Children aged 7 can drive on the sidewalk in many countries. You can transport bikes on public transit to get to something that resembles nature, then ride there (with no cars in sight).
Parents in walkable cities also want extracurriculars for their children. It's the suburb that makes the shuttling to/from required.
Sidewalks are illegal for cycling, and even if a stroad had a shoulder, the vehicle speeds make it far too dangerous for a not-yet-fully-mentally-developed child to cycle along. And even within the suburb, vehicle speeds are often 60-70 kmph and drivers are often inattentive. Cycling on roads within suburbs in all but the most limited sense is not safe for children.
It just takes one wayward glance at your mobile phone for me to be attending the funeral of my son. Cars and bikes don't mix.
So it's safe to walk and ride your bike, but you have nothing close by worth biking or walking to? Sounds counter productive. What do you do, bike in circles?
Or my guess: you have to drive everywhere. Hence no autonomy for the kids.
In the US, parents are sometimes arrested for letting their children go bike (or walk, or play at playgrounds) without direct supervision.
Not to mention that parents are constantly fed scare stories about “random creeps” snatching kids up — a profoundly rare occurrence, surely several orders of magnitude less of a risk than that taken on by driving your child to/from school.
This is 99% of it (other 1% is fear of other parents scolding you). There's a beach bike path near us with only one street crossing in 5 miles. My 6 and 7 year old are free to explore the whole thing unattended provided they avoid that crossing. It has playgrounds and all kinds of stuff they can stop their bikes at.
But I won't let them cross the street we live on because none of these drivers are thinking about pedestrians and even if they were I doubt any of the lifted trucks could even see a 4ft tall kid.
+1. And don't use the car to deliver your kids. Use the bike. It is possible: There are children seats and trailers. And there are ebikes. There is little excuse for driving cars. Despite you live in countryside US, where you apparently need a truck to get anywhere.
It's great to allow your kids to take risks, and we do this with our own as much as we can (they're 1 and 3, so "within reason" is still doing some heavy lifting. I pick ticks off of them now and then and patch up their share of bruises).
But fundamentally, what I want most is to be somewhere my kids can ride bikes or walk alone to school, to friends, to the shop, etc. from the age of 7 or so. As best I can tell that pretty much means the Netherlands, parts of Denmark, or perhaps Japan (more for transit than cycling).
Children can't drive, which means unless you're lucky enough to live very close to your friends, and ideally on the same side of the street, your home is effectively your prison in the US and Canada.
And yes, I suppose you _can_ let your kid ride a bike to school alone in the US at 7, but you would be risking arrest, and death. It's often forgotten that drivers are, by far, the leading killers of children. Far more than people with guns. I was an avid cyclist in the US for the first 30 years of my life and I still have a bruised rib and too many memories of very, very close calls with death.
My kids (11, 8, 5) all ride bikes, and are competent enough to ride on the road on quieter streets. I've found it to be a wonderful bonding experience, and also a growth opportunity since they're learning to get around, read signs, navigate, plus it's laying the groundwork for later independence.
You use a bicycle. There are cargo bikes or bike seats. From age 7 or so they can be on their own bike and you can cycle alongside them. After a few more years, they can go on their own.
How do you do this with kids? Suppose you're taking three kids to an event or a climbing gym or whatever and it's further than walking distance. Can biking be made safe enough, or if it's further, is it reasonable for them to bring them on the metro? What if it's three kids ages 5 and under?
This is an honest question. I live in a city with public transport now and I much prefer it for myself, but when I think of how I was brought up it's hard to imagine that working without a car.
You can't put the kids on the ebike to daycare? Seems like that would be faster and easier than dealing with a car.
Just wait until you start in on the total mess that is school drop-off when every parent decides they have to drive their kid to school. Much faster to breeze past the stopped traffic on a bicycle, unstrap the kids and send them on their way, and bike to the train.
I find these stories of kids not walking (or biking) outside wild! Hundreds of kids in my neighborhood walk, bike, or public transit to school everyday with no issues.
I do worry about car on pedestrian crashes but the city has crossing guards and traffic calming for just this.
Where are these places that you can’t be outside as a child?
No idea.. I have no kids :) Not sure at what age they are capable of what. Of course I was also young but like I said in the Netherlands bikes are king of the road. And I lived in a quiet suburb.
It also depends on the area. If they'd just cycle to school in a quiet area it'd be ok more easily than if they have to cross roads like Passeig de Gracia, Arago or Gran Via, or some of the busier Rondas of course.
I rarely cycle here anyway. I mainly walk, I don't feel safe enough cycling. There's some cycle lanes but not in every street, and often not well connected, or they suddenly jump to another side (the ones on Diagonal tend to do this), mix with pedestrians etc.
Children aged 7 can drive on the sidewalk in many countries. You can transport bikes on public transit to get to something that resembles nature, then ride there (with no cars in sight).
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