Is having your kids walk to school a realistic option in the modern U.S.? Assuming that you don't want to risk jail time for "child endangerment" after the authorities seize your children?
(FWIW - back in the day, I walked to & from school daily, ~2 1/2 miles total, in an "okay" working-class town. Generally alone, starting in kindergarten. The school "cafeteria" was a few tables set up in a wide hall, for the few kids who didn't walk home for lunch. Vs. a quick web search suggests that modern-day parents had better wait 'till their kids are at least twice the age that I was...)
It's always a safety vs independence/convience tradeoff.
My sister got hit by a motorcycle when she was 9 because she was going through a crosswalk next to the school and the motorcycle didn't see her because of a bus.
She survived, but she still has some back problems after 30 years.
The government created traffic lights after the accident, and I think that should be compulsitory near every school.
Is having your kids walk to school a realistic option in the modern U.S.?
I can only speak to Redmond, WA, but I live near a few schools (I walk the dog through one when school's out), and I see kids walking to school by themselves on a daily basis. The elementary school children are often accompanied by adults, but I see clusters of kids accompanying each other in groups. The middle school, I see probably approaching 100 kids(?) when school lets out, mostly in groups, some individuals, and like the neighbor kid across the street, a lot on bicycles.
Now, maybe other cities have different attitudes, and I realize not all of the stories are made up, but this "CPS will take your babies if they are outside by themselves" seems more hysteria than reality. But my data are very limited and very localized.
Depends on where you live, but for a great many, absolutely yes. If you're not oriented to walking, you may think no, but over a mile of distance is very straightforward. This is all personal bias, from fifth grade on I walked 1.5 miles each way. Was about 35-40 minutes each way until legs got longer and then down to 20 minutes each way. Perfect warmup time for school and decompression to get home.
If parents let their children think that walking that much is akin to abuse, beyond reasonable expectations, well, that's a very modern look that their grandparents would just not understand. It's like having cars and a safer world means they don't need to use their bodies more as part of day-to-day life, just reserve them for sports.
When working from home, I would see kids in my neighborhood--admittedly, not many--walking to school, though whether that meant walking to a bus stop, I don't know. I do see a lot of kids on the bus in the morning, though the unaccompanied ones seem to be of middle school or high school age.
I wish people (children included) would go to school or work by bike or on foot more often again. And yes, I am aware that not everyone can do that. Here in Europe, however, we often see fit and healthy people taking the car for journeys that can be made on foot within 20 minutes.
I guess it depends where you are. I'm in Finland and it is common to see seven/eight year old children walking to school, or taking the bus/tram.
Over half the people I know commute to offices, on the days they attend, via busses and trams. Those that live further-afield might take their cars, but the use of public transport is extremely common in the bigger cities like Helsinki.
One challenge is that so many Americans live in climates that humans don't really belong in, and thus rely on air conditioned cars & buildings. 29 million people live in Texas, 22 million in Florida, 7 million in Arizona, 5 million in each of Louisiana and Alabama, 3 million in Nevada, etc.
Walking anywhere when its high-humidity and over 90F (33C) isn't workable for most people because they don't want to arrive covered in sweat. And that's not a temperature that is a brief high for the day at 3pm, it's that hot at 9am on the way to school/work and still that hot at 6pm when headed home.
In the US, I recall hearing a large number of years ago that the over/under distance for choosing to walk vs drive was on the order of 800 yards, or about a 10-minute walk for able-bodied schoolchildren and adults.
I know it’s anecdotal, but I walked about 15min to elementary school, and then about 5min to high school from 2004-2016. Both schools had a catchment area that was pretty small, so maybe a ⅓ of people walked. This was in Oshawa, a city in southern Ontario Canada.
Dropoff/pickup time at the UK school where I work is atrocious everyday - 20mins queue just to get into the car park.
The school has tried numerous measures to encourage walking, nothing appears to encourage parents to get out of their cars if that is how they wish to travel.
(FWIW - back in the day, I walked to & from school daily, ~2 1/2 miles total, in an "okay" working-class town. Generally alone, starting in kindergarten. The school "cafeteria" was a few tables set up in a wide hall, for the few kids who didn't walk home for lunch. Vs. a quick web search suggests that modern-day parents had better wait 'till their kids are at least twice the age that I was...)