[spicyusername]

I don't know. Maybe this is going away in some places, maybe I just have my own anecdata, but my kids play outside unsupervised all the time, as do all the kids in my neighborhood.

I live in just a regular suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of small Metro. Nothing special about it at all.

Every time I see one of these articles I always wonder who they're talking about.

I always feel like this is just one of those news headlines that won't go away, but isn't quite tethered to reality, but people really like to feel bad about modern life and so we keep talking about it as if it's real. I suspect the real reason kids aren't playing outside, if there is one, is not because they can't, it's because they choose not to. Just as adults are no longer choosing to go to third spaces. Screens came for everyone.

[rayiner]

This behavior is probably overrepresented in the bougie places reporters live. I dropped my daughter off at the mall to hang out with their friends and one of the moms followed them around the whole time. They're all 13!

[mikestew]

This behavior is probably overrepresented in the bougie places reporters live.

I live in Redmond, WA. Bougie? My rube Midwestern ass thinks so. And there are feral kids all over my neighborhood. Plenty of kids walking to school in groups, or solo. Neighbor kids talk about riding the bus/train to places. Granted, there are a lot of immigrant families around here (hello, Microsoft, et al.), and I'm sure that skews things.

[com2kid]

Whenever these conversations come up, I've always noted that they don't really seem to apply to the PNW. My neighborhood (in Seattle proper) has lots of kids running around as well. Neighborhood kids will stop by to pickup my son and whisk him off to some adventure down the block. Getting your kid back involves listening for the correct sounding screams of joy as you walk around and figure out whose yard they are in.

Seattle also has a pretty decent policy around the radius for kids walking to school, so there are always gaggles of kids walking together to and from school for elementary and even some middle schoolers. The high schools are spaced far enough out that kids use buses at that age.

My coworkers in lower CoL areas seem mystified why I'm paying an arm and a leg to live in Seattle to raise a kid. And yeah there are some serious downsides (20-30k a year daycare, restaurants are too expensive to go out to often, even take out is insane), but there are kids playing soccer in the streets after school and kids setting up lemonade stands in the park.

That's what I'm paying for - A city that is built for people to live in, not just for cars to drive around.

[lotsofpulp]

It is a function of road design. If the neighborhood is just houses with all the places to go located on 40mph+ roads (meaning people are driving their high grill head height SUVs and pickup trucks at 50mph+ while looking at their phones), possibly without sidewalks, I’m not letting my kids go out there alone until they are teenagers.

Also, places are just too far due to the aforementioned 6 lane roads and 100ft+ wide intersections. And crossing those intersections on foot, in daytime, is daunting as an adult.

[com2kid]

Suburbs are places where people refuse to pay taxes to build parks and instead have giant yards and everyone builds their own private park. :/

[lotsofpulp]

I have a family member in a new neighborhood in northern Indianapolis suburbs, and the housing development has 15k sq ft lots with 5k sq ft houses on them, and the backyard of the houses are not (yet) fenced in, and all the houses had various Costco playground sets with their own swings and trampolines and whatnot, at least 5 that I counted, with probably numerous more across the other houses in the neighborhood.

I asked my family member why they didn't just build one playground for all the kids, and they said the HOA voted against it (for whatever reason, ongoing costs, legal liability costs, etc). I look at that waste and can only laugh at the "efforts" to be green or pro environment as a joke to appease those who can be easily swayed.

[brailsafe]

That's why I'm quite happy to live in Vancouver BC as well. No kids (and I'll never own a home), but if I did, I can't think of a better place to raise them compared to other car-dependent hellscapes where nobody trusts each other.

[rangestransform]

I love explaining to Americans how Vancouver suburbia is slightly better than American suburbia in so many ways that matter like trees, real traffic calming, and walkability

[expedition32]

People decry this as socialism but remember that gated communities with security guards also cost money.

Whenever I get angry about 40 percent of my paycheck going to the government I try to make a list of countries that are better and it's not a long list.

[y0eswddl]

where do you think all our money comes from?

> The economic growth and so-called advanced economies (think Germany, The U.S, Japan, etc. What's been referred to as the “Global North”) relies by a large proportion on a significant net appropriation of resources and labor from the “Global South” (think Kenya, Peru, the Philippines, etc). This appropriation reaches astronomical levels. In 2015 alone, the north appropriated 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labor; worth [a total] $10.8 Trillion in northern prices. Enough to end extreme poverty 70x over.

The West steals $10-$12 Trillion/yr in embodied raw material equivalents, embodied land, embodied energy, and embodied labour.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802...

[rangestransform]

And I will keep voting to benefit myself, my family, and my country in that order.

It’s their own fault that they do not have visionary leaders like Lee Kuan Yew or a dynasty like the CCP that’s willing to sacrifice entire generations for future generations.

To not allow a country to govern itself into oblivion is the peak of western paternalism.

[array_key_first]

I've noticed the less American and less wealthy people are, the more normal their kids interact with the world, i.e. "free range".

I don't know what it is about rich white people and freaky helicopter parenting. I also notice it with homeschooling and those crazy borderline eating disorder diets. There seems to be an association there between rich white people and pushing self-destructive behavior on kids.

[AussieWog93]

Might be different in Australia vs the US, but the white kids here are definitely more "free range" than the Asians.

That's not too say they're not helicoptered too, but Chinese parents are a whole other level.

Think strapping a 3-4 year old into a high chair and handfeeding them, or scheduling every waking moment of a primary school kid's life.

[sage76]

Upper middle class Indian parents in India can be complete control freak helicopter parents too. Much more than the less wealthy ones.

I have seen and experienced some real extremes there.

[ekropotin]

I personally don’t see its being a case, based on my observation.

There is this town nearby where I live - super white, gives old money type of vibe, very expensive real estate. It’s full of free range kids running around on the streets.

It was shock to me to see it, after our diverse suburb, where kids pretty much either locked at home doing homework or at classes all the times.

So in my opinion there is definitely a cultural aspect of it.

[infinite8s]

That's because they know their kids will be set no matter what they do in life.

[foldr]

'Feral' seems like an odd choice of word, given the activities you're describing. It sounds like they're just out and about doing totally normal stuff. I bet you wouldn't appreciate someone describing you as 'feral' if they saw you in public walking to the store or getting on a train.

[rkagerer]

I think it was the perfect adjective in the context of their comment.

The poster clearly meant it with a flavor of whimsy to it, not in a derogatory way. Maybe also as a tongue in cheek jab at how people they perceived as overly concerned about supervision would describe such kids.

I'll put my hand up as having been a joyfully feral kid once upon a time.

[amoss]

"in a wild or unsupervised state" seems like a particularly apt description of children. it does not seem to be derogatory: language really should be evocative as often as literal.

[foldr]

That seems like a slightly off definition to me: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feral And feral certainly is a term with negative connotations in English.

Are you in a "wild and unsupervised" state when you leave your house and go to work?

[mikestew]

'Feral' seems like an odd choice of word, given the activities you're describing.

I never said the feral kids were participating in those activities. :-) Look, it was loose use of the word, you're placing way more judgement on the term than was ever intended. Yes, the children have homes and parent, of course they're not feral.

[JuniperMesos]

https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/shoot-the-messenger

> But I actually find ideological bias to be less concerning than the more fundamental problem that the class of people who determine the boundaries of debate share a set of demographic and experiential traits that they don’t recognize as distinctive.

> This class of people includes journalists, yes, but also people who work in the tech industry, academics, nonprofit leaders, influencers, and those who work in politics. From now on, I’ll refer to this group broadly as “the messenger class.”

> The messenger class’s distinctive experiences — like living in downtown Washington, D.C., or living in one of the parts of New York highlighted in red — shape the boundaries of normal in ways harder to counteract than pure ideological or partisan bias.

> The messenger class plays a fundamental role in any democracy. Democratic self-governance requires not just fair procedures for making decisions but an accurate and shared picture of social reality to reason about. That picture is revealed through the communicated experiences of citizens, filtered through the messenger class, which decides which experiences are urgent and require intervention.

[garbawarb]

Do journalists live in bougie places? It's not a particularly well-paying job.

[rayiner]

It's a job that requires strong credentials and is gated by unpaid internships. So it disproportionately attracts people from relatively affluent backgrounds: https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/the-cos.... And those folks live near and, more importantly, travel in social circles with affluent people.

It's also not particularly expensive to live in a bougie place. I grew up in Mclean, VA. My dad ran into Dick Cheney at the CVS once. But you can get an apartment in Mclean on a journalist's salary, especially if your parents paid for college and you have no debt. You can’t afford to raise a family there, but you can live there, near your social circle. Conversely, you'll see lots of trades people, cops, etc., living in places that aren't bougie at all, despite making more money than the lower end of the professional class. People find ways to congregate around others in their social class, income notwithstanding.

[pessimizer]

Yes. Journalists don't make a living from journalism, they live on family money. That's why working class journalists have disappeared along with working class perspectives.

It was once a job where many if not most of the practitioners didn't have a college degree, now it is the most expensive graduate school program you can do. I think the median price is something like $250K.

If you don't pay writers, you eliminate all of the writers who have to work for a living.

[watwut]

Plenty of journalists I know about (because I read them a lot and they sometimes talk about self) did mot wemt to j-school.

Also, they dont live in parents houses.

You are making stuff up about lives of journalistals to invalidate their claims.

[ghaff]

Don't disagree with the general point but I'm not sure J-School was ever a particularly good entree into journalism. Most of the journalists I know and knew didn't have the grad degree.

[NicuCalcea]

TIL I and my friends and colleagues live on family money.

[Jensson]

Could be a husband that pays for the home etc as well, that is also living on family money.

Regardless since journalists aren't well paid but a lot of them live in expensive areas the money has to come from somewhere.

[NicuCalcea]

So your argument is that journalists must be wealthy because otherwise they'd be poor? Have you considered the alternative, that we just live modest lifestyles, like most other working class people?

[ekropotin]

Was the mom Asian? Asking because my pre-teen daughter has a lot of Asian friends and I clearly see a pattern of hyper vigilance among their moms.

[pessimizer]

From the mall story, you also seem to be living in a "bougie" place. What makes you think that places other than where you live are different?

One would expect that after your first sentence, the second sentence would be a counterexample.

[rayiner]

That’s a fair question. My wife is cheap and I’m indulgent with my kids. So we compromised by sending our kids to private school with yacht club people, but not living around them. Our neighborhood is mostly well-off non-white-collar people: nurses, cops, navy enlisted, guys who did well in trades, etc.

[bdangubic]

I live in suburb of a metro area, as safe as it gets (my front door is unlocked overnight often and almost never locked during the day, my garage is also frequently open). my 12-year old (5’8” 125lbs) went to walk the dog to the park about 1/2 mile from my house, someone called the police and I had to deal with social services…

[insane_dreamer]

> my kids play outside unsupervised all the time

"free range kids" doesn't mean playing outside in a suburban cul-de-sac; it's the ability to go outside the immediate neighborhood on their own (walking, cycling, or public transport) -- stuff I did all the time as a 11-13 year old that is pretty rare these days. I don't think I've ever seen a preteen on the local city transport alone

[belZaah]

My kids walk/bike to school, take public transport and are pretty free-range. But that’s absolutely nothing compared to my childhood. I was born in 1975. We dug up literal explosives from WWII and made our own small bombs (some matches, two large bolts…). Access to all sorts of chemicals was easy and we would set things on fire or just mix stuff to see what happens. Playing around on construction sites. Taking someones boat out to go fishing. Making bows and arrows, that would go straight through plywood. All _that_ is definitely gone. Some of it for good - kids loosing their fingers or worse was a common occurrence. So there definitely is a trend in case of me and my friends.

[watwut]

Free range and kids dig boms are two different things. We dont need to match accident mortality.

[amazingamazing]

> my kids play outside unsupervised all the time, as do all the kids in my neighborhood. I live in just a regular suburban neighborhood

Your kids are hardly free-range. Let me guess, there's no way for them to actually meaningfully leave the area (no train, bus, etc)? It's like dumping kids on a 5 acre farm and saying they can do whatever they want. hardly free-range in the way described in the article.

Presumably you live in a suburb for the reasons the person in the article checked in on the free-range kid.

my personal litmus test is if you'd let your 13 year kid explore Manhattan alone during the day. Many say no because it's dangerous, and yet Manhattan is safer than most American suburbs. just FUD all the way down sadly.

[ryandrake]

Yea, I always through "free range" meant the kid walking (or taking the bus/train) a few miles through the city to get to an actual "other place" destination. Not "playing across the street in the suburban park." If the latter is now considered unusual, we have some big problems!!

[nostrebored]

It is in SF. My son’s school would not let him walk 3 minutes to an aftercare program. They were actually willing to break federal law to stop him from walking a single block away.

I also let him play at the park on his own occasionally. I will get calls from well meaning but extremely overprotective friends to let me know that “they can’t watch him anymore.” He is ten! The library, connected to the park, has a phone which he can use to reach us.

People called my parents hover parents, but at ten I could have played at the neighborhood park by myself.

[em-bee]

If the latter is now considered unusual, we have some big problems!!

it is, and we do:

https://www.offthegridnews.com/current-events/mom-charged-wi...

https://reason.com/2025/08/09/child-protective-services-inve...

https://reason.com/2026/01/16/she-let-her-6-year-old-ride-to...

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/31/living/florida-mom-arrest...

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/parents-investig...

https://nationalpost.com/news/growing-up-independent-is-ille...

https://www.todaysparent.com/blogs/mom-arrested-leaving-daug...

https://legalclarity.org/is-it-illegal-to-let-your-kid-play-...

those are all from the first page of a search for "parents charged for letting kids alone on the playground"

there are probably many more such stories.

[ghaff]

The usual contrast being drawn is kids wandering around a suburban area, walking to school, playing with kids in a nearby rural property. It's not hopping onto a bus to the city a few tens of miles away. You do see schoolchildren in Japan on the train by themselves but I'm not sure that's ever been very common in the US.

[amazingamazing]

there's really no reason American kids in metro areas like SF, Boston, DC, NYC couldn't take a bus 5 miles away by themselves. when one comes up of an actual reason to why, it contradicts real statistics.

the biggest things parents should worry about is their kid being bullied by other kids during school, a supposedly safe place, and other family. strangers just aren't the major source of violence towards children.

[ButlerianJihad]

Welp this week we in Phoenix are dealing with a report of a 17-year-old high school girl who boarded a light rail train (the one with security cameras and guards) and she was harassed and assaulted by a mob of boys on the train, presumably in front of human onlookers; she disembarked, and was assaulted some more.

She is now in a neck brace, and her mother is absolutely distraught, saying this is something she cannot fix for her beloved daughter. I am distraught as well that this could happen to anyone at all on the same train that I ride every week.

[ghaff]

That's a sad story though getting a bit far afield from young kids taking public transit or otherwise traveling away from their homes. At 17 I was in college and taking urban transportation (and flights) all the time.

[vel0city]

Multiple people died on the same stretch of road on the same afternoon that I drive on often about a month ago. One was just a teenager in a car that was following the law, it was the other car that was speeding.

I've seen lots of death on the roads around me.

But sure, it's the train that's unsafe.

[altairprime]

Someone and their gang pulled a knife on me as a kid when I was riding the bus forty years ago in a university town, but that doesn’t make what they did normalized, it just makes an anecdote. As it happens, though, that is quite normalized in the U.S., especially if you’re not white.

A lot of U.S. residents inure themselves to random acts of violence because they either feel helpless to change the societal contexts of that violence and/or because admitting that violence would require confronting the benefits of power exploitation vs. the drawbacks of racism, sexism, bullying, and bystanderism. That swarm of boys abusing a girl to enforce societal mores that benefit them to her detriment is a trope from Pleasantville. This isn’t some new or unknown thing. This is a standard-issue United States Lynch Mob that’s been known about for a century.

I’ve been upset about this for thirty years, which is when I first discovered this. Welcome to the shameful desert of the real. Sad that it took y’all so long to see it; but now you have a chance to decide a way forward. Circle the wagons and raise sheltered, and therefore weakened, children? Teach every family about this threat all the way down to the youngest that kids understand danger? Crossing guards that ride the buses and have safety whistles and self-defense training? Lobby your city government to shift policing dollars to transit safety officers? Lobby your regional government to shift road maintenance dollars to gang violence de-escalation efforts?

As you can see, it’s difficult to find a way forward that feels appropriately vengeful upon ‘those that hurt our budding flower’ while also having a meaningful impact on the quality of the future. Most regions would just try to defund bus service, which fucks over everyone except wealthy adults on time scales longer than ten years or so, because at least that ‘feels’ like an effective response.

Good luck.

[mmooss]

> I’ve been upset about this for thirty years

Completely normal. Trauma at a certain level, unlike other memories and emotions, doesn't seem impacted by time. I'm sorry to hear what happened to you.

> that is quite normalized in the U.S., especially if you’re not white. / A lot of U.S. residents inure themselves to random acts of violence

This part seems to universalize the experience, though. What is the basis for it? Crime is at generational lows. I've used public transit in cities uncounted times and I have never seen a crime; that's what is normal for me.

[kjkjadksj]

This was of course the trains fault

[weakfish]

I’m also curious why you write “we in Phoenix are dealing with…”

I’ve noticed a trend of people attaching a sort of personal identification with headlines

[coldtea]

Perhaps they don't identify as a passive news consumer about irrelevant people, but as a resident with a bond to their city and wider community.

Imagine that!

[NordStreamYacht]

Japan is a monocultural civilisational state. That is a big factor.

[garbawarb]

American children are in more danger because the country's more diverse?

[rawgabbit]

It is the difference in culture. In big cities, Japan doesn’t tolerate public deviance. Police are visible in every block. They are very strict about weapons; you can’t bring a knife in public for no reason etc.

[spinach]

They also have a culture of enduring things in silence for the greater collective good. For instance, most girls and women will have stories of harassment, especially by men on crowded trains but almost none of them will do anything about it.

[xavortm]

To his point - I would say, it's a bug factor BECAUSE on average their culture seems more safe. But it's not because it's monocultural. Bad "monoculture" is bad, good one is good, nothing complex there. Simplifying, but that's pretty much what is said

[NordStreamYacht]

You're missing the more important word.

[bdlowery]

Yes

[paulryanrogers]

Diversity doesn't make places more dangerous (if i understand the stats). But humans are naturally tribal and fear those who look and act significantly different.

[mmooss]

That depends on an arbitrary perception of 'my tribe'. Irish and Italians used to riot against each other. Germans were hated (look up a quote from Benjamin Franklin). Protestants and Catholics used to riot. Every wave of immigrants seems to get the same treatment by some.

Within a few generations, their decendants marry each other.

[coldtea]

Because humans are tribal they will also go on to attack and prey on those who are outside their tribe, making diversity more dangerous. Especially when diversity is not merely some people of different ethnic/racial backgrounds living and working together, but a population split into isolated cultures with different circumstances.

Unless there's a big strict enforcer to keep everyone in line of course.

[insane_dreamer]

monoculture has nothing to do with it, as if more diversity creates a less safe environment

but Japan is much safer than the US, in no small part because they have the sense to not allow people to own weapons

[sfifs]

Russia is fairly mono cultural too. Is it safe?

[GerryAdamsSF]

Yes. Russia is inarguably safer in terms of street crime than the USA.

Philadelphia in 2025 had a higher murder rate than Belfast during the height of a civil war.

https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_countries_result.jsp?co...

Crime in the USA is also extremely regional and local in pattern.

[jemmyw]

I don't think numbeo can be a good source, it seems to be self reported metrics. I asked it for comparison of NZ to USA and it told me that NZ was about the same or worse on most numbers. But actual crime rates are lower in NZ. The murder rate is 5x lower.

[mmooss]

> Philadelphia in 2025 had a higher murder rate than Belfast during the height of a civil war.

Do you have a cite? In American cities crime is at generational lows, including / especially murder.

[deepsun]

Oh no, no way. Child violence on the streets and in school is WAY higher, it's ingrained in culture. It's also pretty rare if a Russian kid would tell his parents about it (only if property damage is involved).

I don't know how your link gathers data (website only shows one dude, software engineer, not a professional survey statistician), but from personal experience I can surely say it's rankings are BS.

The closest in US are the "bad towns" like East Palo Alto or some neighborhoods of Oakland, with their respect for ex-cons and prison slang.

[watwut]

Maybe you should stop believing those bullshit sites.

[insensible]

Good morning from Russia, where I moved my large free-range family (from the US) with the topic of free-ranging children very high on the list of reasons why.

My children cross town by themselves to attend classes, it’s normal to see children walking or riding public transport by themselves once they turn about age 7.

There’s crime and bullying — we have always homeschooled successfully and have had negative experiences with classrooms here — but in my opinion it’s not as bad as the places I’ve lived in the US.

And the streets are definitely safer. There are some risks like gopniki enjoying causing random trouble like pepper spraying strangers, but I believe that type of danger is a threat mostly to young adult men and almost certainly not children. Our daughters can safely do what they need to do with appropriate precautions (that do not include staying within single-digit meters of a vigilant adult at all times else CPS!!!).

[watwut]

Russia has higher incarceration rates and higher criminality then EU and USA.

Also, French, German, Swesish, you name it do all the stuff alone. And third, they have less bullying in schools.

[lesostep]

Russia isn't mono cultural thought. It has muslim regions, buddhist regions, official jewish jurisdiction (it was created by USSR to segregate jews, so it basically has no jews left. But it's mostly because they moved to other regions). There is a duoreligion regions, where having two religions is a mundane thing. And even christian regions are various in traditions.

I wanted to write that the requirements to teach in russian language in russian schools is relatively new one. But turns out, you could still do it. Not like in private schools, you can have a government school in another language.

It can be argued that there is unifying postsoviet culture, but since different regions were treated differently under Soviet regime, there is a lot of differences.

[JuniperMesos]

Why do you think Russia is fairly monocultural? Russia covers a gigantic amount of territory and has people from a large number of ethnic and linguistic groups living there, many of which are not particularly closely related.

[lstodd]

It by no means is monocultural. As for safety, well, yes, pretty safe.

More important is that helicopter-style parenting is unthinkable there, people will just not understand if someone would attempt that. Also not much in insane laws (they have some, but..) and the police will tell you to bugger off if you try make them act on those that exist. So the situation in the article is impossible.

[insensible]

That “but..” is a big key to the difference between Russia and the US in this conversation. The US has a severe cultural propensity for rule-following and reporting things, but in Russia there’s an interesting mix of people seeing society as a commons, seeing personal responsibility as foremost, seeing laws as guidelines that may or may not correspond to reality, and seeing reporting something as fairly extreme behavior. And this includes people at all levels.

[alex-korr]

Big cities like Moscow or St Pete are anything but monocultural.

[zabzonk]

> my personal litmus test is if you'd let your 13 year kid explore Manhattan alone during the day

My parents let me (14) and my brother (9) explore central Paris on our own when my Dad was working at the Paris air show for the RAF. No problems at all even though this was just after the student protests in the 60s, and so things were a little tense.

I think Manhattan would be OK too, though I've only been there as an adjust. Certainly, you see kids running around London.

[insane_dreamer]

I let my then 13 yr old daughter go around Beijing by bus/subway when we lived there 10 years ago; she had a phone. Felt perfectly safe. Same thing in Tokyo. I'm not sure I would have allowed that had we been living in a big US city like LA, Chicago or NYC -- maybe it's just as safe, IDK, but the fact that anyone in the US can own/carry a weapon makes me feel much less safe than in other developed countries.

[semiquaver]

13??? I’m shocked that it’s even a question. Of course a 13 year old should be allowed to do that.

[graemep]

London and the bits of Pars I have seen are pleasant places to work around. London does have its bad areas, as do other cities. Small towns in the UK are fine, as is most public transport. Parents have got more protective but I still see plenty out by themselves where I live.

[zabzonk]

s/adjust/adult/

[com2kid]

> Your kids are hardly free-range. Let me guess, there's no way for them to actually meaningfully leave the area (no train, bus, etc)? It's like dumping kids on a 5 acre farm and saying they can do whatever they want. hardly free-range in the way described in the article.

This depends on the area. In more urban areas exploring can be done on foot or bike. I live in Seattle, which has some fantastic bike trails that can go on and on for miles and cross into multiple adjacent cities.

In some cities parents are fighting to let their kids play in their own front yard unsupervised. Not an issue in Seattle, where kids are required to walk to and from their neighborhood school by the school district.

But denser areas also have lots of stuff to do within the neighborhood. Within 2 or so miles there is a massive shopping area, multiple bakeries, tons of restaurants, a slew of parks (Seattle has an obscene density of parks, it is one of the best aspects of living here), a lakefront beach (lots of bodies of water in Seattle), 2 swimming pools, tennis courts, and a bunch of other stuff I am probably forgetting right now.

So define free range. If a gaggle of kids travel to the local grocery store together to buy lemons and sugar, then self organize selling lemonade to people passing by on a hot day, is that free range? I'd argue yes.

[beej71]

I grew up in the 70s in a town of 30,000 and consider that time free-range. There was no public transit, only bicycles.

[buu700]

Manhattan is one thing, but I would never let my kids go to the 70s unsupervised.

[saintfire]

This is the helicopter parenting the article is condemning. Children made it through the 70's just fine.

[spicyusername]

    just fine

Just a dash of survivor bias here I believe.

I'm pretty sure the data shows the opposite actually, that compared to today some percentage more of them didn't make it out.

[Mordisquitos]

> It's like dumping kids on a 5 acre farm and saying they can do whatever they want.

What do you mean it's like dumping kids on a farm? Are the suburbs really THAT lethally dangerous?

Source [22 minutes]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLAfDrFUBkA

[shawn_w]

Redmond has decent (though not great) bus coverage and light rail stations to Seattle and points beyond in the core downtown area and next to a huge park.

[yieldcrv]

> and yet Manhattan is safer than most American suburbs

[something traumatic happens and 50 people run for their safety]

see and as proven, only 1 person was assaulted!

I think a future society that counts trauma and mental health disruptions instead of just the crime stats will reach different conclusions on areas considered safe

[tayo42]

Plenty of trouble for a 13 year old in Manhattan. Even if it's not dangerous, you can find your own problems easily enough.

[borski]

You can find your own problems on an abandoned farm too. A kid can always choose to get into trouble, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.

[tayo42]

The type of trouble is different. Your not going to get robbed trying to buy drugs on a farm.

[com2kid]

I grew up in a neighborhood that had a drug den next to the 7-11 that all the kids went to buy slurpees at.

The dealers didn't bother the kids, and the kids knew not to go into that yard.

There were plenty of street walkers on a particular stretch of streets. They weren't talking to anyone who wasn't looking to buy.

Of course I had the advantage of being a broke kid at the time, so I wasn't a mark for crime. I was just another neighborhood kid who was walking through. It was a working class neighborhood with a few sketchy parts. There was the occasional shooting or drive by, and property theft was common (every bike I had as a kid was stolen from me at some point), but it wasn't unsafe in regards to violence.

I almost impaled myself on a rebar pole while jumping my bike over hills at an abandoned construction site. That was the most dangerous thing that ever happened to me growing up there. (well aside from the time I almost died falling into a sink hole and managed to grab onto a nearby tree root and pull myself up in time, but that was in the middle of nearby woods, so not gonna blame that on societal problems!)

[borski]

Humboldt County would like a word.

[kingraoul]

I mean by that standard there’s plenty of trouble everywhere for everyone.

[guelo]

I do know. No kids play outside in my neighborhood. The story resonates because your personal annecdote is not very common. (Not as the sibbling comment says, that reporters all out of touch elites).

[renewiltord]

This is a bit of a shift of the Overton Window surely. Because that doesn’t sound free-range: which involves perhaps miles of travel unsupervised.