The last free-range children? Children’s independent mobility in Finland in the 1990s and 2010s

Marketta Kyttä,Jukka Hirvonen,Julie Rudner,Iiris Pirjola,Tiina Laatikainen

doi:10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2015.07.004

Marketta Kyttä, Jukka Hirvonen + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2015.07.004

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Abstract

The study reports the degree of children’s independent mobility (CIM) in Finland for over two decades, from the beginning of the 1990s up to 2011. The first part of the research examined the differences of CIM in five different settlements in 2011: inner city, suburban, large town, small town, and rural village. A cross-sectional survey was used on a total of 821 7- to 15-year-old children in various settlements in different parts of Finland. Independent mobility was operationalized both as mobility licenses, meaning parental permits to perform certain activities independently, and as actual mobility, the proportion of active and independent school travel and independent weekend activities. In the second part of the study, we used the same measures to compare the independent mobility of Finnish children in the 1990s and 2010s. The second sample consisted of a total of 306 8- to 10-year-old children and their parents who participated in the CIM study in 1993–94 or in 2011. The major finding of the study was that in Finland children’s independent mobility had decreased significantly during a span of 20years, even more noticeably in the small town and rural village settings than in the inner city settlements. Finnish children, nevertheless, still enjoy a very high degree of independent mobility when compared with the children from the 16 countries involved in the large international comparative study for which the current research was conducted. In the discussion, we give some possible factors that can provide some understanding of and explanation to these trends.

Highlights

Children’s independent mobility (CIM), freedom to move around without adult accompaniment, has raised interest since the seminal work by Hillman and colleagues (Hillman et al, 1990; Hillman and Adams, 1992) who reported the decreasing possibilities of children to independently engage with their surroundings in Britain and Germany between 1970s and 1990s
Mobility licenses We found that the overall mobility license score of children had been reduced during a span of two decades in all three settlements: inner city, small town, and rural village
This is disconcerting because decreasing levels of CIM and fewer children on the streets can increase or reinforce the need for surveillance (Rudner, 2012), and potentially levels of concern about children’s safety similar to the UK, USA, and Australia

Summary

Introduction

Children’s independent mobility (CIM), freedom to move around without adult accompaniment, has raised interest since the seminal work by Hillman and colleagues (Hillman et al, 1990; Hillman and Adams, 1992) who reported the decreasing possibilities of children to independently engage with their surroundings in Britain and Germany between 1970s and 1990s. Individual and family characteristics that are affecting CIM include children’s age, maturity and gender (Johansson, 2006), family structure, socioeconomic status, ethnicity (Loebach and Gilliland, 2014; Weir et al, 2006), gender of parent, and parent employment (Valentine, 2004; Witten et al, 2013) This includes matters regarding weight of school bags, convenience, families spending time together, and trip chaining (Johansson, 2006; O’Connor and Brown, 2013; Witten et al, 2013). The role of social trust and conceptions of risk have been identified as significant influences on decision making about children’s freedom to go places on their own (Jackson and Scott, 1999; Madge and Barker, 2007; Rudner, 2012; Tomanovicand Petrovic , 2010)

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