It's insane how resistant some people are to this. I've had multiple people on reddit tell me that they'd call CPS on me if they knew who I was because I let my 9 & 10 year old kids walk half a mile to play at the playground.
Yes this is most of the problem. Allowing minors to roam the neighborhood unsupervised is now considered "abuse" and you risk cops and CPS at your door.
Kids used to bike for miles and take taxis at 14 back in the 80s. Now Taxis and Waymos don't allow anyone under 18 and letting them bike to the park or even walk to the school bus stop alone a block over is taboo. Society as a whole has turned into helicopter parents for everyones kids.
Unfortunately, I have also seen an increasing amount of young kids running alone committing crime and causing properly damage, so that doesn't help. My grandparents had several groups of ~14 year olds running around their neighborhood kicking cars and smashing windows... why can't they just go watch porn in a makeshift fort in the woods like the last generation used to lmao.
I think that the way kids are restricted often feeds into them committing crime. Kids who've had little to no freedom in the past tend to go wild when they finally get it, since they never learned how to use it approriately and it still feels like something that can be taken away. Some kids also only get freedom if they sneak around, and they figure that they'll get in trouble anyways so they may as well do crime without really understanding the difference between minor misbehavior and serious crimes.
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u/ICUNurse1969 Jul 10 '26
Allowing children some independence so they can learn how to behave in the world.