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Comment by maire | Hacker News Reader

I am not sure how old you are but everything seemed to change when abducted children were put on milk cartons in the mid 1980s. Before that, kids roamed free. I tell my foreign friends that kids used to run the streets in America and they can hardly believe it.

The funny thing is that the danger of "stranger abductions" has been over blown. Most abductions are non-custodial parents.

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Maybe it spread from more urban areas to more rural areas, because growing up in the mid and late 90s in a small midwestern town we were pretty much let loose on the streets with our bicycles with no restrictions other than “don’t get into trouble” and a time we needed to be back.

> I am not sure how old you are but everything seemed to change when abducted children were put on milk cartons in the mid 1980s. Before that, kids roamed free.

That actually started in the early 1980s, and kids roamed free well into the 1990s.

I don't think there is only 1 reason. I can think of several others - ie Marc Dutroux's case was highly medialised in Europe.

People generally have less and less time with kids due to work, and then overcompensate by being over-protective ("I suck at spending enough time with my kids, but look at how I protect them! I must still be a good parent then!").

There are much more cars everywhere, they drive faster too. Especially US problem from my experience, since whole infrastructure is designed around car usage. How are kids supposed to roam freely in urban areas then? I recall having to do 45 min walk to get to my work which was 1km away in LA, and this was including taking forbidden shortcut via highway road. Otherwise a solid 1h walk, to do frakin' 1km distance. Because nobody thought that there are pedestrians. Well kids are pedestrians, even on bikes.

Which countries still allow children to grow up free?

Anecdotally, I see a lot of kids biking by themselves on the streets in the Netherlands.

I live in India, and the children are relatively free to do whatever they want

Finland. The environment is safe, and kids can roam free. We consider it as a fact that if a kid is above 7 they can manage by themselves a couple of hours without supervision. Including going to school, a visit to the near by store, a stroll in the park or woods and so on.

Also Japan... at least in Tokyo and I expect most other cities.

Russia. (the irony)

Any country in Western Europe.

Yep, but still the amount of kids "roaming free" is far less what used to be (Italy here), in the old days (I am talking og the '70's) - with some due exceptions - after school we had lunch, spent maybe 1 hour doing homework and then (from the age of 6 or 7) "roamed free", usually on bycicles, till there was enough light (or the time was a quarter to 20:00, whatever came first).

A as a side note, most kids wore shorts until roughly 13, the long trousers were reserved to "official" occasions, holiday visits to relatives, (rare) lunches at the restaurants, and similar.

And it was not common to see a kid with both knees not-bruised or non-orange, a much used item was, besides hydrogen peroxide, mercurochrome.

What you describe sounds normal to me, I'm from Switzerland and was a kid during the 90s.

Probably many Eastern European countries.

When I was a kid, New Zealand.

Having close connections to both countries, I can say that kids in Austria are definitely freer than in the UK.

For one, in Austria, kids have a legal right to go to school on their own, be it on foot or by public transport. A lot of parents do drive their kids to school, unfortunately even where it's really not necessary, but you do also see plenty of young kids walking there or home, or taking the bus or train. You definitely also see more kids "hanging out" in Austria - in the UK, everyone seems quick to jump to conclusions about gangs, so I guess "respectable" parents won't let their kids do that.

On the other hand, I felt I probably had even more freedom growing up in the 90s (in Austria) than many of today's kids. This is probably more of an individual choice of the parents (for some reason, people are afraid, despite this being one of the safest countries in the world) than direct societal pressure (being reported to the cops or social services, etc.) as it seems to be in the UK or US.

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