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Comment by discreditable | Hacker News Reader

Also so students are at school before parents need to be at work. School is child care for a lot of parents.

If our society took a chill pill with all the 'stranger danger' fear mongering, we could simply let kids walk themselves to school, as was once common not too long ago.

Where do you live that schools are still that close? some schools are up to 15 miles away from students.

America. I used to walk two miles to school when I was a kid. That school got torn down years ago, but was replaced with another on the same lot. It would be just as easy to walk today as it ever was; there hasn't been some fundamental change in how communities are laid out.

School buses still exist too. Kids in rural areas can stand at the end of their driveway and board a bus without parental supervision, provided their parents aren't totally paranoid.

Stranger danger happened because women in the suburbs went from being SAHM’s to working professionals. This turned the suburbs from villages (where there were plenty of adults around to keep an eye on everyone) to “bedroom communities” which are largely abandoned during the day.

It’s one thing to let your kids walk to and from school when you know there are lots of other parents around. It’s entirely another thing when you know the place is a ghost town until all the parents get off work and come back home.

How do you explain absence of stranger danger in non suburban communities and countries where women work? Women work not just in America and not just in middle class.

Read my reply again. I said it specifically applies to the suburbs. Non suburban communities are different. My comment does not apply to them.

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