[HN Gopher] Making It Legal to Play Outside: "Reasonable Childho... ___________________________________________________________________ Making It Legal to Play Outside: "Reasonable Childhood Independence" Bills Author : jseliger Score : 260 points Date : 2023-02-23 19:06 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (letgrow.org) (TXT) w3m dump (letgrow.org) | kwhitefoot wrote: | The US seems to be the only country that has this problem. | Children here (Norway) walk to school on their own at the age of | five or six, some of them take buses. | | "Ashley Smith, a foster dad, testified about being investigated | for neglect because one afternoon his daughter, 8, was doing her | homework on the front lawn. A passerby reported an "unsupervised" | child (not knowing Ashley was actually inside). The upshot: "We | went through a period of eight weeks of not knowing if we would | continue being able to keep our children," said Ashley." | | That's just astonishing! | MisterBastahrd wrote: | It's a paranoid US millennial parenting thing. I'm a younger | Gen Xer and my parents would lock me out of the house from the | time I got home from school until the sun went down. I was at | the bus stop for 6:30 every morning. | pilarphosol wrote: | The US is a low trust society, because of all the poverty. You | really notice the difference if you travel to Europe. It turns | out that having half of the population be economically unsafe | makes everyone and everything unsafe. | logicalmonster wrote: | I'm sure that poverty can play a factor in worsening social | trust, but can the reason for anything as complex in society | only have 1 cause? Also, arguing your point, there's far | poorer countries that are far more trusting. And arguably at | the US's "poorest" (maybe during the Great Depression to WWII | period) there was a much different social attitude to | strangers than exists now. | | I'd say that commenters have brought up some good factors | like mentioning the media's business model in hyping up | negative clickbait, but personally I'd say that the | increasingly heterogenous population is closer to the biggest | factor. Identity politics drives a wedge between most groups | that can tend to make you distrust the motives of almost | anybody, even if the stranger is a member of your own group. | As long as identify politics persists, countries with an | increasingly heterogenous population will have even lower | trust. | satvikpendem wrote: | I grew up in India, a much poorer nation than the US, and I | played outside all the time, walking to relatives' houses and | going to hang out with friends. I highly doubt it's the | poverty causing this kind of thing in the US. Seems more to | me the high amount of media "stranger danger" affecting | people's viewpoints. | s1artibartfast wrote: | I think this is a key perspective. In the US you will have | rich neighborhoods where kids play freely outside and poor | neighborhoods where kids play freely outside. It is in the | mixed neighborhoods there is an overwhelming fear of | children playing | ajsnigrutin wrote: | I've been through a lof of the balkan areas in the 1990s, | also yugoslavia/serbia during the sanctions before the 1999 | nato bombing and fast after, and during all those times in | all those areas there was A LOT of poverty. | | Kids were playing outside all the time... from urban | belgrade, parks and playgrounds surrounded by huge socialist | buildings, to rural villages. Going to school? Sure, kids 7, | 8, 9yo walking alone to school was (and still is) a normal | thing. Usually elementary schools (6/7->14/15yo) were walking | distance, but some still had to use a public/city transport. | High schools meant a bus/tram for a majority of kids. During | weekends seeing a bunch of kids outside even late at night | was normal and still is. | popcalc wrote: | Hungary is extremely low trust and extremely poor, yet no one | fears public transit nor letting their kids wander about. | em-bee wrote: | that's not a contradiction. if society in hungary is low | trust (which i doubt btw, unless something changed since i | was there last more than a decade ago) then this low trust | does not extend to the safety of their children. | | letting kids wander about shows high trust in their kids | not getting into danger. in the US people don't even trust | that. | dsfyu404ed wrote: | So let me get this straight, trust is measured on | multiple axis except for the axis of children which sets | the maximum? | em-bee wrote: | trust is measured on multiple axis, period. no exception. | | the US have low trust when it comes to children. Hungary | does not. Hungary may still be low trust on other axis. | HDThoreaun wrote: | US is a low trust society because of a culture that reveres | individualism and independence to the detriment of everything | else, especially community and freedom from being abused in | favor of freedom to abuse. Every man for themselves means | kids need to constantly be supervised. | MockObject wrote: | We were a more philosophically individualistic society in | previous generations, during which children played freely | in cities and suburbs. | hn_version_0023 wrote: | That culture is created by a media environment manufactured | by companies whose employee base are well represented on | this site. This line is pushed on us, ad nauseam. | Unsurprisingly, most of us are sick from it. | valleyer wrote: | An alternative view is that our individualistic culture | is simply an evolution of the American idea of "rugged | individualism" -- an idea which somewhat predates the | tech industry. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugged_individualism#Influe | nce... | henrikschroder wrote: | I made the same observation when I moved to the US, it was so | weird to me that SF the city is pretty much devoid of | children. They're all effectively locked up and prohibited | from roaming. No-one trusts children, no-one trusts adults | around children, no-one trusts strangers. | | But I went skiing in Lake Tahoe one weekend, and _suddenly_ | all of that disappeared. Suddenly, you have children freely | interacting with strangers, there 's much less adult | supervision, and a whole lot of trust in others again. | | It's such a contrast, and you can experience it by simply | driving for a couple of hours. | r3trohack3r wrote: | I lived in the Bay Area for two years. It's a shit hole. | It's dirty, dangerous, and expensive. | | I've lived in NYC (the Bronx), Seattle, and Saint Louis. | Never felt anywhere close to the terror I felt living in | San Jose and commuting to Los Gatos and San Francisco. | | We fled from San Jose to Phoenix a year after having our | daughter. Kids walk to school in our neighborhood. A bunch | meet up at the corner near our house and all scooter | together to the local school. | | SF is not the U.S. | Spooky23 wrote: | We have a whole media industry unrestrained by responsible | regulation peddling fear. | | Look at the court disclosures about Fox News personalities | retaliating against Fox reporters actually reporting the | truth. They _knew_ the election fraud story was bullshit, | but these folks have no higher purpose and want grandma to | be scared. | | SFO is a whole other universe. | HDThoreaun wrote: | SF is actually a city that is devoid of children. They're | not hidden, they just don't exist because housing is too | expensive. People with kids mostly leave. | jefftk wrote: | It's low but not zero. SF is 13% under 18, compared to | 29% nationally. | ghaff wrote: | It's been a common pattern for a very long time in the US | for new graduates to often live in a city especially if | that's where their job is and then move out when they | start a family. That was the pattern with essentially | everyone I knew who went into finance in Manhattan. | jvanderbot wrote: | The kinds of strangers you are likely to meet in SF are not | to be trusted. It's not irrational on an individual level, | it's just a societal madness in the USA. | | I lived in LA, and would not let my wife walk around after | dark let alone my daughters. There were a few individuals | who lived under bridges that would regularly assault women. | And we lived in a "good" area. We moved to an even better | area and within a couple months there was a shooting, high | speed chase, and a drunk driver rolled his car into our | neighbor's yard. | | Needless to say, we moved away. | GauntletWizard wrote: | Once upon a time, Trolls lived under bridges. Now they | call you a troll if you complain about those living under | bridges. | wonderwonder wrote: | SF is full of mentally ill homeless people and drug | addicts. Some literally camping in the doorways of homes. | It's also covered in vomit and human feces. No way I would | let my kids run around unsupervised there | swatcoder wrote: | Historically, people teach their kids how to navigate | their local environment safely. | | In rural environments, that can include wildlife dangers | and natural hazards and in urban environments, it can | include human dangers and industrial/sanitary hazards. | | Environmental danger is not new. The culture of isolating | kids rather than educating them is. Whether the new | strategy is better for the kids is an open question, but | seems crazy to some of us. | rhino369 wrote: | >Historically, people teach their kids how to navigate | their local environment safely. | | And historically, society would drive insane and homeless | people out of nice areas. Middle and upper middle class | people weren't letting their kids hang out with drifters | in the past. | [deleted] | wonderwonder wrote: | I let my 11 year old ride his bike to the park, 7-11 etc | on his own or with friends. I don't live in SF though. I | think it's a little different when the danger is another | human and they are mentally ill or addicted to drugs. You | can tell the kids to stay away from them but the kids are | kids they can't necessarily outsmart an adult looking to | cause them harm. | | Adults are killed by homeless people in SF. They are an | irrational danger that is difficult to prepare for. There | are also a lot of them. It's one thing to say if you see | a homeless person stay away but it's another when there | are dozens of them camped on the sidewalk. Telling my | kids to instead walk in the road is not a great option | either. | | You are not wrong and 99% of the time doing as you | suggest is valid. Hordes of crazy people are a danger of | a different breed. | yamtaddle wrote: | It can even vary from one suburban neighborhood to another, | without much difference in actual safety between the | neighborhoods. Our last neighborhood had roving bands of | kids wandering about and picking up and losing members here | and there all day long in the Summer, just like it was | 1975, everyone was totally chill about it. It was great. | Our new one like two miles away is a "kid plays in the | yard" neighborhood and we've had people come by more than | once to make sure we're aware our kids are on their bikes | on the other side of the neighborhood (yeah, we know). | Zetice wrote: | _Parts_ of the US are like this, but huge swaths of Americans | don 't even bother locking their front doors. | notch898a wrote: | The people living in poverty very very rarely hurt a | stranger's children. It's the cops who show up and take them, | absolutely destroying their sense of security and growing | independence. | gretch wrote: | This is very false. | | National studies show more violent crime happens in poor | areas: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf | throwaway049 wrote: | There's a section about poor people more likely to be | victims of _stranger_ violence, which backs up your | point. I didn't see much about children specifically, but | I guess all other things being equal... Just such a sad | thing to think about that I don't _want_ to think it | unless there's hard evidence. | notch898a wrote: | That study says poor people are more likely victims. | Doesn't even say who is performing the crimes (doubtful, | but based on this study could be rich people robbing the | poor or whatever), nor does it show the rate at which | those in poverty victimize a stranger's child (which | despite your sidestepped report here was what you replied | to). | | For example, despite all the worries about kidnappings, | there are only a few hundred kidnappings of children by | complete strangers every year. | | As an aside (and separate point): The data in there was | all 12+. I'm gonna be the one to come out and say it: if | the hypothetical reality is the teenager is growing up in | a hell-scape world of death-match-violence then | unfortunately it's one of those cases of "nows the | fucking time to get out there and learn how to | (gradually) adapt to the hellscape while we try to make | it better." (which honestly is a little what driving | feels like when you turn 15) | anigbrowl wrote: | You need to cite more specifically, I'm not reading the | whole study looking for the bit you think was relevant to | the other poster's point. | gretch wrote: | Okay don't do it. Instead you're just going to believe | the guy who cited nothing? Live your life however you | want I guess... | anigbrowl wrote: | I'm not going to believe either of you. What you offered | was not responsive to his claim because it didn't address | risks to children, which are the topic. | Zetice wrote: | What you've linked doesn't really contradict what the | commenter said; he's arguing that folks don't generally | hurt kids, poverty notwithstanding, and that tends to be | my experience. | fl0ps wrote: | The US is a low trust society because we're told not to trust | people through highly negative news stories. The result is | the US being primed to think there are child murderers and | rapists under every bush, etc, etc. Ancedent to this | unintentional effect was the incentivised "if it bleeds it | reads" motivation for promotion of the highly negative. | myself248 wrote: | Both of these things can be true at the same time. The news | can overemphasize the worst, AND we can have an epidemic of | drug problems, mental illness, and the crimes that those | bring. | certifiedloud wrote: | I would say that this is an extreme and somewhat rare example. | Kids here do walk themselves to school. But this does seem to | be a growing concern, hence the legislation. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | It wasn't always like this. I'm 35 and growing up in the US | involved adventures that took me and my other 6-yr old pals | several miles from home. | bcrosby95 wrote: | I walk my kids to school in the US, but I definitely see kids | as young as 6 walking without a parent. I choose to walk with | my kids because I enjoy it, and it's easy exercise. | | That said, a lot of parents still drive their kids - the vast | majority I would say. Even people who live within walking | distance. It definitely is faster if you look at it in a | vacuum: you save 10 minutes round trip! | | And when casually discussing things with them, that's usually | the excuse - they just don't have the time! They're always | running late! etc. But I get a 20 minute walk out of it, and | spend time with the kids talking about stuff. So to that I say: | I'm multi-tasking. | | Part of me thinks this problem isn't much different from the | fear of child abduction: overblown. But there is something | especially frustrating about the times this happens because | people think they are doing something good when they really | aren't. | kungfooey wrote: | I live about a half mile from my kid's school and we walk | most days, or I bike. | | However, it has been... eye opening. We live in a fairly | urban area of Nashville, but my street doesn't have | sidewalks. We've been yelled at multiple times (me, my wife, | and our kindergartner) by drivers to "Get out of the road!" | (This is on a 25 mph street.) There are ditches and uneven | ground on both sides of the road. | | Even the sidewalks we _do_ have on our route are paltry... | about 3 feet wide and immediately adjacent to a busy 30 mph | road. We sometimes walk in the grass next to the sidewalk, | and I actually had one neighbor yell at us to "Get out of the | yard, get on the sidewalk." That one took the cake for me. | | So, yeah. There's a lot of reasons people don't walk to work, | but one of them might be that everyone and everything assumes | you're supposed to drive in a car and idle in the parking lot | for 20 minutes rather than walking. Walking can be | _stressful_, especially if you're doing it with multiple kids | (which I often do). | ThePowerOfFuet wrote: | No offence, but that sounds like a terrible place to live. | andrepd wrote: | Car-centric infrastructure and its consequences have been a | disaster for the human race. | anon291 wrote: | Some context is likely needed, as the fact that the child is a | foster child most certainly played a part in how seriously they | took this allegation. | | In the US (and actually all over the world), children in foster | care situations are at higher risk of abuse. Moreover, foster | children are wards of the state and placement decisions are up | to the state. The law about non-foster children (children with | parents) is much more strict in what parents can and cannot do | with their children. That means that it is extremely easy for | the state to decide to move a foster child, whereas they cannot | just take someone's adopted or biological child away. At the | end of the day, the state is the foster child's guardian. For | example, the state makes medical decisions for foster children. | When we did our foster parent training, we even learned that | sometimes the foster parents cannot make decisions on haircuts! | | However, I'm going to guess that the state is hyper-vigilant | about foster children because (1) they are often victims, (2) | the state is directly in charge of foster children. | acuozzo wrote: | > The US seems to be the only country that has this problem. | | Here's my take on the issue from 5 months ago: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32680201 | | Summary: We don't have safe roads and in most American suburbs | traveling by car is often the only reasonable option available. | CalRobert wrote: | There are some communities trying to improve this but for the | most part the US is a stroad-infested hellscape. | | https://nstreetcohousing.org/ (Davis, CA) and | https://culdesac.com/ (Tempe, AZ) | | are worth a look. | s1artibartfast wrote: | That seems like a very unrelated issue to someone being an | investigated for letting their children do homework on the | front lawn | sli wrote: | It's a related cultural factor. The more we build our | outdoor spaces to accommodate cars over people, the more | notable it becomes when there are people in them. | ackfoobar wrote: | car dependent development takes away children's | independence -> | | people are not used to seeing kids outside -> | | people freak out when they see an unaccompanied child | gitpusher wrote: | Related - this video does a nice job of articulating that | argument: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw | andrepd wrote: | I didn't open it and I knew it was a NotJustBikes video. | | I actually hate that channel because it made me aware of | how broken the car-centric infrastructure where I live is. | I was living I such blissful ignorance, now I can't unsee | it! | CalRobert wrote: | Depending on your circumstances you may be able to | emigrate to the Netherlands. | danjoredd wrote: | Its been a genuine problem. I have heard people actually say | that if a kid is playing outside by themselves, then the parent | should be charged with child neglect because the kid could get | hurt. Any time a kid gets hurt on YouTube the comments are | filled with people blaming the parent for not being outside | with them. Thing is, playing outside by yourself gives you a | strong sense of independence. The kid might get hurt, sure, but | when the alternative is them never learning to be on their own | and do things for themselves, the risk seems well worth it. | andrepd wrote: | Sure, a reasonable risk is tolerable. But, for instance, car- | centric infrastructure has *intensely* exacerbated those | risks: space is completely surrendered to cars, sidewalks are | non-existent, crosswalks go across 8 lanes of 60+mph traffic. | All of this, plus terrible public transport, makes it | impossible to travel anyway except by car. This leads to lack | of independence for children, and sedentarism. | Icathian wrote: | This is hyperbole at best. There are entire swathes of the | country, both rural and suburban, with plenty of safe | places for kids to exist. | danjoredd wrote: | It also depends on where you live. If you are a suburban or | rural kid, playing outside all you want is fine. Let them | explore the neighborhood. If you live near a highway | though, or a high crime area, then you might want to | reconsider what you want to allow. You still need common | sense. | | My main worry is people who live in relatively safe areas, | like a suburban neighborhood, but with neighbors that will | STILL call CPS on you for allowing them a little freedom. | When I was a kid living in a trailer park we had neighbors | like that. Never called CPS, but definitely complained | about us being unsupervised despite the fact that the speed | limit was a mere 15 MPH, and that we made a point not to | bother the neighbors because our parents told us not to. | They just saw kids playing and having fun, and decided it | was a crime against humanity. | evan_ wrote: | > Any time a kid gets hurt on YouTube | | Who's filming the kid getting hurt and putting it on youtube? | Maybe that's what the comments are talking about... | geoelectric wrote: | IMO, three things need to happen to make this go. | | First, the media needs a sea change towards not making parents | hysterical. We've seen this happen in waves ever since there was | mass media (D&D, satanism, metal, gangs, etc., in my personal | lifetime) but this is the first time I think it's actually caught | on as a cultural standard for something like 2 decades straight. | | Second, social media needs a sea change towards not making | parents hysterical. I think that's where the 2 decades straight | came from. | | Since neither media nor social media will change anything that | lowers their viewership, that means the audience needs to reject | the hysteria. That leads me to the third thing. | | Third, California needs to explicitly adopt play outside laws, | and free range parenting needs to become the normal standard in | Hollywood movies that -don't- involve kids falling into drugs or | other trouble, and -don't- portray the parents in question as | overwhelmed or neglectful. As a country, we seem to take a lot of | our impression as to what's "right" from California, particularly | for parenting and other age-related things, irrespective of local | laws. | | I think CA adopting the laws may happen eventually. They don't | conflict with our normal legal standards for parenting. I think | it'd just have to be an explicit and well-publicized adoption to | spark much of a landslide elsewhere, much like with CO and | recreational cannabis. | angarg12 wrote: | I'm a recent immigrant to the US, and when talking to locals I | need to bite my tongue to not say "for the land of the free, you | sure have an awful lot of rules". | | As much as America prides itself on their freedoms, they have | rules that would baffle most developed countries. And at the same | time they are incredibly loose in other contexts, such as safety | and quality control e.g. substances that are banned in the EU are | legal here. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | Oh it's not the people who are free, it's the corporations. | Sorry if that wasn't made clear up front. | vuln wrote: | This law will not give "poor kids more independence", it absolves | the parent or guardian of legal responsibility for their children | being unsupervised. | | I can't be the only one that's seen the hundreds if not THOUSANDS | of children (under 18) fighting, causing mayhem, attacking | innocent people, and property destruction videos that circulate | all over the internet. | | Will this help edge cases? The mom working at the pizza shop | across the parking lot of a hotel where her child is staying? | Sure. | 1123581321 wrote: | Everything you listed is already a crime or will swiftly | involve child services for due to obvious behavior problems in | the children. These laws are entirely about protecting | responsible parents who want to let their children learn to | peacefully navigate the outdoors in a city. | itronitron wrote: | I understand your concern and feel that part of the problem is | that in many areas in the US it's not comfortable or safe for | adults to be out walking (unless they are with their dog.) The | streets aren't set up for it, the police think it's weird | behavior, and as a result people stay inside which means there | is less adult supervision for the children out in public. | | If you ever visit Europe you can expect to have your mind blown | as you will see nine year olds walking themselves to school, | taking public transit independently, as the norm. This works | because there are always adults out and about. | lolinder wrote: | If you ever visit most of the United States, your mind will | be blown as well. Every morning all the kids in my | neighborhood walk to the elementary school, from kindergarten | up. There are crossing guards at a few key crossing points, | but for the most part the kids are left unattended. | em-bee wrote: | that's a different problem. or are you seriously suggesting | that even teenagers not be allowed to be unsupervised until | they are 18? that's ridiculous. | advisedwang wrote: | Parent's aren't being investigated for negligance because of | 15-18 year olds. This is about 8 year olds. They're not the | ones being reckless. | | Also perhaps if young kids get a bit more freedom, they'd make | more reasonable decisions when they're older? This could even | help the "mayhem" you're worried about. | lolinder wrote: | You haven't read the text of any of the bills, have you? | | > A CHILD IS NOT NEGLECTED WHEN ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN | INDEPENDENT ACTIVITIES THAT A REASONABLE AND PRUDENT PARENT, | GUARDIAN, OR LEGAL CUSTODIAN WOULD CONSIDER SAFE GIVEN THE | CHILD'S MATURITY, CONDITION, AND ABILITIES | | Which part of this language triggers your apocalyptic fears? | | https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb22-1090 | vuln wrote: | Actually after reading the bill you linked (apologies I was | looking at the other states bills) you left out the main | point that does actually reduce my "apocalyptic fears" | | IV) REMAINING IN A HOME OR OTHER LOCATION THAT A REASONABLE | AND PRUDENT PARENT, GUARDIAN, OR LEGAL CUSTODIAN WOULD | CONSIDER SAFE FOR THE CHILD. | | So not roaming around the city or in a random location. | | A _safe_ location. | lolinder wrote: | I left out all the examples because they are "including but | not limited to"--the text I included is the main bit that | defines what the principle of the law actually is, the | bullets are given by way of example and to spell out | specific cases that should never be left to a judge to | interpret. | | If a parent could reasonably decide that a child should be | allowed to roam free, taking into account that child's | maturity, this law would allow that parent to decide that. | vuln wrote: | _A REASONABLE AND PRUDENT PARENT_ can decide that their | child should be allowed to roam free at _HOME_ or _A SAFE | LOCATION_. | | Now who gets to decide what a _reasonable and prudent | parent_ is? | lolinder wrote: | No, you're restricting it more than the law calls for. A | child is not neglected when they are allowed to | participate in _any_ activities that a reasonable and | prudent parent would judge to be within their | capabilities. You 're getting too fixated on that one | example, and there are a lot of places in the US where a | child of a certain age can and should be allowed to roam | pretty much anywhere. | | You're correct the language does leave it up to judicial | interpretation, and I find that to be a weakness in the | law, because it leaves too much room for police and CPS | to claim that they thought they were doing the right | thing. | vuln wrote: | I think they should restrict activity in the way I | understood it. Restrict to home and or a safe location | and remove the judicial interpretation. I would be 100% | fine with that. | swatcoder wrote: | > I can't be the only one that's seen the hundreds if not | THOUSANDS of children (under 18) fighting, causing mayhem, | attacking innocent people, and property destruction videos that | circulate all over the internet. | | I can't think of a worse way to assess the state of society | than by consuming viral videos circulated online. This is a | really disturbing way to form or justify opinions. | vuln wrote: | Really? You don't think social media, Facebook, TikTok, | Instagram, Twitter, OnlyFans, 4chan, et al, is a mirror image | of the current society as a whole? | | How do you assess the state of society? Without looking at | the content said society produces? | lolinder wrote: | Viral content on social media is pretty much by definition | non-representative of normality. If it were just everyday | reality it wouldn't go viral. | qup wrote: | I go out into said society and judge it for myself. | kyoob wrote: | I think it's smart to frame this as an anti-poverty issue. People | often imagine "suburban" families falling victim to overreaching | child neglect laws and enforcement. In fact poor children are | separated from their families for reasons of child welfare far | more often than non-poor kids. (Of course, this ends up affecting | black families disproportionately.) Families are being broken up | in the US for the crime of being poor. | | Editing to add a link to a study detailing "Drivers of | Inequalities among Families Involved with Child Welfare Services: | A General Overview" for folks who find the Bar Association's | article to be limited in scope. | | https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/committees/chi... | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9265799/ | emodendroket wrote: | Yes, but it can happen to well-to-do families too -- if someone | thinks your medical routine seems suspicious, for instance, | even if it has been recommended by a doctor. Casting it as a | poor people's issue or a black issue runs the risk of | complacency because others decide it couldn't happen to them. | ZainRiz wrote: | > Over 50 percent of Black children in the U.S. will experience | a child welfare investigation before their eighteenth birthday | (nearly double the rate of white children). Nearly 10 percent | of Black children will be removed from their parents and placed | into foster care (double the rate of white children) | | While the numbers above sound horrendous (and they really are!) | I wish they normalized the data to only consider poor | households. That would give a much better picture of how much | of the existing system is biased against a given race vs being | biased against poor people in general. | joe_the_user wrote: | Your quote isn't from the article but a link in a post by | kyoob (currently below this) that you aren't even replying to | (were you so eager to beat hn's post throttling you put this | on the main thread?). Kyoob's post already acknowledges this | is also a poverty issue so your complaint seems a bit off the | topic at hand. | Robotbeat wrote: | It doesn't sound like complaining. I think it could be a | good faith point (and not someone just trying to find a way | to downplay modern racism), although kyoob acknowledged it. | | Obvious confounding factors should also be controlled for | (or at least controlled in a side note). | kwhitefoot wrote: | >> Over 50 percent of Black children in the U.S. will | experience a child welfare investigation before their | eighteenth birthday (nearly double the rate of white | children). | | So more than 25% of all children experience a child welfare | investigation? | | That's mind boggling. | baryphonic wrote: | My wife's parents had a child welfare investigation because | my sister-in-law was somewhat clumsy in middle and high | school and had some "odd" bruises. Of course, my in-laws | hasn't done anything abusive, and the investigator | concluded as much, but I'm sure it counts as one of those | >25%. | dragonwriter wrote: | >> Over 50 percent of Black children in the U.S. will | experience a child welfare investigation before their | eighteenth birthday (nearly double the rate of white | children). | | > So more than 25% of all children experience a child | welfare investigation? | | Yes, 37.4%. | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227926/#:~:te | x.... | aquarium87 wrote: | [flagged] | crazygringo wrote: | EDIT: dang fixed it, thanks! Orig comment below | | ---- | | What/who are you replying to? | | Your quoted text isn't in the article and also isn't in any | of the comments on this page. | Jtsummers wrote: | They're responding to the article kyoob linked in another | comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34916150 | dang wrote: | Ok, we've moved the GP to be a child of that one now. | Thanks! | hosh wrote: | The Let Grow organization that wrote this article and help | advance legislation protecting parents, advocates for a | parenting style that lets kids grow into resilient, | independently-thinking adults. This is more than just | protecting parents or preventing unnecessary breakup of | families. | | From that lens, the question I have is, how does this kind of | parenting style help poor families? | yamtaddle wrote: | > a parenting style that lets kids grow into resilient, | independently-thinking adults | | > how does this kind of parenting style help poor families? | | I am not sure what you mean. | em-bee wrote: | poor families have less resources/time to provide for | continuous supervision for their children. so they use this | parenting style by default. what helps them is that this | style gets legal protection, so they are not targeted for | letting their kids run unsupervised. | kyoob wrote: | Advocating for laws that promote reasonable childhood | independence benefits families where all the adults have to | work more hours to get by, leaving their kids in safe but | unsupervised situations more often. | raydiatian wrote: | Part of the issue is that roads and American autophilia make the | world unsafe and inaccessible without transportation. Conspiracy | theorists want to say that the "push for 15 minute spheres is the | state trying to control us" but that is just so braindead it | hurts to look at. | foolswisdom wrote: | I shudder every time I see a thread related to this topic (child | protective services making insane decisions with no oversight, | because the law is vague enough to let them do so). | RajT88 wrote: | As I understand it, not only is the law vague, but also CPS is | underfunded. Which of course, you need funding for program | oversight. | homonculus1 wrote: | [dead] | emodendroket wrote: | I feel that with the burgeoning politicization of this function | (consider their role in anti-transgender laws) things can go in | a very dark direction very fast. | yamtaddle wrote: | It's not just the vagueness of the law, it's a system and | culture in which pursuing a bullshit claim draws no punishment, | but ignoring a claim that _a reasonable person would judge to | be bullshit_ and turning out to be wrong may ruin your life. | jollyllama wrote: | There's some other fundamental problem if cops and CPS were | pulling these stunts anyway. Maybe some better mechanism for | recourse against overreach is needed? | JustSomeNobody wrote: | Such as laws that protect parents? | at_a_remove wrote: | You've got basically four avenues for this, leading to some | kind of CPS and police overreach. | | 1) Cops just seeing a kid walking. It happens. | | 2) CPS hearing rumors, whatever. | | 3) Vindictive exes and people "in house." | | 4) Busybody neighbors, the nosy Karens. | | Both police and CPS probably have some "duty" to begin _some_ | sort of action upon reporting, but I think separating the | reporting from the action is important. And false reporting | ought to be penalized, as in, let 's not weaponize our systems. | rootusrootus wrote: | First I'd like to know the incidence rate. We tend to see a few | specific examples regurgitated repeatedly for several years | after they occur, which leads me to suspect that it perhaps | doesn't happen _that_ often. This is a nation of 330 million | people, after all, so it 's unrealistic to expect stupidity | will happen zero times. | sbuttgereit wrote: | I agree with what you say in principle, but if that's true | the (possibly) few cases of overreach have to have remedy for | those that are injured. But now we're starting to get into | the territory of issues of qualified immunity are an issue | (recently discussed here: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34901629, for example). | | Having said that, I think the tendency of state agencies, in | a political landscape where we regularly justify increased | legal intrusiveness into our lives using "think of the | children" arguments, to use state power to force our personal | cultural prerogatives, and to ask the state to generally | solve our problems for us, will be for "stupid" child | protective actions to increase over time. | | So I applaud the actions to nip this is in the bud... | assuming you're right. | yieldcrv wrote: | In my own lobbying efforts I've found it very easy to get | bipartisan support and things passed | | It comes down to psychology and understanding people | | A decade ago I would have thought getting any legislative body's | attention would be difficult, but all the special interests moved | to far extremes of their parties for ... reasons ... to pursue | things that will _never_ get passed. They just left the center | unguarded and forgot how to communicate, it seems. I understand | this phenomenon is a reflection of broader society, just am | surprised that it has affected "shadow organizations" or | professional lobbying groups that have navigated so many | political environments over time. Anyway, seize opportunity when | you see it. | | It is kind of addicting to alter reality in places you cant even | register to vote in. | Connor_Creegan wrote: | This is neat and all, but the problem is very much downstream of | the children-out-of-wedlock problem, which is downstream of so- | called "sexual liberation" (a misuse of both the term "sexual" | and the term "liberation"), which is downstream of an | inconsistent sexual education, which is downstream of an | inconsistent ethics of sex, which is downstream of the Fall (save | for a few unmentioned steps). | acuozzo wrote: | > but the problem is very much downstream of the children-out- | of-wedlock problem | | If this were the case then there would be similar issues with | children of single parents in e.g. European countries, no? | Connor_Creegan wrote: | https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/12/u-s- | childre... | | The problem is _very-much_ downstream, not wholly-determined. | Obviously this issue criss-crosses with other issues, such as | race, infrastructure, compulsory education, et cetera. But I | would rank doctrine of sex as the brightest star in this | constellation. It isn 't a coincidence that the UK is second | behind us. Its founding event was the invention of divorce. | SwetDrems wrote: | A big perpetrator of this is the designed environment surrounding | car culture. I moved somewhere where there's plenty of foot | traffic, specifically so my kid will walk/bike to school and that | is seen as completely normal. Most Americans do not understand | how horrible car dependence is for personal independence, yet | defend it to the end for some reason. It's really a shame. | s1artibartfast wrote: | That doesn't really explain the changes over time in US | behavior and child Independence. The US had a very strong car | culture in the '50s to '80s as well, but children would still | roam the streets on bicycle and on foot | duxup wrote: | I have trouble buying into this connection to car culture idea. | | I grew up in places with just cars, no transit options and kids | roaming free, walking and biking to school was just normal. | wonderwonder wrote: | I remember reading a news story about a poor single mom who was | renting a room in an extended stay and working in a pizzarea | across the street from it. She left her 9? year old alone in the | room so she could work. Cops show up and take her kid and arrest | her for child endangerment. They made it illegal to be a poor | single working mom. | syrrim wrote: | They made it illegal to be a single mom and not provide | adequate childcare. Many families have both parents working, so | the situation of needing to find someone to look after your | child is not unique to single parents. That said, this is one | of the reasons raising children on your own is more difficult. | swatcoder wrote: | There's a lot unsaid in any gossiped anecdote like this, but | there's not a single fact in the story as given that suggests | inadequate child care. | | Maybe there were _other_ reasons that justify the police | action, but we weren't given any here. | victorhooi wrote: | I think you're glossing over a few things here... | | Firstly, many societies around the world would consider 9 yo | to be mature enough to do things like....go to the shops, use | a telephone, go to a friends place to play, or look after a | pet. Or in this...stay at home? | | I'm not sure if it's specifically an American thing (and | seemingly by extension, Australia, since there's so much | cultural osmosis), but it does feel like we are infantilising | our children, right into their young adulthood. Apparently | it's normal now for somebody in their 20's to continue living | with their parents, and have their parents do things like | cook all their meals for them, do their laundry, etc | | Secondly, what you're suggesting specifically targets poorer, | or possibly Black people - I'm not sure if that's your | intent? However, you're basically saying it's not OK to be | poor, and not be able to afford things like a live-in nanny, | or daycare (if available). | yamtaddle wrote: | A nine-year-old home alone for hours was downright common in | the 80s and 90s, let alone back in the "golden age of | unsupervised kids" (so I hear, anyway) 70s. It was basically | fine. | hn_version_0023 wrote: | What is inadequate about leaving a 9yro child at home in her | own home, alone? | strken wrote: | As a 9 year old (admittedly not in the US), when there was a | day without school but my parents still had to work, I was | allowed to stay home on my own and ride my bicycle to a town | 5km away to buy lunch. My 7 year old brother wasn't allowed | to stay home, but came on similar trips with me. | | The adequate childcare for a responsible 9 year old might be | "tell them to call 911 if there's a serious emergency, or | text you if anything comes up". | Tostino wrote: | This is how I grew up in the US (central FL) in the 90's. I | was 6-7 when I was riding my bike down to the corner store | ~0.5mi away, and ~10 I was staying home and watching my | sisters when necessary. | | I was perfectly capable of cooking and looking after | things. I just don't get this hysteria that seems to have | gripped so many people. We are living in one of the safest | times to be alive. | dave78 wrote: | I grew up like this too (in the US in the 80s). I now | have an 8 year old, and I think she would be fine at home | alone for a while if necessary (especially with easy | access to me via phone/Alexa/whatever). | | However, in my state (Illinois), the government has made | it illegal to leave my kids home alone until they are 14 | (14!) years old. This is insanity, but I don't dare risk | it because on the off chance anything happened and the | police found out, I fear the government would take my | children away. | | I don't think the hysteria is coming from the average | American. I think it is coming from nanny-state | politicians who want to campaign on "cracking down on | child abuse" or whatever. | Gordonjcp wrote: | America just seems like the weirdest fucking place. | | You're all going on about being the only truly free country in | the world, but you can be jailed for letting your child play in | your garden. | | What the fuck, guys? | acuozzo wrote: | America is home to over 21M individuals with a net worth of $1M | or more. | | For them, America is free; perhaps more free than <insert EU | country here>. | | The remaining 310M exist to create freedom for the 21M. They | are pacified with the propaganda of class: the "middle class"; | the "working class"; the poor; the prisoners. | | Each person below the peak of the pyramid is taught from a | young age to fear becoming part of the level below. | | Each person below the peak of the pyramid is taught from a | young age that every level is rigged with a series of doors | which lead directly to the basement in which they will find the | good old 13thAmendmentLoophole(tm). | | Additionally, each person below the peak of the pyramid is | taught from a young age that there exist a few hidden doors on | each level which lead to a secret route that goes directly to | the top. These doors were initially installed by Horatio Alger | Jr, but have been maintained by countless persons since. Rumors | exist that John Steinbeck scrawled expletives on a few. | | Since 1971 or so the the pyramid has evolved into an | incredibly-slippery cone. It keeps growing and growing, but | getting thinner and more slippery as time goes on. Rumors exist | that it is stretching itself to Mars, but I imagine it will | likely fall short of that since the cone is made from plastic. | yamtaddle wrote: | Our relationship to actual, in-practice freedom has always been | kind of... weird, considering how obsessed with freedom we seem | to be. We seem more concerned with high-level theoretical | freedom than with actual liberty we experience in the day-to- | day, which is indeed sub-par compared to many of our peer | states. And we didn't credibly _try_ to even extend that much | freedom to ~every US adult until the last quarter or 30% of our | country 's existence. | RandomTisk wrote: | America is an extremely peaceful place for many millions of | families. There are thousands of smaller communities throughout | the vast country where crime is background noise and kids can | and do run around outside if they want, even today. | | Some places are running untested, never before seen dev code in | production trying to improve the justice system, and they | virtually always make things much worse, like California is | doing and certain metros around the country. | MisterBastahrd wrote: | We like our propaganda more than we like fixing ourselves, | because propaganda is easier and cheaper. | [deleted] | ryanobjc wrote: | "kids these days aren't independent" | | Oh look its literally illegal to be independent. | | If you have kids this is both a relief and the source of the | problem isn't exactly a shock. | neogodless wrote: | Independence is not binary. | | Would you agree that the goal over the period from birth to | adulthood should be one marked by a gradual increase in | independence? | | Would you agree that parents should have say in the pace of | that increase? | hosh wrote: | There's been an mental health epedemic since about 2013, | partially attributed to adolscents not having sufficient | opportunities to be independent: https://time.com/6255448/teen- | girls-mental-health-epidemic-c... | itronitron wrote: | Instead of defunding the police we should just turn half the | police force into traffic cops. Take away their squad cars, | give them bicycles, and just have them run speed traps in every | neighborhood. | s1artibartfast wrote: | This seems like a reasonable proposal to protect parents against | subjective interpretation of the law. Responsible parents should | be able to gauge the capabilities of their children and give them | Independence based on that was capabilities opposed to fear of | third-party criminalization | hosh wrote: | The Let Grow organization is doing more than just protecting | parents. It's advocating for a parenting style that leads to | more resilience in the next generation that will be voting, | making and enforcing laws, and directing the future of this | nation and humanity in general. | croutonwagon wrote: | The problem is that there are busy bodies that will involve | third parties, possibly with good intentions, but still. | | For example | | > But people have very different ideas of what "proper | supervision" entails (as you know if you have, say, a spouse). | One parent lets their kids play outside at age 6, another not | till 12. | | My kids play outside on their own now. At 3 and 6. My 6 year | old has been doing so since about 3. Once she could follow | basic rules (ie: dont go there). | | At their current age we let them ride bikes in the street even, | with the older in charge and both having to get well off the | road the minute they see cars. | | we watch them from the window but the point is to avoid | intervening or helicoptering and allowing them to explore and | be independent. | | In fact we have to limit some media/shows that portray the | parents as toys (ie: Bluey) because we notice it tends to stunt | their independence and skews their overall expectations of a | parent child relationship. | em-bee wrote: | _some media /shows that portray the parents as toys (ie: | Bluey) because we notice it tends to stunt their independence | and skews their overall expectations of a parent child | relationship._ | | could you elaborate on that please? bluey seems to promote a | healthy parent-child relationship (at least in the few | episodes that i saw). how does it stunt their independence | and skew their expectations? are you suggesting that showing | parents that are always available gives the wrong idea to | children about their parents? how would that play out? | croutonwagon wrote: | There are many episodes where the treat the parent as a | toy. Specifically the dad. | | For example. Theres an episode where the father is trying | to give the kids a bath. They repeatedly ignore him that | its time to be done playing it bathe. Or to stop splashing | and make a mess. And by repeatedly i mean there's no | control, eventually the Mom walks in and groans, there's a | huge mess, kids still aren't bathed etc etc. | | Its an overarching theme that the dad is largely a toy. And | even when he tries to be stern or strict its joked and | laughed off and ignored. Moreover that the kids cant really | have "fun" without the dad being actively playing. | | Overall the lesson is the kids learn the dad was right in | the beginning and much effort would be saved by them | listening, but that falls flat on a 3-6 year old passive | listener (they do pick it up sometimes in the moment). | | And there are actual times where I CANT be actively | playing. I love to but its a time and place thing. There | are times i have to fix things, clean up, prep dinner, etc | etc. And our style is the kids in those moments need to be | able to go and play. | | Additionally, in our house, theres a time and place for | playtime and joking and a time and place where you need to | listen and do what we say. It can be a safety issue | otherwise (ie: no stopping or listening in a store, parking | lot, street etc). And even more the kids have to learn that | when I say (or they say) "enough" that means enough and you | need to respect the wishes of others, family or not. | | Overall Bluey is decent, better than most even, and | certainly tries to break that 50-80's mold of parents "not | your firends" and theres a huge barrier/gap. But with all | things, theres a happy medium. So as a result we have to | moderate their intake of it (and plenty of other shows | too). Bluey is just a good example where the fanbase can be | rabid in their support, and sometimes forget that kids are | kids and dont understand context or "real" vs "fake" well | at all, something we as grown ups see as second nature now. | tristor wrote: | I recently moved from a very low average income city to a very | high average income city. In my former city it was nearly unheard | of for children to unsupervised, despite most people having large | families, because there was a very real concern about | kidnapping/human trafficking and other issues (and this concern | wasn't unfounded, this city made national news for masked men in | a van grabbing multiple children while their parents were holding | their hands in a Walmart parking lot and bailing). | | In my new city, I see 7-8 year old kids outdoors playing without | any significant supervision in the neighborhood and allowed to | walk to school on their own or walk/scooter to a friends house. | It's a stark difference. There are complex issues here, and a lot | of nuance, but on its face this made a statistical truth really | obvious to me, which is that socioeconomic status nearly directly | correlates to physical safety and crime rates. The simple truth | is that the high average income city is just a much much much | safer place for anyone to exist in, to walk in, and this includes | children. | | I feel like every time this issue gets discussed, there's always | people ignoring the socioeconomic factor, and worse, pointing it | out is taken as a blanket attack on poor people. | standardUser wrote: | This is interesting to me because growing up poor and with a | single parent, I was allowed to run wild at a very young age. | There was a whole crew of young kids in our apartment complex | that would hang out and wander around unsupervised during | daylight hours. Our parents were busy working and they probably | needed some occasional time alone in those tiny apartments (my | mother and I shared a 1 bedroom). | | As for "high income cities" it doesn't get much higher income | than Manhattan and I would be shocked if I saw some under-10 | kids wandering around here on their lonesome! | q1w2 wrote: | It's not socio-economics - it's Crime. They are correlated, but | where they are not, children walk to school despite the poor | neighborhood. | | When I grew up in India, we were dirt poor and we literally | hitchhiked to and from school each day from the age of maybe 7. | | Students would get out of school, walk to the nearest busy | intersection, and ask people to let us ride on the back of | their motorbikes to get home. No helmets, no traffic lights, no | sidewalks, no cell phones. | | This wasn't in some rural area - this was in central Mumbai | decades ago where people were poorer than the poorest US | neighborhoods. ...yet the danger of being kidnapped or | assaulted was effectively zero. It was far more common to be | attacked by a stray dog than by any of the millions of dirt | poor people in the city. | | One factor (my guess - I observe anecdotally) is the high rate | of drug use in the US. Drug use among the poor in India was | extremely uncommon. However in the US (at least these days), it | seems to be common among most people arrested (just my | observation). | dsfyu404ed wrote: | People are ignoring the socioeconomic factor because it is | basically reverse of what you're claiming it is. | | Worrying about shit that's rare is a rich white people thing. | | Likewise poorer places let kids roam freer. Making rent is hard | enough and likewise parent's don't have the spare fucks to give | to be micromanaging. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-02-23 23:00 UTC)