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Things Drivers Have Sacrificed for Kids
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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to back this up, the Netherlands keep scoring highest in UNICEF's child well being reports: https://www.unicef.org/innocenti/reports/child-well-being-unpredictable-world
And it's not like there's no cars in the Netherlands either.
Yeah this post is bullshit. I grew up with cars (I'm in my 30s). I did all those things that kids apparently sacrificed for cars.
Know why kids can't/don't do any of those things anymore? Parents helicoptering over them. Parents freak out when they get worried about their kids, where as me growing up in the 90s and early 2000s I would leave in the morning and not come back until dinner. I'd go to the beach, play with friends, wander around town and just hang out.
It's not cars that ruined all these things for kids, it's over protective parents who feel better parking their kid on the couch with a tablet than let them go outside and explore, play street hockey, football in the park, or otherwise be a fucking kid.
Yeah but the cars are 3 times larger now. They are so high up you can't see a kid in front of you if they are shorter than your hood. That's why their parents don't let them do those things anymore.
I got hit by a car on my bike as a kid. A small coupe. Everything now is an suv. Imagine an suv hitting me. I would have died
Not helicopter parents. They are part of the problem, but that’s not it. I have kids, and the reason they’re not outside is that most everything can be done inside now to meet with friends. Video calls, gaming with Discord, etc. They regularly just phone up and hang out. For us “old people” we had a household landline, that’s it, and meeting up with bicycles or stickball in the street or whatever was the only way we could hang out.
That’s why. Times change.
Well, it's not entirely overprotective parenting.
Things were different in the 90s.
It was fine to be told off by another parent or even a stranger, there was more social awareness towards eachother and eachother's kids out in the street, and cirtainly not the least, especially in relation to safety, people drove somewhat normal cars. Everybody needs SUV's and pickup trucks now for some reason with absolutely trash visibility on what is directly in front of them.
But what helps particularly in the safety space is that the Netherlands does way more in terms of keeping people sperated from other forms of traffic with infrastructure choices.
Think about all of those near misses when you were a kid. Think about how much danger you put yourself in. That's what they're thinking about when they lock their kids inside. Growing up in the 90s was fun, dangerous and crime was much higher back then. You're not going to turn into your dad if you give your kids the freedom they desperately need to develop their brains properly. You're not putting your kids in danger if you're smart about it and make sure they're smart about it.
Hey man, I did too, but children got killed by cars quite often. Pretty sure that and drowning accounts for the majority of child deaths back in the '70s-'90s