Freedom as Told by Young People

When I was younger I walked to school starting in third grade in California, then after I moved to Texas I biked around the neighborhood and went to the pool in the summer with my friends by ourselves. One of my favorite things was riding to the baseball card shop, just a 15 minute bike ride from my house without having to cross a major road.

Nowadays you’d be hard pressed to find the same freedom in the days of many children, except perhaps if they live in countries like the Netherlands. According to a UNICEF report, Dutch kids are the happiest in the world. Why? In part because they can come and go as they please on their feet and by bike.

Yet as the CNN article notes, 84% of American parents want their children to have more freedom, but in the end they are concerned about their safety. I want my daughter to have the amount of freedom I had as a kid, but if I’m being honest the biggest fear I have isn’t strangers, it’s cars. Here in San Francisco I imagine I will be less worried than some suburb, but there’s still a lot of potential for danger.

Which makes me somewhat envious of our friends like Chris and Melissa Bruntlett who moved to the Netherlands and shared in our discussion with them in 2021 (transcript), that they became more free as parents as their kids became more autonomous because of the culture of biking and walking. Chris noted:

“And it’s only by flipping that script and giving children an independent way to get from a to b, do we liberate them and liberate parents from this chauffeur role that has been thwarted upon them.”

Many often think of freedom as being able to get around much faster and with somewhat less friction in a car, but can also chain us to a life as a taxi driver and impact the development of our kids. I appreciated my mom and dad shuffling me to soccer games and Boy Scouts. But I also loved my freedom to move about the neighborhood on my bike in the summer and on weekends. I imagine they appreciated that too.

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