4/18/2026 at 12:19:52 PM
I don't know. Maybe this is going away in some places, maybe I just have my own anecdata, but my kids play outside unsupervised all the time, as do all the kids in my neighborhood.I live in just a regular suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of small Metro. Nothing special about it at all.
Every time I see one of these articles I always wonder who they're talking about.
I always feel like this is just one of those news headlines that won't go away, but isn't quite tethered to reality, but people really like to feel bad about modern life and so we keep talking about it as if it's real. I suspect the real reason kids aren't playing outside, if there is one, is not because they can't, it's because they choose not to. Just as adults are no longer choosing to go to third spaces. Screens came for everyone.
by spicyusername
4/18/2026 at 12:48:00 PM
This behavior is probably overrepresented in the bougie places reporters live. I dropped my daughter off at the mall to hang out with their friends and one of the moms followed them around the whole time. They're all 13!by rayiner
4/18/2026 at 4:29:58 PM
This behavior is probably overrepresented in the bougie places reporters live.I live in Redmond, WA. Bougie? My rube Midwestern ass thinks so. And there are feral kids all over my neighborhood. Plenty of kids walking to school in groups, or solo. Neighbor kids talk about riding the bus/train to places. Granted, there are a lot of immigrant families around here (hello, Microsoft, et al.), and I'm sure that skews things.
by mikestew
4/18/2026 at 7:19:47 PM
Whenever these conversations come up, I've always noted that they don't really seem to apply to the PNW. My neighborhood (in Seattle proper) has lots of kids running around as well. Neighborhood kids will stop by to pickup my son and whisk him off to some adventure down the block. Getting your kid back involves listening for the correct sounding screams of joy as you walk around and figure out whose yard they are in.Seattle also has a pretty decent policy around the radius for kids walking to school, so there are always gaggles of kids walking together to and from school for elementary and even some middle schoolers. The high schools are spaced far enough out that kids use buses at that age.
My coworkers in lower CoL areas seem mystified why I'm paying an arm and a leg to live in Seattle to raise a kid. And yeah there are some serious downsides (20-30k a year daycare, restaurants are too expensive to go out to often, even take out is insane), but there are kids playing soccer in the streets after school and kids setting up lemonade stands in the park.
That's what I'm paying for - A city that is built for people to live in, not just for cars to drive around.
by com2kid
4/19/2026 at 12:43:15 AM
That's why I'm quite happy to live in Vancouver BC as well. No kids (and I'll never own a home), but if I did, I can't think of a better place to raise them compared to other car-dependent hellscapes where nobody trusts each other.by brailsafe
4/19/2026 at 10:21:56 AM
It is a function of road design. If the neighborhood is just houses with all the places to go located on 40mph+ roads (meaning people are driving their high grill head height SUVs and pickup trucks at 50mph+ while looking at their phones), possibly without sidewalks, I’m not letting my kids go out there alone until they are teenagers.Also, places are just too far due to the aforementioned 6 lane roads and 100ft+ wide intersections. And crossing those intersections on foot, in daytime, is daunting as an adult.
by lotsofpulp
4/20/2026 at 4:35:10 PM
Suburbs are places where people refuse to pay taxes to build parks and instead have giant yards and everyone builds their own private park. :/by com2kid
4/19/2026 at 10:38:08 PM
People decry this as socialism but remember that gated communities with security guards also cost money.Whenever I get angry about 40 percent of my paycheck going to the government I try to make a list of countries that are better and it's not a long list.
by expedition32
4/20/2026 at 12:06:17 AM
where do you think all our money comes from?> The economic growth and so-called advanced economies (think Germany, The U.S, Japan, etc. What's been referred to as the “Global North”) relies by a large proportion on a significant net appropriation of resources and labor from the “Global South” (think Kenya, Peru, the Philippines, etc). This appropriation reaches astronomical levels. In 2015 alone, the north appropriated 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labor; worth [a total] $10.8 Trillion in northern prices. Enough to end extreme poverty 70x over.
The West steals $10-$12 Trillion/yr in embodied raw material equivalents, embodied land, embodied energy, and embodied labour.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802...
by y0eswddl
4/18/2026 at 9:28:35 PM
I've noticed the less American and less wealthy people are, the more normal their kids interact with the world, i.e. "free range".I don't know what it is about rich white people and freaky helicopter parenting. I also notice it with homeschooling and those crazy borderline eating disorder diets. There seems to be an association there between rich white people and pushing self-destructive behavior on kids.
by array_key_first
4/18/2026 at 10:01:27 PM
Might be different in Australia vs the US, but the white kids here are definitely more "free range" than the Asians.That's not too say they're not helicoptered too, but Chinese parents are a whole other level.
Think strapping a 3-4 year old into a high chair and handfeeding them, or scheduling every waking moment of a primary school kid's life.
by AussieWog93
4/18/2026 at 11:12:33 PM
Upper middle class Indian parents in India can be complete control freak helicopter parents too. Much more than the less wealthy ones.I have seen and experienced some real extremes there.
by sage76
4/18/2026 at 10:59:29 PM
I personally don’t see its being a case, based on my observation.There is this town nearby where I live - super white, gives old money type of vibe, very expensive real estate. It’s full of free range kids running around on the streets.
It was shock to me to see it, after our diverse suburb, where kids pretty much either locked at home doing homework or at classes all the times.
So in my opinion there is definitely a cultural aspect of it.
by ekropotin
4/19/2026 at 4:00:16 AM
[flagged]by hackable_sand
4/19/2026 at 10:33:41 AM
'Feral' seems like an odd choice of word, given the activities you're describing. It sounds like they're just out and about doing totally normal stuff. I bet you wouldn't appreciate someone describing you as 'feral' if they saw you in public walking to the store or getting on a train.by foldr
4/19/2026 at 3:46:20 PM
"in a wild or unsupervised state" seems like a particularly apt description of children. it does not seem to be derogatory: language really should be evocative as often as literal.by amoss
4/19/2026 at 3:48:29 PM
That seems like a slightly off definition to me: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feral And feral certainly is a term with negative connotations in English.Are you in a "wild and unsupervised" state when you leave your house and go to work?
by foldr
4/19/2026 at 6:23:40 PM
I think it was the perfect adjective in the context of their comment.The poster clearly meant it with a flavor of whimsy to it, not in a derogatory way. Maybe also as a tongue in cheek jab at how people they perceived as overly concerned about supervision would describe such kids.
I'll put my hand up as having been a joyfully feral kid once upon a time.
by rkagerer
4/19/2026 at 7:49:43 PM
'Feral' seems like an odd choice of word, given the activities you're describing.I never said the feral kids were participating in those activities. :-) Look, it was loose use of the word, you're placing way more judgement on the term than was ever intended. Yes, the children have homes and parent, of course they're not feral.
by mikestew
4/18/2026 at 8:32:00 PM
https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/shoot-the-messenger> But I actually find ideological bias to be less concerning than the more fundamental problem that the class of people who determine the boundaries of debate share a set of demographic and experiential traits that they don’t recognize as distinctive.
> This class of people includes journalists, yes, but also people who work in the tech industry, academics, nonprofit leaders, influencers, and those who work in politics. From now on, I’ll refer to this group broadly as “the messenger class.”
> The messenger class’s distinctive experiences — like living in downtown Washington, D.C., or living in one of the parts of New York highlighted in red — shape the boundaries of normal in ways harder to counteract than pure ideological or partisan bias.
> The messenger class plays a fundamental role in any democracy. Democratic self-governance requires not just fair procedures for making decisions but an accurate and shared picture of social reality to reason about. That picture is revealed through the communicated experiences of citizens, filtered through the messenger class, which decides which experiences are urgent and require intervention.
by JuniperMesos
4/18/2026 at 1:32:02 PM
Do journalists live in bougie places? It's not a particularly well-paying job.by garbawarb
4/18/2026 at 2:00:06 PM
It's a job that requires strong credentials and is gated by unpaid internships. So it disproportionately attracts people from relatively affluent backgrounds: https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/the-cos.... And those folks live near and, more importantly, travel in social circles with affluent people.It's also not particularly expensive to live in a bougie place. I grew up in Mclean, VA. My dad ran into Dick Cheney at the CVS once. But you can get an apartment in Mclean on a journalist's salary, especially if your parents paid for college and you have no debt. You can’t afford to raise a family there, but you can live there, near your social circle. Conversely, you'll see lots of trades people, cops, etc., living in places that aren't bougie at all, despite making more money than the lower end of the professional class. People find ways to congregate around others in their social class, income notwithstanding.
by rayiner
4/18/2026 at 6:52:49 PM
Yes. Journalists don't make a living from journalism, they live on family money. That's why working class journalists have disappeared along with working class perspectives.It was once a job where many if not most of the practitioners didn't have a college degree, now it is the most expensive graduate school program you can do. I think the median price is something like $250K.
If you don't pay writers, you eliminate all of the writers who have to work for a living.
by pessimizer
4/18/2026 at 7:43:49 PM
Don't disagree with the general point but I'm not sure J-School was ever a particularly good entree into journalism. Most of the journalists I know and knew didn't have the grad degree.by ghaff
4/18/2026 at 9:51:10 PM
TIL I and my friends and colleagues live on family money.by NicuCalcea
4/19/2026 at 4:16:00 AM
Could be a husband that pays for the home etc as well, that is also living on family money.Regardless since journalists aren't well paid but a lot of them live in expensive areas the money has to come from somewhere.
by Jensson
4/19/2026 at 12:50:05 PM
So your argument is that journalists must be wealthy because otherwise they'd be poor? Have you considered the alternative, that we just live modest lifestyles, like most other working class people?by NicuCalcea
4/19/2026 at 6:16:18 AM
Plenty of journalists I know about (because I read them a lot and they sometimes talk about self) did mot wemt to j-school.Also, they dont live in parents houses.
You are making stuff up about lives of journalistals to invalidate their claims.
by watwut
4/18/2026 at 10:43:46 PM
Was the mom Asian? Asking because my pre-teen daughter has a lot of Asian friends and I clearly see a pattern of hyper vigilance among their moms.by ekropotin
4/18/2026 at 6:48:54 PM
From the mall story, you also seem to be living in a "bougie" place. What makes you think that places other than where you live are different?One would expect that after your first sentence, the second sentence would be a counterexample.
by pessimizer
4/19/2026 at 1:41:28 AM
That’s a fair question. My wife is cheap and I’m indulgent with my kids. So we compromised by sending our kids to private school with yacht club people, but not living around them. Our neighborhood is mostly well-off non-white-collar people: nurses, cops, navy enlisted, guys who did well in trades, etc.by rayiner
4/18/2026 at 5:09:26 PM
I live in suburb of a metro area, as safe as it gets (my front door is unlocked overnight often and almost never locked during the day, my garage is also frequently open). my 12-year old (5’8” 125lbs) went to walk the dog to the park about 1/2 mile from my house, someone called the police and I had to deal with social services…by bdangubic
4/18/2026 at 10:06:44 PM
[dead]by jditu
4/19/2026 at 5:25:08 AM
My kids walk/bike to school, take public transport and are pretty free-range. But that’s absolutely nothing compared to my childhood. I was born in 1975. We dug up literal explosives from WWII and made our own small bombs (some matches, two large bolts…). Access to all sorts of chemicals was easy and we would set things on fire or just mix stuff to see what happens. Playing around on construction sites. Taking someones boat out to go fishing. Making bows and arrows, that would go straight through plywood. All _that_ is definitely gone. Some of it for good - kids loosing their fingers or worse was a common occurrence. So there definitely is a trend in case of me and my friends.by belZaah
4/19/2026 at 6:12:28 AM
Free range and kids dig boms are two different things. We dont need to match accident mortality.by watwut
4/18/2026 at 1:12:33 PM
> my kids play outside unsupervised all the time, as do all the kids in my neighborhood. I live in just a regular suburban neighborhoodYour kids are hardly free-range. Let me guess, there's no way for them to actually meaningfully leave the area (no train, bus, etc)? It's like dumping kids on a 5 acre farm and saying they can do whatever they want. hardly free-range in the way described in the article.
Presumably you live in a suburb for the reasons the person in the article checked in on the free-range kid.
my personal litmus test is if you'd let your 13 year kid explore Manhattan alone during the day. Many say no because it's dangerous, and yet Manhattan is safer than most American suburbs. just FUD all the way down sadly.
by amazingamazing
4/18/2026 at 2:13:49 PM
Yea, I always through "free range" meant the kid walking (or taking the bus/train) a few miles through the city to get to an actual "other place" destination. Not "playing across the street in the suburban park." If the latter is now considered unusual, we have some big problems!!by ryandrake
4/18/2026 at 5:45:55 PM
It is in SF. My son’s school would not let him walk 3 minutes to an aftercare program. They were actually willing to break federal law to stop him from walking a single block away.I also let him play at the park on his own occasionally. I will get calls from well meaning but extremely overprotective friends to let me know that “they can’t watch him anymore.” He is ten! The library, connected to the park, has a phone which he can use to reach us.
People called my parents hover parents, but at ten I could have played at the neighborhood park by myself.
by nostrebored
4/18/2026 at 8:47:00 PM
If the latter is now considered unusual, we have some big problems!!it is, and we do:
https://www.offthegridnews.com/current-events/mom-charged-wi...
https://reason.com/2025/08/09/child-protective-services-inve...
https://reason.com/2026/01/16/she-let-her-6-year-old-ride-to...
https://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/31/living/florida-mom-arrest...
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/parents-investig...
https://nationalpost.com/news/growing-up-independent-is-ille...
https://www.todaysparent.com/blogs/mom-arrested-leaving-daug...
https://legalclarity.org/is-it-illegal-to-let-your-kid-play-...
those are all from the first page of a search for "parents charged for letting kids alone on the playground"
there are probably many more such stories.
by em-bee
4/18/2026 at 1:18:58 PM
The usual contrast being drawn is kids wandering around a suburban area, walking to school, playing with kids in a nearby rural property. It's not hopping onto a bus to the city a few tens of miles away. You do see schoolchildren in Japan on the train by themselves but I'm not sure that's ever been very common in the US.by ghaff
4/18/2026 at 1:20:37 PM
there's really no reason American kids in metro areas like SF, Boston, DC, NYC couldn't take a bus 5 miles away by themselves. when one comes up of an actual reason to why, it contradicts real statistics.the biggest things parents should worry about is their kid being bullied by other kids during school, a supposedly safe place, and other family. strangers just aren't the major source of violence towards children.
by amazingamazing
4/18/2026 at 1:26:28 PM
Welp this week we in Phoenix are dealing with a report of a 17-year-old high school girl who boarded a light rail train (the one with security cameras and guards) and she was harassed and assaulted by a mob of boys on the train, presumably in front of human onlookers; she disembarked, and was assaulted some more.She is now in a neck brace, and her mother is absolutely distraught, saying this is something she cannot fix for her beloved daughter. I am distraught as well that this could happen to anyone at all on the same train that I ride every week.
by ButlerianJihad
4/18/2026 at 1:32:57 PM
That's a sad story though getting a bit far afield from young kids taking public transit or otherwise traveling away from their homes. At 17 I was in college and taking urban transportation (and flights) all the time.by ghaff
4/18/2026 at 4:59:44 PM
Someone and their gang pulled a knife on me as a kid when I was riding the bus forty years ago in a university town, but that doesn’t make what they did normalized, it just makes an anecdote. As it happens, though, that is quite normalized in the U.S., especially if you’re not white.A lot of U.S. residents inure themselves to random acts of violence because they either feel helpless to change the societal contexts of that violence and/or because admitting that violence would require confronting the benefits of power exploitation vs. the drawbacks of racism, sexism, bullying, and bystanderism. That swarm of boys abusing a girl to enforce societal mores that benefit them to her detriment is a trope from Pleasantville. This isn’t some new or unknown thing. This is a standard-issue United States Lynch Mob that’s been known about for a century.
I’ve been upset about this for thirty years, which is when I first discovered this. Welcome to the shameful desert of the real. Sad that it took y’all so long to see it; but now you have a chance to decide a way forward. Circle the wagons and raise sheltered, and therefore weakened, children? Teach every family about this threat all the way down to the youngest that kids understand danger? Crossing guards that ride the buses and have safety whistles and self-defense training? Lobby your city government to shift policing dollars to transit safety officers? Lobby your regional government to shift road maintenance dollars to gang violence de-escalation efforts?
As you can see, it’s difficult to find a way forward that feels appropriately vengeful upon ‘those that hurt our budding flower’ while also having a meaningful impact on the quality of the future. Most regions would just try to defund bus service, which fucks over everyone except wealthy adults on time scales longer than ten years or so, because at least that ‘feels’ like an effective response.
Good luck.
by altairprime
4/18/2026 at 8:36:25 PM
> I’ve been upset about this for thirty yearsCompletely normal. Trauma at a certain level, unlike other memories and emotions, doesn't seem impacted by time. I'm sorry to hear what happened to you.
> that is quite normalized in the U.S., especially if you’re not white. / A lot of U.S. residents inure themselves to random acts of violence
This part seems to universalize the experience, though. What is the basis for it? Crime is at generational lows. I've used public transit in cities uncounted times and I have never seen a crime; that's what is normal for me.
by mmooss
4/18/2026 at 9:25:08 PM
> Trauma at a certain levelNo, not traumatized for thirty years; that’s not a valid substitution here. Upset, in the way that people that want to effect societal change are upset at acceptance of the status quo. The alternative is apathy and hopelessness, and I refuse to adopt salves (such modern rationalism) that would let me stop caring about difficult ‘uphill’ battles.
> I'm sorry to hear
I refuse your apology; instead, exert your own form of societal pressure against, say, bullying. It’s a more approachable target than lynching and will help you switch your instincts from irrelevant sympathy to relevant action. (And if you already do, bully for you, pun intended :)
> I've used public transit in cities uncounted times and I have never seen a crime; that's what is normal for me.
Mixed-wealth U.S. cities, in daytime and at night? In exclusively downtown, college, and/or affluent neighborhoods? (So excluding for example Stanford, Palo Alto, and Mountain View, which are tilted quite high-wealth and thus low-crime, Brock Turners notwithstanding.)
Also: Are you a white man of middle-class or greater wealth? That generally matters greatly when evaluating anecdotes on this topic, independent of all other factors, and is strongly correlated with ‘I have no matching anecdotes from my own experience’ annotations.
by altairprime
4/18/2026 at 5:11:40 PM
This was of course the trains faultby kjkjadksj
4/18/2026 at 7:55:14 PM
Multiple people died on the same stretch of road on the same afternoon that I drive on often about a month ago. One was just a teenager in a car that was following the law, it was the other car that was speeding.I've seen lots of death on the roads around me.
But sure, it's the train that's unsafe.
by vel0city
4/18/2026 at 1:41:10 PM
I’m also curious why you write “we in Phoenix are dealing with…”I’ve noticed a trend of people attaching a sort of personal identification with headlines
by weakfish
4/18/2026 at 4:47:34 PM
Perhaps they don't identify as a passive news consumer about irrelevant people, but as a resident with a bond to their city and wider community.Imagine that!
by coldtea
4/18/2026 at 5:36:41 PM
I don't think that was the crux of the inquiry / objection. It's wonderful to feel such a bond with one's _community_, but it's a different thing to bind oneself to such a dramatic statistical outlier and make decisions ("dealing with") as if it's a common occurrence.by jMyles
4/19/2026 at 2:07:54 AM
I mean, I don't know what "decisions" would be made but often people say we are "dealing with" emotions or stress related to something that comes out in the news.The crux of my stress on this is that riding the light rail is a very common thing for me and millions of my neighbors. In fact we are shocked because we consider it so safe. The LRT should be the safest place in the city, given the cameras, the crowds, the security guards and the vigilant operators.
To think that a vulnerable, female high school student was attacked, broad daylight, onlookers looking, mob of boys (high school I would assume) is just beyond the pale. Nobody did nothing, and the attack continues after she disembarks? It's just unthinkable. There is a Jesuit Catholic boys' school just up the line from where she boarded. Were none of the Brophy boys on hand to step in, to say "stop it" or do anything about it?
And to watch the interview with the mother was just the last straw for me. How upset she is now. Her daughter means the world to her; she couldn't protect her, and she can't "fix this" for her. It's heartwrenching. It should've been safe, especially for a girl like her, so close to adulthood, but legally a child.
by ButlerianJihad
4/19/2026 at 11:09:24 AM
[dead]by cindyllm
4/18/2026 at 1:29:12 PM
Japan is a monocultural civilisational state. That is a big factor.by NordStreamYacht
4/18/2026 at 1:33:02 PM
American children are in more danger because the country's more diverse?by garbawarb
4/18/2026 at 3:28:57 PM
It is the difference in culture. In big cities, Japan doesn’t tolerate public deviance. Police are visible in every block. They are very strict about weapons; you can’t bring a knife in public for no reason etc.by rawgabbit
4/18/2026 at 6:17:00 PM
They also have a culture of enduring things in silence for the greater collective good. For instance, most girls and women will have stories of harassment, especially by men on crowded trains but almost none of them will do anything about it.by spinach
4/18/2026 at 1:42:08 PM
To his point - I would say, it's a bug factor BECAUSE on average their culture seems more safe. But it's not because it's monocultural. Bad "monoculture" is bad, good one is good, nothing complex there. Simplifying, but that's pretty much what is saidby xavortm
4/19/2026 at 11:41:43 AM
You're missing the more important word.by NordStreamYacht
4/19/2026 at 7:13:01 AM
Yesby bdlowery
4/18/2026 at 1:41:58 PM
Diversity doesn't make places more dangerous (if i understand the stats). But humans are naturally tribal and fear those who look and act significantly different.by paulryanrogers
4/18/2026 at 8:39:08 PM
That depends on an arbitrary perception of 'my tribe'. Irish and Italians used to riot against each other. Germans were hated (look up a quote from Benjamin Franklin). Protestants and Catholics used to riot. Every wave of immigrants seems to get the same treatment by some.Within a few generations, their decendants marry each other.
by mmooss
4/18/2026 at 4:49:02 PM
Because humans are tribal they will also go on to attack and prey on those who are outside their tribe, making diversity more dangerous. Especially when diversity is not merely some people of different ethnic/racial backgrounds living and working together, but a population split into isolated cultures with different circumstances.Unless there's a big strict enforcer to keep everyone in line of course.
by coldtea
4/18/2026 at 6:06:28 PM
This is something a lot of people seem to believe that is not borne out in the research. Plenty of specific counter examples like Queens NY, a densely populated and exceptionally diverse place with crime rates comparable or better than many much more homogenous places in America. Poverty and income inequality are much better predictors. I felt this reddit comment from a while ago did a pretty good job rolling up sources on this: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueUnpopularOpinion/comments/1jxff...by macNchz
4/18/2026 at 1:47:25 PM
Russia is fairly mono cultural too. Is it safe?by sfifs
4/18/2026 at 1:58:16 PM
Yes. Russia is inarguably safer in terms of street crime than the USA.Philadelphia in 2025 had a higher murder rate than Belfast during the height of a civil war.
https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_countries_result.jsp?co...
Crime in the USA is also extremely regional and local in pattern.
by GerryAdamsSF
4/18/2026 at 9:44:43 PM
I don't think numbeo can be a good source, it seems to be self reported metrics. I asked it for comparison of NZ to USA and it told me that NZ was about the same or worse on most numbers. But actual crime rates are lower in NZ. The murder rate is 5x lower.by jemmyw
4/19/2026 at 12:31:51 AM
Murder is a faulty good comparison as it’s unlikely to be a stat that gets manipulated much. Every other crime seems subject to political and social whims of various departments and political agendas.by lostlogin
4/18/2026 at 8:40:56 PM
> Philadelphia in 2025 had a higher murder rate than Belfast during the height of a civil war.Do you have a cite? In American cities crime is at generational lows, including / especially murder.
by mmooss
4/18/2026 at 5:02:04 PM
Oh no, no way. Child violence on the streets and in school is WAY higher, it's ingrained in culture. It's also pretty rare if a Russian kid would tell his parents about it (only if property damage is involved).I don't know how your link gathers data (website only shows one dude, software engineer, not a professional survey statistician), but from personal experience I can surely say it's rankings are BS.
The closest in US are the "bad towns" like East Palo Alto or some neighborhoods of Oakland, with their respect for ex-cons and prison slang.
by deepsun
4/19/2026 at 4:40:57 AM
1) Russia is generally very safe, and 2) I agree that the violence amongst children is crazy. It’s a great place to homeschool and free-range and I have not found a way to send children to school in a way that’s acceptable to us.by insensible
4/19/2026 at 5:59:45 AM
Larger cities have private schools. There are also embassy-affiliated schools (yes, even today).In public schools there's this unofficial "letter grade system". Unlike the US, where kids homerooms are mixed around each year on purpose, in Russia a homeroom group sticks together through the entirety of their school career, grades 5-12. Of course some kids will move away, and new kids will join, but the core group remains. Many lifelong friendships are formed this way.
Now - and this part doesn't officially exist, but it certainly does in practice - these groups are not created equal. Let's say there are 3 teachers who are picking up a grade 5 homeroom. They will stick with these kids until they graduate. So, the teacher with the most seniority has their pick of the "best" graduating elementary students. These will be well-behaved and academically strong kids. Their new homeroom will be called 5A. Then the second most senior teacher has their pick. This homeroom will become 5B. And 5C onwards are the "leftovers". And these groups will stick together until they are 12A, B, and C.
If you want a good school experience for a nerdy shy kid - they have to be in "A". Of course, as a newbie who is unfamiliar with the system... your kid will likely be put in "C" ("ve"). And you probably know enough about how Russia works by now to understand how to go about changing that ;)
by temp8830
4/19/2026 at 5:10:25 AM
Russia doesn't have reliablr statistics on anything. It like saying North Korea is safe.by weregiraffe
4/19/2026 at 5:43:32 AM
North Korea likely is extremely safe when things like street violence and bullying are concerned. It's only unsafe for dissidents.And you know, you can also ask people. In software there is a large population that grew up in the ex-USSR. Many of us still regularly visit the old country and talk to friends and family that live there. And we aren't all bots, despite what many seem to believe.
by temp8830
4/19/2026 at 6:22:58 AM
Maybe you should stop believing those bullshit sites.by watwut
4/19/2026 at 4:35:44 AM
Good morning from Russia, where I moved my large free-range family (from the US) with the topic of free-ranging children very high on the list of reasons why.My children cross town by themselves to attend classes, it’s normal to see children walking or riding public transport by themselves once they turn about age 7.
There’s crime and bullying — we have always homeschooled successfully and have had negative experiences with classrooms here — but in my opinion it’s not as bad as the places I’ve lived in the US.
And the streets are definitely safer. There are some risks like gopniki enjoying causing random trouble like pepper spraying strangers, but I believe that type of danger is a threat mostly to young adult men and almost certainly not children. Our daughters can safely do what they need to do with appropriate precautions (that do not include staying within single-digit meters of a vigilant adult at all times else CPS!!!).
by insensible
4/19/2026 at 6:21:25 AM
Russia has higher incarceration rates and higher criminality then EU and USA.Also, French, German, Swesish, you name it do all the stuff alone. And third, they have less bullying in schools.
by watwut
4/19/2026 at 11:48:46 AM
The US is 5th, Russia is 33rd.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
by NordStreamYacht
4/19/2026 at 1:28:53 PM
Seems like they dropped after they startes Ukrainian war. They used to be higher then USA in those rates.Not sure "sending them to be killed by Ukrainians" is better then incarceration. But, probably costs less money.
by watwut
4/19/2026 at 7:10:25 AM
Russia isn't mono cultural thought. It has muslim regions, buddhist regions, official jewish jurisdiction (it was created by USSR to segregate jews, so it basically has no jews left. But it's mostly because they moved to other regions). There is a duoreligion regions, where having two religions is a mundane thing. And even christian regions are various in traditions.I wanted to write that the requirements to teach in russian language in russian schools is relatively new one. But turns out, you could still do it. Not like in private schools, you can have a government school in another language.
It can be argued that there is unifying postsoviet culture, but since different regions were treated differently under Soviet regime, there is a lot of differences.
by lesostep
4/19/2026 at 12:49:43 AM
Why do you think Russia is fairly monocultural? Russia covers a gigantic amount of territory and has people from a large number of ethnic and linguistic groups living there, many of which are not particularly closely related.by JuniperMesos
4/18/2026 at 11:16:22 PM
Big cities like Moscow or St Pete are anything but monocultural.by alex-korr
4/19/2026 at 1:46:26 AM
It by no means is monocultural. As for safety, well, yes, pretty safe.More important is that helicopter-style parenting is unthinkable there, people will just not understand if someone would attempt that. Also not much in insane laws (they have some, but..) and the police will tell you to bugger off if you try make them act on those that exist. So the situation in the article is impossible.
by lstodd
4/19/2026 at 4:53:45 AM
That “but..” is a big key to the difference between Russia and the US in this conversation. The US has a severe cultural propensity for rule-following and reporting things, but in Russia there’s an interesting mix of people seeing society as a commons, seeing personal responsibility as foremost, seeing laws as guidelines that may or may not correspond to reality, and seeing reporting something as fairly extreme behavior. And this includes people at all levels.by insensible
4/19/2026 at 2:09:13 AM
monoculture has nothing to do with it, as if more diversity creates a less safe environmentbut Japan is much safer than the US, in no small part because they have the sense to not allow people to own weapons
by insane_dreamer
4/18/2026 at 1:45:51 PM
> my personal litmus test is if you'd let your 13 year kid explore Manhattan alone during the dayMy parents let me (14) and my brother (9) explore central Paris on our own when my Dad was working at the Paris air show for the RAF. No problems at all even though this was just after the student protests in the 60s, and so things were a little tense.
I think Manhattan would be OK too, though I've only been there as an adjust. Certainly, you see kids running around London.
by zabzonk
4/18/2026 at 7:30:13 PM
13??? I’m shocked that it’s even a question. Of course a 13 year old should be allowed to do that.by semiquaver
4/18/2026 at 5:28:01 PM
London and the bits of Pars I have seen are pleasant places to work around. London does have its bad areas, as do other cities. Small towns in the UK are fine, as is most public transport. Parents have got more protective but I still see plenty out by themselves where I live.by graemep
4/19/2026 at 2:12:49 AM
I let my then 13 yr old daughter go around Beijing by bus/subway when we lived there 10 years ago; she had a phone. Felt perfectly safe. Same thing in Tokyo. I'm not sure I would have allowed that had we been living in a big US city like LA, Chicago or NYC -- maybe it's just as safe, IDK, but the fact that anyone in the US can own/carry a weapon makes me feel much less safe than in other developed countries.by insane_dreamer
4/18/2026 at 5:35:05 PM
s/adjust/adult/by zabzonk
4/18/2026 at 7:30:10 PM
> Your kids are hardly free-range. Let me guess, there's no way for them to actually meaningfully leave the area (no train, bus, etc)? It's like dumping kids on a 5 acre farm and saying they can do whatever they want. hardly free-range in the way described in the article.This depends on the area. In more urban areas exploring can be done on foot or bike. I live in Seattle, which has some fantastic bike trails that can go on and on for miles and cross into multiple adjacent cities.
In some cities parents are fighting to let their kids play in their own front yard unsupervised. Not an issue in Seattle, where kids are required to walk to and from their neighborhood school by the school district.
But denser areas also have lots of stuff to do within the neighborhood. Within 2 or so miles there is a massive shopping area, multiple bakeries, tons of restaurants, a slew of parks (Seattle has an obscene density of parks, it is one of the best aspects of living here), a lakefront beach (lots of bodies of water in Seattle), 2 swimming pools, tennis courts, and a bunch of other stuff I am probably forgetting right now.
So define free range. If a gaggle of kids travel to the local grocery store together to buy lemons and sugar, then self organize selling lemonade to people passing by on a hot day, is that free range? I'd argue yes.
by com2kid
4/18/2026 at 2:45:05 PM
I grew up in the 70s in a town of 30,000 and consider that time free-range. There was no public transit, only bicycles.by beej71
4/18/2026 at 5:22:33 PM
Manhattan is one thing, but I would never let my kids go to the 70s unsupervised.by buu700
4/19/2026 at 4:53:56 AM
This is the helicopter parenting the article is condemning. Children made it through the 70's just fine.by saintfire
4/20/2026 at 1:41:13 PM
just fine
I'm pretty sure the data shows the opposite actually, that compared to today some percentage more of them didn't make it out.
by spicyusername
4/18/2026 at 1:43:03 PM
> It's like dumping kids on a 5 acre farm and saying they can do whatever they want.What do you mean it's like dumping kids on a farm? Are the suburbs really THAT lethally dangerous?
Source [22 minutes]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLAfDrFUBkA
by Mordisquitos
4/18/2026 at 9:43:50 PM
Redmond has decent (though not great) bus coverage and light rail stations to Seattle and points beyond in the core downtown area and next to a huge park.by shawn_w
4/18/2026 at 1:44:23 PM
> and yet Manhattan is safer than most American suburbs[something traumatic happens and 50 people run for their safety]
see and as proven, only 1 person was assaulted!
I think a future society that counts trauma and mental health disruptions instead of just the crime stats will reach different conclusions on areas considered safe
by yieldcrv
4/18/2026 at 1:27:07 PM
Plenty of trouble for a 13 year old in Manhattan. Even if it's not dangerous, you can find your own problems easily enough.by tayo42
4/18/2026 at 5:14:42 PM
You can find your own problems on an abandoned farm too. A kid can always choose to get into trouble, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.by borski
4/18/2026 at 7:08:17 PM
The type of trouble is different. Your not going to get robbed trying to buy drugs on a farm.by tayo42
4/18/2026 at 7:39:03 PM
I grew up in a neighborhood that had a drug den next to the 7-11 that all the kids went to buy slurpees at.The dealers didn't bother the kids, and the kids knew not to go into that yard.
There were plenty of street walkers on a particular stretch of streets. They weren't talking to anyone who wasn't looking to buy.
Of course I had the advantage of being a broke kid at the time, so I wasn't a mark for crime. I was just another neighborhood kid who was walking through. It was a working class neighborhood with a few sketchy parts. There was the occasional shooting or drive by, and property theft was common (every bike I had as a kid was stolen from me at some point), but it wasn't unsafe in regards to violence.
I almost impaled myself on a rebar pole while jumping my bike over hills at an abandoned construction site. That was the most dangerous thing that ever happened to me growing up there. (well aside from the time I almost died falling into a sink hole and managed to grab onto a nearby tree root and pull myself up in time, but that was in the middle of nearby woods, so not gonna blame that on societal problems!)
by com2kid
4/18/2026 at 7:31:18 PM
Humboldt County would like a word.by borski
4/18/2026 at 3:53:08 PM
I mean by that standard there’s plenty of trouble everywhere for everyone.by kingraoul
4/19/2026 at 2:07:20 AM
> my kids play outside unsupervised all the time"free range kids" doesn't mean playing outside in a suburban cul-de-sac; it's the ability to go outside the immediate neighborhood on their own (walking, cycling, or public transport) -- stuff I did all the time as a 11-13 year old that is pretty rare these days. I don't think I've ever seen a preteen on the local city transport alone
by insane_dreamer
4/19/2026 at 12:02:45 PM
This is a bit of a shift of the Overton Window surely. Because that doesn’t sound free-range: which involves perhaps miles of travel unsupervised.by renewiltord
4/18/2026 at 7:22:13 PM
I do know. No kids play outside in my neighborhood. The story resonates because your personal annecdote is not very common. (Not as the sibbling comment says, that reporters all out of touch elites).by guelo
4/19/2026 at 6:13:38 AM
[dead]by aaron695