It’s good not to place psychotic restrictions on what kids can do by themselves. I’m not sure it’s necessarily good to make laws about it.
If you pass a law that says letting your kids walk a mile on their own is OK, then great, it remains legal, but now it’s right on the edge of criminally bad parenting. Unless parents were getting harassed and/or prosecuted for this before, it’s not moving in a good direction.
Once you’ve established that legal boundary, it’s there as a political football, ready to be kicked much further than it ought to be the next time an emotive case hits the headlines.
It doesn’t address, and arguably reifies, the underlying Fox-fueled batshit-insane crime paranoia that makes people call 911 if they see a 10-year-old without a leash. If adults are allowed to behave like that, there will be overreactions, no matter how high you set the legal bar for neglect…
…because the flip side is that, for the state to deal with actual abuse, it has to take allegations seriously. Without relying on the judgment of neighbors, there are whole classes of serious abuse that social workers have basically zero chance of detecting.
Tl;dr: don’t legislate, fix fucked-up social norms. It sounds to me like suburban folk have forgotten that snitches get stitches.
Fifteen years ago, I went round and round with the (parochial) school because they didn’t want my kids to walk six blocks to after school daycare. It was crucial for a single working mom. Now one kid lives in France, the other has a job in Thailand for the summer, and everyone marvels at how “brave” they are. I see now how some folks hobbled their kids to keep them nearby, but I also think that’s selfish.
I try to visit Utah yearly and one of the things I like there is that kids in third grade are allowed to walk to the bus stop by themselves. In Texas I work with people that won’t allow their high school children to walk home alone.
I rebelled pretty hard against what trivial restrictions I had as a kid… I can’t imagine just how punk rock i’d be growing up today.
I remember when it was a thing for grandparents to talk about walking 10 miles to school in a blizzard barefoot. It just doesn’t seem right to say ‘I had to walk a mile to school after my cheap hoverboard burst into flames’.
Yep. I used to walk a mile to school in grade school. No biggie.
Several miles to/from high school. (Not Jr. High, a bit too far away)
After school, we could kinda ride around wherever as long as we told our parents where we were going. Again, up to a couple miles away. No biggie.
I once got jumped by bullies and bashed over the head with a tree branch, came home totally covered in blood. Still allowed to wander after that! No biggie!
On the good side, here in suburban Chicagoland, if the weather is decent, kids are out on their bikes, skates, or skateboards. Even better, on the bike trails I see more parents with young kids on bikes rather than sitting in bike trailers.
On the bad side, way too many parents insist on driving their kids to school. The difference in morning traffic during vacation breaks is staggering.
In Soviet Russia, everything is forbidden including that which is explicitly legal.
Among the 1%, everything is permitted, including that which is explicitly illegal.
When you have to come to that, it means your system is fucked up. Government should not be defined by a list of limits to its powers, because if you forget a limit, you’re fucked. Better to have an comprehensive list of powers which explicitly states their extent. If a power isn’t on the list, it’s no big deal. More freedom to the people.
