dynodonn 

Kids and bicycles were synonymous when I was growing up. My parents were very supportive of my bicycling and even though the bicycles were used, my parents always made sure that I had a bicycle to ride as a kid,

Blinkie

My parents were a bit mixed. Both thought kids should learn to ride, and so we did. Around age five or six, both my sister and I were given our first bicycle with training wheels. We learned to ride in the driveway, and that's it. Our parents didn't ride anywhere, and didn't even own bikes at that time (I later learned they used to take long-ish trips in the neighborhood for fitness some years before). Their opinion would have been split at the age of adolescence, had I not lost my dad. He believed a bike was a way for a kid to go see friends, if ridden responsibly; it's how his entire large family was raised. My mom, on the other hand, thought bikes were solely toys.

I had a little bike with coaster brakes as my second bike, given me around 8 years old. It was too loud, and much too small, by the time I somehow begged my mom into giving me something else at twelve: my first ten-speed, which I rode around the neighborhood without any sort of maintenance until I was 16 (good lord was it in bad shape!). She saw that I might use it for an excuse to have some freedom, so it somehow managed to 'get stolen' from our locked back yard with a privacy fence when she found out I was riding farther than just around the block for several hours per day.

Somehow I never totally lost the cycling bug.

Artkansas 

Yes they did. I was fairly rough on bicycles and went through 5 1/2 as a kid. By 8 I was doing unescorted 12 mile trips. My parents kept me in bicycles until I carelessly had one stolen at age 17. Then I was forced to walk till I got into college. The half was one I shared with my brother.

Okiecardinal

Growing up in a decidedly middle class Midwestern steel town....if a kid didn't ride a bike there was something seriously wrong. I too grew up in that "different world" where being gone all day and coming home before it was totally dark was not only the norm, it was pretty much enforced.

We had homemade dirt tracks, our own little bike parts and frame swap shops and could name all of the BMX companies. We would have heated discussions about the quality of our favorite brands just like many do on this forum today.

corwin1968

I pretty much always had a bicycle of some kind as a kid, often more than one. I think every single one of them ended up getting stolen.

I only quit riding when I turned 14 and my parents bought me the kind of bike with a motor.

I will say that when I was 27 years old I drove to the nearest large city (100 miles) and came back with a Trek bicycle, they thought I was nuts.

slowandsteady

I find it pretty bizarre that parents would be anti-bike. I don't get it. I thought everyone rode a bike. It is one thing if they couldn't afford it, but to actually be against it and non-supportive seems weird.

Booger1

She must have,she bought me one......She used to tell me to go play on the freeway also....

iheartbacon

In my opinion the information age has made parents more paranoid. For example within 5 miles of my house are 47 registered sex offenders. The total number of people living within 5 miles of my house is ~18,000. So ~0.27 percent of the population within 5 miles of my house are sex offenders. That doesn't sound like a lot, but 47 does. It wouldn't surprise me if where you grew up there was a similar percentage of sex offenders. It's good to have this information, but at the same time it makes parents paranoid. So the kids stay at home and play video games.

If I was a parent I would teach my kids to never talk to strangers and let them go play. Speaking for myself I was more terrified of my dad catching me speaking with strangers than of the stranger him/herself. Kids need to run around and exercise, socialize with their peers. At some point you have to trust your kids and let them grow up. Growing up I lived in big cities like New York and Chicago. This was in the 80's. My parents let me roam around the neighborhood and make friends. Let me take the subway across town to go to a baseball game. In the 90's we lived in north western Montana. Really rugged and very remote country. My parents let me go hike and camp. Yeah I could have gotten eaten by a Grizzly or some other horrific fate, but my parents trusted my judgement. When I was 16 I went to Uzbekistan for 3 months on a Christian missionary trip. Our group was 3 people. I credit the way my parents raised me, to be independent and street smart, for staying safe on that trip. All those stan countries are pretty unstable.

What will future generations be like? Do you think parents are over protective or are they justified because the world is indeed a more dangerous place? Does the world only appear more dangerous because we now have the technology to report more bad events through mass media? This would be an interesting study for a graduate student.

homechicken

They sure did. I always had a bike, but was a lazy kid, and as soon as I got my driver's license I quit riding my bike unless my dad just refused to let me take the car. He had a family sedan and a small P/U truck. He drove the truck to work, so the sedan sat unused most of the time and it just kind of became my daily driver.

hotbike

Not too much. My first bike was a Royce-Union knockoff of a Stingray. It didn't last too long, and even other people told my Dad he should "Buy American" so then I got a three speed Ross brand knockoff of a Stingray. I rode the Ross "Barracuda" on the local trails when all the other kids had BMX bikes. Till the spot welds let go on the rear dropouts.
Then I got a Columbia ten speed with 26x1 3/8" tyres. Then I won a 12 speed bike from my newspaper route, but it was a piece of crap, and I wanted to trade it in on a BMX, but the Mineola Bike and Mower shop said I could only trade it in on another 12 speed, so I got a Panasonic 12 speed. By then I was riding to work at a local factory, and I had to have a Mountain Bike. I paid $500.00 for a Peugeot "Canyon Express", which ended up a bad choice account the rear brakes were on the chain-stays, not the seat stays.
Then I worked at a Bike shop, and bought several BMX bikes , at-cost, or employee discount. The Mongoose Decade got stolen, I sold a GT to someone else, I sold a Diamondback to another person.
Then I decided to build a freaking Velomobile as a student project, since I was in Engineering School. I can build a Fiberglass Bike frame from scratch. If I can come up with enough money, I could transfer this to Carbon Fiber.

Mobile 155

I am not sure that parents might be right. It may be a combination of things and technology might be one of them. But the legal system and the big city decay, gangs and a change in the family structure mighthave a lot to do with it. You could also add in more traffic and an increase of the Nanny state attitude in some places. I used to live in a school district that didn't allow students to ride bicycles to school. In fact I think there was an article in last months Bicycling magazine about one such school district and the fight some parents were having to try and get the policy overturned. We also seem more willing to give rights to the criminal than the victum. Casie Anthony comes to mind.

A few years ago I was in Kenya and I noticed lines of small children walking to school. 1st and 2nd graders as well as older kids. I asked how they delt with child abductions and the village elder I was talking to smiled as he explained. "We are a small community and we know everyone. When something like that happens some of us take the offending person out into the jungle and have a "talk" with them. After the "talk" it never happens again." And no one ever sees the offender again. Kids aren't that important to our village elders.