Why aren’t kids out there on their bikes?

After World War II most bicycles were for children. Bicycle production rose from 249,500 in 1932 to over a million by 1937. In September 1945, one month after Japan’s surrender, the Wall Street Journal reported that 97 percent of American children told pollsters they wanted their own bicycle.

Today, ridership is on the decline. One reason is that children are not riding. In 2000 there were 17.6 million active riders between the ages of seven and seventeen, by 2013 that number was only 10 million. In 2000, 11.6 million children’s bicycles were sold in the United States, in 2013, the number was 4.9 million. From 2018 to 2019, children’s bicycle sales decreased 7 percent in dollars and 7.5 percent in bikes sold.page 162https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/06/04/fewer-kids-are-riding-buying-bicycles-industry-is-worried/

In 1969, 48 percent of children 5 to 14 years of age usually walked or bicycled to school (The National Center for Safe Routes to School, 2011). In 2009, 13 percent of children 5 to 14 years of age walked or bicycled to school (National Center, 2011). Parents driving their kids to school is the cause of congestion on city streets. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to turn down a street where a school is located at opening or closing hours you are overwhelmed by the number of cars parked with their lights flashing on both sides of the road, often blocking the through-way.http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/introduction/the_decline_of_walking_and_bicycling.cfm

We can all speculate on why: overscheduled days, helicopter parents, electronic devices, smart phones. Couple all this with fears and worries of children being snatched (which, by the way, happened way more in the 1970s than it does now).  Add to this, that the number of children being born in the US is shrinking. To put this all into context: there are less young riders today than in the 1970s during the boom and the 1890s during the pinnacle of the cycling craze.

I find these statistics sad, but more than this I miss that time when kids could simply get up and go. We were free to do stupid stuff. Sure parents back then might have been somewhat negligent—my friends and I laugh that you went outside in the morning and your mother told you not to come back until the street lights came on. I know my mom was in a tranquilizer haze brought on by “bad” nerves. As a kid, maybe five years old, I’d play behind the house where there was a hedge row of crab apple trees and a retention pond. One time at dinnertime I told her I’d pretended I was an Indian and tracked a guy in the woods. I’d followed him stealthily. Mom let me have it: Why’d you go and get your shoes all muddy!?