I have a ten year old daughter in NYC, and I’m probably one of the types of parents who many here are castigating. I’m not ready for her to go out and explore the city on her own. Here’s what I worry about:
- cars: she’s not always the most present and aware, and it takes one mistake to ruin or end her life.
- bikes and scooters: less dangerous in some ways, but more ubiquitous and unpredictable than cars
- sexual harassment: she’s only ten, but sadly in some neighborhoods, that’s old enough that she’s likely to get hassled. That’s a sad fact of life she’ll have to deal with at some point, but I’m not ready yet
- bullying: I had several encounters with groups of older kids when I was off free-ranging as a kid
- subway: some deranged homeless person throws someone off the platform or stabs someone every week here
I could go on, but the bottom line is that the potential harm outweighs the potential benefit for me right now. In my mind there’s no right answer here, just pros and cons. Appealing to how things were a century ago, or even when I grew up, is pretty irrelevant. My daughter might mature a couple years later than I did, and I can live with that.
Also, I’m just pretty fundamentally unimpressed with most moral panics. “The Anxious Generation” seems like just the latest entry in a tradition stretching thousands of years where people worry about how the changes in society are ruining the next generation, and long for a return to how life was when they grew up. However, each generation somehow manages to figure it out.
I understand and worry about my kids the same age too. But the paradox I myself admit to is that those perceived dangers aren't new nor have they increased significantly since I was young in the 70s -- other than scooters being new -- and yet I, and pretty much every other kid, had tons of freedom and was just fine. So it's mostly about the fears in my head, not the reality on the ground.
Yeah, but “I made it just fine” is poor logic to me. This would be true for kids who grew up with parents smoking, mom drinking while pregnant, no seatbelts, etc. They were mostly fine too.
It's not just me who made it fine; my entire generation did.
> This would be true for kids who grew up with parents smoking
not really, given the number of people with lung cancer then compared to today
> no seatbelts
again, the number of fatalities was much higher then
Your entire generation definitely didn’t make it just fine, lots of kids were killed, abducted, assaulted, raped, traumatized, or just disappeared. That doesn’t mean anything on its own about how we should live today, but they didn’t make it just fine.
And yes, traffic fatalities were much higher before seatbelts, but they still only affected a tiny fraction of kids. The vast majority were just fine.
One thing I always think about when reading these posts: the complaints about how kids never roam free anymore are also accompanied by claims that abductions are incredibly rare now. But how do we know they’re not incredibly rare because kids don’t roam free? It feels like claiming that you shouldn’t have to wear your seatbelt because traffic fatalities are much lower than they were when seatbelts were introduced!
I mean, realistically, you can tell who is going to do all those weird things. We decided that rampant criminality was fine on the streets. City life in America is about being collateral damage in the Democratic Party campaign to enrich their special interest through NGOs.
“No, that serial molester of children just needs a daily check-in with the NGO my friend runs. Then he’s fine to go around. No carceral justice.”