Re:Where Do the Children Play?
by jiggawatts on Monday November 17, 2025 @05:50AM
(#45952476)
I was an only kid that roamed pretty free as young as four, wandering the neighbourhood with similarly aged kids.
I chalk that up to the inertia of social behaviour. My parents grew up in a generation where they all had many brothers and sisters, and their parents were one of eight. They learned parenting from their parents, and I learned parenting from mine.
We adjust with each generation, but not completely.
We still roamed pretty free as kids in the 90s. That's long after the decline of childhood mortality and large families - I don't know more than a handful of families from that era who had more than 2 kids.