Where is Jack Shafer when we need him? This is a "trend story" where all the evidence is 1) the author's observation of his sister-in-law's town, and 2) a book he read.

"I'd like to raise just one question about this picture of domestic bliss: How often do you actually see a child playing on, or near, one of these devices?"

Well, Tom, I guess that proves it. Kids don't use their outdoor play equipment. Evidence: I drove past several houses today and saw it with my own eyes.

"My sister-in-law reports that each year, her upstate New York town's annual "cleanup" day produces a massive haul of slides, swings, tubes, and tunnels, all of which seemingly have half-lives of one weekend and swiftly find themselves headed for the landfill."

How do we know these structures haven't been used? Maybe they're being discarded because the kids have outgrown the toys, rather than because the toys didn't get any use. One weekend? That's the worst hyperbole that's ever been written.

"The environmental implications alone—each piece of equipment must represent a lifetime's worth of plastic shopping bags—are reason enough to eschew this stuff."

Well, here you could be right. I'm sure that as a journalist, you extensively researched this claim and can back it up. Or maybe the phrase "must represent" can be translated as "I couldn't be bothered."

Buried in this opinion piece is one (possibly) real trend: the demise of public playgrounds, for which these private plastic structures must now substitute. But it's not even Mr. Vanderbilt's point; he cites the book "American Playgrounds" on this one.

This is where the author goes off on how houses are too big and garage-laden, not enough trees, too many shrubs, and yards are too small. (Too small? So much for Mr. Environmental Implications.) Admit it: you don't like the way suburbs look.

Personally, I'd rather see some bright-colored plastic in the backyard than the squeaky, rusted metal swingsets with exposed bolts that decorated all the yards when I was a suburban kid. But I guess my aesthetic standards aren't as refined as Mr. Vanderbilt's.

in my early childhood educaution classes we have been investigating safe outside toys and furniture for children.Te bright color toys he describes are as far as I know very safe unless they are from china and hong kong where this type is been made to make little kids sick with toxic gas vapors. Our OAHA and other federal branches should know this and recall these types of outside swings and slides. In my childhood we also had very dangerous metal climping toys and sides.at achool then hard back apshalt or concrete I am glad those days a re gone forever. I have wathed planning commissions on cable in tennessee and am amaxed at what little rights the homeonwer now has to use their yards and put picinic tables or play music or anything in them without a premit theis is a very sad time in America when these types of complaints are discussed every day in local town halls . If you want tall hedges and an English garden great bring backand by all means and please bring back the local play parks for children .

however right now the safest place is your own backyard with a safe fence for the kids. and safe toys swingsand kid sprinkers and picnic tables. all in tasteful shades of tree green and sky blue hows that

I just posted the same thing, except your post was more detailed and journalistic what with the point by point quote and response.

Between your point by point, objectively damning post and my less detailed (but much more sarcastic) post, maybe we can make Tom angry, at least until he cashes Slate's check.

It really must be said when so called "think pieces" and "trend journalism" are run in a national forum, but are miraculously devoid of thinking or actual trends.

Very good post!!!

Well, you may not see it, but I do. His observation that there is nothing more lonely than a suburban street on a hot afternoon is so completely true in my experience that I cannot see how anyone would doubt it.

Maybe you are not old enough, but I grew up in the 1970s, and things were obviously different. I spent many, many, many hours outside as a child, 3:30 to 6 pm every day during school time, probably 6-8 hours in the summer. There is no way kids are out that much today. When I was a kid there was no such thing as a playdate. You played with neighborhood kids, all day, every day. There was no fear of the pedophile or the kidnapper. Maybe there should have been, but there wasn't. We didn't have fences in our yards so we could have longer fields to play football. I don't see this in any neighborhood I have lived in as an adult. Everyone has privacy fences, everyone has his own swingset and toys the kids never use sprinkled everywhere.

He got it right.

mchebert:

When I was a kid there was no such thing as a playdate. You played with neighborhood kids, all day, every day. There was no fear of the pedophile or the kidnapper. Maybe there should have been, but there wasn't. I don't see this in any neighborhood I have lived in as an adult. Everyone has privacy fences, everyone has his own swingset and toys the kids never use sprinkled everywhere.

He got it right.

But, see, that's the problem with anecdotal evidence. You see one thing that happens to be the same as the writer, his sister-in-law and some random bloggers.

I don't see that. It's true that things have changed, but I still see kids that play on their swing sets and slides. I also see that most new suburban communities do have neighborhood parks (it's a selling point for the houses) and they do get used quite a lot.

The real point of the original poster is that the writer is conjuring up a trend where none really exists. The purpose of the article was to generate a paycheck for the writer. No one is more enlightened after reading his gloriously fact free missive.

But he's right. Drive anywhere in suburbia or in the rural areas and you likely won't see a soul.

Driving home a couple of years ago, I saw two kids furiously pedaling their bikes up the road. And I thought, wow, this is like a movie called 'Escape from the Suburban Moms.' B/c you just don't see kids on bikes anymore. I've never seen kids biking like that since.

There's a little 'general' store in a village a few miles from here; my friends and I used to bike or walk to that place all the time to buy candy and pop. Now, even though there must be about 50 to 100 times more kids in this neighborhood, and that village is FULL of kids, you NEVER see kids in that store. NEVER EVER EVER. I find that incredible.

You don't see kids outside, you don't see adults outside, you don't see anyone outside, at best you see someone mowing the lawn. And this is supposed to be among the safest parts of the country, the place where people move to get away from urban crime and all of that.

I don't know, I guess it differs from place to place. I agree that kids don't range far and wide on bicycles and skateboards quite the way we did back in the 60s and 70s, but I still see kids out there.

I think that to whatever extent that kids don't roam anymore, they don't roam mainly because parents are more protective. I don't think there are more pedophiles and kidnappers today than there were 30 years ago, but people are much more aware of the possibility and react accordingly.

I do also think that this kind of thing varies depending on the type of neighborhood you live in. Poorer kids are more likely to run the streets (nothing pejorative intended there) and less poor kids are more likely to be getting ferried around in a minivan from soccer to karate class.

In fact, if you want to see a trend, the overscheduling of middle class kids has been well documented and widely commented on. Perhaps the scarcity of kids on swing sets is due to them having no time after all their little league and pottery classes that their parents ship them off to.

Hwasi, thank you. I was thinking that but was too lazy to Jack Schafer-ify this story.

And to the posters that think this story about empty suburban streets rings true--maybe but not in all suburbs. I recently moved from a unique older neighborhood with nice big yards and no privacy fences. But there were no sidewalks, we were far away from our neighbors, and there were no stores or restaurants that you could safely walk to. Now I live in the sort of suburb that I used to hate on principle. But I like being close to my neighbors and I always see families out walking and riding their bikes because we have sidewalks and parks. And the neighborhood playground and pool get lots of use, especially during the week.

A final thought: I attribute the proliferation of backyard playscapes to open container laws. After all, I can't have a beer while watching my kid at the neighborhood playground.

Austin Annie:

A final thought: I attribute the proliferation of backyard playscapes to open container laws. After all, I can't have a beer while watching my kid at the neighborhood playground.

Annie, this is why the good lord invented flasks.

Seriously, I see the same thing you do. It really does depend on the neighborhood.

Indeed - both "sides" are right, they're just looking at different neighbourhoods.

The generational divide is one factor, since there are likely more wholly sterile suburbs now than in the 70s (given the increased availability of screen-time activities for kids today) but good suburbs clearly still do exist.

I grew up in one Canadian suburb built in the 70s, and then moved to another suburb (built 70s/80s) less than a 15 min. drive away when I was thirteen.

First suburb: Lower-middle/middle-class. Centred on a school with a huge public park area, neighbours knew each other because their kids played together outdoors, I rode a bike around by myself every day. This was in the 1990s.

Second suburb: Middle-class. No school. No sidewalks, no street life, no children visible except in the mornings when they waited for the school bus. Public park is tucked out of sight of most of the neighbourhood, beside a ravine. Nobody knows each other. My parents refused to let my 12-year old sister go to the park with her friends because a pre-teen girl was raped there. I myself got paranoid, afraid to walk on the empty streets. This was in the late 1990s, early 2000s.

My parents moved because they wanted my siblings to grow up in a better neighbourhood. The irony kills me.

I think some of the blame for dead 'burbs can be laid on poor planning (i.e. park placement, etc.) but sometimes poor individual decisions can trigger neighbourhood death spirals.

People don't encourage their kids to play with other kids, instead compete to buy their kids the best toys, kids stop playing beyond their own properties, public spaces are underused, crime rises in deserted public spaces, people get afraid and forbid their kids from frequenting said spaces, everyone stays safely indoors, anyone who ventures outdoors feels either like a criminal or a target.

That's how it seems to have happened in my parents' neighbourhood, anyway.

Texwiz:

I think that to whatever extent that kids don't roam anymore, they don't roam mainly because parents are more protective. I don't think there are more pedophiles and kidnappers today than there were 30 years ago, but people are much more aware of the possibility and react accordingly...

In fact, if you want to see a trend, the overscheduling of middle class kids has been well documented and widely commented on. Perhaps the scarcity of kids on swing sets is due to them having no time after all their little league and pottery classes that their parents ship them off to.

Actually, according to StatsCan, there are far LESS kidnappings now than there were in the 70's and 80s, but since they've gotten so much more media attention in the 90's and since (a la Jon Benet), parents are definitely overprotective of their children. Another stat is that these children that are kidnapped are more likely to be by people they already know and trust, and not a random stranger walking down the street (although I recognize that it does happen, and it's terrible when it does). Also, it's apparent that 'free' time has been greatly devalued since I was growing up as it always has to be filled with some regimented activity these days, and kids are also given massive amounts of homework comparatively.

I think that my brother and I (29 and 31 respectively) are among the last of the kids who spent most of their time outdoors playing along the street in everybody's yards, when we weren't riding our bikes or walking to the nearest public pool or park. Yes, my brother had one or two scheduled activities at different times in the year to go to (summer was ball hockey and winter was bowling, and I had after-school drama rehearsals), but these activities didn't eat up all of our 'free' time. And hey, we were definitely watching TV too.

Also, when the heck did kids get start to get shuttled around to each and every one of their activities, whether they be trips to the park, to school, whatever? I'm beginning to think I was extremely lucky and had a nique childhood experience living in a very well planned community within the city throughout my childhood, and am really grateful my parents didn't move to the suburbs until after I had moved out to go to college. I walked everywhere, and I mean everywhere, and my parents would have scoffed at a request for a ride.

I think kids now don't have enough free time when they have to amuse themselves and be imaginitive about it (playing video games does not count despite the increased hand-eye coordination). Parents overschedule their children and keep them in the house (or in their private yard) out of unfounded fears. That doesn't do their kids any favours- creative thought comes not out of regimented activities, but out of enough time to let the brain do it's magic (a la Archimedes' Eureka moment).

It's very telling to me that Gen Y is described as not having the same level of rebellion as previous generations, although that's somewhat of a generalization. Not enough self-determination or self-reliance for enternainment must have effects though.

I think overscheduling children is a class based money issue. I bet that the wealthier suburbs, like the author's sister's posh neighborhood, do have less children playing outside. Those ballet classes and music lessons can cost up to $200 a month. Multiply that times the number of children in a family, and most of the population does not have the money for that sort of thing. I don't have $300 for a wii so my kids don't play vide games all day. I looked into signing my kid up for pee wee football, but they wanted him to go to practice every day Monday through Friday, and these are 5 and 6 year olds! Talk about overscheduling. So, my kids do indeed have nothing better to do than play outside all day. I know some parents who scoff at the idea of unstructured play time, but most of them have the time and money to spend on expensive activities. But for a lot of regular people like me, our kids are doing the same things we did.

I will be objective here...... while I am certain that there are "suburbs" that have very little activity, which may be in part due to the age of the children, in our suburb, there are many younger childern k-6th grades. At one point, there were 19 kids on our street alone. My street was not that different than the others in our subdivision (built in 1967-74) we are the second wave of families..

Bike riding, skateboarding, hockey nets in the cul-de-sac, a game of toss in front of my house- AND we have horrible horrible basketball nets in our drives!

Tom would have gone into cardiac arrest if he pulled into this little place I call heaven! It has matured trees, lush landscape and only one yard the kids dont play on- out of respect to Mrs. K who is a widow, and likes everyone to stay off her lawn. (also provides tic tacs and mini sodas when the kids go to talk to her on her bench in the front of her house....hmm wonder why she is out there????)

"I think that my brother and I (29 and 31 respectively) are among the last of the kids..."

Not quite. Im 27 and had the same experience as a kid, as did my younger brother who is 24. Im pretty sure we're the last ones though!

I saw the shift happen in the mid to late 90's with my next door neighbors. They had a daughter close in age to me, and two younger girls who were 10 and 13 years younger than me. When the older daughter and the rest of us kids in the neighborhood were young, we played in my pool, ran through the woods, built forts, climbed tree stands, dug through the couch looking for change to take to a small store 1/2 mile away to buy candy, rode our bikes for miles at a time and caught lightning bugs at twiglight. Sure, we spent time inside too watching tv and playing Nintendo, but it was far outweighed by how much time we spent outdoors.

By the time the younger girls next door were of an age to do all that stuff (say 6-13) they barely left the house. They almost never played in their own yard, much less anyone else's. They certainly didnt venture into the woods They had playdates and were shuttled to all of their activities. They had no idea that the shop down the road sold gourmet candy because they never once walked over to it to scope it out. Their childhood was almost the exact opposite of mine and their older sister's and there was absolutely no rational reason for it.

The only thing that changed in the neighborhood from the time of my childhood to theirs was a few different families moved in. No increase in traffic, or violence or anything negative at all.

Perceptions changed I guess and people started to get panicky and overprotective.