A recent video called “Why The Kids Need Stranger Things”[0] made exactly this point about the nostalgia of the Netflix series and how malls were a symbol of free-range kids[1]. Circumstances have changed so much that the creators assert Stranger Things could not be set in the present day.
The reason why free range parenting has gone down so much can be seen in the series.
There was a believable scene in which one kid bullied another into taking an almost certainly fatal jump into the quarry, and was only saved by paranormal means.
A world in which more free-range parenting is the norm inherently implies a world in which kids more often pay the consequences of their actions, which can be death or maiming.
We, as a society, do not seem to have a stomach for this, to the point where free-range parenting has been equated with neglect.
> There was a believable scene in which one kid bullied another into taking an almost certainly fatal jump into the quarry, and was only saved by paranormal means.
I watched it last night so it's fresh in my mind. It was paranormal events that setup this scene and made the bully go to such extremes to begin with.
It was also one of the worst, least believable scenes in the series. The fact that he was so willing to jump, the threats the bully was giving, etc. It was just weak writing in an attempt to create a dramatic reunion. When your 11 years old it takes some time to build up the courage to make a safe jump from something like a bridge, let alone a possible fatal jump.
It was believable to me because they had shown adults talking about people that had bragged to have jumped from there. I remember as a kid thinking that everything others bragged about was true and I was just lame. I totally see him thinking it would be no more dangerous than jumping from a bridge, just a bit scarier.
That's so weird. We in northern europe have no problem in letting our kids roam (Finland, but I presume the situation is similar in at least scandinavia).
I would guess that even in northern Europe there has probably been a substantial reduction of kids’ roaming distance and time spent unsupervised compared to 2 or 3 generations ago. This seems to be a worldwide trend (if not to the same extent in every place).
In the US one of the big problems is a culture of legal liability for every possible thing, and a general culture of fearfulness, excuse-making, and ass-covering instead of allowing moderate informed risks and dealing responsibly with the consequences. If you have too steep a slide, some kid is going to fall off and the parents will sue and bankrupt your town. If you let kids ride the bus by themselves, 1 kid in a million is going to get kidnapped and the parents will sue. Etc.
But there are surely other contributing factors: more families with 2 working parents (and more single parents) and in general less adults “hanging out” with an eye on their neighborhoods, a general degradation of community relationships and civic institutions, smaller family sizes (it’s much easier to chaperone 1 kid than 6), more middle-class angst about maximizing children’s future earning potential, more media attention on rare tragedies, communication improvements leading to less spontaneous social gatherings and more virtual socialization, increasing reliance on car transport and inaccessibility of unsupervised play spaces (especially undeveloped land), etc.
I think this is a big one, and not just rare tragedies but distant ones. 40 years ago you heard about the bad things in your village, now the 24 hour news cycle feeds a constant stream of fear from all over the world.
Yes there is a trend to 'protect' kids from everything. But in my country there is a clear counter-culture advocating agianst what they call 'rubber stone' society where everything is done to avoid possible danger.
There are now ads running on TV saying 'let boys be boys', let them climb trees, go out and explore etc...
We in the US didn't a few decades ago, either. Politicians and the media (with different motivations) deliberately creating false impressions of increasing risks mostly did that in.
I grew up in them Scandinavian countries, and my brother and I often spent the entire weekend outside out of sight from my parents. My earliest memory of that is when I was 7 years old.
I now live in the US and have kids about the same age.
The issue is not homogeneous culture or any other thing people with no brains come up with, but traffic density, at least in my case.
Where I used to live we could roam without having to cross dangerous streets. Where I live now, there's traffic everywhere and cars don't give a shit about people on foot, so my kids do not roam.
When I was a kid, we used to have vast areas to play safely. I just looked on Google Maps and the cross-country ski route we used to regularly take on weekends is 4 miles long. We had to cross ONE street. I used to bike about 10 miles one way, by myself, when I was a little older and keep on bike lanes the entire trip.
We also used to have large play areas in the backyard of every home I ever had. The bigger ones were the size of a typical New York borough block. We didn't have to leave our homes to get to a playground, or a park...we had one right outside of our door.
Obviously this sort of thing is easier to do / plan for when the entire country has less people than the city of New York.
My single greatest fear for letting my kid walk free when she's old enough to is that she'll be killed by a driver. This is compounded by the fact that as long as you say "Sorry mate didn't see you" it's OK to kill people with your car
(weird really - can you do that for killing people by any other means?)
My wife and I have semi-seriously considered moving to northern Scandinavia for both this reason and its comparative likelihood of remaining a decent (well, bearable, if only just) place to live in a clathrate-gun scenario.
There was a case not far from where I live where a driver turning right mowed down a 4-year-old child walking with his grandmother on a CROSSWALK. He wasn't running or anything like that, just crossing the street. The child died. They didn't even charge the driver. Fucking ridiculous. It was 100% the driver's fault. New York Times published an article written by the child's mother who questioned the logic of first of all call it an accident and second of all how the driver wasn't charged with anything, not even reckless driving.
I don't know how to change the mindset. A kid in san diego was killed in a bike lane while I lived there and everyone poured sympathy on the DRIVER, ffs, and blamed the kid for being there. It makes one weep, especially because people (Americans, at least) accept it.
Forgive me, but it seems that you're taking a common argument (X policy that works in Scandinavia won't work in the US because the US isn't homogeneous) and extending it to some sort of xenophobic dog-whistle (i.e. kids in the US can't roam because the US isn't homogeneous). Is there a more charitable way to interpret your comment?
Definitely an interesting point that children have less freedom today. But it's a bit of a stretch to say that this is what's causing the "safe space mentality". The narrator says the good old days of free range parenting led children to be more prone to questioning authority, which is healthy. If anything, you could argue that young people's assertion of their right to "safe spaces" is a form of rebellion in itself.
The video comes from FEE though, so it's obviously got a political bias behind it that explains it's opposition to safe spaces. People on the more socially conservative end of the spectrum don't seem to understand safe spaces and how they are actually a rejection of authority, rather than an appeal to authority. The notion of authority used is simply more subtle.
Some marginalised groups have made a very valid claim that there is a built-in hierarchy in many social norms that constitute acceptable behaviour in mainstream society. And that they tend to be on the shittier end of the deal in that hierarchy. Therefore, rather than acquiesce to the ordinary way of doing things and just accepting the negative effects of living in a world that doesn't value them as it does others, they have decided to carve out a space where they can assert their own version of what should be culturally acceptable. And they ask that others respect their desire for such a space and not enter it without also changing their behaviour and rejecting the toxic standard practices.
It's quite simple, it's like the cultural equivalent of libertarians trying to carve out a piece of land where they can keep the government out and live in their hyper-capitalist utopias. It's inherently anti-authoritarian. Anyone who goes into a safe space is voluntarily choosing to abide by its standards, no one is forcing them to.
[0]: https://youtu.be/qHl-BQXYg3s
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-range_parenting