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Comment by magduf | Hacker News Reader

Just google for "illegal children outside" and you'll find all kinds of stories. Here's one: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2014/09/25/kar...

Parents are routinely investigated or get police contact because of this. Of course, being America, it varies a lot from place to place (you probably won't have a problem if you're in an extremely rural place and your kids are playing around in the 40 acres that is your backyard, but in a conservative suburban subdivision you certainly can have CPS investigate just for letting your kids play in your back yard).

As for "always", things were definitely nothing like this when I grew up in the 80s. This isn't the same country I grew up in.

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The article you cited says: "The police officer left with a curt nod and without filing a report." And "agree[d] that this was a little ridiculous." It was officially marked a "non-event".

The whole point of the story is that it's not illegal. An inappropriately nosy neighbor caused a stir, and that sucks. But there's no reason to escalate and downward spiral the situation by countering with factually incorrect claims.

Except now the mother has a record with CPS which they refuse to expunge.

It's a record of a "non-event." It's precedent of an accusation against the mother being illegitimate, not a black mark against her. Though I'm sure she obviously wishes the incident had never happened.

Either way, though, it's still not in support of calling it "illegal" to have your kids playing outside unsupervised.

I agree with you that this isn't the same country you grew up in. I'm only a decade behind you, and the country is certainly not the same country that I grew up in either!

The common nostalgic "this isn't the same country I grew up in" topic just gets brought up all of the time, I'm guessing because it garners a lot of clicks from us who miss our naive childhoods but I just don't see it being as illegal as you do.

I can google around for all sorts of "florida man" stories. Just because I can find some very weird and newsworthy stories, doesn't mean that everything and everywhere is like that. I can probably live in Florida and have a normal life, and raise my children however I would like.

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