Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Often Do Japanese Teenagers Live Alone?
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rinmackie
 Posts: 1040 Location: in a van! down by the river! |
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While I haven't heard of any teens living alone, when I was growing up, it wasn't unusual for kids to be left alone at home after school while their parents worked. (This was in the 80's, and I was born in the 70's.) They were called "latchkey kids" by the media. And kids in general, had more freedom then they do today. Of course, it was during the 80's that the medial starting sensationalizing child abductions and all other sorts of horrors that could possibly befall a child. Also, this is when a lot of mothers were working outside the home and divorce rates were skyrocketing.
As a result, by the 90's, parents were frightened of the idea of leaving their children alone and this gave rise to the "helicopter parents." So things that were "normal" when I was kid like letting your school-age child stay home alone or letting your kids play outside by themselves, even until dark! are now a thing of the past. Though I'm not sure it's the same everywhere; there are places that are relatively safe and despite what the news tells you, the crime rate in general, is lower then it's ever been. And not everyone lives in a crime-infested, dangerous neighborhood. But the things I was able to do as a child could nowadays get my parents in trouble with the law! |
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Heishi
 Posts: 1346 |
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Sounds like one hell of life for these kids!
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Lactobacillus yogurti
 Posts: 852 Location: Latin America |
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Actually, I'd consider that less of a problem in areas like suburbs and cul-de-sacs than in neighborhoods that aren't well off. I'd think that the bigger problem is the distance and in many cases, lack of sidewalks. In my area, at least, it depends on the social strata. Kids from the higher classes may not need to do much, other than study, and school buses will pick them up until a certain age, where they may get a car, or if they stay late, they may call their parents to pick them up. They're seen as somewhat sheltered. I was more of a middle-class microbe, so I took the school bus until I was 15, and later on, I took normal buses, especially when I had to go to my university. Nowadays, the bus system is just slightly better, though.  . And I started doing errands at around the age of 12, when I bought groceries, and later on cigarettes, for my mother (illegal as hell, but people looked to the other side).
Kids from poorer areas, on the other hand, may be sent to do errands at young ages, but the risk of them being kidnapped or endangered exists, and lately, there have been nasty news about a girl who was abducted and killed. But that is a topic for another day. |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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This is definitely true. Back in the 70s and 80s when I was a kid, children routinely went all sorts of places without adult supervision. I'm often bemused to watch school kids at bus stops with their parents there. That was never the case when I was going to school... even back in kindergarten, when I was around 5, my Mom didn't escort me to or from the bus stop. Let alone by the time I was in 5th or 6th grade. Heck, if I missed the bus, I had to walk the two miles home from school. Parents these days are *far* more (over-)protective of their kids. From Soccer Moms to Helicopter Moms, parents seem to want to know what their children are doing at all times, and to keep them busy doing something all the time. This is the *opposite* of freedom and individuality that an earlier posted commented on, and IMO is a bad thing because it limits the maturation process of kids. |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1121 Location: Puget Sound |
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This article is a couple of years old... but it's still interesting: How children lost the right to roam in four generations.
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Ushio
Posts: 635 |
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You mean after the news media lost the soviet union and communism for there boogie man scare stories they had to turn to your neighbours! ah 24 hour news what a great thing it is /s |
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starlightshine
Posts: 59 Location: Singapore |
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Huh, interesting. I too live in an Asian country and during my middle and high school years, I also spent most of my time in school (regularly about 12 hours in a day) and really just went home to sleep. Although I don't live alone, there are plenty of foreign students who come to Singapore on a scholarship at age 15 and study here for several years while their family remains back home. Now that's learning independence at a new level.
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R315r4z0r
 Posts: 717 |
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General US populace is generally too stupid to allow for such trust. And the boom of social media has only escalated the problem. People believe what their friends say rather than check actual sources... so when some rumor goes around that a kidnapper is roaming around with a white van, suddenly anyone in possession of a white vehicle larger than a 2-seater is a suspect.
I remember reading some news article about a year or two ago where two parents had to put up with a child services lawsuit or something because they allowed their two kids (around 9 or 10), to go shopping. The parents even left a note with the children in case someone questioned who they were, saying that they were running errands with parental consent. It's ridiculous. People can obliviously be horrible parents themselves but the second someone else tries to teach a valuable life lesson, they might as well be filming child porn. |
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NeoStrayCat
 Posts: 632 |
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Well, besides Yuna49's helpful example, speaking of dormitories, and since it hasn't been mentioned yet. Clannad is one such example, with both Okazaki and Sunohara in high school, usually living there within the first season.
Also, some examples of people living alone (or at least with another) on their high school life I've seen so far like Toradora (both main characters), Love Live (Nico, maybe?), and Midori Days (Seiji mostly, but sometimes with her big sis. And obv. Midori as his right hand, lol.) And yeah, such examples you guys posted, yeah, its surprising. |
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Afezeria
 Posts: 817 Location: Malaysia, Kuantan. |
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Just by reading a few comments here, I didn't know that english speaking countries/western continental are THAT overprotective of their children. I'll also still kept tagging along with my family throughout my 23 years worth of life but they never really cared about what I did once I grew up to reached high school, as I'm free to make my own decisions. They still supported me with whatever necessary, but my daily activities are not limited to anything at all. I'd used to lived in an university's dormitory for a few years, with new friends that I'll never got into contact with now except for one sole person and being away from my family by hundreds of miles, though still in the same country, that is. I really enjoyed the feeling of living alone, and wouldn't mind keeping it up for long if I've given a chance to move away. Of course, communication with friends and families should be expectedly continuous, as long as I'm able bodied and the person being communicated at is alive and well too.
In shorter summary, I wouldn't mind being alone and independant, and from what I can see in this country through personal observation, parents aren't overbearing and protective most of the times, and there's quite a lot of teens that lived alone too because of their parents being busy in working. I don't know much about the subject here to expand further into the horizon. |
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RestLessone
 Posts: 1426 Location: New York |
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I am curious how independent high schoolers are relative to western high schoolers. I spent a good deal of time home alone as a teenager. When I did extra-curriculars and whatnot I could be out late, but I was honestly more of a homebody. People in the drama club or sports though were often out very, very late due to practice time.
Of course, perhaps one of the major differences is working parents. It's very common to have both parents work in the US, but the 9 - 5 workday means they typically get home within a few hours after school lets out. In contrast, Japan's work environment may make this more difficult. Also important to remember that much of the US population live in the suburbs and has reliance on cars. I'm sure kids living in, say, NYC have more to do after school than someone who has to drive a decent while to get to anywhere halfway interesting. Cities also make movement a lot easier, and you'll always be in eyeshot of something. Speaking of cars, though, there's a responsibility most countries don't give teens that the US does. Depending on the state, people can get full licenses anywhere from 14 to 17 years of age. As a final point, I have to agree with previous posters that the reason you see so many teens living alone in anime/manga is that it allows for drama, adventure, and hijinks that would otherwise be halted. |
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Wingbeats
 Posts: 272 Location: Boise, Idaho |
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I'm 27 years old now, but I remember the days when my friends would walk over to my house by themselves and then we'd all walk to the park to hang out on the playground, or go get snacks at the convenience store, or otherwise just wander around.
I lived in a rural mountain state in the USA and it wasn't unusual in the slightest. My parents would actually kick me out to go walk on purpose. I liked to go sled in BLM land or poke around in the creek. No one ever batted an eye about me walking by myself or in a group of friends down the sidewalk-less roads. (This was when I was about 6 years old through my entire teenagehood). Nowadays, I read about parents getting arrested for letting their kids walk to the playground by themselves. Things have definitely changed since I was a kid. |
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Nom De Plume De Fanboy
Exempt from Grammar Rules
Posts: 632 Location: inland US west, pretty rural |
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Being as most American high schoolers spend their weekends looking for house parties to get drunk and be rowdy at, the rareness of US kids living by themselves is understandable. That was the way it when I was a kid 40 years ago, and my nieces and nephews say it hasn't changed.
Once, when I was 15, I had to move heaven and earth to get my parents to let me stay home alone for two weeks when they had to travel, and I still had my rancher grandfather driving into our farm yard two or three times an evening to check on me, because, well, kids will be kids. I could have stayed with them, but my grandmother- sweet dear lady that she was- was terribly fond of spicy cooking, which is not for me. But as for work, several of my city relatives let their kids work after school and during the 90 day American summer vacation with no problem with it. And I and my country friends almost all did. The US mixture of individualism and independence just makes for a different society. Shrug. |
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Mr. Oshawott
 Posts: 6773 |
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For a country that boasts about individualism, kids venturing out into the world is extremely rare in America nowadays compared to four, perhaps even three, decades earlier, thanks to an overprotective parental society. I've heard about kids going out by themselves during the day, but I wonder if some have spent any time outdoors during sunset...
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Suena
Posts: 289 |
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US lady here. Even as a young adult, my mother wouldn't hear of me commuting home on the bus at night from my evening class at a college 10 minutes away. She always insisted on driving over to pick me up (which is a big deal because she hates driving). And it's a pretty low-crime area. But parents still have that fear, especially concerning their daughters. (My parents were not nearly as protective over my brothers, though that might have also been because they were younger than me and my the time they reached the same age my parents were more used to their offspring being out unsupervised.)
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