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Comment by ovulator | Hacker News Reader

Why does it seem that everyone who writes articles like these seemed to have a national forest in their back yard as a kid?

Most kids don't have "an expansive wilderness" to explore. Most of them have miles and miles of residential streets to "explore" in Baltimore.

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I grew up in a suburb. It's important to remember that kids are closer to the ground. Shrubbery. Slates and what burrows beneath. Trees—the texture of the bark and the vestibular effects of climbing. Ice on the ground in this season, the smell of gasoline and grass in another, and the detritus of illegal fireworks after a holiday.

Seeing strangers. Seeing new strangers. Seeing the same old strangers every day until those strangers are recognized as neighbors.

Just being in that world is an experience of wonder and learning.

This was such a beautiful comment. Thank you. You should write more (maybe you already do!)

Do you know what happened during the housing boom in the US? The 1950 to 1960 was one of the biggest housing explosions in the US. As well as one of the biggest population explosions with the population growing some 20% in those 10 years. This [1] is the population of the largest cities in the US in 1950. This [2] is their population in 1960. You might notice something quite interesting. The population of nearly all major cities declined!

The housing boom was not people building up residential areas inside of well developed cities. It was people accepting some sacrifice and moving outside of cities into areas where previously there was nothing. This is a big part of the reason why housing was so cheap. It also helped keep city housing prices low since it had a [quite extreme] depressing effect on demand.

The reason I mention this is because when you build houses in the middle of nowhere you don't often have to go far to find more nowhere. Everywhere you look is just row and row of cookie cutter houses, then a 2 mile bike trip and you're in the 'wild lands'. Lots of children got to grow up in these exact sort of areas. I had the fortune of getting to spend some brief part of my childhood in an area like this, and then most of the rest in an ultra urban area apartment in the middle of the city. Suffice to say, I won't be raising my kids in the middle of a city!

[1] - https://www.biggestuscities.com/1950

[2] - https://www.biggestuscities.com/1960

I'm currently in the process of moving my family (including 6 kids) from a 1/3 acre lot in Utah (there really isn't much land here because it's a desert) to a 15-acre farm in Tennessee for these reasons exactly.

I went from a 1/4 lot in a city to a 12 acre lot in the country when I was around 8. My dad gave my brother and I a compass, taught us how to use it and encouraged us to roam the woods as a form of play/exploration. If we got lost, we ended up at the neighbors house a good 25 acres away and they would just call our parents to pick us up.

It was a bit of culture shock when I went to college and found out how restrictive other peers youth were.

> It was people accepting some sacrifice and moving outside of cities into areas where previously there was nothing.

The word for it is “white flight", it was publicly subsidized (largely by the GI Bill) deliberate racial segregation acheived through restrictive covenants, and discriminatory lending and real estate sales practices.

"It was people accepting some sacrifice and moving outside of cities into areas where previously there was nothing."

that sacrifice is getting bigger over time. when my neighbor moved into his house in the 70s people thought it's nuts that he was moving that far out and commuted from there. Now this is perfectly normal and maybe a double commute would be viewed as long.

It depends. In Washington, DC, or its suburbs, probably most locations are within a couple of miles of a stream valley park, or simply a wooded ravine that is public land.

Helicopter parenting requires one to sacrifice a lot. It is not lack of sacrifice that leads to it. A lot of it is people unable to tell no to further personal sacrifice (whether for subjective or objective reasons).

We actually moved into downtown for that sort of experience - we live close to the river valley so there will be a ton of area for our kids to explore. The edge of the urban sprawl is utterly soulless - nothing but row upon row of houses, but once you leave that you're in a field, nothing to explore or see, and it's killing our infrastructure as the city grows outwards and outwards and considerations need to be made for transit and road maintenance and utilities.

Until recently there were pockets of "interesting" places for kids to screw around . If there wasn't some forested land there was an abandoned factory or dead construction site (e.g. the pit in parks and rec). That sort of stuff is fenced off (or otherwise made hard to access) much more thoroughly these days and people are much more likely to call the cops if they see unattended kids poking around.

True. I remember playing in all of the local construction sites with my friends as a kid. There were nails, wood scraps, tools, and even huge piles of hay used to keep the concrete from freezing at night that we would jump into from the second story of the house. Of course, that was all illegal and likely quite dangerous. But man, it was fun! And the danger part of it was what made it so fun. We knew we shouldn't be there and so we hid whenever a car drove by. But that should be a part of childhood. Exploring and making mistakes.

I do remember getting busted a couple of times. Those were some life-long lessons that I haven't forgotten, that's for sure.

But today, with attractive nuisance laws so strict and the liability associated with those laws so severe, no wonder kids are locked indoors for most of their formative years!

While a low probability to fine someone who did, I did grow-up on island in Alaska (Kodiak) with endless (well up to the ocean) of forests, mountains, and rivers to explore right outside my backyard.

I nearly ended up living there. It's a place that actually is unsafe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodiak_bear

I suppose that the situation is fine once you and several friends are old enough to bring a couple rifles with .300 Winchester Magnum or better.

Kodiak bears are pretty rare to see. Saw one in my 6 years living there. I heard plenty mountain biking, but they don't bother you as you aren't a predator nor their prey.

The risk to children in Alaska is of abuse from their family, not the wildlife.

It doesn't matter, really. The important part is being outside, exploring physical reality.

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