[bombcar]

And as family sizes increase, the family increases as well, so even the first born may not be treated as such, because they were always watched by cousins. Very quickly you can have a completely extant sub-culture in the children that is unaffected much by the adults.

[lapcat]

People want to tell stories about the past, but they completely ignore the more recent past, specifically, Generation X, the notorious "latchkey kids", who also tended to belong to very small families, because the entire generation was the smallest in population of the recent generations.

US birth rates dropped dramatically between the late 1950s and the late 1970s, resulting in this small generation. (I attribute the drop to the increasing financial independence of women and the widespread adoption of birth control.) GenX family sizes were small, with few siblings. Yet GenX kids "enjoyed" (or suffered from, depending on your perspective) the absence of supervision for large parts of their days. Helicopter parenting didn't exist at that time. GenX is the glaring counterexample to the family size theory.

The past with extended families all living together — grandparents, cousins, et al. — is more distant than people are acknowledging.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

your thought process is all over the place.

Gen-x was more independent because they were allowed to be, the family size doesn't have a lot of bearing on that, but more than that it's a non-sequitur that somehow gen-x is a counter-example to the idea that smaller families lead to higher value placed on child safety. child safety and independence are orthogonal ideas.

[lapcat]

> Gen-x was more independent because they were allowed to be

Correct.

> the family size doesn't have a lot of bearing on that

Correct.

> child safety and independence are orthogonal ideas.

Incorrect.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

your last statement is only true if you believe in a binary world.

In truth, a child can grab a can of soda out of the fridge without it being a safety concern.

[lapcat]

> your last statement is only true if you believe in a binary world.

That's basically a nonsensical reply.

> In truth, a child can grab a can of soda out of the fridge without it being a safety concern.

Nobody is talking about children grabbing cans of soda. That's a non sequitur. The submitted article: "Children need risk, fear, and excitement in play".

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

I'm not going to play that game, the discussion had meandered over to safety and independence as orthogonal things.

we're done here.