Which American city is best for raising free children?
With 90s-and-earlier style independence. Could it be Salt Lake City? Inspired by this:
“Utah Free Range Parenting Law […] says that letting your kids play outside, walk to school, wait briefly in the car (under some circumstances) or come home with a latchkey is not neglect unless something else seriously bad is going on.”
https://letgrow.org/state/utah/
#urbanism #WalkableCities #SaltLakeCity #SLC #Utah #parenting #childhood
- AnarchoYeasty ( @AnarchoYeasty@beehaw.org ) 22•1 year ago
“I want to raise my kids free. Is this religious theocracy ran by a literal cult with a long history of religious indoctrination, theocratic control, and suppression of thought, as well as institutionalized homophobia and transphobia be the answer?”
Yeah we’ve got some wildly different ideas of the definition of free.
Few things
1.) This is entirely a problem invented by the paranoid and delusional. People aren’t having their kids snatched because they walked home from school or has their kids sit in an air conditioned car or playing at a park by themselves. This is right wing fear mongering at it’s fucking finest.
2.) You have the audacity to mask your paranoia with “it happens all the time to blacks and natives”. Want to know how I know you aren’t black or indigenous? Because no black or indigenous people are fleeing to a theocratic fascist racist ass place like salt lake city. You can just admit you’re a white person who reads too many homestead and mommy blogs.
3.) CPS has better things to be doing than snatching kids for being outside. My wife, who is black, was horrifically abused growing up. I mean horrific. Living in squalor when she did have a home and living homeless for most of her life. CPS investigated a few times and never once removed her or her siblings from the hell they were living in. In the other side of the coin my sister is a foster parent who takes in children who have been removed from homes by CPS. And far too many times we’ve seen kids be returned back to parents who were unwilling and unable to take care of their kids. In talking drug abuse, parents being prostitutes, etc. Not white parents pretending to be a victim because they let their kids play outside.
To add to your first point, it’s actually safer than “back in the day” for kids. They’re also much more likely to be abused/abducted by a trusted relative than a stranger. Much like airplane crashes though, abductions make headlines so everyone thinks they’re much more prevalent.
- AnarchoYeasty ( @AnarchoYeasty@beehaw.org ) 10•1 year ago
Every single person who abused my wife growing up was someone she loved and trusted. It was entirely people who didn’t want the government or cps telling them how to raise a kid because they know how to do it because they are old school and have “common sense”. Never once was it an abduction
This post is unnecessarily hostile.
Nah, this is the exact amount of hostility an op like this deserves.
Uhg. 🙄
I wish people could be nicer to each other. Nothing about OP or their post implies they are asking in anything less than good faith.
I’m sorry, I can’t help as I don’t live in America, but why would those things constitute neglect in the first place? If it’s talking about very young children, yeah, I can understand, but otherwise, I don’t.
@Stoneblackdog overpolicing is a huge problem here, CPS (child protective services) and the police have taken children and put them in foster care for things like this. They target Native, Black and poor families. It didn’t used to be like this. 9/11 made some people extremely paranoid and the culture has never recovered unfortunately. Canada has some of these issues too now.
It sucks that my government thinks “ipad kids” locked inside all day are better off than kids who play outside.
This was a problem long before 9/11. I remember stranger danger being a huge thing throughout the 90s and I know the 80s had that ridiculous satanic panic thing where pedophile satanists were lurking around every corner waiting to do some hoodoo.
@lemillionsocks true. but I think 9/11 really exacerbated the problem. It seems like kids began staying indoors and at home way more in the 2000s than the 90s… of course some of that is due to video games.
I dunno I was 11 when 9/11 happened and I was living in a town just outside of NYC. There wasnt any noticeable change in kids playing outside pre and post 9/11. Anecdotal I know, but I feel like if any place would feel this big cultural shift it would be the NYC commuter belt.
One big shift I do remember seeing is a lot more families moving up from the city and outer boroughs(especially The Bronx).
You can probably compare the summer of 2001 to the 2023 and see a huge cultural shift, but I suspect if you directly compared 2001 to summer of 2002 or 2003 you’d see a much more gradual change.
@Stoneblackdog The cynic in me also believes the daycare industry may be responsible for this. Some people spend thousands of dollars per month on daycare. That’s crazy to me. When I was a kid and my parents were working I just stayed with other family members. But many people are isolated without extended family and the daycare industry exploits that.
- AnarchoYeasty ( @AnarchoYeasty@beehaw.org ) 2•1 year ago
The term free range parenting was coined in response to some parents letting their 6 year old walk home from the park in 2015. And not a park right across the street. So yeah I think that qualifies as really young. And also not even something that was acceptable in the 90’s
Pittsburgh.