Been spending some time with family in the exurbs. What an awful place to be. Sure, you get to buy a big house you can be so proud of! But the only time you ever leave it is in your giant SUV to go shopping. You can only walk in your immediate tiny subdivision, and nobody does that! What will the neighbors think??? You immediately leave the subdivision to rural roads with zero sidewalks with people speeding in their giant SUVs. It’s really depressing, everyone stays inside all day.
I raised 4 kids in the 2000s/2010s and they mostly got themselves to school by walking, riding bikes or buses (school and city). They would also go to the park or go hiking or biking on their own. No cell phones and no particular mandate other than be home by dark. They’re now all grown and are successfully living as well adjusted adults, in part at least, because I never treated them as immature or irresponsible unless they gave me reason to. This shift in the culture towards treating our children as helpless has really been a detriment to their overall well being and I hope that we can find a way to fix that.
I see it as part of a more widespread increase in fear and distrust. Probably because negative emotions like that drive traffic, voting, and other behaviors that are useful for power and profit of the people stoking them.
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