I 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.
I’ll probably let him bike alone anyway. But it’s a different equation because of the cars.
show comments
paulmooreparks
I'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.
show comments
delichon
A 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.
show comments
zkmon
This 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.
GlibMonkeyDeath
I'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-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 :)
PantaloonFlames
The 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.
show comments
GMoromisato
The 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.
GeekyBear
The 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.
In general there is excessive alarmism, and the internet makes it possible.
paulpauper
I 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.
m3kw9
Is 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.
I 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:
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.
I'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.
A 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.
This 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.
I'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-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 :)
The 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.
The 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.
The 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.
History Channel has a good series about what gen X and baby boomers grew up with: https://www.history.com/shows/hazardous-history-with-henry-w...
In general there is excessive alarmism, and the internet makes it possible.
I 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.
Is 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.