I live in a different part of VA than SoftballMom and the only places you will find sidewalks in this entire county is in some of the incorporated towns. Because we are so rural most of the roads don't even have shoulders.
The road we live on is very busy, but even though it has no shoulders it is wide enough that I will allow my 11yo daughter walk to the store (which I can see out my back door) and to her girlfriend's house (the other girl's grandmother picks up sight of my daughter at the curve in the road where I lose sight of her.)
Letting her walk to school will not happen.
Voting makes no never mind, there just isn't room to put in sidewalks unless we pave over most of this rural county, and sidewalks are not on a list of priorities or even desires of most that live here.
So, not letting your child walk to school has nothing to do with sidewalks?
You make an important point. Most suburbs built since the 60's are not pedestrian friendly, with isolated subdivions separated by miles of space, connected by winding rural roads. I know this describes the suburbs I grew up in in Maryland and Georgia. The town in Michigan in which my wife grew up was very different, with wide, straight boulevards, on a grid, with wide shoulders (for snow plowing, I guess), with schools located within residential areas. She would walk to school passing nothing but other houses along the way. In the suburbs, as opposed to older town and cities, very few people even live close enough to the school to raise the question of walking.
I think simple pedestrian safety/distance has as much to do with it as fear of "the other."
In my wife's hometown, I would be much more comfortable letting my kids walk to school. Where I am now, in N GA, where the road to the new local elementary school is an old indian trail, winding, hilly, with no shoulder (in fact pretty deep ravines on each side in some spots), no kids walk there.