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Comment by mos_basik | Hacker News Reader

>There's a cultural vibe of individualism [where?] preventing overwatch of kids [whose kids?] by adults which has led, in part, to the prohibitive [prohibiting what?] autonomy that I had as a kid.

I don't quite understand what you're saying here, but I'm genuinely interested. Could you clarify?

Active listening: What I thought you said is that in, say, the Philippines, there is a culture of individualism that prevents adults from hovering over kids (not sure how that follows), which leads to the kids having significantly more autonomy than in the U.S. (and maybe you used the word "prohibitive" incorrectly?).

I was also raised by American parents in a village in equatorial Congo--thus my interest.

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Not OP but I read it as prohibition of the autonomy (of children by today's culture) that they used to have. I can relate, as a child I was expected to be self-sufficient in a way that would be unrecognisable to modern children.

Rather than being ferried by car to the school, and taxied to a series of child appointments, I walked to school alone or with friends. That including crossing a 4 lane highway, at the lights, in a major city. I must have been doing that at age 5 and 6 as at 7 we went to a different school. I don't remember my parents ever taking me apart from the very first time. Maybe a couple more times at most then. Same for everyone else - we all walked. Now every school is near unreachable thanks to the hundreds of cars from parents who are usually near enough to walk.

When playing out I was often told not to come back until dinner, so we'd go off and do stuff.

Every adult around, and everyone else's parent would give us a telling off if we were being out of line. A shopkeeper or stranger might come out to yell. Everyone seemed to have half an eye out for all the kids.

The individualism of today's adults all around has led to them ignoring, or putting up with the excesses of, everyone else's kids. Few would dare say anything, and would probably get a torrent of abuse from the parent if they did.

The over-hype of abuse and stranger danger hasn't helped either - serious things, but not exactly as common as the media imply. Adult males have double the reason not to speak to or tell off someone's child.

I grew up with much the same freedom: in small town Iowa, the school bus was for kids 20 miles away. My street would join the larger neighborhood's kids for the 5 mile walk to and from everyday, rain, thunderstorms, winter snow storm or not. If snow was really bad, dads with snowmobiles would ferry the kids, pulling trains of sleds. Rain was okay, no matter how hard.

After school, the "bike gangs" of kids would be roaming free, stop in for dinner, and then back out till dark. Everyone had this freedom.

As the kids became teens, this being the late 70's, a tax law created incentive for publishing and insurance corporations to move to Iowa. Their families brought major city / coastal teen attitudes, including appetites for a drug culture that Iowa was not sophisticated enough to manage. That Iowa Innocence seems to have been lost. Now it is just another generica in the US corporate sameland, with the original Iowa Natives unable to understand what happened to their culture.

> Now it is just another generica in the US corporate sameland, with the original Iowa Natives unable to understand what happened to their culture.

Is this a very cleverly disguised allegory for the loss of indigenous culture by invading hordes, descended from Europeans who settled the coast of what is now the United States? Do you actually consider small town mid-20th century midwestern US culture to be the culture of the "original Iowa Natives"?

I am referring to the fact that all the States had unique cultures, transplants from their original countries, many idealist moved to the middle states and tried to create utopias in the New World. None of that worked, but there was unique culture, distinct in different parts of many states. Many of these people never move, so they are the original descendants from some religious idealism that fizzled.

I course I recognize these are not the original Iowa Natives. I am referring to the ideal of small towns and their community culture. Which was very real not that long ago.

When playing out I was often told not to come back until dinner, so we'd go off and do stuff.

When I try that with my daughter there is a 97% chance she'll end up at a friends house playing Minecraft or something similar (or she'll just end up in her room playing computer games). Personally I don't think the problem is so much that we don't let kids out, rather that there are so many other, screen based, things competing for kids attention. We don't have to ban kids from playing in the streets since we couldn't convince to do something that boring if we tried.

This isn't new though. It might just be that she's an introvert. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and I had the freedom to go pretty much where I pleased, and where I pleased was in my room with a book, or copying programs out of books for my TRS-80, or playing with my GameBoy. That's pretty equivalent, I think. As I got older and had even more freedom with a bike, I usually wound up at a friend's house playing D&D.

My interpreta is that in many other countries there is a sense of collectivism in that everyone takes care of children and collaborates a little bit. If you see a kid, you don’t think something must be wrong, you lend assistance to their parents by being an impromptu guardian and help the kid achieve their means.

Whereas in the US the modus operandi is “Well it’s not my kid what do I care? Their parents must be terrible people for not standing right next to them”

For example, as a 7 year old in eastern-ish europe, I would walk 1km to school on my own every morning. The worst that ever happened was when me and a friend decided that umbrellas arr the perfect snow shovel.

Anecdote: in Belgium, everything changed after the Marc Dutroux case. Teenage girl friends of mine who worked summer jobs as youth camp workers told me they were anxious to bear children in arms or being seen too close to them. Same reasoning with letting children walking alone to school.

Seconded. Teachers of teenagers dont dare to be alone with 1 child anymore. The smallest of hints might cause years of misery and job loss. This at an age where the children can be real assholes, and they know their powers.

The article "Letting Kids Light Matches and 9 other seemingly scary things that German parents do" [1] provides the point of view of an American mother on parenting and schooling in Germany. (I can't check the link from France, hope it works.) Otherwise, it's all about Sara Zaske's book "Achtung Baby", anyway [2].

1. http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/parenting/sc-fam-ge...

2. https://sarazaske.com/upcoming-book-achtung-baby/

Have not (yet) read this article.

Nonetheless, I'm a 34-year-old American who has been lighting matches since probably the age of 5 or 6...

I appreciate the active listening, it's close, let me clarify a bit.

There are two major cultural ideas, cultures of individualism [0] and cultures of collectivism [1], that I vaguely pointed out. They're not exclusive but you don't always notice them intertwined together often. In my experience, the Philippines, had both cultures but usually led with a dominance of collectivism. I had autonomy [4], much like the article, to make my own decisions that were un-coerced. That wasn't to say that my parents didn't parent, or that individuals would watch over me where ever I was. In example, I would wander a mall (273k m²~ in size) as a 6-10 year-old kid and when my parents wanted to find me they would look at the shop keepers which would point in the direction I went. I remember chatting with different store keepers like it was normal. That leads me back to the idea of collectivism. I had tons of "uncles" and "aunts" (mostly local college students) which would collectively parent me, but I also had people I barely knew who would watch out for me. There was a construction site next to my parent's house which I would often visit. Those guys would obviously watch out for my safety but when I visited during their breaks they would talk to me, ask how my day was, what I was up to -- small talk. I also lived in post-Soviet bloc Poland, it was a similar experience.

In the United States, when we visited and ultimately moved there it was extremely different for the most part. I had walked not even a quarter mile to a local barbershop in Huntsville, Alabama before I got stopped by police asking where my parents were. I never once had that experience overseas. There was also a cafe, local bookstore, a few restaurants, and a few other shops on that block.

Eventually, it got to the point where my parents took away the majority of my autonomy to go places because of Child Protective Services (CPS). It fell into a few categories but the two big ones were: the hype over stranger danger and the issue of perceived safety of myself by the U.S. Government. I do want to admit that my experience, which has shaped my opinion, would be different if I had lived in Rural America. CPS can be a terrible organization to work with because they're overworked leading to snap decisions rather than understanding the context. I've heard horror stories from friends over the years of the stuff that organization does because the government has the "best interest" for everyone in every situation (one of those friends was a Parent Advocate for the local Public Defenders Office). Also, if you need another example, look at ICE.

On Individualism in America, when was the last time you saw a stranger interact and correct/parent another person's kid in a grocery store. Swizec and NeedMoreTea had a great summary too:

NeedMoreTea [2]

> The individualism of today's adults all around has led to them ignoring, or putting up with the excesses of, everyone else's kids. Few would dare say anything, and would probably get a torrent of abuse from the parent if they did.

> The over-hype of abuse and stranger danger hasn't helped either - serious things, but not exactly as common as the media imply. Adult males have double the reason not to speak to or tell off someone's child.

Swizec [3]

> My interpreta is that in many other countries there is a sense of collectivism in that everyone takes care of children and collaborates a little bit. If you see a kid, you don’t think something must be wrong, you lend assistance to their parents by being an impromptu guardian and help the kid achieve their means.

> Whereas in the US the modus operandi is “Well it’s not my kid what do I care? Their parents must be terrible people for not standing right next to them”

> For example, as a 7 year old in eastern-ish europe, I would walk 1km to school on my own every morning. The worst that ever happened was when me and a friend decided that umbrellas ar[e] the perfect snow shovel.

Hopefully, that provides a bit more clarity for everyone.

Edit: formatting.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivism

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17437151

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17437088

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomy && https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomy#Child_development

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