It's not illegal to leave a child under 14 unattended in Illinois. It is however illegal to leave a child under 14 unattended for an unreasonable amount of time in Illinois.

Here's an actual page from the government explaining the law and even providing the text of the law: https://dcfs.illinois.gov/for-families/safety/preparing-your...

If you follow their advice and your child is ready to reasonably able to be left alone unattended, you can leave even 8-9 year olds unattended for long periods of time. It's not odd for children to be home alone after school for 4-8+ hours.

Your opinion on "CPS" in Illinois (I assume you meant DCFS and not Chicago Public Schools) is based on not understanding a single paragraph of the law that is written to be readable by the general public.

Kids go all over the place in Chicago while under 14 without their parents. It's literally not an issue.

Your concerns are extremely valid, but it is not _that_ bad in many places in America. I relocated my family specifically so that my kids could have a walkable community to live in, and since then (about five years), we've had no issues with them getting to schools, parks, the library, friends' houses, and downtown shops on their own.

That said, we live in the inner district of a small city that was settled in the mid 19th century, so it has a street grid, alleys, uninterrupted sidewalks, etc.... everything that makes a place as safe as possible in this day and age for kids to get around without getting hit by a car. (One exception being dedicated biking infrastructure, which would be awesome.)

I can't comprehend an environment where kids aged 14 can't be independent. From age 5, I walked 20 minutes to and from school every day.

I get 1 mile of walking in a day at a minimum just going to and from the train in Chicago. I hit the 6K steps minimum that my watch wants by default every day by around 1-2pm if I take the bus transfer from the train to my office. I usually end around 8-10K steps just doing my commute and walking around the office. Going to the grocery store is another 2K steps roundtrip. Going out to dinner is another 1+ mile of walking minimum unless I get fast food.

When I lived in suburbs, I had to go out of my way to get even 6K steps in a whole day.

> Suburbanites who are only active while engaging in intentional exercise because they need to get in their car to go anywhere are in the worst situation.

This is true. We have nowhere to go on foot. In every direction we have roads, private property and that's it.

If we walk we risk automobile/pedestrian injury, unless we'd prefer to risk trespassing charges. This is also the full selection of kids' choices, btw.