Did you have a "free-range" childhood? Where you a latchkey kid?

[entremet]

There's a big debate amongst parenting advocates on how modern children are more sheltered than past generations. Whatever happened, 24/7 news cycles, prominent media kidnappings, etc, kids started to be more sheltered. There's been a focus for more organized supervised activies, over unstructured and unsupervised leisure.

The biggest example of this seen in stuff like Stranger Things. The Duffer Brothers said they couldn't set their show today because kids are unsurpervised.

I'm not a parent and i don't have an opinion what is good or bad. Parenting seem very complex and it's not my lane. No kids and I haven't raised kids to successful adulthoods.

For the most part, I was a parented free range in NYC and Texas (until I was 5). My gender absolutely had a lot to do with it because my female cousins and extended family in my generation were not as unsupervised. But I rode bikes, skateboarded, went to friend's houses. My only directive was to come home before 7-8 ish on weekdays.

We really couldn't afford structured activities like martial arts lesson or sports, so that was a big part of it. And my public schools had very underfunded sports programs.

This was an interesting older story on one of the first notable "free-range" cases. The parents almost had their kids taken away from them by local authorities.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrnEOwkrBqo

I do wonder that changed? Was it the 24/7 newscycle that did in free range parenting? Why did "free range" Millienials and Gen Xers change parenting styles?

 

[Rosebud]

It's weird. They didn't let me leave the house by myself, but inside I could do anything I wanted (play GTA, watch any movie, any website...)

 

[rubbish_opinions]

pretty much free range but I grew up in the 70s/80s in Italy. I never see kids around on their own nowadays. they are losing out a lot imo.

 

[apocat]

I wandered around town all the time and loved just feeling like I could go around exploring. It gave me a lot of self confidence.

 

[entremet]

pretty much free range but I grew up in the 70s/80s in Italy. I never see kids around on their own nowadays. they are losing out a lot imo.

Click to shrink...

I'm just curious what changed that dramatically altered parenting styles? My theory is definitely the 24/7 newscycle, but I'm surprised it has been that influential.

 

[Planx]

I grew up in the 90s in a rural New England town, and graduated high school in 2010. I wasn't a latchkey kid (I had a stay-at-home mom), but I would disappear for the whole day with my friends with no way to contact me. At most, we'd ride our bikes a mile or so to the river nearby and we'd swim, fish, and hang out all day. As long as I let my parents know who I was with and was back before dinner (or called to let them know I wasn't coming), it was fine.

 

[julia crawford]

I was pretty much free to do as i pleased. I would bike to friend's houses, go bike in the mountains, etc etc.

 

[ArrogantBastard]

100% 'free range'. I rode my bike all over the place, my parents always told me be home before dinner and that was that. I don't think I could afford my son that type of freedom today...

 

[Seirith]

I was born in 1983, I was allowed to go the near by school playground with a friend and hang out/play but I had to be on the playground and if my parents walked by and could not find me I would have been in big trouble. Otherwise my parents had to know where I was and who I was with at all times, especially as a young kid.

I personally think letting your child do whatever they want and you have no idea where they are is irresponsible.I don't know anyone who was allowed to just go as they please and "be back before dinner".

 

[Kamek]

Free range 90s/2000s NYC. As long as I did well in school, no one said anything to me. That being said, I definitely found myself in some precarious situations, but I chalk it up to live and growing up and anything can happen to anyone at any age at any time.

 

[Cow]

Could do what I wanted. There used to be kids with strict religious parents who wouldn't let their kids cross the street. So the free range kids were all playing football on the field whilst the religious kids were stuck on the other side of the street that just had a pavement watching on, sad they couldn't play lol. This is actually how it was. Respect to those kids for sticking to the rules their parents set, though.

 

[Mirage]

I had to let my parents know if I was going to go somewhere. They wouldn't have been happy if I just took off around town without saying anything.

 

[TheXbox]

Free range. I hung out with other kids on the block in grade school and pretty much went wherever I wanted from middle school up. I grew up in the early 2000s.

 

[Yasuke]

I was a free range kid in the 90's/early 2000's, but I grew up on an Air Force base, so the calculus on that is a bit different.

 

[entremet]

100% 'free range'. I rode my bike all over the place, my parents always told me be home before dinner and that was that. I don't think I could afford my son that type of freedom today...

Click to shrink...

Why is that? Do you think you just prefer more organized activities for him?

 

[Gr8one]

We were free range. If I wasn't in school i'd be in the streets with my friends until dinner and then back out on the street until someone called me in for bed.

 

[PeskyToaster]

Seems like local news crime reporting and 24/7 news probably did the most damage as the sense that society is more dangerous and violent than ever is pervasive but not supported by reality. Most of violence and kidnappings and abuse are perpetrated by people the victim knows but all the fear is around random strangers. That isn't to say there aren't any random acts of violence or kidnappings but I think they are the small majority but I don't know the exact stats.

At the end of the day I don't think it really matters though. I think it's pretty low on the scale of things determining a child's future.

 

[HVivi]

I was raised latch-key. I was fine with it because I mostly just played video games inside. I am hoping to raise my kids more free-range. I see kids in my neighborhood going on adventures together all the time and I want to instill that independence into my kids. With the advent of phones/smart watches with GPS it is way less scary to let your kid wander your neighborhood IMO. We haven't started that quite yet as my oldest hasn't started kindergarten but will do that in a few years. I know he can walk/bike himself to school without a parent starting 3rd grade in our neighborhood so will probably start around/before then.

 

[CHC]

Yes to both. I got my first 50cc dirtbike when I was around 8 years old and I could just freely ride around in the woods behind my house. Climb trees, play with firecrackers and BB guns, whatever really. Safety was always taught to me and I wasn't stupid or anything, but it was a nice kinetic, physical childhood. Later on my parents got divorced and both worked full time so I was home alone from like 3 PM to 5-7 PM every weekday. It was a great life!

 

[Carn]

Freerange in the 90s. My parents owned a bakery so they were always 'at home' so to speak. Only rules I had to follow was be on time for dinner (or call / let them know if I wasnt having dinner at home); and afterwards be home at before 8-ish (later in the summer).

There was this article about a few generations of a specific family that showed graphics how each generation's 'range' was getting smaller and smaller. Let me try to find it.

 

[lunarworks]

I grew up in the '80s, and when I felt like going out I just went. That's how it was.

 

[Teiresias]

As younger adolescents, my brother and I were free-range within the confines of our subdivision. Free to ride our bikes wherever, to any friend's house, hang out in the road, go into the woods, etc. It's not that we were ever actually told not to leave the subdivision, there just really wasn't any reason to do so since it was quite a bike ride to anything other than ANOTHER subdivision down a pretty busy road, so we didn't really want to do that anyway. The neighborhood was pretty large, with a few additions being built, so we also had things like newly dug foundations to mess around in, large water drain pipes to walk through, that kind of thing. It seemed like all of our friends and all the neighborhood kids had the same basic freedom.

Once we were both driving it was pretty free-range then too in terms of extra curricular activities for school and other social activities.

This was the 80s and 90s.

 

[rsfour]

Could do whatever. Lived in an apartment while growing up, so lots of kids to play with; baseball, video games, the pool.

Didn't change much in my teens after we moved (aside from not having a pool). Whole lotta arcades and movie theatres though.

 

[exodus]

Mostly free range in Ottawa. Didn't go out that much as a teen as I was a bit of an introverted shut in, but I'd bike all over the neighborhood and be left on my own when I was like 9 or 10. Would bike down Bank St to Billings Bridge for some McDonalds ice cream...maybe my parents didn't know how far I got, can't recall.

 

[Mupod]

I grew up in a fairly small town/rural area and was generally left to my own devices. I spent a lot of time exploring the hills behind our place, maybe my parents would have been less inclined to let me do that if they saw what I was doing to get there, lol. I had to jump across some floating planks and tires to cross a little creek then clamber up some rock faces to get to this nice little clearing with a stream. I always went there with a friend or two so the one time something bad happened (other kid stepped on a hornet's nest) we had someone to go get help.

I was a latch key kid at some point but I don't remember how old I was. Maybe grade 5? I lived about a 10 minute walk from my school and it was a perfectly safe area, though.

 

[Rassilon]

pretty much free range in the 90s yup

lived in a leafy green english town, so it was common for kids to congregate in the park, woods, field or moorland

 

[SwampBastard]

I was a kid in rural Indiana in the 80s and early 90s. We lived in a fairly small neighborhood that was surrounded with corn/soybean fields and some forest. We were absolutely free-range kids. On the weekend or during summer vacation, I would get up, eat a bowl of cereal, grab my bike, and I usually wouldn't be back before lunch or later. I'd ride to friends' houses, we'd go tromping around in the woods, shoot bottle rockets at each other, etc. It makes me genuinely sad that kids generally don't get that kind of freedom anymore.

I was actually just talking to a friend about this over the weekend. She lives in a pretty affluent neighborhood with three kids. A couple summers ago, the three of them walked around the block to a friend's house. They never even crossed the street. When they got to the friend's house, their mother called my friend and, in a mild panic, said that she would gladly pick the kids up and drop them off in the future. It's crazy to me.

 

[Deleted member 3208]

Inside my home, I was free to do whathever I wanted. Most of the times. My mother forbid us to watch DBZ after Cell absorbed 17 because 'it was too violent' or watch Sailor Moon after Haruka and Michiru appeared.

Yet they allowed me to play games like Doom or Duke Nukem when I was a little kid.

Few times I visited a friend's house or went out on my own, had to tell my parents.

 

[pikachief]

Grew up in the 90's but my parents grew up in the same neighborhood in the 70's and 80's and it was such a violent time they rarely ever let us out and never on our own. My parents wouldn't even let us learn to ride a bicycle in fear we'd roam the neighborhood lol

Still dont know how to this day

 

[Macheezmo]

Grew up in the 80's and I was free-range. I just had to tell my parents where I was going so they'd know where to find me if they needed me and I was free to go.

 

[FliX]

I was very free range... I cannot fathom keeping kids on such a short leash...

 

[rubbish_opinions]

I'm just curious what changed that dramatically altered parenting styles? My theory is definitely the 24/7 newscycle, but I'm surprised it has been that influential.

Click to shrink...

wish I'd know! I don't have kids but if I had one I don't know how I would act. I had a lot of weird and strange encounters when I was a kid, I grew up in a really sketchy neighborhood and some guys I knew back then ended up junkies, dead or in jail. mothers were worried but never stopped from going around. I remember having a lot of support from the Catholic church (I'm an atheist) with them offering a place to play and pass the time to everyone, 'bad' and 'good' kids alike with little to no proselitizing. lots of sports, activities, they sold candy at crazy low prices, organized summer holidays. dunno if it's still a thing.

 

[mhayes86]

Free range back in the 90's. I had a lot of siblings, and my parents probably couldn't afford to do most extracurricular activities with us let alone keep tabs on us all the time. As long as we said where we were going and were home by a certain time.

We used to wander the woods behind us, climb the cliff face in there, walk across a busy street to the gas station for candy/slushies, etc. I was staying home alone pretty early on as well (1 kid in daycare is expensive enough). One big difference with the town I grew up in these days is that it really built up over the last 30 years and is a lot busier.

At my current house, we have a small and safe enough neighborhood for our daughter to wonder around in when she's older, but I won't lie that I'd be nervous about her walking along the street to the town center alone since there's no sidewalk until closer to town, and people speed.

 

[Garth2000]

I grew up in the 80s/90s in a Canadian suburb. We did whatever we wanted without question. We had a key tied around our neck with a shoelace in case we had to come home and the house was locked.

Especially in the summer time, it wouldnt be unusual to hop on your bike after breakfast, maybe with a baseball mitt and just be gone until the streetlights came on (that was curfew). We had boundaries we weren't supposed to go past (but we often did) and there would be hell to pay if we got caught (which we did not). We would explore forests, parks, sewers, or just gather a bunch of other kids for an impromptu baseball game in an empty field.

Someone would feed us, and our parents knew that, they didnt worry about that either. Inevitably we would end up at someones house around lunch time and there would be a stack of sandwiches and a jug of kool aid.

I miss those days.

 

[Kill3r7]

I grew up as a "free range" child 80s/90s (although my parents had their own quirks such as not allowing me to own a bike because a kid in the neighborhood got hit by a car and died) but I suspect that had a lot to do with neighborhood composition. There were dozens of kids in the apartment building or the immediate surrounding area that made it possible to hangout and play on our own without our parents being too concerned even in NYC. That isn't really possible in most modern neighborhoods, even in the burbs. My oldest child's best friend lives 10 miles away from us. Her classmates are all pretty far away. Thankfully our new neighbors have younger kids so that should help.

 

[Kyrios]

I had to let my parents know if I was going to go somewhere. They wouldn't have been happy if I just took off around town without saying anything.

Click to shrink...

Yeah same. That was the deal, especially growing up before cell phones. As long as I told one of my parents where I was or call them once I got to a friend's house, things were cool.

 

[Couleurs]

I guess so; in the 80s/early 90s my sister and I could do whatever as long as we weren't getting in trouble. We just had to go home when the streetlights came on.

 

[steejee]

Free range-ish in 80s/90s but we lived in a rural area, so free range meant biking to the one friend I could actually get to in under 30minutes or the park at the reservoir. So I was pretty constrained not by parents but by location.

 

[HeySeuss]

I think those of us that grew up free range realize how ridiculous that was and essentially made it a personal choice to not out our kids in harms way like that. I grew up that way and just had to be home for dinner. If I was late, I didn't eat that night.

Unfortunately I think a lot of parents in my generation swung too far the protective direction to not make the same mistakes and helicopter parents were born trying to overcompensate leaving a lot of kids that can't function by themselves or make any decisions on their own. Obviously that's something that they can learn, but it's not good initially as they try to make their way through life.

I think a better approach is a healthy balance of both ways of parenting.

 

[Taurus Silver]

I was pretty sheltered to a point. I was a latchkey kid because my mom worked 16hr days, so I spent a lot of time at home by myself starting at 5. No brothers or sisters, just me and cartoons. Once I got to be a teen I pretty much did what I want, but I was respectful and always let my mother/grandmother know well in advance my plans.

Today my kids are latchkey kids as well. They are teens now, and I'd give them a some leeway to go out and be normal teens but their grandmother doesn't agree with that so it's a battle.

 

[MercuryLS]

100% 'free range'. I rode my bike all over the place, my parents always told me be home before dinner and that was that. I don't think I could afford my son that type of freedom today...

Click to shrink...

Same here, I feel bad for my daughter. I want to afford her the same freedom but I doubt my wife will allow it.

 

[J_ToSaveTheDay]

I was a neighborhood rascal and spent most of my time at neighbor's or friends' houses. When I got to be about 11 or 12, I started wandering to whole other suburbs where my school friends lived on my bike (at the time it felt huge, now I realize how relatively short a distance I was actually traveling to hang out).

Summers from ages 11 and 12 when I started hopping to other sections of the suburbs was just me wandering from friend's house to friend's house, sometimes kind of collecting a caravan of friends as we went.

Only policy that was in place was that I had to give the phone numbers of all of the houses I was going to (landlines were still the main mode of telecommunication at the time) so that my parents could call around to ask about me, I had to try and call once every 4-5 hours just to check in, and I couldn't stay out past dark without notifying my parents and subsequently staying at the exact house that I was notifying from (i.e. no more wandering after dark). Led to an impromptu sleepover about once a week, usually fueled by a popular local multiplayer game that my friends and I couldn't stop playing (Mario Kart 64, Goldeneye, Smash Bros, etc).

So yeah, my childhood was pretty free range and until my late middle school years, I didn't actually spend much time at home. During the school year I'd usually call back to my parents and let them know that I was going to go hang out at a friend's house after school.

 

[Boy]

Free range. I'm thankful that my parents didn't shelter us too much and allowed us breathing room to be independent. It made my siblings and I responsible at a young age.
As long as we stayed out of trouble my parents gave us the free range.

 

[The Albatross]

I was a latchkey kid from about ~12. My mom worked part time when I was a younger kid and I was with my grandmother the days she was working, but then when I was like 11 or so she went back full time. I had sisters who were 16 and 18 at that point.

As a kid I liked the freedom. I was pretty responsible for the most part, didn't get into trouble or do too dumb shit as a kid. I had to be *home* though, I couldn't like wander around the square or anything, I had to be home by 2:30 or whatever it was, unless I specifically had permission to be somewhere else like a friend's house or something. I had a neighborhood friend and so I could go over there, but nowhere else. Usually just stuck home, played videogames, watched TV.

Wasn't free range, but it was 90s kid free range. I think it's better than what we have today. Lots of formative experiences that weren't necessarily *good* but I look back on them as learning a lot. THings like fights walking home from school, kids settling their own problems, etc. "The Line" on the way home from school from like age 8 to 15 was always a semi war zone of like kids getting into fights, bullies, "Getting jumped" by teenagers was a thing for a while (pretty tame compared to how it sounds).

Weekends I was pretty much always outside of the house from like April till October, always playing outside, bikes, roller blades, playing football or pickup somewhere, capture the flag. My parents basically didn't let me be in the house if the weather was nice and it was a weekend. So you'd find something to do. Sometimes that meant getting into trouble or something but it was always petty trouble, mischief. There were places I wasn't allowed to hang out at, but it's not like my parents were stern about it, it's just i sort of knew I'm not supposed to hang out at the coffee place, that was for older teens to sit around and smoke cigarettes or w/e, and I didn't.

 

[Parch]

Completely free range. Sunrise to sunset. Getting a bicycle just increased the range. My cousin and I took a bike trip to a completely different town once, just for the hell of it. 10 hour trip.

 

[SteveWinwood]

Seeing a lot of 80s/90s in here. Which is when I first heard about kids not being allowed outside anymore because of weirdos in vans or over-protective parents. And my parents say the same about their childhood. There were kids who weren't allowed out for various reasons and parents talked about it then and that was almost 60 years ago.

So I'm filing this under its always been a discussion and people only think it's a new thing now because they weren't around to see it before. Or they have a warped view of the past (we never wore seatbelts and everyone lived!). Just like everything else.

In another 20 years people will be saying all the same things. Nobody plays outside anymore. Back in my day we did though.

There was a scan of an old article I saw once from the 50s about how kids are too busy listening to the colgate radio hour nowadays they never play outside.

 

[skeezx]

as an 80s/90s kid i can say yeah, things were much different back then in this regard. there's no way we could've gotten away with half the shit we did today

 

[DirtyLarry]

Free Range in the 80's and 90's in Northeast New Jersey.
I learned most of my actual life lessons on my own this way no doubt.

 

[ProstatePuncher]

Born in the 90s, grew up in the slums of my city, used to spend all day outside until my mum got too freaked out about gangs and got me into video games to keep me indoors.

Used to enjoy just going out on my bike and getting lost, cycling miles from home with no real idea where I was. Surprised I never got proper lost and had to be taken home by cops as a missing kid or whatever.

 

[Yesterday]

Raised by a single mom so not much she could do to supervise me, luckily all I wanted to do was be alone and not cause trouble