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I'm not sold. My instinct says there's likely more within-group variation than between-group variation especially in the US.
My kid is in 5th grade and get himself to school every day, including waking up on time, eating breakfast, appropriately dressing himself, and walking to and from school every day without intervention. Like the author this is often before I get out of bed. I live in CA and while I know many other parents must be practicing the same parenting strategies - my son has an endless supply of other kids to walk with - I can't help but also have a feeling that some nosy neighbor or good'er-do-well will swoop in and call the police because, "These fifth graders must be attended to or something could happen!"
Maybe that difference in feeling is what the author is trying to communicate. In which case, that makes perfect sense.
Many US parents would be far more open to allowing greater freedoms to their children if they were not concerned with the scrutiny of others and terrifying potential legal problems. You hear about stories about where the neighbor sees a child arrive home before their parents and when the parents get home the cops are waiting to talk to them. There are other scenarios where parents lose custody of their children for allowing their child more independence. I believe parents desire to allow more freedoms for their children, but the potential consequences outweigh the benefits.
An anecdote:
My neighbor came into my yard and threatened to call the police on me because my 14-year-old-at-the-time son was up on our roof helping me. I went to grab a tool we left on the other side of the roof and she "panicked because I left him by himself and he could have fallen off and died".
In comparison to when I was a kid: my siblings and I would get the ladder to climb up on the roof when my parents weren't home. One time my sister thought it would be funny to steal the ladder, so I jumped down from the roof and chased her. I was 11-years-old at the time.
I grew up in a rural area. My kids in an urban area.
I've also jumped down from that roof several times. I probably could have died.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-chil...
> A Texas mother who asked her misbehaving eight-year-old son to walk half a mile home through a quiet suburban neighbourhood says her life was upended after she was charged with child endangerment.
I wonder where this takes place? (Yeah, I know, I could search...) Here in Redmond, WA, I ask because for years I've watched the kids across the street arrive home before Mom or Dad, open the garage door, and in the house they go. Just like "latchkey" kids of the 80s, if you're old enough to remember that moral panic.
And it's not just those neighbor kids, I see kids walking in groups or individually from the middle school if I'm out at that time. I'm quite confident that not all of those kids have a parent waiting at home. Yet I never hear of problems. Granted, it's Redmond, what's the worst that could happen, but still...
I live in a suburb of Dallas and most kids walk/bike to school alone past the 3rd grade
Are the only concrete examples a seven year old walking to school by themselves and wearing snow boots sometimes? I remember speaking to a Swiss national who boasted about how they walked everywhere. I didn't say anything, but all I could think was "well yeah, if I lived where summers were 70 degrees, a backdrop of scenic mountain beauty, and everything is in walking distance, I'd probably walk more places too."
The design problems that prevent walking are more than just distance. Roads in most places have gotten absurdly large, as have vehicles, and crossing infrastructure is often terrible and sometimes nonexistent. By designing for car dominance, we've made walking extremely dangerous, especially for children.
This also applies to bicycling.
>Are the only concrete examples a seven year old walking to school by themselves and wearing snow boots sometimes?
It's a much broader thing culturally from my experience well up into adult age. When I was in uni a little bit more than 10 years ago (in Germany) we used to have quite a few American expats and they behaved like kids too. Over here people can drink when they're 16, when they're 18 they move into a shared flat, do their laundry, cook their food etc. The American students were all into dorm life, couldn't handle booze, couldn't cook often, etc. American schools and colleges seem like daycare centers in comparison to education here.
I don't buy the argument that this is just about transit or environment or safety. US life seems very "on rails" all the time straight up into adulthood.
"Are the only concrete examples a seven year old walking to school by themselves and wearing snow boots sometimes?"
In Germany I walked to Kindergarden around one mile in any weather. Snow boots when necessary. From 5th grade on I walked a mile to the train, and then another half mile from train to school. In any weather and it was no big deal.
Isn't that the point? That the different environments incentive different patterns of transit and that in turn induces different modes of dependency in the children?
From my experience city kids are substantially more independent than their suburban counterparts for exactly this reason. The latter can't go anywhere without their parents unless they live particularly close to a park or some such, and even then will often be yelled at for doing so as it's "too dangerous for someone their age"
Your point stands but in summer it gets up to around 35 degrees, 95 fahrenheit to be correct.
If only summers were 70F (~21C) here
:'(
The description of "Swiss parenting" would also accurately describe most American parenting 60 years ago.
Even less than that - I walked to elementary school by myself every day in the 1980s. For the busiest streets, 5th graders served as crossing guards for the younger kids, which something I also did.
From what I can tell, the mentality of not allowing kids to get around on their own has really been in the past ~20 years or so. And (IMO) it is largely caused by some subset of people who freak out when they see kids alone unsupervised. Other parents (like me) would love to give our kids more freedom, but feel limited by the possibility that nosy neighbors will call child protective services if we allow too much.
Not even that long ago. The so called "latch key generation", or Gen X, lasted into the 80s.
60, try 20. Many of us millennials remember having a key to the house on a string around our necks. I walked to and from school with no adults since I was 6. I was out around the neighborhood from the moment school let out until the sun went down, by myself on my bicycle with all the other neighborhood kids. I was a teenager 20 years ago and I came and went as I pleased, no cell phone.
Millennial here and I was outside everywhere. Walked to middle schools because it was close and biked to high school. My kids elementary school it’s about a mile away and I’ll bike with them a day or so a week.
By the time I was 11 I was biking everywhere with big groups of kids. Or my buddy and I would go to the store and grab a drink or snack.
My teenager kid scoots a mile to high school (using a "manual" human-powered scooter, not electric/gas) back and forth under any weather, including severe rain, here in the US. He has walked to school since 5th grade.
Having lived with young kids in Switzerland, I agree, but one also has to add that there are very few places your kids won't be safe in Switzerland. Most places you could leave your bike unlocked and have a reasonable expectation it would still be there when you came for it.
Aside from getting run over by a car, are there that many places a kid isn’t safe in the US? Yes, there are rough neighborhoods - I’m asking about normal suburbs and white collar neighborhoods?
The school drop off line is absurd in my neighborhood. The school complex (K-12) is on a shared property. It’s less than a mile from my house. No road crossings at all to get there. Yet the kids bused or driven.
Is crime low because everyone is so well off it’s pointless to steal a bike? Or more social norms and culture like Japan?
Switzerland is seeing a huge increase in violent crime. 16.6% between 2021 and 2022. Serious bodily harm and rape were the crimes that saw the biggest rises, increasing by 17% and 14.5%, respectively.[0]
- [0]: https://www.iamexpat.ch/expat-info/swiss-expat-news/most-vio...
My kids are tween and teen and they thanked me for giving them the freedom they get. I get weird stares from other parents like I neglect my kids when what I do is actually consciously educating them to be autonomous.
Back when I grew up in the 80s and 90s there was a child abduction scare due to high profile cases like the Michaela Garecht case in Hayward, California. In fact, we lived in the same general community as her family (my parents knew the Garechts). Yet they still allowed my sister and I to choose how we got to and home from school (bus, walking, or bike) or to our friends' house. Speaking to them in adulthood about it, they said their choice to allow that was a combination of what you said -- teaching us to be autonomous -- and also that it jibed with their busy professional lives. Seems like they also got stares of disapproval from other parents, but I think it was the right choice.
Reminds me of this 99PI article/episode about how the built environment in urban Japan enables a lot of independence for little kids. You can't do that in a lot of the US because speeding cars make it unsafe to walk, and there's nowhere worthwhile within walking distance anyway. So of course US parents keep their kids on a short leash; the environment around them is hostile to anyone outside a car.
Cars are not the main issue (but a huge issue due to urban sprawl caused by NIBMYism):
This is typical in large cities: https://old.reddit.com/r/SanJose/comments/1c7er1l/homeless_p...
Today:
"San Jose girl attacked while walking home from school, police say | KRON4" https://old.reddit.com/r/SanJose/comments/1cs7du6/san_jose_g...
> Police said Martinez is known to hang out in “The Jungle,” a sprawling homeless encampment that stretches along a creek adjacent to Senter Road and Keyes Street.
This is one of the richest cities in the US. A city which has squandered 100s of millions of dollars of homeless aid:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/13/audit-san-jose-failed...
This is a real issue: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-bay/san-jose-cou...
> Student activists said they do not want to criminalize homelessness, but insist walking to school in fear has to stop.
Walking in Switzerland isn't without risk of collision from street cars, buses, cyclists and cars, especially for an unsavvy 5 year old. But the short leash rule extends to areas of parenting beyond just long walks to school. America is obsessed with infantilization all the way to the legal drinking age being fixed at 21 and strictly enforced.
It isn't all about the traffic. Japan also enjoys famously low crime rates by almost every metric. The most dangerous parts of Japan are safer than the best low-crime neighborhoods in the US. This bleads into all aspects of the culture. People who feel safer themselves then don't panic as much about their kids walking out of sight.
>You can't do that in a lot of the US because speeding cars make it unsafe to walk
Not just speeding cars but specifically those shitty monster-trucks with crap visibility that can just run over everyone who isn't Shaq. Why in the name of all that is holy does every insecure suburban dickhead need to own a Ford F-450 Super Duty to play cowboy in the city?
And now they're worshiping the Cybertruck which has the pedestrian crash safety of a giant prison shank making it illegal in Europe. How do you expect to have safe roads for kids considering a nation's worshiping of oversized impractical cars?
Top of article photo is Baden, 5 minutes walk from where I live. Small world.
Well, what she describes is the way of parenting in German-speaking parts of Switzerland. Here in Geneva, which is French-speaking, walking alone to school usually happens only at 12 years and older kids. We have a lot of differences even within our small country.
Well, if only Geneva was considered Switzerland :D
(/s just in case for people unfamiliar with the sarcasm)
The note about differences is true, the country is pretty complicated and fragmented. But where do you get this 12 years old from? I grew up in the 90s, so things may have changed drastically but I remember going to school by myself since 6-7 years old. And it was the same for other kids who wouldn’t live too far from our school.
And I’m from Romandie (Vaud, Lausanne to be specific)
I've been in places where it varies school-to-school in the same town/area.
In fact, you can often cause a change yourself if you have a few families that just start having the kids walk.
Other times it's an actual policy of the school (they can't really prevent kids from walking to school but they can forbid them to leave without supervision).
Geneva - maybe, but that's not true for Vaud or Valais. Small kids, aged 7 or thereabouts, walk and ride buses to/from school all the time, en masse. This is a routine.
I think your experience is more specific to Geneva than German vs French speaking parts in general.
My son plays American football at the high school level. He rides the school bus to school every morning and I try to pick him up everyday and catch the tail end of his after school practice. It is one of the great joys of my day. Its about a 20 minute car ride home and we spend the entire time talking about football, school, gossip, whatever. As a single parent who works long software dev hours, I cherish this time.
Parenting is the hardest thing to do.
The problem with this style is frequently not your children but other parents. They present a risk via the straightforward thing that they are bad drivers so risk killing your children, they will report you for letting your kids be more independent, and eventually their kids will grow up and be obsessed with "going to therapy" and therapyspeech and will politically espouse helplessness, parasitizing the few productive members of society.
This comment took a turn from valid concerns into lunacy. Heaven forbid someone seek therapy!
I wouldn't let kids alone in Chicago of all places
Chicago is big: over 200 square miles. I'm sure there are parts of it where you would not want young kids walking alone (near a busy road, or a place where broken glass on a sidewalk is a regular occurrence). And I'm also sure there are many parts of it where young kids walking alone will be, realistically, about as safe as if they were driven in a car.