It’s easy to find a number of examples of parents being disciplined or even arrested for allowing their children to walk to school, the store, or the park. To allow a child outside without guidance is considered gravely irresponsible by western society at large in a way that really isn’t healthy or helpful for promoting independence, in my opinion.
While I agree that society is too far in the direction of not letting kids do things independently, I think it’s easy to think the status quo is worse than it actually is. I think these examples of Child Protective Services (CPS) making the wrong call are pretty bad, and I agree they’re partly “society considers letting kids be alone outside irresponsible” but also “CPS has a lot of discretion” and “if you make a lot of calls some of them will be wrong”.
Also, in a survey I ran the median age for when my sample thought a typical child in their area could be ready to play at a playground unsupervised was 8.4y. When you say “child outside without guidance” it’s not clear whether you’re thinking 4, 8, or 12.
While I agree that society is too far in the direction of not letting kids do things independently, I think it’s easy to think the status quo is worse than it actually is. I think these examples of Child Protective Services (CPS) making the wrong call are pretty bad, and I agree they’re partly “society considers letting kids be alone outside irresponsible” but also “CPS has a lot of discretion” and “if you make a lot of calls some of them will be wrong”.
Also, in a survey I ran the median age for when my sample thought a typical child in their area could be ready to play at a playground unsupervised was 8.4y. When you say “child outside without guidance” it’s not clear whether you’re thinking 4, 8, or 12.