I would love to be able to do this with my 3yo son...but there are two things stopping me: Cars and helicopter parent culture.
Cars, and the entitled culture we have fostered around them, make streets hostile to pedestrians and likely fatal to small children, even if children followed the laws and common sense. I experience it practically daily. Every time I cross the street at a marked intersection, cars will stop for me 9/10 times. At unmarked intersections, its more like 5/10. Crossing at a stoplight with a walk signal on is still precarious because of the tendency of many drivers to blow through crosswalks without stopping so they can turn right on red. Every single day I experience a situation that could be fatal to a less visible child with a more fragile body and slightly worse situational awareness. No way.
The second problem is the CPS story. My neighborhood is extremely safe, but the parents here are borderline psychotic about helicoptering their way through their children's lives. Every time I take my kid to a playground, I end up witnessing helicopter parents freaking out about how my kid will climb a ladder by himself or jump off of a piece of equipment by himself... sometimes they swoop in to "parent" for me...and other times they will chew me out for being so irresponsible as to let my kid learn his own boundaries. As much as I respect the mission of CPS, I've heard enough horror stories about their enforcement of parenting methodology that I wouldn't ever risk having them called because my kid walked to the park by himself.
I think car culture also means that everything is further away. I grew up in a small town in the Netherlands and from a young age I'd walk/bike everywhere (sports training, friends' places, etc.). When everything is close by, it's easy for parents to gradually give children more space and responsibilities. For example, at a very young age I was only allowed to walk/bike to the end of the street. Then, later, I started walking to school. Then, later still, I'd bike to my grandparents in the neighboring town and so on to taking public transport to the city to go to secondary school. If you have to drive your children everywhere it becomes difficult to gradually give them more independence in this way.
Before you put too much blame on car culture you should know a few things about Japan. First, cars are cheap, and lots of people drive. However, lots of the same people also have a bicycle which they use for short trips including grocery shopping. People also walk. This means drivers have more empathy for people not in cars. Second, the speed limits are low. Some decent looking roads are 50 kph whereas in America they would be 45 mph, about 50 percent faster. Third, children walking to and from school wear fluorescent helmets. This is a safety precaution American children would not tolerate for themselves or on others.
This means drivers have more empathy for people not in cars.
The point you make is extremely important. In my dreams:
People caught not yielding to pedestrians are sentenced to walking 3 miles a day for a month on busy city streets. I do this every day (4 miles), and I can tell you, there is not a day that goes by that I see the most horrible behavior from drivers. I can only assume, since I don't believe it's because they are all horrible people, they just have no empathy for pedestrians and can't imagine the consequences of their behavior.
Like the mom-looking lady that turned left with me in her path in the cross walk. She saw me. Turned anyway. Stopped in the lane with oncoming traffic and pushed into the cross walk (directly toward me) and looked exasperated as to why I was in her way. Does anyone thing, if a car was about to ram her that she wouldn't sacrifice me? I don't.
I wish adult joggers in US would please wear reflective something when running on street.
Few days ago I pissed off a biker and a jogger because I didn't see them in time to stop at a safe distance away from them.
Guess what? BOTH were wearing BLACK shirt/shorts. Because they were running from my 10 oclock to 2 oclock (outside of cone of headlights), I just couldn’t see them.
A high percentage of people you see in the Seoul subways actually own cars. Lots of office workers leave their sedans/suvs in the garages of their highrise apartment complexes on regular workdays. They usually walk/bus/subway to/from work. This is because of the crush of traffic at rush hour. You just end up stressed out if you try to drive around in Seoul at rush hour in certain areas. Much less stress/time if you just walk/subway.
The cars are usually driven on weekends for family trip.
Similar situation in many German cities. Or, if you work in one suburb and live in another, you drive to work, but then whenever you go shopping or anything you walk/take bus/metro/etc.
supporting anecdote: while jogging in Seattle, I got hit by a cop car turning right on red. only fell to the ground, no injuries (except bumper marks!), but I could imagine a heavy car like that not even registering a little kid hitting it at 5mph.
I've heard this before and I have to wonder, do stop signs also seem insane to you? Because right on red is no different. You stop, look both ways, and go if it's safe to do so.
This is not how American drivers deal with it. When they don't see an immediate risk of hitting someone, most don't bother stopping at red lights when they want to turn right on red, which is not the case with stops.
Yes, so it basically turns an intersection with traffic lights into one without. The point of a red light is that it removes the guesswork, and gives people going in other directions the guarantee that the stopped traffic won't move. Right on red throw all that out of the window.
I learned to drive in a country that didn't have right on red, have now lived 9 years in countries that do.
It makes perfect sense, and it's very hard to understand why it wouldn't be allowed. As the other comments have said, it's a hard stop, so you wait until it's clear before going.
(Obviously, for countries that drive on the left, it would be left on red)
I agree entirely, I also have an issue with "yield on green".
Green means "go" at 99% of the lights I run into. Then there's that one left turn I make that's "yield on green" and I'm not supposed to turn. I'm not surprised at all that the intersection has the most accidents annually. I don't think many people are used to yield-on-green lights... so many T-bones its amazing they haven't changed the traffic flow.
It's a rarity in my part of the state. There are only 2 intersections that don't have protected left turns and are yield-on-green. They both have triangular signs stating they are yield-on-green and those signs get ignored.
I've been honked at and nearly rear-ended because I yield-on-green on protected turns at unfamiliar lights where I expect them to be yield-on-green (I assume any lane without a dedicated arrow light to be yield-on-green.)
The intersections around here give opposite sides protected left turns, then normal straight traffic flow. None but the "weird two" are yield-on-green and those two intersections, as a result, have a ton of accidents caused by people not yielding properly.
It probably wouldn't be as big of an issue if every other light in the town was yield-on-green instead of protected. It's the fact that those two lights are the only "special" ones that I think causes the problem. Since everyone is used to having a protected turn, people ignore the "yield on green" sign and turn into oncoming traffic (whom they think have a red light).
They have that here in The Netherlands for bikes: both the cyclist and the driver get green, but the driver must yield to the cyclist (yield to the right).
Countless times I've been almost hit and then screamed at by clueless drivers.
Same in Denmark, but I've not yet seen a near miss.
In the UK, when the pedestrian has a green man all road traffic has a red light, without exception. (Same for cycle paths crossing roads, but they're rare.)
I'd guess foreign drivers would get this wrong in NL, DK etc. Turning right and thinking "the pedestrian has seen me, I have a green light, they will wait" when the pedestrian is thinking "they've seen me, I have green, I can cross".
They removed all the "Yield / Unprotected Left Turn" lights in my town, just for this reason. People simply don't understand. It's a bummer to sit and wait, but it does save lives.
I guess I don't even follow what this means, does every single stop light where someone could possibly turn left now have the green arrow in your town? That seems ridiculous to me, coming from a city where thousands or tens of thousands of stoplights would need to be retrofitted just because people don't know how to turn left on a two way street.
Exactly. If I had a reasonable expectation that >99% of the drivers obeyed the law, I wouldn't feel too hesitant to let my 3yo cross the street on his own. He knows how to look both ways, and cross when people have stopped. Even right-on-red is safe at face value. But I don't even believe that 5% of drivers obey all of the laws that protect crossing pedestrians. It's almost as if they don't expect pedestrians to exist.
I've lived here 13 years & am raising 2 girls who both have been able to live in the manner described in the article.
1) The number one reason why we feel comfortable is the number of "safe" people constantly around. In Japan, every apartment building of size has maintenance people who stay several years and know all the children in the neighborhood, and recognize strangers. Every supermarket has parking attendants. Every construction site has "guards" to make sure people cross the area safely. Every train station has staff around. Many grade schools have patrols of parents who literally "sweep" the neighborhood right before school lets out, just checking that no "out of place" people are hanging around in the parks and neighborhoods.
What this REALLY adds up to is like the article said - there are always people out there keeping an eye on things.
2) "Japan is safe" - yes, but assaults on children/young people are a problem, and parents worry. My first point prolly rules, but we are still selective in when & where they can do that. We make sure someone is meeting them on the other end. It IS safe, but not all "roses".
> assaults on children/young people are a problem, and parents worry.
Statistically, they are a very low problem if we disregard assaults by family members. It may be that, in the US, CPS may be more of a hazard than strangers at this point.
The fact that the US is pedestrian-hostile is more problematic.
For any given segment of a trip in Japan, there are probably other adult pedestrians walking that segment as well. If a child simply "falls in" with a group going the right way for several small segments sequentially, they will have the right behavior.
In the US, there are very likely not fellow pedestrians for children to emulate except in the very biggest cities.
> In Japan, every apartment building of size has maintenance people who stay several years and know all the children in the neighborhood, and recognize strangers. Every supermarket has parking attendants. Every construction site has "guards" to make sure people cross the area safely. Every train station has staff around.
It is difficult to have this when a man interacting with a small child is at risk of being accused of being a pedophile.
I fully agree agree. The most shameful moment I experienced in England, when I lived there with my small children whom we'd previously raised in Japan, was when I was asked by a concerned parent whether I had a permit to be in a place where children were present. Apparently all of those other parents had already applied to the government and been vetted to be in a play room attached to a public library.
That was when I realised things were not the same in England. I felt sickened and angry at a such society-wide presumption of guilt.
I am a Spaniard who lived in UK and I feel that this is the most sick aspect of British society. For them, every single man is a monster that will molest children if he has the opportunity.
Things like sitting on a bench to read next to the children's playground, or crossing a park next to them, can put you in trouble.
In the US, any adult male who wants to be an elementary school teacher is looked at as a potential predator. Parents will literally ask to have their kids transferred to a different class because of it.
Most of what was described is people protecting children or pedestrians not by interacting with them, but by interacting with motorists, strangers, etc. For example, many construction sites in Japan, as well as many shopping malls and large car parks, have a person at the exit who watches the street and stops vehicles from exiting when cross traffic is present. A pedestrian, child, or cyclist on the pavement need not do anything, the system is passive for them.
Lived there for 10 years with two young children and I completely agree with your first point. The sense of community and shared responsibility is much greater there IMO.
Japanese parents probably were never warped by "milk carton kids" -- throughout the 1980s and 1990s in the U.S., we'd see missing kids plastered on the sides of our milk cartons. It made people think that kids were being kidnapped by strangers all the time, when in fact nearly all the missing kids shown on the cartons were either runaways or were taken by a parent involved in a custody dispute (bad, sure, but not the same thing as a stranger kidnapping them). The national hysteria that resulted from this led to our current era of helicopter-parented kids. I was a kid just before all this happened, so I consider myself a member of the last generation of free range kids in the U.S.
> This assumption is reinforced at school, where children take turns cleaning and serving lunch instead of relying on staff to perform such duties. This “distributes labor across various shoulders and rotates expectations, while also teaching everyone what it takes to clean a toilet, for instance,” Dixon says.
> Taking responsibility for shared spaces means that children have pride of ownership and understand in a concrete way the consequences of making a mess, since they’ll have to clean it up themselves. This ethic extends to public space more broadly (one reason Japanese streets are generally so clean). A child out in public knows he can rely on the group to help in an emergency.
This sounds alot like a Montessori school philosophy. I've got two kids in one and that's one of the biggest things we love about the school.
The freedoms that the kids are allowed and the lack of constant hand holding is something that we really appreciate.
Also a Montessori parent and I couldn't agree more.
Our kids were in a private Montessori school from Pre-K to 1st. Due to some issues with the owner (that unfortunately forced her to shut the school down) we had to put my daughter in public school for the remainder of 1st grade. She hated it. She kept asking us, "Why do I have to sit at that desk all day?"
Contrast that to their new school where on the first Back To School Night, one kid was literally jumping up and down excited to start school the next day.
> "Japan has a very low crime rate, which is surely a key reason parents feel confident about sending their kids out alone. But small-scaled urban spaces and a culture of walking and transit use also foster safety and, perhaps just as important, the perception of safety."
Honestly, this perception – that they try to place secondary – is KEY. Living in Japan, it's a stark contrast to walking around the States in any major city. Japan feels – and is – significantly safer.
Japan has a pervasive air of safety. As a foreigner who can speak a total of 4 words of Japanese, I felt completely safe wandering the streets alone at night, anywhere from the alleyways of Tokyo to the suburbs. There were surprisingly many people outside late at night, yet I never got a "sketchy" feeling from them like I would even in the most safe/affluent parts of America.
If I was in distress for any reason I am confident that I would be able to get assistance from any random stranger nearby. In fact, while on the train, I witnessed a girl collapse and start seizing. The train was relatively busy at that time but everyone sort of just reacted as if they shared a hive mind. 2-3 people kneeled down to try and help her, a few people got the attention of the conductor, and everyone was very respectful and helpful. I can just imagine what would happen if this occurred on Bart. You would probably either be ignored or people would record you on their phones and upload the video to Facebook.
> I can just imagine what would happen if this occurred on Bart. You would probably either be ignored or people would record you on their phones and upload the video to Facebook.
That's not my impression. (Unfortunately I can't think of an actual counterexample.) I think people everywhere tend to help out. I imagine that when Americans are reluctant to get involved, they feel they don't know what to do, and they're afraid they'll be criticized or even sued for supposedly making things worse.
New York has a walking and transit culture similar to Tokyo. Yet most New Yorkers would not feel comfortable sending a six year old out alone. I don't think walking and transit use is alone responsible for the difference.
Even in the rough and tumble NY of 40 years ago, parents allowed kids to roam freely up until the tragic disappearance of Etan Patz in '79. [1]
Seems like that event and the subsequent media fearmongering is what really spurred the cultural shift towards helicopter parenting and a reduction in youthful independence in the US.
It does come down to the fearmongering I think. People are really poor at judging risks and when more and more risks are made present to their awareness they make poorer and poorer decisions.
Native New Yorker here. Growing up in the 80's and 90's (when crime was at it's peak), it was common among everyone I grew up with to ride the subway/bus alone and generally explore the neighborhood alone/with friends. I remember my mother being slightly apprehensive when I started commuting to school alone in 4th grade, but it wasn't a major issue.
As many have pointed out, the culture has simply changed. Crime is way down, but ironically people are more afraid to let their children travel unsupervised than when I was a kid.
As a side note, I did get lost on the train once (while in the care of a relative. She got off the train and forgot to take me with her.) I was asleep and woke up at a stop I didn't recognize. While I remember being a little apprehensive, I simply walked over to the woman in the token booth, explained I was lost and had gotten separated from my aunt. She let me inside the booth and called my mom, who came and picked me up. All in all, it wasn't a huge affair. I think if that happened today police and CPS will probably turn it into a major incident of possible child neglect.
Yes? Of course it's a wild generalization. And by 'children' I mean young children, like we were talking about; and I'd have to qualify 'New York' somewhat if we had were going to quibble about it.
I spent four years growing up in Japan (my parents were ESL teachers) and I attended Japanese public schools for 2nd/3rd grade and sophomore year of college. What the article says is very true; I feel like strangers can be trusted in Japan but not here in NYC. There is strong pressure in Japan to do what's good for others: be clean, be quiet, be honest, be economical. There is also strong pressure to follow the social norm and to not take risks, which affects startup culture in Japan like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8573992 describes well. Both these traits have one thing in common: they point to Japan's exceptionally homogenous culture. I really wish we could have the ubiquitous "care for others" mentality alongside the "be yourself" mentality, but so far I've not seen anywhere that is very much the case. If anyone has seen it I'm really interested to know.
> I really wish we could have the ubiquitous "care for others" mentality alongside the "be yourself" mentality
Agreed. I'm not even sure if it's possible for those to coexist, but it's wonderful to imagine - discover yourself and your place in the world while respecting others and recognizing that your actions can negatively affect them. The US has too little of the "care for others" mentality, as evidenced by the large number of individuals who do not believe in climate change and see environmentalism in general as useless government meddling.
They can, but it's a balancing act. One that is constantly under threat by advertisement and similar that push the self above all else.
I sometimes wonder if one need to experience real hardship for the idea to set in. To really experience the need for cooperation to get something done.
I think I've let the 'manners mode' etiquette influence me a lot. I now keep my phone on silent from the moment I get on my train for the morning commute to work right up until I get off it again after the trip home.
I'm not sure that has anything with "manners mode" etiquette. I have never been to japan and my phone is almost always in silent mode. When my phone is either in my pocket, in my hand, or on my desk half a foot from me, I don't see why it would ever ring.
That's...not accurate - you realize that, right? I mean - if we think tech startups in the last two decades only, then yes. But, both Japan and Germany have both fostered huge companies, both conglomerates and not, that belie your statement.
It's impolitic to notice it, but America used to be a lot like this as well. See, e.g., Bowling Alone by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam (http://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Commun...). One of Putnam's main conclusions: a principal factor undermining social cohesion (corresponding to a decline in "social capital") is diversity. We're constantly bombarded with messages that "diversity is our strength," etc., but you'll note that Japan isn't exactly diverse by our standards. Neither does it face much pressure to allow massive immigration to change that.
You may still believe in the benefits of diversity, but there are also costs. One of them is that little kids can't ride American subways alone.
I'm from Spain and I've traveled Europe a bit. Kids here go to school alone since they are 6-8 years old, they take the bus/metro, they do errands alone. That's the norm. It also happens in North Africa and Middle East. And, as the article says, it's the norm in Japan too.
Actually, the headline should read "why are USA little kids the only ones so dependent?"
I could go ahead and be a demagogue and say it's because all the helicopter parenting and the fear mass media... but I think it has more to do with the fact that we can go walking anywhere.
Europeans in general, and Spaniards in particular, live on the streets. We hardly use cars: most things are at walking distance, and public transportation is fine. Real crime, like abductions and violence, is very rare, and people help each other.
Local policemen (non-militarized) are everywhere and they help any lost kids. I have been lost maybe a couple times, in a supermarket and in a foreign city and, while I lament the stress that caused on my parents, they knew that I would turn up at some point. And I did. I was a little kid and I was just... lost. That happens and it's not a huge deal.
I'll turn the argument 180 degrees: the USA is a very, very young country. You know what they say, in Europe, 1000 km is a long distance, and in the US, 1000 years is a long time. We've been living in small cities literally since the dawn of time. We've walked. Many cities have streets where cars don't even fit.
It is mainly a car and culture problem. However, it'd be an improvement if you americans could convince your mass media not to constantly spread fear. We also have those fake-fear-documentaries but most people disregard them for what they are: yellowish press crap.
They have "My First Errand", we have Dateline NBC and America's Most Wanted. What else should we expect?
I think Americans have an almost pathological reflex to gaze at sentimental stories that are sensational because they are exceptional, then use them as guidelines for how the world is now.
The sentimentality aspect, which drives interest, outrage and action, is what makes it so pernicious. Sentimental appeal is what drives our politics, media and fundraising. If there's no emotional aspect, our media is quick to invent one by creating angles like arguments between talking heads.
I know many on HN understand that there are fewer than 200 stranger abductions of children per year in the US. Maybe you even know that runaways have decreased by over 70% in the last ten years.
How would the US public ever know this?
In the emotional marketplace, that simple fact can't compete with these facts which, when conflated in the media, produce utter paranoia:
I have nothing against the work this organization does; they are as captive to the existing narrative as police or parents or anyone else.
I think the progress in this area is that through electronic media, we can actually measure pretty easily how informed the public is by the media they consume. Hopefully we can get closer to news that demonstrably informs people.
Americans have an almost pathological reflex to gaze at sentimental stories that are sensational because they are exceptional
I don't think those stories are sentimental - sentimental to me means stories like 'adopted siblings reunited after 40 years or something.' The crime-centric TV shows you mention tap into a kind of latent sadism which allows people to vicariously enjoy the violence of gruesome crimes and then project their bad feelings about themselves on the perpetrator, revving up the sadism again in anticipation of an impending execution or a lifetime rotting away behind bars. They are a form of ritually desexualized pornography.
The real question is: why are kids in the US lacking in independence? Most of what this article says about kids in Japan applies to a lot of countries in the EU as well. Why is the US somehow different?
The US has an outsized culture of fear that's far in disproportion to other countries. The reasons are complex but I'd posit one major factor is that the US has, by far, the most commercial and competitive media market of any country. This leads to the normalization of sensationalism in the chase for ratings and a systematic distortion of reality.
Watch the movie Nightcrawler for an example of the type of culture that pervades newsrooms around the country and understand the effect that has on people's decisions regarding safety.
Interestingly, the same also tends to happen in Germany frequently.
Helicopter parents tend to be more of a US-American invention.
The question is how helicopter parents will change the way the next generations behave in society, as children have to take responsibility and become independent at some point.
And this is in stark contrast to my neighborhood in the USA, where parents will wait with their children for the schoolbus pickup... not even a block from their own house.
Now granted, we occasionally have reckless drivers speeding down the street. There isn't as much respect for pedestrians in the USA, so I guess that's a factor.
A lot of this is because of assumptions made by other people & law enforcement. A couple friends of mine had DSS called on them for letting their two daughters, ages 10 & 5, walk to a park a block away, with a cell phone, within shouting distance, while their mother was at home. The charges were eventually dropped, but it's not really a hassle that any parent wants to go through.
The assumption in many parts of the U.S. is that if kids don't have a parent standing next to them, they aren't safe. In many cases, they're not safe because that's the assumption.
Many people are now overprotective of their children not because of fear of crime but because of fear that the state will take those children away if they're not kept in bubble-wrap and on leashes 24/7.
I would advance that there isn't much respect, period. Part of the American mentality of everyone for themselves I guess.
It's frustrating. You can lose something expensive in Japan like a watch and be relatively assured that no one will touch it for hours/days unless it is to safe keep whereas if the same thing were to happen in the US, it's pretty much a goner. =(
Germany in most places the same, lost a laptop, got a few days later a phone call (had my phone number on the laptop login screen displayed) and they asked where to bring it.
I left my wallet and phone on a subway in Manhattan. Both got returned to me (including about $50 cash I had in the wallet). My girlfriend's iPhone 6 fell out of her purse in a nightclub in San Francisco. It got returned to her the next day. In college, my bike got taken during the night and returned a few days later with a sickynote saying the person who took it was drunk and didn't want to drive home. While in Japan, my friends got scammed by thugs who demanded $1000 to leave the "club" they were tricked into entering.
This is funny because 2 of my kids get off the bus exactly 1 block from our house. I believe we are the only parents who let them walk home from there.
Japan has a very low crime rate, which is surely a key reason parents feel confident about sending their kids out alone.
They mention a lot of good things. What they don't mention is that Japan has a relatively high average age. It is a country full of old people.
In Africa, when too many adult elephants get killed, you see unsupervised adolescent elephants get injuries that essentially never happen if there are enough adults around. Countries with an average young age for the population tend to have more problems, generally speaking, especially with a violent angle, whether violent crimes or civil war or terrorist groups or what have you.
This is not the sort of thing where you directly observe "Specific old person does X, young people respectfully go along and we can see how it happens." It is more subtle than that. But the effect nonetheless exists.
I think it is a good article, but I think that detail is one they overlooked.
I am 50 years old. When I was a child in the U.S., I also went where I wanted without a parent and so did other kids.
The world was different 20-30 years ago. I don't know that how safe it was 20-30 years ago has any bearing on the current conditions in Japan as compared to the rest of the world currently.
Japan wasn't always filled with old people (even this is overstated as a percentage of the population,) and it was still extremely safe. I witnessed this firsthand.
Japan has a culture that expects and reinforces cooperation and responsibility and respect, and it's ethnically homogeneous enough that this is manifested even between strangers. It also doesn't have the kind of downright devastating poverty that I've seen in the USA even in well-off cities. There are a lot of reasons that Japan can do things we can't do, but I don't believe the percentage of old people has much if anything to do with it.
This is where we agree to disagree. "Old people" is just one factor in my opinion. It doesn't throw any of the others out. (For that matter, "high average age" doesn't mean "a country of old people." It can also mean "A country with fewer children." Edit: I guess I am the person who used that phrase to start with, but I feel like you are twisting my meaning, I guess.)
I interpreted it in the context of repeated "demographic crisis" claims about Japan getting older. I still read it that way, but if that wasn't your intent, I apologize.
I used to have several friends in Pakistan, a country with a relatively low average age. IIRC, Pakistan is the "youngest" country on the planet, demographically speaking, and has a lot of problems that grow out of that. So I have read up a bit on how average age interacts with things like crime rates, tendency to be involved in violent organizations, etc.
More adults/higher average age/demographic shift in one direction or the other has a known impact on group tendency towards either civility or violence. The most violent groups on the planet are predominantly made up of young men under a certain age. Governments take advantage of that reality for filling the ranks of their military branches.
Is it any more dangerous now? Crime rates are generally down per capita I believe, hopefully car accidents too. I'm not sure this story about Japan is particularly unusual or odd in much of the world. I ran around London on my own from about 7 fwiw
You mean in the U.S.? I honestly don't know if it more dangerous now than when I was a kid. I do know that kids are generally less free to roam around their own hometown without parental supervision than they used to be, something multiple other people have remarked upon elsewhere in this same discussion.
I used to play in the patch of woods behind my house. So did all the neighbor kids. Sometimes, a bunch of kids would get together and build an earthen dam across the creek. My dad would call us home using a hunting horn. I went where I wanted in my neighborhood. My parents knew where I was, generally, but that didn't mean they could readily physically locate me. So they called us home with the horn, which we could hear anywhere in the woods.
That kind of thing would get social services called on you today.
I am roughly the same age as you, and experienced the same thing as kid. At age 8 or 9, in the summer, we were outside all day playing with other kids. If I wasn't home when the streetlights went on (signaling darkness), my Mom would come out and whistle loudly, the signal to get home. We roamed for miles on our BMX bikes (no helmets, mind you) and somehow we survived ok.
Now I have a 1 year old son of my own, and I'm truly saddened that he probably will never experience that type of youthful freedom. I am resolved not to become that helicopter parent, but it's hard to battle against the social pressure.
When I was a kid, Halloween was basically a block party. The younger kids went out with a parent early in the evening, then came home and helped give out candy and got to stay up late. The okder kids went where the hell they wanted until midnight. Houses did their best to not merely decorate for the occasion but to really participate in giving visitors the Haunted House experience.
My sons are 28 and 25. They never got to experience that. I took them once and only once to the mamba at the mall. As often as possdible, I arranged to take them to a party on Halloween and then bought them any candy they chose the day after when it was half price. As much as possible, I refused to participate in what Halloween has become -- some commmercial piece of crap unrelated to what I grew up with.
I also ended up homeschooling and have made other choices that helped shield my kids from the watered down version of life that so many kids today get.
Best of luck. Fight the good fight.
Also, if you are intersted, I have a private blog, subrtitled "memoirs of a mom", about raising my two sons. Shoot me an email with a gmail address and I will be happy to send you an invite.
Agreed. I'm in my 40s. I distinctly remember watching Back to the Future and Return of the Jedi with my friends, not my parents and we took a bus across town to get there.
I seriously think it's the car culture of US. You move around outside of your immediate neighborhood enclosed in your car, cut off from others except for occasional eye contact or hand motion at stop signs.
And that somehow seems to have translated into a mentality of cannot trust anyone other than immediate family/friends.
Not only we drive kids all around in the car to get things done, we also need tell them "not talk to strangers" etc if they happened to be walk home from nearby school.
And the school always need more parents to be lunch helpers or recess watchers, of course PTAs etc, all the way so kids entering college are still treated like a baby to some extent. no wonder many of them live with their parents at adult age after they graduate, we just blame the economy for that though.
In addition, soon we may need armed guards on k-12 campus to keep them safe? for some colleges they will need learn how to carry a gun to stay safe.
> A popular television show called Hajimete no Otsukai, or My First Errand, features children as young as two or three being sent out to do a task for their family.
I want to try this with my 3 year old. Find a very large park which has a canteen or shop at one end and send him off to buy something. I'd still like him to be visible, but it seems like it would be really fun and empowering.
It seems driving kids in cars (to school etc) is unsafer (due to more obesity and car accidents) than letting them walk after a certain age. I think in Canada there have been no cases [citation needed, maybe a handful] of children abducted by strangers, they are always family members.
> Ideally, any member of the community can be called on to serve or help others.
After 9 years living in North America, that one line explains the difference between here and my home country better that I've ever been able to.
On a daily basis, it just feels like Americans are not in a unified society working together to help each other and have a common good - it's a much more individualistic society where everyone is looking out for number one. If someone else has shitty healthcare and is on hard times, too bad for them.
The Police in my home country are friendly and helpful, and I fondly remember asking them for help as a child and young teen. Upon arriving in NYC, I asked a policeman for directions and he barked at me for not calling him "Sir". Wow.
Same thing in Seoul, South Korea also. Little kids walk/subway to school or go to friends' place without parents or older siblings. No such thing as play date being arranged by parents as done in US. Kids do it themselves.
Reading this article, I can forsee comments about how American kids are being messed up since they can't go and do things freely, pointing to this story about Japan as an example.
While I myself would wish to live in a community where this kind of behavior is OK or encouraged (I'd like for my son to be able to walk to the grocery store a quarter mile away at age 6 or 7 without fear of societal repercussions), I also reject some of the narrative that this article seems to be putting forth (and I predict the comments here will also put forth) that if we let our kids be independent, they'll turn out better. They might, they might not. They'll definitely have a different set of problems, just like every generation before them.
There were articles from just a couple of months ago about parents being charged with child endangerment for allowing their 10 year old to walk home from the bus stop in a safe neighborhood.
Honestly - a large amount of crimes in Japan go unreported. Many murders are written off as suicides (which contributes to the high suicide and low murder rates reported by the government...). I don't really trust crime statistics coming from a country that's heavily influenced by Yaks.
This has to do entirely with public perception (as user alexleavitt also mentioned).
In Japan, I feel safe to leave my bag on a bench while I go use a public restroom. I expect my bag to be there when I return. It's probably not any safer, in reality, than it is where I am in the States - but I would never leave my bag on a table unattended where I live. I would expect it to be stolen.
In reality, it would probably be there when I get back. No different than in Japan.
When I walk around Los Angeles at night, I walk defensively and make sure I keep alert at all times and I'm always paying attention to my surroundings. When I was walking around Tokyo at night - it felt no different than the day. Except it was dark outside. I'm certain that had I had better knowledge of the "dangerous" streets of Tokyo, my perception would be different.
If I feel safe, I'm likely to feel my child is safe. In the US, a child walking on the streets in most suburbs is likely just as safe as in Japan... but public perception means you'll get child protection services called on you if you think about letting your 9 year old walk down the block to the store to buy a soda.
You were doing so well until you brought up the CPS boogeyman, which is as much a part of the baseless fear culture you're deriding as anything else.
Getting in trouble with CPS over letting your kid be independent is as unlikely as any of the other horror stories the media (and your friend's cousin's hairdresser) pushes about childhood. CPS employees are stretched thin on full-blown abandonment and horrifying abuse cases, and don't care if some kid walks down the street alone.
The CPS boogeyman was hyperbole, yes. Few freerange parents get charged with anything, but a few do still have to deal with investigations or charges by local police. Is it isolated? Yes. But it happens. Even if police don't get involved, you get flak/judgement from neighbors and nosy busy bodies butting into your business and trying to parent your kid(s). That happens a lot more and is something most any free range parent in a suburb knows the feeling of.
The fear is there and my father had plenty of issues with busy body neighbors and the police being called because of an "unattended child" (me). The shit happens and my own mother is one of the judgmental busy bodies herself; looking down on her neighbor for letting their 11 year old child to play jump rope with her friend in the front yard of their house. Has my mother called CPS on the neighbor? No. But she treats them like shit and refuses to let my sisters' visit their house in fear they'll do something "unattended".
Yes - those two examples were very personal anecdotes. But it's not like I'm the only person to ever deal with this stuff. A great thing about the internet is you get to meet countless other people who have the same issues you have:
If the US didn't have a culture of fear and nosy busy-bodies butting into other peoples' business at every turn, this wouldn't even be a discussion and "free range parenting" wouldn't even be a term. It would be called "parenting". Like how it is in the UK, Japan, and many other countries.
Cars, and the entitled culture we have fostered around them, make streets hostile to pedestrians and likely fatal to small children, even if children followed the laws and common sense. I experience it practically daily. Every time I cross the street at a marked intersection, cars will stop for me 9/10 times. At unmarked intersections, its more like 5/10. Crossing at a stoplight with a walk signal on is still precarious because of the tendency of many drivers to blow through crosswalks without stopping so they can turn right on red. Every single day I experience a situation that could be fatal to a less visible child with a more fragile body and slightly worse situational awareness. No way.
The second problem is the CPS story. My neighborhood is extremely safe, but the parents here are borderline psychotic about helicoptering their way through their children's lives. Every time I take my kid to a playground, I end up witnessing helicopter parents freaking out about how my kid will climb a ladder by himself or jump off of a piece of equipment by himself... sometimes they swoop in to "parent" for me...and other times they will chew me out for being so irresponsible as to let my kid learn his own boundaries. As much as I respect the mission of CPS, I've heard enough horror stories about their enforcement of parenting methodology that I wouldn't ever risk having them called because my kid walked to the park by himself.
It's a shame.