> As have been pointed out by multiple people, kids are perfectly capable of taking public transit themselves.

This is another difference that intersects with other issues in America. In a car, your child is under your control. Moreover, adding to your following point of a child under ten being unaccompanied in public, no American parent would dream of letting their children go out alone and recently, this includes even children in their early teens. Especially in the previous decades, helicopter parenting has reached a new peak in the US, this seems somewhat coincident with a general infantalization of young adults.

It is incredibly common for kids to be alone in cities in the US. I can look out my window right now and see 2 children playing in a park with no supervision.

On my train commute every morning there were school children who get off at my stop because it’s where their school is. Their rides happen at reduced fares as well.

The trope rings very false to me and seems to be about one particular demographic (white and suburban).

If there is an increase in over watching our children it’s because we’ve over indexed on cars, not the reverse.

There have also been cases where families were threatened with/by CPS for letting their children outside without supervision. It's good to know that attitude is not universal, but it does occur.

Those cases are newsworthy, because they are newsworthy.

As kasey_junk implied, this sort of over-protectiveness is not universal in the USA. For example, NYC provides all students that live further than 1/2 mile from their school with a discounted public transit card (soon to be free). While very young kids are rare, tween and teen students can often be seen unaccompanied on mass transit. And even more often walking alone or in groups without parents. No one bats an eye except possibly to complain a bit about the groups of boisterous kids blocking the sidewalk :-)

> no American parent would dream of letting their children go out alone and recently, this includes even children in their early teens

This is, AFAICT, mostly a white suburban “middle-class” (mid-high income working class, including proletarian intelligentsia, really) attitude, rather than something that applies to all American parents.

Along with the other replies, you're right. I will say though, when we're talking about car culture, white suburban middle class types are ones to mostly support it.

>usually two parents in a household,

That's getting less true as time goes on.

>and some grandparents will help,

If your parents live more then ~45min away (this is probably true for most people) it's probably not realistic to expect them to help out with childcare.

>Caretakers can be hired in certain cases

If you have the $$$ to rationalize it. That said, if you have to choose between a caretaker and a car it's an easy choice for most people.

>I grew up like that. People have been doing that for decades.

People have been enduring hardships for centuries. It's foolish to expect them to voluntarily continue doing so when they have other options. The fact of the matter is that most people who are in a position to own a car find owning a car worth the tradeoffs.

>As have been pointed out by multiple people, kids are perfectly capable of taking public transit themselves.

Sure, after a certain age.

>Kids under ten might need to be accompanied by a guardian, but there are usually two parents in a household, and some grandparents will help, too. Caretakers can be hired in certain cases.

This works out well in a well developed coutry I suppose. In Russia, for example, most people won't have this kind of options. You want your kid safe? You take your kid to the school yourself (before 10).

And again - I've describe certain cases, not just one. We've never had a car too, but for some cases this is a necessity.

So basically we change our quality of life to fit some urban ideal? My kids’ grandparents live in a different state and a different country.

A child on the BART train? You have got to be kidding. With the insane people, mentally ill, the thieves and the homeless, I would’t expose my kids to having to deal with that nonsense. Cars are awesome. Being forced to share public transportation with a bunch of weirdos isn’t progress.

I am riding home right now at 2am from the airport in Hayward to my house in Mountain View. In a car, I’ll be home soon. With public transport, I’m stranded for hours. Public transportation can’t go everywhere.

At least tens of millions of teenage or younger students take public transit to school around the world, somehow few of them seem to fall prey to “the insane people, mentally ill, the thieves and the homeless.”

Last I checked kids don’t tend to wander outside at 2am, and places with public transit tend to have taxis too. (I would add that the last thing I want to do at 2am is to drive myself home; in fact, a couple years back I had an accident due to driving jet-lagged the day following an international flight.)

Your child is probably realistically safer on a train than in your car. Deaths due to traffic accidents per year are much, _much_ greater than deaths on trains through all causes, per passenger km. Of course, people aren't great at assessing risk.

Ah, but so many families have already changed their quality of life to fit the suburban/car-centric ideal.

>A child on the BART train? You have got to be kidding. With the insane people, mentally ill, the thieves and the homeless,

Typical American paranoia.

I’m a huge proponent of the whole “free range kid” thing, and am always looking for ways to encourage my kid’s independence, but there’s no way on earth I’m putting her on BART by herself. This is not a general paranoia about trains or public transportation—it’s a specific observation about BART in particular.

Hell, I won’t take BART through certain stops at certain times of the day and I’m a grown-ass man.