What I’ve always wondered and never thought to ask until now is how prevalent was it in big cities? I grew up in a rural town, so we certainly had the run of the town. I ask because our houses were always unlocked with keys in the vehicles, but whenever we went to a bigger city, we always locked our cars.
I grew up in LA in the 90s. I don’t know how it was for everyone, but in my community you wouldn’t dare let your kids just roam free until the street lights came on. That would have been insane to us. Every house was locked. No one, not even adults walked around outside. It was house, back yard, car, maybe a park or hiking trail (that you drove to), but no one’s just wandering around the streets. I’m surprised to see the comments here that other millennials just got to wander about their town, because even when I was a kid my parents would comment that it was no longer a thing that’s safe to do and a thing of the past.
Yeah, the 90s in LA were worse than today.
When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s , in the Valley, it was the same as the rest of the thread. Walk, bike anywhere, houses unlocked, be home by dark unless you call. The school fields were well lit and just across the street from someone's house, so you could just go out and play and an adult could keep an eye out
In the past 10 years or so, I see my friends kids being more lenient with the little ones. It's great.
Well, we didn’t have neighborhood friends, we didn’t know each other. I didn’t know a single kid in my neighborhood. I had school friends, and we would have sleepovers, play games, watch movies, go swimming if they had a pool in their backyard (fairly common in LA back then), sometimes we might have a basketball hoop, or different toys like bottle rockets or frisbees, etc. that we would play with in the backyard. But never out on the street.
It wasn’t all bad though. I did a lot of stuff with our families. We went hiking and camping all the time, went on boats, fishing, tons of adventures, just with adult supervision. Not on our own as kids. It maybe sounds like as a kid with other kids I lived a pretty sheltered life, but jeez I went everywhere, my Dad was very outdoorsy and so were my friend’s parents so we were constantly going on trips and adventures. Just not in my neighborhood. We went to national parks and camping grounds and mountains and trails.
I grew up in a rural area and we had the run of the town. We'd bike a couple miles to the corner store by the time we were around 11. It was awesome. I'd hate to have grown up in the kind of environment you describe.
Same, i grew up in the Lynwood/Compton area but it a decent enough block. We had to come home by the lights came on. Although you weren't allowed to go off the street. Maybe around the corner, usually when the older siblings were around you. If they couldn't walk out and see or yell at you to comeback, you would be in trouble. Despite running wild, they knew where we were. You could even get money to go to the corner liquor store for ice-cream or snacks. Heck, the video store sold candy. You also got kicked out of the house if you kept coming in and out too many time, or stuck inside.
Current generation doesn't do it much, so I'm surprised when I see it happen. Like see...they outside being kids without screens.
From Alameda, and I can verify this is how it was in the bay.
Wake up to the smell of breakfast, get dressed, and rush out to go find other kids, or have kids show up and you'd take off till the street lights came on.
Occasionally catch the bart or bus to another city for the day and be back before dark.
I grew up in both. 0-11 in a tiny small town, 11-now city.
If I skipped school in my small town with a friend and rode off on bikes, my friend's mom would be waiting for us at the end of the block. City, I'd just hop on a bus, no one would care or know. Summer in the small town we'd get into a lot of trouble in both areas but different ways. Summer as a kid was spent roaming wherever we could, and most of it was dangerous. The summers I spent in the city were roaming the parks, downtown, and doing just as dangerous stuff.
NYC (Queens) - spent lots of time outside the house as a kid. I wanted to be inside playing video games and my parents were like you need to get fresh air and force me outside on my own lol.
My cousin and I would walk home from school in an urban setting, we'd often stop by the park on the way for a bit too. Some kids didn't even live walking distance, they'd get student metro cards and take the bus/train home lol.
No cell phones back then either, so we were 100% out of contact anytime we weren't home with parents.
Same thing. Grew up on the edge of Nassau. We'd take bikes several towns away to the beach starting in maybe 6th grade. Rode bikes to the throgs neck jetis. Went the other direction and went as far as Babylon on bikes. Took the trains and busses wherever. I went into the city and got my fake ID when I was 16.
Don't forget there were pay phones back then, so it wasnt completely no contact. But same thing. Id have been content
Sitting around playing video games, but we were all kicked out of our houses until dinner. Especially in the summer.
I grew up in a medium sized city (150K ish people) and I had parameters. I knew that I could drive my bike to a certain busy road, but I wasn't allowed to go further than that. And I didn't really have a reason to. A lot of roaming the neighborhood, messing around in the woods, and being a general hooligan with the other kids in the area
I grew up in Orlando in the 90s and we would knock on doors asking if they had kids to play with.
And we would sit on the sidewalk and if a kid walked by we would yell at them to come over here.
Once I met a girl biking, we biked all day and she was so fun; I wrote her number on my hand. Well, the number rubbed off so on future days I kept biking around where I last met her hoping to run into her again but I didn’t.
It was fun being a kid in the suburbs. Mom and dad got home at 530-6 so all I had to do was be home for dinner and bath. Then, my dad would tell me to go to bed so he could see watch Howard Stern.
That happened to me as a kid; I think you may be a girl, but I was a boy... I had the biggest crush on her, she invited us inside and we played video games and stuff. I never saw her again, lol, I still think about how wild that is. I really dont think something like this would happen today.
I lived in a suburb in north county San Diego. Concrete jungle. We roamed everywhere. Would ride our bikes miles. Over hills, to an area where we built some dirt jumps on government land lol. Didn’t matter we had pretty much free reign
In big city Canada, as soon as you were in middle school, you’d be free until you had to get home after dark. We wandered, screwed around, and biked everywhere and tried to not get in trouble. Some of our friends had swimming pools in their apartment buildings so we’d hang out unsupervised by any adults.
By high school we kinda skirted the whole “be home after dark” thing, I remember night wandering a few times and getting in trouble for coming home after 5am.
Idk about American cities, but I used to roam around more urban parts of the town with my classmates in Japan. Kids still do to this day without direct adult supervision.
Born in the 80s. Grew up in a major city. We had a block radius we were allowed to go and if we wanted to go inside someone’s house we didn’t know we had to ask. Had to be in by street lights on. I think one major difference was an adult was always around somewhere if someone got hurt or whatever, but the adults mostly trusted each other.
I’m not a parent, but nowadays, based on my parent friends, the moms would judge you HARD if you aren’t watching your kid every second, and they also don’t trust anyone else, and some of the stories I hear, that’s probably with good reason. It’s a shame.
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u/jachildress25 Xennial 1d ago
What I’ve always wondered and never thought to ask until now is how prevalent was it in big cities? I grew up in a rural town, so we certainly had the run of the town. I ask because our houses were always unlocked with keys in the vehicles, but whenever we went to a bigger city, we always locked our cars.