[FrancoDiaz]

I have a 4 year old, in my mid 40s, and think about this a lot for some reason.

In the 70s during the summer, when I was around 7, we would wake up, eat breakfast, go out and about wherever we wanted, come back for lunch, out again, come back for dinner, and then out again past dark to play flashlight tag.

I think I would be charged with child endangerment these days if my kid (3 years in the future) was doing stuff like that. And frankly, I think I've been conditioned to think that I would be a negligent parent if I did this.

The media is part of the problem. 24/7 news, social media, and channels like ID (real life murder 24/7) scare the bejeezus out of people. But besides that, we have an acceptance of nanny-state government - that the government should be a much closer "partner" in child rearing than 40 years ago.

I always say, there's a consequence for everything, including seemingly innocuous laws to protect people.

But as a parent of a 4-year old in 2017 (and a 7 year old in 2020), I know I would be gnashing my teeth if my kid was roaming the streets and woods all day long...even if I did it.

[Kluny]

Media is part of it, but the other part is this, taken from the first comment on the linked article:

"I can’t help but notice how many freeways and roads are between Sheffield and Rother Valley. We can’t blame parents alone for the loss of childhood freedom. Since 1919 We have purposely designed our cities to maximize vehicle throughput and require car ownership and the result is an environment that is lethal for 8 year olds. You can’t blame parents for wanting to keep their children safe when it’s barely safe to cross the street."

I hardly feel safe roaming my own town as an adult, and it's mostly due to the rivers of high-speed traffic that cut up the city, that I have to cross to get to anywhere interesting.

[nvarsj]

This is very true in London, unfortunately. Cars destroy the city - both by polluting it, and making walking and biking dangerous. Boris Johnson's goal as mayor was to optimise traffic flow through London, which just encouraged more cars. Going to a city like Cambridge where the center is shut down to cars is quite eye opening - lots of kids and people walking and biking. In London it's just a sea of cars driving and parked on sidewalks so you can't actually walk anywhere safely.

Case in point: my daughter had a very near miss when she was about 2. She was walking down the side walk a bit in front of me, and this middle aged lady in a Range Rover went onto the sidewalk to get around a stopped car, barely missing my daughter. I yelled at her but she didn't even notice in her sound proof SUV.

[freehunter]

After reading the parent I was about to say "I'm almost 30 and I barely feel safe wandering alone".

Not just crossing major roads (I live downtown in my little city, but I have to cross a major road to get to any shops, which puts a big damper on my walking) but just one person walking down the road, by themselves? It's almost a scandal. And if I'm biking around town, especially not dressed in spandex like a bicyclist... what, did you have your driver's license taken away?

I know those are purely my hang ups and no one has ever stopped me and questioned my motives, but the idea comes from somewhere. It comes from a childhood where you weren't supposed to wander alone, and you were supposed to avoid strange men on the street. Then when you grow up to become a strange man on the street, you can't help but feel uncomfortable about it. At least I can't.

[erikpukinskis]

> We have purposely designed our cities to maximize vehicle throughput and require car ownership

This is just one specific example of the broader phenomenon, which is corporations seek to remove all of our abilities to take care of ourselves and our communities, so that they may resell those things to us as products. Requiring cars to move around is just the surface.

We go to coffee shops and restaurants to see our friends.

We purchase MP3s or concert tickets to hear music.

We order food instead of cooking it let alone growing it.

And of course this is all a luxury to some: many of us would be happy to never have to walk significant distance, cook, or listen to a local musician ever again.

But it's in the corporations best interest that children aren't really given a choice. And that serves nation states' best interest, which is to grow the GDP. But the result is a world of people who, without a credit card, are babies unable to care for themselves. Short of someone putting food in our mouths and maintaining the grounds around us, we would be lost. Luckily we have the cash to afford these things.

And those who fall through the cracks of being able to hold a job are eaten up.

All hail GDP. All hail capital. Thank you Gates, Koch, Slim, Walton, for providing us with internet connectivity, petrol, and toilet paper this day.

[orthoganol]

Reminds me of "Taken for a Ride", a somewhat famous documentary about the auto industry seeking to gut forms of public transportation in many cities.

Having traveled quite a bit I believe the US's public transportation systems, within cities and between regions, is a national embarrassment.

[lamontcg]

> it's mostly due to the rivers of high-speed traffic that cut up the city

and that is the priority.

you have to be able to drive as fast as the roadway allows to get where you're going without needing to think about the safety of others.

if some kid runs out in front of your car, its not going to be a question of if you were driving to fast but one of "where the hell were the parents?"

the assumption being that the vehicle occupant has the right to get where they're going absolutely as goddamn fast as is humanly possible and nothing had better get in their way.

driverless cars can't get here soon enough.

[talmand]

Rivers of high-speed traffic in the city? Dude, I feel like I can't allow my kids to walk alone to school that's four blocks over in my own neighborhood without some nanny state enabler calling child services on me.

Hell, I don't let them play in the front yard and wonder how long it'll be before I get the knock on the door because I let them play unsupervised in the fenced backyard with a trained full-grown German shepherd on watch.

Things are seriously screwed up.

[danielbarla]

Your comment made me consider this point, and I think it's a good one. That said, I actually live in a less crowded and busy city than I did as a child, yet the conditioning the parent poster mentions is there.

As a 6 year old, I would walk next to busy urban streets alone, cross streets, get on trams, and go to school. I don't think the risk of that has really gotten much higher, we just perceive it differently. A good example is how cars didn't have seatbelts (at the back at least), or headrests, and they had a tendency to crumple and have the steering column impale the driver during collisions.

We seem to be more keenly aware of these issues nowadays, and are somehow more averse to them - quite aside from any actual changes for the worse.

[hueving]

This isnt it. The town I grew up in had precisely the same number of interstates and major roads as it did 30 years ago (flat population) and children today have nowhere near the freedom that I did as a child.

[toast42]

It will be interesting to see if self-driving cars lead to parents being more comfortable with their children exploring.

[cel1ne]

I see your point, but don't you think it's possible to teach children to cross traffic safely?

When I was little, I regularly walked 3 or 4 miles to visit friends. I had to cross at least one "big" road on my way, where I just took extra care, because my parents had reminded me to.

[space_fountain]

Yep I (20 year old) rode a bike quite often down to say the public library about two miles, but it was all sidewalks on slow roads. It's one of the things I really miss about where I live now. It would be almost criminal to try having a kid ride to the library from here.

[someguydave]

Another reason is that things are generally very spread out in the US. Since it was taken for granted that everyone has a car, house lots are large and commercial areas are far from residential areas.

[Melchizedek]

I can't help but notice that this is close to Rotherham. The second hit when you google for Rotherham is the Wikipedia article on the "Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal".

The report estimated that 1,400 children had been sexually abused in the town between 1997 and 2013, predominantly by gangs of British-Pakistani men.[7] Abuses described included abduction, rape, torture and sex trafficking of children.

Perhaps freeways aren't the only factor here.

[shams93]

Yeah the traffic is a killer, I was almost killed by a driver who straight up ran a red light going around 75mph and nearly collided with me, an old man and an (estimated) 8 year old girl, its very dangerous to be a pedestrian, even more dangerous than being a motorcycle rider.

[deelowe]

This is definitely the issue from what I see. I have a neighborhood road that runs in front of my home. Speed limit is 25 mph. Doesn't matter, cars still do 55 or more at times. When I was growing up, you'd never see anyone going that fast down a residential street.

[DiffEq]

I think this is a large part of it. I don't care so much as 5 cents about what somebody at child protective services thinks...but where I live people drive so fast it is a bit ridiculous..but also my neighborhood has roaming packs of dogs. For whatever reason my area seems to be where people go to drop off unwanted dogs; they pack up and become dangerous. I have been attacked 3 times, my wife once and I am not too keen on my children's ability to defend themselves against them. I have disposed of many of them but it seems just when it is safe again to go for a run...there are more dogs.

[thomnottom]

I grew up deep inside a suburban development in Pennsylvania. We could ride our bikes for miles and still avoid major roads. Street hockey games very rarely had to move nets for cars. A number of friends lived easily within walking/biking distance. Even leaving my development usually meant dealing with one "major" road before getting into the quiet streets of the next one.

I would love to let my 8 year old daughter roam our current neighborhood like that, but we get more speeding cars in an afternoon cutting through our street than I would see in a weeks at my parents'.

[ArkyBeagle]

But the driver for building roads is frequently that roads enable an upgrade in zoning for land that fronts on those roads.

More modern roadways are quite distant and independent of even the usual retail/restaurant establishments. You have to take an exit. These roads tend to be toll. I don't know how anyone who hasn't used them would be able to see what I mean, but around Houston, the new 99 and I45 stand as examples of the two approaches.

[mseebach]

Traffic is definitely a big, unsolved problem in todays cities -- but in this context, it doesn't really fit into the causal chain: People report roaming about freely as kids in the 70s and 80s (that would include myself), several decades into the golden age of cars everywhere. Obviously individual areas can change, but the world at large today isn't significantly more dangerous for traffic reasons than it was 40 years ago.

[baddox]

I'm curious if that's a sufficient explanation. Do all the parents today (who remember roaming as kids but who wouldn't let their own kids roam now) live somewhere with more dangerous roads than where they grew up? I wonder if my own home town, which I know has not had significant road changes, has experienced the same alleged decline in roaming.

[MK999]

Great point to consider geography and the urban environment. In the suburb I grew up in there were no sidewalks, and a few woodsy areas around my parents house were quickly developed and turned into more suburban dwellings, so there really wasn't anywhere to roam.

[m_mueller]

As a Swiss with a small child, this is the main reason why I couldn't move to the US or UK. Your 70ies examples are still common enough in Switzerland. 6 year olds are sent to Kindergarden on their own (after a bit of training with their parents). Put the visibility triangle on and off you go. Parents are discouraged by the school authorities to bring by car. Today looking back at this I can see the value. Maybe it has to do with Switzerland being small enough for horrible child abduction stories to be very rare, and if they happen outside Switzerland we tend to think as something that happens to other people - as nationalistic as that sounds, but that's just how most people's minds work, for better or worse, in this instance probably for the better.

[NamTaf]

To be fair, in a recent brief visit to Switzerland I stayed with some friends in a small village near Zug and saw examples of this sort of attitude throughout more aspects of life than just child-raising. For example, many farmers were leaving produce out with price tags on and relying on an honour system for payment. Some did a 'pay what you want' system for their produce and just relied on people to do the right thing when valuing the items. It was really nice and refreshing and had a very positive community feel to it. It wouldn't surprise me if it's an attitude conditioned through exposure to it in all kinds of different aspects of life. I hope it stays around.

[culturestate]

This is essentially how it works in Japan as well; once the kids are old enough, the parents will walk with them to school a couple of times - to ensure they learn the route and to introduce them to neighbors they might meet on the way - and then the kids are on their own.

Japan's cultural safety net (by which I mean the overarching concept that everyone is more or less working together for the common good) is one of my favorite things about the country, and one of the most startling to me after moving to Asia.

[rconti]

I think you're right. Kids being randomly abducted is vanishingly rare, but the faster and further news spreads, the more 'real' it seems. A smaller country would be less likely to see it as a problem that "happens here".

I was born in 1981 and from the age of 7 or 8 I remember walking to school (1.5mi and parts of it along a busy street). My friends and I would play in the drainage culvert under the road, walking back and forth, the far side actually was basically a cliff, but we didn't want to fall, so we took care. I remember at age 10 wanting to ride my bicycle to a friend's house across town, but it was "too far" according to my parents. It actually was quite far though; at least 6 miles and mostly on very busy streets, no cycling infrastructure. By 11 or 12 I was riding my bike dozens of miles from home. My friends and I went all over the place unsupervised, all summer long, and this was just in the mid 90s. It was just your average middle class suburban American town.

I definitely hope people takes these stories to heart and it encourages folks to let their kids roam. But it's hardly a memory of generations past.

[cowsandmilk]

Does Switzerland publish where sex offenders live?

One piece of information present now is that I can see all the child molesters within a mile of where I live. You see that half a mile away there is someone convicted of "Rape of child with force" and it messes with you.

[JabavuAdams]

My main concern would be traffic. I live in an affluent neighbourhood with a lot of stressed people driving SUVs. I've had a car run over my foot. On one occasion, my kids had to be yanked out of the way by their mother to avoid being hit by a left-turning car that didn't see them.

My impression is that the Swiss are more fastidious about following traffic regulations. Is this outdated?

[WildGreenLeave]

As a Dutch guy visiting Switzerland regularly for skiing and just regular recreational purposes, I was surprised how many young children are getting on the bus for the slopes without a parent. Seeing a young child sitting/skiing/snowboarding on their own wasn't anything unusual.

[Reason077]

As a Swiss with a small child, this is the main reason why I couldn't move to the US or UK.

There always seems to be plenty of children, of various ages, running around my London neighbourhood unsupervised. The noisy little blighters!

[froh42]

"child endangerment"

This seems to run rampart in the US, but also a little bit over here in Germany.

My daughter (now 12) is allowed to use public transport across my city (Munich) since she was 9 (close to 10) - and my son who's 9 will change schools in summer and take public transport to there as well.

What's (still!) normal here might be child endangering in the US. The kids are free to roam from here to the city's river Isar (around a 20 minute walk, 1 subway station) because there's just a green, nice place.

And no, Munich is not a rural area, it's a 1.6 Million people city. And the first year when my daughter was taking public transport she was switching lines at Munich central station. In 2015. During those days when there were several thousand refugees here.

You teach the kids about sensible behaviour, about how to travel safely. And then you have to let them take a risk, because locking them up in the apartment is a very dangerous thing, for their mind, for their health.

There IS a certain risk that something bad happens. But I refuse to encumber the kids souls with fear and panic. I definitely believe part of the "obesity epidemic" is parents driving their kids everywhere because "its safer". No it's not. The kids get sick and fat.

[vermontdevil]

My problem is neighbors. They would call the cops instead of talking to me if they saw my daughter out there biking or playing. Can't they just chill and keep an eye out? I do for their kids and even let them play on my lot.

Nope - they all hide behind the drawn in curtains and think there's pedophiles lurking in my backyard bush.

[clarkmoody]

We have been conditioned to appeal to authority in disputes rather than handling them ourselves.

Remember, whenever you call the police, you are requesting people with guns to enter into an unknown situation on your behalf. Tragedy happens.

[dsfyu404ed]

Seconded. People see crap they don't like and escalate to some 3rd party without at least making a token effort solve it first get a special place in hell.

[bigtunacan]

What part of the US do you live in? I have 3 kids ages 7 to 12 and they and all of the neighborhoods kids wander together over a distance of several miles.

We make sure they have a phone and a time they are expected to return. The kids always group up as there is more safety in numbers. Life isn't worth living if you don't actually live.

[asolove]

Yes, you can definitely find places where kids still play by themselves in the US! But it takes work and the regional and even neighborhood-level differences in kids' behavior are enormous.

We used to live in suburban Washington DC and I didn't let my kids out of sight of the house.

Now we live in suburban Denver. We cared about play a lot so we used it as the main criterion of where we bought a house. We drove through neighborhoods on Saturday mornings until we found one where kids were out riding bikes and playing without adult supervision. We found a neighborhood that was both well designed (pools, a network of walking trails away from roads, school in walking distance) and full of people who were culturally supportive of free-range kids.

If you want to find or help to foster such a neighborhood, I recommend the book we used, "Playborhoods": http://playborhood.com

[wallace_f]

>I think I've been conditioned to think that I would be a negligent parent if I did this.

>The media is part of the problem. 24/7 news, social media, and channels like ID (real life murder 24/7) scare the bejeezus out of people. But besides that, we have an acceptance of nanny-state government - that the government should be a much closer "partner" in child rearing than 40 years ago.

The whole intent is to condition you to normality. Not unlike civil forfeiture and intrusive security checks when travelling.

[slacka]

Growing up parents gradually loosened the restrictions on my roaming from age 7-12. As an adult, I think that taught me independence, love of nature, and exercise / outdoor activities.

Do you not feel the benefits outweigh the risks? I've watched aunt shelter her 2 children. Both of her boys are sickly and extremely sheltered. Sure I had some minor adventures like stepping on nails and falling off my bike. But I learned and grew from those experiences.

Comparing how my sister and I turned out compared to my sheltered cousins, it seems like my parents did the right thing. You recognize that the world is just as safe and it's the media that scares people. Don't you worry that you are being selfish by being overprotective?

[jimmaswell]

Has anyone considered that, like many things, maybe childraising knowledge has improved over time, and maybe it is true that it's dangerous and a bad idea to let them roam around far away unsupervised? It always seemed reasonable to me, even when I was that age myself. An anecdote is that the only bone injury I had as a kid resulted from riding bikes with some other kids who had a "fun idea" of biking down this steeply sloped road, which wouldn't have been allowed had an adult been present, and I ended up with a crushed wrist and internal bruising, and I was lucky I even lived - could have easily hit my head for example. The aftermath of that incident is probably largely to blame for the weight problem I developed at the time.

My proposed alternative is good video games with open exploration (something like the original Spyro the Dragon games has a great sense of exploration and adventure) or that are otherwise engaging. I always found them a lot more intellectually stimulating/interesting than meandering around outside as a kid anyway. Local multiplayer is a good social activity. Continuing the tangent on other benefits, I remember being motivated to read faster as a kid to keep up with certain text boxes that would disappear quickly, and achieving it.

With all this balanced with other stuff like encouraging playing musical instruments or art and such, I don't see a need for unsupervised "roaming," especially a need outweighing the risks.

[djsumdog]

I really feel that proposing video games over being outside does a huge disservice to us as people. Maybe I'm centennial, but there's something visceral and amazing about being outside.

I think we have made some changes for the better. I remember as a teenager I noticed all the metal jungle jims at playgrounds were gone. It made me said, but I realized it was probably because falling from one could injure or kill a kid; and today we see that many of them have come back, but in the much safer rope based variety with that cool recycled rubber matting under them.

There is something about risk that is important in helping people develop:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2008/aug/06/children.pla...

Your own stories show you learned from your mistakes. Yes, you could have died, but you didn't. That action and memory create a different reality for you, and the way you view it deeply impacts the opinion you've presented here.

[throwanem]

One of the two bones I broke as a kid had a similar cause. That might sound like an endorsement of your claim, except first that it gave me powerfully to understand the value of forethought on the subject of not being a damn fool, and second that the other broken bone resulted from jumping up and down on an ordinary floor - not even jumping off anything. Are floors a problem?

I have a scar at the base of each thumb. One came from carelessness with the Boy Scout folder whose purchase price I'd years earlier worked hard to earn. It wasn't the first time I'd hurt myself through carelessness with that knife, either. It was the last, though, with any. Are pocketknives a problem?

The other scar I earned through waving a stick around. It wasn't really an instance of culpable carelessness on my part, in that if the stick hadn't had a twig stump where it did, or had I held it differently, it wouldn't have gouged me. I found a lesson there about unintended consequences that's served me well in life. Are sticks a problem?

In rough terms, I spent half my pre-adolescent childhood running around barefoot climbing trees and derelict farm equipment, and the other half indoors reading and playing NES games and writing Applesoft BASIC. I found both enjoyable, and a worthwhile way to spend time. I would not have attempted to replace either with the other. To make the attempt would have struck me as arrant foolishness, even at such a callow age, and I cannot say the idea seems any more sensible from a perspective more heavily weighted with years.

[robbrown451]

"My proposed alternative is good video games with open exploration"

I don't even know what to say to that. Seriously?

[johngalt]

> I ended up with a crushed wrist and internal bruising, and I was lucky I even lived.

And I bet you wear a seat belt every day in your car as an adult.

Invincibility is one of those myths you want to dispel when kids are young and the stakes aren't as high.

[losteric]

I doubt it. There's a difference between playing and exploring the real world, and sitting in a room.

My parents took the easy route of indoor parenting, with video games / books / school / instrument practice... be safe all the time. I was consistently at the top of my class and reasonably successful socially... but that upbringing did a lot of damage mentally. It's like being raised in a glass cage.

I plan to go the other way with my kids. Buy 10 acres out in the country or woods near some other families, far from the concrete jungle... Let the kids run free and explore, sit and learn, play video games, whatever. My parenting mentality is to provide freedom, and advice on using that freedom (living). If they ignore my advice and do stupid stuff, the pain will teach them the value of advice.

[akira2501]

> and maybe it is true that it's dangerous to let them roam around far away unsupervised?

...and maybe there are unseen benefits that outweigh those risk factors? It's true that in the past few years childhood mortality has lowered, and that the highest risk factor for anyone up to age 44 is "unintentional injuries;" however, other statistics may be more troubling.

For example, the teen suicide rate was steadily declining throughout 1985 to 2000, but since then, there has been a steady uptick in the suicide rate for children under 18. It's the second leading cause of death for people 10 to 34 in the united states, out-ranking even murder and cancer for these groups.

[JustSomeNobody]

Adam Walsh was murdered in the early 80's. John Walsh scared the sh out of everyone because of it.[0]

[0] I'd like to think I'd be as tireless at trying to find my son's killer as well, so not trying to be disrespectful here.

[pbhjpbhj]

There have been vast societal changes too (in the UK). 30-40 years ago a lot of residential streets would have parents home during the day. That doesn't seem true now.

I was allowed to roam as a child. But was in a village area where all the families knew each other, primarily because mother's were home with their kids for 5 years of their lives at least.

[MK999]

Great point, I've not seen this point mentioned elsewhere in these types of discussions.

[greedo]

When I was 12, I rode my bike three miles to the bus stop where I hitched it to the bus and rode from a small town in San Diego down to the El Cortez Hotel where Comic Con was being held. I paid my own way, stayed for about 7 hours, then rode back home. I can't imagine being allowed to do that today...

[CalRobert]

Unfortunately San Diego has been pretty opposed to making any safety improvements for bicycles, even as plenty of folks are killed by drivers.

Taxpayer-provided parking welfare is more important than keeping people alive. http://bikesd.org/2016/08/hba-hole-worrying-precursor-future...

[greedo]

I also just remembered another anectdote. One morning (age 13) I set out to go birdwatching. I had to get up around 5am, in order to get to the estuary before sunrise. I had a small backpack with all my gear, and about a mile from my home, a sheriff's deputy stopped me in his squad car. He quizzed me on what I was doing, asked to look in my backpack, and after 15 minutes, I was on my way. He was obviously surprised to see me out that early, but once he was convinced of my sincerity, I didn't warrant any further scrutiny.

[TheSageMage]

Late 20's(mid 1990's as a kid) here in Northeast US. I had the same experience growing up, days when it was nice outside, we were expected to not stay in and watch TV, so we would go outside and find things to do. I feel like it's that last part though that may have changed over the years as well. There's so many compelling forces today that A) make kids want to stay inside and B) make parents want to want their kids inside.

In these discussions, I hear people say "I'd be charged if I let my kids outside today", but it doesn't also address the cultural shifts that have happened to both the kids and adults that make "outside" a worse off place to be.

[germinalphrase]

I'm 30 and my childhood in the Midwest was very similar to yours.

Perhaps, it's a regional thing - but I hope to bring up my future children in a similar manner. It's important for young people to have some autonomy.

[credit_guy]

(Parent of a 6yo and a 1yo). I feel the same, I was orders of magnitude freer as a kid as my children are now. One day the nanny of my 1yo found my 6yo outside of our school (which is across the street) almost ready to cross the street on the pedestrian crossing. We wrote to the teacher, who told us she couldn't sleep that night. It's very likely that if we had reported the incident to the principal she would have been fired. At end of the day, the main function of the schools nowadays is to keep our children safe, not to educate them.

But here's the thing, I feel the same as you. Part of it could be the PG observation of asymmetry of benefit vs risk for kids and parents ([1], paragraph before "Discipline"). But part of it is that the whole "world is tough, so toughen up" is a big misconception. I'm struggling to articulate a good argument, but I think it's worth shielding our children from danger for as long as possible, so they can focus on learning. Life will come at them, that's for sure. And then they'll have the motivation to learn how to deal with all the bad stuff. But until them they'll learn more of the good stuff if we remove the distraction of having to look out for themselves.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

[pantalaimon]

> I think it's worth shielding our children from danger for as long as possible, so they can focus on learning. Life will come at them, that's for sure. And then they'll have the motivation to learn how to deal with all the bad stuff. But until them they'll learn more of the good stuff if we remove the distraction of having to look out for themselves.

But how will they ever learn that when all they've been brought up with was that they can't be trusted to do anything on their own?

What good is all the learning when you lack confidence to apply it to something new, unknown, where you don't know the outcome 100%?

You make it sound like you are living in a war zone when in fact, your children are probably much safer than they ever were in history.

[secfirstmd]

Man that reminds me so much of my growing up experience. Spent most free time outside on a bike, playing with a football, climbing trees and only coming back indoors for food.

[johnpowell]

Same here.

I grew up on a 80 acre farm. We lived there until I was 7 and my sister was 10. My parents didn't even get home from work until 7PM.

We had a full on welding and machine shop and a pretty fantastic place for woodworking in the shop. We had two creeks that were lined with trees hanging over them.

My dad had pretty much taught us how weld and use the plasma cutter and drill press and all the wood working stuff. Looking back I even find it insane to teach your 6 year old how to weld. But somehow I am still alive.

But the last few years we lived there my sister asked if we could build a tree-house in one of the trees that branched out over a creek. My mom said to go for it. My dad did help build the base (he was a mechanical engineer) and we did the rest. It was massively unsafe now that I think about it 33 years later.

The funny thing is we only had one major emergency at that house. My sister was making a frozen pizza and didn't check when she started preheating the oven. There were a few dozen glazed doughnuts in a box in the oven. They burst into flames and she pulled the entire rack onto the floor. We got the fire to go out.

And a few days later my dad taught me a lot about replacing a kitchen floor.

[intrasight]

For sure the media is the main problem. the commercial news media sells fear.

[ransom1538]

Or. Just google child predators in your neighborhood. Some states require these databases updated regularly. Statistically you should have one within walking distance. Sleep tight!

[visarga]

> I know I would be gnashing my teeth if my kid was roaming the streets and woods all day long...even if I did it.

I think what has changed is our attitude towards risks. We just can't stand even the slightest risk on our children. It's a form of entitlement - we want to raise kids risk-free, but that is dangerous in itself. Lacking experience, children are much worse prepared for life.

[wolfgke]

> I think I would be charged with child endangerment these days if my kid (3 years in the future) was doing stuff like that.

> [...]

> The media is part of the problem.

Not the media is the real problem, but the tolerance of people towards the mentioned kind of laws.

[drdeadringer]

How does the US have a "nanny-state government" regarding child rearing?