there is more crime, would be a reason kids were sheltered.