zlacker

>>vmoore+(OP)
I'm strongly in favor of expanding the US social safety net, but I don't want to neglect other obvious factors here. Dutch children are able to walk or bike outside unsupervised. In the US they'd risk either being killed by a driver, or stopped by an overzealous neighbor or police officer. I think this kind of freedom of movement has a big effect on happiness, it certainly did for me.

ETA relevant links: https://youtube.com/@NotJustBikes https://letgrow.org/

ETA again: I glibly mentioned "being killed by a driver" but of course navigating the typical US built environment if you're under 16 or otherwise unable to drive is a miserable experience in a number of ways even if you survive it. Highways make pedestrian paths unnecessarily roundabout. Parking lots make everything further from everything else. Crossing major roads requires getting drivers to notice and stop for you (harder when you're short!), or waiting through interminable signal cycles, etc.

>>MBlume+yj
> In the US they'd risk either being killed by a driver, or stopped by an overzealous neighbor or police officer.

It may depends on where in the US you're talking about, but in my area none of this is actually true. Although lots of people believe it is.

>>JohnFe+Kl
I wonder if there's an urban/suburban/rural or political divide when it comes to this.

I live in a suburb in California and have never ran into this problem. But we're also unincorporated and don't have cops with nothing better to do than harass some kid walking to school alone.

We're also surrounded by people whose kids are now in their 20s-30s. They don't see our kids running around as a nuisance - they're relatively new empty nesters and the kids seem to evoke nostalgia as they discuss the different things their kids did around the neighborhood when they were young.

>>bcrosb+Vx
I grew up in rural California in the one town in the county that was incorporated; the kind of place where every cop in town shows up if anything happens at all. I biked and rollerbladed to school alongside literal highways and never was approached about it once.

>>Talane+yC
And in my rural California town growing up the cops pulled you over for everything. I was once pulled over for riding my bicycle "fast". I wasn't speeding.

Every place is different.