Man, this is just not an accurate stand-in, though, _because_, well, Arizona has literally over 500,000 residential pools. It's actually one of (if not) _the_ highest pool-per-capita rates.

And because of that, drowning is the leading cause of death for children 1 to 4 years old in Arizona.

As a result, parents here are fairly fastidious about early childhood swim lessons. It's a _big_ deal for us. We've had both of our kids in lessons as early as a year, but a lot of folks start at 6-9 months.

If anything, the distributed nature of the many many many many _small_ bodies of water makes the drowning problem more pervasive and dangerous. An ocean is... well, an ocean: its availability for extremely small children is limited by geography, and many areas where you might take small children are policed by professional lifeguards. Backyard swimming pools, on the other hand, can be a lurking danger literally over your neighbor's wall. My parents had a neighbor one house over who had a 4 year old drown in their pool... from one house further over. He had stacked chairs against the cinderblock wall and climbed over while his grandfather was watching him but dozed off. Even if you don't have a pool in your own backyard, it's a risk here in Arizona.

What’s large? I’m not sure the creeks and swimming holes I frequented in my youth would qualify.

Also, the post isn’t about swimmable water—it’s a cautionary tale about how little it takes to drown. I can confirm that as one winter my neighbor drown in a shallow mud puddle off his back porch. He had a non-fatal heart attack and fell into it unconscious.

Your point is wrong. Everywhere in the US has access to some form of swimming.

Whether or not someone learns to swim is dominated by what their parents raising them decide. It’s much more likely to follow an urban vs suburban/rural divide than any kind of geographic correlation.

I disagree, YMCA lessons are not accessible. First off, you don't know what level your child is, and I remember being stressed trying to read our Ys website to understand what the levels meant. This is important because 2, the classes fill very quickly. You have to know what you want and sign up as soon as they're available. And finally, the classes are at very specific times, which certainly do not work for all working parents schedules. For example, it will just be tue or Thur at 5:45pm. If you can't make that you are SOL.