[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.