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Comment by parpfish | Hacker News Reader

one of my theories for why we specifically see highly-educated people waiting longer or opting out is that it's a consequence of tiger-mom/helicopter-parent upbringings

its a double-blow to deciding to have kids -- a) they were raised to pursue personal/career excellence which deprioritized becoming a parent, and b) when they look back at their parental role models they see an unsustainable level of over-involvement that they don't have the time/money to match and think that that's what's expected of being parents.

if we started normalizing more hands-off parenting styles where we let kids be kids and don't expect as much from parents, everybody wins.

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Agreeing with you, and connecting it to the link, my parents talk about their childhood as basically being feral. You had multiple kids in the house who entertained/babysat each other (possibly by beating each other up, but whatever) and you also had streets filled with kids doing whatever (baseball in a dirt field, playing in traffic). The rule was to be home by the time the streetlights came on. Organizing and transporting to playdates etc. was not a thing.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s. This was my childhood. In the summer, I would play with the neighboorhood kids until dark and come home.

My mom would yell out the back door when it was time for dinner.

Look at the way our cities are built. I live in a grid based streetcar suburb and my kids can be let out feral. If you live in a modern subdivision ... Good luck. The roads are too big, and there is nowhere for kids to go. Meanwhile, my local city has free lunch at the park for kids every day during the summer and kids can go unaccompanied. I see tons of kids out riding bikes and walking by themselves.

Impossible in modern developments. You'd have to cross a six lane road with 50mph traffic to get anywhere not safe.

Agreed, the consequences of a car-dependent society are far reaching, and this is a very insidious one.

I'd also add that it may even be illegal in some places to let your kids outside by themselves at all. Even when it's not illegal, it just takes one busybody to call the police and you've got a potential charge waiting for you, all because you let your kid walk a couple blocks to school. And of course, this just exacerbates the problem further.

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