Here is the dark secret we are not warned about.

As a counter point to "kids don't want to go outside anymore " - where can they go?

The street outside my mom's house has gone from safe to play in to a "shortcut" because the main drag is too congested. One od the parks I played in has the new library, a second the new hospital, and my elementary school has cut the playground size by 2/3, and they lock the fence outside of school hours. The Catholic School next door had to sell off its vacant lot to pay for Father "masturbation will send you to hell but having sex in a forest preserve with an underage male is okay" Reeva's poor managment. In short, many of the places I played in as a kid are gone and what remains is crowded and often closed off for "civic functions".

Then you have all the "activities " Kid's days are planned from sun up to sundown. Free play has been virtually elminated from school curriculum, etc.

 

And what percentage of the population live in "the sticks"?

And how long will it remain "the sticks" when everyone from the cities and suburbs move out there?

 

Read that this morning.

Now I'm afraid to go home; I always knew she was a stone-cold killer....

 

Never mind parents getting arrested for the heinous crime of *gasp* letting their children walk to school or the park.

 

Problem is the metropolis is expanding. I remember when there was a very noticiable gap between Chicago and Milwaukee. Heck I remember a gap between Joliet and Chicago. When my parents bought theur house in 1980 it was in the "west suburbs", now its "near west".

 

I can say the same thing about the streych between Gren Bay and Appleton. Or Appleton and Oshkosh. Or Oshkosh amd Madison.