How children lost the right to roam in four generations

I think the independence factor is the issue, not necessarily exposure to rocks and rills. My uppermost priority in childhood was to go off to see the world on my own, even just to roller skate at six years of age blocks beyond my “boundary” in Queens (NY). I was a tiny little girl and Mom was a micromanager. I just could not stand it!

New Orleans was the second city I was allowed to explore on my own. I loved its murky strangeness. My grandmother lived there in the Garden District and we visited every Easter vacation. I was FINALLY allowed to wander the Quarter by myself at age 12, though I wanted to slip my moorings much earlier. The year before, at 11, I got to prowl around San Francisco, where we stayed in the St. Francis Hotel in 1947. My mother was pregnant and I wasn’t about to hang around the hotel all day. The doorman pointed me toward Chinatown: “Walk uphill, and walk downhill to get back to the hotel.”

It wasn’t all that different in the sixties when my kids grew up on the beach between Santa Monica and Marina del Rey. We lived in the Marina and they walked or biked to SamoHi every day. There were some bad characters then, but self-destructive hippie druggies were relatively harmless to others. Now, of course, an adult would be crazy to walk that beach alone without two Dobermans and an Uzi.

I spent a few delightful years as a travel writer, with assignments all over the world. Both of my kids headed to foreign shores the minute they left school. I’m seriously ticked that so many countries are so dangerous for Americans now, and even more ticked that I seem to look like an easy target at my allegedly advanced age. @#$#&(*& to THAT!

That may be very true for these ever expanding city urban types. But there are also many country kids, go look at the blue states by county map... and we’re always out doors and doing stuff. BTW I was born in 85, so I’m not talking about some previous generation. But I know others from college who came from Chicago and such and they have spent all their lives in condos and downtown neon worlds. But I think that it’s more a symptom of population concentration than generational differences.

I consider myself very lucky, in that we live on a USMC base. My children are, for the most part, safe to roam and run outside whenever they choose. Too bad it’s too dang hot lately. It is also a neighborhood where there are few who are afraid to come outside and greet their neighbors and chat over the back fence, so to speak.

One of my favorite things about being a military family is the sense of community that living on base gives me. My children seem to have a more “normal” after-school existence, because they are able to run and play in a safe environment, in addition to the fact that I know a majority of my neighbors. As a result, I have never felt the need to over-extend them with arranged activities. We also have a great youth center here on base (within walking distance) that they can play at when it gets too hot (110 here at 4pm).

Growing up in the citrus belt in Florida I was walking several blocks to visit a friend in my rural neighborhood in 1965. A car pulls beside me, pushes the car door open an offers me a ‘ride’. Had a car not come over the hill (very rare) in the opposite direction, causing the pedophile to speed off, who knows what may have happened.

There have always been perverts. We are just more aware of them now. (and probably know one or two)

The contrast between Edward and George's childhoods is highlighted in a report which warns that the mental health of 21st-century children is at risk because they are missing out on the exposure to the natural world enjoyed by past generations.

Gosh, this wouldn't be an attack on private property er anythin', would it? Kids plant their little asses in front of the idiot box (used to refer to TV, now includes computer gaming machines) and never read a book for the same reason they don't go outside -- no action.

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