It's easy to tell people to "chill" when you live in a high trust society like Tokyo (where I've called home for over 3 years; I can't speak for the other cities mentioned).

I've not once feared for my own safety. Children as young as ~5 or 6 walk on my street alone or in small groups regularly, and they, likewise, have no reason to fear. There's even a culture of teaching your kid at a very young age to do things on their own. A regular TV show documents it (link with English sub: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4lme5a).

I spent 3 and a half years in San Francisco, and the difference is stark. People riding the bus grab their phones hard with one hand while using it with the other, for fear of it being stolen (as happened to a friend of mine). You would never leave your phone on a table while going to the bathroom unless you were with someone to watch it. If you lost your wallet, you'd be lucky if you got your driver's license back in the mail.

Are American parents overbearing as a group? Likely. But it's easy to criticize from afar if you've never lived in a low-trust society.

In Denmark, and probably elsewhere, we have the term "helicopter parents" for parents who constantly hover near their kids, never letting them out of sight. Similarly, we also have the term "curling parents", because they do everything to clear the path of their offspring (to the point of going to job interviews with them).

Both are obviously used in a teasing-not-quite-nice way to signal that maybe these parents should take a deep breath and assume that they raised their kids well, and that scraping your knee or getting frightened is something that happens in life sooner or later, and the parents' job is to guide and comfort their kids when they do happen.

There was a very high profile case (in DK at least) from 1997 about a mother who left her child outside the restaurant where she was eating (with line-of-sight to the stroller): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/26/anette-soren...

I might not want to do the same in New York, but in Denmark no one would bat an eye if this happened.

The single best thing you can give your kid is the confidence to face the world alone.

Consequently, its one of the few things you can exert a modicum of control over as well ;-)

Let them burn their fingers, let them fall, let them do stupid shit and just be there to advise, help and guide them in a loving matter after the fact so they can learn and grow to become a confident, decent adult.

I walked to school 3 kilometeres one way since the first grade (6 years old). Nowadays I've seen kids of the same age who can't even tie their shoes. It is even more concerning considering authorities are actually reinforcing this. The world did not become more violent or dangerous, but somehow people became more scared and paranoid.

I’m Australian and my wife Norwegian. Norwegians are very very relaxed with their kids, and so are Australians for the most part...

That said my wife, left unchecked, is a helicopter parent... it’s inherited by her mother who is the most anxious person I’ve ever met, my sister in law is also as anxious. So I always have to try and help my wife relax and have less anxiety with our daughter.

One thing is when our daughter falls over... my wife and her side of the family’s reaction is to run over and repeat in Norwegian “you poor thing” or something to it’s like. Where as my side of the family.. we almost celebrate falling over, we treat it like a positive. “Ohh come on get up” said in a very positive tone. Then we clap our hands and say “yay” when my daughter gets up.

The difference, my daughter almost never cries when she falls over. If she really hurts herself of course we will go to her, I’m not a monster... but other kids could fall over and scream for an hour over the smallest of falls. Why? Because their parents run to them and try to wrap them in cotton wool.

My point with all this, is parenting styles from what I’ve witnessed isn’t really based on nationality.. but more the cultural norms, and how you were brought up.

I have read that the great generation, had a very very hands off parental approach. The boomers had a more hands on approach, and then gen X and gen Y seem for the more part to have a much more hands on approach than their parents.

I’m gen Y, my wife gen X.

I think there’s a lot more factors involved here than just nationality.

As a father from The Netherlands, I can tell you that no parent would let their 5 year old have a birthday party unsupervised by adults. If they did then you expect social services to get involved.

What actually happens is that the HOST PARENTS supervise the group. So if your kids are invited to a friend's birthday party then yeah, you don't stay. I assume that it's the same in the US and pretty much every other country.

We also don't leave our four-year-old kids in the car alone. Well, some people do, which is why the local newspapers have been full of stories about the parents getting arrested for it and social services getting involved.

I have three kids. I’ve left them home alone since the age of 7 to drop off dry cleaning, grab a coffee or pick up milk at the local store. My only requests were no cooking, fighting or using the iron. Read, play or clean your room. Never a problem. And if one goes missing I still have two left.

This made me laugh.

I stuck around for my kids friends birthday parties when he was 2-3 and didn’t want me to leave. Once I could leave him there without him crying (or even noticing), of course I got the hell out of there. Being in a room full of 5 year olds isn’t really my idea of a great Saturday. The parents hosting the party do the suffering, those are the rules.

As a parent in Germany I can say that there is a trend towards the American model. People watch their kids more closely on the playgrounds (helicopters parents), bring their kids to school by car. The latter has spark a lot of discussion here because roads around schools get blocked a lot and school principals are annoyed.

T.b.h. as a young parent with a 4yo daughter, I am kinda affraid to give her more free reign. Currently, I am fine with she doing whatever if a) I know where she is

b) I know there is at least some obstacle between her and the traffic.

c) if she hurts herself, I would know, and could get to her in 3 minutes

So I am fine with her being inside of a 100x100 m playground mostly unsupervised, as long as I know it is fenced and I have at least some idea where she is.

So my question would be this. Today, I wouldn't let my 4yo kid cross the road without adult supervision. In 15 years she will probably be in college somewhere, having to pay her own rent. How do you handle the progression?

I.e. I remember that from the school when I was 11 years old was a Big Deal™ .. but by the time I was 14, taking bikes with my friend and disappearing for half a day was normal.

I’ll note that helicopter parenting in America is very much an affluence thing.

In poorer parts of the country kids spend lots of time, from a young age, unsupervised. Because their parents and care givers don’t have a choice.

I wonder how much urbanisation plays into this. If your city is designed entirely around cars there's far less opportunity for kids to go out themselves.

I've always lived in a walkable places (ie in the UK) and growing up was told to walk everywhere. From a young age (maybe 8?) I could walk faster than my mum so she let me power off on my own to school. Naturally I became very independent.

But if there are no sidewalks, if your town is car centric and drivers have no regard for pedestrians? How in those places do you create opportunities for independence?

I grew up in the US but my parents are both Italian. They pretty let me run around unsupervised, and it was wonderful. I remember though my mom receiving a lot of flak for that however.

There was an interesting map posted here a while back on how children lost the right to roam. In 1919 the grandfather could walk 6 miles to go fishing but today the son is only allowed to walk in the street where the family live: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-...

Didn’t France just ban phones in school.

I wish the legal age would be lowered to 12 or 14. At least then kids could be given more financial and contractual independence. Children can’t participate in movie pass, take Uber...

I wouldn’t attend most meetings / talks where they refused to let me in without my phone. I don’t know how we let kids suffer through the humiliation.

American child and parent here, can report that American is a large and varied place. In my experience most children and parents here behave appropriately and American child raising is not some dystopian nightmare as these articles would have you believe.

The kids will be alright.

> Some have called the police or child protective services after witnessing a parent leave a child in a car to run into Starbucks or attend a job interview.

I get what the gist of the article is about however isn't this a real risk?

Maybe in the other countries they leave the windows down but in America windows are up for security fears?

http://noheatstroke.org/ (hopefully not a sensationalist website, just first thing that came up in google that seems to have numbers)

edit: For the down voters I'm talking about the job interview, not 5min to go get a coffee. It just seemed like a bad example to prove the articles point

Plus it was just a question...

cue the people needing to chill.

I live in Portugal, right next to a school from 5th to 9th grade (10-15 year old kids).

In the morning, you can see parents and grandparents outside the school fences watching the inside like it was some zoo! It's painful to watch. I went to that school and I know I would HATE it if my parents did it, and I live right next to it!

It's explainable if it's the kids first day of school, but you see this year round. I think this is happening more frequently, I don't remember seeing it as much some years ago.

I believe the cause is the same as in America: the news on TV focuses only on the crime and scandal, increasing the perception of danger, when it's actually decreasing.

> Some have called the police or child protective services after witnessing a parent leave a child in a car to run into Starbucks or attend a job interview.

Not sure why they included this little nugget in the article. Letting your child roam free is just a little bit different than locking them in a car and possibly forgetting about them. Parents absolutely need to make arrangements such that this situation can be avoided, and I can’t fault anyone who calls the police if they see a child left unattended in a car. They don’t know how long they’ve been in there or will be in there.

  High Trust Society

I grew up around dirtbag kids, scummy weirdos, freaks and fuck ups, during an era and in a zone where people are still uncertain about what the effects from lead poisoning were, immediately prior to my childhood.

I have older siblings with... stories.

I look around now, and I have to admit, the world does not seem to be strewn with the human wreckage that existed prior to the crack epidemic that emerged in the 1980's, but I do remember what people were like back then.

I really think leaded gasoline, coupled with alcoholism, drunk driving and many other drugs, ripped the banality of the 1950's to shreds, and scared the hell out of a lot of people, who still remember what that looked like.

The world was not "safe" or anything that looked like it. People were scary.

I'm not going to go into details, because HN winces to think of such things, but really, I could paint vivid pictures of the fears people have.

I'll say this much, illicit gambling was rampant and normal in dens of vice, rendered an impenetrable haze of cigarette smoke that hung four feet off the ceiling, right down to the tops of the door jams. That gambling atmosphere was pervasive. Everyone just felt like the abandon of wagering it all, any old time was normal. Such was the case with so many freaks on the loose.

Things aren't like that now. But it's not as far away as anyone would love to claim.

Helicopter parents seem uptight, and relative to the world as it has been for but a pair of decades or less, they are. But a lot can happen in a single generation.

We'll see how things go.