Children’s freedom of movement - research study

CHILDREN’S INDEPENDENCE IN THE OUTDOOR

ENVIRONMENT:

Investigating parental concerns about children’s freedom of

movement

Children’s independent mobility is extremely important for a normal development but more and more children are not allowed to move unsupervised in the outdoor environment. The children’s need to explore their surroundings independently is emphasized as being essential for a healthy development. This study was realized in order to investigate to what degree children are allowed to move independently outside and to find out what are the parents’ reasons for restricting children’s freedom of movement. In order to understand the parent’s concerns, a questionnaire was developed with the help of existing literature. The targeted groups are represented by two communities in Romania. As expected, the results show that the number of independent children is low both in rural and urban areas, but in the same time, they show some interesting connections between different factors such as children’s age group or gender and the reasons for their parents not to allow them to travel alone. In addition, the main reasons chosen by the parents are discussed from a landscape architecture perspective and possible solutions are mentioned.

INTRODUCTION

In the children’s spatial mobility context, the independence is usually associated with the liberty to explore the outdoor surroundings without being supervised by an adult (Hart 1997). Nowadays, more and more children, all over the world, are not allowed to move independently outside (Whitzman et al., 2009). The fact that children are losing their independence of movement has been studied by many and various reasons were found. In most of the cases, children are not even allowed to walk to school or to playground by themselves without being supervised by an adult. The apparent necessity of escorting children everywhere is seen by the researchers as a practice that could affect the long-term development of the children. In the existing literature is shown that the reduced freedom of discovering the outdoor environment through unrestricted movement can increase dependency issues and diminish social capability (Prezza et al., 2001). The disconnection from the natural environment affects their physical, intellectual and social development (O’Brien, 2004, Tranter, 2007). When being escorted, children are usually driven from one place to another, without getting to do enough physical activity. As a result, the reduced independent mobility is associated with increasing rates of obesity. The routine of travelling to and from school or playground can provide a great opportunity for physical exercise (Armstrong, 1993). In the article, Rights of passage – Rites to play (2011), Herrington writes about how the children that are usually escorted everywhere, lose their power of decision. These children, or the “back seat generation” (Karsten, 2005), have their time and space organized by parents. Lia Karsten shows in her paper how the children’s independence in the outdoor environment changed during time and she touches on the parent’s reasons about this transition (2005). Another important writer about children’s independent mobility is Marketta Kyttä, who emphasizes in her studies the parents’ reasons for decreasing children’s freedom to explore by themselves the outdoor environment (2004). The most common justifications are related to traffic and criminality. Other reasons mentioned by the parents are the fact that the school is too far away, the children are too young and unreliable or that they might be bullied by other children. In her work, Kyttä also discusses how children’s independent mobility is seen from a gender perspective. Her results show that usually girls get less freedom than boys in exploring the environment and she suggests that these restrictions might affect the girls’ development as independent women. Her research is following the work of the British architect and town planner, Mayer Hillman. In his book, “One false move…” (1990), he touches on this problem and his results are showing how the gender of the children is affecting the amount of independence that they get.

Presently, in a Romanian context, there is a lack of research about children’s freedom of movement. From the author’s personal point of view, growing up in a Romanian rural area, there is a need for an in-depth study that concerns children’s possibility to explore the outdoor environment independently. Initially inspired by international research, this paper focuses on children’s independent mobility in an urban and in a rural area in Romania.

OBJECTIVES

The research investigates to what degree are the children allowed to move unsupervised outside their home and what are the reasons for the possible loss of their independence. The research questions that guided this study are:
1. Are the children allowed to move independently in the outdoor environment?
2. Is there any difference in the amount of permitted independence for children from urban and rural areas?
3. What are the reasons for parents not to allow the child to travel to school without supervision?
4. Is the gender or the age group of the children influencing if they are allowed to travel alone to school?
As a main objective, this paper focuses on the parents’ reasons for restricting the children’s independence mobility outside their homes. The results are not statistical and they are presented in order to strengthen the findings from the exiting literature and to give an overview of the situation in a Romanian context. They also might show what is missing in the outdoor environment to be perceived as safe and attractive for children and their parents and what can be accomplished in this direction through the field of landscape architecture.

STUDIED AREA

METHODOLOGY

The study is based on a literature review about children’s independent mobility in the outdoor environment, more specifically in an urban and rural environment (Herrington, 2011; Hillman et al., 1990; Kyttä, 1997; Matthews et al. 2000; Rissotto & Tonucci, 2002) and about the factors that influence parents’ choices when it comes to their children’s freedom of movement outside (Karsten & Willem, 2006; Kyttä, 2004). Inspired by the findings from the existing literature, the questionnaire for this study was developed. This questionnaire was created with Google forms and was specifically made for the parents in the studied area. The link for the questionnaire was sent out through a social networking website on the 20th of April 2018 and the parents were asked to send it forward to other parents from their community. In the beginning, the questionnaire was distributed to 15 families living in the urban environment and to 5 families living in the rural area. All participants were informed that the questionnaire is part of an ongoing research study about children’s independent mobility in their area. The parents chose to share the link for the questionnaire and as a result, this was accessed by 64 people. Based mainly on Hillman et al.,’ questionnaire (1990, pp.123), the questions needed to be reformulated in order to be suitable for this case study. As it was sent to two Romanian communities, the questionnaire was written in Romanian and then translated into English. The results were also translated into English in order to be presented in this paper. This questionnaire was meant to show the parents’ restrictions on their children’s mobility and to what degree these restrictions apply to children in an urban and rural environment. The questionnaire had both single answer questions and multiple answer questions and the results were analyzed for each target group. For this paper, the initial sampled groups were different through their living environment, rural and urban. Later, the different age group and the gender were considered important factors in the results' interpretation stage. Three age groups were selected for this study and the selection was based on Găişteanu’ book, “The child psychology” (2003). These age groups are between 3 and 14 years old. In the final step, the results were discussed through the author’s perspective as growing up in the same area. In the rural area, the group of parents was smaller but still representative considering the whole population of the village. The parents were asked to answer the questionnaire and to submit their answers as soon as they finish. The answers were stored in Google drive as tables and pie charts. During one week, the questionnaire was completed by 64 respondents and from those, 55 respondents corresponded to all off the criteria that this study required.

Table1 presents the age group, the gender of the children and the number of respondents with children in the selected age groups. The full questionnaire is available in appendix A.

RESULTS

CONCLUSION

To sum up, this study investigated children’s independent mobility in a rural and an urban area from Romania. Based on the existing literature and on parents’ feedback about their children’s ways of travelling to school, this study examined what determines the possible loss in children’s freedom of movement in the outdoor environment. As expected, the results showed that in a Romanian context, there is a low independent mobility for children both in rural and urban areas. From a landscape architecture perspective, more can be done in order to improve children’s use of the outdoor space and to ensure the parents with safe environments for their children. The school location is extremely important and the results showed that if the school is too far away, children are usually taken there with the car. Another important problem is the lack of bike lanes which also affects how children chose to travel to school. The traffic-related concerns in the rural area can be diminished if traffic is better regulated and the children’s needs are taken into consideration. By introducing more pedestrian crossings and walking paths, the percentage of parents considering that their children are safe enough to travel alone to school might be increased. The connection between independent mobility and gender and how this affect the children’s development must be further studied, for a better understanding. After comparing my findings with the existing literature, it is evident that there are a lot of similarities in the parents’ justifications for restricting their children independent mobility. The concerns about the children as being too unreliable, or the ones about traffic and the distance to school are influencing the parents in many Europeans countries and apparently also in Romania.

This paper is not using statistical data and the parents’ feedback is presented in order to reinforce the existing literature. Despite the need for additional research, the outcomes of this study conclude that, as expected, children’s independent mobility outside is endangered by various reasons and both the parents and children’s opinions need to be taken into account when planning the outdoor environment.

Landscape Architect ANAMARIA PANAITE-BONDRE



REFERENCE LIST
1. Armstrong, N. (1993). Independent mobility and children’s physical development. In M. Hillman (Ed.), Children’ Transport and the Quality of Life; pp. 35–43. London: Policy Studies Institute.
2. Docs.statwing.com. (2018). T-Test Statistical Significance Example and Definition. [online] Available at: http://docs.statwing.com/examples-and-definitions/t-test/statistical-significance/ [Accessed 15 May 2018].
3. Hart, R. (1997) Children’s Participation: The Theory and Practice of Involving Young Citizens in Community Development and Environmental Care London: Earthscan. New York: UNICEF
4. Herrington, Susan (2011). “Rights of passage – Rites to Play: Landscapes for Children at the Turn of the Centuries”, in: S. Egoz, G. Pungetti & J. Makhzoumi (Eds.) The Right to Landscape: Contesting landscape and human rights, pp. 113-126. Aldershot, Ashgate.
5. Hillman, M., Adams, J. and Whitelegg, J. (1990). One false move. London: PSI.
6. Găişteanu, M., (2003). Psihologia copilului (Child Psychology). Bucharest.
7. Giffinger, R., Fertner, C., Kramar, H., Meijers, E., (2007). City-ranking of European Medium-sized Cities. Centre of Regional Science. Vienna University of Technology, pp. 1, e12.
8. Lia Karsten (2005) It all used to be better? Different generations on continuity and change in urban children's daily use of space, Children's Geographies, 3:3, pp: 275-290, DOI:10.1080/14733280500352912
9. Karsten, L., Willem van Vliet, (2006). “Children in the City: Reclaiming the Street.” Children, Youth and Environments, 16(1), pp. 151-167.
10. Kyttä, M. (1997). Children’s independent mobility in urban, small town, and rural environments. In: Camstra (Ed.), Growing up in a changing urban landscape, pp. 41–52.
11. Kyttä, M. (2004). The extent of children's independent mobility and the number of actualized affordances as criteria for child-friendly environments. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24(2), pp.179-198.
12. Matthews, H., Taylor, M., Sherwood, K., Tucker, F. and Melanie Limb (2000). Growing-up in the countryside: children and the rural idyll. Journal of Rural Studies, 16(2), pp.141-153.
13. Montessori, Maria. The Absorbent Mind. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Press, 1964, pp.90.
14. Prezza, M, Stefania, P, Morabito, C, Cinzia, S, Alparone, F & Guiliani, M., (2001). The influence of psychosocial and urban factors on children's independent mobility and relationship to peer frequentation, Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, vol.11, no.6, pp 435–450.
15. Primarie.multinet.ro. (2018). Despre municipiul Baia Mare - Date statistice. [online] Available at: http://www.primarie.multinet.ro/baiamare/date_stat.htm [Accessed 11 May 2018].
16. O’Brien, C., (2004). Child Friendly Transport Planning. The Centre for Sustainable Transportation, Ontario, Canada.
17. Rissotto, A. & Tonucci, F. (2002). Freedom of movement and environmental knowledge in elementary school children. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 22(1-2), pp.65-77.
18. Sacalaseni.ro. (2018). Comuna Sacalaseni | Va multumim ca ne-ati ales. [online] Available at: http://sacalaseni.ro/ [Accessed 11 May 2018].
19. Tranter, P 2007, Strategies for Building Child Friendly Cities, paper presented at Creating Child Friendly Environments Forum, Centre for Teaching and Learning, Stirling, 27 June 2007.
20. Whitzman, C., Worthington, M. & Mizrahi, D., (2009). Walking the Walk: can Child-Friendly Cities Promote Children’s Independent Mobility? Melbourne: Australian Centre for the Governance and Management of Urban Transport (GAMUT)