[kannanvijayan]

I have a 10 year old boy and I'm facing these issues right now. I'm also in Canada so culturally adjacent to the US and similar enough with regards to this topic.

I don't see child welfare agencies personally as a particular threat when it comes to this topic. Maybe they ARE more likely to get involved in cases of more free range parenting where before they weren't, but it doesn't register as a real worry.

The major difference I see between when I was growing up and now is that when I went out onto the streets, there were other kids on the streets. My parents didn't know exactly what they were sending me out to, but they knew that there as a general crowd of kids that would be out on the street until some point in the evening, and that they would all go home at around the same time, and that's also when you were expected home.

The draw of smartphones and video games as indoor entertainment can't be understated, but I can exercise some parental tyranny here and always kick him out of the house to go play like my folks used to do.

But there are no other kids out there. I'm sending him out into streets empty of kids.

To mitigate this I'm trying to nudge things in the direction of him and his friends forming some sort of after-school crew that finds outside activities to do together, undirected. There are other like minded parents that I've found that are also interested in enabling something like this.

On the subject of risks - I strongly believe that the role of parenthood is to mediate a child's exposure to the real trauma of a hostile, often absurd reality that they will grow up into. Controlled exposure to risk, to self-directed decision making in times where they feel like someone won't be there to help them out and they need to figure things out on their own, these are critical requirements in parenting IMHO. And all risk comes with some small chance of tragedy, and that's a burden we as parents have to bear: to expose ourselves to the emotional trauma of the possibility of our children getting hurt, however small the chance, so that they are able to grow into healthy well-adjusted adults.

I feel like I have to work a lot harder than my parents did to enable that exposure.

[MichaelRo]

>> But there are no other kids out there. I'm sending him out into streets empty of kids.

This. It's a number's "game".

My father, born in rural Romania, had 8 siblings, one of them died of an accident in his childhood (yeah, during "free range stuff"). I was born in a town and have 2 brothers. Live in a city and have one kid.

I can't send my kid out carelessly because I don't have a backup.

[xyzelement]

One of the many reasons you should have more kids.

[lotsofpulp]

Easier said than done when you don’t have to suffer the physical consequences of having them.

[xyzelement]

I am not sure what you mean. Most people in the world including every single one of your ancestors has managed to have kids - including the physical aspects.

[MichaelRo]

My wife gave birth by C-section. That would have killed her up until very modern times.

She may theoretically birth another child but there's a substantial risk.

There are "physical aspects", just because it's all theoretical and principles to you doesn't make them go away.

[true_religion]

People aren’t comparing today to the ancient past. They’re by and large, comparing life to when they grew up.

So on HN, that’s the 70s through the 90s.

Since then maternal mortality in the USA has only increased. The reasons vary, but this still supports your comment as less people ought to be willing to risk having more children.

I would add, that this stat also pairs with the prevalence of hard pregnancies in the USA, so people may become more protective of their children since they suffered more to have them.

Other countries don’t have this issue, and also have more free range child allowances (e.g. Japan with low mortality, low number of children, but highly independent children supported and watched by adults in general and not their parents).

[mothballed]

If one in 8 has that kind of accident in America they will seize all the kids and you will lose all of them, so other than just spreading your DNA that approach won't work. There are many, many documented cases of people having all their kids seized because they had a child with a brittle bone disease, and after their brittle bones break (happens easily with such child) the government blames the parent and takes all the other children too.

[xyzelement]

Ok I am not sure what exact point you are making or arguing with. The op grew up as 1 of 3 and I think that's better than 1 of 1 :)

[mothballed]

3 means 3x the chance of them all being taken away when something goes wrong. 1 seems better if your goal is to have at least one child remaining in custody with you to age 18, since if anything goes wrong other than a provable unavoidable medical accident they're typically all seized.

[xyzelement]

This seems like an absolutely insane thing to optimize for but if this is anything like personal experience for you I am really sorry.

[shigawire]

Many, many seems like overstating a rare corner case that can easily be proven.

[mothballed]

It actually can't be determined if it's "overstated", because the child snatchers have intentionally hidden the data (under seal, "think of the children") so you can't determine the ratio of "overstating." It is illegal to pull the data, so instead you just have to rely on the many many articles you can pull up of people speaking up on their own accord despite the fact their adversary is usually using their children as leverage to keep them from speaking out.

That is part of the genius. They hide the data then declare "just show us the data" knowing damn well they hid it then try to hide under just being reasonable and why can't you prove it. It's quite sadistic actually and of course arguments such as yours play into this intentional subterfuge. Note that this hiding of evidence, when done by private actors, in a court of law usually means it is entered in evidence in favor of the other side as hiding means the worst case scenario of that is contributed towards the burden of proof ("spoliation of evidence.") You don't get to play the fuck-fuck game of simply asking for additional burden of proof when you've intentionally induced spoliation of the evidence.

[watwut]

Missing kids statistics exist.

[dublinstats]

statistically you'd only need about 0.0002 additional children to counter the risk of accidental deaths prior generations of children experienced.

[xboxnolifes]

> I can't send my kid out carelessly because I don't have a backup.

I don't understand this reasoning. Are you saying you're knowingly stunting the growth of your child because you would have to deal with your emotions if something terrible happened?

I understand the emotional pull of it, but I don't understand being able to identify it, put it into words, and then continue to do it.

[MichaelRo]

I don't understand the "knowingly stunting the growth of your child" attack. What makes you conclude I'm stunting the growth of my child?

He's not chained to a tree. He goes to private school in a country where public schools are free and excellent. Visits his friends and play in the public park or the private yard. Spends vacations in the countryside unsupervised by me because unlike the city, chances of being run over by a retard driving a car are much lower. Still, I advise him not to wander around freely as I did in my childhood because the world has become much shittier. One thing, there are bears everywhere, thanks to the animal rights lobbyists. I feared dogs and bulls when wandering across countryside as a kid, now I have to add bears too for my kid.

[testing22321]

Small town Canada here. In winter all the kids above school toboggan and slide down the roads (GT racers). All the kids below trudge up carrying their slider of choice. In the afternoon the roles are reversed. Not an adult in sight.

At the ski hill kids 5+ roam free- it’s always fun getting on the chairlift and a little kid says “ can you help me get on?” And you have to physically pick them up onto the moving (fixed grip) chairlift. There’s no cell service.

Mountain bike trails around town are full of groups of kids 5+.

My advice: move to a small town, it’s like going back in time in a very good way.

[kannanvijayan]

I learned to snowboard in Wapiti Valley which is a little river valley skislope setup way out in the middle of nowhere saskatchewan. I know what you're talking about. I took the lift up with both 6 year olds and 86 year olds and both would offer advice to a new learner. I drove 3 hours in from "big city" Saskatoon but most of the attendees were kids and adults from the nearby towns. Loved the literal 30-second wait times to catch a lift back up - it was a really great environment to learn in.

That said, "move to a small town" is easier said than done when you have a family and kid :)

[testing22321]

It’s still like that today, and it doesn’t have to be Saskatchewan either.

I have a family and a kid

[oakashes]

Great point. Intuitively it makes sense that sending kids out when you expect a bunch of their peers to be there is different from sending them out into empty streets. Thinking a little more about why this intuition holds: it's because once upon a time you were sending them out into a community, where they would learn the tried and tested practices by example. Once the link of cultural transmission is severed, it's hard to bootstrap it back again, even if you had a bunch of families that wanted to try.

[KaiserPro]

Where I am in the UK its the "problem" kids that are seen out and about on their own.

I was freerange growing up in rural england, so I have no problem with the youth roving about. My wife is horrified by the idea, so our kids are somewhat coddled.

In the UK at least, children are objectively safer in every metric apart from getting fat. Kidnap, abuse, getting lost, car accidents are all way way down.

The interesting thing is that here you wouldn't be threatened with child services, You'd have to be pretty abusive or get your kid picked up by the police for the state to get involved. Mostly its pure classism, nice middle class kids aren't allowed to walk about on their own until they are 16, at least.

[left-struck]

I think mentioning those safety metrics is really important because for any person, not just in the UK but in many countries like it, the thing that will most likely kill them are diseases related to being unfit and overweight.

So while kids might appear to be slightly safer in their childhood, the reality is that those other dangers were never a serious statistical danger to begin with, but not creating health habits is a contributing factor to the most likely cause of death when they’re older.

I think people vastly underestimate how dangerous living an inactive lifestyle is. I’m not saying this because I grew up super active and now I’m judging people who live their life differently to me, I’m saying it because those are the statistics, and because I DIDN’T grow up being active.

[KaiserPro]

I definitely agree that child inactivity is something that is really bad in multiple ways.

Deaths from inactivity are going to show up in 40s and 50s after long and expensive periods of medical treatment. THats a problem because we are only really going to see significant issues around about now. But that trend of inactivity isn't equally distributed over time.

[ip26]

Totally onboard with some managed risk of injury being ok. Very much not onboard with the parents who trust their six year olds to face mortal peril alone and make good choices.

[semiquaver]

I read through the comment you replied to multiple times and I’m not seeing any mortal peril referenced. What are you referring to?

[ip26]

all risk comes with some small chance of tragedy

This part. I’m not going to assume what that person meant, but there’s always a few people about in these conversations lamenting that when they were six, they were certainly never hit by a car, and really you have to let your children take a few risks etc…

[xboxnolifes]

Every time someone drives their child somewhere, they are being put into a position of a small chance of tragedy. The chance of tragedy doesn't go away, only our perceptions of it. People seem to be more okay with dying with their child than their child dying away from them, so I guess that makes sense.