9 ms·
Swiss vs. American parenting: Differences according to a US mom
- bwanab 2y agoHaving lived with young kids in Switzerland, I agree, but one also has to add that there are very few places your kids won't be safe in Switzerland. Most places you could leave your bike unlocked and have a reasonable expectation it would still be there when you came for it.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoIs crime low because everyone is so well off it’s pointless to steal a bike? Or more social norms and culture like Japan?
- kimi 2y agoIt's because the little crime there is will be taken very seriously. Police will investigate your missing bike. And yes, culture and social expectations.
- huhtenberg 2y ago> Police will investigate your missing bike. They most certainly will not. They won't generally investigate property-related theft and crimes, including non-violent home break-ins. They just issue an incident report for your insurance and that's the end of it.
- rootsandstones 2y agoThat‘s a good one. They write down your frame number and tell you they get back to you. Then you never hear from them again.
- dgellow 2y agoThey definitely won’t investigate your missing bike unless it is a really valuable one. If you would have any experience living in the country you would know that’s absolutely not true. We also don’t have a single police, it’s handled at the canton level and they can be drastically different.
- kimi 2y agoWell, it depends of course, but in general police presence is way more attentive to "smaller" issues than in neighboring countries. As for experience, I have been living in CH for almost 20 years now.
- barrkel 2y agoCrime seems sufficiently low that police have bandwidth to deal with more petty crimes. However I would not expect an unlocked bicycle to be safe, there is still quite a bit of bike theft. But I would expect a simple lock to be enough, most of the time. Similarly with motorbikes: steering lock seems to be enough, judging by the lack of extra security I see on other bikes.
- atemerev 2y agoSwitzerland is very expensive. A stolen bike won’t bring you much money by local standards (and the crime will be investigated by police).
- dilyevsky 2y agoI spent some time in Zurich and at this point it's not measurably more expensive than SF and parts of south bay yet here we are
- piva00 2y agoNot that much more than NYC or SF to be honest, I've traveled to all three in the past year and spent more money in NYC than I did in Geneva for the same amount of time (around 4 days in each).
- prmoustache 2y ago>and the crime will be investigated by police nope.
- atemerev 2y agoWell, I reported my stolen scooter to the police. They haven’t found it, but the case is open! And they helped me in other cases.
- PKop 2y agoLow crime and being well off, along with good social norms and culture, likely all go together and come as a collection of traits of certain groups of people.
- rootsandstones 2y agoIts just not true. Bikes get stolen a lot even when they are locked. But There is not a lot of violent crime in Switzerland, so you can walk around everywhere without any worries.
- prmoustache 2y agoAdults bikes get stolen, a lot. But kids bike almost never because there is no money to be made selling kids bikes.[1] [1] I mean the regular department store kids bike, not some kids specific high end mountain bike some people would buy for their kids.
- dgellow 2y agoNot everyone is well off in Switzerland, the country is relatively rich and lots of rich people moved there but the wealth isn’t distributed equally among the population. It’s not necessarily as visible as other countries due to the low density. The vast majority of people couldn’t afford to live in Zurich or Geneva.
- derelicta 2y ago> Is crime low because everyone is so well off Apparently it's a controversial statement for some folks, but yes, having good material conditions basically makes it stupid to commit crimes. Why would you risk your life or your freedom for some quick bucks when you can enjoy social comfort and 5 weeks of guaranteed vacations per year? You can thank trade unions for that lifestyle. They fought very hard until very recently. Nowadays it's getting tougher for them and for all of us for sure...
- alistairSH 2y agoAside from getting run over by a car, are there that many places a kid isn’t safe in the US? Yes, there are rough neighborhoods - I’m asking about normal suburbs and white collar neighborhoods? The school drop off line is absurd in my neighborhood. The school complex (K-12) is on a shared property. It’s less than a mile from my house. No road crossings at all to get there. Yet the kids bused or driven.
- throwway120385 2y agoSpeaking from personal experience I would do that more for the local busybodies than out of any real fear for my child's safety. There are a ton of older people in our area who never had kids but feel like they can police how you parent.
- alamortsubite 2y agoIs it more disturbing to sacrifice a child's development by isolating them 1) due to irrational fears, or 2) merely to satisfy the local busybodies?
- throwway120385 2y agoWell when the busybodies spread rumors about you you end up isolated either way.
- maxsilver 2y ago> , are there that many places a kid isn’t safe in the US? It depends on what you mean by "safe". In most of US "normal suburbs", your kid isn't likely to get like, murdered. But if they leave a bike unlocked and unattended for a few hours (the way the parent poster describes Switzerland), then yeah, it's going to vanish, even in many "nice" US neighborhoods.
- bombcar 2y agoThe "unlocked kids bike" is a pretty good way of testing a neighborhood over time.
- typeofhuman 2y agoSwitzerland is seeing a huge increase in violent crime. 16.6% between 2021 and 2022. Serious bodily harm and rape were the crimes that saw the biggest rises, increasing by 17% and 14.5%, respectively.[0] - [0]: https://www.iamexpat.ch/expat-info/swiss-expat-news/most-violent-swiss-city-named-after-burglary-rates-rise-first-time-decade https://www.iamexpat.ch/expat-info/swiss-expat-news/most-vio...
- HatchedLake721 2y ago> Switzerland is seeing a huge increase in violent crime. 16.6% between 2021 and 2022. 2020-2023 data should be mostly ignored, especially by news websites trying to generate clickbait content. It's like when UK politicians gloated how they reduced shoplifting/burglary rates. Yes, it was lockdown with shops closed and people sitting at home, of course rates went down. Same thing here, there's no point drawing conclusion in data between 2021 (lockdowns) and 2022. > The FSO noted [...] crime rates have shot back up to 2019 levels.
- PKop 2y agoIt's because immigration is increasing, and more non-Swiss are in the country.
- dgellow 2y agoHN isn’t the place for xenophobic, racists comments like this one
- typeofhuman 2y agoBut the increase is attributable largely to the recent immigrant population. Some cultures think it's perfectly fine to assault and rape women. Those cultures are bad and good cultures are suffering the consequences by inviting them in.
- PKop 2y agoI'll note you didn't say "that's not true" because you know it is. You should be ashamed of yourself for wanting to oppose discourse that speaks truth, in service to upholding some religious incantation denouncing those that discuss truth as "racist". Don't you care whatsoever about the quality of life degradation for people living in these countries that are suffering with this problem? No, you care more about words and labels.
- barrkel 2y agoTop of article photo is Baden, 5 minutes walk from where I live. Small world.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- qwertyuiop_ 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- PopAlongKid 2y agoThe description of "Swiss parenting" would also accurately describe most American parenting 60 years ago.
- chrisco255 2y agoNot even that long ago. The so called "latch key generation", or Gen X, lasted into the 80s.
- Aloisius 2y agoI suspect today's helicopter parenting culture is partly a reaction to all the 80s media sensationalizing the "horrors" of being a latchkey kid.
- theGnuMe 2y agoWell the parents were more likely latch key kids themselves so that hypothesis does not make sense to me... Helicopter parenting is, I suspect, a fear driven phenomena to get kids into elite colleges. There is also a sports version of helicopter parents as well.
- bluefirebrand 2y agoI suspect that more Millennials grew up a similar way than people realize too I was routinely left to my own devices even as young as 8, me and my friends would be out roaming through empty lots and along beaches and stuff for hours in the late 90s Stuff really seemed to accelerate past that. Partly because the empty lots filled in, the park with a rope swing got replaced with a playground with seating for parents... Density does limit kids options too
- eigenspace 2y agoSame situation for me in the early 00s, though I suspect that was more because my parents didn't have the bandwidth to helicopter parent me due to one sister being disabled, and the other being a psycho. I think the amount of independance I got would probably have been described as neglect if I had turned out poorly, and in my teenage years I really did flirt with a pretty bad path, but it turned out good so I remember it rather fondly.
- the_snooze 2y agoReminds me of this 99PI article/episode about how the built environment in urban Japan enables a lot of independence for little kids. You can't do that in a lot of the US because speeding cars make it unsafe to walk, and there's nowhere worthwhile within walking distance anyway. So of course US parents keep their kids on a short leash; the environment around them is hostile to anyone outside a car. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/first-errand/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/first-errand/
- chrisco255 2y agoWalking in Switzerland isn't without risk of collision from street cars, buses, cyclists and cars, especially for an unsavvy 5 year old. But the short leash rule extends to areas of parenting beyond just long walks to school. America is obsessed with infantilization all the way to the legal drinking age being fixed at 21 and strictly enforced.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cafard 2y agoYou can thank the Reagan Administration for that one. The Department of Transportation had ideological scruples about mandating airbags, and came up with numbers to indicate that raising the drinking age would decrease automotive fatalities by a comparable rate. Before that, the drinking age was up to the states.
- chrisco255 2y agoIt still is up to the states but I suppose they would lose 10% of their highway funding if they went against the law: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._history_of_alcohol_minimum_purchase_age_by_state https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._history_of_alcohol_mini... To be honest I think Federal laws like this that carve out "obey or be punished financially" dictates should be outlawed and unconstitutional. Or if the Federal government wants to make funding conditional then the taxes for that initiative should not be enforceable for the state that chooses to forego that service.
- renewiltord 2y agoThe problem with this style is frequently not your children but other parents. They present a risk via the straightforward thing that they are bad drivers so risk killing your children, they will report you for letting your kids be more independent, and eventually their kids will grow up and be obsessed with "going to therapy" and therapyspeech and will politically espouse helplessness, parasitizing the few productive members of society.
- 2024throwaway 2y agoThis comment took a turn from valid concerns into lunacy. Heaven forbid someone seek therapy!
- renewiltord 2y agoFor the ill, the doctor is necessary. But only for the ill.
- mindslight 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory It's not lunacy to think that labeling kids with "conditions" will cause them to externalize their locus of control in terms of those labels. And then it's not like the medical system is even that competent at treating less-subjective conditions.
- ineedaj0b 2y agoIf you find sex with a stranger okay there is nothing wrong with a prostitute. If you find laying bare your emotional self with a stranger okay there is nothing wrong with a therapist. oh but only one is an expert? they both are. both are doing it for money. there is no free lunch
- 2024throwaway 2y agoNot sure what argument you’re trying to make here. I would consider them both to be experts.
- 2y ago
- TeeMassive 2y agoI wouldn't let kids alone in Chicago of all places
- m_ke 2y agoBecause you were raised in the US and probably grew up being afraid to step outside.
- PKop 2y agoDon't excuse the fact that Chicago has around an 18 per 100k murder rate, while Zurich has a 3. I'm referencing murder rate as a proxy for overall crime as well. Now, many like to cope with this disgusting fact of conditions in US cities by projecting a "tough guy" bravado.. "Oh are you scared of the big city, not me I'm cool with my city being a shithole" I'd prefer government puts criminals in jail so we can all live in nice places like the Swiss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rat...
- orwin 2y agoI think the "Jail everyone" reaction is some cases useful (my opinion changed recently, but i can't explain it shortly. And english isn't my best language), but this isn't the US issue. The US incarceration rate is 531 per 100.000, which is honestly a rate i thought was USSR level, and its youth incarceration rate is the worst in the world. Worst than Salvador or countries with real Cartel problems, worst than communist countries.
- wonderwonder 2y agoincarceration rate should probably be 2 - 3x more. Arrested 2x for an unprovoked assault of someone on the street or the knock out game, 20 years. Do it again, life. Push someone on the train tracks, life. Drive by even though no one was killed, life. Robbery, car jacking, etc with a weapon, life. All of these life sentences should consist of hard but humane labor. Short on workers to pick strawberries? Hire from the prison. The money should go towards ensuring humane conditions in the prison, no more giving the contract to the lowest bidder. Government run prisons, the idea of paying a private company to run a prison is insane. I'm fine with some lee way with property crimes, drugs, anything in that crime level but we really should not have to deal with violent criminals in society released to hurt people again and again.
- bern4444 2y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20240514093645/https://www.businessinsider.com/swiss-vs-american-parenting-differences-independence-freedom-culture-shock-2024-5 https://web.archive.org/web/20240514093645/https://www.busin...
- atemerev 2y agoWell, what she describes is the way of parenting in German-speaking parts of Switzerland. Here in Geneva, which is French-speaking, walking alone to school usually happens only at 12 years and older kids. We have a lot of differences even within our small country.
- theanonymousone 2y agoWell, if only Geneva was considered Switzerland :D (/s just in case for people unfamiliar with the sarcasm)
- bombcar 2y agoI've been in places where it varies school-to-school in the same town/area. In fact, you can often cause a change yourself if you have a few families that just start having the kids walk. Other times it's an actual policy of the school (they can't really prevent kids from walking to school but they can forbid them to leave without supervision).
- huhtenberg 2y agoGeneva - maybe, but that's not true for Vaud or Valais. Small kids, aged 7 or thereabouts, walk and ride buses to/from school all the time, en masse. This is a routine.
- prmoustache 2y agoI think your experience is more specific to Geneva than German vs French speaking parts in general.
- dgellow 2y agoThe note about differences is true, the country is pretty complicated and fragmented. But where do you get this 12 years old from? I grew up in the 90s, so things may have changed drastically but I remember going to school by myself since 6-7 years old. And it was the same for other kids who wouldn’t live too far from our school. And I’m from Romandie (Vaud, Lausanne to be specific)
- bitshiftfaced 2y agoAre the only concrete examples a seven year old walking to school by themselves and wearing snow boots sometimes? I remember speaking to a Swiss national who boasted about how they walked everywhere. I didn't say anything, but all I could think was "well yeah, if I lived where summers were 70 degrees, a backdrop of scenic mountain beauty, and everything is in walking distance, I'd probably walk more places too."
- FillerAccount47 2y agoIsn't that the point? That the different environments incentive different patterns of transit and that in turn induces different modes of dependency in the children? From my experience city kids are substantially more independent than their suburban counterparts for exactly this reason. The latter can't go anywhere without their parents unless they live particularly close to a park or some such, and even then will often be yelled at for doing so as it's "too dangerous for someone their age"
- bombcar 2y agoIt depends more on the parents than the locality, though parents of a particular bend may pick similar localities. In our area kids are seen walking around and nobody really comments or cares, and it's certainly not very dense.
- FillerAccount47 2y agoI would disagree with this, just on the basis that there are localities where it becomes physically impossible to do so. Most commonly in relatively "dense" suburbs where having children walk around is a genuine hazard because of cars and because other parents will call the cops if the child looks under 12. Of course on the individual level it is possible to go against the grain but in the current cultural sphere it's definitely really hard. I am annoyed I cannot find a great case study I saw of this being done where an unattended child of 8 was playing by themselves on a playground and had the cops called on them multiple times by multiple sets of "concerned parents." This being despite the fact that kidnappings and incidents of that nature are actually extremely rare compared to basically every other form of injury for minors
- xutopia 2y agoMy kids are tween and teen and they thanked me for giving them the freedom they get. I get weird stares from other parents like I neglect my kids when what I do is actually consciously educating them to be autonomous.
- mayormcmatt 2y agoBack when I grew up in the 80s and 90s there was a child abduction scare due to high profile cases like the Michaela Garecht case in Hayward, California. In fact, we lived in the same general community as her family (my parents knew the Garechts). Yet they still allowed my sister and I to choose how we got to and home from school (bus, walking, or bike) or to our friends' house. Speaking to them in adulthood about it, they said their choice to allow that was a combination of what you said -- teaching us to be autonomous -- and also that it jibed with their busy professional lives. Seems like they also got stares of disapproval from other parents, but I think it was the right choice.
- bombcar 2y agoIt's interesting to me (viewing somewhat from the outside) that as you have more and more two working parent families that the kids have (apparently) less and less autonomy. But again, it may be that we're not seeing it for what it is; when I was a kid there wasn't much to do at home so we'd go wander around - if I was a teen today I'd probably be playing video games or wasting time on the phone.
- kelseyfrog 2y agoI'm not sold. My instinct says there's likely more within-group variation than between-group variation especially in the US. My kid is in 5th grade and get himself to school every day, including waking up on time, eating breakfast, appropriately dressing himself, and walking to and from school every day without intervention. Like the author this is often before I get out of bed. I live in CA and while I know many other parents must be practicing the same parenting strategies - my son has an endless supply of other kids to walk with - I can't help but also have a feeling that some nosy neighbor or good'er-do-well will swoop in and call the police because, "These fifth graders must be attended to or something could happen!" Maybe that difference in feeling is what the author is trying to communicate. In which case, that makes perfect sense.
- mrinterweb 2y agoMany US parents would be far more open to allowing greater freedoms to their children if they were not concerned with the scrutiny of others and terrifying potential legal problems. You hear about stories about where the neighbor sees a child arrive home before their parents and when the parents get home the cops are waiting to talk to them. There are other scenarios where parents lose custody of their children for allowing their child more independence. I believe parents desire to allow more freedoms for their children, but the potential consequences outweigh the benefits.
- vasco 2y agohttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-child-protective-services-waco-heather-wallace-b2226799.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-chil... > A Texas mother who asked her misbehaving eight-year-old son to walk half a mile home through a quiet suburban neighbourhood says her life was upended after she was charged with child endangerment.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- phaedryx 2y agoAn anecdote: My neighbor came into my yard and threatened to call the police on me because my 14-year-old-at-the-time son was up on our roof helping me. I went to grab a tool we left on the other side of the roof and she "panicked because I left him by himself and he could have fallen off and died". In comparison to when I was a kid: my siblings and I would get the ladder to climb up on the roof when my parents weren't home. One time my sister thought it would be funny to steal the ladder, so I jumped down from the roof and chased her. I was 11-years-old at the time. I grew up in a rural area. My kids in an urban area. I've also jumped down from that roof several times. I probably could have died.
- mrinterweb 2y agoI also grew up in a rural environment, and I had a great deal more freedom as a child than children in my urban environment have. I would bet it is not just rural vs urban/suburban but also general cultural changes. When I was young, I too jumped off roofs, would leave on my bike for many hours to go fishing by myself, etc. I know some of that was freedom was because I was raised in a rural environment, but I have a harder time comparing the differences between environments and current cultural expectations in terms of acceptable childhood freedom. I would love to give my children the same freedoms, but I understand that is not acceptable now and where I live.
- mandibeet 2y agoParenting is the hardest thing to do.
- bubbleRefuge 2y agoMy son plays American football at the high school level. He rides the school bus to school every morning and I try to pick him up everyday and catch the tail end of his after school practice. It is one of the great joys of my day. Its about a 20 minute car ride home and we spend the entire time talking about football, school, gossip, whatever. As a single parent who works long software dev hours, I cherish this time.