6 ms·

I don’t think it’s unconventional, it’s just a definition of suburbs. Worse of both world in my book. Unless you want to raise your kid in isolation.

wincy 4y ago
How? My eight year old daughter gets to roam free and has seven or eight different kids she plays with on a weekly basis. A few of them daily. We’re not worried about her getting carried off because the area is super safe. We lived in the city before and it was dangerous and the neighbor had a crazy pitbull chained up that’d break out all the time so we couldn’t let her out of the house. It’s also very diverse, her friends parents are from Ukraine, India, Jordan, Vietnam, China, and those are just the people I’ve met. The American suburbs are an excellent place to raise children.
- Tade0 4y ago
  I've found that it's more about the person than the area. My friend is an urban activist and he always complained that his childhood neighbourhood wasn't conducive to meeting people. Recently I learned that we actually grew up just a few bus stops from each other. For me it was never an issue to hop into a bus/subway train and reach my friends - usually unannounced.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Some people want to be forced to socialize - others find ways to socialize with those around them. And others only want to socialize with copies of themselves.
  - dTal 4y ago
    Easy to meet people, and easy to hop on public transport to visit existing friends, are two very distinct things. How did you meet these people who were not within walking distance?
    - Tade0 4y ago
      School mostly - my family moved to the other side of the district when I was in 6th grade, but I already had an urban card and the right to go out whenever I pleased as long as was back by 7pm, so we stayed in touch, even though I went to a different middle school where in turn I met more people living closer to my new neighbourhood. The only people my age in this new neighbourhood were bullies and/or juvenile delinquents, so I didn't make any friends there. My closest circle currently is my class nerd group from middle school with one additional guy from a high school the two of those went together. The urban activist friend I met through another guy from this bunch, who introduced me into some extracurricular activities in his school which I could attend. I also have college friends who, like me, didn't move cities to go there. One of them is actually a guy who my primary school friends met in their middle school and who went to my high school, but we only got to know each other better in college. We were all spread out over this 1.7mln city, but that was no problem since everyone had phones.
- Aa9C4xPz43Gg7k6 4y ago
  No, American suburbs are good enough compared to American cities that are just filthy. Cities outside of US are just fine for raising children.
  - ptero 4y ago
    > Cities outside of US are just fine for raising children. Idk, there are many cities outside the US where I wouldn't want to stay more than absolutely necessary, let alone raise children.
    - mcv 4y ago
      There's a lot of dangerous cities in the world. Lots of countries have weak governments unable to keep the peace, with social life disrupted by crime, strife, unrest, distrust. But there are also lots of countries that are much, much safer than the US.
      - ptero 4y ago
        US certainly has its share of horrible cities. That said, US is a collection of regions with very different social setups and it is easy to move between them. It is common, as preferences change, for youngsters to live for a few years in one state, settle to raise children in another, then move as empty-nesters to third. If safety is what one is after, one can find a place that is super safe, comparable on safety to anywhere in the world. Someone else would aim for nightlife instead. This flexibility is what makes US very livable for me. Just my 2c.
        MavisBacon 4y ago
        Definitely this. I grew up outside Baltimore and went on to live in Boulder CO, Orange County CA, moved back home and then to LA on a whim. Finished school in Nashville, TN and my wife and I are about to get out and move to Maine. Zero red tape whatsoever- the flexibility and ease of traversing and moving around the USA is definitely awesome and rarely discussed in terms of the benefits of living here. There’s something for pretty much everyone and the culture varies greatly from region to region, city to city.
- aikinai 4y ago
  I think this is a very rare situation in the US and depends heavily on either luck or targeted buying to land the right neighborhood at the right time. I grew up in a wonderful neighborhood in a nice suburban area, but I was the youngest kid by about four years so I never walked to a friend’s house. I also never realized I was missing anything until I moved to a non-US city in my twenties and found out how different life could be in a human-scale environment.
- mcv 4y ago
  > We lived in the city before and it was dangerous and the neighbor had a crazy pitbull chained up that’d break out all the time so we couldn’t let her out of the house. That's not specific to cities. My wife grew up on a farm, where neighbours lived a hundred meters away, and her brother had an entire chunk bitten out of his leg by a neighbour's dog. I grew up in a village, and I was terrified of some of the dogs there. We live in a city now, and although we live in a street with a lot of dogs (to the dismay of my cynophobic kids), all dogs are very well behaved. > The American suburbs are an excellent place to raise children. I guess it varies. I've heard stories of American parents having CPS called on them merely for having their children play outside. Many American suburbs don't have the bike paths or even sidewalks necessary for kids to get around.
  - wincy 4y ago
    Oh yeah CPS came and determined we weren’t neglecting our children when some busybody called on us. It was annoying. Then she lost her job and had to move away, which I definitely didn’t feel any sense of schadenfreude from. We ended up buying her an Apple Watch with cell service and the complaints stopped. I think us letting our daughter roam free has changed the general mood of the neighborhood and I’ve noticed far more children playing outside. We’ve been the catalyst to get everyone to just chill out. Be the change you want to see in the world and all that.
    - mcv 4y ago
      That is pretty awesome. Well done.
- cnelsenmilt 4y ago
  I have lived both in suburbs and cities and there are just as many poorly-kept and dangerous dogs in one as in the other.
bavell 4y ago
Huh? Growing up in the burbs (90's and 00's) I had dozens of kids around my age within biking distance.
- epistasis 4y ago
  This is changing, kids are riding a lot less than in the 00s (here's one of many articles): https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/06/04/fewer-kids-are-riding-buying-bicycles-industry-is-worried/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/06/04/fewer-kids-... It may be social, in that letting kids roam on their own is not as acceptable and could get you in trouble with courts. Also, "cars" are more dangerous these days, ans they shift into more trucks and SUVs with massive blind spots and distracted drivers, and there have been many efforts to eliminate penalties for speeding, and the difference between 20mph and 30mph is literally a ton of death. The number 1 thing I would love for my child is to live in a place where I was not in constant fear of cars when on the sidewalk or street. It wasn't like that when I was a kid in the suburbs in the 80s. And I will likely have to leave the US to find what I want.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >And I will likely have to leave the US to find what I want. Yep, that's exactly what I did. I'm in Tokyo now, and it's mostly what the "NotJustBikes" crowd is asking for: great public transit, walkability, lots of bike-riding, etc. I see kids walking or riding bikes by themselves all the time. I finally realized I was never going to be able to live in this kind of society in the US, so I found a place that had the lifestyle I wanted and moved there.
  - ta1243 4y ago
    Helmet rules are a key part to that, it encourages the incorrect belief that riding a bike is dangerous (not to mention being something else to deal with), thus fewer do it
    - phil21 4y ago
      I was an extremely active kid, biking everywhere until the street lights came on pretty much every day. The helmet safety panic really crushed a lot of my enjoyment of life. Made riding a bike utterly miserable for me - both socially with my peer group at the time, as well as it being massively uncomfortable to wear. Not to mention getting in trouble dozens of times for leaving it at whatever location. I usually would end up biking outside sight distance of the parents and ditch it under a bush for later retrieval. But once this rule was enforced on me, my biking was severely curtailed as it didn't have the same simple joy of freedom it had beforehand.

wincy 4y ago

How? My eight year old daughter gets to roam free and has seven or eight different kids she plays with on a weekly basis. A few of them daily. We’re not worried about her getting carried off because the area is super safe. We lived in the city before and it was dangerous and the neighbor had a crazy pitbull chained up that’d break out all the time so we couldn’t let her out of the house. It’s also very diverse, her friends parents are from Ukraine, India, Jordan, Vietnam, China, and those are just the people I’ve met. The American suburbs are an excellent place to raise children.

Tade0 4y ago
I've found that it's more about the person than the area. My friend is an urban activist and he always complained that his childhood neighbourhood wasn't conducive to meeting people. Recently I learned that we actually grew up just a few bus stops from each other. For me it was never an issue to hop into a bus/subway train and reach my friends - usually unannounced.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Some people want to be forced to socialize - others find ways to socialize with those around them. And others only want to socialize with copies of themselves.
- dTal 4y ago
  Easy to meet people, and easy to hop on public transport to visit existing friends, are two very distinct things. How did you meet these people who were not within walking distance?
  - Tade0 4y ago
    School mostly - my family moved to the other side of the district when I was in 6th grade, but I already had an urban card and the right to go out whenever I pleased as long as was back by 7pm, so we stayed in touch, even though I went to a different middle school where in turn I met more people living closer to my new neighbourhood. The only people my age in this new neighbourhood were bullies and/or juvenile delinquents, so I didn't make any friends there. My closest circle currently is my class nerd group from middle school with one additional guy from a high school the two of those went together. The urban activist friend I met through another guy from this bunch, who introduced me into some extracurricular activities in his school which I could attend. I also have college friends who, like me, didn't move cities to go there. One of them is actually a guy who my primary school friends met in their middle school and who went to my high school, but we only got to know each other better in college. We were all spread out over this 1.7mln city, but that was no problem since everyone had phones.
Aa9C4xPz43Gg7k6 4y ago
No, American suburbs are good enough compared to American cities that are just filthy. Cities outside of US are just fine for raising children.
- ptero 4y ago
  > Cities outside of US are just fine for raising children. Idk, there are many cities outside the US where I wouldn't want to stay more than absolutely necessary, let alone raise children.
  - mcv 4y ago
    There's a lot of dangerous cities in the world. Lots of countries have weak governments unable to keep the peace, with social life disrupted by crime, strife, unrest, distrust. But there are also lots of countries that are much, much safer than the US.
    - ptero 4y ago
      US certainly has its share of horrible cities. That said, US is a collection of regions with very different social setups and it is easy to move between them. It is common, as preferences change, for youngsters to live for a few years in one state, settle to raise children in another, then move as empty-nesters to third. If safety is what one is after, one can find a place that is super safe, comparable on safety to anywhere in the world. Someone else would aim for nightlife instead. This flexibility is what makes US very livable for me. Just my 2c.
      - MavisBacon 4y ago
        Definitely this. I grew up outside Baltimore and went on to live in Boulder CO, Orange County CA, moved back home and then to LA on a whim. Finished school in Nashville, TN and my wife and I are about to get out and move to Maine. Zero red tape whatsoever- the flexibility and ease of traversing and moving around the USA is definitely awesome and rarely discussed in terms of the benefits of living here. There’s something for pretty much everyone and the culture varies greatly from region to region, city to city.
aikinai 4y ago
I think this is a very rare situation in the US and depends heavily on either luck or targeted buying to land the right neighborhood at the right time. I grew up in a wonderful neighborhood in a nice suburban area, but I was the youngest kid by about four years so I never walked to a friend’s house. I also never realized I was missing anything until I moved to a non-US city in my twenties and found out how different life could be in a human-scale environment.
mcv 4y ago
> We lived in the city before and it was dangerous and the neighbor had a crazy pitbull chained up that’d break out all the time so we couldn’t let her out of the house. That's not specific to cities. My wife grew up on a farm, where neighbours lived a hundred meters away, and her brother had an entire chunk bitten out of his leg by a neighbour's dog. I grew up in a village, and I was terrified of some of the dogs there. We live in a city now, and although we live in a street with a lot of dogs (to the dismay of my cynophobic kids), all dogs are very well behaved. > The American suburbs are an excellent place to raise children. I guess it varies. I've heard stories of American parents having CPS called on them merely for having their children play outside. Many American suburbs don't have the bike paths or even sidewalks necessary for kids to get around.
- wincy 4y ago
  Oh yeah CPS came and determined we weren’t neglecting our children when some busybody called on us. It was annoying. Then she lost her job and had to move away, which I definitely didn’t feel any sense of schadenfreude from. We ended up buying her an Apple Watch with cell service and the complaints stopped. I think us letting our daughter roam free has changed the general mood of the neighborhood and I’ve noticed far more children playing outside. We’ve been the catalyst to get everyone to just chill out. Be the change you want to see in the world and all that.
  - mcv 4y ago
    That is pretty awesome. Well done.
cnelsenmilt 4y ago
I have lived both in suburbs and cities and there are just as many poorly-kept and dangerous dogs in one as in the other.

bavell 4y ago

Huh? Growing up in the burbs (90's and 00's) I had dozens of kids around my age within biking distance.

epistasis 4y ago
This is changing, kids are riding a lot less than in the 00s (here's one of many articles): https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/06/04/fewer-kids-are-riding-buying-bicycles-industry-is-worried/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/06/04/fewer-kids-... It may be social, in that letting kids roam on their own is not as acceptable and could get you in trouble with courts. Also, "cars" are more dangerous these days, ans they shift into more trucks and SUVs with massive blind spots and distracted drivers, and there have been many efforts to eliminate penalties for speeding, and the difference between 20mph and 30mph is literally a ton of death. The number 1 thing I would love for my child is to live in a place where I was not in constant fear of cars when on the sidewalk or street. It wasn't like that when I was a kid in the suburbs in the 80s. And I will likely have to leave the US to find what I want.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >And I will likely have to leave the US to find what I want. Yep, that's exactly what I did. I'm in Tokyo now, and it's mostly what the "NotJustBikes" crowd is asking for: great public transit, walkability, lots of bike-riding, etc. I see kids walking or riding bikes by themselves all the time. I finally realized I was never going to be able to live in this kind of society in the US, so I found a place that had the lifestyle I wanted and moved there.
- ta1243 4y ago
  Helmet rules are a key part to that, it encourages the incorrect belief that riding a bike is dangerous (not to mention being something else to deal with), thus fewer do it
  - phil21 4y ago
    I was an extremely active kid, biking everywhere until the street lights came on pretty much every day. The helmet safety panic really crushed a lot of my enjoyment of life. Made riding a bike utterly miserable for me - both socially with my peer group at the time, as well as it being massively uncomfortable to wear. Not to mention getting in trouble dozens of times for leaving it at whatever location. I usually would end up biking outside sight distance of the parents and ditch it under a bush for later retrieval. But once this rule was enforced on me, my biking was severely curtailed as it didn't have the same simple joy of freedom it had beforehand.