I wonder if this doesn't have a lot to do with cars.
In surrendering utterly to the preeminence of streets, we have essentially taken our open, free world and overlain it with an immense grid of electric fences -- thick lines all over the map that, if children wander across them, might easily lead to their deaths.
So "hold hands everywhere" and "don't let your children run free outside" become the norms. The only safe place is locked inside or behind fences; the wider world is a death trap for children.
Play inherently requires a degree of freedom, but children have none. We are just prison guards eternally transferring them from one captivity to another.
Routinely in New York City at least, you can kill someone using a motor vehicle almost with complete impunity.
The driver who led to Sammy's Law (which still hasn't passed) only received a 180 day license suspension a year and a half after the accident, even though he sped past a stopped vehicle on the righthand side (the vehicle had stopped for the child). Death by car is often considered acceptable.
There is really no disincentive to dangerous driving, to say nothing of the preeminence of driving more generally.
Which is absolutely wild to me. It is a great responsibility to wield a multi-ton machine in the proximity of other people. Driver's licenses are handed out quite freely and it seems the reason has less to do with competence than a complete failure of the economy as we know it if people couldn't bring themselves between the places that earn them money and the places they spend them, especially considering how far apart they are from each other in cities built after cars were brought into public awareness.
It seemed wild to me years ago, but in aggregate and after reading your comment it makes more sense. Private vehicle ownership is a great deal for for a variety of businesses (cars, insurance, maintenance, road builders, oil companies, attorneys), and who cares if a few people die, because that's how capitalism works. :(
You can poll people about things that they want, but (like it happened with many great inventions) people don't actually know what they need. Do they want less car-centric environment? Most will answer "no" because they've never lived in a society that wasn't as car-centric. Most people are not urbanists and most are content with their lives. You can poll them and do inquiries to death, or you can allow experts to implement all of the things that are unambiguously good from any perspective, let people grumble for a bit, adjust and after that reap benefits.
A part of being a democratic society is accepting that an opinion of an average person is worthless.
Absolutely, and America has double problem where denser neighborhoods are seen as unsafe due to crime. And less dense neighborhoods means kids can’t go anywhere without having an adult drive them.
Cars do make it worse, but probably aren't what it all stems from. As an example, I lived a 5 min walk away from the primary school I was attending and wasn't allowed to make the trip on my own for years. They gave me a payphone card and I had to call one of my parents to come and walk me back.
Helicopter parents don't let things like logic and convenience get in the way of taking every atom of independence from their kids. It may also have something to do with trust. Nobody trusts their kids with anything these days anymore and then they expect them to somehow grow up capable of taking responsibility? Like, how?
Is it paranoia? If it wasn’t for guns, cars would be the number killer of kids under 16. Note: This includes kids IN cars being ferried around from activity to activity.
Granted the numbers are lower now than before but that’s because of various safety and traffic calming efforts. Seems like we should push harder on that front, so parents can feel safe encouraging their kids to just pop over to their friends place on their own.
Well that's my point, the parents thinks its a dude in a white van to be scared off.
But the numbers say its the actual white van going too fast on a four lane road (speed limit 45mph) next to the park. This isn't that much of a problem in older European cities.
The city I grew up in was levelled by Nazis during WW2 and rebuilt to be car-centric.
The OP said that everyone is walled off by cars so they have a mindset of controlling their children, lest they get run over. You're saying that they're actually afraid of kidnappers etc., while they should be of cars. To me these points are contradictory.
In any case do you think removing cars will solve the problem? My guess is that no, because this mindset appeared decades after cars took over, and these things are actually not related.
If the cars caused the mindset then the mindset would necessarily be delayed by two generations because mindset and worldview changes require new humans.
It's paranoia. The pedophile panic of the last few decades led to nobody letting kids out of their sight.
Things like the sex offender registry "help" but don't at the same time. It's not something I ever concerned myself with ("I know the stats, it's usually a relative!") until someone encouraged me to do it while closing on a house. I'm now acutely aware of the fact that there are dozens of child predators within a 1-mile radius of my home.
I would say that American car-centric development and distrust of others go hand in hand. The more people wall themselves away into their castles in the suburbs, the less they feel part of a community, and the more they distrust others.
In theory I agree. But in practice, where I grew up, it was pure suburbia. I lived a few miles from school. No sidewalks, and roads very car centric. In elementary and Jr high I used to bike to school, regularly, and I don't remember it being abnormal; I remember a lot of kids doing it. I remember my dad commenting on it being weird that there was a crossing guard we had to wait for on our school corner (which crossed a 4 lane busy-ish street) on one of the rare days where he picked us up in his car.
I think a big part of this is just our risk tolerances change. We naturally want to protect kids, and looking historically we've taken safety to relative extremes compare to 20 years ago (and similarly before then). Its natural to want more security, and its obvious how it helps. But its not as obvious what we've given up in return.
Interestingly, I moved to Portland recently, and live mid way between suburbs and downtown; its fairly dense but mostly SFH or townhomes in my neighborhood, many businesses, some homeless. Kids of all ages walk to school and are... just everywhere, around here. Its quite normal to see people walking with their kids too. Its just got a really great mix of urban density -- you can walk to stores, bars, school. There's a few high traffic streets, but they are not large and the speed limit is 20mph. I think what this neighborhood has taught me is, while our risk tolerances are lower than ever, its still a bit of a design and culture choice to not let kids walk around. Its nice to see here, in Portland of all places, there's a bit of a counter trend going on. I hope its what the future looks like in other places (here and elsewhere) too.
In surrendering utterly to the preeminence of streets, we have essentially taken our open, free world and overlain it with an immense grid of electric fences -- thick lines all over the map that, if children wander across them, might easily lead to their deaths.
So "hold hands everywhere" and "don't let your children run free outside" become the norms. The only safe place is locked inside or behind fences; the wider world is a death trap for children.
Play inherently requires a degree of freedom, but children have none. We are just prison guards eternally transferring them from one captivity to another.