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> I agree it sounds great to let your kids roam free as we did, but I think in practice the environment has changed in ways that make it difficult

I agree, both with this and the premise that overprotective parenting is a real phenomenon. You can't place all of the blame on the parents for their increased vigilance because the environment of growing up has literally changed.

Like many of you, when I was young, I played all over my neighbourhood with other kids my age, completely unsupervised. Free to wander quite far from my home with the understanding that I would be home for supper. However, I grew up in a small town (pop. ~20k).

Today, most people live in cities, and many in large ones (us included). When my kids are older, I will do my best to give them freedom to play, but there are just some realities today that are different from when I was younger. I remember reading somewhere that there are roughly 3x the amount of vehicles on the road as there were in the 80s (when I was growing up). My biggest safety fear for my kids is traffic. We live in a city. There are a lot of parks around, but getting to and from places involves navigating traffic and a lot of it. I'll do my best to educate them and give them trust to do so, but you can't help but be a bit concerned. We all know you can be involved in a traffic accident these days through no fault of your own.

To clarify: I'm not saying that the world is actually more dangerous for kids today than it was a generation ago, but I think for many parents it's not difficult to see how they could have that perception (true or not) and thus parent in a more protective way. Not only has the world changed, but so has the beholder (from carefree child to responsible parent).

I live in Brooklyn and there's kids roaming around after school all over. Unless they're toddlers they know how to not get hit by a car.

I'm not saying kids can't handle it. My point was not that it's not entirely reasonable to expect parents of today to act in the same ways as their parents did when when they were growing up, because the world now looks a lot different from what they experienced as children. The danger could be real or perceived, but the end result is the same.

I wouldn't be surprised if our parents' generation were also considered over-protective by previous standards. This just feels like a "when I was your age" type of thing.

I think there is real difference between saying the reality is different, and the perception is different, though I agree the outcome is the same. If teh reality is different, then teh outcome may be justified. But if the perception is different (which I think is the truth), then guys like Mika Lanza are fighting the good fight, and all parents should be working to change the perception that free play is dangerous.

I completely agree. It's something I consciously try to change within myself on a regular basis as a parent. My point being, it is a struggle and an understandable one. It's not as easy as saying "You're being a helicopter! Stop being so silly." as if the parent is behaving irrationally. It's something I feel I have to actively unlearn, even though it wasn't explicitly taught to me.

And, of course, there are many degrees of protectiveness. It is a spectrum. I see some parents where their protectiveness is much greater than mine and it seems obvious to me. At the same time, I'm sure other parents look at me and say the same thing. It's not a one size fits all situation. Parenting, as a whole is, of course a matter of personal values.

Brooklyn is one of very few places in America where kids can roam around all over. It's a highly walkable, pedestrian friendly place with excellent public transit options. Most of America is not like that at all.

I think the problem is more complex than more cars. If you have more cars but road size stays the same, after a point traffic is slower moving. I imagine the graph to be like a bell curve.

But if you widen roads and make other improvements to accommodate traffic then the graph would be more linear.

I grew up in a relatively large town (~300k at the time, regional capital), on a block that mostly consisted of densely packed 5-story and 8-story apartment buildings.

We all played all over the neighborhood together. There were playgrounds between the buildings, but we didn't really stick to them once we were old enough to go to school. When I was 10, I was riding the bike all over the place, within about 5km radius from home, and so were all the other kids.

I didn't personally know anyone who had a serious accident, traffic or otherwise. The worst I remember is one kid falling off the garage roof and breaking an arm, and another kid riding the bike into an uncovered manhole and falling down there. As far as the rumor mill went, the most extreme that I can recall was a story of a kid in the area who lost an eye in an incident involving live ammo being thrown into fire.

5 and 8 story apartment buildings is not a typical American environment by far. I grew up in exactly the same environment as you did -- pedestrian friendly, highly available public transit, protected courtyard playgrounds, wide sidewalks on both sides of the streets, where kids riding bikes are not forced onto the road, etc.

This is a very different environment from most of America.

I wouldn't call our playgrounds protected. They had driveways between the actual buildings and the playground, and cars went there occasionally. But the drivers were generally well aware that there'd be kids around, and drive carefully there.

Sidewalks, yeah, I'll grant you that. It's still the thing that amazes me most about US - that so many roads here plainly don't have any sidewalks. I'm used to seeing them on literally every road that is in a populated area. Even villages usually had them!

I was more alluding to the fact that these courtyard playgrounds are easily accessible for kids directly from their apartments, and don't have to be driven to by adults.

As far as cars, it was almost impossible to get up to higher than 10mph in there, and if you did, you'd probably be hunted down next time by neighbors and old ladies.

2 is a big one. Yet another consequence of high land prices as now both partners are forced to work.

Another is the break up of wider family. Before people could live locally and they would have their grandparents local too, and aunts etc. Now that land rents are so high and work is god, together with low job security, people are forced to move to other parts of urban areas or even to different cities in order to find work.

Still everyone seems pretty happy with capital gains on their home that can never be realised because all other homes also went up in price, so perhaps it's worth the utter destruction of life as we know it!

Well you can always just move to a small town where the rent is cheap.

Oh wait, there's no decent-paying jobs there...

Rent is a function of wages. Land prices are a function of credit * wages. That's the point, the system scales up credit to absorb all productivity.

Well I grew up in the mountains of Vermont, and that environment hasn't changed really. But I see your point, although I feel that the only way to combat that shift, is to actively push against it (like the dad in the article did).

It seems like (2) is a good cause of (1), quite separate from helicopter parenting: working parents need a supervised place to store their kids.

When I was a kid, I could roam the neighbourhood in a pack exploring woods and feeding horses, because I was sent to an (illegal) child-minder. This was just the house of an auntie who had finished raising five kids and was still not sick of it.

Being illegal was the best part: had it been an official daycare centre, we would have been trapped inside a palisade and hovered over by nice 20-somethings with proffesional training and no kids. No Hulk-Hogan reinactments would not have been possible then.

#1 is the #1 problem. My kids still go around the neighborhood knocking on doors but the other kids are _never_ home.

>2. Parents aren't home either, they are working.

Even worse, at least half of them are working in "bullshit jobs", doing nothing productive except wasting time there justifying their paycheck.

I strongly believe that that's not true for most folks. And even if it were - the paycheck is why they're there so they can make ends meet for their family.

Yes, but that doesn't mean the work they're doing is meaningful or useful. There's been a bunch of articles about this. Most office workers are just doing "bullshit jobs": their work isn't really needed, or their productivity is horrifically low.

I firmly believe we could switch to 20-hour work weeks and see almost no drop in productivity. Most workers spend much of their time surfing the web, sitting around chatting, etc.

http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

https://www.rt.com/uk/312365-people-think-jobs-useless