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Comment by merloen | Hacker News Reader

Is there any nation in which kids are less independent than in the U.S.?

China. Two strong influences: an idolization of western parenting plus the one child policy. Take your caricature of a dependent US kid and add the pressure and coddling of six parents.

And yet, you’ll see first graders walking alone or in adult free groups to the convenience store during lunch to get something to eat. It’s only really the black Audi crowd that super coddle their children.

My hunanese wife had free reign of the city since elementary school, things are not that different now.

I'm observing a massive decline in children independence in Russia as well compared to the "good old Soviet times" and early (pretty violent though) 90s.

It is a helpless feeling that emerged is the age of kidnappers, organ harvesting etc. Or has nothing really changed since then and it is just that we're exposed to massive amounts of FUD in the new era of mass media?

Edit: to answer the actual question: I don't think (that's really subjective and I don't have kids) Russia has reached yet the "typical level of overparenting" in the US.

As crime rates dropped the television shows people watched focused more on exploiting the fear around crime against children.

I think it's a lot more fear, uncertainty/doubt. Kids are most likely to be a victim of crime at home by family members. That's where most abuse happens. The random kidnapping is more in the movies that reality.

That’s a fact. Doug Stanhope has a great bit about how your kid can go his entire life without being raped by a man in a van.

In South Africa you get a mix. Upper middle class and rich driven to school with some parents even walking children into class. Poor and working-class kids catch public transport. They have no other option. Unfortunately, we have a fair amount of violent crime and the result is kids have less freedom to roam.

Good grief; must every thread devolve into “are there any countries [worse] than the US?”

I live in France (I am American) and my 6 year old has walked to the store by himself and his French classmate’s parents think that’s insane. It’s a scandle when my 3 year old plays on playground equipment designed my 6 year olds. I took my kids rock climbing in Chamonix when they were 3 and 4 years old and had them properly harnessed and roped and you would have thunk I pushed them out of an airplane. Our Italian guide was having a great time while the French families were clucking disapproval between bouts of amazement.

I know plenty of UK parents in France that keep their kids on tighter leashes than even the French.

This idea that “American kids are less independent than others” is just nonsense. It’s all situational — a suburban kid might have to walk 3 miles to get to a shop or a school — that’s a much different context than some kid walking in a neighborhood where everything is a block or two away. When I am in Cupertino, I see elementary school kids riding their scooters to school unattended and when I was in Korea, there were plenty of teenagers getting picked up by their parents to walk theee blocks home.

Let’s stop generalizing so much. All of this depends on the relative safety of an area and not the nationalities involved.

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