The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

https://bigthink.com/mind-behavior/the-quiet-disappearance-of-the-free-range-childhood/

by sylvainkalache • 3 months ago

259 269 3 months ago

lmf4lol• 3 months ago

this resonates a lot. I am not sure how to handle this though. Next to our house (500m), the city government established a camp for “asylum seekers”. 100 men. Men only. How can I reasonable let my pre-teen daughters roam freely now? Id love to, but my gut feeling doesnt allow me to.

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

techjamie• 3 months ago

Statistically, we live in the safest society we ever have. We see a lot of bad stuff happening because news reporting travels further and faster than ever before, amplifying the perception the world is going to shit.

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.

dghlsakjg3• 3 months ago

Do you have any evidence or are you just basing your fears on feelings? Has there been a rise in sex attacks associated with this particular refugee housing?

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.

baublet• 3 months ago

This is bigotry dressed up as concern. It’s also not something widespread. Seems like you just think immigrants are rapists.

hackinthebochs• 3 months ago

It's interesting how much some of you expect us to ignore gut feelings and statistics to avoid the appearance of bigotry. We should at the very least be able to acknowledge statistical reality then we can debate what is an appropriate response. Hell, I don't even need to know the backgrounds of the immigrants. We know that males engage in almost all the violent/forcible sexual assaults. We know that a lack of community engagement increases the chance for anti-social behavior. We know that access is a prerequisite for interpersonal crime. That itself is enough to warrant heightened concern.

roxolotl• 3 months ago

I’m reasonably convinced this explains basically everything currently attributed to social media, for children at least, and likely can also help explain some concern around birth rates and child rearing costs. Starting with the satanic panic the US has slowly closed down children’s lives because of concern that terrible things will happen to children if not continually under supervision. And the true is that yes sometimes bad things happen and have always happened. But if you look to many other countries they do not have the same extreme expectations of parents or the state to keep children’s lives locked down.

trallnag• 3 months ago

Does the term "satanic panic" also apply to the EU restricting internet access for the youth?

dghlsakjg3• 3 months ago

Satanic panic was a very specific phenomenon in the US.

coldtea7• 3 months ago

No, that's plain old security state motivation hidden behind plain old moral panic justifications nobody buys.

spicyusername2• 3 months ago

I don't know. Maybe this is going away in some places, maybe I just have my own anecdata, but my kids play outside unsupervised all the time, as do all the kids in my neighborhood.

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.

rayiner3• 3 months ago

This behavior is probably overrepresented in the bougie places reporters live. I dropped my daughter off at the mall to hang out with their friends and one of the moms followed them around the whole time. They're all 13!

garbawarb3• 3 months ago

Do journalists live in bougie places? It's not a particularly well-paying job.

mikestew2• 3 months ago

This behavior is probably overrepresented in the bougie places reporters live.

I live in Redmond, WA. Bougie? My rube Midwestern ass thinks so. And there are feral kids all over my neighborhood. Plenty of kids walking to school in groups, or solo. Neighbor kids talk about riding the bus/train to places. Granted, there are a lot of immigrant families around here (hello, Microsoft, et al.), and I'm sure that skews things.

pessimizer2• 3 months ago

From the mall story, you also seem to be living in a "bougie" place. What makes you think that places other than where you live are different?

One would expect that after your first sentence, the second sentence would be a counterexample.

JuniperMesos2• 3 months ago

https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/shoot-the-messenger

But I actually find ideological bias to be less concerning than the more fundamental problem that the class of people who determine the boundaries of debate share a set of demographic and experiential traits that they don’t recognize as distinctive.
This class of people includes journalists, yes, but also people who work in the tech industry, academics, nonprofit leaders, influencers, and those who work in politics. From now on, I’ll refer to this group broadly as “the messenger class.”
The messenger class’s distinctive experiences — like living in downtown Washington, D.C., or living in one of the parts of New York highlighted in red — shape the boundaries of normal in ways harder to counteract than pure ideological or partisan bias.
The messenger class plays a fundamental role in any democracy. Democratic self-governance requires not just fair procedures for making decisions but an accurate and shared picture of social reality to reason about. That picture is revealed through the communicated experiences of citizens, filtered through the messenger class, which decides which experiences are urgent and require intervention.

ekropotin2• 3 months ago

Was the mom Asian? Asking because my pre-teen daughter has a lot of Asian friends and I clearly see a pattern of hyper vigilance among their moms.

amazingamazing3• 3 months ago

my kids play outside unsupervised all the time, as do all the kids in my neighborhood. I live in just a regular suburban neighborhood

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.

ghaff3• 3 months ago

The usual contrast being drawn is kids wandering around a suburban area, walking to school, playing with kids in a nearby rural property. It's not hopping onto a bus to the city a few tens of miles away. You do see schoolchildren in Japan on the train by themselves but I'm not sure that's ever been very common in the US.

tayo422• 3 months ago

Plenty of trouble for a 13 year old in Manhattan. Even if it's not dangerous, you can find your own problems easily enough.

Mordisquitos• 3 months ago

It's like dumping kids on a 5 acre farm and saying they can do whatever they want.

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

yieldcrv• 3 months ago

and yet Manhattan is safer than most American suburbs

[something traumatic happens and 50 people run for their safety]

see and as proven, only 1 person was assaulted!

I think a future society that counts trauma and mental health disruptions instead of just the crime stats will reach different conclusions on areas considered safe

zabzonk2• 3 months ago

my personal litmus test is if you'd let your 13 year kid explore Manhattan alone during the day

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.

ryandrake• 3 months ago

Yea, I always through "free range" meant the kid walking (or taking the bus/train) a few miles through the city to get to an actual "other place" destination. Not "playing across the street in the suburban park." If the latter is now considered unusual, we have some big problems!!

beej712• 3 months ago

I grew up in the 70s in a town of 30,000 and consider that time free-range. There was no public transit, only bicycles.

com2kid4• 3 months ago

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.

This depends on the area. In more urban areas exploring can be done on foot or bike. I live in Seattle, which has some fantastic bike trails that can go on and on for miles and cross into multiple adjacent cities.

In some cities parents are fighting to let their kids play in their own front yard unsupervised. Not an issue in Seattle, where kids are required to walk to and from their neighborhood school by the school district.

But denser areas also have lots of stuff to do within the neighborhood. Within 2 or so miles there is a massive shopping area, multiple bakeries, tons of restaurants, a slew of parks (Seattle has an obscene density of parks, it is one of the best aspects of living here), a lakefront beach (lots of bodies of water in Seattle), 2 swimming pools, tennis courts, and a bunch of other stuff I am probably forgetting right now.

So define free range. If a gaggle of kids travel to the local grocery store together to buy lemons and sugar, then self organize selling lemonade to people passing by on a hot day, is that free range? I'd argue yes.

shawn_w• 3 months ago

Redmond has decent (though not great) bus coverage and light rail stations to Seattle and points beyond in the core downtown area and next to a huge park.

bdangubic2• 3 months ago

I live in suburb of a metro area, as safe as it gets (my front door is unlocked overnight often and almost never locked during the day, my garage is also frequently open). my 12-year old (5’8” 125lbs) went to walk the dog to the park about 1/2 mile from my house, someone called the police and I had to deal with social services…

guelo• 3 months ago

I do know. No kids play outside in my neighborhood. The story resonates because your personal annecdote is not very common. (Not as the sibbling comment says, that reporters all out of touch elites).

insane_dreamer5• 3 months ago

my kids play outside unsupervised all the time

"free range kids" doesn't mean playing outside in a suburban cul-de-sac; it's the ability to go outside the immediate neighborhood on their own (walking, cycling, or public transport) -- stuff I did all the time as a 11-13 year old that is pretty rare these days. I don't think I've ever seen a preteen on the local city transport alone

belZaah• 3 months ago

My kids walk/bike to school, take public transport and are pretty free-range. But that’s absolutely nothing compared to my childhood. I was born in 1975. We dug up literal explosives from WWII and made our own small bombs (some matches, two large bolts…). Access to all sorts of chemicals was easy and we would set things on fire or just mix stuff to see what happens. Playing around on construction sites. Taking someones boat out to go fishing. Making bows and arrows, that would go straight through plywood. All _that_ is definitely gone. Some of it for good - kids loosing their fingers or worse was a common occurrence. So there definitely is a trend in case of me and my friends.

watwut6• 3 months ago

Free range and kids dig boms are two different things. We dont need to match accident mortality.

renewiltord2• 3 months ago

This is a bit of a shift of the Overton Window surely. Because that doesn’t sound free-range: which involves perhaps miles of travel unsupervised.

xtiansimon• 3 months ago

My free range childhood friends and I would have been all _get bent_ to that lady—even at 6 yro. I can tell you this because I was also getting a whooping at home from da for saying the same to my ma. I was a dreadful child.

jl6• 3 months ago

It’s easier to let kids play around the neighborhood when you know who the neighbors are.

amazingamazing3• 3 months ago

most acts of abuse to family members are by other family members. ironically strangers are more likely to leave your kid alone than extended family.

phyzix5761• 3 months ago

That's a problem of access not familiarity.

paulryanrogers2• 3 months ago

Know which of your neighbors have unsecured firearms lying around. Sadly all to common where I am.

homeonthemtn• 3 months ago

I think this is more a data point towards the quiet disappearnce of community / the steady march towards pervasive isolation

Loughla• 3 months ago

Correct. There are no communities anymore, just groups of houses. You see it in the death of social and civic organizations, churches, and other community groups.

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?

lencastre• 3 months ago

and yet everybody is one discoord channel away from everybody else hundreds if not thousands of km away, eager to talk, voice their opinions etc… crossing the street, meet your neighbor, too much hassle

GoldenRacer• 3 months ago

There's a book called "Bowling Alone" that explores a lot of ideas around this. Iirc the conclusion is two fold:

1. Historically women were largely responsible for community building. As they joined the workforce, they had less time to community build and so there became less community.

2. Technology allowing home entertainment. People can now stream movies instead of going to theaters. Play computer games instead of go to arcades. Check Facebook instead of call friends to catch up. Use a Keurig for convenient coffee instead of go to a cafe.

esafak• 3 months ago

I think it depends on the locale. I moved from SF, which is career oriented, to OH, which is family oriented and, as I expected, I found more kids roaming the streets.

So if your streets are deserted, ask the locals their views on parenting. Paranoid parents will talk up the safety factor, but it's overblown.

keybored3• 3 months ago

Bourgeoisie society. Not values, not culture, not mindset. It’s rooted in how society is structured. But values, culture, and mindset reinforce it.

This very individualistic society can only critique itself in terms of individual failings. Which leads to the catch-22, anti-communal, ankle-deep critiques: people are on their phones, people are asocial, why don’t “people” all get a clue individually and fix this via some spontaneous autoenlightenment.

akomtu• 3 months ago

Technology has caused this. Once a society becomes highly developed, it fuses itself with technology that eventually replaces human culture with efficiency, productivity and similar crap.

metalman• 3 months ago

here in Canada, social service "baby snatchers" have destroyed basic community cohesion and along with many other wildly out of control beurocratic policing forces, such as the spca making having animals a huge liability, litteral special subdivisions, chicken police, horse police, and an enacted rock police to prevent the totaly illegal practice of picking rocks off a beach, but hey it is legal to pack granma into the back of a motor home and drive her to the government canabis store, get her wrecked, and then take her in so she can ask to be euthanized. cant make this shit up as they say.

dghlsakjg3• 3 months ago

Wow!

Where I live my neighbors have chickens and one has a horse and they never get hassled, the kids roam through the neighborhood under the age of ten without getting picked up by the authorities (well, one time one got lost and a helpful cop brought him home, but that was the end of it), if your dog wanders off animal control will call you to come pick it up (first time they waive the fee), you can collect shells, rocks, driftwood and seaweed for fertilizer off the beach. We have euthanasia but it is a carefully controlled process that involves multiple independent doctors and a lucid patient, and the supermajority (84%) of people approve of it!

Canada sounds like a terrible place, but you are more than welcome in the country I call home; Canada. Oh wait…

scelerat4• 3 months ago

My biggest fear of letting my young kid play alone outside is getting hit by a car.

neogodless• 3 months ago

When I was a kid I was taught not to walk in the street.

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?

tomasphan• 3 months ago

Pedestrian traffic deaths are going down again after peaking in 2022. Accidents are less survivable in the US due to bigger cars and higher hoods.

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.

bojan• 3 months ago

The cars are getting bigger. That means that the impact is more deadly, and the line of sight is higher - making it easy to overlook a child. The sensors often won't react at low speeds which are common for residential neighborhoods, and at high speeds they are late anyway.

scelerat4• 3 months ago

It's not even "in the street" I'm worried about -- it's the lunatics who drive like they are the main character in a single-player RPG. Not looking for bikes or pedestrians, crashing into parked cars and houses.

delichon2• 3 months ago

That's why you have an emergency backup child for redundancy in case of failure of the main child.

NordStreamYacht4• 3 months ago

Ah, the Spare. You must be British royalty.

mynegation• 3 months ago

The only people who find this joke funny don’t have any children.

cap11235• 3 months ago

Remember, they're cattle, not pets.

scelerat4• 3 months ago

Riight! I was wondering why some people had more than one. Like, I wonder that every single ever-loving day

seb12042• 3 months ago

I don't think roads were ever considered a safe area to play. Even in cities in 80 the bugger roads were too busy. This is why cities need spaces for people including youth and teens not just playgrounds for toddlers. Yes traffic is more dense and faster, cars get bigger etc. but aren't cars also safer? I have heard the cars in the USA are crazy big which has larger dead angles particularly bad for smaller humans.

mitthrowaway2• 3 months ago

Cars are safer for those inside of them. For those outside of them, well, it's their fault for not having crumple zones!

Cars on the roads in the '80s were very low to the ground. Even a child standing on the sidewalk could easily see over the hood of a car parked on the road. Now, hoods have gotten so tall that neither can the child see past it to what's on the other side, nor can the drivers see the children.

jMyles2• 3 months ago

Of course; that's the only reasonable conclusion from a straightforward reading of the risk profile for children after they age out of drowning and before they age into opioid overdose.

The lion's share of loving a child is intervening in proportion to actual risk.

As a society, that means, more than any other single reform, relieving our cities of the burden of maintaining lethal, taxpayer-funded compatibility with the auto industry's machinery.

nkrisc• 3 months ago

For real. Way too many people drive around our neighborhood way too fast and looking at their phone the whole time. Of course they’re also driving their enormous pedestrian-crusher trucks.

musicale• 3 months ago

My biggest fear of letting my young kid play alone outside is getting hit by a car.

It is frightening once they learn to drive, isn't it?

ocdtrekkie• 3 months ago

I remember when I was a kid I would bike to a park around a half mile away by myself, definitely before I was 13, and I admit it feels weird to suggest a kid can go to the park down just a single block alone today.

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!

gehsty• 3 months ago

As a parent you feel the push and pull of not ignoring your child while also not mollycoddling them. For me let the kid do what they want - if your kid wants to stay home let them, if they want to climb trees and go off on their bike let them. Help them learn what is safe (which rods can they cross), what are their boundaries. Hopefully they get it, maybe they don’t. Don’t restrict access to devices or screens too harshly. Encourage games of any kind. Wear sunscreen.

kannanvijayan2• 3 months ago

I have a 10 year old boy and I'm facing these issues right now. I'm also in Canada so culturally adjacent to the US and similar enough with regards to this topic.

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.

testing223212• 3 months ago

Small town Canada here. In winter all the kids above school toboggan and slide down the roads (GT racers). All the kids below trudge up carrying their slider of choice. In the afternoon the roles are reversed. Not an adult in sight.

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.

kannanvijayan2• 3 months ago

I learned to snowboard in Wapiti Valley which is a little river valley skislope setup way out in the middle of nowhere saskatchewan. I know what you're talking about. I took the lift up with both 6 year olds and 86 year olds and both would offer advice to a new learner. I drove 3 hours in from "big city" Saskatoon but most of the attendees were kids and adults from the nearby towns. Loved the literal 30-second wait times to catch a lift back up - it was a really great environment to learn in.

That said, "move to a small town" is easier said than done when you have a family and kid :)

MichaelRo3• 3 months ago

> But there are no other kids out there. I'm sending him out into streets empty of kids.

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.

xyzelement4• 3 months ago

One of the many reasons you should have more kids.

xboxnolifes3• 3 months ago

I can't send my kid out carelessly because I don't have a backup.

I don't understand this reasoning. Are you saying you're knowingly stunting the growth of your child because you would have to deal with your emotions if something terrible happened?

I understand the emotional pull of it, but I don't understand being able to identify it, put it into words, and then continue to do it.

ip262• 3 months ago

Totally onboard with some managed risk of injury being ok. Very much not onboard with the parents who trust their six year olds to face mortal peril alone and make good choices.

semiquaver4• 3 months ago

I read through the comment you replied to multiple times and I’m not seeing any mortal peril referenced. What are you referring to?

oakashes• 3 months ago

Great point. Intuitively it makes sense that sending kids out when you expect a bunch of their peers to be there is different from sending them out into empty streets. Thinking a little more about why this intuition holds: it's because once upon a time you were sending them out into a community, where they would learn the tried and tested practices by example. Once the link of cultural transmission is severed, it's hard to bootstrap it back again, even if you had a bunch of families that wanted to try.

KaiserPro2• 3 months ago

Where I am in the UK its the "problem" kids that are seen out and about on their own.

I was freerange growing up in rural england, so I have no problem with the youth roving about. My wife is horrified by the idea, so our kids are somewhat coddled.

In the UK at least, children are objectively safer in every metric apart from getting fat. Kidnap, abuse, getting lost, car accidents are all way way down.

The interesting thing is that here you wouldn't be threatened with child services, You'd have to be pretty abusive or get your kid picked up by the police for the state to get involved. Mostly its pure classism, nice middle class kids aren't allowed to walk about on their own until they are 16, at least.

left-struck• 3 months ago

I think mentioning those safety metrics is really important because for any person, not just in the UK but in many countries like it, the thing that will most likely kill them are diseases related to being unfit and overweight.

So while kids might appear to be slightly safer in their childhood, the reality is that those other dangers were never a serious statistical danger to begin with, but not creating health habits is a contributing factor to the most likely cause of death when they’re older.

I think people vastly underestimate how dangerous living an inactive lifestyle is. I’m not saying this because I grew up super active and now I’m judging people who live their life differently to me, I’m saying it because those are the statistics, and because I DIDN’T grow up being active.

givemeethekeys• 3 months ago

Blame a litigious culture where agencies have far too much power to "fix" other people. People in many places in America live with a fear of losing their children or getting sued and losing everything.

eweise• 3 months ago

When my child was an infant, my wife parked in a parking lot and starting chatting with a friend about 10 yards away. Minutes later a woman came by and starting claiming the child was not safe and was going to call protective services. This freaked both of us out that a stranger could potentially have the power to cause the government to become involved with our family. Fortunately, we didn't let that experience prevent us from letting our kids wander freely. But it does just take one over-concerned parent, to get you into trouble.

mothballed7• 3 months ago

I had something like that happen I was out of town and forgot most places in America have a way more fascist child snatchers than where I live. The police contacted a national database check, their local child services, and my hometown child services. Thankfully my hometown child services told them to go fuck themselves (the place I live in now thankfully doesn't usually get involved unless there is serious abuse) and the ones in the place I was at didn't have time to deal with it before I left, but they certainly would have if I were a resident there.

ceayo2• 3 months ago

fascist child snatchers

lol

vjvjvjvjghv• 3 months ago

A friend of mine was outside with his kids. He read a book and a woman who drove by yelled at him to always watch the kids and not read a book.

sublinear• 3 months ago

I do get that it's stressful to raise a family. You're being held accountable for many things you don't have much control over, but I don't think this is a big deal either way. This is a false dichotomy like all the other nonsense aimed at parents.

It misses the point entirely to seek control over whether your kids are "free range" enough. That style of parenting worked so well in the past (it didn't really, but I digress) because they left well enough alone. They weren't trying to contrive anything. Your kids absorb everything from you. Don't let your insecurities be part of it.

What I would argue is much more important is keeping things fresh with new opportunities. That's your main job as a parent. Keep them thinking and engaged with their mostly self-directed path in life. The goal is to open their eyes and help them understand the world. Respect their intelligence and let them decide things on their own.

Many of those so called free range childhoods of the past were actually just empty and boring. That's when they got into trouble. That's not something to be nostalgic about. When I hear about trends like this I have to wonder if some parents are just looking for excuses to be lazy.

seb12042• 3 months ago

I have to keep telling my kids that "this is not the USA", all the things they see or hear are so dominated by USA views and experiences that the kids need to be reminded that this should not be transferred to where we live without consideration. This is a constant effort to review concerns and angst that might arise. E.g. school shootings and metal detectors on school entrances. Sure there are socioeconomic issues around when looking at high schools here but not like that. Personally I think we need to ground ourselves and not get shit crazy or paralysed by fear.

polivier• 3 months ago

I do feel like we as a society are moving in the direction discussed by the article, as a general trend. But this is not my personal experience. We live in typical suburbs, and we are lucky enough that our street has a bunch of like-minded young families that let their kids play outside. Our street really feels like what you would imagine if you were thinking of a typical street in the 1960s. Kids aged 5 to around 10 playing ball in the street, going in each other's yards/houses, etc. There's a Catholic church less than 1km away, and at 6pm every day the bells ring. All the kids go back to their houses for supper when they hear the bells. It's great.

There's a kid (7-8 years old I think) a few houses down that carries a walkie-talkie with him during the summer. He'll be out for several hours (probably not farther than 10 houses away from his own house), and his mom checks on him every now and then using the walkie-talkie. I'll buy a set for own kids this summer for the exact same purpose.

The only thing I'm kind of scared of are the cars, because they tend to drive too fast (for my taste) and kids tend to not always look when they cross the street when they're too excited playing their games.

Edit: I just remembered that a few years ago, the cops showed up because there was a complaint about our kids being left unsupervised. They were playing in the backyard, which is completely fenced off, while we were inside cooking supper. Our kitchen window faces the yard so we could see them, and the window was open so we could hear them. At least the cops realized that the complaint was BS and didn't even come inside to check for anything. We live in Canada.

skrrtww• 3 months ago

“We work in tech,” she says. “Our kids [aren’t] getting any cell phones, no smartphones, no Instagrams. I write the algorithms. I don’t want my kids to touch those algorithms.”

It's disgusting that this has become a casual attitude and admission by the tech worker class. No one should be getting this free pass.

"I am actively harming children and society with my livelihood (except my own, because I am so smart). Here I am proudly and smugly stating this in a news article."

pickledish• 3 months ago

Don't know why you were downvoted -- I scoffed at that part too. The least we in tech can do is have some self-awareness

tmseidman2• 3 months ago

I disagree- I think it's not much different than working at a distillery or cigar company (wrappery?). Social media is a vice not very different than whiskey or cigars- they're addictive, feel good in the short term, and are problematic to have too much or to do habitually. But we still let people indulge in them because they're fine in small quantities for responsible adults, and we expect that parents will not let their kids have access to them.

The only differences as far as I can see are in buying- a child could technically buy a phone for themself if they had the money and create an account on Instagram for free, and in cultural recognition of social media as a vice, which I believe is starting to change.

The overall point is, the law should assume that adults are reasonably intelligent and responsible people, and that parents should be the ones responsible for parenting their own children their own way.

projektfu4• 3 months ago

Don't get high on your own supply. Famous advice.

keybored3• 3 months ago

But we still let people indulge in them because

We want to make money.

The overall point is, the law should assume that adults are reasonably intelligent and responsible people,

Over cigarettes and alcohol. The most inconsequential stuff.

But don’t say the words “direct democracy”.[1] Then people being reasonably intelligent and responsible gets forgotten. By the hive mind at least.

But people should be assumed to be reasonably intelligent and responsible. If that narrative allows us to make money off them. Not when it comes to democracy and political autonomy, of course. Shudders.

Where’s the option for people who are weak willed when it comes to something? Can they ban themselves from buying these goods? If not, where are the heroes that are working on that?

and that parents should be the ones responsible for parenting their own children their own way.

There are whole studies of psychology weaponized against children to make them act as consumer proxies for their parents. To optimize nagging.

But every pair of parent for themselves. Against all of marketing. “Responsibility.” Because that makes money.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=b65e8bee43c2ed0

keybored3• 3 months ago

Weird. I was told by HN that it’s not the worker’s fault. They have kids to feed. Oh my gosh the Bay Area rent/mortgage. Blah blah blah.

Software is eating the world they say but they can’t get an honest do-no-evil CRUD job apparently.

Low key looks like some sketchy that-happened journalistic rage bait though. I casually found some unscrupulous nerd that is making YOU doomscroll

beej712• 3 months ago

I recently revisited my childhood town and walked from my childhood home to my school. I hadn't done that for nearly 50 years. It was shorter than I remember, of course, but it was still several blocks. The last time I walked it, I was five. I also learned to ride a bicycle when I was five, so that took the place of walking for the latter part of the kindergarten school year.

I arrived at the school just as it was getting out for the day. I did not see a single student of any age leave without an adult.

Like so many people of my generation, I can only wonder at the cost, and be grateful that I was born when I was.

chairmansteve• 3 months ago

Yeah. Not seeing it. The local neighbourhood here in Arizona is infested with 12 year olds on e-bikes. It's great.

mothballed7• 3 months ago

It work on the dirt-bike tier e-bikes because they can get away. IF they are walking my child has been harassed by Karens asking "why they are out on their own." I look forward to the day they are old enough to ride a fast enough e-bike to escape people with cell phones that will rat them out for being out and about.

I largely blame cell phones for the Karens being able to impose their will. When I was a kid we were all out about and/or doing dumb shit, but anyone who wanted to call the authorities had to go home to find a telephone. By that time we were long gone. As long as we didn't go near houses, no one could touch us. Now they will just follow the kid with their cellphone until the rat-fuckers from CPS or the police arrive.

garbawarb3• 3 months ago

We tell children not to talk to strangers but if a random adult goes up to a child and says something like "Why are you out on your own," what are they supposed to do?

Thankfully this never happened to me as a child, I don't even know what I'd do.

DaedalusII2• 3 months ago

america is more dangerous than many 3rd world and developing countries on the street

once my friend get arrested in LA by police when he jogging. they say they arrest him for his own safety because he shouldnt be out jogging in "this neighborhood"

turns out people in america get murdered and attacked in the street all the time for... no reason. yes literally, no motive.

mothballed7• 3 months ago

Me and my child were detained by the police in a park because my child is a different race and some Karen called it in as suspicious and I was detained as a "kidnapper." I ended up buying acreage in the country just to escape all the pieces of shit that would harass me and my child for playing outside.

The danger to children is largely the police and CPS, who rip apart families for hallucinations or levels of parenting sin that are far more benign than the emotional cost to children of authorities bearing down on them.

DaedalusII2• 3 months ago

you are a real american now, you play outside in your private land that you drive to. there is peace in the universe again

now, if your child is too playful for Ms. Karen, they will give them a shit load of adderal as well

you may consider paying for a private school to avoid Karens drugging your children

coldtea7• 3 months ago

Also so conditioned to this warzone levels of violence, that many consider them normal, or will cite stats with 5x-10x the violence of an equivalent sized city in the rest of the West and East saying "that's good odds, just X of 100K murdered last year".

Barrin92• 3 months ago

america is more dangerous than many 3rd world

it isn't. Crime is highly concentrated and the vast majority of, at least median affluent America, is about as safe as it gets. Same goes for any big cities, usually you can count risky streets on one hand, where 90% of the violence happens.

Not to mention, developing countries are if anything the only places where kids still run around and play on the street. I've spend a fair amount of time in Latin American countries with much higher violent crime rates than most of the world and you don't see much helicopter parenting

if anything in the first world this style of parenting is a result of excess safety, not lack of it. The world has seen a secular decline in violent crime over the last few decades, and yet this paranoia is distinctly new.

mothballed7• 3 months ago

Well we also view children as completely disempowered unlike before. Starting around age 7 my parents gave me a gun and ammunition and I would roam the countryside all day long. It was mostly for hunting but if someone tried to inflict mortal bodily injury upon me my father gave me the instructions to aim between their eyeballs.

I'm also quite certain that in much of Latin America anyone fucking with a child would not go through a trial and handled with kid gloves, but rather there are plenty of videos of the internet of such people being held down while Rottweilers literally rip their balls off. Probably not an ideal version of justice but also perhaps more effective at pursuading people not to fuck with children.

zkmon• 3 months ago

It's not isolated phenomenon.If we look at the larger scale of, say, 100 years, a lot of things are rapidly disappearing. It's actually some sort of extinction that is underway, but you don't feel it on a smaller scale of time. Similar to how Romans wouldn't have been aware of the Fall of Roman empire while it was happening, because it was too slow to notice.

ceayo2• 3 months ago

Can you give some examples of things rapidly disappearing?

FloorEgg2• 3 months ago

The average person's ability to acquire food from nature (farm, hunt, gather) and cook it for themselves.

The average person ability to make and fix their own tools. Build and fix their shelter.

Free range childhood.

Average person getting dirt under their fingernails.

Being in sync with sunlight cycle.

Stargazing at night.

These are off the top of my head (I'm not op).

amingilani• 3 months ago

I think OP is talking about Shifting Baseline Syndrome[0].

A shifting baseline (also known as a sliding baseline) is a type of change to how a system is measured, usually against previous reference points (baselines), which themselves may represent significant changes from an even earlier state of the system that fails to be considered or remembered.

[0]: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline.

[1]: Earth.org article that reads nicer: https://earth.org/shifting-baseline-syndrome/

rolodato• 3 months ago

Being able to see stars in the night sky

moralestapia• 3 months ago

Sure, here's one!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47815127

neuroelectron• 3 months ago

What changed? In a 2023 article for Psychology Today, Gray proposed some factors that began reshaping parents’ attitudes and children’s behavior around the middle of the century: “the arrival of television, the rise of adult-directed kids’ sports, the gradual exclusion of kids from public spaces, the declining opportunities for gainful employment or meaningful contributions to the family economy, and, finally, the increased mandate that kids must be constantly monitored and protected.”

You will see lots of kids free-ranging in Lakewood, NJ. A lot of families there have banned TV from the home.

semiquaver4• 3 months ago

That paragraph bothered me. It gives a strong “assuming the conclusion” vibe. Oh, a factor reshaping parents attitudes is a “mandate that kids must be constantly monitored and protected” (in other words, parents’ attitudes)? You don’t say.

ls612• 3 months ago

No, the mandate is enforced by the government coming and taking away your children by force, for some indeterminate period of time, until your lawyer goes in front of a judge and (hopefully) the judge rules that the government is stupid and should give you your kids back. But by then the damage is done.

One has to think if a state wanted to eliminate individualism in society this application of surveillance and restraint to children would be entirely by design...

hawaiianbrah• 3 months ago

Lakewood is a fascinating place, to be sure!

projektfu4• 3 months ago

The takeover of US kids soccer by club soccer is disturbing to me. Generally kids who play are either well off or extremely talented (called "scholarship"?).

I think the clubs suck the fun out of it. Even with the expense, American players perform much worse than players in other countries where the kids have just been playing for fun for years until they start getting paid.

KnuthIsGod• 3 months ago

On the other hand, stuff happens.

Depends on your risk appetite and your systems tolerance for the inevitable consequences of errors...

A 5 year old free range kid on a scooter died outside a nearby school a few months ago.

Hit by a SUV

Was riding back from primary school on a scooter, without the mother.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-14/islah-metcalfe-rouse-...

A massive investigation, police, social services, traffic consultants, a million plus spent on upgrading safety, mother and father demonised in the community,etc ...

Teachers involved who responded or gave CPR ( I know some of them) given counselling.

The mother is likely to have lost custody of her other children.

namero999• 3 months ago

As a counter example, I witnessed 3 months ago a similar scene in my neighborhood, where a kid on a bike, crossing on pedestrian stripes, was hit by a taxi. It was a bad accident but luckily he didn't die. His dad was following right behind him. I'm leaning to think that "shit happens" in any case, but overprotection adds on top another layer of subtle, long term risks.

projektfu4• 3 months ago

There was no support in the link for your assertion that the mother is likely to lose custody. Money was raised in support of the parents. Your link says two other children were struck at the same intersection before this, and the municipality didn't take notice. Yet you blame the parents for not driving to school instead of the driver of the truck, and the traffic situation?

This is really the problem.

ww520• 3 months ago

Gen X was the last free range children. They ran wild after school without the tethering cell phones, playing in sand and drinking from garden hoses. The silent generation turned out to be a great generation building most of modern technologies.

semiquaver4• 3 months ago

Judging by this comment thread, this is just not something HN is capable of having a reasonable discussion on.

QuarterReptile2• 3 months ago

I think Maryland deserves a special shoutout. It's illegal, and not just in a CPS-steamrolls-your-rights-and-family sort of way, for an 8 year old to be left with children <13.

Growing up, I think many girls had ended their babysitting careers by 13.

croisillon• 3 months ago

Related: 2017 (but based on a 2007 DailyMail article), 520 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13547089

jhoechtl• 3 months ago

A delicate topic with many perspectives. Our small families make it possible to devote so much energy to our kids. However autonomy is all so important to become a strong adult later. We deliberately need let go more than we do now.

alexpotato• 3 months ago

As a relatively "free range" child in my youth and now the parent of children, even I find it hard to reconcile how I feel differently that my parents.

e.g. at 10 years old, my cousins and I were running around in the woods at my gradparents' home in rural Pennsylvania. I was the oldest of the group with my youngest cousin probably being 6. No cell phones. No Apple watches etc. We were outside of that house around 9am and would come back for lunch and then dinner when my grandmother rang the bell.

My oldest has an Apple watch and is both reachable able trackable yet the above still feels little strange to me.

insane_dreamer5• 3 months ago

Social media, and instant news media (scary news sells), amplify the perception of danger, where the numbers don't back it up.

Stranger kidnappings are exceptionally rare. They occur roughly 100 times per year, which works out to a 1-in-720,000 annual risk of a child being kidnapped — less likely than being struck by lightning at some point in their life.
A Pew Research Center survey from 2022 found that about 60% of U.S. parents were “very” or “somewhat” concerned about their children being kidnapped,

insane_dreamer5• 3 months ago

In the late 70s early 80s I went to school in another town from ages 11-13 and would take a train + bus to get there. Was perfectly normal. This was in France though, not US.

I let my 13 year old go out by himself, walk to places, take the street car; he has a phone so he can contact us if he needs help, and we can see where he is if we're concerned. It's ironic that parents are more worried today when technology makes it much _easier_ to track/communicate with your child (back in the day at that age, when I was out of the house my parents had no way of reaching me).

firesteelrain• 3 months ago

This has to be a limited area where this idea of “free range” is a problem. Where I live is middle to upper middle class and there are kids everywhere. Electric motorized bicycles have made them even more mobile.

ButlerianJihad4• 3 months ago

In my childhood, my Mom said "we were the first Democrats in the neighborhood" as part of a new wave of young families. But we were also next door to the gayest neighborhood in San Diego (Hillcrest) and so our neighbors were mostly childless, and our Catholic parish had no school attached, for obvious reasons.

So, we were sort of carpetbaggers from the beginning. We were enrolled in a parochial school in the next parish over, which was a 10+ minute drive for Mom. Of course we could never walk or ride bicycles or public transit that far!

As a child, while I was granted roller skates and bicycles, me and my sister were both forbidden from straying beyond the block where we lived. And neighborhood peers were few and far between. We had few playmates, and nearly none from school. Our classmates were in different socioeconomic classes, and often of different ethnicities and cultures. At least 1/3rd of them were bused in from North County, where new Catholics were settling, but no schools were available yet.

Our neighborhood was a sleepy suburb surrounded by dead-end streets and canyons. There were no city parks or playgrounds. There was exactly one city bus line that was about 7 minutes' walk away, which we never ever rode. Grandma, on the other hand, took us on walking/shopping tours all over her neighborhood, which was completely amazing, and also to every shopping mall we could reach by city bus, which was doubly amazing. Grandma's neighborhood had a full-fledged recreational center and a park with a playground, where I could fly kites or do whatever.

Here is the paradoxical contrast: though we could have no physical contact with neighbors or friends, I could own any book, watch any TV channel and program, and listen to any radio station whatsoever. That included "border blasters" from Mexico that were intent on corrupting American values. Literally any book we wanted, we could read it or discard it into our voluminous bookshelves. Later, Mom and Dad were reluctant to hook us up with a modem, because they knew what that would mean, but college opened up the entire Internet to us, and it was game over.

You can physically shelter your kids all you want, but if you have a TV, a radio, and computers in the home, you're constantly inviting a parade of strangers, scammers, and perverts inside your securely-locked doors. Think about that. It is far kinder to allow your children to mix with neighborhood friends and freely explore this world, than to let them dive unsupervised into cyberspace.

zx8080• 3 months ago

This reads like the worst case of the "1984" out in the wild.

There's a huge set of initiatives for a maximum control of any individual since childhood under all children-safety laws.

Is that really for freedom or democracy? Or is that for something else?

trinsic2• 3 months ago

This is the kind of shit that pisses me off:

“We work in tech,” she says. “Our kids [aren’t] getting any cell phones, no smartphones, no Instagrams. I write the algorithms. I don’t want my kids to touch those algorithms.”

Yeah it's ok for the rest of us, but not your kids. Who the fuck do you guys thing you are? You shouldn't be making society worse.

burnt-resistor• 3 months ago

As a kid in the 80's and 90's, I biked up and down deserted, steep mountain fire roads before cell phones were widespread.

I hear that risk-tolerance normalization and freedom of kids in the 70's was even greater, so this trend appears to be a multi-decade decline.

What I miss most though is cool stuff like interactive art installations and improvised playground features made for kids that were ripped out in the 90's and 00's. Decommissioned Korean war jets, telephone pole obstacle courses, and a myriad of other things without so much as a web page anywhere lost to history.

tsoukase• 3 months ago

The lower density culture of the US is problematic for children freedom. In Europe the situation is better but still worse than 30-40 years earlier. Time passes and things change. After 30-40 years there might not be kids anymore to stay locked at home.

arjie2• 3 months ago

We recently lived in Taiwan for a month and I was struck by the fact that from 2022-2024 Taipei had zero pre-teen traffic fatalities. My own San Francisco neighborhood has had more within the last two months!

The only thing that presents a persistent risk to children, I think, is motor vehicles and the way they’re driven. Children make mistakes and San Francisco’s tolerance for traffic fatalities is very high.

beacon294• 3 months ago

To be fair, you're cherry picking traffic fatality data. It's topical now but it's not common.

arjie2• 3 months ago

I actually don’t think there’s a single year where San Francisco has seen zero pre-teen traffic deaths. I think even my neighborhood is positive for the last two years. Taipei has more people, more children, and even by a percentage.

The number of pre-teen traffic fatalities is the only concern I have when I’m thinking of letting my children walk around because I think the other risks are relatively overblown. Sure we have an occasional Bill Gene Hobbs and the like but I think only traffic fatalities are near certainty.

These are for accompanied children, so leaving a 5 year old to wander is way different than when I was 5 years old. In SF, I’d rate the chance of survival to 12 at under 90% for unaccompanied 5 year olds walking around the city along the range that I used to at that time.

Teens are pretty self-capable in decision making but pre-teens just don’t have judgment yet. I feel like this is a pretty reasonable statistic to match.

xboxnolifes3• 3 months ago

There's no need to cherry pick data. The US's traffic fatality record is bad pretty much over the entire country.

effisfor• 3 months ago

For another perspective, see Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff. She looked at indigenous cultures alive today and makes the compelling argument that the Western boomers were the outlier - not their kids. 'Free range' meant having no meaningful responsibilities or expectations within the tribe, other than 'do what you like all day'.

gls2ro• 3 months ago

Whenever I read these kind articles and some of the comments here I always wonder:

Its it survivor bias? I grew up in a small village/city during communism. I was basically unsupervised from morning to night since I have memories about me walking around in that village.

We were doing a lot of dangerous things while playing. And there are kids that got injured for life or lost their lives: falling from trees, drawn in a river, leg lost due to a horse injury, losing an eye during a game with some pipes, jumping from high places like 1st floor or more, ... I managed to not get hurt but the examples I gave are real.

I am not even talking about any of the fights between kids verbal or physical there were happening that todays will be labeled trauma.

So I do wonder if this free range thing that we desire is really what we want and we can accept the consequences?

I am not sure in all cases, depending of course of kids age and ability to reason, for each individual child this total liberty is the right path. I do understand the benefit for the society.

silexia• 3 months ago

This is what happens when you create a government agency to solve a problem. It eventually turns into a jobs program that cannot be shut down even after the original problem is mostly resolved. So the bureaucrats just shift the goal posts and the whole thing metastases is into a cancer upon society.

ozgurds• 3 months ago

Being exposed to many bad news daily from all around the world, unfortunately, all parents are forced to limit their children. And we do it even though we know we are limiting their development as well. Of course there are many neighborhoods that kids still play freely but the ratio is undeniably going down :(

burnerRhodov2• 3 months ago

We work in tech,” she says. “Our kids [aren’t] getting any cell phones, no smartphones, no Instagrams. I write the algorithms. I don’t want my kids to touch those algorithms.”

Thats... displeasing to hear.

The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

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