The title blames "helicopter parenting" while the actual study blames the lack of independent mobility:
> Considerable research, mostly in Europe, has focused on children’s independent mobility (CIM), defined as children’s freedom to travel in their neighborhood or city without adult accompaniment
Isn't that lack of independent mobility largely caused by car-centric urban planning? Children and teens can't safely roam the streets on foot or by bike because of the awful amount of car traffic everywhere. Urban sprawl is the direct cause of car dangerous and noisy car traffic everywhere, as well as the reason why interesting places are often too far apart to walk between them.
I'm currently trying to find a place to live where my kids can become more independent and it's surprisingly difficult to find places like that in Canada. Suburbia may have little traffic, but they are also devoid of "third places" where teens can be teens.
I would say the root cause of children's independent mobility (or lack thereof) is parents' perception of how dangerous it would be to give kids that freedom - a perception that may or may not be strongly correlated with the real risk profile. Of course there's also a social angle, if all other parents gawp at you or even threaten to report you to social services for giving your kids more freedom, then you're most likely going to give in.
Car-centric planning is definitely a contributing factor, but I can think of others such as crime (or fear of crime), legislation (if it's a crime to let kids under X years unsupervised in public). Suburban sprawl has mang negative effects but it can sometimes produce walkable areas and quiet residential roads that it's safe to play on too. You might need a car to get to any capital-p Places, but you can kick a football around the local cul-de-sac just fine.
You can also have places where there's safe and reliable public trnasport, and still have heated debates in the local parent-teacher association about when it's safe to let your kid ride on their own.
This is what it is. There were just as many cars when I was little (6 or 7 years old) but I could walk anywhere I wanted with my friends "exploring" most of the day and no one even had the thought that we would be kidnapped or murdered. Fast forward and I am not even sure about letting my 16 year old walk by himself 3 blocks down the road to the corner store. And it isn't about cars! Also, I would say that there was likely just as much violence in the 70's but we didn't hear about every single instance, now we do through social media and the news so it seems pervasive. Also, I will say that nearly all the kids I know very much prefer playing video games or being on a laptop or phone rather than out walking through the tick infested woods like I used to love.
>FYSA: There is almost certainly lower violent crime risk and higher car risk than when you were growing up.
I agree with you and that is why I said that the problem is that we hear about every single instance now and really didn't back then unless it was a "big deal" or involved someone we knew.
>So why are you not sure about letting your 16 year old walk by himself?
I am more worried about someone fucking with him and recording it for online points (upvotes, likes, whatever) than I am about him being run over by a car. Also there is a lot more very aggressive homeless people about now than when I was young (there were zero that I remember) and their unpredictability is an issue.
> parents' perception of how dangerous it would be to give kids that freedom - a perception that may or may not be strongly correlated with the real risk profile
I would guess correlated with the advent of the 24-hour cable news cycle.
I've head many people express that, but I can't imagine it. I think people had different concepts of child-rearing then. Because no one was doing it differently.
But as for caring less: having a child is like cutting out a chunk of your physical heart, and using it to make this baby. The mere thought of harm to your child feels like torture. That's why us parents develop the no-sense-of-humor disadvantage regarding our kids.
I get your point, but I sort of disagree. Maybe "caring" in the abstract isn't the exact word for it, but I have friends who had 8, 10 or 11 mostly older siblings, and their parents definitely didn't give them as much thought or care as kids who had 0, 1 or 2 siblings. Like, they never coached a sports team, or helped with homework, or gave any impression that they were going to help pay for college, or attended school events. They kids basically on their own and partially raised by older siblings.
> Suburban sprawl has mang negative effects but it can sometimes produce walkable areas and quiet residential roads that it's safe to play on too
The population density in North American suburbs is too low to allow for children to comfortably walk or bike to their friend's homes, or to third places. They can't even walk to school, for goodness' sake.
More importantly, most people unsurprisingly live in the most densely populated areas, not in suburbs, and traffic there is awful, making it remarkably unpleasant to loiter, not to mention that there is hardly any public space to do so.
I'm talking from the perspective of a parent living in Toronto. It's a terrible place to raise independent children, and as a consequence you never see them around, and instead they are always being chauffeured from one structured activity to the next with zero agency or self-sufficiency.
> The population density in North American suburbs is too low to allow for children to comfortably walk or bike to their friend's homes, or to third places.
That's just your point of view, a point of view which results in helicopter parenting. When I was a kid I used to ride my bike 5 miles down country lanes into the nearby suburbs to play with my friends. The only rule was that I had to be back by dinner. This sort of thing remains a viable option for kids today, except their parents are too anxious to permit it.
And forget the "the roads are too dangerous now" argument. My elderly parents still walk those same roads with their dog every day. It's fine. They don't use reddit/etc so they aren't pumped full of hyperbolic propaganda about how dangerous walking in America is, and consequently, they're able to enjoy it just fine.
> That's just your point of view, a point of view which results in helicopter parenting
> They don't use reddit/etc so they aren't pumped full of hyperbolic propaganda about how dangerous walking in America is, and consequently, they're able to enjoy it just fine
Here's some of the data and context that informs my opinion.
I'm used to walking about 30-35Km a week in suburban Toronto. Close calls with cars happen on a weekly basis. I wear hi-viz clothing, look both ways, all that jazz.
You know who doesn't look both ways? Cars making right turns. Pedestrian safety statistics published every year in my area very much support this viewpoint [0].
As for the risk involved, if again you look at actual statistics you will find that pedestrian deaths have been increasing sharply in North America with the advent of ever larger vehicles like lifted pickup trucks and SUV [1]. This is happening in spite of far fewer people choosing to walk these days [2].
As for the volume of car traffic, it's worse than ever in my area [3].
So, with actual data at hand, it does look like walking is rather more dangerous than it used to be. You can look up cycling statistics if you feel like. Hint: they are much worse.
I’d also add that phones and in-car TVs are a huge distraction which didn’t used to be there. Something like 20-30% of people are driving around looking at their phones now and it’s common to see people watching videos on a phone or things like Tesla’s gigantic dashboard TVs. It seems like this is understood to be related to the rise in fatalities but the regulators don’t want to acknowledge it since they’d have to do something politically unpopular if they did.
> I'm used to walking about 30-35Km a week in suburban Toronto. Close calls with cars happen on a weekly basis.
Can you expand on how exactly do you have close calls with cars ever, let alone weekly?
I don't walk as much as you but a decent amount. I've had close calls with cars... literally never. I'm having trouble picturing how that happens?
I walk on sidewalks, zero chance of close calls with cars there. For busy streets, I cross on pedestrian crossings which are protected by red lights, so no issue there either. On quiet streets I cross wherever, but only after making sure no traffic, so no issue.
So how does it happen? Are you forced to walk on the street due to lack of sidewalks? That's the only scenario I'm able to think about.
Drivers backing from driveways without looking for pedestrians.
Drivers making right turns on red only looking left for oncoming traffic without also looking right for pedestrians.
Drivers speeding at crossings that have poor visibility due to hedges.
In winter, cars driving too fast relative to the amount of traction they actually have on icy streets.
While cycling, by far the most common problem I have is drivers passing me far too close. It only takes a very small percentage of drivers to drive carelessly to put people at serious risk of injury.
> Drivers backing from driveways without looking for pedestrians.
> Drivers speeding at crossings that have poor visibility due to hedges.
Both of these are things you should be watching for. When approaching driveways, look for people inside the car, that means the car might move. And a crossing with poor visibility for the driver probably has poor visibility for the walker as well, so don't cross until you're sure there is no traffic.
If you truly are having close calls with cars all the time, it might be benefitial to walk more defensively. I can see having close calls in the above if one isn't paying attention, but not otherwise. Always make eye contact with drivers to get a sense of what they're doing, they might wave you to go first or you can wave them to go if in doubt.
> Drivers making right turns on red only looking left for oncoming traffic without also looking right for pedestrians.
Wait, if they are turning on red it means the pedestrian also has a red.
> In winter, cars driving too fast relative to the amount of traction they actually have on icy streets.
That I could see. Thankfully no winter as such here (silicon valley).
> While cycling
Yes, cycling is much more dangerous, since you're sharing the road with cars. I still bike a lot but yes, it's more dangerous.
Walking shouldn't be though, since you have a separate sidewalk and as long as you pay attention when crossing.
> Wait, if they are turning on red it means the pedestrian also has a red.
Not sure about OP but the dangerous situations I've seen when car turning on red was not looking around untill it reached the cross traffic that was a danger to him. Happily driving without looking through pedestrian crossing perpendicular to the direction he was comming from that now had green light.
> Both of these are things you should be watching for
Not sure what makes you think that isn't the case already. There is only so much a pedestrian can do when cars have tinted windows and they are parked right at the limit of the sidewalk, as they often are, which means that as soon as the car starts moving it will hit any pedestrian there.
> > Drivers making right turns on red only looking left for oncoming traffic without also looking right for pedestrians.
> Wait, if they are turning on red it means the pedestrian also has a red
Think of an intersection with the shape of a plus sign, where the driver is going North and the pedestrian is coming from the East. The driver only looks at the West because that's where the oncoming traffic is.
This issue is particularly common in T-shaped intersections with or without street lights.
> Walking shouldn't be though
Cycling shouldn't be dangerous either, yet here we are. A very small percentage of poor drivers is all it takes.
> > Both of these are things you should be watching for
> Not sure what makes you think that isn't the case already.
Obviously I don't know you, but what made me think that is your assertion that you are having close calls with cars every week. Something needs to be done differently if you are almost getting hit by a car every week.
The most dangerous roads are multilane roads e.g. highways: "among 60 roads that had the most pedestrian deaths during 2001-2016, all were roads with adjacent commercial retail space, nearly all were multilane roads"https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/pedestrian_safety/i...
If you simply choose to follow basic common sense, then these population-level statistics don't represent the actual risk to yourself. You're getting yourself freaked out by numbers that don't actually apply to you (or shouldn't if you have any sense.)
> Most pedestrian result from pedestrians doing stupid things like walking in the middle of the road at night wearing black while drunk
According to the local statistics I have [0], in something like 75% of car collisions the pedestrian had the right of way, and the immense majority of them occur at intersections rather than in the middle of the road.
> 60% of pedestrian deaths occur on high-capacity urban roads
And how does that compare to the amount of walking that happens on one area vs the other?
> Men account for 70% of pedestrian deaths, because men are more inclined to have a severe disregard for their own safety
What percentage of pedestrian Km are walked by men vs women?
> You're getting yourself freaked out by numbers that don't actually apply to you (or shouldn't if you have any sense.)
I am concerned for my safety because I actually walk and have noticed how often drivers don't even see me, in spite of wearing hi viz clothing. The statistics merely confirm what the risk I already noticed empirically: what sort of vehicles are dangerous to pedestrians (SUVs and pickups), where the danger occurs (busy intersections) and whose fault it is (predominantly drivers).
Finally, it there is an inherent contradiction in the simplistic narrative that people barely walk anymore "even though nothing has changed": there is far more car traffic now precisely because people barely walk anymore.
Walking doesn't kill, cars kill, so more traffic means more dangerous streets. It is rather obvious.
> Most pedestrian result from pedestrians doing stupid things, like walking in the middle of the road at night wearing black while drunk.
A ridiculous notion not supported by anything you've linked. Somehow it's the most vulnerable road users that are at fault?
If that's the case, then why are pedestrian death rates in the US so bad compared to Europe? Do european pedestrians do fewer stupid things? Do they drink less?
> The most dangerous roads are multilane roads e.g. highways: "among 60 roads that had the most pedestrian deaths during 2001-2016, all were roads with adjacent commercial retail space, nearly all were multilane roads"
If there's adjacent commercial space, it's not a highway, it's a stroad. The article explains it quite well:
"There’s no single explanation for why it’s getting more dangerous to walk on US roads, but there are a few major contributing factors. One is deadly road design."
"A stroad is the worst of both worlds, and is incredibly dangerous to pedestrians. The data bears this out: In 2021, the latest GHSA report says, 60.4 percent of pedestrian fatalities happened on such roads, which often lack infrastructure that would make it safe for pedestrians, such as good lighting and frequent crosswalks. As a consequence, many of the people killed last year were struck at night."
"Another major factor contributing to climbing pedestrian fatalities is the American love affair with big vehicles. Over the last 20-plus years, US consumers have turned away from the small cars that used to dominate our roadways in favor of increasingly larger SUVs and light trucks. These larger, heavier vehicles create big blind spots and are more deadly to pedestrians when they strike them — especially children. From 2000 to 2019, smaller vehicles such as sedans dropped from 60 percent of all vehicles to around 40 percent, while the number of SUVs surged, from 10 percent to over 30 percent. In 2021, trucks and SUVs made up more than 80 percent of new vehicle sales, and there’s little sign of that trend abating"
Personal responsibility isn't a useful concept when it comes to safety. Safety can only be achieved when the infrastructure is designed for it.
Putting up a speed limit sign isn't going to slow down a vehicle, shining a red light at it is not going to stop it, a line on the road isn't going to prevent a vehicle from crossing it. That's how pedestrians and cyclists die.
Reducing lanes down to one will stop overtaking and narrowing lanes will slow vehicles down, as will introducing turns and twists. Putting up a physical barrier between the road and a cycle path will prevent cars from intruding on the cyclists. Safety by design, not by wishful thinking.
See all that red? That's what it's like for most people in the US, minus all the sidewalks. You might be lucky enough to live in a place like I do where there's enough green and orange and walkable shoulders to make walking and cycling viable if you live in the right neighborhood or close to a bus stop.
Also take special note of the situation on Prince Avenue. It has clearly marked, wide, dedicated bicycle lanes you can easily make out on a satellite view and it's still orange. People have died there, recently. You can at least get a bicycle across with the racks on buses. Most people don't have buses.
People still walk it and ride it. And people die often enough doing it to validate the concern.
That link centers the map on Prince Ave in Athens-Clarke County. Look that road up, it's a 4 lane road. I would never bike on that road, of course it's dangerous. If you avoid roads like that, you avoid most of the risk. It's common sense but a substantial portion of adult male cyclists obstinately refuse to apply such common sense because they'd rather die as some sort of martyr for their right of way than stay alive.
In fact most of the roads on the map you just linked to are marked as green. If I zoomed out and the first red road I saw was Broad Street. That is four lane road as well. No surprise. Multi-lane roads are very dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians, so you should tell your children to avoid them. That's what I've always done, so I have much less to worry about than the crudest population-level statistics would suggest.
> It's common sense but a substantial portion of adult male cyclists obstinately refuse to apply such common sense because they'd rather die as some sort of martyr for their right of way than stay alive
Let's stop for a moment and reflect on these words. Notice the implausibility of what this person is saying. Observe how they place the blame squarely on the person bearing the risk, rather on the inadequate infrastructure or the pervasiveness of the mode of transportation that causes the most fatalities per Km. Not even a faint attempt at understanding what could be behind the cyclist's behavior, other than painting them as zealots.
> The population density in North American suburbs is too low to allow for children to comfortably walk or bike to their friend's homes, or to third places. They can't even walk to school, for goodness' sake.
That makes no sense; population densities were even lower 150 years go, yet kids walked to school.
A lot of it is how those suburbs are laid out. To walk to a point that is a 100 meter beeline, you may have to navigate 500 meters of labyrinth, to avoid going through people's backyards.
Could it be that the schools are larger, serving a larger catchment? I.e. schools in suburbia are perhaps modeled too closely after schools in denser urban areas.
> The population density in North American suburbs is too low to allow for children to comfortably walk or bike to their friend's homes, or to third places. They can't even walk to school, for goodness' sake.
All of North America is quite a big area. Clearly as a generalization that's incorrect.
Here in a very suburban town in northern California one can walk around no problem. Easy walk from this neighborhood to the middle school. My office window faces the street of the school and when classes end I see hundreds of kids exit the school and they all walk off in various directions, a smaller number bike or skateboard.
I would largely agree with this viewpoint having grown up in the US in a medium sized city. Everything was a few miles away, public transit was present but not reliable (missing a bus meant waiting 40+ minutes for the next one), no bike lanes or paths except for one outside of the city, etc. as a child bikes were our only option to meet friends but this meant biking in traffic or on sidewalks, neither pleasant or convenient.
While i survived fine, it was in spite of the childhood, not because of it. I still don’t want to bike in a city unless they have well defined and protected bike lanes; too many close calls, not so close calls that ended up in disaster, bike theft, etc.
After moving to Europe and seeing how mobile kids are without cars even, i wish i had that growing up, as just seems so much nicer to be able to meet friends and do things without needing a car or having to survive biking in traffic.
I’m glad i had internet very early to make hanging out with friends easier and keeping up with what’s going on way easier. instead of having to do a bunch of phone calls or go visit and make plans, we could just do IRC or AIM or Skype chats and it’s much like it is nowadays for planning and joining/declining meetups. I do wonder what my teens years would have looked like if we had the same public transport options as most EU cities do.
> After moving to Europe and seeing how mobile kids are without cars even, i wish i had that growing up, as just seems so much nicer to be able to meet friends and do things without needing a car or having to survive biking in traffic.
Same, but in regards to moving to NYC recently. Seeing just random groups of kids who look no older than middle schoolers riding on subway along with everyone else and just going about their day and visiting places on weekends makes me feel happy for them. Just knowing that people are able to have that kind of experiences I only could dream of having as a child. Makes me feel hopeful, knowing that at least some of the kids in get to grow up like this.
I am very confident that helicopter parenting was the biggest hindrance when it came time for me to get out into the real world. The level of preparedness that those kids growing up in NYC will have is a great advantage. Quite a few of my friends who grew up in NYC (and other places with similar cultures around public transport usage; ofc almost all of those other ones were outside of the US) definitely have that “just built different” feel to them. And that feel mostly extends to things like going to places, trying new things, independence/drive, etc., which all feel like extensions of those experiences I described above.
Not trying to say “NYC-grown people are special, and people from the rest of the US is all the same and lame,” that’s entirely false. Lots of different parts of the US with people who grew up there having their own unique culture and “built different” feel (SoCal, south-east, north-east, PNW, Texas, etc.). But in terms of that independence and just being able to go places and do things on your own from a very early age (way before you can get a driver’s permit/license in any US state), it absolutely feels like it gives people something that is very difficult to replicate otherwise.
America was no less a car culture in the 80’s and yet we had much more mobility. I was walking to school by myself as a six year old, and everyone else did. Now your parents did.
The more people travel by car, the worse the experience is for everybody else.
For example, as more people drive their kids to school, fewer people become comfortable letting their own kids walk because the traffic around the school is so much worse. The actual danger, not just the perception of it, has increased. And besides the increased danger, there is also noise, peer pressure, etc.
Without better policies the situation will not improve.
I just don’t think it has anything to do with cars. I think the movie Mystic River did far more to stop people letting their kids travel around unsupervised.
If anything, all sorts of traffic deaths are much lower than they were when I was a kid.
I’ve heard it theorized that the reason we are less tolerant is that we have fewer children. It was once not uncommon, not even that long ago, for a family to have several children, and one did not make it through childhood.
It was still tragic, of course, but I think people find it significantly more tragic if you have one child, and that child does not make it through childhood.
But I definitely agree that both are factors. I think the perception comes largely from the Internet. Everyone thinks crime is going up, even when it is going down, and the only reason that makes any sense is that we simply hear more about it.
The actual risk has changed. The risk vector is different though. Where before the risk was from a predator, now the risk is from a “Karen” calling CPS on you as well as the social costs of other people judging you as a bad parent.
That had to follow the change in societal norms though. When I was a kid if you called CPS because somebody let their kid walk to school they wouldn’t have done anything.
The norms changed due to different assessment of risk, then, perhaps other risks followed
CPS has had massive overreach in power. Somehow they are now both able to make life difficult for decent parents and are just as bad or worse at protecting at risk youth. I think they probably realized that they would have an easier time going after struggling but generally decent parents vs going after complete degenerates.
>Isn't that lack of independent mobility largely caused by car-centric urban planning?
If it is, then comparing EU versus US should show a clear difference, as US cities are much, much more car-centric than most (any?) EU city.
Personally, I don't see “children’s independent mobility” as a problem (I live in Denmark). At least, not an issue that is any different from when I was a child. The only major difference I see is that kids aren't allowed the same mobility by helicopter parents (everything is too dangerous these days, even though in reality it is better).
I grew up in a rural area as well but in my mind it is no different or possibly worse - farther distances meant biking was a necessity versus walking, zero bike infrastructure so I had to be commingled with vehicular traffic, and that traffic was going much faster than in a city due to the wide openness of the roads and no need to stop for far distances. I think it was far more dangerous.
I think you need to give the country, as the infrastructure in a rural area varies widely.
In Britain every road is for cars, and in rural areas they can travel at 80km/h on them. There will be footpaths within a village, but not necessarily on the roads between villages. Cycling on footpaths is illegal, including for teenagers.
Other countries (Netherlands, Denmark, probably more) can have roads only for use by residents or farmers plus cyclists/pedestrians (e.g. gates at each end), or roads with much lower speed limits, or guaranteed footpaths. I've visited but not lived in a rural area like this, so I'm not sure how well it works in practise.
Survivorship bias. The rural kids riding their bikes all over the place who unfortunately got eliminated by cars didn't get to write hacker news posts.
My own 6 year old has to cross a busy main road to get to school. Have I damaged him mentally by personally making sure he gets across twice a day, or have I mitigated the low risk of a catastrophic outcome?
Rural places can be, and should be, one of the best places for independent mobility in kids, but unfortunately are often the worst, since you have no footpaths (aka sidewalk or pavement) and the roads are full of high speed traffic with no shoulder.
> Suburbia may have little traffic, but they are also devoid of "third places" where teens can be teens.
Could you unpack this? I grew up in a small town, moved to a very walker/public transit friendly city for 10 years, and now live in a close suburb. I didn’t really see any extra third spaces geared towards teens in the city. In fact, I rarely saw kids out on the street or congregating anywhere. In the suburb I am in now, they are everywhere, biking to each others houses and hanging out in the town center.
> Suburbia may have little traffic, but they are also devoid of "third places" where teens can be teens.
When I was a teen there was no pre-made concept of "third places". We made our own. Most of the time, this meant being outside doing something active. We didn't want to be inside. We didn't want to watch TV or even binge-play video games.
We created our own ways of keeping us busy, entertained, socially connected, etc.
Let's not forget, scarcity breeds creativity and innovation.
You may not have used them but there were definitely third spaces for children and teens in the form of play areas and parks. Add skate parks to that list if you grew up in the early 00s, and probably something else before that.
Maybe. But we got on our bikes and went there. We'd sonetime bike 20 miles in a day...for kicks. Just to bike.
There's a third place in every kid's head - and every adult's head - if we don't exercise that muscle (so to speak) we will lose it.
The evidence seems to say we are losing it. The adults, and in turn the kids.
Fwiw, I liken the situation to Legos. When I was a kid you bought "raw" legos and then created whatever TF we could imagine.
No. Wrong. Answers.
Today, Legos are highly kit-focused. That is, build THIS. There is a right and wrong answer. Ffs Legos today intentionally mitigate the opportunity for kids to color outside the lines. Just the though of that straight-jacket is demoralizing.
p.s. Yes we occasionally went to a skateboard park. But we also built our own ramp for when we couldn't. We also found a drainage ditch in the woods off Rt 195 that we frequented in the summer. 100% adult-free.
The "Dogtown and Z-Boys" story could never happen today. Not to belittle depression but that's depressing.
Lego still sells buckets of bricks. When we take our kid to the store, he wants the kits in pop culture themes. When he's home playing, he wants more basic blocks. Classic example of industry selling to our wants, not our needs. But good news, it's lego: the kits rarely stay assembled longer than a few days.
Children being indoctrinated into brand-culture is another horror show to discuss some other time.
But to your point, not only don't they get to color outside the lines, they're assimilating into the Culture of Consumption and the Culture of You-Are-The-Brands-You-Buy.
I think you missed my point about lego. My kid builds the whatever-theme set, gets some satisfaction for completing the task, and then within a few days has used the pieces to make something of entirely new. He "consumes" the brand-culture product a few times a year when he gets kits as gifts or saves up to buy them, and for the rest of the year, uses the pieces to color outside of the lines. This flexibility is pretty much unique to lego.
I've been curious watching the market after the lego patent expired. That market is dominated by rather intricate models [e.g., 1]. They aren't attached to big brands, because of the "nobody got fired for partnering with lego" effect, but the quality producers aren't doing buckets of bricks either. (On the other hand; as I write this, that Taj Mahal set is over 3k pieces for $76. The color is boring but holy heck that's a lot of (itty-bitty) parts!)
Unused land is fenced off and teens are chased away when they congregate now.
Actually, nevermind teens, even adults can't find third spaces now. There's vanishingly few places you can comfortably exist without being expected to pay something. The library might be the final remaining space like that, and my local one is sadly closing down.
That’s part of it. But a bigger part, at least in the United States, are laws that basically require you (or another adult) to supervise your child at all times until they are 12-15 depending on the state.
This is just so weird for me as a European. We were just roaming around I guess from age 6 or 7 onwards without parents.
Another factor though I think are pervasive use of smartphones. We could explore the world (80ies/90ies) and do the stupid stuff that kids do, without the risk that someone films it and shares it among peers, makes a meme about it, or whatever. I think at a certain age children's behaviors are much more controlled (or staged) nowadays as a result of the awareness that you could be filmed.
In some EU countries (Italy) it can be illegal until 14. The law didn’t change since the 40s, but since the end of the 90s judges have started considering the concept of “temporary abandonment” and suing parents who’re letting children out by themselves. Very shitty.
If you can tolerate the crazy politics and French, I grew up and live in Montreal central-ish neighborhoods, and have a very independent teen in high school who takes public transport or bikes to go just about everywhere in the city.
It's not always efficient, but teens have time (saving a few minutes by using a car would make me waste a ton of time).
Personally I have a car, but I bike most of the time to go downtown because it's 15-20 mins away and there are those new bike paths that are clean in winter too (and much faster/fun than driving).
In all the eu countries I've been, most cities or even local towns are car centric and I grew up in one.
Walkable options I've experienced:
Uk towns in the country with a large walkable area and plenty of shops (and I've heard about some spanish cities although I have not seen them) or London with frequent transport.
Even though my city was definitely car centric I could roam freely as a kid wherever I wanted by bike.
Since I was ~16 immigration from Africa, the middle east and balkans became a massive problem and every week there was someone getting knifed in the park in front of the train station.
I didn't lose my right to roam freely, but that's because I was already big enough.
I moved country (still eu unfortunately) and immigration is becoming a problem here as well. It's like when I was 16 all over again. In comparison, in my own home country my grandma stopped going out in the city centre because it's so dangerous.
It goes without saying I am not going to let my kids roam freely here.
How is it a signature of urban environments? I moved from the countryside to a city a few months ago and have already made more friends than I did in years in the country.
Urban sprawl is a feature of _suburban_ expansion at low density. It's exactly the opposite of a dense, connected urban environment. (1)
My kids spend a lot of time at the neighborhood park, as one example. It's within walking distance and we see a ton of families there. Density (with infrastructure like parks) creates opportunities for connection.
(1) from the Wikipedia article you cited, "Reid Ewing has shown that sprawl has typically been characterized as urban developments exhibiting at least one of the following characteristics: low-density or single-use development, strip development, scattered development, and/or leapfrog development (areas of development interspersed with vacant land)"
Right. Maybe I lost context, urban sprawl results in lack of independent mobility. Like you pointed out I use my local park frequently, see you there :)
> Isn't that lack of independent mobility largely caused by car-centric urban planning?
I think this probably leaning into a bias more than anything. If this were true we'd see data going back starting from the 20s that begins to correlate to this.
What's more likely is that each generation has become successively less likely to let their kids walk to school on their own, ride bikes through town, go adventuring, etc. Combine that with that there's often limitations on spaces kids can use. I remember a lot of parking lots wouldn't let kids loiter, malls didn't want us hanging around unless we were buying, and even being in the woods by a certain time was considered suspicious.
> Isn't that lack of independent mobility largely caused by car-centric urban planning?
Thats not much if an issue in Europe. Here the problem is the risk of violence and crime. Particularity in western europe, walking alone at night is risky even as an adult. For kids it would be equally risky during the day.
Maybe I'm biased, but in my opinion crime risk is higher in the US, where you have "no-go-zones" than ok most parts of Western Europe, where this concept does not really exist.
This concept absolutely exists. First time I witnessed it was in Denmark and Sweden with plenty of stories from locals that were beaten or threatened by local gangs for simply entering their "area" and the police did nothing. Then there are stories I heard from Paris, and Berlin.
However, overall, all areas except maybe small towns and villages pose sufficient risk for children.
Edit: I dont think it’s because of “refugees” as someone else wrote, I think it’s a policing issue.
I'm a Boomer. As you hear about, we had total freedom on weekends, as long as we were home for meals. Our bikes were our only limits. But we did some crazy, reckless stuff, too.
My son is five (youngest by 33 years); we don't let him do any such thing.
I got excited when I saw something about helicopters. There are hardly ever any articles about helicopters on HN. I have a commercial helicopter license and almost 900 hours of combined helicopter and airplane flight time. If any extra rich people in the bay area or Sacramento want to buy a heli I will be your personal pilot available 24/7. Helis can go almost anywhere. I love to fly but it is hard to fly them unless you have a lot of money. You can get a used Robinson R-44 4 seater for about $500k. Maintenance and insurance are expensive but no insurance is required if you pay cash. Let me know.
i did an open door heli flght in Kauai, Hawaii - as well as an over night Tokyo ride. Both were unforgettable. And I'm definately done dancing with the devil!
I'm not sophisticated enough to know for sure, but I wouldn't give that much extra credit for airplane hours. For example, if I thought that 500 helicopter hours was sufficient to entrust my life to someone, I wouldn't take someone with 300, just because he had 200 (or even 300 or 400) hours flying a completely different type of craft.
If it were going in the other direction, I might be more likely to be accommodating, since my sense is that helicopters are harder to master than airplanes. But I'm no expert here, and I would definitely ask around to see if my understanding is correct.
If I were to say combined 5 years of professional experience in rust + C++, employers would definitely want to see the breakdown, unless they really don't care if it's 0+5.
I think there’s a certain point at which you are considered safe to fly by yourself? Most commercial pilots seem to have hundreds to thousands of hours of combined flying time.
> I love to fly but it is hard to fly them unless you have a lot of money.
I have a comfortable amount of money, and I have been certified to fly some small airplanes, including one turbojet model, yet helicopters still elude me - it's just so much harder. Much respect to you sir.
Just my personal experience working as a psychologist with kids: The kids who were overly protected had about the same amount of problems as the kids from seriously neglected homes. So when I want to make my case for NOT overprotecting kids, I say: "If you really want to damage your kid: Protect them from all adversity."
I do think that the whole "suicide is increasing" trope is seldom put in context. Of course, it's a serious issue. But the number is relatively stubbornly just hanging around 5-15 per 100k for all nations for hundreds of years. So when people say stuff like "suicide among teenagers is skyrocketing," I roll my eyes, because I know they think THEY know the cause of the supposed epidemic of suicide. The absolute risk of suicide has been almost strangely stable across culture and time (as a population rate).
By contrast, it is so good to see that death by drowning and car accidents have plummeted over the last 50 years.
I had to read this twice, because it seemed like you said that overprotective, and neglective parents have the same outcomes, but I think you are mostly trying to say that parents which are neither overprotective nor neglective have a lower rate of issues right?
I can try to elaborate, but my claims (and they are just claims), should be interpreted just as narrowly as you would when reading code, because changing even one little thing breaks the message:
In the context of: "The kids I meet as a clinical psychologist":
The ratio of kids "damaged" by neglect and impoverished homes, versus the kids that were struggling with anxiety or apathy caused by overprotection, was about 50-50.
This resulted in me spending as much time strengthening the social network around neglected kids, as I spent trying to get parents to stop overprotecting kids.
That doesn't mean that overprotection is as bad as neglect. There are SO many variables in play. For instance: Overprotective parents might also be over-represented in the mental health services, because they are much faster to ask for referrals. For instance, if 10% of the population is neglected, and 1% is clinicaly-overprotected, but the overprotecting parents get referred at 10x the rate, they will make up about the same amount of cases in a clinic.
Based on my anecdotal experience, here are my hypotheses:
Given a normal distribution of "overprotection," the top 1% will be at serious risk of mental health problems.
Overprotection is easier to fix, as kids from impoverished homes are statistically at both an economic and cognitive disadvantage. As such, overprotection i a more unnecessary source suffering.
All things being equal, I think neglect is a stronger risk factor than overprotection
Thank you for a more nuanced reply - I did get half way through something like "but surely abuse is worse than over protection" but it did not seem to add much to the discussion - thank you for actually adding to the discussion
You did mention this, but I think it deserves more weight, that kids from disadvantaged groups would be less likely (by at least an order of magnitude from my own perception) so it would skew your numbers by at least a factor of 10.
Overprotective parents are much more likely to reach for a doctor whereas neglected kids are unlikely to see one until referred by the cops or school or such.
>overprotective, and neglective parents have the same outcomes
I think that is what they were saying; I've seen the stat elsewhere, that extremely spoiling children produces just as bad outcomes on average as neglecting them.
OP said same amount of problems not the same problems or same outcome. As in, sheltered kids will fail as much, becoming alcoholics, criminals, depressed and frustrated with not accomplishing things their parents made easier for them.
> By contrast, it is so good to see that death by drowning and car accidents have plummeted over the last 50 years.
Yes, less deaths are obviously a positive. However, could this be because of helicopter'ing adults? From kids not being allowed to be kids and put themselves in adverse places and face tough decisions?
Mom won't let Johnny drive, she drives instead.
Dad won't let Jane go out with friends on a camping trip.
Those will save lives, yes? Adversity by definition means risk. Is it possible that eventally these kids will grow up and in say 20 years become adult suicides or maybe don't go that far but are joy-less dysfunctional (?) adults? And eventually they pass that "DNA" along to their kids?
Helicopter parenting has longer term implications that we have yet to face. We can't have adversity without risk.
I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Some reduction is probably because of changes in protective styles of parents. But I think that the reduction of deaths due to car accidents is primarily driven by safety standards and better cars/roads. While the reduction in drowning is probably closer linked to parenting style. But also this is probably related to regulation.
I think what's most annoying about overprotection is not when people demand that the child should use a flotation vest while on a boat, but when they demand that other kids shouldn't be allowed to bring peanuts to school, because their kids have anxiety about nuts after a minor allergic reaction earlier in life (actual case I had).
> But I think that the reduction of deaths due to car accidents is primarily driven by safety standards and better cars/roads.
Do we see that across the board? My impression is accidents are up due to distractions (i.e., phones). Youth are notorious heavy users of their devices. If their deaths are down it's not from safer roads.
I don't think that the implication is that "helicopter parenting" is doing it. The article posted by GP says this (and provides references):
"This has been attributed to the widespread adoption of seat belts and appropriate child safety seats, the production of cars with improved safety standards, better constructed roads, graduated driver-licensing programs, and a focus on reducing teen drinking and driving"
We're talking about the same comment. "GP" means grandparent, in this case jtrn. I'm referring to the link in their own post [1]
The text in the linked article attributes the reason for having less deaths to safety standards, etc. In fact the same link mentions that people have been traveling more by car despite the reduction, not less.
fwiw, come to think of it, deaths is a false god metric. That is, accidents can increase but medical procedures can have improved to prevent deaths.
Nonetheless, in helicopter households moms and dads are certainly driving more.
p.s. We've both read plenty of studies based on bad data, bad procedures, bad analysis, etc. The topic comes up weekly on HN. One study does not a law make, nor is it grounds to dismiss the obvious.
Interesting that the study author attributes the decline in teen suicides from 1990 to 2005 to technology. [1]
In particular, he says that adults considered children (especially boys, who make up the large majority of teen suicides) to be knowledgeable about computers, which gave the kids agency.
I would have thought this would be obvious but I don’t see a single mention of it. The reason for helicopter parenting and a lack of independent mobile kids is the disappearance of stay at home moms. When I was a kid in the early 90’s we moved to a new neighbourhood with hundreds of families and kids my age. There were stay at home moms all over the place so everyone collectively felt safe letting kids roam during the day, especially in the afternoon when they got out of school until supper time and all day during the summer break.
What changed since then? The cost of housing shot through the roof! Now it’s extremely difficult to afford a house on a single income so stay at home moms are much rarer. This has also led to loneliness and depression for moms staying home with very young children and I believe a big part of that is due to a lack of other moms around to socialize with. So when the kids start school these moms rush back into the workforce and feel much better getting to socialize with other adults.
But all of this leads to neighbourhoods having a very different character during the day. With basically no friendly eyes around, the place seems much more dangerous and scary. Of course it also does not help that traffic has gone way up. My neighbourhood also has the (common) issue that there is more than one entrance/exit to main roads so there is a lot of through-traffic and people tend to drive way over the residential speed limits when they’re just passing through. This could be fixed by designing subdivisions as trees rooted at a main road, making through traffic impossible, but you can’t really retrofit a neighbourhood like that.
Nobody? All the solar stats are up and the right, IEA expects fossil fuel consumption will soon plateau, solar panel prices keep going down faster than experts predict, seas are getting flooded with windmill parks etc etc.
Sure, though there's an avalanche of horrible news too. The non-anthropogenic rise in methane suggests we may have triggered feedback loops we can't stop.
I don't see why you're getting downvoted. There is an ocean of difference between "we're on track to fix things" and "nobody's doing anything at all", yes, but it does nobody any good to pretend we haven't even gotten on the boat yet. They'll just reach the assumption that it's 100% hopeless.
Thanks. I was rather confused as well so I just assumed that it’s people who are so attached to their doomsday conviction they actively block good news.
Fwiw I see the extinction rebellion groups as a beacon of hope (even if they’re way more pessimistic than I am). I live in NL and as far as I can see their work is actually beginning to move the needle.
You don’t go sit on a highway and block all traffic with 200 people for a month straight if you believe it’s all futile anyway.
No, we haven't gotten on the boat. Who cares how dirty energy is when so much of it is wasted? Who cares if electricity comes from solar or wind, if you're still adding PFAS to any furniture and other dirty chemicals in all food supply chains.
Industrial lobbies (aka "green capitalism") are trying to frame the debate as a question of clean energies, but for decades scientists have known and studied that consuming less, and more durable products is the only way out of this global crisis. Another example, industrial organic agriculture (yes that's a thing) is still very damaging to the environment in many ways (eg. contributing to desertification of soils), while permaculture/agroforestry is good for everyone but less profitable.
So i replied to the original comment in good faith, but such arguments are usually pushed by industrialists who explicitly profit from destroying the environment and silencing the narratives of actual scientists and environmentalists. Capitalism is what destroyed everything (see also scientists naming this geological era "capitalocene"), and nothing it can produce it can fix the inherent death-bringing at its core.
Hey, I don't meet a lot of people like you in real life these days. What's your opinion of the concept of comparative advantage?
To me it's the "real" mathematical law from which capitalism spawns, but it breaks down at the extremes. If the AI paperclip maximizer can produce 10^100 paperclips a day, and I can only produce 1, it might make more sense to the maximizer to take my atoms apart and put them back together in a more optimal configuration - which of course is bad news for me. I figure an actual dissident probably has a stronger criticism than me, so I'm curious.
What you're saying is similar to claiming fixing a leak on your faucet is gonna fix the global water crisis we are starting to face.
Assuming you are in good faith, you are probably very uninformed about the state of the climate crisis, pollution crisis, and everything that comes along. We are far from the targets set by IPCC to ensure human survival, and they are one of the most optimistic organizations out there when it comes to projections, as some indicators are now much worse than their "worst scenario" projections.
Solar panels isn't gonna cut it. No single isolated change is gonna cut it. Nothing short of a global revolution tearing down industrial capitalism and consumerist culture. I mean, a solarpunk alternative sounds great, but is so far 100% unrealistic, while local-first permaculture-oriented anarchic societies have proved their worth/resilience throughout history/pre-history.
Oh, well if _that’s_ all it’ll take… you may as well stop talking or worrying about it and just enjoy your life since nothing short of a global extinction event will make a dent.
1. You’re responding to a straw man. I never said it’s all fixed and solved. I merely said that there’s a nonzero amount of people working on the solution, which even a turbo pessimist like you has got to agree with.
2. But to respond to said straw man anyway, I believe that you’re severely underestimating the single good thing about capitalism: it can cause exponential growth, in bad ways but also good. We’re now at the point where renewable energy can be cheaper than fossil fuels, and the gap is widening. Those evil nasty greedy capitalists who you despise so much are going to want in on that deal and once they do, there’s no stopping them (except for governments not giving out permits for solar parks and wind parks and so on). Investment will keep increasing, the technology will keep getting cheaper and more plentiful. There can be a huge demand and supply cycle for renewable energy spinning way out of control if only we let it.
Where I live (NL) the government is the single biggest bottleneck. They just decided against (!) allowing more solar parks on fields, they take up to a decade to OK wind parks in the North Sea etc etc. To say you want more of that bureaucratic mess, and less commercial investment in the solution, frankly, that’s insane to me.
I agree with you that capitalism caused this thing, but I believe that we’re so far out already that nothing but capitalism can move fast enough to fix it.
Growing up in the 1960s we all expected to die in the imminent nuclear holocaust. That was a relatively good thing because if we didn't most people were expected to perish from mass starvation by the year 2000 due to the global population bomb.
But yeah, kids today have it hard because their future looks bleak.
"Hey kids. You're inheriting a cluster fuck. There's hate, and war, and gloom & doom around every corner. But look, we give you...The Kardashians!!! And never forget, here's a never ending list of things you need to worry about...Don't go outside, it's dangerous. Eat this shite fake food and they worry about your heakth...and so on..."
But it's social media to blame??? That disconnect would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
I'm slightly confused because the chart shows a sharp decrease in suicides between 1994 and 2007 and then a gradual increase.
But neither theory (bad social media or helicopter parents) explains the curve. Did helicopter parenting get better between 1994 and 2007 and then get worse? Why did suicides increase between 1968 and 1994 and then start decreasing?
AITA for expecting a theory to explain the observed curve?
There is probably no single factor that totally explains the trend, but rather a multitude of contributing factors that will be extremely difficult to disentangle. Most of the world’s big headline problems are similar - most have no single smoking-gun root cause, but a whole bunch of factors that come together and interact in complex ways. We seek simple narratives, but that’s just not the way the world at large works.
Accordingly, I think “social media causes depression” and “social media doesn’t cause depression” could be equally bogus takes.
I think you have to look at the parents. Teenagers in 1990 were born around 1975, so their parents were born around 1945. (I'm not sure what the average age was when people had kids back then, but the ballpark should be right.)
For 90s and early 2000 teenagers, the parents were born post WW2, and had their formative teen or twenties years in the very liberal late 60s and early 70s. They experienced the shift from black pedagogy and strict morals to anti-authoritarian and liberal norms. They grew up in an opening and progressing society. I could imagine they passed on a certain optimism and openness to their children.
Contrast with the later generation, whose parents grew up in the Reagan and Thatcher times (keyword "no future"). I imagine those parents would be more pessimistic and protective on average.
I was born in 1984 and certainly my parents had that optimistic outlook ("ones kids are going to have it at least 50% better as their parents" was a widespread idea at that time). And I had a lot of freedom growing up that kids in the 2000s didn't have. Growing up in the somewhat optimistic 90s, I hope that my generation is going to be a "good" parent generation again...
Helicopter parenting was not (a very widespread?) thing til the age of smartphones (not meaning any causation), which started 2006, realistically for the masses 2010, or was it? Only learned or heard this term 2015-2020ish..
Thanks for the reference - indeed no. But it is also totally not my focus/interest, so how I meant it actually there was that when that term reached me, it must have already been much spread and likely something 5-10 years after its creation ;)
I am a victim of this and was depressed until, I took control of my life.
The worst part is, all of your life decision are taken by the parents and you feel at odds at your own emotions when you grow up to become an adult. Now a days, any words that my parent utter, even if the advice is a good one, I never take them seriously.
To me the worst part is that their behavior hasn't really changed as I became an adult, and in fact the have gotten worse. I'm not affected anymore due to stronger and more mature boundaries, but my siblings still are. And damn if it those boundaries are not isolating as hell.
Another very isolating factor is societal response to having a less than ideal relationship with ones parents. Some people really change their opinion on you after knowing you're not close with your folks.
I feel very similarly having grown up with a very overprotective and overly attached mother. I'm constantly struggling with emotions and have a lot of self doubt and don't feel like Im in control of my life. Been slowly regaining this control and trying to improve myself via therapy.
Unfortunately right now I don't value my parents very much and Im resentful towards my mother. Perhaps that will change in future, perhaps not.
People are not perfect. I know it's hard now but I urge you not to resent your mother. If she was otherwise kind then she was just overprotective and overly attached because she loves you.
This makes sense. Kids need agency and make their own mistakes. And parents to guide them not too far off course on the road to adulthood and a well functioning being in society.
The effect of heli parenting is the same as when you have a boss that is an idiot and you hate him because you realize he is incomptent but he doesn't see it: you intuitively realize that something is very wrong but you may have credit so you are locked into the job.
With a kid it's much worse: you can quit from a job even if you have credit (risky), but as a kid you can NEVER "quit" from your parents: it's being stuck in a perpetual situation with a shitty boss who gives you no freedom and micromanages you.
Don't forget the abominable nanny states. I.e. all nation states I know.
The overkill of laws and bureaucracy, that affects directly and indirectly parents and kids, must be destroyed.
Normal childhood is an evolving exploration of the environment, with growing age more and more independent and (self-)educated. If you steal that from the kids, you steal their whole childhood. And as one cannot grow up without this progress, you steal their adulthood, too.
It's annoying how the article shows that independent activity/movement of children has declined drastically in the US and UK over the past 30 years while suicides have risen and how this contrasts to Finland where young children are much more independent. But then it somehow fails to compare the trends in teen suicides between those geographies and does not prove the point.
Paradox: Japanese children have high independent mobility: young kids can be seen walking to school, taking subway and buses. Yet Japan is known for high suicide rate.
People helicopter parent children because they have so few children today. This intensifies risk adversity and the default behavior is to over protect and smother their kid since it gives a sense of control.
When people had more kids they could look after each other, and although a tragedy if you lost one you still had others left. Additionally when you have many kids it’s not possible to helicopter them.
The great irony of helicopter parenting is it doesn't accomplish all that much. After you cover the First World basics (adequate nutrition, no violence in the home etc) you just don't have that much control over who your kids will eventually grow up to be, no matter how much test prep or whatever you throw at them.
Exactly. The best you can do is provide your children what they need to allow them to become who they are, and maybe some guard rails to discourage them from the not so great parts of themselves until they can adequately self-reflect. Otherwise, the idea that parents can "mould" their children without also damaging them in some way seems unproven.
Case in point, I know someone who grew up with a helicopter parent who kept said person and their siblings effectively sheltered from adulthood well into their 20s. Despite all experiencing more or less the same childhood with a parent imposing the same values, each of the siblings ended up having very different personalities and attitudes towards life. They get along fairly well, but each is very different from one another, and none of them identify with the aformentioned parent. Although this person is more safety-paranoid than is average, which seems to be one of the few things to have been moulded by the parent. How positive!
There are many possible reasons for helicopter parenting, but I think one widespread cultural cause is the post Great Depression idea that failures in adulthood are borderline unrecoverable. When I was a young person not so long ago, a message we got from our authority figures was that, if we fail for whatever reason, it will have disastrous consequences; fail a classes or don't go to college and you'll be unsuccessful while your peers who did exactly what they were told will be showered with riches, safety, and happiness. This erroneous attitude is meant to keep young people in line and, though it doesn't always work, many young people internalize it, and their own parenting skills are influenced as a result.
Simultaneously, American society in the last century and half, and especially in the last two decades, has done far more to de-adultize young people than any society prior to it. So-called "adolescents" and even later teens, whom would have been considered adults until recent history, face a substantial amount of oppression from every level of society that more than ever are failing to launch at 18 or even after college. The more this happens, the less confidence that older adults have in the competence of young people, creating a cycle of more and more shielding.
Young people in America today are barely trusted with anything, which is ironic given that, in many parts of the world, they would be trusted with tasks like herding large animals and operating heavy machinery. Outside of a rural farm life, many young people are essentially treated as mentally challenged; they can't open a bank account without a parent having control over it, have their privacy routinely violated by their parents (not every parent does this, but it's extremely common), don't have control over their private property, can only work "safe" jobs for a limited number of hours, can't move away from their parents without begging a judge for emancipation, can't consent to their own medical treatment, can't vote, are subject to curfew laws, must go to public school, and so forth.
Garbage in, garbage out, anyone?
The view that children and even young people in their late teens need so much protection is a cycle that feeds itself, and there's scant evidence that such levels of protection are necessary. At worst, alienating young people from the adult world can be damaging and cause delays in becoming fully functional as an autonomous individual.
I have little original input to your outstandingly well considered comment. :)
Except to say I have the unusual situation of moving from the US to Finland a few years ago partly in the hopes that I would find a better society for my children to enjoy there than what I myself experienced, and I've so far been quite happy with what I see.
One particular difference: I was constantly frustrated as a kid with living too far away from my friends to bike to their houses as a kid like I saw in the cartoons, or even to bike around just for fun. My kids here definitely will have that ability. I know - "How childish!" That's my point!
> Considerable research, mostly in Europe, has focused on children’s independent mobility (CIM), defined as children’s freedom to travel in their neighborhood or city without adult accompaniment
Isn't that lack of independent mobility largely caused by car-centric urban planning? Children and teens can't safely roam the streets on foot or by bike because of the awful amount of car traffic everywhere. Urban sprawl is the direct cause of car dangerous and noisy car traffic everywhere, as well as the reason why interesting places are often too far apart to walk between them.
I'm currently trying to find a place to live where my kids can become more independent and it's surprisingly difficult to find places like that in Canada. Suburbia may have little traffic, but they are also devoid of "third places" where teens can be teens.