In Japan, small children take the subway and run errands alone (2015)

> Japan has a very low crime rate, which is surely a key reason parents feel confident about sending their kids out alone.

I grew up in a relatively high crime area but still walked to school and sometimes took public transport. The only thing that made it somewhat unsafe was the bullying by other school kids. Of course there is an overlap there as yesterday's bullies are tomorrow's criminals, but still it wasn't enough to have parents escort me. Sometimes strangers intervened to save me from a few attacks by groups of older kids. So maybe there is an element there as well of people not minding asking kids what's happening, why are they pushing this one kid to the ground.

Now living in US in a much safer area I would think very well before sending my kids to school by themselves at the age when I was going to school by myself. The reason is neighbors who could report me to the police for "child endangerment or neglect". It happened to a co-worker. One of the neighbors reported them to the police while kids were playing out in the front by themselves. It issue was resolved but not without embarrassing calls to work and home visits.

I had a somewhat unique childhood, in that I spent my early years (before the age of about 10) living in many different places around the world. My parents always made me walk or ride a bike to school, although sometimes I would go together with my 2 older sisters (who were only a few years older than me). Specifically, we lived in places like Caracas (Venezuela), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), and Africa (Nigeria, Ghana). Eventually my family settled in Canada where I mostly grew up, and I continued to transport myself to/from school every day without an escort.

Not only was I never harmed whilst traveling to/from school (except for one time when I fell off my bike while riding to school when I was 6 or 7 years old in Venezuela and I had to get stitches on my knee—I've still got the scar to prove it), but today I live mostly without fear and don't subscribe to most of the BS that fear-driven people do. Depending on how you look at it, I seem to have turned out fine. I also spent most of my childhood playing outside eating dirt, and go figure, I have no allergies or immune problems.

American parents today who coddle their children are robbing them of learning and growth experiences they deserve. Experiences which, in my opinion, would help make them better people. More tolerant, more empathetic, more intelligent, and healthier.

I'd often seen kids on the tram in Melbourne. Rarely on their own though, almost always in groups. In Wellington, you'd see them occasionally too in the mornings. They had dedicated school buses (city buses with the "School" sign on the front), but if kids were running late and missed their bus, you'd often see them on regular public transport.

One of the big problems is the lack of public transport in the US. Even with cities with good transit, the minimum age for kids on buses/trains is usually 12 (wasn't there an article on HN earlier about a New York man who's kids rode the bus in a group of three and how social services said he couldn't do that any more until one of them turned 13? I can't seem to find it now..)

Crime is more perception then a real issue. You're always most likely to be a victim of a crime by a family member at home. Actual child abductions are more hollywood and rarely real life. When it does happens, it's usually someone who knows the child via family.

I feel like this is yet another problem that could be solved via real transit and which will just be made worse by self-driving cars.

I walked to school at 5 in New Zealand, took the bus to town at 10 to go to the library or the pool.

My son at 11 took the BART to and from school from Berkeley/Oakland to El Cerito, other parents were horrified - we moved back to NZ a couple of years later, handed both kids a bus timetable and a phone and sent them off to town to explore.

One of our main goals as a parent is to create independent kids who can function alone in the world - we don't want them still living in the basement at 30

How children lost the right to roam in four generations - highly related article and previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13547089

From the comments there it seems that it's not about (perceived) risks at all, it's more about peer pressure. If no other parents in your group would let their kids go about on their own, you surely won't want to be the only one.

The other day I accidentally left my son at a busy station in Tokyo. He was more annoyed than upset. He just found the right platform to go home and planned to email me when he got back to say where he was.

We underestimate children's ability to navigate, which is silly because if they were really bad at it our species would have died out long ago.

A study from 2015, "Children’s Independent Mobility: An International Comparison" [1] and the actual report [2]. Report covers 16 countries, US was not included.

Unfortunately I could not find any summary articles (except in Finnish). The charts summarizing the results seem to start on the report page 14.

[1] http://www.psi.org.uk/children_mobility [2] http://www.psi.org.uk/docs/7350_PSI_Report_CIM_final.pdf

Living in Germany, I've walked to the kindergarten alone (I think when I was four years old) and after knowing the way to school, I was walking there with my friends and without parents. We spent hours outside without our parents knowing where we are because we knew where we were allowed to go and what we where allowed to do (This didn't mean we listened, though).

In Germany, we had cycling safety classes in primary school (and you got a badge at the end, yay!), so we could cycle to school (or anywhere else, really).

In many countries in Asia, kids with parents can just go to a restaurant (for example) and let the kids roam - everyone else (waiters, other patrons) will take care of the kids collectively.

"What accounts for this unusual degree of independence? Not self-sufficiency, in fact, but “group reliance,” according to Dwayne Dixon, a cultural anthropologist who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Japanese youth. “[Japanese] kids learn early on that, ideally, any member of the community can be called on to serve or help others,” he says."

Live in Burundi (Africa) which has been plagued by insecurity since 90s. We used to go by public transport even at age of 10. My little bro and sisters still doing so.

I personally think it's related to culture. How the community like to make kids mature earlier.

I've also lived in Tanzania where communism had made in the 90s, pupils not pay public transportation. So even little kids were riding buses.

In Finland, kids walk to school by themselves from age 7. Depends on the distance of course.

I’m also letting my 10 year old daughter use the MRT in Singapore on her own, but also really only in Singapore, any other country I’d be worried too much. There is MRT staff everywhere who help everyone and after I explained to her that the police helps everyone here, so she asked a patrol when she wanted to try a new route. The streets might be cleaner in Tokyo, but I think the sense of community is similar

I'm raising kids in Switzerland. Here it will be more-or-less required for them to walk to school (kindergarten) themselves from age 5.

It's a change in culture. When I was a kid, it was pretty normal for a 9-year-old to take the public bus to school alone and then the subway to an after-school program. In New York City. In the 1980s (aka the "bad old days").

The level of parental paranoia and of cultural concern has skyrocketed. We're so concerned about actual neglectful parenting and so paranoid about infinitesimally low-probability events that we are afraid to give our children what would once have been considered age-appropriate levels of autonomy and responsibility; and parents who do attempt to are under threat from a safety net originally intended to prevent qualitatively different behaviors.

I know a lot of parents in the US who would like for their kids to go out and play, and go places on their own. What prevents them:

- Stories of overzealous Child Protection Services agents, child neglect and abuse laws being used to punish parents.

- Stories of neighbors, teachers, and other overly concerned people, sometimes with malicious intent calling CPS.

- Stories of lawsuits because children trespassed, caused noise in the neighborhood.

- Stories of child rapists and serial murderers.

When you live in an litigious, social-media and 24-hour news addicted society, some of the side-effects are ugly. Even if a parent wants to raise their children like "when I grew up", it is very difficult not to get either swept up or cut out.

I worry that american culture has gotten so paranoid that kids don't get to roam free any more.

I remember growing up in the 80's I could bus/walk all around town and do whatever as long as I got back by night or called.

Remember, none of those cheating cell phones!

I did this too at those ages in Eastern Europe and even in the US. This is hardly unique at all. It's hardly newsworthy. Keeping kids locked up at home under supervision until they become adults is a neuroticism seemingly unique to American (and possibly Canadian) culture. I wonder if parents really think through the consequences of their actions in these cases. Do they weigh the high likelihood of their children suffering and not developing into adults properly because of the parents' actions against the tiny chance they might be harmed if they were allowed on their own? Clearly, as a society, we have adopted the paranoid, scared point of view, a point of view that has defined culture in the US for the last two decades. It makes sense that the culture would appeal to the lowest common denominator, the most paranoid of the paranoid. Unfortunately, these people have codified their paranoid delusional culture into laws that now affect everyone else.

I simply cannot see myself raising children in the US. Just like my parents gave up everything to bring me here, I will give up everything to bring them to a society that respects them, where they have the opportunity to grow into adults without them or me getting arrested for being independent human beings. The way we treat children in the US at the moment is sick, disgusting, and simply unacceptable to me. Children are human beings too.

Might as well replace the title with "In <not the US>, small children take the subway and run errands alone (2015)". Children are expected to get to school and to go to whatever by themselves from age 6-7 in pretty much all of Europe.

I grew up in Zambia, in the capital city in the 80's and to this day this is still a fairly common thing.

No subways of course, but small children will walk to the store or school unaccompanied all the time.

I live in South Africa now where it's probably not a great idea.

Pretty sad.

>Kaito, a 12-year-old in Tokyo, has been riding the train by himself between the homes of his parents, who share his custody, since he was nine.

Normal thing here in Russia. Why would 9-10 year old need a guardian on his way to school anyways? Same for some shopping.

I think children, 7 years or even younger, move about on their own almost everywhere in the world, except North America.

Welcome to my world in Germany :)

This used to be far more common in Ireland a few decades ago than it is today, though you certainly still see it. Funnily enough, the crime rate was much higher back then; it’s not a risk thing.

Reminds me of the Scandinavian woman prosecuted in 1980s/90s NYC for leaving her child in a pram outside a cafe. In Scandinavia this is (or at least was) extremely common, you get a cluster of prams outside cafes with babies still in them.

I was in Berlin last week and was amazed to see bikes being locked to bollards on the street only waist high, so you only had to lift it a foot if you wanted to steal it.

In Sweden kids are taught how to navigate by public transportation while they are at kindergarten. 7-9-ish might still be considered too young to travel alone (probably because kids are easily distracted), but it's not uncommon for a 9-10 yo to take care of a 6yo and take him home by commuter train.

Traveling long distances by commuter train and then switching to bus is not uncommon for kids ages 11 and up.

This is even more common and ubiquitous in India. From reading the article, I would say way more common.

The safety that allows a child to travel alone should be a defining factor of a “first world” region.

Related: http://web.kitsapsun.com/archive/1998/06-20/0063_world_cup_s...

In Singapore my kids take the school bus. They could technically take the MRT / Bus by themselves, but I don't trust Singapore's traffic. When I grew up, I walked to school. But German drivers are really well educated (mostly).

Not only Japan, everywhere. I believe the US is the only country which would be worried of kids go to school by themselves. Sick.

But the most trust into their kids I saw amongst Africans.

There's a great article on the topic (for USA) by Michael Ventura of Austin Chronicle:

A little clause set between commas in a missive from a reader about a recent column ["Hero vs. Superhero," July 25] -- in that piece I wondered about the effect of today's movie superheroes on little children as opposed to what children saw, say, in John Ford's 1956 The Searchers. The reader was intelligently critical of the piece, but in that clause he doubted that many 7-year-olds ever went to movies like The Searchers. A natural mistake -- he was clearly too young to remember, and how else would he know? But, for me, his error brought back a lost world.

In today's America, where parents chauffeur kids to "play dates," only on the poorest streets do 7-year-olds still roam free ... but they don't go to movies much because tickets are so pricey ... the concession stand is even more expensive ... and you can't just walk into any movie (it might not be rated for kids) ... and you have to know the exact time a film starts ... and shopping-mall movie theatres are rarely within walking distance. Today you're blitzed by TV ad campaigns and product tie-ins in fast-food joints, so you know all about a Hollywood film before it starts ... and today's urban parents panic if their grade-school children disappear, unaccounted for, for hours on end.

Fifty years ago, none of that was so. In the larger cities, two or three movie theatres were in walking distance of most neighborhoods. Each had but one screen. The program began with a newsreel, a few cartoons, and brief "coming attractions" (not today's compilations that tell the whole story). Then the "features" began -- plural, features, for all neighborhood theatres played double, sometimes triple, features, two or three movies for the price of one ticket. Nothing was rated, there were no sex scenes or obscenities; anyone could go to any movie. Admission price for a kid was rarely more than a quarter. Popcorn for a dime, a Coke for a nickel. They weren't supposed to sell kids tickets during school hours, but they did. As for kids roaming about -- "Go play in traffic," our parents would say, and they wouldn't be surprised if we didn't walk in 'til dinnertime, which in our immigrant neighborhood wasn't until after 7. ("Go play in traffic" wasn't so harsh a phrase as it sounds. Where else could we play?)

And you didn't go to a movie, you went to "the movies." You rarely knew the title of the film you were going to see until you saw the marquee -- and even then you might not recognize the title. Big productions were advertised on billboards, but there weren't so many billboards. No ads on the sides of buses, and none in supermarkets (and there weren't that many supermarkets). Second features were never advertised. TV ads for movies? Very rare in the early Fifties, and not so common by the end of the decade. Except for Davy Crockett's "coonskin" hats (and that was for television), massive product tie-ins were decades away. So adults and kids alike went to the movies, to see whatever was playing -- especially during the hot months, because in those days the big pull was to go to "an air-conditioned movie," as the phrase went. Into the early Sixties, movie theatres were among the only air-conditioned public buildings, and nothing was more rare for working-class people (on the East Coast anyway) than an air-conditioned residence. (I didn't live in one until I was 29.)

And there was this, a fact that can't be overestimated: Almost all movies (with Disney the major exception) were made for adults. Kids went to the movies, but few movies were calibrated for kids. Yet no ticket-seller I ever encountered thought it strange for a 7-year-old alone, or a group of three or four, to show up. I went every time I could scrounge the change, and I don't remember ever being turned away.

My birthday is late in October, so I was still 7 in 1953 when I saw my first film without "parental guidance" -- or parental presence. Frankly, it kind of shocks me to write that, for I can't imagine the parents of 7-year-olds today allowing their children to go to the movies alone. In fact, I doubt a lone 7-year-old would be sold a ticket now anywhere in this country. But once upon a time, it was no big deal. (All of which makes urban parents of 50 years ago sound permissive. They weren't. We would never have dreamed of speaking to our parents, or to any adult, as I now hear so many minutely supervised kids speak to theirs. Disrespect was not tolerated. Neither was whining. I know that sounds like an exaggeration. It's not.)

So, at the age of 7, three or four other urchins and I saw Vincent Price in House of Wax -- in 3-D, no less. It was deliciously scary in a harmless sort of way. But that same year I felt true horror at seeing (alone) The Robe; the Jesus I prayed to -- I watched him be crucified, watched the nails entering his hands, and it was among the more shattering experiences of my little life. And then, a different kind of shattering, that same year: The War of the Worlds -- the scene where the crazed mob throws the scientists out of their truck, destroys their work, and so (seemingly) ends all hope that mankind might survive the martian invasion. When later I became an obsessive reader of history, I had occasion to think of that scene many times.

In the spring of the next year, when I was 8, my 6-year-old cousin Tony and I "went to the movies," and what was playing was what I now know to be one of the rarest films by a major director and major star: William Wellman's The High and the Mighty, my first John Wayne film. Tony and I sat through it twice -- that is, we sat through The High and the Mighty, a second feature that I've forgotten, and The High and the Mighty again. For in those days once you bought a ticket you could sit there till the theatre closed. Also, since you just "went," you almost always walked in the middle of whatever picture it was, stayed through the second feature, and watched the first feature until the scene you walked in on. That's the origin of the saying, "This is where I came in" -- people would often leave at that point, with those words on their lips. Not me. I always stayed 'til the end, even if I didn't like the picture. I was (and am) stubborn that way. The High and the Mighty was about a haunted, limping co-pilot (John Wayne) who'd survived the crash that killed his wife and child. He redeems himself by managing to land a (propeller-driven) airliner that otherwise would have been destroyed. Tony and I walked out whistling the haunting theme music. We went back the next day. Which was the first time I ever went to a movie. I can still whistle that theme, but I've never seen that film again -- to my knowledge it has yet to appear on TV, VHS, or DVD. What happened to it? In any case, I kind of fell in love with John Wayne. He was the man my 8-year-old wanted to be.

Other movies I saw solo or with buddy-urchins: The Blackboard Jungle, East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause when I was 9 ... The Searchers when I was 10 ... age 11, I saw Edge of the City (the complex friendship between John Cassavetes and Sidney Poitier turned my young head around about race). Eleven, too, when I saw A Face in the Crowd and The Three Faces of Eve. Face left me absolutely stunned -- so much so that I couldn't stand to see the film again until I was well into my 40s. I know this will sound incredibly naive to a modern ear, but Face taught me that those smiling faces on TV were laughing at me. Baby, that changed me. I stopped believing a lot of things that year -- and stopped calling myself a Catholic. I didn't trust a priestly smile anymore. As for The Three Faces of Eve -- my mother had been in and out of mental hospitals, so Eve taught me more than I wanted to know, earlier than I could absorb it, and to this day I've not been able to watch it again.

All of which is to say ... there are good arguments for and against a child seeing such things, though I'm glad I did. Good arguments for and against children roaming dangerously, freely. Yes, disasters happened. You had to learn how to handle men who sat next to you and groped (that was rare, but once was plenty); I'd always grab an aisle seat, and I took to the trick of spilling Coke and popcorn on the seat next to me. But, as W.D. Snodgrass said when asked why he didn't write poems about A-bombs: "I've seen more people killed in their living rooms." It isn't much of an exaggeration to say "the movies," as an entity, raised me. It was like listening in to the conversations of the grownups. Which, we now forget, is how children have been raised for eons. So, reader, yes -- 7-year-olds did see The Searchers, in another world, and in a freer, riskier, more exciting, and inviting country.

https://www.austinchronicle.com/columns/2003-08-22/174046/

In suburbia there are no subways to use, although parents do let their 15 year old kids take their cars and run erands alone.

when I was 9-10, while living in Munich around 1989-1990, I rode the U-bahn (subway) to school with 2 other kids around the same age everyday. Had to do a transfer in between also....

This is not surprising: Japan is a high trust, low crime ethnostate.

In Germany too

and u can eat off the subway floor’s its that clean there

Is there any nation in which kids are less independent than in the U.S.?

I used to do this in Australia many years back when I was six and seven. It never even occurred to anyone that it was an issue.

Is this news worthy? This is also the case in NYC and probably every city around the world. Kids take the subway, bus, etc all by themselves to go to school, malls, theaters, friends' homes, etc. My siblings and I did. All my friends did.

Did you know they still hang people in Japan? Anyway, America has more freedoms and also more crime.

http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Japan/Unite...

Not sure why this is newsworthy, seems like they are just trying to stir the pot up.

Good, but too bad Japan does not let kids be as free to think for themselves at school a little more. If you limit autonomy to walking to school, it won't bring much benefits in the end.