I live in just a regular suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of small Metro. Nothing special about it at all.
Every time I see one of these articles I always wonder who they're talking about.
I always feel like this is just one of those news headlines that won't go away, but isn't quite tethered to reality, but people really like to feel bad about modern life and so we keep talking about it as if it's real. I suspect the real reason kids aren't playing outside, if there is one, is not because they can't, it's because they choose not to. Just as adults are no longer choosing to go to third spaces. Screens came for everyone.
Your kids are hardly free-range. Let me guess, there's no way for them to actually meaningfully leave the area (no train, bus, etc)? It's like dumping kids on a 5 acre farm and saying they can do whatever they want. hardly free-range in the way described in the article.
Presumably you live in a suburb for the reasons the person in the article checked in on the free-range kid.
my personal litmus test is if you'd let your 13 year kid explore Manhattan alone during the day. Many say no because it's dangerous, and yet Manhattan is safer than most American suburbs. just FUD all the way down sadly.
My parents let me (14) and my brother (9) explore central Paris on our own when my Dad was working at the Paris air show for the RAF. No problems at all even though this was just after the student protests in the 60s, and so things were a little tense.
I think Manhattan would be OK too, though I've only been there as an adjust. Certainly, you see kids running around London.
the biggest things parents should worry about is their kid being bullied by other kids during school, a supposedly safe place, and other family. strangers just aren't the major source of violence towards children.
She is now in a neck brace, and her mother is absolutely distraught, saying this is something she cannot fix for her beloved daughter. I am distraught as well that this could happen to anyone at all on the same train that I ride every week.
I’ve noticed a trend of people attaching a sort of personal identification with headlines
What do you mean it's like dumping kids on a farm? Are the suburbs really THAT lethally dangerous?
Source [22 minutes]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLAfDrFUBkA
[something traumatic happens and 50 people run for their safety]
see and as proven, only 1 person was assaulted!
I don't see child welfare agencies personally as a particular threat when it comes to this topic. Maybe they ARE more likely to get involved in cases of more free range parenting where before they weren't, but it doesn't register as a real worry.
The major difference I see between when I was growing up and now is that when I went out onto the streets, there were other kids on the streets. My parents didn't know exactly what they were sending me out to, but they knew that there as a general crowd of kids that would be out on the street until some point in the evening, and that they would all go home at around the same time, and that's also when you were expected home.
The draw of smartphones and video games as indoor entertainment can't be understated, but I can exercise some parental tyranny here and always kick him out of the house to go play like my folks used to do.
But there are no other kids out there. I'm sending him out into streets empty of kids.
To mitigate this I'm trying to nudge things in the direction of him and his friends forming some sort of after-school crew that finds outside activities to do together, undirected. There are other like minded parents that I've found that are also interested in enabling something like this.
On the subject of risks - I strongly believe that the role of parenthood is to mediate a child's exposure to the real trauma of a hostile, often absurd reality that they will grow up into. Controlled exposure to risk, to self-directed decision making in times where they feel like someone won't be there to help them out and they need to figure things out on their own, these are critical requirements in parenting IMHO. And all risk comes with some small chance of tragedy, and that's a burden we as parents have to bear: to expose ourselves to the emotional trauma of the possibility of our children getting hurt, however small the chance, so that they are able to grow into healthy well-adjusted adults.
I feel like I have to work a lot harder than my parents did to enable that exposure.
This. It's a number's "game".
My father, born in rural Romania, had 8 siblings, one of them died of an accident in his childhood (yeah, during "free range stuff"). I was born in a town and have 2 brothers. Live in a city and have one kid.
I can't send my kid out carelessly because I don't have a backup.
At the ski hill kids 5+ roam free- it’s always fun getting on the chairlift and a little kid says “ can you help me get on?” And you have to physically pick them up onto the moving (fixed grip) chairlift. There’s no cell service.
Mountain bike trails around town are full of groups of kids 5+.
My advice: move to a small town, it’s like going back in time in a very good way.
When you walk, you go in the opposite direction of cars and can see them coming and, if necessary, move off to the side more.
I know it's survivorship bias, but it worked for me.
Now I get that population density is increasing, and probably so is traffic. Though so are automatic safety features that cause cars to brake rather than hit things.
Are there statistics on vehicular fatalities in suburbs?
Quote from CDC
During 2013–2022, U.S. traffic-related death rates increased a relative 50.0% for pedestrians and 22.5% overall, compared with those in 27 other high-income countries, where they declined a median of 24.7% and 19.4%, respectively. Across countries, U.S. pedestrian death rates were highest overall and among persons aged 15–24 and 25–64 years.
Everybody is an island. I don't know what has caused this, but it seems like it's happening in most 1st world countries. Anyone have insights about this?
The funny thing is it'd be safer: Kids have cell phones now by like 7 or 8 in a lot of cases and can call for help! Back when I was that age if I got injured or something I might've had to knock on strangers' doors!
Maybe, back in the days, it was just a different time? A more high trust society that worked well?
Nowadays, we have news stories, where 70 year olds get stabbed by youngsters because they got lectures on their bad behaviour. When I was young, I had respect towards a 70 year old. Big time. Never would we have thought to pull out a knife…
Life changed a lot in recent years and not for the better on all dimensions.
Europe is still pretty save though. At least if you trust the statistics
Plus, now, basically every kid is running around with a phone that gives them access to talk to the police or their parents at any time. So it's going to be a lot riskier for someone to try anything against them. Even then, between 80-90% of sexual assaults are performed by people the victims already know, and around 30% of those are relatives of the victim.
I thought this kind of bigotry was only used by far right shit to manipulate feeble-minded people.
I'll be generous and assume this comment was not made by a human, but by a bot.
You should flip through some newspaper archives from when you were a kid. I don’t know where you are, but I can almost certainly guarantee that there were kids attacking people back then too. Just because you and most you know would never have pulled a knife, doesn’t mean that there weren’t those that would. After all, you say the teens today attack old people with knives, but I really don’t think your teen daughters are stabbing people with knives.
How can you reasonably let your teen daughters out alone? Well, be reasonable. Find out if your fears are amped up by sensationalist press. Go meet your refugee neighbours. Quite honestly it sounds like YOU spend too much time inside.
Edit: I just saw your comment about importing men from countries where rape is natural. I can’t imagine that we have the same definition of reasonable.