I was in a very similar situation for almost the exact same thing. I'm happy Georgia DFACS did not get involved, though being arrested still sucks.
* become a helicopter parent (and thus have less independent children).
* run the risk of loosing my children and/or go to jail.
How the hell did you people let it come that far? I.e. how do people keep voting for these moron politician with their war on XYZ narrative.
Me and my wife come from two countries where parents are actually pushed to make their children more independant - Switzerland and Japan. In Switzerland, children are usually sent to Kindergarden on their own, by foot, at least if the neighbourhood is safe (note: requires a city structure where a drive isn't necessary to get anywhere). All parents do is give them a lunchbox, a visibility triangle and a kiss on the head. [1]: This is how you'll meet them on the roads. There's signs and TV programs everywhere before first day of school to warn drivers of new children on the streets - after 1-2 weeks it's not necessary anymore and we don't have a higher number of child accidents to my knowledge.
In Japan, small children are accompanied not by their parents, but by older children, usually 3-4 years older. Their morning meetup is organized and supervised by elderly volunteers who keep watch at the meetup point. It both teaches responsibility to the 9+ year olds and first independance from adults to the youngest.
How come the US doesn't use studies from abroad when doing CP regulation? Boggles my mind.
[1] http://www.baselland.ch/fileadmin/baselland/pics/docs/uebrig...
This right here is the number one reason why I'd never take a job in the US.
Your fear of coming to the United States, which is second only to France as an international tourist destination, and second to none as a net destination for immigration, is irrational. It is perfectly safe to live in the United States and walk about in public. My children do that all the time. (I say so in a comment in this thread that was posted earlier than your comment.) This news story is news because it is a rare event. But what the news story illustrates is that irrational fear can keep people from doing things that are perfectly safe--like letting their children walk about in public, as I do, or visiting other countries, as I have.
Also, visiting a country and living there are two very different things. I often visit the US and I tend to enjoy it. But deciding to live somewhere (i.e. taking a job) requires a conscious decision by me to accept the overall societal and legal framework of a place - and I currently cannot do that for the US. In fact I question why there aren't more Americans who cannot accept it. Can something like the Sexual Revolution ever happen again (= a wide ranging transformation of society through a largely non violent movement). Is the grip by mass media and government too tight? Is it just not bad enough to warrant action?
It's currently happening - the gradual expansion of non-heterosexual marriage. And drug legalisation is starting to get off the ground.
As a Brit who has visited the US a couple of times, I see it best as a big and very variable country with a lot of outliers. Georgia and Massachusetts are probably at least as different as two randomly chosen non-bordering EU countries. Some places in the US are police microstates. Some have a very great deal of freedom.
In some ways there is no "overall societal and legal framework of a place" for the US. It's just too varied and too dissenting. By comparison, even Switzerland with its four languages and ultra-local canton government isn't as diverse.
Because like all laws, it is invoked and exercised with discretion by real, sensible, responsible people almost all the time.
I share one that irritated me. For years, in California anyone with a bachelors degree from a four year college, after taking eight required relate state courses could take the realestate brokers examination.
The Realestate Lobbiests decided to change the law and require every applicant work under a realeste broker for two years in order to sit for the broker's exam.
Gov. Schwarzenegger saw right through the bill. Knew there no probems with the current system, and didn't want to limit competition. He vetoed the bill.
A few years forward, Gov. Brown thought it sounded good and passed the law. The result is we have less competition, and the guys' who move a lot of property don't have the competition they used to have. Think about that when you try to haggle over that 3% commission.
Anyways, since I followed that bill I will never vote just on party lines. Back to state/local laws--we should be deleting laws every year after instead of holding competitions(Jarrod Huffman) for new bills? I heard California passes over 10,000 new laws/bylaws every year? (Too tired to look it up, but that was the case a few years ago.)
You either break a law or you don't. The alternative is the begin of tyranny.
It depends on the specific context. Park full of crack heads? Park had a spate of child rapes this month? No lighting for pedestrians? Might be neglectful to let kids navigate alone. Nice, normal park? Kids in pairs? Not neglect by any reasonable judgement.
You can't encode the the subtleties and particulars in statute. Hence the statutes are, and must be, open to interpretation and somewhat selective application by people who are held accountable for their judgement.
How can you state such things talking about a place where it's a fact that laws are applied unequally based on skin color?
Around here, as a consequence of depopulation, a lot of schools have been closed. Door to door busing is as much a financial choice as anything else (Which sounds insane, but there you go).
I grew in the late 70s with my 9-12 year old friends like a bunch of savages - our parents would kick us out of the house in the morning, and we wouldn't see them until dinner time - and looking at Google Maps - it looks like I routinely ranged about 1.5 - 2 Miles away from home - and never really thought much about it.
I'd be interesting in hearing more Japanese/Swiss parents feedback on whether their country really is more liberal than the United States when it comes to letting their younger children walk to school in the presence of only another child, not older than 12 years old.
This isn't at all what you asked for, but I'm going to share it anyway, just for the sake of some heady juxtaposition. It's apparently a common sight in Iceland to see babies in strollers left unattended, outdoors, in sub-zero temperatures[1]. That definitely falls under the "you can't make this shit up," category for me. It's almost comically Viking.
[1]: http://qz.com/351821/for-generations-icelandic-babies-have-n...
The trick with sleeping outside is that you have to make sure that they're warm and that there is no wind directly blowing at their face and there is blankets and stuff surrounding. In this case, breathing actually creates a zone of warmer air, so they don't breathe in the super-cold air all the time. The upside is that they get to sleep in fresh air and the parents get some free time. Win-win.
Regarding scool-age kids not being left left alone, I can't even imagine how this could possibly work. School for my eight year old is done by 12:45 - I work at least until 17:00, usually even a bit more, so does his mom. He comes home after school, warms up his meal (using a gas stove with an open flame - never had an accident or even a mishap with this btw) and on the days that he has swimming practice takes a bus to that. Trip from school to home is about 8km.
I'd actually kind of like to know, how do people manage work in the US, where I understand that this kind of behaviour is not allowed. If I were to pick him up after school and come home with him every day, it would mean that I could only have a half-time job maximum..
To answer your question, Daycare or After School activities are two of the mechanisms used to keep children safe when their parents are working - which can be a real problem if the Daycare costs more than the salary being made by the employee - this is a real problem in the United States, and results in situations in which the parents would end up losing money by working.
Usually what happens is the parent finds another stay-at-home parent, or unemployed parent, to take care of their children for a smaller amount of $$$. Ask yourself what you did with your eight year old before he was eight years old. Now extend that out another couple years.
It's fairly common in most of Scandinavia as well.
Yeah, I had a similar Upbringing. We went out and just did whatever outside. Then back for Lunch and then out again. Running around in the woods, building dams in the small stream, and so on. We were at the fringe of a small suburban town right next to some woods. I think we also ranged about 1-1.5 Miles away from home. We did have some boundaries set up by our parents, but that was really more to kind of limit the places they needed to check whether we fell asleep somewhere or something. The area was certainly big enough and exciting enough to tide us over.
And when I was 11, I was given a card for public transportation and we went to school in the "big" city (biggest city in CH). We took public transportation, switched modes 2 times (10 min walking to the train station, 15 min train ride, 12 min tram ride, 20 min bus ride). After the initial confusion over how public transport works, where all the info is located at the stations, no big deal. We usually rode in a group of 2-3, but if you missed a connection, you'd ride alone.
I feel that Switzerland has (had? I don't have kids... no real idea how it is 20 years later) a healthy attitude towards this stuff. Maybe that's just because I grew up there, but I feel that having an environment where we feel that children can roam around without getting murderized at every corner is something all societies should strive towards. And this absurd helicopter parenting I hear about sounds like it's trying to mitigate symptoms, not alleviate the root cause.
Here's an interesting discussion by English speaking parents in Switzerland [1]. The same for Japan can be found here [2]. These are largely the same as my observations.
[1] http://www.englishforum.ch/education/207982-kindergarten.htm...
[2] http://www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?0+77744
Edit: See, even that you had to specify this stance as "independent/free-ranging" tells me that there's a cultural clash at work here. Where I and my wife come from, we dont' need to apply such adjectives to what we consider 'normal parenting'.
Skipping the general safety subject (every country is perfectly safe when implicitly compared to, say, Nigeria or Burma), this events needs to be put in context; specifically, this is not an entirely irrational fear, because there is an arrest-easy culture (to say the least), which is definitely something to fear, not only because of itself, but also because of the consequences (abuses of power, in abstract).
You surely missed this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8016756
While using "this" in specific, as "reason number one" is quite excessive, a fear of the culture is understandable.
% of population of Germany in prison: 0.076%
% of population of US in prison: 0.707%
% of population of Canada in prison: 0.118%
You're not getting busted because you're in the right place... which is where, exactly?
Likewise, it is rare for parents to be found neglectful when allowing their children to walk alone, yet that is what we HNers are screeching about.
The linked news story is news because it is a rare event. Hundreds of thousdands of kids walk alone from/to school each day and don't get the cops called on them.
Suppose a child is snatched off the street. That's an outrageous thing to do. Say we find out who did it. We would expect charges, a trial, and punishment.
In this story we have government employees finding a couple to be a weird sort of semi-guilty for doing nothing wrong. Said government employees made a credible threat that they might, in the future, steal the couple's children. These are also outrageous actions. Have these people been investigated or punished? Have the policies that let them treat the couple this way been changed, or even officially questioned?
Both answers are most likely "no". It appears that these -- perhaps rare, but also outrageous -- actions are business as usual for the government.
The equivalent for the first situation above, might be a prosecutor failing to bring charges against a child abductor, and, when questioned about it, stating that such abductions were generally things he wanted to encourage. That, I think, would also be worthy of a new article.
Don't get me wrong. I think these cases ought not be prosecuted. But I'm not scared of being prosecuted in one of these cases, nor would I even consider avoiding travel or living somewhere else because this happened to one person in a city across the country from me.
Anyone who wants to let their kid walk to school alone at age 5 or 6 or 8, or ride the bus or subway alone at 8-10, probably ought to be scared of these cases.
So you have a lot of free time and money to spend on lawyers?
I would have preferred to raise my kids in a free-range culture. For sure, there are many great things about growing up here. But this cultural question would weigh heavily on my decision to bring kids to America.
If you and your spouse are united in your views about child rearing, I'm sure you could pull it off and have a great experience.
Actually I'd bet foreign parents could pull it off much better than native born. Because you'll already face so many cultural changes and can discuss which one's you'd like to adopt or reject.
Also note: culture in different parts of the country can differ wildly. But as a tech worker, you're probably going to land in a region filled with helicopter parents.
My generation (I'm 30) is incredibly paranoid when it comes to parenting, which is really saying something because my frame of reference is my own parents (over-protective asian immigrant boomers). When I was that age, not only would I walk home from school unsupervised, but they had 4-6th graders as "patrols" along the walking routes to keep an eye on the 1-3d graders. My parents thought nothing of letting me walk my brother home when we were about the same age as the kids in the article, and neither did anyone else.
That being said, it should be noted that the place in the article is a D.C. suburb, which means it's full of paranoid, uptight people to begin with. On top of that, like many D.C. suburbs, it has seen a heavy migration of hispanic immigrants in recent years, which has resulted in a lot of tensions. I wouldn't call it representative of the whole U.S.
I hate to say it, but… we don't really have a choice. You choose either the Republicans or the Democrats, neither of which actually care about the things that matter but instead have, as you mentioned, this odd form of bikeshedding that is intended to make people feel "safe". Not that it actually works, because now we are scared of the government. It's funny how we technically have more freedoms than people in other countries but we have to work so much harder to keep any of them.
Japan and Europe different from the US in lots of ways, but at least Europe in general seems to be less concerned about "safety" especially when it's so impractical.
And helicopter parenting seems to come easily, just as much a part of culture and social norms as it is necessitated by these laws. It's not something that's exactly forced on people but rather something that's accompanied naturally by the decisions of these "moron politicians".
> How come the US doesn't use studies from abroad when doing CP regulation? Boggles my mind.
The US doesn't care about studies from abroad. The US is too US-centric; it thinks it's too different from the rest of the world for those studies to apply.
Compare vs. the USA where over 30,000 Americans die on the road every year. That's like if 9/11 happened 10 times per year, instead of once per century.
My kids don't walk to school alone... and it's not because of my worries about paedophiles lurking around every corner, it's the very real risk that they could be hit by a car - the leading cause of death for their age-bracket.
> Compare vs. the USA where over 30,000 Americans die on the road every year.
That's a lot more complicated than you're making it sound. For starters, the US has over 320 million people—Netherlands has less than 20 million, and Sweden half of that.
In addition, the US has a lot of heavily used, very long distance roads. It's a lot bigger than both countries, and so a lot more driving is required to get around.
The number of driving deaths in the US is depressing, but trying to compare it to what's happening in countries a fraction of its size is not useful.
Nobody's commuting from Wyoming to Oregon. This fallacy is often presented as a reason people here need to drive more, as though having a larger country obliged people to drive across it routinely. Besides that, the EU is pretty sizable too.
People here drive so much because cities are HORRIBLY designed, so everything is spread out. Why is everything spread out? Because people drive so much that any new development is required to be primarily a giant parking lot with a building in the middle. But then everything is really spread out, so you have to drive even farther, meaning more cars on the road, meaning more road space is built, meaning things are even farther spread out, etc. etc. etc.
Why is this?
* Racist, classist suburbanites don't want "those people" taking the train to their neighborhood. Likewise, they abhor the thought of even being seen on the bus. * People think transit should pay for itself, nevermind the millions of untolled roads in the US (fuel taxes cover less than half the cost of construction/maintenance) * Design decisions made in the 30's-50's meant for convenience (zoning rules, parking minimums, Level-Of-Service dictated building rules) had horrible, horrible knock-on effects (people have to pay for parking spots they don't even need, it's illegal to build dense neighborhoods, and roads are widened to the terror and death of cyclists and pedestrians everywhere)
How can it be fixed?
* Get rid of parking minimums. Overpower the NIMBY's politically. Build transit. Raise fuel taxes. Change culture to respect walkers and cyclists.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
edit: deadly
b) There is a wide neutral ground between "helicopter parent" and the degree of freedom offered the Meitiv children. For various reasons, we drove our son to school but in no other ways resembled the helicopter parent.
c) The process you describe is much less electoral than bureaucratic, a rigorous and unthinking carrying out of premises that started off reasonable. The residents of Montgomery County, Maryland, are not that susceptible war on XYZ narratives, but they could have a greater than average acceptance of government regulation, so many of them being employed in the development and enforcement of the same.
d) Studies from abroad? If you repopulated close-in Montgomery County with Swiss or Japanese nationals, I'd be happy to see children younger than the Meitiv kids walking home long distances.
e) Of course the Meitivs are in the right. And he expression "responsible for unsubstantiated neglect" is revolting.
The number of petty busybodies who think they know how other people should raise their children, even when (especially?) they don't have children of their own, is on the rise.
But hey, it takes a village, right?
You mean in Switzerland, to have children on the streets like that? Well we have cities too (albeit smaller ones) and our roads can be very busy as well. Everything tends to be very decentralized however, so each neighbourhood usually has their Kindergarden and primary school, in 15min walking distance from every home. At worst children have to cross one main road on their way, which will be trained with their parents beforehand.
Apologies for the USA-centric reference :)
Both sides like big government enforcing their pet concerns.
That's an interesting range right there and potentially another clash of cultures for me (I assume I started with similar values as the thread starter, substitute CH with DE).
What I meant was, "shooting guns under competent adult supervision." Which, I'd rather have my kids do than walk to the park alone.
How about this for a culture clash:
When I was 14, my mom would drop me off at my high school so that I could participate in the rifle club.
We had a shooting range in the basement of the school. Guns and live ammo were kept in the school - in a locker - at all times. This was in like, the year 1994, in a medium-sized city - not some little farm town in the 50s. However, it was a private school. This could never happen at a public school.
Crazy, huh?
Kids are incredibly safe in these neighborhoods, and the more kids that are out, the safer it gets. We need to be encouraging this behavior, not apply some seriously chilling effect. What can be more chilling than the threat of taking away the kids?!
The idea that this could reach to that level is I think the worst part of the whole ordeal. This is so far removed from 'we need to get the kids out of here' it is absolutely ridiculous that could even come up.
But I think, again, it's about the state trying to maintain 'easy access' to their biggest weapon, so they can use it easily when they need to. I think what there needs to be is a bright line test which assures parents their kids are not at immanent risk of being seized by the fucking state. For this, I think the answer is simple, you cannot ever remove children, you can merely arrest the parents. If you can't legally arrest the parents, then you shouldn't be taking the kids. I can't even imagine how traumatic that must be.
I mean... if I was actually working at an agency like this, if I got a call about those kids walking on their own with multiple residents calling the police, the reasonable thing to do is first establish the parents knew where the kids were, and then second ask a few basic questions of the kids, and see if the eldest knows the right answers. It's really no different than if you encounter a park ranger, some of the questions they might ask you to ensure you are safe. We/They are there for your protection. So it's hugely concerning for such a simple case to get this out of hand.
Then depending on whether they physically touched the kid or not, they could be allowed to go home with or without a quick beating.
What we've been having to teach to kids lately has been, is this person a friend of the family? okay. is this person not a friend of the family? not okay. is this person claiming to be from a school, government, anything like that? ignore that, see the two rules above.
(And yes if you look at our family picture, it looks like a Sopranos wrap-up party)
That is a great question, but is IMHO too socially / politically sensitive for Americans to address seriously.
An honest and open discussion about root causes isn't going to happen - especially here on Hacker News.
* liberal towards persons
* liberal towards organizations
These two often contradict each other, so IMO a place cannot be perfectly and absolutely liberal - it will at best be a balance between the two. The US from what I can judge is extremely liberal towards organizations - kick out tenants, fire employees, influence the government through legal bribery (PACs) - go ahead, no problem (keep your lawyers ready though). Towards persons the US seems to be pretty much the opposite of liberal - the government seems to want to regulate every aspect of people's lives, and if some fall outside the norm there's politicians declaring war on them and introducing more and harsher punishments. In France, Italy, Austria and Germany (=our large neighbours), the tendency is rather the opposite: Relatively liberal towards people, very restrictive towards organizations. Switzerland is a balance between the two, but with the general idea of not restricting anything if it's not really necessary. There's even a third level of liberalism: Towards local governments. Want your own tax regime, with Blackjack and Hookers? Build a new village in Switzerland and let it become an official commune, there you go.
For instance, in Germany you can't homeschool you're children, in the US you can. In the UK it's very difficult to own a gun, in the US it's easy. Many hate speech laws in Europe would be unconstitutional in the US, and the US has broader protections for criminal defendants than many other developed countries.
However, on the other side, the US lacks universal healthcare, and has fewer consumer and privacy protections.
* changing the atmosphere with the gas I like to breath didn't go over too well - got imprisoned for a while, will not repeat.
* eating a human was even worse! After decades of imprisonment and therapy in Europe they actually let me free again, my friend in Texas wasn't that lucky. Wouldn't recommend.
* Alright, I've learned that human life is sacred and that I shouldn't try to change the environment too much that humans like. Next I had to get was some food source. After searching through what humans throw away (tasty!), some humans came and brought me to a place with a roof. I talked to some other human with a suit who hooked me up with some idea of theirs, I think it's called a 'bank account'. I learned that I can use that to go to a 'store' and exchange that thing using some electrons with fresh food. Pretty neat!
* Good news! That suit guy even organized a home for me! Well, the thing is, other humans there didn't quite like my morning roaring rituals, so I had to give them up. Noise is not such a good idea here, especially when silly humans are 'sleeping' - whatever that is, noone could explain so far. Some guy even called in other humans that came in a dress with the word 'police' on it. Was a bit scared at first, but they just explained a bit and went away.
* Wanted to paint the outside a bit nicer in traditional Qrkzsu Green. Something strange happened, was sent to a guy that tried to teach me how to integrate. Alright, I got most of it now I think.
* It's 40 years later now, nothing much happened. Except I wanted to visit another place that's always in those moving pictures they show using many more electrons. Tried to drink human's version of Grigrog on my way to their own garbage facility. That wasn't a good idea, took a few days to get free again. Wanted to sleep on something they call a 'bench', but apparently it's only for sitting.
Ok maybe I've gone a bit far off there ... ;).