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What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard
- delichon 5mo agoA large part of the protectiveness of children is about the fertility trend. Parents with four children think about safety very differently than parents with probably ever only one. I saw this on my home street growing up. The girl next door was an only child who her parents hovered over relentlessly. When I was ten, with three brothers, and told mom I was going exploring, she made sure I had a quarter to phone home if my bike got a flat and told me to have fun. We joke about having a main child and an emergency backup child, but deep down it's not a joke, it changes our behavior.
- andai 5mo agoYeah, as an only child it's a weird burden to be the guy who makes or breaks the whole bloodline. No pressure right ;) But that pressure is on the parents too. There's this weird two-way feedback loop. Single child household has made parenting culture neurotic. Because if you screw it up it ends your entire bloodline. But the neurotic attitude makes child rearing feel like such a burden, people can hardly imagine doing it more than once... I am told this attitude does not produce beneficial outcomes in the children either. Apparently people grow up healthier when their parents are relaxed.
- XorNot 5mo agoThis feels like assigning intent where economics is more correct: your priority is your children, but if you have three then by necessity you didn't multiply your attention or time in proportion. Even going from one child to two.. suddenly you don't have numbers on your side in dealing with things.
- m3kw9 5mo agopeople still think about bloodline when having kids or when caring about safety? I would think that would be the last thing to worry about with kids safety.
- boelboel 5mo agoI'm not sure if single child households have done this to parenting culture as much as neurotic culture/economic incentives have pushed single child households. When everyone is competing it makes sense to focus on one child as you don't want your child to be at a disadvantage vs those who can spend on tutors/extra curriculars/.... It's a problem in Italy and some eastern countries, a bad and anti-social evolution in my opinion but I doubt it's going to change.
- zwischenzug 5mo agoPeople used to knock out children as a social security/insurance policy for old age, or to work the farm as they aged. The rise of the welfare state(s) in urban societies removed that need.
- anon291 5mo agoI have four kids, my neighbor has one, and I see this dynamic play out in real time. My neighbors are neurotic with their kid. Poor kid is hovered over. My kids play by themselves, walk to their grandmother's house (a block away), go to the park, and just kind of show up in our house from time to time. Of course the little ones are taken care of explicitly, but they too will age out of that. It's much better for everyone. My wife and I go on dates and stuff that our neighbors could never imagine doing. Having one kid is way harder honestly. (We get a babysitter for our dates, but they're too scared to leave their kid -- no judgement... that's just how it is).
- ytoawwhra92 5mo ago> walk to their grandmother's house (a block away) Do your neighbors have parents nearby? I think this makes an enormous difference.
- anon291 5mo agoYup! In fact he grew up in the neighborhood so he has parents and friends nearby.
- Fraterkes 5mo agoWhich parts are not a joke? If someone asked you who your main child was you’d be able to answer?
- Animats 5mo agoThe classic phrase is "the heir and the spare".[1] That's why Prince Harry's bio was titled "Spare". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heir_and_spare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heir_and_spare
- kelnos 5mo agoEh, I don't think that's it. I come from a two-child household, and our parents weren't particularly precious about our safety in the neighborhood in the 80s and 90s. I knew plenty of other two- and one-child families that were the same.
- triceratops 5mo agoI think parents just have more time and energy to devote to an only child. Consequently they pour all of it into that child. Three kids? If they don't die or end up in prison, you've succeeded. (that last part is a joke, but the overall idea holds I think).
- dnnddidiej 5mo agoI suspect there is some sense of the kids helping each other and looking out for each other. It may not seem like it at the time lol.
- collectedparts 5mo agoI can't help but think that thee's some sort of tragedy of the commons type thing going on here. Probably the wrong metaphor. But: it seems like a lot of what the article is getting at is that we can all intuitively agree that the population of children in society being more independent is good for a healthy society (or not just intuitively I suppose, he backs it up with mental health data). Any given parent can know this. But even if you know it, can you knowingly accept doing something that causes a 1% chance of losing your child in exchange for a 99% chance that they'll grow up better off? It seems most parents can't.
- anthonypasq 5mo agothen why did every previous generation of parents do it? most parents can, its just illegal now.
- Henchman21 5mo agoI call bullshit. The parents that WANT to let their kids roam free are stymied by "helpful neighbors", aka busybodies who simply will not let kids be alone. I've seen it too many times: CPS or COPS (!!) called on children "unattended" outside -- even when it's really obvious their parents are watching through a window. Let's ALSO not gloss over the fact that CPS & police are used by neighbors to harass each other. Let's say the simple truth: *US Culture is a literal abomination and its getting worse not better*
- globular-toast 5mo agoDefinitely some truth to this. I'm the oldest of five. Most of my friends when I was little seemed to have older siblings and they could do what they liked while my parents hovered over me a bit more. By the time my youngest sibling was born that completely changed. My little brother was allowed out with us pretty much as soon as he could walk!
- watwut 5mo agoBut, Japanese, Germans and Polis are not that overprotective and dont have many children. If it was about fertility, you would see countries with low fertility all move toward overprotectiveness. But, that overprotectiveness is very much an American phenomenon - exported a little but not that much yet.
- billfor 5mo agoHistory Channel has a good series about what gen X and baby boomers grew up with: https://www.history.com/shows/hazardous-history-with-henry-winkler https://www.history.com/shows/hazardous-history-with-henry-w... In general there is excessive alarmism, and the internet makes it possible.
- paulmooreparks 5mo agoI'm 55. Growing up in Florida in the 70's and 80's, I was outside for hours at a time. I would wander in the woods, following streams to their source and actually mapping the entire forest (I still have the map). I rode my bicycle all over town, by myself and with my equally adventurous friends, getting into all sorts of dangerous things. I went fishing by myself, literally dodging moccasins and alligators. I'd clean the fish with a very sharp knife when I got back. I still have scars all over my body reminding me of all the trouble I got into. Damn, I'm glad I got to grow up then.
- object-a 5mo agoDo you have kids? Did you let them grow up the same way?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- obscurette 5mo agoI'm father of three daughters and they grew up almost like this in nineties. My grandchildren don't have this chance any more. It's a little bit about changing times, but mostly because of public – it's just not acceptable for others to do all these things and parents would get into real trouble. When I was 10, I drove tractor, had already several scars from knife and axe and visited my grandmother more than hundred km away alone. My daughters would be arrested if they would let their kids to do any of it.
- ryandrake 5mo ago> My daughters would be arrested if they would let their kids to do any of it. Yea, the problem isn't that we don't want to give kids the freedom we had as kids. The problem is the nosy public that won't mind their own business and instead call the cops when they see someone out just playing. Not willing to risk involvement with poorly-trained, amped-up, armed law enforcement.
- phil21 5mo ago
- m3kw9 5mo agoIs likely due to how humans react to issues. They fix it or make a big deal to over fix it when someone gets hurt. The baseline risk shifts and people will get scared looking back doing a mental calculation: lower risk better then higher risk. Stuff like training wheels, bike helmets when you are just doing leisure rides. Don't get me started with bike helmets, people wear them and do risker things, drivers drive less careful around them, and you get a false sense of superiority instead of being more careful. If you're on the road/off roading, sure, but now you can get fined in some place for not wearing is one small example of safetyism taking over.
- debo_ 5mo agoAs a commuter cyclist of over 20 years, my favorite recent trend are is wearing a bike helmet and giant noise-cancelling headphones at the same time.
- raddan 5mo agoI’ve also seen this. It’s completely insane. Especially when I consider how many times a sound alerted me to a danger while I was on my bike.
- bertjk 5mo agoTo be fair, good noise cancelling headphones nowadays have "transparent" or "ambient aware" modes that actually electronically pipe the outside noise in. (Whether the cyclists in question are actually using that feature, who knows?)
- lstodd 5mo agoNo idea about bicycle, but for motorcycles, integrated helmet headphones are a thing for long time. It maybe helps that a typical motorcycle helmet is quite noise-cancelling by itself, so one relies mostly on moving faster than traffic and if that fails, on mirrors and not on sound. Besides being an mc person I always considered bicycle helmets a useless compromise in that they don't provide true protection like full-face motorcycle helmets do. You're still as likely to leave half of your face on the obstacle, so either don't bother or wear something that would prevent that.
- alex_young 5mo agoI want to let my kids walk wherever they want to. It’s great for them. My 5 year old bikes to school, accompanied by an adult. It’s a bit more than half a mile away from the house. I’d like to tell him he can do this on his own next year, but there’s a single intersection he has to cross that makes this difficult. I’m not worried about him getting lost, abducted by a stranger or any host of movie plot scenarios. I’m worried about vehicles. Specifically pickup trucks and SUVs. 40 years ago a 5 or 6 year old mostly had to contend with sedans with hoods lower than 30 inches. Today there are large numbers of vehicles twice that high, where even an adult can’t look the driver in the eye at close distances. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says: Vehicles with hood heights of more than 40 inches and blunt front ends angled at greater than 65 degrees were 44 percent more likely to cause fatalities. https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-vertical-front-ends-pose-greater-risk-to-pedestrians https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v... I’ll probably let him bike alone anyway. But it’s a different equation because of the cars.
- iamalizard 5mo agoI'm almost 2 meters tall and was crossing a street at a crosswalk with my bike yesterday, walking and pushing it at normal walking speeds, like the law requires. There was a car about to turn left from the lanes going left. There was a car from the lanes going right (the closest lanes to me) that slowed down as I started crossing the street. I assumed they saw me and that's why they were slowing down. Nope - they almost hit me but managed to hit the brakes very hard at the last possible second. Apparently they slowed down to make sure the car that would turn left would wait for them. If I was as tall as a 5 year old, maybe the car that almost hit me wouldn't have even seen me. If I got hit, I'd take it better than a 5 year old due to physics - my mass is bigger and the point where it would've hit me would've been my thighs instead of my torso. That car wasn't even with a tall hood or anything obstructing its view, just a regular car. In another comment a few days ago I reminisced about how I was let running alone for hours on end when I was very young, and how that was normal. It's a bit hard to reconcile both events now. I gained a lot of independence and had real unrestricted fun, but in hindsight I might've died a few times. My idea, even if it might be traumatic, is to show the kid a few clips of people being hit by a car and getting mangled, with all the gore visible. Especially people following the laws and being careful. I miss /r/watchpeopledie as it was actually very educational.
- GeekyBear 5mo agoThe notion that children are not allowed to play outside within a couple of blocks of their home seems like a mass delusion to me. However, I'm GenX and having all my friends and I roam the neighborhood from the time we got out of school until our parents got home from work with no supervision seems perfectly normal. "Come home when the street lights come on" and television PSAs asking "It's nine o'clock, do you know where your children are?" were the norm in the 70's.
- incompatible 5mo agoMaybe it's a local thing. I often see random kids roaming on the streets.
- GeekyBear 5mo agoI first became aware of how insane things could be when a single mother was arrested for allowing her child to play at the park a couple of blocks from their home while she was working. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arrested-for-letting-a-9-year-old-play-at-the-park-alone/374436/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arreste...
- incompatible 5mo agoMadness.
- PantaloonFlames 5mo agoThe article is confused. The opinion is, it's so much safer _now_ than it was in the 1970s, it makes no sense to restrict children's wanderings. But the article doesn't consider whether restricting children's wanderings is the REASON it is so much safer for children now. "We have so many fire-safety rules in the building codes in Seattle. But get this: we haven't had any major fires since 1889! It's obvious we don't need these rules!" It's true there is a cost to restricting children. But let's be a bit more realistic about the tradeoffs.
- bryanlarsen 5mo agoThis article may not address this, but many articles of this type by Lenore Skazeny and others do address it. IIRC the findings: - stranger danger was worse in the 70s than it is now. - safety in numbers was better in the 70s -- if all kids are outside it's more likely to be somebody else's kid that is snatched. If your kid is the only one, ... - car danger was worse in the 70s. Cars are bigger/faster now, but there were more drunk drivers then. This varies widely by jurisdiction. It's hard to balance the factors -- it's not clear whether or not it was safer to let your kids outside today than it was in the 70's.
- keepamovin 5mo agoTangential to risks raised in the article I guess, but I cannot understand something that's happening in the US: it's crazy how many demented people there are. That there is a market that captures children in order to traffick them for sex; that there are hundreds of people doing this regularly being wrapped up by LE raids, and dozens of children freed; that these raids happen on the frequency of weeks, or months; that the numbers on this in the United States are in the order of 100,000s per year (at least of missing/unaccounted I think). How can it be like this? I just can't conceive it - how is this even a thing? What is the psychology of these adults doing this? How is the morality of this lacking? And how can there be so many people involved? Where is all this insanity coming from? How did it develop? How did it slip through the idea of safety in the neighborhood we used to have? I don't understand how this is real, the scale is inconceivable (how can so many people be so totally demented) it's the craziest thing I cannot comprehend.
- GMoromisato 5mo agoThe point of the article is that children have less independence now even though cities are statistically safer. Yet a lot of the comments here suggest that kids would have more independence if cities were safer (particularly from cars). IMHO, the answer is to improve safety by teaching children how to navigate dangers. Teach children how to cross the road; teach children to be aware of distracted drivers; teach children about situations to avoid (e.g., being in a blind spot). Waiting for cities to be sanitized theme parks before letting kids out of the house is how we got into this mess.
- GlibMonkeyDeath 5mo agoI'm in my sixties and reflect sometimes on how much freedom I had as a kid, and why things have changed so much in terms of risks parents are willing to accept. One correlation with "safetyism" this article doesn't mention: the rise of the two income household (https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/04/08/after-decades-of-decline-a-rise-in-stay-at-home-mothers/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/04/08/after-d... for the US; the UK appears to be similar.) In reality when we kids were running wild about the town, someone was watching us out their windows. If we got into (or more likely caused :) ) a problem, adults, usually a housewife, would show up quickly from somewhere. Even when we were off in the woods there was a sense that we could find a house where a grown-up would help us if needed (like if some kid's little brother ruptured his spleen on a dare, which actually happened.) Nobody would call Child Protective Services - you knew it was little Billy who threw that rock that hit Jimmy, so-and-so's kid. You would tell Billy's dad, who would make sure he didn't ever do _that_ again, and that would be the end of it. Now I imagine police and lawyers would be involved. It seems we don't have the informal social connections any more, which were largely driven by someone just being around. The above link BTW shows that "only" 50% of mom's were stay-at-home in the 1970's. In my specific time and place, many of the moms who did work outside the home had jobs that revolved around the school schedule (i.e., working at the school, or some work schedule that allowed them to be home when the kids were not in school.) The ones with full time jobs like my single mother, supporting three kids through full-time work, were a rarity back then. Maybe my brothers and I had excessive freedom because there simply wasn't anyone to watch over us - fortunately we all turned out more or less OK :)
- paulryanrogers 5mo ago> You would tell Billy's dad, who would make sure he didn't ever do _that_ again, and that would be the end of it. By beating the child?
- jolmg 5mo agoIt's not necessary, but it might be necessary for the child to believe that's a possibility. It's like armies. The presence and the possibility do most of the work. My grandfather didn't beat his children, but e.g. spanks and being hit on the butt by a belt were permissible by society. He didn't do that AFAIK, but the children knew it was possible, and a single look from him sufficed to get them to stop misbehaving. He's very loved by them, BTW. I didn't meet him, but they always talk with admiration of him.
- paulpauper 5mo agoI have seen the opposite argument, such as kids having too much autonomy in so far as social media usage .Or just go on Instagram and you will see tons of examples of young adults taking steroids and other stuff. I'm sure the parents are aware of this, but meh.
- zkmon 5mo agoThis is not a isolated phenomenon. Security measures for software products, for example, kept increasing making good old working software to be highly vulnerable in today's world. There are some islands that have un-contacted tribes. They can't survive if they move out of the island. In my childhood, there were some popular movie songs and stories which advised people to stay in villages, not to venture out to town-side and showed the scary stories of what happened to people who ventured out. It's the context around you that is changing. Also, the digital divide is so strong that many old people and village folks see anything related to technology or complex online processes as alien things that they can't dare to deal with. They are basically living in the non-digital islands. The logins, MFA, password recovery, OTP, finding the correct web portal, filling in the right information - it's a nightmare for a common human.
- Artoooooor 5mo agoI won't criticise actual parents - these are their children, their decision, their responsibility and their either regrets or appreciation later. That is a trade-off and they will see in about 20 years whether it was worthwhile. Even not having children I know parenting is difficult (I just remember how hard it was for my parents). However I definitely appreciate that I was allowed to wander through my town (in central Europe) when I was a child/teenager. Moreover - I regret being so afraid of everything and not exploring more. Maybe it was a time to have that fear so that I could overcome it in later stages of life. Maybe. To be a devil's advocate - maybe lower frequency of crimes against children is a result of that red tape? Or maybe not. I don't know.
- human305893 5mo agoI can think of so many reasons but the biggest I think is the reduction of community. - When I was a kid mums worked part time or not at all. We had school fates and lots more community gatherings. - Dads didn't work as hard. Half of them would be at your soccer practice at 6pm to hang out - Parents were on local sports teams together or other social groups as well - You did most of your shopping at the local shops, you knew the people that lived in the suburb. You ran into them picking up the newspaper or at the local video rental place. - My mum always joked that I couldn't get away with anything because someone would see me and it would get back to her some how. - There were some wierdos around sure. But the whole suburb was on the look out for the kids roaming around Then there were other things like just that cars were smaller. A kid on a pushie would be as high or higher than a person driving around in small sedan. I don't think I would let my kid play on the same street I spent 90% of my time riding my bike or playing with the other kids in the street these days. They'd end up underneath a giant landcruiser or ford ranger/hilux in no time (and they are smaller that the larger trucks that are in the USA which are scary big) I know some nordic countries are still a bit like this. But I'm talking about a car centric Sydney (Australia) suburb in the late 80s early 90s
- porknubbins 5mo agoWhere I lived we knew a few neighbors but didn’t really interact every day or feel like they would watch out for other people’s kids. That didn’t stop me from biking and exploring all over from age 6-7, which seems unthinkable now. I think it was mostly just more risk tolerance and less flashy warnings about danger. Like my dad biked around the same block so why not let me and there was not much more thought given to it. Your suburb sounds nice but I guess Im just saying that level of community wasn’t necessary for kids to have freedom.
- smelendez 5mo ago> Like my dad biked around the same block so why not let me and there was not much more thought given to it. I’m convinced that’s more of the explanation than we realize. Adults in a lot of places move about almost entirely by car and often look down on other modes of transportation, to the extent that having your kid walk or bike while you have a car in the driveway seems wrong, like if you shopped at Whole Foods for yourself and fed your kids on gruel.
- alexandre_m 5mo ago[dead]
- Cheetah26 5mo agoFor those who grew up in a time and place where you were able to wander without supervision, how far away were your friends? Follow up, how much traveling did you do on your own? For me growing up in 2000's suburbia, the closest kids around my age that I knew of were about one mile and major road crossing away, but to get to a friend it could be a lot more. I think kids out in a group doesn't feel like a safety concern to most people even now, but if they have to travel 5+ miles solo just to meet up with one other person, that's where the issue might lie.
- protocolture 5mo agoI used to live a kilometer away from school and would walk/ride there myself from 9 or so years. Then when I was ~12 we moved further away. Probably 3-4 kilometers and I would still ride in. I had friends scattered all over the area between my place and school but I never needed any assistance from them.
- tootie 5mo agoI had some friends within half a mile or we'd meet at a park. But in high school, my friends were a few miles away and across a few highways. We needed to drive. Idk if this counts but my parents did let my older brother with a license take me places in his car.
- ludicrousdispla 5mo agoGrowing up in the 70s and 80s, my friends were within a 2 block radius, so about 300 yards. Tack on another block each year and that was the standard walking distance to a friend's house. And of course in high school there was the standard minimum of one student death per year per school, usually related to driving. So teen deaths seemed more prevalent than younger ages.
- burnt-resistor 5mo agoSame block, next block, and 3 miles (5 km).
- dividefuel 5mo agoBorn in 1990. In the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, many of my friends lived in the same neighborhood. That's how we became friends in the first place: you'd see each other outside and gradually become friends. By the time I was 14 or so, many of them had moved to other parts of the town, typically 2-3 miles away. By this age I was comfortable riding a bike or walking to visit them, though equally as often we'd ask our parents for a ride just to save ourselves time or because we were bringing heavier stuff with us. I did have a few friends that were farther away, about 4+ miles, and I rarely if ever made it out that far on bike or foot. That was a mix of the distance and the type of roads I'd have to take or cross to get there.
- protocolture 5mo agoI have concerns in this area myself but I find the attempt to create an opposing ideology "safetyism" and then attribute unrelated stuff like trigger warnings to that ideology to be unnecessarily reductive. I call this "Shitarticlism" and it includes OP's article and also a bunch of clickbait I read. And Microsoft Learn. If I work from home I see tons of unaccompanied kids going to school in the morning. I live in what is statistically the most crime ridden area in my city. My toddler has a drive for independence that will probably lead to him doing this himself in a few short years just need to impress road safety on him a bit more.
- qsera 5mo agoWe lost grownups. Modern establishments (businesses/governments) work by making people afraid. It is truly, the age of fear. Let me quote M.I.B >There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT! At some point we figured that there is good money to be made by making the people perpetually aware of how they or their loved one are going to die 24x7!
- breezybottom 5mo agoYeah no one was afraid during the Cold war
- dfxm12 5mo agoThe world didn’t get more dangerous. We got more afraid. The people in my life who consume conservative media are afraid. They all say the world is so different now. It is. It's safer. The people in my life who don't consume conservative media aren't so afraid...
- hibikir 5mo agoWhat I see in my deep suburbia is just far less interest in wandering past the front yard, because there's nothing to do: House after house where no front yard has anything for anyone, and quite long distances before you get somewhere you might be welcome, or have a chair. When my son, a pre-teen at the time went to Spain with me, things were quite different: A small town that even had stores targeting kids, places to sit everywhere, things to see, other people walking too. He could even go to the beach and be fine, as there's lifeguards. By the second week of the summer, you'd see group of new friends hanging out with no parents, just going back home for meals and sleep. Build environments where children can be independent, and they might even want to be. But it's amazing how much modern-ish suburbia just has no place for you to even exist without a car.
- antiframe 5mo ago100% this. Every time someone visits me in my city home, they comment on how nice it must be able to walk to school, the ice cream shop, the library, the playground full of other kids who walked or biked there, or just see other people out and about. But, they say, they could never live in the city. It's too dangerous. Cars are dangerous. No sidewalks on 50mph roads are dangerous. Loneliness is dangerous. And yes, there are bad parts of town where the people are dangerous too. But life is full of safety vs. living tradeoffs. We made ours. They made theirs.
- seanmcdirmid 5mo agoI live in walking distance of all these things, and the farthest I’ve gotten my kid to do things alone is to walk to and from school (a whole 8 minutes). But even in my dense neighborhood, it’s not dense enough, kids are hardly at the playground unless it’s nice out, the ice cream shop is a bit too expensive for kids on their own, the 7-11 is probably the sketchiest place they could go to. I’m not really sure what we are missing, but it’s way different compared to when we are in China and there is a whole mall next door.
- flakeoil 5mo agoIs go shopping in malls what kids should do?
- quijoteuniv 5mo agoIs not rocket science, if everyone has enough, then everyone has something to contribute, then a nicer environment flourishes. Why do you think the finland example is there. Inequality create problems
- bigmattystyles 5mo agoI was a lot more permissive parent when my children were imaginary.
- dnnddidiej 5mo agoPlans don't survive contact with the enemy and all that!
- qingcharles 5mo agoThis popped up on my feed, and I thought it was fitting :) TV interview with parents taking their little kids to see Alien (1979): https://x.com/TheCinesthetic/status/2058998742506954766 https://x.com/TheCinesthetic/status/2058998742506954766 https://xcancel.com/TheCinesthetic/status/2058998742506954766 https://xcancel.com/TheCinesthetic/status/205899874250695476...
- vibekoter 5mo agoAnd ppl on this very site "trying to interest my 3yo for programming by building fun little gagdets for her". Ppl are so stupid, they need online courses for locating their wiener when peeing outside their regular zone...
- kelseyfrog 5mo ago> But the kindest thing I can do, the thing that will actually make my daughters resilient, is to let the small problems happen. I live in an average California suburb. Average priced homes, relatively quiet street, not really any disorder or even appearance of disorder. When I let my kids play in the front yard - minding themselves - neighbors call the cops. I've written about this before, and it's not simply a matter of choosing to let your own kids have more freedom. There are simply no kids outside anymore so if yours are, they stand out. Kids playing outside is now so outside the norm and neighbors on edge that they will call the police. The police will not ignore it, and you or your kids will have to contend with a police encounter. This has the effect of making parents perform a calculus every time their kids ask to play outside. If there's a way to get neighbors to feel that kids playing in yards is normal, I'm all ears.
- armchairhacker 5mo ago> When I let my kids play in the front yard - minding themselves - neighbors call the cops > The police will not ignore it, and you or your kids will have to contend with a police encounter What if you just kept doing it? I’ve heard about similar situations where the cops would start to ignore your neighbors.
- kelseyfrog 5mo agoYou should never talk to the police. One of the most effective means of accomplishing this is to avoid police encounters.
- pjmlp 5mo agoThis still happens in most European countries, kids go to school on their own, you see them all over the place on public transports, play with their friends somewhere back home and then are eventually back.
- darkwater 5mo ago> In England data shows that in 1971, 86% of primary-age children traveled home from school unaccompanied. By 1990, that had fallen to 35%. By 2010, it was 25%. So basically the main change affected already the childhood of, what? 85% of the average HN reader, at least if they are from England. What are we talking about then?
- kleiba2 5mo ago> When I tell people these numbers, the usual response is some version of “the world is more dangerous now.” It certainly feels that way. The only problem is that all of the data we have shows it’s much safer than when you or I were wandering the streets. Violent crime against children has fallen steadily since the early 1990s. Stranger abductions, the thing every parent imagines when they hesitate to let a 10-year-old walk to a friend’s house, were rare in 1985 and are rarer today. Could it be possible that we're confusing cause and effect here?
- dust-jacket 5mo agoYou could defintiely argue abductions and crime have reduced because there are fewer opportunities (because we keep the kids safe). But that still doesn't mean you can conclude the world is MORE dangerous.
- fergal_reid 5mo agoWell, you could conclude the world is now more dangerous for any kid let wander - even if fewer do, and even if the observed average risk to any kid is lower (given they are allowed wander a lot less). I don't want to be on the 'overprotect kids' side of the argument, but I'm not sure the numbers argur cleanly in one direction or the other. I also often think of selection bias whenever anyone says "I was allowed do a lot more and we were fine" in the context of child safeguarding; because it also sounds like a lot of kids were abused in the past, who don't speak up in that conversation. I don't know. I worry I overprotect my kids, but I also am not sure how to price in small risks of massively negative events. I think that's the crux of it for parents - trying to weigh hard tradeoffs.
- Dig1t 5mo agoVery likely declining social trust has something to do with this phenomenon. >But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings. >"The extent of the effect is shocking," says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist. >https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/world/americas/05iht-diversity.1.6986248.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/world/americas/05iht-dive...
- dncornholio 5mo agoThis is a product of making everyone and everything reliant on cars. Social control is out of the window if nobody wanders the streets. Not leaving the front yard is unthinkable in many countries outside the US.
- burnt-resistor 5mo ago> This is a product of making everyone and everything reliant on cars. That's not necessarily the whole story. While walkable villages and cities would be a huge improvement in many areas of society and community resilience, however kids in un-walkable US suburbia and urban sprawl have had bicycles, skateboards, skates, or some form of mobility device since at least the 1950's. There have been dedicated bike lanes in some areas since around 1985-1990 and many have bike or multi-use trails. While not as fast or efficient as cars, it was how we got around before 15 ½ when one could apply for a learner's permit. About age 9 or 10 was when we were let loose.
- dncornholio 5mo agoYou're looking at it too shallow. Kids don't bike because everything is too far away, because they expect you to drive out of the suburbs. The roads feel less safe, because everyone is in a car. Everyone in cars are unanimous, no social control. When you have infrastructure that doesn't rely on cars, you will have schools and stores and communities right in your "suburb".
- metalman 5mo agowhat has been lost is civilisation.period, full.stop. what we have is institutionalisation at scale. which only rachets one way.
- graemep 5mo agoThis bit is not supported by the quoted studies: "We live in a culture of safetyism. And it’s largely an English speaking phenomenon." If you look at page 14 of this: https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/sites/default/files/files/7350_PSI_Report_CIM_final.pdf https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/sites/default/files/files... its far from clear. I am also very dubious of the findings. The very low level of mobility in Sri Lanka contradicts what I see - especially relative to England. Most families do not have cars, for example. I suspect a bias to Anglophone affluent urban families.
- vjk800 5mo agoI was wondering what the hell people here are talking about. Then I saw that my country (Finland) is number one on that list. Indeed, my children (3 and 5 year old) run freely around the half hectare communal yard of my housing company (which includes 12 apartments). Almost all kids here go to school by themselves either by walking or by bike, starting at the age of seven. I also see kids around this age playing without adults in groups on streets and parks all the time. City planning gets a lot of shit here, but apparently we did something correctly. It might also have something to do with cities here being generally safe. I'm probably just as concerned about my children's safety as parents in any country, but it just isn't that scary out there.
- graemep 5mo ago> It might also have something to do with cities here being generally safe. Is the difference in actual safety or the perception of safety? For example. Finland has a higher rate of traffic related deaths than the UK according to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... but kids in Finland have a lot more autonomous mobility.
- krieger_857 5mo agoI agree, here in Chile, at least where I live, children play outside all the time. Maybe it's an internet thing where people have a massive disconnection from reality (To various degrees of course).
- niedbalski 5mo ago[dead]
- TrackerFF 5mo agoDid we stop letting kids leave the front yard, or did they simply stop doing that themselves? I grew up in the late 80s / early to mid 90s. We were allowed the roam around until dark. But that was also a more natural thing to do, as there weren't a whole lot of things to do inside (we had to ask very nicely if we could stay inside to play). But as I got into my teens, indoor activities became more accessible. Everyone had a computer, the internet became a thing, you suddenly had more options than to just bike around or play. As I got into my young adult years, I noticed that team sports and things like that had dropped off significantly where I came from. Even in my small rural town we'd have 3-4 soccer teams in my age group...10 years later, they could barely string together a single team of teens to play for our town team. Many kids had simply lost interest, and were occupied with other things.
- kdheiwns 5mo agoIn the 90s/2000s, my parents refused to even let me go into the front yard alone because I'd get "kidnapped". 24 hour news made lots of parents absolutely deranged and plenty of people really thought kidnappers flew around like hawks, waiting for under 18s to be outside of the sight of parents for one second so they could swoop down and carry them away. I tried to go outside a few times. Learned the hard way that it wasn't allowed. Plus many other kids weren't allowed outside either.
- saimiam 5mo agoI blame apps and products like WhatsApp and Nextdoor. We've created these online means of connection (and conflict) which allows us to communicate without having to actually meet anyone in person. Absent these forced meetings, parents barely know their neighbors and consequently, their kids barely know anyone even two doors down.
- deltarholamda 5mo agoI'm old enough to remember Atari when it was new. Playing a video game at home was quite something, no quarters required! But it also had somewhat limited replayability. Doesn't matter how good you are, eventually Defender is going to beat you. The NES was a radical departure in how games were played and how good they were. You'd never spend all day in front of the Atari, but you could with the NES. Add to that the steady increase in the availability and affordability of cable tv, then VCRs and video rentals, and now the TV is even more central to the ordinary person's life. Then came computers, the Internet, etc. I think there is definitely something to kids just not being as interested in going outside. Why would they be? All their friends are in the magic box in their pocket. Outside is where you get sunburn and ticks that make you allergic to meat.
- holoduke 5mo agoMy oldest son of 10 years already cycles alone through our village. Hangs out with friends in nearby parks or soccer fields. Here in the Netherlands infrastructure is build around cyclists and pedestrians. I can't imagine him sitting home all the time. As soon as he wakes up in the weekend he leaves the house. During the week he cycles to school which is about 2 miles by bike. No phone, no gps. It's how we live.
- wheels 5mo agoA quirky thought: I'm very much an advocate of "free range parenting", and mostly grew up with it myself in the US, and it's what my kids have here in Germany. My 7 year old walks to school alone (in my neighborhood), my 10 year old takes the subway to school, and they have a large degree of freedom in our neighborhood, generally going to after-school activities on their own. But I wonder if part of why people worried less in earlier generations is that we were so close to the time where childhood actually was dangerous: 100 years ago in the US, 20% of kids didn't live to adulthood (mostly because of diseases we can now prevent). I wonder if that had some cultural impact on perception of relative dangers.
- throwawayffffas 5mo agoWhat happened is we learned the extend of sexual abuse of minors. Estimates in the early 90s was around 1%. Research in the late nineties revealed the actual percentage was about 9% and 10%.* Are we over-reacting maybe but maybe not. * I vaguely recall that in an episode of PsychologyInSeattle, a guest that was doing research into food addiction back then realized that over 40% of their patients had experienced some sort of sexual abuse when they were a child, this led them to expand their research into that subject and discover the full extent of the issue. I think the research they did put the figure for the general population at 16% but take these numbers with a grain of salt it's been a while since I listened to it.
- pjc50 5mo ago.. however, isn't that almost entirely from people known to the child? Authority figures, teachers, priests, step-parents? "Stranger danger" was in some ways a recoil from recognizing how bad the "system" was in secret, as it relied on abuse of trust.
- throwawayffffas 5mo agoI think that only reinforces the fear. The old thinking was the danger was the guy in the van snatching up children. Now we assess the danger may be the father of the kid next door.
- watwut 5mo agoMost of that happens in families
- jlengrand 5mo agoMoved house earlier this year, from an apartment in a not so safe area to a house in a family area with no cars and more green. The kiddos have been out so much more, and it's awesome to see how they find phones / screens less interesting when they can just go and play outside.
- thedougd 5mo agoI live in the SE US suburbs and a regular story on the news are fears over roaming packs of kids on e-bikes or e-motorcycles. Now, while the safety concerns of reckless riding are warranted, it also tells me that at least some of the kids are alright. I live in a low density, large neighborhood where kids 8-17 are out roaming all the time, the older half heading to adjacent shops and other neighborhoods. I recognize and know who most are and their parents. The common trend I see is a purposeful limiting of screen time.
- chasebank 5mo agoWe have the same "problem" where I live in central coast CA. It's so rad to see kids ripping e-bikes all over town. Would I prefer the kid riding on the back seat isn't staring at her phone? Of course! But at least they are outside exploring! Fwiw most of the kids I see with this freedom are Mexican but that could be because I live closer to and work downtown, closer to lower income areas and not in the suburbs.
- kevinfarrugia 5mo agoThis matches research done by Let Grow that claims that kids spend so much time on their smartphones because they are on a short leash and would prefer unstructured play time: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/kids-smartphones-play-freedom/683742/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/kids-smart... As a parent of a 9 year old I often find myself keeping them on a short leash and need to consciously give them the freedom they crave. Reading these articles help me be more aware and courageous.
- i_am_a_peasant 5mo agoMeh, even when you have the infrastructure for kids like in Germany. You still need to keep your eye on them. I've heard too many horror stories, including from personal friends of them just being dragged into a bush by a stranger and scarred for life. :/ It's a garbage world containing many garbage people and I think the "good old days" where you could just send your kid out in the morning and only see them at dinner never existed in the first place. It's just that predators can only prey on so many at once... They're probably a lot safer in big numbers though, like if you had a group of 4 kids, each with cameras ready to film a potential attacker you could maybe give them ways in which they can protect themselves without necessarily needing adult supervision. It's gonna be a hard problem to solve when I'll be a dad.
- ndsipa_pomu 5mo agoTo me, this is one of the many issues with designing around motor vehicles and motornormativity (i.e. viewing personal cars as the only viable mode of transport). It's been spoken about a lot of times with philosophies such as 15-minute cities and there has been progress in Europe with promoting active travel and banning some cars from city centres. However, there's a lot of entrenched money and power that push for ever increasing numbers of cars and that's why the discussion ends up polarised. Personally, I like Cory Doctorow's phrasing of "geometry hates cars". When places are designed for cars, more room is required for attempting to ease congestion (induced demand makes this futile) and parking, but facilities can be moved further apart as people are using cars to get there. That leads to more cars being used, which leads to more congestion, which leads to more space being allocated, which leads to facilities being spaced further apart. Rinse and repeat until cars are the only mode of transport which can be used.
- predkambrij 5mo agoThank you for raising the issue. One stupid reckless driver, or a street criminal can cause overprotective behavior.
- agentultra 5mo agoInteresting what factors people choose to explain it. I just read Life After Cars which makes a compelling case that a major factor was the car: people don’t feel safe letting their kids wander and prefer driving them everywhere… which makes people feel less safe letting kids wander.
- spicyusername 5mo agoMy personal opinion for the reasons for this: - Less families with kids the same age in suburban neighborhoods - Less community between neighbors - More on demand entertainment inside the house Basically it's more that there is less to do outside and more to do inside. Parents just want their kids to busy themselves, and inside is easier than outside now.
- avazhi 5mo agoWhen are we gonna get a rule about AI slop submissions? "Don't post generated comments or AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans." Why limit this to comments only? In this case the conversation was literally started by an AI. At least require people to label submissions as AI-generated and then give users a way to filter that shit out. I don't come to HN to read AI slop.
- lbrito 5mo agoWait, how do you know that? I took a quick look at OPs stuff and it seems human
- tomhow 5mo agoThese comments from you seem belligerent and entitled. This has no place on HN. If you want to contribute constructively to the way HN runs, great. Start by being respectful to the community and the guidelines. We're hardly going to prioritize the suggestions of people who routinely throw grenades around. We can't have a blanket rule to ban all AI-generated articles, because we can't review every article that's submitted and make an evaluation about how much it was AI-generated or assisted. If an article is badly written, whether or not it was AI-assisted, it should be flagged. In this case, yes I can see the LLM-style of the writing, and I'd prefer writers avoided publishing work that with such obvious fingerprints. But it got few flags on HN, no complaints other than yours and a good discussion, and the quality of the discussion is what matters most on HN.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- cbondurant 5mo agoI remember being young when "kids don't play in the yard anymore, they just play on their phone/consoles/computer" started to be a big talking point. Even then I recognized that the reason I was on the computer so much was, at least in part, because it was so much easier to hang out with my friends online than it was to coordinate with my parents to try and get travel to their house, or to convince my parents to let a friend come over. And I consider myself relatively lucky in that part of the US where I live, despite being in a relatively rural region, is remarkably walkable. As opposed to most places in the US, which are effectively micro islands when it comes to getting anywhere on foot. Then lets also add on how loitering is treated as such a great offense. That traditional areas for young adults to just "hang" (cafe, bowling alley, arcade) have increasingly priced them out. That a teenager hanging out on their own is often suspected to be "up to something" In a time before the cell phone, we apparently let kids wander unsupervised more than we do in an era where they can get a hold of their parents at almost any time? It's ludicrous.
- gentleman11 5mo agoNot to mention how parents might get in actual legal trouble now for not acting like this
- jghn 5mo agoI agree that people don't give this explanation enough credit. I was online in that age group by the late 80s. Just as in your story, that started me down a path of not going outside as much, even though the other kids would be outside doing outside things. Why would I go out and play basketball or something else I didn't like when I could instead be online talking to people with shared interests?
- empressplay 5mo agoMe too, but I wasn't on AOL or anything long-distance, instead I called local chat systems / BBSes. And because they were local we met up physically as a group at least weekly (almost daily in the summertime). The summer I was 16 I spent more time away from the computer, hanging out with other teenagers I met on the computer, than I would have otherwise.
- jazz9k 5mo ago"A 2008 study found that media exposure explains why Americans, in particular, often see the rest of the world as dangerous Other research shows a link between the amount of crime reported on the news and the degree of fear people have over crime." So we should go back to the 'good old days' and not report the crime? I guess ignorance is bliss. If there is more crime being reported in an area, that's a signal that it's more dangerous, and you should take precautions. "Stranger abductions, the thing every parent imagines when they hesitate to let a 10-year-old walk to a friend’s house, were rare in 1985 and are rarer today." It's the same with plane crashes. The problem is that it only has to happen one time for total devastation. There are now grooming gangs in countries like the UK to worry about (which wasn't the case in the 80s and 90s). The Internet has made it much easier for predators to organize, share information, and get to your kids. When I was 11, I was around people doing drugs, smoking, drinking, and lighting illegal fireworks off (nearly blew my fingers off a few times), all without my parents knowing. The dangers were always there. Society just chose to ignore them in the those days.
- AtomicOrbital 5mo agochildren are pack animals ... as a kid the neighborhood was full of children and all of us had freedom to walk or when older ride our bikes anywhere always in a herd ... this is still the case in that tiny one red light village ... challenge is due to globalization most of the factories within driving distance have shuttered so working age adults have moved to where the jobs are leaving that village dominated by grandparents ... same freedom exists yet without the density of kids
- y11t0 5mo agoAs a 16-year-old, I want to say this: My friends and I do go out, but that sense of spontaneity we used to have is gone.Everything's pre-arranged in group chats now, those spontaneous get-togethers always excited me more, but they’re very rare now. And I think this is now universal in most places
- IlikeMadison 5mo ago[flagged]
- angst_ridden 5mo agoDo non-Europeans not let their children outside? Or are you suggesting that non-Europeans make everyone else keep their kids inside out of fear?
- plufz 5mo agoI think you should consider the possibility that people who ”don’t mention it” does so because we don’t see the science pointing in that direction.
- econ 5mo agoMaybe it's different if you have 8 or 15 kids.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- hamburgererror 5mo agoIt's fascinating to me that we forbid our kids to wander and socialize outside believing it's "dangerous" while it's safe. And instead we let them wander endlessly online where they can easily get abused...
- chasd00 5mo agoI was a free range kid in the 80s in Daytona Beach FL, i was a bit of a handful so i would literally get grounded to "outside the house" and told not to come in until the street lights where on. Ironically, Daytona Beach FL during that time was not the place for a free range kid. I remember bulletin boards full of "have you seen me" posters of missing kids and runaways at the beach arcades. As a teen I was moved to Abilene TX (culture shock to say the least) but same situation, I skated all over that little city by myself between ages 12-15. My kids today ( 16 and 14 year old boys ), are doing more and more outside but they certainly didn't has young children. My wife and I encouraged it but there was just no interest. We'd have to drag them to playgrounds and parks. My 14 year old has gotten into mountain biking so he's on his bike a lot. It's funny how proud boys are of scrapes and bruises. My 16 year old has taken up skateboarding which warms my heart as an ex-skater so he's been doing that more and more. Plus, the 16 year old has a driver's license now so he can get to a skatepark or hang out with friends without having to coordinate with me or his mom very much. We raised out kids in an urban setting, Dallas proper. If i had to do it over I would have raised them in a suburb. There whole setup in the northern suburbs of DFW are just better for families. The public schools are acceptable, the parks are better, no gunshots every night, no vagrants shooting up or shitting on the sidewalk, more family oriented businesses the list goes on.
- zwischenzug 5mo agoI don't believe people keep their kids 'safer' because they think the world has become more dangerous. It's slightly taboo, but I think people protect their kids more now because they are more precious to the parents. The average number of children per mother has plunged in the last 200 years, and investment required in them per child to get them to child-bearing capability is much higher also. Child mortality has dropped like a stone, so any harm coming to children is much less tolerable. Parents have so much invested in their children - and so few of them to "spare" - that they get far more protection than before.
- ytoawwhra92 5mo agoThere's probably some truth to this but it's hard to reconcile with the large number of parents who allow their kids to engage in behaviours known to be actively damaging and harmful at home.
- cindyllm 5mo ago[dead]
- jonahrd 5mo agoI overall agree with this article. I was mostly raised in the US but spent time from ages 7-9 in Finland, where I took the metro to school alone, so I see myself reflected in this statistic: > For example, in Finland, the majority of 7 year olds are routinely allowed to walk or bike alone. And by 8, the majority of kids cross main roads, commute to school, and navigate their neighborhoods unaccompanied. However, I feel the need to push back against this small addition to the main point: > It's providing trigger warnings, so that people can walk out instead of face being uncomfortable in the classroom. The article is about parents and parenting-culture _restricting_ a child's freedom, especially during important developmental stages. Trigger warnings in a college classroom are for adults to casually and quickly let other adults know when content might trigger their PTSD (not simply discomfort) so they can make an informed decision about attending a lecture or not, given that it simply might not be worth their time if they won't be able to listen and learn in a clear-minded state. There are no restrictions to anyone's ability to make these decisions, simply a bit more information being provided up front to allow one to do so. It feels rare to find authors online who both see the danger of raising a generation of children who are never taught that they are allowed to take care of themselves, but who also recognize the value of being kind enough to warn people when you are going to discuss sensitive topics in a lecture, harming nobody in the process. edit: In fact, thinking a bit more about it, one of the large points the author makes is that consuming either traditional or social media, which is biased towards showing us negative content related to crime, violence, tragedy, etc, will prime parents to over-protect their children. And in the same article, claims that being warned about content that might provoke an intense emotional reaction is an overstep. Maybe if these parents were also warned that "hey, I know you're just trying to catch up to the news, but reading about a child abduction 2 states over is actually just going to spike your cortisol and make you a worse parent", it would help a generation of parents self-select the media they consume, and help them avoid this trend?
- micromacrofoot 5mo agoIt doesn't even matter if you choose to parent your kids like this anymore... there's nowhere for them to go and no one else to hang out with these days. There's no more village. There's also one metric that I've heard that gives a lot of parents pause: while being out and about in the world is generally safer than ever in the US from a social standpoint, it's more dangerous than ever to be a pedestrian.
- maerF0x0 5mo agoIf you enjoy/agree see also: https://reason.com/tag/free-range-kids/ https://reason.com/tag/free-range-kids/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Enough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Enough!
- crypto420 5mo agoI spent part of my life growing up in a major Asian city where communal ties are very strong, and spent a very significant fraction of my childhood outside of my house, just because there was so much to do - whether it was playing soccer, playing hide and seek, or taking the local bus/train with friends to shows, coffee shops or restaurants. All of this was before cell phones. If I got lost or needed help I'd ask a stranger for directions or navigation. Nothing bad ever happened to me, and most people were actually quite kind and helpful to a 14 year old kid asking for help and directions. That sense of confidence in myself - that I could figure out how to pretty much do anything - has stuck with me in a way that a lot of my friends who grew up in sanitized suburban neighborhoods just don't have. Kids really don't know what they're missing.
- brainzap 5mo agoI was there when entertainment became available. 1 or 2 kids dissapeared inside, watching or playing on the new PS1/N64. Slowly more and more got PCs. Playing online.
- jroggenkamp 5mo agoReading through the comments here, it shows just how underrated small towns and rural communities are. I've hardly even seen anyone here mention them as an option. While they have their own downsides, they check most / all of the boxes that people are talking about here in terms of child-friendly environments.
- travelalberta 5mo agoGrew up surrounded by farms in rural Ontario. My parents did a great job of driving me to friends houses to socialize, but when there wasn't an organized play date I had two options: stay at home or go wander. I usually opted to stay at home and read or play video games but I did often just pick a direction and go walking. My parents made me take a hunting knife with me and only let me do this around the age of 12. While it is great to romanticize my wandering in the wilderness, it was typically pretty boring. As a result I played more video games as I got older. My best friend lived in a sort of suburb (still very rural) but we'd spend all day biking around, meeting other kids, getting up to trouble, and making grand adventures to the store to buy mountain dew. This was all the way up until high school. After 14 I was too busy with school and sports in the academic year to do anything else, and in the summer I worked at a camp. I talked to my mom about this recently and she said that 'kids can't just wander around anymore it's unsafe' and I'd argue that a child with a smart phone that constantly pings their location is a million times safer than whatever the hell we were doing. I think the challenge is that parents are more anxious and video games and social media are way more convenient than anything outside the house, making a perfect storm. I don't remember leaving the house as much as a kid because there was that much to do outside, but rather we had exhausted all the activities at home. I feel like now you have unlimited options for entertainment at home so why bother, especially if your parents would rather you be at home anyways.
- tonymet 5mo agoFacebook/Nextdoor has been a curse for kids. Parents gossip, moan and report kids constantly. Recently hysteria over e-bikes. But really it’s any trivial annoyance. I think adults / elderly completely lack perspective and compassion for kids. Berating them for using iPads, berating them for playing outside. In reality there aren’t that many kids out socializing, and not many avenues for them to be free and be themselves. They are constantly monitored directly via their phones and indirectly via the E-Stasi . When I was a kid in the 80s/90s there were kids just everywhere: parks, streets, malls , playgrounds, school facilities. We had to sneak into abandoned yards to find our own space. Now adults are whining about a few kids roaming around being kids.
- jimt1234 5mo agoI'm a Gen-Xer. I work with a lot of younger, fresh-out-of-college kids. I tell them about how it was as a kid in the 70's and 80s, but they generally reject it with disbelief. They think I'm lying when I tell them that my single mother would leave for work in the morning, and us kids would have absolutely zero supervision until she got home, usually around 7PM. Contacting her at work was basically impossible ("If you call me at work, someone better be dead!") In the summer months we roamed the streets with other neighborhood kids like a pack of wolves on BMX bikes - completely unsupervised. I had a friend get shot (some dumb-ass kid was playing with his dad's gun in the woods). One of the neighborhood kids was a Boy Scout and knew enough to tourniquet his leg. Another kid knew how to drive his dad's pickup truck, so we threw him in the back and drove to the ER. No parents around (until they showed up at the ER). There was also a time when some creepy older dude used to come down to the woods where we all hung out and rode our BMX bikes. He was probably in his mid-20s. It was totally stereotypical. He used to offer us beer and rides in his cool Trans Am. We all thought he was a creep so we stayed away. One of the kids told his dad, and shortly thereafter the dude stopped coming around. I assume some sort of "street justice" took place, but I'm not sure. Kids would get in fist fights around lunchtime, then be best friends by dinnertime. We lit stuff on fire, built ramps and treehouses with wood we stole from the nearby construction site, and we drank water directly from random houses' garden hoses. Anyway, all of this stuff (and A LOT more) happened all the time. All the neighborhood kids stuck together and looked out for one another, even if we didn't necessarily like one another. Parental involvement really wasn't an option. Almost all our parents worked. And the best part: it was awesome!
- danesparza 5mo ago"Why are we so afraid to let kids explore"? Pedophiles. They were always there, even inside of families and churches. Just underreported.
- dlandis 5mo ago> According to a 2017 study, approximately 38% of all children will be investigated by CPS by the time they are 18. This seems outrageously high. The study says it is an "estimate". I'm willing to be their methods or assumption are seriously flawed. Would be curious if someone has looked into it.
- aggie 5mo agoI'm also curious what it really means to have CPS called on you. People talk about it like it's a foregone conclusion that they'll take your kids away. I just can't believe they would do so lightly. Now of course even having to interact with them must be extremely stressful.
- ineedasername 5mo ago>Violent crime against children has fallen steadily since the early 1990s.... The world didn’t get more dangerous. We got more afraid. This is the step that otherwise smart people fail at. "We were afraid of danger X so we did Y to prevent it and turns out it was a waste because not only did X not get worse, it got better! To heck with Y!" And don't consider, maybe, things got better for that reason? This is "only sick people take medicine" logic. If you're tempted down this line of thinking you need to consider: If nothing had changed or they got worse, would that have been the expected results? What then would be the expected outcome? Comparative analysis at a minimum, not just to other societies with different norms but attempting at least to find pockets that didn't change as much or as quickly, what happened there and in other sub populations where factors varied. Otherwise you're just someone complaining how things used to be different, better in any way that fits a narrative that makes you feel comfortable or righteous or whatever.
- tonymet 5mo agoso are means. Mean reported crime dropping in urban areas does not mean that things are adequately safe. having x% lower chance of getting mugged in the hood doesn’t mean that your kids can ride the bus alone. Urban areas in the 90s , in projects and ghettos were basically war zones in terms of murder rates. They pushed the average murder & violent crime rates off the charts. Those have come down, but that doesn’t mean that the cities are now safe for 5 year olds to walk around alone. Compare moderately sketchy parts of LA to Tokyo or Helsinki and tell me which one feels safe and which doesn’t . You can tell yourself “LA is so much better than the 90s” but you still won’t feel safe in the same way.
- ineedasername 5mo agoPrecisely this! Too many confounding variables to look at such a surface level, a few high-level population wide stats. Nothing is that simple, nothing is clean in this sort of thing. Messy, interrelated factors, and you can chip away at the question bit by bit to reveal things but that is what it takes, not this do-it-with-vibes approach that's been around long before agents started taking prompts to code. My hope is that agentic analysis that does this tedious methodical chipping away, comparative cross referencing of seemingly disparate datasets, will help shift society the tiniest bit away from law & policy making via hot takes that make even the well intentioned fall on their face with poor reasoning and the more cynical wield ambiguity a cudgel of control by any emotion they can incite, usually not the good ones.
- angst_ridden 5mo agoYou can't control a society without keeping them afraid, so roll that tape of predators, kidnappers, gangs, and drug pushers! What? A child doing something without adult supervision? Next thing you know they'll start thinking for themselves, asking uncomfortable questions, or looking for forbidden books in the library. Better call the cops and accuse them of vandalism or something.
- MaysonL 5mo agoI remember walking the last couple miles of the Garden State Parkway a week or two before it opened. Could a youngster do such a thing today? After checking the Wikipedia page, I realized that I was only 10 or 11 at the time. Somehow I remembered it as having been older – high school age.
- mindcrime 5mo agoAs a GenX kid who was pretty much literally "raised on hose water and neglect", I find it incredibly hard to relate to modern parenting (disclaimer: I don't have children). I had SO much freedom to roam around and do stuff, and half the time my parents had no idea where I was. Once I got into bicycle riding, I'd jump on my bike and go miles and miles from home. And there were no ubiquitous cell phones back then, so if your parents need to find you quick it was pretty much "call all the other parents and popular hang out spots and ask "have you seen Phil?", and/or jump in the car and start visiting the spots they knew I frequented. Was there a measure of danger to allowing a 12 year old that much freedom? Sure, probably. But to illustrate something that lines up perfectly with TFA... the worst thing that ever happened to me or any of my friends during this time, was when me and my then best friend were riding our bikes on the road between our homes, and he was struck by a car. Were we ever worried about being kidnapped, or any of that crap? Hell no. That's not to say it couldn't have happened, but that wasn't on anybody's minds back then (I'm talking approx 1984 - 1990 or so). That said, if I were a parent today, I think I'd be somewhat scared to give my kids the same amount of freedom I had. Which makes me a hypocrite I guess? Maybe I've bought into too much of the prevailing media narrative stuff myself.
- dfxm12 5mo agoThat said, if I were a parent today, I think I'd be somewhat scared to give my kids the same amount of freedom I had. Why? Stranger kidnappings are down since you were a kid. What media are you consuming and what is it saying? "if it bleeds, it leads" has long been an adage that the news talks more about violence than other things, so take the volume of violent stories with a grain of salt. I think when you are a parent, you also understand that other people in the community are watching out for stuff like this, whether they have a stake specifically in your kids, or keeping your community a nice place to live. Other parents, the guy at the corner store, older siblings, the coach at the basketball court at the playground, the teacher who lives in the neighborhood, etc. It takes a village and if you aren't going to school or other community events, you can lose sight of the village that's out there.
- mindcrime 5mo ago
- scelerat 5mo agoAs I'm sure many people on HN with kids do, I think very highly of my toddler's capabilities. I'm looking forward to the day I can stick him on a cross-town bus and have him fly solo (or at least with a peer/buddy). I'm hoping he can do it by age eight or nine. That was the same age my parents let me ride my bike several miles across town to a friend's house. My biggest fear for my kid out in the world is not abduction, but injury or death by automobile.
- LoveMortuus 5mo agoWe would go into a forest and chop down trees... among other things. A sibling did get in trouble once, because it wasn't our forest, but it wasn't that big of a deal.
- prmoustache 5mo agoThe issue is not only on the parents side. For years my daughter walked on their own to their primary school. But same school didn't allow kids to leave the school unless a parent/legal guardian or person allowed by them would show up. I was ready to sign a paper but they refused. Regarding leaving the front yard, there are so many communities/streets with lots of interdictions like prohibition to play with a ball, this is ridiculous. Yes kids are noisy, I know I have a small football field next to my office where kids still hang out after school and play until way past sunset. They are still less noisy than traffic and they bring life to otherwise boring neighborhoods.
- darepublic 5mo agoAs a parent I am mostly concerned about traffic
- monch1962 5mo agoIt seems inconceivable in 2026, but in the late 1960s my parents dropped me off for an unaccompanied ~10-hour train trip from Melbourne to Sydney. That trip included multiple stops at different stations along the way, plus a change of trains as we crossed the state boarder. As far as I'm aware, there was nobody on the train who was watching over me. I was 7 years old
- elendee 5mo agomy neigborhood is dense and -feels- like 50% immigrant, I could be wrong. The birthrate is high, the parents are working, and mobs of kids roam the street. Nature is healing.
- adfm 5mo agoI pinpoint the start of “safetyism” with the kidnapping, rape, and murder of Polly Klaas in Petaluma, California in 1993. Overnight, nobody let their kids outside unattended. It was crazy that nobody talked about it. Terms like “helicopter parenting” sprung up to explain it, but it was obvious they were freaked out by the media’s 24/7 coverage. And the weird thing about it was the guy abducted her from inside her own home during a sleepover, not off the street, like most people assume. https://www.ktvu.com/news/marc-klaas-close-foundation-3-decades-after-daughter-polly-killed-petaluma.amp https://www.ktvu.com/news/marc-klaas-close-foundation-3-deca...
- deafpolygon 5mo ago> Violent crime against children has fallen steadily since the early 1990s. Stranger abductions, the thing every parent imagines when they hesitate to let a 10-year-old walk to a friend’s house, were rare in 1985 and are rarer today. Well, we stopped letting kids wander -- certainly that has an impact on the statistics.