Because it's illegal in most of North America (especially when you consider where people actually live) for them to leave the house. That is the beginning and end of it.
If this answer isn't blindingly obvious to you, you are part of the problem. Either you don't notice it because you're more focused on being angry about "suburbia" than you are the objective well-being/freedom of your own children, or you actively encourage it because you think it's a net good (either because you're paranoid, because you're a victim of misinformation, or because you're a concern troll).
Things are safer than ever before yet most children have fewer rights and ways to develop available to them than at any point in recorded history. Sure, there might not be any place for them to go to exercise that freedom, but if you legalize it they'll eventually start coming back.
As for now, keep cheering on the arrests of children playing on their own front lawns. The reason suburbia exists in the first place is because that's the place your kids are maximally safe from this while still allowing you to be sufficiently gainfully employed, and making that way of life slightly more aesthetically acceptable to childless apartment-dwellers will do nothing to fix this.
> Because it's illegal in most of North America (especially when you consider where people actually live) for them to leave the house.
It is not illegal in most of North America, if you consider the USA (not sure about Canada/Mexico), only three states have laws that make it actually illegal. Consider:
> Washington doesn't have a state law that dictates whether children can or can't be left at home that's dependent on age, according to Seattle-based law firm Elise Buie Family Law. In nearby Oregon, though, the law states the child must be at least 10 years old to be home alone.
Or California, which has alot of people:
> In the state of California, there is no legal age stipulated on when a child can be left home alone or allowed to walk outside alone. There is a law, however, that children 6 years old and younger cannot be left alone in a car.
So for the west continental coast we have Oregon until 10...and in California if a car isn't involved no constraint. Oregon is just one of three states with actual laws on the books:
> Three states legally require kids to be of a certain minimum age to be left on their own for some time: Illinois (14 years old) Oregon (10 years old) Maryland (8 years old)
I'm not sure Maryland is being unreasonable here, but Illinois and Oregon probably are.
It's about being effectively illegal or illegal 'enough'. If there is a good chance you will get a CPS call for your kids 'welfare' due to not being 'supervised', even if nothing happens, is plenty enough for most parents to not let their children be unsupervised no more. Most CPS visits have a background threat of 'we will take away your children', and that is plenty enough of a threat as it is.
Then the chilling effect starts and people just never bother because they read or heard of that happening once somewhere.
In a world where CPS can’t even take kids away from parents whose car catches on fire with their kids in it while they are shoplifting at a Walmart for a few hours, I don’t really see this as effectively chilling.
It is chilling. And beyond kids being taken away, being forced to go to parenting classes or just having to be there for follow up visits, having to pay layer are all significant hurdles.
In the case you mention, kids would be supposedly taken away for being without supervision in the car. Shoplifting is unrelated crime.
The adults left the kids in the car to go shoplifting for hours. But more to the point: you think CPS is way more effective (let alone over effective) than it actually is. The few anecdotes to back that up have always concluded in favorable outcomes to the parents.
Because it's illegal in most of North America (especially when you consider where people actually live) for them to leave the house. That is the beginning and end of it.
If this answer isn't blindingly obvious to you, you are part of the problem. Either you don't notice it because you're more focused on being angry about "suburbia" than you are the objective well-being/freedom of your own children, or you actively encourage it because you think it's a net good (either because you're paranoid, because you're a victim of misinformation, or because you're a concern troll).
Things are safer than ever before yet most children have fewer rights and ways to develop available to them than at any point in recorded history. Sure, there might not be any place for them to go to exercise that freedom, but if you legalize it they'll eventually start coming back.
As for now, keep cheering on the arrests of children playing on their own front lawns. The reason suburbia exists in the first place is because that's the place your kids are maximally safe from this while still allowing you to be sufficiently gainfully employed, and making that way of life slightly more aesthetically acceptable to childless apartment-dwellers will do nothing to fix this.
Karen delenda est.