Remember When Kids Used to Walk to School?

Karen Murphy — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:34:00 GMT

When I was a kid back in, oh, that year back then, I had to walk to school. Both ways. In the ~~snow~~ sunshine (hey, it was California) and the rain (northern California). Everybody walked to school. I got a ride home once, though. It was the day I broke my arm. Even on crutches (accident-prone) in middle school I simply strapped them to my bike. It was no big deal. Nobody thought so. It was just what you did.

So a semi-new study of 7400 parents across the U.S. indicates that kids don't walk or ride their bikes much to school anymore, even when it's less than a mile away. In 1969, 90% did, but now it's less than half. What's up with that?

And when the distance is more than a mile, the numbers are even lower. Where I live, all the kids ride the bus except those who are driven to school, because it's semi-rural and nothing's close enough for safe or feasible walking. But I was amazed a few years ago when I lived in a town that was quite walkable yet still it seemed that few kids walked. I lived next door to an elementary school (and ironically drove my kids to a private school 20 miles away) and routinely saw a family who lived down the street dropping their kids off by car. What, they couldn't walk up a residential hill?

There's quite a bit of conjecture about the cause of this huge drop in walkership in schoolkids: two-working-parent families who find it handy to drop the kids at school or a lack of sidewalks or walkable conditions in newer communities. But one thing is clear, and that's that there is a concern that kids who don't even walk a few blocks to school and back are getting practically zero exercise at all. Which means we're back to worrying about the fattening of kids.

Strollerderby : bike riding

Remember When Kids Used to Walk to School?