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Comment by epolanski | Hacker News Reader

In Italy is now illegal to send your kids to school alone before they turn 14, it's now legally child abandonment. Even if the school is few hundreds meters from your house.

I went to school alone since my second day of elementary school, in Japan kids cross Tokyo streets at the same age.

I have given math lessons for two decades and during that timespan kids have changed a lot due to how much parents changed. It went quickly from "if he doesn't listen you slap him hard" to "how dares the teacher give him a bad grade".

I have brought that topic with some people my age on a programming board and all fellow devs surprisingly told me they agreed, that it is child abandonment and streets are dangerous.

I feel like such over protection makes for young adults that are absolutely unprepared for the harshness of real life.

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That's wild. 13 is so old. In the UK it's completely normal for most secondary kids (11+) to travel to school on their own, and many younger kids will go to primary on their own.

We live about 10 minutes from school. My eldest is 9 and in the penultimate year of primary school. He walks home and I meet him half way (mostly as an excuse to go for a walk), he's fine. From next year he'll probably go by himself half the time.

The only concerns I have are around crossing the road. And even with that I'm aware that my worries are overblown, we've taught him how to cross carefully. He will be fine.

I can understand if you live in a rough neighbourhood, or where the roads are really terrible for crossing, but making it a blanket rule is ridiculous.

> streets are dangerous.

I have a vague hypothesis that people's mind have a detector of a danger, and mind adjust sensitivity of the detector to get some specific average value of danger. The safer our streets, the more sensitive detector becomes, so the perceived level of danger remains the same.

Most mental processes follow this return-to-the-mean style of homeostatis.

Isn't Italy a country where "mama hotels" come from? There was some statistic showing that average age of man leaving parents house is 39 years or so.

I was going to alone to elementary school since second day as well. I had 2 younger siblings, it was not possible for my parents to take me at school at that time. Nowadays, having siblings is not common when US fertility rate is 1.6 and in EU 1.4 per woman.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab...

39 feels too high, but yeah, it's one of the worst, and depending on the statistic the worst outright, in Europe.

In 2022 the average was 30 years https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...

A significant factor in that, beyond cultural ones, is the fact that it's quite expensive to buy/rent, especially given the high youth unemployment

These unemployed folks could literally be building their own homes with the right institutional policies and support.

On which money?

The power of debt and helping an economy grow faster than the debt growth rate. A healthy society has a good roi, Italy is dying as is.

Debt is tool for making citizens obedient and always voting for system that they benefit from.

If you refuse to participate on debt system, you have no choice than share property with parents so I'm not surprised.

Debt just means young families can have a place to live now while they pay off over time. No one can afford upfront housing…

So debt (to what anyway if currency doesn't store value) is default state for living?

In Switzerland kids are expected to go to school alone from primary school, but I've seen kids to the Kindergarten alone as well (5-6 yo). It's normal.

> and streets are dangerous.

In most places I've lived, streets are objectively less dangerous than they were a few decades ago in all aspects except traffic density, which is a mixed bag. In places with poor urban design, I can see the argument that street (crossing, particular) is high risk for say 6-8 year olds. In places with better design, the idea that a 8 year old, let alone a 14 year old, shouldn't be able to navigate a reasonable distance by themselves seems pretty crazy.

You are experiencing the power of television/media for sowing division. The more you watch, the more misinformed about the mean you are :)

> In Italy is now illegal to send your kids to school alone before they turn 14, it's now legally child abandonment

I find your claim very hard to believe, can you back this up? I did some searching and could not find anything to back up your claim.

Sure I do.

Even leaving them alone at home is a felony. There have been sentences already.

https://www.brocardi.it/codice-penale/libro-secondo/titolo-x...

Where are the examples?

The only ones linked on that page are for someone who left his disabled son in the car for many hours, someone leaving a 9 month old alone, and someone abandoning their elderly disabled mother

And now the fertility rate of Italy will go down even further, as less will bother to have children.

That is insane!

I had taken my kids out of school by that age, but they would go to places alone much younger than that - depending on where we lived, the time of day etc.

if you don't mind me asking, why take them out? did you homeschool them?

Will never understand homeschooling, social (and even survival) skills are the most important to learn when young imho.

Schools seem like a poor place to learn social skills unless one plans to live out Lord of the Flies later in life.

Life is tough and the dynamics of the book are common in real life.

And they can be learnt outside of school just as well. I'll never understand how readily people are to accept schooling.

I hear this all the time, but so far every time I've met a home schooled kid they show that lack of socialization. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it is so rare that I doubt any home schooled kid is.

Sure they will have a lot of kids, but that is not the same. Do they interact with kids that are different? Poor, rich? Different religion? Different political background? (note that many private school suffer from the same problem - generally not as bad as home schools, but it is easy to find private schools that don't really socialize kids well either.)

I fully agree with you, however....

> Do they interact with kids that are different? Poor, rich? Different religion? Different political background?

This is often the main reason that parents take them out of school in the first place.

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