So, apparently in Japan, children as young as six and seven travel alone:
It’s a common sight on Japanese mass transit: Children troop through train cars, singly or in small groups, looking for seats.
They wear knee socks, polished patent leather shoes, and plaid jumpers, with wide-brimmed hats fastened under the chin and train passes pinned to their backpacks. The kids are as young as six or seven, on their way to and from school, and there is nary a guardian in sight.
Oh my, what an exotic sight.
So exotic, that in the 70s and early 80s in Vancouver, Canada, I saw it all the time. Heck, I was one of those kids. At that age, I would take myself from my home down to the YMCA for gymnastics classes and I would take myself to school, either using the bus or just walking. It never occurred to me or my parents that I should do otherwise, or that I couldn’t do it.
I remember moving to Vancouver at age six or so, and exploring the city and the beach, downtown, by myself.
And I can tell you that there were some pretty seedy parts of Vancouver. It was heroin city back then, too.
I spent my days doing what I wanted once school was out, and I was responsible only for being home at meal times and bed time. My parents had only the vaguest idea where I was or what I was doing. “Going out to play” included a multi-block radius.
Here’s the truth: Most adults can be trusted and will look out for small children. Further, most of the time small children don’t need it; they are more capable than modern Westerners think they are. I cast back, thinking of times I needed the help of strangers. I can remember only two, and both times it was given unstintingly and without my even asking.
We are a paranoid bunch of ninnies. There is, actually, less violence now (though perhaps it is because we keep them in a closet and throw away the key) than there was in the past, and most danger is almost entirely from people they know. It is not some nasty stranger who will hurt your child: It is Uncle Bob, or a teacher, coach, or neighbour you trust.
The rare exceptions are exceptions, and the press makes a big deal of them for exactly that reason. “Man bites dog,” not “Dog bites man.”
Of course, mores have changed. Let your kid run free like the children of my childhood did and someone will probably call the cops.
Ninnies indeed. And I see the results when I deal with children in their late teens and early twenties. They are far more uncertain, more scared, than my cohort was at the same age. This isn’t their fault, they were never given freedom, never allowed to fail and succeed on their own terms–never expected to take care of themselves.
Doubtless this will change again, as we move into the era of ultra-surveillance, the panopticon police state. But I fear children will never again be free.
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Willy
I live in an exurban area with no publicized cases of child abduction. Yet every single school day multiple parents will gather at the various school bus stops to await their children. Some will even drive their kids the very short distances home. Every day. I fondly remember walking home with all the other kids, nary a parent in sight, miles through the driven snow…
I don’t think that all parents are subject to these cultural compulsions. I’m sure the ones who aren’t, fully trust their offspring to be as common-sense-wary and self-reliant as they themselves were as kids. But since most people are group-thinkers who tend to move in herds, in every possible sense, they’ve adopted this current latest bizarre behavioral fad as being completely normal.
Obviously social manipulators of every kind try to take advantage of the ‘common-brained traditional types’ need to ‘be normal like everybody else’, and are always trying to swing things their way. Case in point: irrational political beliefs against one’s own interests.
So, here we are today, with rational people eager to discuss their various viewpoints, yet mystified/horrified by all the irrational black/white ad hominal groupthink they’re surrounded by.
jrkrideau
I grew up in the country so things are not equivalent, but at 6 years old I and my 10 year old sister walked 2 km each way to and from school in all but the worst weather and I was running messages to cottages in the area who did not have a phone.
By the time I was 13, I was doing some limited driving of a farm tractor and, during the winter, using a dirty great axe to chop wood to build a fire. I was also chasing cows, feeding the blasted beasts and other normal duties on an dairy/beef farm.
I think we may have become a bit over-protective (read screaming paranoid) today.
Rayner86
“Of course, mores have changed. Let your kid run free like the children of my childhood did and someone will probably call the cops.”
That is exactly the biggest threat, as it will result in criminal prosecution of the parents and Child Protective Services taking the children into custody.
There is no Due Process with respect to dealing with Child Protective Services as the children’s welfare trumps the normal justice system processes (you are essentially guilty until you can prove otherwise). It is an extra-judicial process.
Bill Hicks
I gather the Japanese news media also doesn’t have a business model that relies on constantly scaring its viewers to death–particularly any time something bad happens to a child.
Herman
Since “stranger danger” hysteria and overzealous police and child protection services have already been mentioned I would like to add that there is a class element to helicopter parenting as well. For most parents who are middle class or above “free range” parenting is seen as irresponsible, something belonging to degenerate working-class or poor cultures.
Middle-class and upper middle-class Americans know that there is increasing competition for a shrinking number of good careers. The culture now demands that your kids better be working on their resumes by the time they are 6 if they want to avoid a lifetime of dead-end jobs. I see this a lot with parents already enrolling their kids in STEM boot camps when they are barely old enough to start school.
Even if you wanted to adopt a more free-range parenting style there is a good chance that your peers will shame you. That is why we have things like “Mommy Wars” fought between usually affluent mothers over which parenting style is the best. Generally it seems like most middle-class Americans today go in for the helicopter approach. Letting kids roam around and learn on their own is seen as negligence and sure to lead to a life of poverty as an adult. You can’t pad your resume with “I spent the day wandering around in the woods” or other forms of simple exploring.
Today’s young people are safer and less likely to be juvenile delinquents but many of them have degraded social skills and mental health problems as researchers like Jean Twenge have noted. Many young people today are unable to handle the inevitable life setbacks that occur when they get out into the “real world.” Smartphones and other technologies only enhance this problem by making it easier to cocoon yourself in your own little world.
jrkrideau
Rayner86
Let your kid run free like the children of my childhood did and someone will probably call the cops.
I have heard of this in Vancouver, BC and in Florida. Soon, any child under 12 will have to be an a leash.
bruce wilder
I think there’s also likely to be a huge, yawning gap, based on class, between children who have gotten the full helicopter parenting treatment, complete with heavily scheduled organized activities and sports and “enrichment” (plus especially for the elite highly competitive testing and placement beginning with kindergartens that get your kid into Harvard) and the very large number of children (close to half in the U.S. now) who will spend some part of their childhoods in at least transitory family poverty (and pretty severe poverty that is; the statistical tests to be classed as poverty are pretty damn low). Poor kids in the U.S. are living in a 3rd world country and not a nice one because their parents feel ashamed and powerless (which is often not so severely the case in actual 3rd countries where social systems are calibrated to available resources and a time before technology).
bruce wilder
I can actually remember my parents struggling to teach me to tie my shoes and taking me multiple times along the route from the elementary school back home, so I could be trusted to navigate it myself without mishap. I do not think I was easy to instruct or trust, being generally compliant but also impulsive as kids are. So, I do not feel the reluctance and anxiety that a parent might feel about a 6 year old is entirely misplaced. When I see parents hovering over a ten year old, though, I wonder what is wrong with the parent.
Arnold
Here in Chapel Hill, the buses are free and kids ride them. And we have an active bike to school program. If you don’t give kids a bit of autonomy, they could grow up to be twisted, craven creatures, like your average Republican who “needs” to carry a gun to walk his dog.
Frank Stain
I suspect there’s another very nefarious dimension to this. Basically, upper middle class parents today would never let their kids run free like this even if they believed they were perfectly safe. This is b/c childhood for the upper middle class has been transformed into a long incubation period of a child’s talents and abilities, which should undergo rigorous cultivation all the way up to adulthood. Educated parents nowadays tend to fill up their child’s waking hours outside school with various forms of cultivation and self-enrichment that is supposed to prepare them for a neoliberal lifetime of deadly serious competition with their peers.
These parents would not consider letting their child run free, as we used to in the 1970s, b/c that would be considered a total waste of the time in which your child could be learning violin, taking extra math lessons, or learning about ancient hominids. The most insane version of this is youth sports, in which small children try to express themselves physically while they are absolutely surrounded by adults shouting at them and closely scrutinizing their every move for possible signs of sub-maximal performance.
I often wonder how any child could grow up like this and not need an entire adult lifetime of intense therapy and drugs.
e. a. foster
society has over protected children. I can’t really recall a date when it happened, but it did, somewhere in the 1980s I think. It may have been the media who just went for it when children were kidnapped and people started to feel unsafe. Children, if they don’t get to figure life out, won’t be able to make good choices as they get older.
I grew up in Richmond, B. C. and remember being sent my Mom on the bus to the local butcher to pick things up in the main shopping area. Would walk home. Never had a problem. It gave us a sense of accomplishment. it taught us how to do things. Children need to be free to learn how to live a life, not to be kept in cotton until some set date and then expected to know how to function.
There is no reason children can’t take transit from a young age.
reslez
Mayer Hillman’s research in the 90s suggested that parents removed their children from the streets in order to protect them from traffic accidents. It was a rational response to the risks cars pose to pedestrians, particularly small immature ones unable to properly evaluate danger. Hillman and his team published their research decades ago and nothing was done. Developers continued to build subdivisions and culdesacs without so much as a sidewalk. Walkability is a joke in most parts of the U.S. Quoting from his book:
In 1971, 80 per cent of seven and eight year old children were allowed to go to school without adult supervision. By 1990, this figure fell to 9 per cent. Road accidents involving children have declined not because roads have become safer but because children can no longer be exposed to the dangers they pose. Systematic surveys were carried out of how children and their parents behave in response to the risk of accidents in ten areas in Britain and Germany. Clear evidence was found that restrictions on the independent mobility of children were a direct result of the fears of parents. [from the back cover]
The childhood reminiscences of ‘the gold old days’ of most people over the age of 70 have a similar flavour. The reduction in private motoring during the Second World War, and the period of austerity following, resulting in low levels of traffic, and streets that were considered safe for children. As a result most children then had far more freedom to roam the neighbourhood and play in the streets than they do today. [p.2]
Another interesting side effect of traffic:
[Another] study found that knowledge of neighbours across the street decreased sharply as traffic increased, suggesting that a good accident record is often purchased at the cost of community severance. [p. 5]
The book is called One False Move…: A study of children’s independent mobility, and you can read it here. Here is a recent interview Hillman did with The Guardian on climate change, suggesting “accepting the impending end of most life on Earth might be the very thing needed to help us prolong it”.
Willy
Visiting my childhood neighborhood park I noticed that all the playground equipment is gone. But there were children, all of them way out there in the playfield. They were wearing matching soccer outfits, and were goosestepping in unison. Maybe it was some kind of exercise drill or something. The few dogs were all leashed, with not a single tennis ball or frisbee to be found. A car drove by blaring Nickelback. A shudder ran up my spine.
Webstir
I’m frustrated that I can’t find the link to the article I read a few months back, but it made a convincing argument that like so much that has changed in our society of late, the source of this overprotectiveness is neoliberalism. Parents have been trained to think of their children as “investments.” We have to pour so much time and money into preparing them for the “good college” competition that we are reluctant to allow them to “be kids.”
While not the article I read, there seems to be a lot written on the subject. One example: https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/austerity-media/ruth-cain/bringing-up-neoliberal-baby-post-austerity-anxieties-about-social-repro
Webstir
Herman:
“Even if you wanted to adopt a more free-range parenting style there is a good chance that your peers will shame you.”
In my mid-forties and first time father of a 5 mo. old boy.
Personally, I can’t wait for someone to try. For whatever reason (probably my disdain for 99% of Americans) I’ve managed to cultivate a look just for people seeking to insert themselves in my business. Basically, you let them say their piece. Then, long pause. Direct eye contact. Look them tip to toe. Back to direct eye contact combined with a wry knowing smile that says “I see who you are.” Hold the eye contact until they flinch. Then tell them: “That’s what I thought.” If you meet someone with an actual backbone, clasp your hands behind your back and slowly start walking toward them while maintaining the smile and laser focus on their eyes.
Most people can’t pull it off I’ve found. It simply defies too many social conventions. You have to practice. But once comfortable, people whither before your eyes. You can actually watch their stature diminish before your eyes … and they’ll never mess with you again.
Bill H
This results in college students demanding that they be provided with “safe spaces” and that speakers who might say things which would frighten them be excluded from speaking on their campuses.
tawal
I lived in Palo Alto, in 1966 to 1969, age 6 to 9. I went everywhere on my bike, didn’t come home until I was hungry. Wasn’t a loner, but no adult ever bothered me. More catious now, when walking to the store at night, but never fearful; live in a tougher part of El Cajon now.
Linda Merrill
When the satanic pedophiles who rule and control this world at each level, top to bottom, are all imprisoned, maybe then children will be able safely to roam the streets alone. But not until then. This is our present context.
Linda Merrill
And here is where I totally agree with you, a different aspect from my first comment, and why authors today find a good market for books like, “Getting Grit” (by Caroline Miller) intended to toughen people up and not be afraid of competition, winning and losing:
“……….This isn’t their fault, they were never given freedom; never allowed to fail and succeed on their own terms: never expected to take care of themselves.”
V
In answer to the question: Only if you get out of the western dominated countries.
Children in the emerging/third world countries are doing just fine; wild child lives…
Just as I grew up in rural America, lo, those many decades ago…
Chipper
My understanding is that children learn to deal with their fears by doing things that scare them (think of times you’ve climbed a tall tree or ridden your bike down a steep hill or done flips on playground equipment). They learn that it’s normal to feel afraid and that the feeling will pass, and that they can deal with the fearful situation. Kids these days aren’t allowed to do scary things most of the time, and I believe this is a large part of why anxiety is so prevalent in kids today.
I’m not saying the previous posters are wrong about middle- and upper-middle-class kids vs poor kids, but there is at least some recognition that kids need to get outdoors more and have more unstructured play. I recently read an article (which I can’t find now) about affluent parents paying tens of thousands of dollars to pay for their kids to go to daycare where they can play in a woods. It’s odd to think that playing in the woods may now be something only for the rich.
nihil obstet
As much as I may disagree with how people raise their children, it is striking when I look at how parents at different times, in different classes, and in different societies raise their kids for the world in which they live. We live in a winner-take-all world of constant work and striving, where a mistake can have life-long expensive consequences. To have the security that used to characterize the middle class, one has to work very long hours and in fear of not conforming to the bosses’ expectations. Parents are raising their children to live in that world.
Steeleweed
On one hand, we seriously underestimate what children are capable of doing. On the other hand, we often have unrealistic expectations of them. We treat them like incompetent, ignorant animals – pets, essentially – who cannot be trusted on their own and yet we expect mature and ‘grown up’ behavior, i.e.; obedience, so as to reflect well on us as parents.
At 4, I walked to nursery school, about a mile, crossing major highway, avoiding the light traffic – and Colorado winters commonly ran -10 to -20 at that time of morning. I wasn’t the only kid who did this, and nobody considered it unusual or risky. At 7, I took a .22 rifle, fishing tackle, hunting knife and a blanket and spent a week in the woods alone. At 9, I was driving tractors and trucks on a ranch, even when I had trouble reaching the pedals (I was very small for my age). In summer, most kids slept outside on someone’s lawn (and roamed around town after our parents were in bed, roasting corn and potatoes in a secluded campfire). I slung a hammock 40 feet up in a cottonwood tree and took afternoon naps there. I survived and there are damn few places in this world you could drop me without gear or prep that I couldn’t cope with, aside from the Arctic or Antarctica.
I recall visiting a Lakota friend who had a toddler. He asked the boy to close a door which had been left ajar. The door was heavy and the toddler struggled with it. I offered to close it but the friend stopped me. “He can do it”, – and the child did manage to shut the door – and was proud of himself for doing it. “Don’t ask more of them than they can do, at their their age and ability. But do ask them to do what they are capable of”. Pretty much sums it up in my book.
stefan
I live in a mid-size Northern CA town (SF east bay). My 12 year old kid goes to school (2.5 miles away) alone by bike, crossing several busy streets. His friends do the same. They go to other places around town alone, play in the parks without supervision, etc. Sometimes he is out for hours and we don’t know exactly where.
Maybe this is unique for where we live…
stefan
When I was 9 years old, my family and I moved to Libya for a few years (I am from Eastern Europe). The city we lived in was 4-5 km from the sea, but the road to the seaside was not direct; it was going around through another town.
So a friend of mine (a 10 yo girl) and I decided to find a short cut to the sea. One morning, after our parents left for work, we packed a couple of sandwiches and headed north across the desert (or rather semi-desert). Soon we were completely lost but I don’t remember being worried. After a few hours wandering in the wilderness, we came across an old guy, in a hut, with a donkey in front of it. Somehow we managed to explain to him (I had learned some arabic by that time) that we were lost. So he untied the donkey and, with it, walked us slowly back to town. We got home just in time before our parents came back from work. They never learned what happened.
I had so many such adventures – pretty much all my childhood memories are stories like this. I wonder what today’s children will remember from their childhoods.