The Kids Aren't Alright (Cot'd)

[Kimstu]

LSLGuy, I think you’re still glossing over some significant issues here, and just filling in the lacunae with sweeping assumptions.

@LSLGuy

What is lacking now is the willingness for parents to let their precious sprogs out of their sight. For reasons that are mostly fear-based and mostly false.

I really don’t know, and don’t see any evidence that you really know, to what extent this claim is factually true.

ISTM very plausible that the main driver of increasing car-dependency (and consequently less childhood outdoor autonomy) for parents and kids alike may be just habit and the path of least resistance, rather than “paranoid” fear and overprotectiveness per se.

@LSLGuy

To be sure, in that environment moving beyond bicycle range requires a car. Back then most 16yos were itching to spread their wings by traveling farther than their bike can take them. So they promptly obtained a drivers license and a rattrap car as soon as family finances permitted. And folks freely shared cars and rides because not everybody could afford one.

Conversely, the kids now who’ve had their parents inadvertantly clip their wings, or leave the kids caged up until their wings have atrophied to uselessness, have no desire to move beyond walk/bike range.

Another categorical assertion about a phenomenon that might well have other explanations. For one thing, have you noticed how much more expensive it is to buy and maintain an old rattletrap (which I think is what you meant by “rattrap”) automobile these days than it was 45 years ago?

Not to mention the fact that kids nowadays have a lot more options for virtual socializing than back in our day when talking to a friend elsewhere meant trying to chat on the household landline, usually in a high-traffic area of the house and surrounded by eavesdropping siblings and annoyed parents telling you to stop tying up the line.

@LSLGuy

Certainly some don’t. But I lay that at the feet of crappy parenting, not crappy environment. Those same parents are certainly terrified of letting their sprog take a public bus or train.

While I personally as a non-car-owner am ardently in favor of kids and everybody else using public transit more, have you paid any attention to how public transit options in the US have deteriorated over the past 50 years? It’s easy just to sneer at “crappy” parents for being too clueless or “terrified” to “let” their children use transit, but the fact is that communities have been doing a shitty job of keeping transit usable.

Back in 1970, 77 million Americans commuted to work every day, and 9% of them took a bus or a train. By 2019, the number of U.S. workers had nearly doubled, to more than 150 million. But the vast majority of these new workers chose to drive: The number of public transit riders increased by only around 1 million during those years, and their share of the country’s overall commuters collapsed to 5%.

That historic shift reflects several broad trends in U.S. life, including suburbanization patterns and urban highway expansion, the growth of the car-friendly Sunbelt, and the depopulation of once-robust industrial cities. […]

“In a number of other countries, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development are combined in one entity,” [Urban Institute researcher Yonah Freedmark] says. “In the United States, we ended up with two different entities.” As a result, housing and mobility needs have been poorly aligned; the landscape is laden with housing that lacks access to public transportation, light rail lines that course through sparsely settled areas, and too many cities whose transit networks can’t connect riders with jobs.

Again, everybody’s just been going down the same path of least resistance in the form of defaulting to car use for all their transport needs. Which means that the needs of car users get prioritized at all levels, above the needs of users of other transit modes. Which means that people are even more likely to rely on car use. Which means that car users’ needs get even higher priority, and round and round the vicious circle we go.

That’s not just contemptible parental “paranoia” and kids’ “atrophied wings”. That’s a systemic, structural problem in US society.