This isn't so much the Japanese being weird and different as the American's being the odd ones.
I am Norwegian, and little of these descriptions would seem odd to me. My kids go on trips every week with their pre-school, and I have never keep track of where.
My oldest son has walked to school himself since he has been 6 years old. I walked to school when I was a kid from 7 (we started school later). And I had to walk about 30 minutes to get to school crossing many roads.
From early childhood I roamed around all my neighborhood walking into forests or as I got a bit older I'd go with friends to big abandoned ship yards.
When I later emailed a distant American relative of similar age, I was confused when she didn't understand why I didn't have a drivers license. She was like "doesn't your parent's get tired of driving you everywhere?". A question that made no sense to me until I visited the US. I was of course going everywhere and I didn't need parents or a car to do that. I could take the train, bus or subway myself or bike.
In America however it is simply sad how dependent children are on their parents. Parents take them to every sort of activity and thing they got to do. In so many American cities you can't have a life without a car. There is nothing to do without a car.
Seriously, the amount of helicopter parenting in this country is ridiculous. 21 year old men at my top ranked engineering school had their mothers checking their school emails for homework (I'm not making this up).
Another story: kid OD on drugs, his mom flew across the country to be by his bedside and paid the school from getting suspended
Another Story: child is depressed because he got a low first exam grade os his parents sent him to Europe to a GPA booster school for a semester to "cheer him up"
These kids are ridiculous their parents coddle them through everything and clap joyously and the slightest acheivement which they totally positioned them for.
They are depressed and completely incapable of navigating the real world. I had to break up with the one I dated because he wanted me to be his mom. Like no kid, I have a life to live do your own laundry and no I'm not going to redo your resume for you and get you a job.
This has GOT to stop. Below is an article from the Former Dean of Stanford on just this very topic: It's embarassing.
About that first example... showing up at your child's bedside when they're in hospital doesn't sound particularly helicopter-y.
If the child was low-key sick, sure, that'd be silly -- a stomach bug or flu keeping you in bed for the weekend doesn't warrant cross-country flights. But a drug overdose? That's a serious health issue.
More to the point, someone who just ODed on drugs might very well need some therapy or even an intervention. The hospital is just going to toss him out on the street once he can walk on his own again and whomever his friends are at school they probably aren't helping. If the parent doesn't go over there and intervene there is a very high chance he will end up in the hospital or the morgue shortly afterward.
I taught an introductory computing course for incoming freshman while I was at university. I once had a student's mother call the department head to complain about her child's grades and the "needless difficulty" of the class.
Fortunately, my boss was[1] fantastic and told that parent to piss off, not-quite-politely explaining that her son is now a grown-ass man, and that if he weren't doing well in the course then it was his own damn fault, and that it's pretty pathetic that as an adult, he was still having his mother fight his battles for him, and furthermore pathetic that his mother was complicit in such. She also put a few kind words toward my abilities as a teacher, which had me feeling pretty chuffed ;)
Seriously, that class was quite likely the single easiest course required by the college of engineering, and anyone who failed it was either too lazy to do the work or they simply didn't have what it takes to be an engineer (either way, most of the failures wound up dropping out of the college of engineering within a year or two; a few came back ready to take it more seriously in round two; one of my students took my class three times, and he failed every time, finally dropping out of engineering after three semesters).
All in all, it was pretty sad.
[1]: She's still fantastic, though she's no longer my boss :)
As a lifelong resident of a midwestern state in the US, I think it's less a matter of independence and more a matter of safety and legal issues. I too made plenty of solo excursions through our rural countryside at a young age.
On the other hand, in major cities, parents are being charged with neglect if their young children walk a a few blocks up the street to go to a park. Not everywhere, but such stories crop up in the news every so often.
Another part of the problem is that communities in America aren't (or seem to not be) quite as tight knit as they once were. There are plenty of explanations, from cultural shifts, family policy, excessively punitive drug policy, economic policy, decline of religion, decline of moral values, rise of the internet and easy access to excessive amounts of televised programming, cell phones and handheld video games, you name it, and someone has probably blamed something for it.
Your talking about fear not actual danger. Crime statistics are very much down from the 1950's. As are playground accidents and automobile fatalities..
The most important thing to remember about lawn darts is not that handing kids metal stakes is dangerous and stupid, but relatively few kids where actually harmed.
Your talking about fear not actual danger. Crime statistics are very much down from the 1950's. As are playground accidents and automobile fatalities..
It's not necessarily fear, from the parents, of actual danger, it's fear of being charged with neglect. It, too, may be an unfounded fear, but until being a busybody who needless charges someone with neglect is a crime, crime and accident statistics don't necessarily enter into it.
Definitely agree with this. I grew up rural and was pretty independent by middle school with a broad network of older friends and friends parents to get me rides around the county.
I have friends raising kids in inner city areas, both gentrified and not, and they are all about getting those kids navigating the city blocks around their homes by eight or nine.
I realize those are anecdotes, but suburbs have been repeatedly indicted for a lot of the post-Baby Boomer social issues. Thus, I'm hardly surprised. Suburbs were a massive mistake: fiscally, socially, and environmentally. We're only now really uncovering the entirety of the negative impacts this sort of development had on the United States.
Depends on the suburb, too— I grew up in a prewar streetcar suburb where all the kids walked to school in the 90s (although there weren't really corner stores that kids went down to for milk or whatever). More 'modern' suburbs are designed to only be navigable by a car, and getting to most destinations involves crossing huge deadly arterial roads.
I saw two 10yr old girls on a sushi date here in NYC by themselves. Table full of sushi, eating with chopsticks and catching up with mature conversations. The children here generally seem very independent and well adjusted.
Exactly. I am a parent and even though rationally I want my kid to be independent and I know the world is fairly safe, the media has made me terrified at the prospect of letting my kid interact with strangers unsupervised. I just cannot shake that fear.
Air conditioning. I'm in the south and central air made it where nobody goes out and sits on their porch and socializes any more. Nobody is forced to meet their neighbors anymore.
> In America however it is simply sad how dependent children are on their parents. Parents take them to every sort of activity and thing they got to do. In so many American cities you can't have a life without a car. There is nothing to do without a car.
That's hardly the parents' fault though. In many American cities it's literally a life-threatening journey for a 6-year-old to try to navigate along a road that has no sidewalk, with cars zooming by at 45mph. And then a kid comes to a 6-lane intersection that he needs to cross. With drivers turning right on red and generally not used to any pedestrians at all.
> This isn't so much the Japanese being weird and different as the American's being the odd ones.
German, confirming.
What I fear is, that like many other cultural things, this will eventually make it's way over the Atlantic and, when I have kids, I will be forced to do this to them, too.
Seconded. I'm not Norwegian but I've been living in Norway for 30 years and my children grew up just like that. Of course they were in fact dependent on me for transport to sports events (handball, archery) but these were often more than 100km round trips, just impractical with public transport (too many changes of bus and train) and anyway we would take turns driving a car full not just our own children.
As for school trips, one thing stands out, compared to the UK at least, and that is that they were expected to take a knife with them. Can't sharpen a stick to hold a sausage over a fire otherwise.
And yet, the least car-dependent areas of the US (Manhattan, downtown SF, downtown Chicago) are where it'd be least appropriate to let a child wander alone.
It's all fun and games until someone gets kidnapped.
There's also the situation where a lot of American towns/cities aren't so crowded that you can walk everywhere. And not everywhere in America is there good public transportation.
> It's all fun and games until someone gets kidnapped.
But statistically, how often does that happen? Is it enough to be seriously worried about?
> There's also the situation where a lot of American towns/cities aren't so crowded that you can walk everywhere. And not everywhere in America is there good public transportation.
I don't think it's an issue of being crowded. I think it's an issue of how we design our cities. We assume everyone will have a car, so those that don't have a car (kids) have less independence. A lot of Europe was built before cars existed, so they don't assume that everyone will have their own car.
There are 115 abductions of children by strangers in an average year, in the US.
Traffic accidents are a much, much more prevalent threat.
(There are 800,000 children reported missing each year. 90% have misunderstood directions or ran away on their own initiative. 9% are kidnapped by a family member in a custody dispute.
> And not everywhere in America is there good public transportation.
First off, that's by design. Car-centric infrastructure planning really did a number on the American public. The damages ended up being far worse than just economic.
Second, that's an understatement of the century. Public transportation is pretty much non-existent in most of US. It's good in exactly 1 city (NY), and probably decent in another 2 or 3.
I bet more parents beat their kids to death each year than strangers kidnapping children. Based on that parents should not be allowed to get close to their children.
Independence as in independent physically from their parents who may be far away, but not as in independent psychologically to make responsible, self-governing decisions based on their own free will.
The former is not that surprising considering how safe Japan is. The latter however is a known social issue. Oyabanare (leaving the parents) is the term for independence, and many have a hard time.
Physical independence is a step every toddler takes when they learn to cope with not having their parents around during day care and such, and in Japan it simply extends to the commute. Traditionally, the Japanese would not even lock their doors. The entire community is an extension of their living space, with lines drawn with respect, not fences or locked doors. So just as you wouldn't call a child independent for being able to go to the bedroom and back, going to school and back is the same but farther, with the community acting as a safety net to ensure these children commute safely. Kobans also help (community police manning one man police stations that patrol on bicycles).
Psychological independence unfortunately does not extend naturally from the above. With many young adults being too dependent on their parents and on instruction, they suffer from the inability to think or act or speak for themselves. They can commute fine alone. They can be hikikomori fine alone. They are fine alone. They just are not independent in the western sense. They are afraid to act on behalf of themselves or enact their identity. So they also resort to 2chan and anonymous free speech which does not help them gain a voice.
Westerners are almost too comfortable acting on behalf of themselves. It is almost a given. And that is also why parents are less inclined to "let them loose" because "loose" is what they are. They are free thinking and free acting, hence a long solitary commute only sounds dangerous. But it is this perception that instills that very quality in their children. The perception of being on an infinite leash yields physical freedom and distance, but to confuse this with psychological independence is an egregious mistake.
This doesn't square with my experience as someone who lives in Japan. I know quite a few young, single mothers who are unbelievably self-sufficient. I also know a lot of people who are the breadwinners and caretakers of their aging parents. This whole notion of hikikomori is novel and feeds into the image of Japan as dystopia, but it's not a good basis for any sweeping statements about independence in Japan.
A much more interesting point is the dynamic between the primacy of personal liberty and the group's long-term well being. The West can learn a lot about how to keep their society viable over millennia if they'd stop drawing half-baked conclusions like yours and experience the confounding and delicate balance of paradoxes that has developed over a long time here.
Women are different. The moment they become mothers their role changes. It's more of a switch society flips for them. So single mothers are probably the most independent and competent of any demographic. Unfortunately high paying work is hard to come by with both ageism and sexism in the work place.
My conclusions are not half-baked. They are baked into my being. I was raised by a single mother in Japan, then was fortunate to travel the world. She is also a professor in anthropology.
"Delicate balance of paradoxes" is half baked. I would be more qualified than anyone to talk about cultural paradoxes because according to you I'm probably full of them. But being in Los Angeles now I can say with confidence there are no paradoxes between cultures or race. We are all just people. Paradoxes only happen between words, and words do not own us, except, for some people they do. But that is not a paradox. That is a mere hardship.
I encourage you to spend a lot of time in Japan and keep your mind and eyes open. You can't see what I'm talking about from LA, especially not through another person's eyes.
I encourage you to revisit what I wrote then. I was raised in Japan. I am Japanese. I'm not just a westerner making half-baked conclusions based on what I see outside looking in. I'm a westerner too, and that's what makes my answer even possible.
If you had something substantial to say, I would love to respond, as I did with your single mother counter argument, but this open your mind business is pointless (and also condescending).
Like a color or a taste, some things need to be experienced and fiercly resist explanation or codification. The urge to turn everything into a set of rules or a narrative can be a kind of sickness, or at least less productive than methodically testing what works and building on it over time without too much concern about some grand unifying theory. It's not easy but there is such a precious example of a society that does an OK job at it. Too many people leap at the negatives while ignoring what's working.
>The urge to turn everything into a set of rules or a narrative can be a kind of sickness
I agree with this, and I think that's the root of many of the social malaises Japan has that the OP was getting at: lack of intellectual independence and hikikomori, for example. Many of the Japanese folks I've met through work are very attentive to protocols and rules, and supremely uncomfortable without well defined sets of rules. That's a kind of sickness, isn't it?
It's a balancing act and requires constant adjustment. I was suggesting that you won't find some rule book for Japanese society -- it's all unwritten conventions that do change over time.
> Westerners are almost too comfortable acting on behalf of themselves. It is almost a given. And that is also why parents are less inclined to "let them loose" because "loose" is what they are. They are free thinking and free acting
A bit of a fiction. All you have to do is have a look the tribalism in campus culture to falsify this.
In fact, the current campus hysteria is in part motivated by a lack of independence, self-reliance and accountability for one's actions.
Western tribalism is the emergence of a common voice among those who exercise their voice. At least those who take part take part on their terms and by enacting their will. These tribes are, for better or worse, movements.
There is no tribalism in Japan. There are clubs and extracurricular activities, and an emergence of groups who find comfort in interdependence.
Independent actors have common interests too. That isn't to be confused with interdependent actors simply getting together to avoid confrontation with society.
Aren't clubs and extracurricular activities perceived rather differently in Japan as well? Being part of clubs, from my very limited vantage point, seems to be incredibly culturally important.
I have to admit that I have no idea what the parent posts are talking about wrt to tribalism, etc. I'm not trying to be dismissive, I literally don't understand.
But I can talk about clubs in Japan :-) I worked in a Japanese high school for 5 years. Students are required to be part of a club. It is part of high school. Most clubs run 6 days a week and students are a member of a club starting from junior high school. Even when people go to university, they invariably join clubs. I don't know if it is required, but after 6 years it is already ingrained.
A club in Japan is very different than a club in North America (I'm Canadian). When you are in school in Canada (at least), you can join many clubs. Most students have many, many hobbies. You are encouraged to try many, many different things. In Japan you have 1 club and that's your hobby. You have exactly 1 chance to change your club -- when you graduate junior high school and join high school (well... you can change again if you go to university).
Because you are forced to practice 1 and only 1 thing, you tend to get quite good at it. Japanese students are very, very good at their hobby (note the lack of plural). This is virtually without exception. Most students (in my experience) absolutely love club. They live for club. It's where their friends are. It's the place where they are accepted. It's the place where they are good at what they do. In the middle of winter, with the wind blowing, and the rain coming down, the only way we could get the tennis boys to go home was to turn off the lights at 8 pm every day. They would show up on Sunday (presumably their day off) and keep at it. That's Japanese club.
Of course some students don't want to go to club. Some students have no interest in a hobby. In my school we had a kind of rotating "club" for students who hated club. One year it was track and field. When we got a student from junior high school who was very serious about track and field, we had to move the non-club club to cooking. Then some students got interested in cooking, so it moved to the English club. Every couple of years it moves somewhere else (and all the teachers flock to volunteer to supervise it because supervising a serious club is a huge amount of work).
It's interesting, though. My school had about 400 students and the non-club club never had more than 60 students in it. Students generally love club. What's more, when a student is in the non-club, you know they have some serious problems. There is not a single happy student in non-club.
Like many things in Japan, the whole concept of a single club that takes up all of your child's free time would not work in other places. Japanese culture is instilled in students at school. Teachers raise the children at least as much as parents do. If teachers think that a parent is doing a poor job, they can and will march over to the parent's house and lecture them for hours on end. I once followed a teacher on his "rounds" visiting parents, and I didn't remove my jaw from the ground for at least a day afterwards.
When you say "being part of a club seems to be incredibly culturally important" you are right. It's the way you live. Even now, my neighbour dragged me off to the karate dojo because he was worried about me. Too much free time is not good for you :-). I have no choice now (even at nearly 50 years old)!
Thanks for sharing it with so much detail. Where I grew up we didn't have clubs, you had the afternoon to do whatever you want and I think I would have enjoyed to have some alternatives to do instead of staying at home or playing with the other kids in the street.
Wow. Thank you so much for taking the time to share. I just learned a lot.
It seems like there's a lot of value in it being taken so seriously and focusing on one thing. That must do wonders for a persons discipline.
But the way I grew up (in Canada) I couldn't imagine doing it that way. I did hockey a lot. And some baseball. A summer of drawing classes. Some engineering summer schools, robotics, etc. I never became great at any of those, but I did become great at being adaptable.
Wow. That must be an incredible amount of pressure on every Jr. High freshman to pick the right club. I'm not sure I could do it. I might like tennis, but I don't know if I would want to devote all my free time to it.
I can see the advantage of being in one and only one club from a competitive standpoint, but I have no idea how they don't burn out kids and then make them feel trapped in an activity they have grown to hate.
> If teachers think that a parent is doing a poor job, they can and will march over to the parent's house and lecture them for hours on end. I once followed a teacher on his "rounds" visiting parents, and I didn't remove my jaw from the ground for at least a day afterwards.
Can you give specific information on what shocked you so much?
I imagine Canada is similar to America in this regard: a teacher would never in a million years think about lecturing a parent. In the U.S that would probably be a fantastic way of losing your job!
The parent's word is "law" and no "stupid teacher" gets to have any say in things. The teacher may try to talk about it or make suggestions during parent-teacher meetings but that is the only time it is considered "okay" and even then it isn't lecturing the parent but trying to guide them.
In Japan, teachers are far more respected. The "jaw dropping" part is a teacher visiting parents and lecturing them. Something unheard of in the U.S, and based on the mikekchar's reaction, probably Canada too.
Yep. This is pretty much it. However, I remember a couple of specific incidents. One time the home room teacher noticed that a student's lunch box was not very good. It had all sorts of pre-packaged stuff and was mostly filled with sweets. So he ordered the mother in to the school. Amazingly she came and he spent an hour lecturing her on how she was ruining her son's life by giving him crap to eat. After she had cried an acceptable amount[0], he ordered her to come in once a week where he arranged cooking classes for her. She dutifully came in and the home room teacher along with the home ec teacher gave her explicit lessons on how to do the shopping and make nutritious and cheap lunch boxes. It was awesome and terrifying all at the same time!
Another time a student was caught smoking behind a convenience store. Smoking is a very serious offence in public high schools[1] and often results in expulsion. The teacher ordered the parents in to the school. He asked, "Which one of you smokes?" The father admitted that he smoked. The teacher lectured him on how he was setting a bad example for his son and ruining his future (you can probably see the pattern here...). So then the teacher brought in the student and they worked on a compromise that would allow the student to stay in school. The student would have a 2 week suspension and would agree never to smoke until after he turned 20. Then the teacher got the father to agree never to smoke in sight of his children again. Failure to comply would result in the immediate expulsion of the student.
The level of WTF from my Canadian cultural background in these instances was overwhelming. On the one hand I couldn't believe that the parents would allow the teacher to have so much authority over them. On the other hand, I couldn't believe that this stuff actually worked. For things like this, it's a different world over here...
[0] I discovered that students are trained very early on that teachers will lecture them until they cry. If you are not stubborn and you can learn how to cry, you can get away with almost anything. Even as adults it's the way society works. When you do something very, very bad (like line your pockets with public money as a politician) it is expected that you will go on TV, apologise and then cry. Then it seems like it's OK. It's very strange....
[1] There is a public school system and a private school system (not to be confused with "public schools" in the UK -- "public schools" in Japan are mostly government funded, while "private schools" are funded by tuition rates). Students choose to either go to public or private schools. There are many elite schools in both systems. However, if you get expelled from the public system, you can only be educated in the private system. For that reason, there are many private schools that cater to troubled students. Their rules are much, much, much more lax. Students who are about to get expelled and do not have money to go to a private school, must get a job. The school where the student goes takes responsibility for the student and arranges a job for them. In those cases the student is not expelled, but rather "decides that school is not for them and quits to take on a job". Many of those students then enroll in "night school", which is for students that dropped out and want to continue studying. This is also publicly funded (to the best of my knowledge -- although even public high schools have a tuition fee). Essentially the system is set up to filter students into institutions that (ostensibly) are better suited to deal with their specific issues. Sometimes this is abused by crap teachers who have a vendetta against certain students. Life can be cruel.
> On the other hand, I couldn't believe that this stuff actually worked
Well, those two scenarios are weird but not actually abuse of power. There was no vendetta or bad faith like you imply sometimes happens right at the end of your comment.
Regarding the crying. I think that's common in "shame based" cultures (guilt ones work differently)
Yes. It is an interdependence. Extended family. Also for the youth it provides the perfect excuse to consume alcohol and be "irresponsible". They drink irresponsibly responsibly.
These are all trends of course. Student activism isn't zero. It's just non-existent. Activism is extremely rare.
Don't think you can speak of the west in general here. In Norway kids are physically loose much earlier than in the US. And I could see when studying in the US that American college students are a lot less mature than northern European ones e.g. They were not used to being away from home or managing their own life in any way.
But if you come from say Scandinavia or the Netherlands which I know best you would have biked of taken the bus to downtown a lot yourself and roamed around the neighborhoods to friends from early age. American kids are driven by their parents to all sorts of activities. Everything is organized.
One clear contrast I can see is e.g. American elementary schools have clear fences. Norwegian schools are usually adjacent to a forrest. There are no fences anywhere. Kids can roam quite far into the woods. But kids are taught the imaginary fences they should respect.
American upbringing seems saturated with organized activity to the point that while Americans might have their own strong opinions about everything they have a very low reflection level because they are not used to being alone with their own thoughts, the way you are when you venture into the woods on exploration without your parents.
My wife and I are immigrants from Brazil and this is one of the few culture shocks we've suffered here in America. We moved here when our daughter was 4 (she's 8 now) and comparing her ongoing upbringing to ours back home can be interesting.
Birthday parties in America have an exact start time and an end time. Not only that, those parties are almost always organized around planned activities which also have a start and an end time (e.g. first 45 minutes they'll play in the playground, next 45 minutes they'll play some game, final 45 minutes they'll have pizza and cake). This is the case even when parties are at home.
But the party stuff is fine. It's just how it is. What bothers me somewhat is how my daughter's day-to-day activities are a bit too organized. Both at school and at her after-school care place, every minute of her day has some kind of label attached to it (e.g. "Power Hour" in after-school is homework time). Everything they do at school has a quirky label attached to it to too, instead of just being called what it is. Every activity has a name and a time and a specific method to how it's supposed to be carried out. If they're going to learn values such as respect, focus, etc., there has to be a label attached to it (e.g. "Reflections" or "Values Initiative" or whatever) instead of those things just being taught for what they are.
Her teacher sends us weekly emails to keep us up to date with what's been going on in class, and I feel overwhelmed trying to learn all the labels and names and whatnot. Of course my daughter gets super upset when I don't remember what one of them is about. It doesn't help that some have similar names, like they have both Reading Club and Reading Partners for reading, and I'm supposed to remember the difference :)
While there's a good side to everything being neat and organized, I've seen this lead to some level of anxiety. My daughter sometimes expects the same kind of organization at home, like there should be a specific time and label for everything she does. She gets upset if we eat a meal outside its normal time (e.g. late lunch on a weekend) because she then she says can't call that meal by its name because it wasn't at the right time. This leaves me a little apprehensive that she will grow up to be a schedule-follower, with such schedules always being defined by other people. That's basically the opposite of how my wife and I are.
This is a bit of overblown "look at the crazy foreigners!" Most people don't raise kids through the same ages in multiple countries so they have no idea what the real differences are. There is also more variation in the USA.
Here in San Francisco you can go watch little kids doing this exact same thing every single day. Teachers walking the kids to Golden Gate Park, showing them how to wait for the WALK sign, look both ways for cars, etc with no parents around.
It is also extremely common advice to make your kids cleanup after themselves to learn responsibility. At 18 months they naturally want to help, so you give them jobs to do and slowly ramp up the complexity.
The only thing unique to Japan (that I got from the article anyway) is that really young kids walk to school by themselves. Part of this might be urban vs suburban/rural, I'm not sure. SF doesn't bus kids, and I definitely see middle-schoolers navigating muni on their own. Not sure how much younger that goes.
All of Japan is smaller than California, with a population 3x as high. It's much easier to go from "do it one place" to do it everywhere in a country like that.
My comment didn't have to do with population density or the size of the country, just that it's extremely common in Japan and doesn't happen much in America. Only that.
Japan is densely populated and small. Tokyo has the same population as the entire state of California. A 'grassroots' campaign or a 'try it local first approach' simply takes into account a staggering amount of people, and all of these people have relatives that live within 3 hours distance of them, due to the size of Japan and the speed of transport.
It means that though Japan is largely conservative... if an idea does take root, it can quickly spread everywhere.
In the US, you get enclaves. California says X. Texas says Y. New York says Z. And there's 1500 miles between each of these major population zones, meaning that activists and politicians in one zone simply aren't active in another.
When I was a kid in Iraq (1990~) going to school by yourself was very natural. Our school was nearby so we walked every day. Other kids took the bus.
The only thing amusing in the article is how Americans are amused by this.
I remember on my first day to school my mom took me there, but she didn't come to take me home. I was one of the few kids that cried because my mom wasn't there. Later, I felt embarrassed by that.
Our school organized some kind of a school trip about once or twice a year. I was the odd kid whose parents would not let him go on the trip. For everyone else, it was a natural part of school that they looked forward to.
Needless to say, the parents do no join the kids for the trip.
Isn't this just due to population density? If you live in a dense area the schools have to be fairly close together (or absolutely sprawling), so most would be in walking distance for the students.
In the states a great many kids live 5+ miles from school, which is a pretty long walk for a first grader.
When you refer to large cities, are you referring exclusively to Japanese cities? In Europe, buses are an integral part of the transport network in many major cities.
How are you sure this is peculiar to Japan. I believe there are many countries, to varying degrees, where children have a lot of freedom of movement and are not overprotected as in the US
I had that degree of freedom in both Honduras (the capital city of Tegucigalpa) and in Canada in the mid-to-late 1970s and early 1980s so I've got two data points there.
Note: my Honduran side of the family was upper middle class so it was entirely by personal and parental choice, I walked by myself and also with young friends and family all through town
Did you live anywhere outside the US for a long time?
In any case, I grew up in Korea in the late 90s and it was pretty much as described in the article, without the niceties like designated safe building or a warning chime to remind kids to go home.
I walked to and back from school every day, and oftentimes went to Sunday school, library, etc. by myself. I was also given money to purchase school supplies for various school activities everyday. I also knew how to take the subway/bus to get to my grandparents' place on days my mom would be there after school.
Every Saturday all the students helped clean the school and we had rotating duties to collect milk cartons, clean the bathroom, bring lunch from the kitchen in bulk to serve to classmates, etc. Mind you, this was all in 1st and 2nd grade.
When I moved to the States in 3rd grade we had tasks like whiteboard erasing, door holding, etc. but that's about the only similarity I found.
I'm not American (thank God!) but I can understand that in the US you need a car if the school is several miles away and there's no serious public transport option...
It's not just that. In Italy, when I was a kid (mid-80s), it was normal for 8-year-olds around the "paese" (which in my case was a city borough) to just walk to school. We would meet up on the way, and it was pretty fun. Same for going back, although we were expected to have someone at home.
Now people freak out if a child is without adult supervision for 5 minutes, because of pedo-paranoia; nevermind that abuse cases are overwhelmingly done by relatives or close friends, which means the more you ask for an adult to be with kids, the more you're actually putting them at risk. Thanks, fearmongering mass-media and hollywood.
> Now people freak out if a child is without adult supervision for 5 minutes, because of pedo-paranoia
pedo-paranoia was also a think while I was growing up. I totally remember the talk regarding not accepting rides from people nor candy. My parents deny that they ever said such things because those were "idyllic times", but they sure did.
You don't need a car to travel several miles, not even in America
My office is "several miles" from home, and I bike to work.
And while I live in a mild climate now so weather is on my side (winter temps rarely go below 50), decades ago when I was in college, I biked to campus even in the winter (which included ice, snow and below freezing temps)
"The person who is carrying out amae may beg or plead, or alternatively act selfishly while secure in the knowledge that the caregiver will indulge him. The behavior of children towards their parents is perhaps the most common example of amae, but Doi argued that child-rearing practices in the Western world seek to stop this kind of dependence, whereas in Japan it persists into adulthood in all kinds of social relationships."
And here we find a concept related to traditional gender models with the 'strong' man and dependent woman, sub-dom relationships and other such constructs. Helps us see why many people still hold onto tradition.
Totally agree. Japan is also incredibly safe. I've just spent a couple months there (now in Seoul), and you get the sense that people really trust each other there. It's not uncommon to see people leave their bags, phones, wallets, etc. just lying around in a cafe; bikes unlocked everywhere. It's a really calm place to be in that sense.
I've been doing the "digital nomad" thing and jumping around a lot of countries — Japan was very different in this aspect to pretty much everywhere else I've been.
I had left my Nikon camera in a shop, when I've realized and ran back, a shop associate was trying to knot it to a chair she just put outside of the shop (so it can be seen).
It was amazing!
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Other story I had in Japan. That I lost direction in Kyoto and had no money since all ATM is closed (at night).At some point somebody just stopped his bike and asked where i go. When I told him, he said that I should wait a bit, he will pick up his car and bring me there (in the middle of the night!) .. and so he did.
More than one person I met in Japan told me a story of someone accidentally leaving their wallet on the seat of a train, only for another passenger to chase after them to hand it to them as they left.
For what it's worth, I had this happen in Denmark last month.
During the couple of years when I lived at the end of a metro line in London, I must have found about 5 wallets left on the train. All but one were the type that just holds the transport card and perhaps a credit card, but still.
hahaah that happened to me at least twice with my cell phone when I was living there. One of the times a girl missed the train she was taking to return it to me.
This doesn't make any sense. If you run to return a dropped phone/wallet to someone they don't accuse you of pickpocketing them. Not unless you maybe drained the wallet of cash first.
I've handed people stuff they've dropped many times and usually get a polite thank you for the effort. The idea that they would be hostile to you is just crazy.
When I was traveling in Japan, even in some of the sketchier areas my only worry was that I might get yelled at or maybe at worst get in a fight if I started something. Not once did I fear for my or my wife's safety even late at night.
There is something magical about living somewhere like that which I can only fantasize about as someone who grew up in Chicago taking the 36 to school and having to avoid crazy people and always looking over my shoulder. And that was in a nice part of East Lakeview.
I rented Airbnb apartments in each city I visited (Tokyo a couple times, Osaka, Kobe, Hiroshima and Kyoto), which was pretty painless and not too expensive. Definitely better value for money outside of Tokyo -- probably Osaka or Kobe was the best in that case.
I mostly worked from cafes, but I'm a bit of a coffee snob so I spent a fair bit of time and energy finding the perfect combination of coffee, wifi, and comfort. I've definitely got some suggestions if it's something you're interested in.
The Dutch have a similar approach albeit at a bit older age. During my last visit to the US I was really astonished when my colleague told me he was driving his kids (12-15 years old) everywhere anytime and that this was common.
One of the best moments of my childhood were those in which you could stroll around the city in full freedom.
I still don't fully get the protective attitude of US parenting. I wonder if it has to do with crime stats being higher.
> I wonder if it has to do with crime stats being higher.
Yes, crime is higher in the US than in the Netherlands, but that cannot be the explanation. Because crime is the US is much lower than it was three decades ago when children did walk to school.
Do you think the perception of crime/safety might be an explanation? The difference with three decades ago is the ease of information distribution with social media/internet. Most likely also media coverage has shifted more to crime reporting.
If I'm not mistaken Levitt describes this perception of crime in his book, Freakonomics, as well.
There could be some lag involved. The children of 3 decades ago are now having their own children and are deciding their freedoms. I think crime was lower in the US 6 decades ago than 3, so each generation may be reacting slowly to a perceived level of danger.
I think one of the issues now is that there are many more homes with two working parents. It was one thing 30 years ago to let your kids walk to school, wander around the neighborhood, or whatever, if a parent was at home. But without that safety net, I can see why it's a psychologically challenging attitude for parents. (besides the whole media focus on crime exacerbating things).
(I was born in 1977 and walked or rode my bike to school until 4th grade, when I switched schools. I also had a mom who's rule was "go outside and play. come in for dinner when the street lights turn on." I think this was common across the US until the '90s, especially outside of major metros.
True, the suburbs explain some of it. However, I've been told it would be a big no-no to let your 8 year old play in the park a few blocks away without supervision. Parents who do so are apparently considered irresponsible.
Do note my source is only a single colleague from CA, could of course be an exception..
Not bicycles? Children riding bikes round their neighbourhood is a common sight in American films/TV, the most obvious example is Bart and Lisa Simpson.
I think it depends a lot where you live, and whether it's urban, suburban, or rural.
My kid could definitely bike to school when she gets older. But to get to, say, her gymnastics class, it's 8 miles through heavy traffic with only occasional bike lanes. (In the dark in the rain, at this time of year.)
The article describes how Japanese children are socialized. They are taught to become independent off their parents at an early age. They learn to rely on they local social network.
We in the west understand may independence differently. With our western eyes we seen transfer of dependence on family to social community not as we would expect more becoming an individual.
There are few cultures like the Japanese that have such close social links to their peers at adult age. These differences seem to be cultured at an early age.
Helicopter parenting is certainly damaging in the long run. The Japanese approach also has some long term implications. It is worth looking at other alternatives too. In the end we are responsible for our choices.
I start doing some grocery buys as 7/8 years old and go to school alone at the same age.
In medellin.
In the 90s.
Towards schools with some gang members.
Where some shootings happened (outside!).
And get mugged a few times.
After bombings 7 blocks away home.
And get to the school alone next day.
Equal as elsewhere. Now here are copying some of the unfortunate aspects of the US culture and some of my younger cousins have not idea how navigate the city alone.
Despite to be very shy and introvert, I'm certain I can get lost anywhere and find my way back home!
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By the way, bullying was very uncommon, despite being the most nerd there. Now is epidemic. When kid looking at US movies I wonder when we will start to copy it.
My daughter's preschool [American] went on several field trips, it's not that weird. And her first "solo day of class" was sooner than a month in.
I walked to school by myself in NYC. Now I live in the suburbs, and I see plenty of kids walking themselves to school in my neighborhood. But a lot of it depends on how far away you live and the route.
Basically, I don't worry about my daughter's ability to find her way to school, I worry about her getting run down by some idiot in an SUV.
For young kids this is awesome but Japanese young adults are not nearly as independent as western kids. It is far from uncommon for 20 somethibugs to choose to live at home even into the their 30s. Where does the system fail from this great stuff as 3-6 year olds vs the 18-30 year olds?
It does not fail. It's the expected outcome. Young people don't get "legal" independence until they get married. By "legal" independence I mean they don't have a personal register (koseki) until they have to leave the family register, which can basically only happen by marrying.
Besides, leaving at one's parents is not equal to be dependent, it is economically sound and young people who have entered the work force may live in the same place as their parents but few share much more than that.
Japanese 18-30 year olds are also in a lot less debt. It's part of the Japanese culture to live with your parents until marriage and it has nothing to do with independence. There are also plenty of young people who move into expensive tiny single bedroom apartments in Tokyo for work purposes. But who would want to do that when you can live in a private wing of your parents house for free? Most young people spend their social time outside of their houses anyway (house parties in the west vs karaoke parties in Japan). It just ends up being a place to eat and sleep.
Funny that: a classic Italian complaint from parents of 20somethings still living at home is "This house is not a hotel!" - i.e. a place where to eat and sleep.
Well, the idea that everyone should move out at 18 is somewhat unique to north-west Europe and North America. In many parts of the world it is normal for young adults to live with their parents until there is a practical reason to move out. Living alone for no apparent reason may be seen as economically wasteful or as fleeing from a dysfunctional family.
A part-time job salary is about 850-1200 yen/hr [1]. So the rent is pretty high. And there are additional payments (like key money, deposit money, insurance money) one has to pay upfront.
First: People on this website tend not to have grown up poor, but let me assure you that that demographic of Americans has no problem with independence. My friend has had a job since he was twelve, and until he moved out (at 18) he had to pay his share of the household bills. And he has bad credit because when they needed money his mom borrowed money in his name.
Second: Im a college student, so I see a lot of people floundering with new found independence. First people who grew up poorer can, in general, cook, clean and shop properly. Of those that grew up in wealthier families, the "only" children are the ones that tend to struggle at first.
In the end though, most of them figure it out. Large universities are pretty good at fostering independence. Primarily because they don't really care about their students. Either you figure it out or flunk out. I know that anecdotes of peoples parents coming with them to interviews are common, but I don't know a single person who has had this particular indignity inflicted on them. In general I think that adults in the United States are fairly good at being independent from their parents and American Universities have helped with this. I also know that Asian, and Japanese universities have a reputation for coddling their students, to the point that American professors are wary of taking them on as grad students (not to say that some of them aren't fantastic students because they are).
I also know that Japanese parents are far more likely to support their children financially into their adulthoods than American parents are. So while I agree with many of the sentiments here I want to point out that Americans do force their children to be independent. They just wait until they are 18-25.
I find it ironic that in America, where child rearing is the epitome of life in mainstream culture, parents are so awful at it, especially at instilling independence and freedom, something we claim to value more than anything. This article is only interesting in comparison with our failed parenting. In comparison to many other cultures, it's pretty mundane and similar.
Exactly, I'd say America is more exception than a rule in this regard. This article implies that 5-6 years old walking to school alone is something extraordinary. It's common in my country too, actually, most of the first graders that are dropped off by parents are those who live outside of town and there's no good public transit route.
That's a really sweeping statement. In reference to this particular article, there may be a lot of reasons why fewer American children travel to school by themselves, including geography and transportation options.
That's pretty irrelevant. I base my assessment of the horrific parenting in this country on our poor and still falling educational achievements and the censorship houses our universities have turned into. I understand that the law enforces such poor parenting practices by throwing parents in jail, placing children in foster care, etc., but that's still no excuse.
I've always found Japanese kindergarten elementary school education to be quite good. They encourage children to be independent, they have children clean the school to teach responsibility (most schools do not have janitors on staff), they often have student councils where the students determine some of the rules and how they are enforced.
However, the education after that is too focused on rote memory, multiple choice tests and not enough on critical thinking. This, I believe, is what creates a lot of problems today with Japanese young adults. If I had a kid, I'd send her to a Japanese school until around 8-9 years old and then switch to an international school.
It's difficult to separate this issue from the vastly civilized cultural context of Japan.
Kids can take the bus because there is a near zero chance that someone will do something bad to them. If they are lost, they are surrounded by people who will help them.
North American urban areas are not quite like this ...
Also, the simply geographic issues of housing/roads and large distances between things is a pretty big factor.
No guns, homogenous society, extremely well behaved people ...
American leftists and rightists would each find something to 'freak out' about were America to try to recreate the kind of civility they have there ...
In Japan I noticed that the public washrooms were always so clean, magnitudes cleaner than anything in Canada.
My wife told me at school that all the students take turns cleaning the bathroom, this meant if you made a mass you'd eventually have to clean it up. The idea seems to be that by keeping it clean you avoid having to clean up someone else's mess later, seems to encourage doing the right thing.
I'm a Sansei in Brazil, which essentially means most people think I'm Japanese while the Japanese think I'm not, so I've peeked both sides and I can tell you this: yes, childhood in Japan can be amazing, but certainly Japanese culture in general isn't about independence, it's actually quite the opposite, it's about order and individuals adhering to his/her role in this order. "Do as your parents said, get into college, respect your boss." It's even kind of bittersweet that childhood in Japan is so good, because you'll grow up knowing what you've lost. On the other hand, it's also not all smell of flowers, because children being independent also means that if mom isn't home, you have to be the responsible sibling, it could be a form to shorten childhood.
I don't know. The Japanese are usually known for their dependence on the society and social norms. In the corporate world, they find it normal to work overtime without pay, never take vacations longer than several days at a time, and they seem to find it hard to disagree with their bosses. That's not what I would call a culture of independence.
When I was little my mom would give me a few coins and send me to the store with a milk jug to get some milk and bread. A couple of times Every week. They would also give me a garbage bag to take out on my way there( dumpster was a few blocks away). I was not that small, may be 9 or 10. This was not in USA. Today I live 10000 miles from home on another continent speaking another language... Are these connected? Who knows. Was it dangerous? Who knows. My kids for sure will not be helicoptered over...
I used to spend summers in Japan to get an extra two months of schooling as American schools were out... Walking to school at age six was a daily activity. Summers in Okinawa regularly reach 30C or higher; and the particular town I was in was mostly agricultural gravel roads between home and school. The process wasn't completed alone; I typically grouped together with four or five cousins that lived nearby and we all walked the ~2km together.
I have seen numerous cases where they would have no clue when to even start when giving the initiative. A pretty good sign of the level of japanese colleges and universities.
To quote from A Bit of Fry & Laurie, 'well of course too much is bad for you, that's what "too much" means[...]. "Too much" precisely means that quantity which is excessive, that's what it means'.
The US has diverse ethnic groups that homogeneously live in little enclaves. You have "white" areas and "latino" areas and so on. This is how diversity actually happens in the west.
I'm not a Japanese but I would say that the social expectations are too high: at X age you should be working for a company, at Y you should be married, at Z age you should own a house... some people can't handle that pressure, specially if something has gone wrong.
There's a webcomic called Re:Life in which this is shown.
I am Norwegian, and little of these descriptions would seem odd to me. My kids go on trips every week with their pre-school, and I have never keep track of where.
My oldest son has walked to school himself since he has been 6 years old. I walked to school when I was a kid from 7 (we started school later). And I had to walk about 30 minutes to get to school crossing many roads.
From early childhood I roamed around all my neighborhood walking into forests or as I got a bit older I'd go with friends to big abandoned ship yards.
When I later emailed a distant American relative of similar age, I was confused when she didn't understand why I didn't have a drivers license. She was like "doesn't your parent's get tired of driving you everywhere?". A question that made no sense to me until I visited the US. I was of course going everywhere and I didn't need parents or a car to do that. I could take the train, bus or subway myself or bike.
In America however it is simply sad how dependent children are on their parents. Parents take them to every sort of activity and thing they got to do. In so many American cities you can't have a life without a car. There is nothing to do without a car.