The US seems to be the only country that has this problem. Children here (Norway) walk to school on their own at the age of five or six, some of them take buses.
"Ashley Smith, a foster dad, testified about being investigated for neglect because one afternoon his daughter, 8, was doing her homework on the front lawn. A passerby reported an “unsupervised” child (not knowing Ashley was actually inside). The upshot: “We went through a period of eight weeks of not knowing if we would continue being able to keep our children,” said Ashley."
Its been a genuine problem. I have heard people actually say that if a kid is playing outside by themselves, then the parent should be charged with child neglect because the kid could get hurt. Any time a kid gets hurt on YouTube the comments are filled with people blaming the parent for not being outside with them. Thing is, playing outside by yourself gives you a strong sense of independence. The kid might get hurt, sure, but when the alternative is them never learning to be on their own and do things for themselves, the risk seems well worth it.
It's even in the YouTube algorithm. I've had a couple of videos taken down due to "potential child endangerment". They were videos of me and my kid doing things that are, realistically, safer than riding a bicycle. It's pathetic how fragile kids are being made these days.
The YouTube rules are completely insane. Whoever makes them has totally lost their mind.
For instance, YouTube recently implemented a policy such that they now demonitize videos that contain profanity in the first 15 seconds - AND THIS APPLIES RETROACTIVELY TO VIDEOS RELEASED BEFORE THE POLICY WAS CHANGED.
Between that, the downvote count being removed, random demonetizations, mysterious channel shadowbans, the DMCA travesty, YouTube Rewind, and the "misinformation" rules, YouTube is a complete trash fire.
Nobody sane believes that the YouTube rules are reasonable.
I don't think then problem is entirely YouTube per-se for some of the rules, it is the "people" who demand they do certain things a certain way. And by the "people", I mean (to lesser extent) us, the viewers; but mostly the advertisers, the mega-corps with deep pockets who want to be as far away as possible from everything that's not seen as sanitized humanity.
YouTube, then, like most capitalist entities, is merely incentivized to gravitate towards something, anything really, that will maximize their bottom line.
The most recent was when my kid did a review of two different multitools. Within five minutes of uploading it YouTube had taken it down due to "potential child endangerment."
As long as it's something sterile like playing video games it's fine. But as soon as a kid does something with a bit of substance it becomes child endangerment.
>I have heard people actually say that if a kid is playing outside by themselves, then the parent should be charged with child neglect because the kid could get hurt.
Giving concern trolls the ability to use the State's guns on whatever personally offends them always ends badly.
I’m guessing that OP can’t even comprehend what reasonable person of rational mind would report a child in no immediate danger for being neglected. OP is calling it trolling because it’s hard to believe people are that stupid and therefore must be doing it simply to harass others.
Concern trolling isn't the same as just trolling about being concerned it's a specific type of interaction around delegitimizing the other viewpoint via faking support of the view but raising concerns you don't actually have that may raise doubt about the view to others.
As a general rule, parents seem to be blamed for anything happening to a kid under any specific setting.
Kids playing outside is one of them, kids talking to strangers, kids browsing the internet will also be seen the same...and then kids using voice chat in online games, kids talking to strangers in VR, kids just playing in VR, kids watching youtube etc.
It seem well accepted that pervert/criminal will go after kids at any occasion, the community can't be expected to police itself nor stop other people from hurting kids, and kids need to be locked away or under adult supervision 24/24 until adulthood or the parents are failing their job, and they shouldn't have kids if they're not up to the challenge.
I think there is a real issue on what people perceive as society's role and what parent's role is.
>I think there is a real issue on what people perceive as society's role and what parent's role is.
Not only that, but you a society has become obsessed with risk mitigation over the last several decades. The problem is that people are poorly equipped to estimate risk with very low occurrences against low or unclear cost. You see it in all facets of society with a platitude of better safe than sorry.
It shows up in increased medical licensing to reduce error, which means less accessible and more expensive care. It shows up in new parents who don't introduce their children to family for risk of covid. It shows up San Francisco city policy to reduce traffic death to zero even if it means reducing traffic to a standstill.
At the end of the day, a life with zero risk is not a life worth living but people are scared into the safest option.
It gets better.... they do the drill but then don't even practice the most important and highest priority of the 3 option which is to RUN.
It turns out, running is too inconvenient for the teachers to deal with, because it's a lot of work to round up kids that have run away (and probably not the safest thing to begin with anyway for just a drill). So instead they drill for them to hide, which should be done only if you can't run away. The thing is, watching both the Uvalde and Christchurch massacre videos, it will become crystal clear to you that hiding is the literal worst of the three options as you become a sitting duck.
So they have the drill, then drill into the kids to be sitting ducks because it is more convenient for the administrator than dealing with kids that are running. The advice I have for my kid is to not give a damn what the teacher says, to grab the nearest long durable object and smash out the windows and run away.
> The advice I have for my kid is to not give a damn what the teacher says, to grab the nearest long durable object and smash out the windows and run away.
Meanwhile, here in the UK, the advice I gave my son was to look both ways when crossing the road, not to mess around with plug sockets, and not to run when carrying a pair of scissors.
I honestly don't know how the US has got itself into such a messed up state that such drills are considered necessary and routine, or how it is that the people are ok with this. I'm guessing it's a boiling a frog type scenario as it doesn't make sense otherwise.
I think you've missed the point there, which is that something has become necessary to prepare for the horrifying reality of mass shootings.
Unfortunately, due to the political situation in the country, it's currently impossible to do the one thing that we know might actually stop those shootings (make it harder or impossible for people, especially children, to get their hands on heavy weaponry). So by the "logic" of "we must do something" "this is something" "then we must do this", we have active shooter drills instead.
Assuming the drills are necessary currently, doing "the one thing" isn't going to end them for at least decades. It's not going to be an either or situation.
The best solution I see is worldwide disarmament in some manner that still allows equalization of women, elderly, etc in physical force. That's a pretty tall order honestly not sure that happens anytime in my lifetime. It also has a sort of 'prisoner dilemma' element where the individual would be insane to give up their arms while the criminal still has theirs.
> It also has a sort of 'prisoner dilemma' element where the individual would be insane to give up their arms while the criminal still has theirs.
Advocates of "gun control" in the US don't realize this part, they seem to assume by making guns less available the criminals won't be able to find them.
I'd be wary of putting all of these examples into the same box, though.
If kids can't play outside anymore because of overprotective parents or an overprotective society, that feels to me like a net negative. If newspapers are afraid to publish because they are fearful of libel suits, then we might miss fact-checked stories that are in the public interest, and it's not clear that that's a good trade-off.
On the other hand, zero traffic death policies usually result in fairly cheap and only mildly inconvenient interventions (if inconvenient at all) to improve the legibility of key intersections and dangerous roads. Drives to reduce medical error usually rely on increased training or the introduction of fixed procedures or checklists, quick wins. Safety regulations in construction require proper dust extraction and safety at heights, and really the cost in better ladders, scaffolding, safety harnesses, vacuums and so on is completely negligible compared against the occupational hazards and chronic illnesses often suffered by older construction workers.
(And sometimes it's debatable. I feel like NASA could take a bigger risk on some manned missions if the astronauts agree, but on the other hand there's so much money and effort involved in these missions that it's not so strange that they want to get everything right, and that feels like the right culture and attitude. I feel like you should probably be allowed to swim anywhere you want even in still water or when there's algae, at your own peril, but really it's not that much of an inconvenience to go to a safer spot with a lifeguard.)
My impression is that what really ails Western societies is not necessarily risk averseness but rather gridlock, where a small amount of people can block a lot of progress for the rest of us. Gridlock has made governments averse to big infrastructure projects (e.g. high speed trains) and big changes in regulations that could move the needle (e.g. land value taxation) but they're not really averse to the risk, they're averse to getting swamped by interest groups and influential people with a vested interest in the status quo.
To be clear, my central point is that people cannot differentiate between the exceedingly low risks with cost and real risks that should be addressed.
I'll speak to your points on the medical area because it's the area that I'm most passionate about and think I'm the most informed. I'm not talking about medical checklist s. I'm talking about increased licensure. An example would be pushes to increase the academic training of nurses. Nurses with four-year degrees marginally better outcomes than nurses with two-year degrees. At face value that sounds like people will get better care. What's not discussed is that this means nurses are more expensive so hospitals have less nurses. Another example is mini drugs that are over-the-counter in most countries require a prescription in the US. At face value this sounds safer as it allegedly reduces misuse. However, it adds hundreds of dollars in cost for a doctor's visit to get a $5 pill, and means many people that need it won't get it.
I certainly agree that governmental gridlock and dysfunction exist. However, that alone doesn't explain why large infrastructure projects like rail cost $5 to 10x more in the US when they do make it through the process. Infrastructure projects have vastly higher headcount then even in the EU. You have paid professionals whose job it is to make sure that Builders don't step on endangered animals. This obsession with preventing the risk ignores the fact that it would be both cheaper and better for the animals assume some will die and spend part of the money you would be paying to prevent that on actually helping them.
> If newspapers are afraid to publish because they are fearful of libel suits, then we might miss fact-checked stories that are in the public interest, and it's not clear that that's a good trade-off.
I'd argue the opposite. If they're afraid of libel, they're probably engaging in it and should stop.
If they're sure of what they're saying and have proof of due diligence, they shouldn't be afraid. If they're not sure, they might still want to publish the information but be clear and explicit that they have no proof and state how they got hold of the information.
Saying "I heard but haven't been able to verify that Person X did Thing Y" is very different from saying "Person X did Thing Y". The latter should absolutely be liable to a suit if they don't have proof or very strong evidence that it actually happened. The former shouldn't as much.
Disclaimer, IANAL so I can't tell if libel laws in different countries work that way but I would expect them to do so at least in broad terms.
> If they're afraid of libel, they're probably engaging in it and should stop.
That may depend on the jurisdiction.
My understanding is that libel laws in the UK, for instance, are horribly broad, and, importantly, don't actually take the truth into account. (From what I've read, I would say it would be more apt to call them "defamation laws", but no one put me in charge.)
So if it were as simple as "just don't print verifiable lies", then I'd tend to agree with you, but given that there are places where you can print verifiable truth and still get slapped with a successful libel suit for it...
Even if you think you'll win a case, there's still the distraction and economic cost of being dragged into a lawsuit. Fear of libel suits probably does make the gutter press slightly less trashy, but it also has a chilling effect on dependable sources, and they are regularly employed by malicious actors for precisely that reason. But anyway, if you don't like that particular example, make up another where you feel society is currently too risk averse.
I think this is too broad a subject. Different societies have different risk profiles.
In the US, the OP is probably enough example. If you can't let your kids play outside or walk the streets for fear of being accused of child abuse, endangerment or whatever charges might be made against you, that's the symptom of worrying societal illness.
I grew up in America - in the southern part of the continent though, not in the USA. I now live Europe. Kids roam and play outside and that's a normal thing.
Kids need to be allowed to be kids, otherwise they will grow up to be very limited adults with odd world views. Perhaps everything else stems from this, at least partially? Kids who grow up overprotected might feel they need to overly protect everyone as an adult, and these adults will be the ones behind laws and regulations.
My point was not to debate the seriousness of covid but talk about relative risk. If you think covid is very serious and it's perfectly logical to take some precautions with your child.
To my point, there is a huge difference between taking your child to a sports game and introducing it to one or two people over the course of a year. If you magically knew there is a 1 in 10 chance your child would die, of course don't do it. The question is when would you start to do it. One in a million chance, one in a billion? At some point the logic of better safe than sorry works against you.
Those people should take the subway in, e.g. Munich, when children go to school. A nice mix of people commuting to the office and 6 year olds commuting to school in the same crampted subway cars.
Looking from the outside in, the US are just a wierd country.
Sure, a reasonable risk is tolerable. But, for instance, car-centric infrastructure has *intensely* exacerbated those risks: space is completely surrendered to cars, sidewalks are non-existent, crosswalks go across 8 lanes of 60+mph traffic. All of this, plus terrible public transport, makes it impossible to travel anyway except by car. This leads to lack of independence for children, and sedentarism.
It feels like this infrastructural risk is media driven to the extent of "pedophile kidnappers" or "razor blades in apples". For example I grew up in an Eastern MA "suburb" in the mid 90s - early 2000s, characterized by narrow winding roads, fast drivers, and no streetlights. Everyone too young or unconnected to have car access bicycled or walked everywhere; parents were a bit fearful but ultimately acquiescent ("better dead than dumb, and if you're not dumb you won't die"), and cops only cared about trespassing with intent to vandalize.
Over the intervening years, the town added nice wide sidewalks (previously none), fancy crosswalk infrastructure, lighting, and started enforcing speed limits extremely aggressively. Yet the number of people on foot and bike dwindled to almost nothing and now the only ones are older middle aged folk walking their dogs.
Dunno about that city in particular but in general car deaths have been increasing over the past decades, presumably because cars keep getting bigger and heavier. It’s a lot safer for kids to cross the street when everyone’s driving a Taurus than when everyone’s driving a modern Toyota Tundra
Is it that the percentage of accidents resulting in fatality has increased, or that the raw number of accidents has gone up overall? Is it just a simple function of more cars on the road, and the compounding effects of such?
The example of the Tundra is legit. Trucks keep getting bigger. It's not really because people all want a bigger truck though, it's because the government outlawed the compact trucks with CAFE and any remaining compact truck import options that might have satisfied CAFE had the shit taxed out of them with the chicken tax. It's a major reason for increased death in pedestrian by truck.
No clue whether that source of data is any good, and what the rates outside of the Us are. Just FYI, I don't like car centric places either, and that's part of the reason I probably couldn't live in the US.
The source may be correct, but it’s not useful. To judge the risk you’d need a breakdown of where accidents happen - it may be the case that motorways have become much safer due to safer cars, but pedestrians and cyclists suffered.
Especially modern pickups and SUVs have an increased risk of severe injuries for pedestrians due to the high front area which hits vulnerable body parts where a station wagon would hit legs. You’ll likely find two or more overlapping trends.
Yep, I grew up in the woodsy part of Framingham up by Route 20. A whole bunch of those roads are outright dangerous. My parents groused about how dangerous it was, but mostly trusted me not to be stupid.
Good on your n=1 data, but pedestrian fatalities have been steadily increasing for the last decades.
Also, nothing to do with "being stupid", if there are cars going 60mph right next to where you're walking, it's the luck of the draw whether you get decapitated by a truck or not.
I feel you, but this is clearly a “correlation is not causation” type situation. Infrastructure should be people-centric, and there’s nothing wrong with doing things to reduce car speed and make the built environment safe. It is unlikely that improved infrastructure resulted in people walking and biking less, which is what the wording of your post suggests.
(Also, love your username… I thought I was the only one. ;-) )
I'd actually read it more as asserting the populace has been been so influenced by this media hysteria that even though all this stuff got built, nobody uses it because they've become fundamentally unwilling to let their children walk--and perhaps not very willing to do so themselves.
GP mentioned the safety-related improvements to demonstrate exactly how irrational being scared in their particular community was, and perhaps to lament the wasted effort and money a bit. The before/after was to illustrate the populace was so affected by whatever's happening they actually regressed from previously being very willing to walk in worse conditions.
At least I did until the response you got that didn't say exactly the same. But I still suspect that was the gist, in the original context, and it just got a bit lost in rebuttal.
Presumably the infrastructure development itself was not causative, but, the trend occurred nonetheless over roughly the same time course as the development.
It also depends on where you live. If you are a suburban or rural kid, playing outside all you want is fine. Let them explore the neighborhood. If you live near a highway though, or a high crime area, then you might want to reconsider what you want to allow. You still need common sense.
My main worry is people who live in relatively safe areas, like a suburban neighborhood, but with neighbors that will STILL call CPS on you for allowing them a little freedom. When I was a kid living in a trailer park we had neighbors like that. Never called CPS, but definitely complained about us being unsupervised despite the fact that the speed limit was a mere 15 MPH, and that we made a point not to bother the neighbors because our parents told us not to. They just saw kids playing and having fun, and decided it was a crime against humanity.
There is irony here in that a "high crime" urban area is much more likely to have kids walking around with relative freedom than a "low crime" suburban area.
“High crime” urban areas are still generally safer for kids than car-centric suburban areas because cars aren’t going as fast. Kids are far more likely to die getting hit by a car than from violent crime.
The use of the phrase "high crime area" in this context, when just referencing child safety, is itself problematic. Everyone who is reading that phrase right now is forming a mental picture of what it means, and I guarantee it's not a picture of illegally burning garbage in the yard while drinking raw milk, sitting on an unpermitted deck, listening to an illegally downloaded MP3 while making a trade on their phone based on an insider tip they heard from their brother.
Because people have different opinions? And because college sometimes changes them?
Mind you, I'm not necessarily with the GP. It seems like a question of only marginal relevance. But the parent reads like a low-effort dismissal that doesn't actually address the point.
There is nothing problematic about having a phrase for areas with high risk of crime that negatively impacts the quality of life of local residents and visitors. (And that includes neighbors illegally burning garbage in their yard)
I'm objecting to the parent comment where this originated, where the author juxtaposed the safety of a child growing up in a "suburban or rural" setting with living "near a highway though, or a high crime area."
Crime is not an urban phenomenon, and when we describe it as one, we're flaming stereotypes. I don't think it was intentional and my point was not to denigrate the parent comment, but to encourage us to avoid accidental constructs like this.
Accidental construct of what exactly? Crime might not be an urban phenomenon in other countries but it certainly is more visible and prevalent in US cities.
At least in west coast cities, visible crime is just a fact of life. It borders on gaslighting to suggest that its not.
Cherrypicking violent crime in a discussion about child safety is misleading and fearmongering.
More children die from non-violent crime. The person who drives 10 over the speed limit down a suburban street is a child-endangering criminal, but so many people think the crimes they commit aren't "real" crimes.
If you want to look at data, overall rural child mortality exceeds urban child mortality in the United States; some of these causes are criminal, others are not. Motor vehicle death are the leading cause of child mortality, and for children under 18 exceed deaths from murder 2:1. Within vehicle deaths, for example, seatbelt usage is one of the predominant differentiators between rural and urban outcomes, and guess which areas have the lowest seat belt usage, and a disproportionately high number of deaths as a result? Yep, those "low crime" rural areas. Those parents who don't buckle up their kids are all criminals, too. I'm tired of seeing the label "crime" only applied to people committing certain crimes, in certain areas. It's applied in the most racist possible way in this country.
Mostly kidnapped by the parent that doesn't have custody. Once in a while other aunts or uncles who don't approve of the way their brother/sister is raising kids.
That happens in places, but probably not in the places where people living here are.
But if you are adopting from a foreign country beware that it is easy to kidnap some baby from a remote village. Some of the less ethical adoption agencies have done this in the past.
When China was adopting kids to abroad, I'm sure that happened. These days, I'm not sure if child trafficking is still a problem, I only hear anecdotes, and its all domestic (because China doesn't allow kids to be adopted abroad anymore except in very rare circumstances).
China is not the only country adopting. There are places in Africa to watch out for. Though many have stopped adopting as abuse was too common for the benefits.
The big issue for China is that they needed kids staying in the country not going out of it. Even in the 00s, they were adopting primarily disabled kids, and I think that has almost stopped now.
Eh, the big issue with China (and Russia that did the same thing recently), is that it was embarrassing when someone did an international documentary and it became clear that many domestic orphans no one Chinese wanted.
Most schools have lunch accounts these days, stealing lunch money is no longer possible.
We have a lot of unhoused neighbors in our neighborhood. When they are on bad fent trips, they can get pretty irrationally violent, though I've never heard of a kid being attacked before.
It’s a term for street homeless because the homelessness industrial complex decided to inflate the stats by conflating couchsurfing people with the visibly homeless.
Not to support the “what about the children” arguments, but 1) try thinking a little harder, and 2) probably a good thing that nothing comes to mind for you.
Recently, it seems that every year in Washington, DC, there are a few bystanders shot by groups quarreling with other groups. Some of those bystanders have been very young.
That basically never happens with strangers on the street. If you're worried about that, pay more attention to teachers ("nearly 9.6% of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct") and your partner ("of the girls living with a stepfather, 3.7% reported sexual experiences with him")
What do you think the children of people committing said crimes do? They mimic their parental figures. Child on child violence is a real thing and ignoring it just let's them turn into adult versions of the bullies they are.
Such extreme privilege right here. Kids that young will be pressured into using drugs and committing crimes, mostly vandalism and theft, but sometimes worse.
That’s around the age when kids started dealing drugs where I grew up. I knew kids who threw bricks through windows and huffed paint when left alone.
Why should it be a crime for a parent to allow there child in the same public where criminals operate? Why should the police punish the victims of crimes for the police's failure to do their one job?
I hate to say this, but this is an amazing lack of imagination over what could happen ( based merely on what did happen before and not coming up with wild scenarios ). I am saying this as a likely free range parent ( still internally debating, but a lot will depend on how my kid handles things ).
You are definitely onto something. Humans are horrible at estimating risk, but are forced to do it all the time. In some cases, it is a very clear miscalculation resulting in overdoing it one way or another. Sometimes it is just dumb luck.
<< Terrible things happen. They aren't likely to happen.
I think this is the wrong way of looking at this. Most people believe that lightning does not strike people that often. This does not give one has carte blanche to prance around the backyard with a metal rod.
Or, to use less crazy example, my street is relatively quiet and slow. And yet, I still look both ways crossing the street, because you never really know. Individual disposition and approach affects statistics.
As a kid, I swam in our backyard pool during thunderstorms. I sunbathe. I drink alcohol.
I do these things knowing the risk but knowing the happiness they give me outweighs that risk.
Personally, I feel like the benefits to kids of greater independence (developing social skills, learning to deal with being uncomfortable, learning to see things through on their own) outweigh the risks of that independence (sex trafficking or sexual assault, bullying).
Going back to the context of the thread: Not every risk has to be codified into the law, or enforced by the government. Should we make it illegal to prance around with a metal rod in their own backyard, just in case? Making a risk illegal does not magically improve safety, and there is a non-zero probability of the "enforcement" making things worse.
I am with you and, in a sense, you are preaching to the choir. If system setup was up to me, maybe with few notable exceptions, all new laws would require a sunset provision to force bad laws out of existence. I am certainly not arguing that just making things illegal improves safety ( and even when it does, I am not stoked about it ).
Where was this, and what convinces you this is widespread enough for concern?
This entire article is about rebuffing the "it happened once somewhere so it might happen anywhere" scare tactic that people use to prosecute well-meaning parents for letting their children experience independence.
> My main worry is people who live in relatively safe areas, like a suburban neighborhood, but with neighbors that will STILL call CPS on you for allowing them a little freedom.
I think this is the real problem, a lack of a low stakes mechanism for resolving small issues surrounding children. No matter if these laws pass, society will have standards and sometimes (oftentimes) good people will fall short of them.
Someone who can deal with a kid who gets a little overzealous at hide and seek or who decides to poke around an abandoned building instead of walking straight home from the store. Police and CPS type organizations seem to be too heavy handed for assisting with normal families that have had a dysfunctional moment, at the same time it feels like there is a need some something (neighbors just talking to each other would be nice, but it's apparently too big an ask).
It's similar to the situation with mental health and substance use disorders. A lot of people need help, and it ends up falling to first responders of various kinds and while they want to help they aren't necessarily well equipped to do so.
Do such crosswalks really exist? Seriously. AFAIK, 60+mph speed is allowed usually (if not exclusively) on Controlled-access highways where pedestrians are not allowed at all. I highly doubt such crosswalks exist at all.
Cars are much bigger (easier to accidentally hit stuff with them), taller (harder to see things at street level) and heavier (take longer to stop and hit much harder) and smartphones greatly reduce driver attention.
I went googling to find evidence to disprove your statement about cars, and I found that you are correct. Though the trend slope is pretty shallow in the graphs I found, I can believe small increases have outsized effects.
...and the smartphone part I obviously wouldn't dispute.
No, its mostly news stories and channels like Code Blue Cam where I see people getting overprotective and blaming parents for letting their kids roam. Also sometimes kids will film each other doing stupid stuff and then those videos get added to compilations
Look man, I grew up in a trailer park. Very few people live alongside highways or in places where it is not safe to play outside. Currently, I live in a low income apartment complex, and I still see kids playing outside. three years ago I lived on the most violent street in our town because rent was so cheap there, and I still saw kids riding around on scooters and playing ball. A lot of it is mentality, and what you view as an acceptable risk. Has very little to do with income.
I frequently go to a trailer park to help someone there. Young kids are often running around and playing with other kids. In the summer I’ve seen a group of 8-10 kids grade and middle school age (some very young) sitting in street after dark playing games and talking. It’s a very mixed group age/gender/race.
In my own wealthy neighbourhood I never see kids playing outside.
The U.S. federal government gives the States' child protection service agencies money grants that are conditional on those agencies actually taking children from their homes. You get what you subsidize, and if you subsidize petty tyranny, you'll get petty tyranny.
I had friends who should have been taken away from their neglecting parents, but never were. Turns out, if the child is not being literally beaten, all the parent has to do is not open the door when child services comes by.
So if the child's teeth literally rot out of their mouth, they wear filthy clothes to school, they live in a house full of cat shit everywhere, and a rotted away caved in roof, all the parent has to do is continue smoking, drinking and browsing the internet. No one could do anything about it. Those kids' lives were ruined.
There are sadly some places where the courts/CPS will avoid removing them even in such a situation because their temporary care situation available from the state is so fucked that they're better off in literally any situation where they aren't beat/molested. Some parts of the US have truly dire situation with not enough quality foster car parents and basically a lord-of-the-flies temporary home available chock-full of kids with various unique and difficult to live with issues.
You wouldn't remove a kid from a cat shit/dirty clothes/rotten teeth situation to toss them into lord of the flies with 9 kids who have violent tendencies as a result of being treated even worse.
That makes sense. But what's bad is they had extended family who would have taken them in, there was just nothing the state could do. The mother brainwashed the younger kids to think their grandmother and aunt were terrible people, so they couldn't even lobby for themselves.
My friend was the oldest of 3 sisters and she didn't even realize how bad her home life was until middle school. Eventually she started dating another of my friends and ended up just living with his family for years to avoid going home. After she turned 18 and was independent, she tried to get her siblings out, but the state said their hands were tied.
If I (non-consensually) spank an adult, that's abuse. If I spank an animal, that's also abuse. But if I spank a child, that's somehow magically not abuse?
Most of Europe has been getting along fine without physically hitting their children for discipline. Parents should not be teaching their children that pain compliance is an acceptable method for getting what they want.
Your analogy makes no sense. If I ground my child, preventing them from leaving the house, that's a reasonable punishment. If I prevent an adult from leaving my house, that's kidnapping. There are some things you can do to your child that you cannot do to another adult. And that's normal and good.
That's fair, and I don't disagree that parents and guardians should have rights over their children to punish them for discipline. That said, you certainly still can't spank your pets...
Look, I agree that the state should have a lot of leeway in letting parents decide what is best for their children. But in and of itself, spanking is the direct use of physical harm (the fact people even split straws on whether or not it causes "lasting damage" is really the wrong question to be asking) to a child to get your way, whether you feel it's justified or not. And there is this reflexive defense of it because it's just this completely weirdly ritualized punishment where people have completely distanced themselves from the idea that while yes, they are inflicting physical pain upon their children, they've made themselves comfortable with the idea because it's a traditional parenting method.
When one of my sons, at age 4 or 5 picked up a brick and hit my other son in the head with it "just to see what would happen" he got a spanking.
He got to see what would happen.
And you know what? He never did anything like that again.
I don't think that spanking should be a go-to punishment, but in some cases, especially those involving high danger, a small child needs to have a fundamental fear of breaking certain rules.
I'd rather have to give a child a spanking for trying to run out into the road than to have a dead child and some sort of moral superiority.
You imply that people who get "incandescent" about CPS abuse children, or believe that government should not have the right to stop parents who abuse children. I do neither of those things, yet I remain "incandescent" about CPS. So that you can understand why, I'll share a personal anecdote.
When I was in elementary school, CPS received an anonymous allegation of child abuse regarding my parent. That was false—there was no abuse. CPS investigated by sending a social worker to my school, who interviewed my sibling and me individually. My teacher insisted on being present so we would not be alone with the interviewer, something I've appreciated ever since I was old enough to understand the implication. In the end, the conclusion was: no abuse.
Later, CPS received another false, anonymous allegation. Our family went to a CPS facility, and my sibling and I were interviewed individually. A (non-parental) relative was allowed to be present. Conclusion: no abuse.
Later, CPS received yet another false, anonymous allegation. A cop showed up at our door, and threatened my parent with arrest if my sibling and I were not willingly given up to the cop. The cop drove us to another city in another county over 50 miles away, where we were taken to a safe house and interviewed individually by CPS, with nobody in the building except two social workers, us two children, and the police officer who had taken us from our home indefinitely. Conclusion: no abuse. At the end of the day, our parent picked us up.
I have had a deep mistrust of and visceral aversion to police and CPS ever since. Being taken from a safe, stable, loving home and not knowing if you will ever come back is deeply traumatic. It doesn't matter that we weren't taken for long—the damage was already done. My sibling and I knew that it could have easily gone the other way, and that it could easily happen again.
It is very similar to what I experienced, except in magnitude. But... after the third incident, we sued CPS, and received a favorable outcome. If we had not known or had the resources to do so, perhaps the situation would have continued to escalate.
Cases where children are left with abuse parents are horrifying and sad. But I know the solution is not to give CPS free rein, low oversight, and the power to ignore due process. Doing so irreparably harms a different set of children.
I applaud your parents for staying level-headed. There is a 100% chance I would have gotten into a firefight with the government in the same scenario. And of course that would have been objectionally successful for the government as the children would have been removed from the home.
for those of us who ticked off at CPS, that's kind of the point. who you want "anywhere near children" should have nothing to do with my relationship with my kids.
Works that way with lots of things. My kid gets a pretty generous existence off ~10% of our post-tax salaries. Not because we are rich, we just don't waste money.
In a divorce, the state says I would need to pay 20% pre-tax (like 30% post-tax) or go to fucking jail. There's no rational reason why the kid is always going to need 3x the money in a divorce, and that reason be so dire it's worth throwing someone in jail for not paying it. The reason turns out the state gets benefits based on both the small administrative cut and based on the amount of child support outlays.
In Belgium, we had Dutroux a serial rapist and child kidnapper that traumatised the country ~30 years ago.
As a kid I remember living like you describe in Norway. Not anymore. Parents are still to this day worried letting their kids go outside.
Fast forward to spring 2020.
The country is locked down. The weather is surprisingly excellent.
It took me a lot of effort to leave my 8y old girl go play with her friend to the small wood nearby.
Initially I even asked her to go with the dog.
I could see the disapprovals of other parents I was talking to about this. But little by little other kids joined.
They had a blast. No school for months. Living in the sunny woods all day, just coming back to eat and sleep.
She's 10 now and as you can imagine a very independent girl.
I blame this transition to overprotection on Mean World Syndrome[0]. Our media picks up alarming stories and amplifies them in a way that wasn't happening before.
I concur. It's not just children, women are afraid to walk alone at night, when men are way more likely than women to incur violent attack from strangers.
Women and children are almost always preyed upon by people who know them, not strangers.
Imo there's two factors at play only one of which seems to get much attention. There's the legality (and burden of compliance even when abiding the law) of leaving your children unsupervised but there's also the complete lack of penalty for being wrong. A person reporting abuse incorrectly is for all intents and purposes, an attacker. Why is attacking someone else with only a brief observation of the situation cost free? Sure there's a balance to be maintained so that people still report actual abuse but why is there no burden upon the attacker to be correct or defensibly confused when the stakes are so high for the defender? If this was a game the imbalance would be an obvious point of dialogue.
I was reading Hammurabi's code the other day and was struck by the fact that the very first thing the code does is establish the consequences for bearing false witness. There's not even an allowance for "well, I thought it was true", if you are accusing another in court then you are running the risk of the same penalty that you are hoping to impose on the other person, whatever penalty that may be.
There are lots of problems with Hammurabi's code and I wouldn't suggest emulating this particular implementation, but it's interesting to note just how far back this concern of false accusations goes and how our legal system seems to have backslid a bit in this regard.
Of course, the solution is criminal and/or civil penalties for people making false police reports. If you call to complain about your neighbor and it turns out there was nothing wrong going on, the neighbor should be able to 1. discover who made the complaint and 2. sue for damages. People need to mind their own business unless they are 100% sure there's abuse/crime happening.
I get your point, and it was a pretty serious discussion in the early days I think.
Now, introducing micro-transactions into people‘s communication looks like a straight ticket to hell to me. Reminds me of the early days of SMS when only porn sites, scams and businesses that made you pay for their SMS bills would send you messages.
Well, it would have combated spam effectively, which would have directly decreased the power of Gmail.
But it would also have, more importantly, created a revenue stream and normalized microtransactions, which would have created an alternate business model to attention/advertising.
Nobody likes paying for things... but I think the "free" future we're living in is pretty shitty compared to the way things were before.
On spam: we’ve been receiving physical direct spam mail from the dawn of the modern postal service, and the delivery is paid by the sender. Same way on linkedin for instance, recruiters pay to reach inboxes. Same for many other platforms where spamming and shoving content in users’ feed is monetized by the platform itself.
And that’s the bulk of the alternate business models and revenue streams we’re talking about.
Not everything needs to be free, but raising paywalls at the wrong place can have devastating effects on platforms.
Did you use email ~2000? It was a nightmare in sheer spam volume. Zero cost of copying + zero cost of sending = send worldwide all by default, or as close to it as they could get.
I'm sure the amount of email that isn't even seen in modern webmail services would still boggle our minds.
And as far as I see it, platforms are part of the problem.
Marketplaces are better for the customer in the long run.
That is to say, shared infrastructure/basic utilities with many different independent vendors on top, each offering goods and services.
Sure, the not so early days were rough, everybody and their dog could run a self hosted email server, a lot of us actually did, and the spammer jumped on the bandwagon x1000.
But trying to solve these kind of situation with marketplaces only solve them monkey paw style. Marketplaces are for discoverability and supply and demand issues. Fundamentally I don’t want my personal communication to be supply and demand regulated. Instead I want strong enough penalties on entities that flood my inbox.
As you point out spam filters help a lot, but to me regulation was the biggest move: having a one click link to unsubscribe from ads and companies actually respect it reduced my inbox manyfold. Businesses I actually have transactions with were the hardest to filter out, and finally some progress was made in that front.
In general I feel believing marketplace are more than financial systems only leads disappointment. AppStores are the poster child marketplaces, and they’re sure full of scam and predatory content. Online ads are also marketplaces, facebook made user feeds a marketplace etc.
In my thinking, I probably should have said cooperative instead of marketplace -- a place where all parties have equal access and there's no tax to a third party.
App stores, ad markets (as they exist today, namely Google/Facebook/Amazon), and Facebook user feeds are all beholden-to and -enrich a single operating party. And specifically, an operating party that also competes with many of the offerings in their own "marketplaces". That makes them owned platforms in my book.
That sets up some screwy incentives (e.g. caring about volume over quality, self-preferencing) that substantially degrade the entire experience for buyers/users.
To the email case though, the problem with penalties is that they require a centralized manager. Which is how you get back to Gmail being a de facto standards body. Ugh.
We could always have done net-zero charging on email fees, that I think would have solved the accessibility issues. $0.05 paid to send an email -- $0.05 earned on receipt of an email.
I walk my kids to school in the US, but I definitely see kids as young as 6 walking without a parent. I choose to walk with my kids because I enjoy it, and it's easy exercise.
That said, a lot of parents still drive their kids - the vast majority I would say. Even people who live within walking distance. It definitely is faster if you look at it in a vacuum: you save 10 minutes round trip!
And when casually discussing things with them, that's usually the excuse - they just don't have the time! They're always running late! etc. But I get a 20 minute walk out of it, and spend time with the kids talking about stuff. So to that I say: I'm multi-tasking.
Part of me thinks this problem isn't much different from the fear of child abduction: overblown. But there is something especially frustrating about the times this happens because people think they are doing something good when they really aren't.
I live about a half mile from my kid's school and we walk most days, or I bike.
However, it has been... eye opening. We live in a fairly urban area of Nashville, but my street doesn't have sidewalks. We've been yelled at multiple times (me, my wife, and our kindergartner) by drivers to "Get out of the road!" (This is on a 25 mph street.) There are ditches and uneven ground on both sides of the road.
Even the sidewalks we _do_ have on our route are paltry... about 3 feet wide and immediately adjacent to a busy 30 mph road. We sometimes walk in the grass next to the sidewalk, and I actually had one neighbor yell at us to "Get out of the yard, get on the sidewalk." That one took the cake for me.
So, yeah. There's a lot of reasons people don't walk to work, but one of them might be that everyone and everything assumes you're supposed to drive in a car and idle in the parking lot for 20 minutes rather than walking. Walking can be _stressful_, especially if you're doing it with multiple kids (which I often do).
Large parts of the US seem like a nightmare society. I can’t imagine how limiting life must be when your basic freedoms like walking are so restricted.
Any forum with a large group of problem-solvers who are discussing a problem are going to have a larger-than-average number of people announcing all kinds of terrible things.
Put another way, some Americans just love complaining about America.
We're a country of 330 million people, spread out the length of an entire continent. Name a problem, and somewhere, someone has it. No place you go to has every problem, and I imagine most places you go the average person will have more good than bad to say about where they live.
I don't know, I used to make similar sorts of treks daily, but on county highways (speed limit 55). No sidewalks. Uneven sides with drops.
I just gave cars berth, and wandered into the ditch when necessary. So the ground is uneven; never bothered me any. I didn't feel particularly restricted; I just went where I wanted to go, however I needed to do it. Probably not the best place to walk with your kid, I'll grant.
What did get to me was freeways; the idea that you have this huge swathe of road that's just straight out illegal to cross on foot.
What's really limiting, though? Not having access to a vehicle when you need one...
When I was faced with the big commitment of buying a house, that was a major factor. Grocery store, credit union, pharmacy are all within easy walking distance, hospital's just a little further, and going downtown is still reasonable if the weather's nice.
There's a bit of our road without sidewalk, and someday I'd like to fix that. But mostly, it's just really nice to live somewhere walkable.
I've done a lot of walking in non-walkable areas before. It is awful. And I think that's most of the country. Been hit a couple of times by the side mirrors of drivers who were driving right on the edge. Had to make my way on roads with steep dropoffs or ditches on one side and cliffs on the other. Crossing big highways. It's dangerous.
I can totally see why some people just won't do that and won't let their kids do it. But what amazes me is that most people don't even see that as a problem. It's something that can be fixed.
I live in the Nashville area as well. I’m sorry this is the state of things where you are. The walkable areas have all become super expensive because everyone wants to live there.
Yet people keep building more suburban sprawl with no public transit or bike connections around town. It is all isolated and divided by huge stroads. Local celebrities even call the bike lanes that do exist here a communist conspiracy.
I live in Nashville right now too and it's just a mystery to me why people want to live in a place built this way. I guess Nashville residents simply do not share my values, and they want to drive their big cars on big roads. The idea of their kids walking to school must be completely alien.
I'm currently living in Nashville and it has an especially terrible built environment. It is one of the most car brained cities in the entire country. The fact that you have any sidewalks at all is exceptional in this place.
My daughter's school is under two miles away, but I can't let her ride her bike alone because it is terrifying. I will sometimes ride with her though.
To get there one has to cross a huge stroad and motorists frequently ignore all traffic regulations. They look at cyclists and pedestrians as obstacles and their hatred is visible in how (and what) they drive. My daughter's bus driver told us that people don't stop at the red stop lights on buses here and I have seen first hand motorists pass and honk at buses that are actively picking up children.
Cities don't need to be built this way, Nashville is just an especially bad place to raise a family. A sibling called it a nightmare society and that is close to correct.
I am really surprised every time I see this vehement hatred of cars. I lived in NYC my whole life and didn't have a car, but now we got kids so we happily moved for the house-and-car-in-the-burbs life and it's absolutely better. People make this choice for a reason.
Just curious, do you have a family and do you shlep them by bus everywhere?
Have you been to, say, the Netherlands? There are plenty of cars in Amsterdam, but it is the opposite of a car centric culture. Bikes and pedestrians abound (including bikes with places to "shlep" your kids or cargo around), and they all have right of way, anywhere, and the drivers generally seem to respect it.
Contrast that with a big American city like NYC, and though probably the vast majority of New Yorkers don't own a car, it is still very car-first in the priority of who gets to use the streets.
I feel the same, lived in a large city when single just to be part of all the hustle and bustle. I liked it but I mean eventually all the bars/restaurants/music venues start becoming the same. Got married and started a family, eventually moved out to the suburbs. It’s MUCH better for families. Good public schools nearby, lots more parks and stuff geared for kids. Very safe, like leave your doors unlocked overnight safe. Yeah I have to drive more but I don’t mind, the benefits definitely outweigh the drawbacks.
But of those benefits you mention, most are not in contradiction with a walkable neighbourhood. In my home town, most things are in walking and biking distance and we still have good public schools, lots of parks and safety. These things have nothing to do with cars, if you just make the choice to create them somewhere walkable.
We have two cars, but anything within walking or cycling distance I prefer to do walking or cycling. E.g., 10 minutes walk to school with the kids, 20 minutes cycling into the city to do shopping,
Better how? You don’t actually say why you prefer your new lifestyle. Clearly lots of people prefer to live without a car. Have you ever bothered having a conversation with them? Maybe if you did, you’d be less surprised!
Its easy to go places like the beach, camping, skiing, fishing, golfing, etc. Basically all the things I like to do except biking and hiking which I can do from my house.
These are all occasional things. Day to day life is better car free. And then when you want to go out you can rent a car. Or even own one. You don’t have to use a car for every single activity just because you sometimes go skiing.
This is every weekend. Also, kid soccer practices are about four times a week and too far to walk or bike. Soccer games on the weekend can be 60 miles away. The grocery store is eight miles away.
I sense that the no car advocates are single people living in cities. I lived car-free back on those days. But once you have a house and a family, a car is a basic necessity. Its financially impossible to raise a family in a city on the US west coast, with the same standard of living as suburbia.
Sorry, but this is false. It entirely depends on your circumstances. Four soccer meets per week and soccer games sixty miles away is not a necessary thing in a child’s life. If they’re into it and you can make it work, that’s great, but this is hardly the only option.
It seems like you have a notion of what a high standard of living is that isn’t actually shared by everyone. I’m looking forward to raising my kid in the city with the absolute minimum amount of car dependency that I can manage.
Until you want to do things like bring groceries home (more than you can carry in your two hands), or something novel like, say, building materials. People do do those sorts of things, you know.
Or are you telling me that day to day life is better if I'm not a woodworker?
More food for thought: how cold does it have to get, with how much snow on the ground, before walking can be reasonably said to be unattractive to the average individual?
When I’m doing a big shop I just get it delivered to my door. Costs from $2-$10AUD.
I’m not claiming there are no things where a car is useful. But having to drive regularly is depressing. My life improved so much when I moved out of the suburbs and in to a walkable area. Sitting in traffic twice a day was sending me insane. While walking makes me feel better.
> When I’m doing a big shop I just get it delivered to my door. Costs from $2-$10AUD.
That... adds up quickly. And delivery services have other problems, such as actually getting the items you want. This may not be a problem for you; it's been a problem for me. Also, I can't help but point out that instead of driving out in your car for your groceries, you're having someone else drive the groceries to you. In a car. (I'm not sure if this has developed into something else, but it started with the topic of cars and their associated infrastructure).
> I’m not claiming there are no things where a car is useful. But having to drive regularly is depressing. My life improved so much when I moved out of the suburbs and in to a walkable area. Sitting in traffic twice a day was sending me insane. While walking makes me feel better.
Well, for me, I love to drive. I spent five years without a vehicle and it was depressing as all hell. This is in the context of country roads though, not city traffic. I hate cities...
I also tend to walk an hour or two most days, so there's that. Maybe we can agree that the issue is more about being forced (or feeling forced) into one path or another?
It’s far cheaper to get them delivered than to drive myself when you factor all the costs of a car. They also don’t deliver them in a car, they deliver them in a refrigerated small truck which makes multiple deliveries to the same street/area in one trip. Often a few to the same building as me.
I’ve regularly evaluated the cost effectiveness of getting deliveries/Ubers vs owning a car. And owning always comes out massively more expensive. Most of the stuff I want is within walking distance anyway.
Okay, yeah, since your alternative is not owning a car, paying for grocery delivery is going to be cheaper than owning a car if that's literally the only reason you might own one. I concede.
> They also don’t deliver them in a car, they deliver them in a refrigerated small truck which makes multiple deliveries to the same street/area in one trip. Often a few to the same building as me.
Ah, interesting. Very different from my area. Where do you live, roughly speaking? If you don't mind.
Not single but I do not have children. I’ll admit that complicates things. From what I’ve seen from comments and US media, the US has a culture of woman rejecting men who don’t own cars, leading to this assumption in your comment?
This is not the case in Australia, especially with younger people mid 20s where not owning a car is usually associated with living in one of the expensive inner city trendy areas.
Having building mats delivered frequently would be a good reason to have a work vehicle.
In walkable places, you can just walk down and get that day's groceries as needed, or maybe you do it on your way home from your walkable job, etc. It's more flexible, fresher, requires less mass consumption, less packaging, as well--lots of ancillary benefits.
More food for thought: I've heard a saying (attributed to Norwegian/Scandinavian folk wisdom) that goes like, "There is no such thing as bad weather, only inadequate clothing."
> In walkable places, you can just walk down and get that day's groceries as needed, or maybe you do it on your way home from your walkable job, etc. It's more flexible, fresher, requires less mass consumption, less packaging, as well--lots of ancillary benefits.
It's also more expensive, and I don't buy "less packaging". Bulk purchasing generally involves less packaging than purchasing in smaller quantities. It's also far more time consuming to go to the store every day vs. once a month for bulk items and once a week to supplement perishables / small stock. I realize some cultures do this, and that's fine and all, but it has tradeoffs.
> More food for thought: I've heard a saying (attributed to Norwegian/Scandinavian folk wisdom) that goes like, "There is no such thing as bad weather, only inadequate clothing."
I have plenty of clothing. Nothing stops me from going out in most weather if I feel like it. When I don't feel like it, my truck is sure nice to have...
Car-centricity is a result of neighborhood design, which necessitates owning a car. There's almost nothing within walking distance of most houses. As you add cars, you need to add car infrastructure (especially wider streets for car parking, lanes of vehicles, sidewalks, parking lots etc). This further increases walking distances and also creates coverage areas that public transit cannot feasibly satisfy. Cars create a problem that only they themselves can "solve".
The schools here got a lot more car/bus heavy when five k-6 elementary buildings consolidated down to one k-2 and one 3-5 (with 6 rolled into the 6-12 building).
There's a closed and sold elementary building about 4 blocks from here.The consolidated buildings are still reasonably close, but still some multiple of that.
Car-centric culture and gun-centric culture is making our society to be like this.
Also, most states defund mental health institutions. Finally, the 24/7 news cycle covers a lot of crazy behaviors, encouraging copycats to one-up the crime even more.
Is it a surprise if Americans are more paranoid than ever?
> Car-centric culture and gun-centric culture is making our society to be like this
This can't possibly be the cause. The US has been filled to the brim with cars for decades - yet this is a modern phenomenon.
Similarly, bad guy have had loads of guns in the US since even before the US was a thing... yet again, this is a modern phenomenon.
> Finally, the 24/7 news cycle covers a lot of crazy behaviors, encouraging copycats to one-up the crime even more.
I'm in complete agreement here. The media goes wall-to-wall with every mass shooter every time, turning them into some sort of sick idol for all the other mentally unstable wannabe's. Sometimes the media even reads these people's manifestos on air... it's just insane behavior.
> Is it a surprise if Americans are more paranoid than ever?
Paranoid, but also mentally diseased. We've constructed a society where it's totally acceptable to be mentally ill and entirely on your own. Today, even small cities have homeless camps filled to the brim with mentally ill that desperately need help - yet our policies give them free needles to enable them to continue doing drugs and ruin their lives.
It's horror disguised as compassion - compassion that ends up killing people.
> The US has been filled to the brim with cars for decades
In the 1970s, I lived in one of the western suburbs of Denver, about a mile from I-70. At night when things were quiet, I could hear individual cars. In the 1990s when I was back for visits, I-70 had the steady hum of continual traffic.
There are definitely more cars per household than there were fifty and sixty years ago.
> The US has been filled to the brim with cars for decades - yet this is a modern phenomenon.
I think you may underestimate the degree to which US infrastructure has failed to keep up with increasing use of cars.
The interstate highway system was built in the post-WWII years. It was designed to cope with the amount of traffic that existed then, plus a reasonable buffer for growth. It actually did a pretty good job of keeping up for at least a few decades. Anecdotally, growing up in NYS in the '80s and '90s, I-90 (aka the NYS Thruway) was a perfectly reasonable road to drive along.
As the 2000s came, it was already starting to get crowded. These days, I always have to weigh the extra speed and directness of the Thruway against the stress of driving among so many cars—and, especially, so many tractor trailers, including many double-length trailers.
Other roads may not get quite the same concentration of additional traffic as interstates, but as car ownership in general has trended up, more and more places have filled up with them.
As for guns...yes, lots of people have had lots of guns for centuries. But in 1999, the Columbine shooting showed that disaffected young people could get massive media attention if they shot up a school and then killed themselves. It has been fairly well proven by now that the media attention given to these events is a significant driver of more such. You even comment on this, but don't appear connect it to the rise of mass shootings in the modern era.
——
There's also a second phenomenon at work here. There's been a very strong streak of sensationalism in the media about children in danger that, from what I've seen, mostly started in the early '90s. There was a prominent disappearance in the Upstate NY area around that time (the Sarah Ann Wood case) that stayed in headlines for years; the JonBenét Ramsey case was also in the mid-'90s, and much more nationally sensationalized.
In general, there was an increase in pushing the "stranger danger" idea during that time, and...guess who are the parents now? The people who were young and impressionable growing up during that era.
I don't think any of this is new, it's a continuation of a trend.
I'm intending to have children soon (admittedly later than normal), and it was only in my parent's day that the interstate highway system came into being.
The world has changed quite a bit in not the last few generations. We're in the process of developing new social norms to deal with these changes, so we've got overreactions and underreactions.
Sort of? I've been at an Israeli wedding once and we literally had to shelter for fifteen minutes because some Gaza rocket was flying over the venue, people just shrugged it off.
There's people in the thread here saying American roads in suburbs are too unsafe, I don't think these folks have seen traffic in Jakarta, and yet kids still walk to school there. Most people on earth would kill for American suburb levels of safety.
America's paranoia is grounded in something else. The country has had bouts of hysteria over anything for many decades now.
Maybe. But we all agree that American suburbs are peaceful, heaven-like places compared to many places in the world. In Australia it is poisoness animals, in many countries it is the availability of drugs, in some crime, kidnapping and rapist. And God forbid you live in a war zone.
Most parents would love their kids growing up in a safe place like in the US, the EU or Japan. But they are not and are faster independent and aware of their environment. And that is okay. Was like that for thousands of years.
Minor quibble: Australians generally aren’t afraid of our poisonous animals, and it generally doesn’t factor into whether we let our kids play outside.
The 24/7 news cycle is problematic, not because of copycats, but because of paranoia about traumatic, but very low-frequency events.
If we had the kind of gruesome, 24/7 news coverage that is usually reserved for crimes, but for car crashes (lethal and otherwise), instead, maybe that would shift the needle some.
> Finally, the 24/7 news cycle covers a lot of crazy behaviors, encouraging copycats to one-up the crime even more.
Yet that is entirely refuted by crime stats.
What the 24/7 news cycle does is runs out of real news 30 minutes into the 24 hour cycle and then fills the public head with deceptive and disproportional hysteria. The kind of stuff that makes them say that Car-centric culture and gun-centric culture are something remotely new. :)
In Japan, one of our buildings was right next to a girls' primary school.
When I took the train from Shinagawa to Nishi-Ohi, I would see these tiny little girls, basically knee-high, on the train, by themselves, on the way to school.
I've talked about growing up in Africa[0], and what kinds of things we had, slithering around.
I walked to school in the late 90s to middle school because we were so close a bus isn’t offered. I also did a similar thing and biked or walked to high school until a friend who took me.
When I used to ride a public transport train to work I would see young kids going to a private school dressed in school uniforms. They would go together and it wasn’t a problem, their school wasn’t in the best area either.
No one blinked an eye now or then. I live in fairly large city in the US South and half my neighborhood walks around. Never head of someone calling the cops for walking.
I'm told I was stopped from walking to school around the age of 10 (which did involve crossing a very busy road without any safe crossing apparatus) because someone reported it to the headmaster who then asked my parents to put a stop to it.
NotJustBikes is very good at articulating the problem with suburban car culture. I knew it was that guy before I even clicked it and many of us have already watched it so unfortunately it's choir preaching on HN. I hope town planners and suburban SUV drivers can also be influenced by his videos.
The problem with a lot of countries is that the car culture has spread to every city due to planning laws and such. You just need one place done right that can grow into something more European.
I didn't open it and I knew it was a NotJustBikes video.
I actually hate that channel because it made me aware of how broken the car-centric infrastructure where I live is. I was living I such blissful ignorance, now I can't unsee it!
Much of Latin America too, you don't have to be rich and powerful to have public transportation and stores and services evenly distributed throughout the city. It was a very deliberate planning decision made in the US, to have residential-only zones connected by highways to cities with huge parking spaces.
It's a related cultural factor. The more we build our outdoor spaces to accommodate cars over people, the more notable it becomes when there are people in them.
That doesn't really explain the differences though. Car culture and design was as prevalent in the 40s-90's too, which basically defined the ideal of suburban sprawl. However, those spaces were also filled with children, often literally playing sports in the streets.
Parents and elderly at the time had grown up with playing in the street, so they could hardly be bothered by it. Now we have the next generation that has only known cars (oddly enough probably the ones that played in the street).
IMO, yes, but I obviously can't cite sources for this claim.
I think it was a problem that started to feed back on itself once people started spending more time indoors and isolated themselves from their neighbors more.
Stupid, careless, wreckless people obviously existed during the heyday of the American suburbs, but I reckon that far fewer of them came roaring down suburban streets at 60mph since they knew that Nicky, Tony, and Tommy might be outside playing stickball and that Tony's dad, also named Tony, would throw you a neighborhood-sanctioned beating if you were to pull such a stunt... and nobody saw nothin'.
No, instead, you drove carefully until you got to the highway and THEN it was drag racing time.
The whole thing goes back to 80s and 90s daytime TV and people like John Walsh who pushed “stranger danger” unbelievably hard. Two generations of parents have been taught that the streets are crawling with child predators when in reality attacks by people not known to the child are very rare.
For whatever reason this took off in America more than most other places. US culture seems very prone to moral panics and crime scares.
The fact is that the vast majority of child abuse and abduction is committed by a family member or someone known to the child like a teacher, pastor, neighbor, coach, etc.
Stranger abductions are horrific and terrifying but they are nowhere near the top of a list of bad things likely to happen to your kids.
I would say that this is an extreme and somewhat rare example. Kids here do walk themselves to school. But this does seem to be a growing concern, hence the legislation.
> "The US seems to be the only country that has this problem. Children here (Norway) walk to school on their own at the age of five or six, some of them take buses."
I grew up in New Zealand, and when I was a kid it was pretty normal to walk to school also. I spent my whole childhood walking 20-30 mins every morning and afternoon! Eventually I got a bike which saved a bit of time.
But now days, I think it's not as common. My nieces seem to get shuttled everywhere in their Mum's car. One issue is that there's a lot more cars on the roads now days so it doesn't feel as safe or as friendly for pedestrians as it used to.
Over here in Australia I remember the same, kids walking to school at 5 years old. In fact one time my mum forgot to pick me up, so I walked to my friend's house. Turns out it was the wrong day, oops.
But now I see cars lined up at the school near me, around the block. They'd rather sit in a line in their car blocking traffic for half an hour, instead of just parking one block away and walking with their kids (there is plenty of untimed parking, it's residential). Or, god forbid, asking their kid to meet them at a convenient corner each day. So I don't think it's just a safety thing, some parents are a little lazy too and would rather just sit in their car instead of walking or meeting other parents.
This might be a country vs city thing too, since I'm in Sydney now.
Seems popular and does seem to create a good social vibe on the street: parents actually chatting to each other rather than sitting in their idling cars!
The block I'm talking about has "no stopping" signs specifically during school pickup hours to block cars idling. But, either it's a grey area or they just don't enforce - I'd guess the parents would say they are "stuck in traffic" and not just stopped and waiting. Except maybe the one in the front. Either way, if you want to turn left at the traffic lights while that's happening you have to do it illegally from the centre lane to get around them (2-lane roads, but the left is full and the only legal turning lane there).
Closing the streets could work but I think we already have the tools we need (it worked differently in the past, right?) but choose not to use them.
That’s a nice touch. Where we are it’s a little impractical as there’s only a single road through the village but it also means that that we’d only have to man the single point of crossing.
Also grew up in rural Nz where walking / cycling alone from a fairly young age was normal. Now my kids are at that age they cycle a bit on their own, but even in our village there is a street they need to cross on the way to school where they need supervision. Really we should start a community lollipop person schedule and sort it out.
> ”Really we should start a community lollipop person schedule and sort it out.”
Ahh yes! My primary school in NZ had two nearby crossings over a “busy” road (but probably not that busy by today’s standards)
I remember doing lollipop duty on it a few times. As a kid. A very prestigious assignment and we got some special high-vis to wear and everything. I assume there must have been some volunteer parents involved as well, but I really don’t remember now. Would have been too caught up in the excitement, haha.
>> Really we should start a community lollipop person schedule and sort it out.
That's how it's done in Japan in the mornings. Kids first collect into small local groups, they walk together to the nearest designated adult helper. From that point, there are adults manning every crossing to the school. They help the groups cross.
It's not a huge commitment for the adults. Maybe 20 minutes on average. Not every week.
Some context is likely needed, as the fact that the child is a foster child most certainly played a part in how seriously they took this allegation.
In the US (and actually all over the world), children in foster care situations are at higher risk of abuse. Moreover, foster children are wards of the state and placement decisions are up to the state. The law about non-foster children (children with parents) is much more strict in what parents can and cannot do with their children. That means that it is extremely easy for the state to decide to move a foster child, whereas they cannot just take someone's adopted or biological child away. At the end of the day, the state is the foster child's guardian. For example, the state makes medical decisions for foster children. When we did our foster parent training, we even learned that sometimes the foster parents cannot make decisions on haircuts!
However, I'm going to guess that the state is hyper-vigilant about foster children because (1) they are often victims, (2) the state is directly in charge of foster children.
The usage of "foster dad" and "his child" to me implies that the child was not a foster child. However, foster homes are typically (completely depends on local laws) held to a fairly high bar for safety, so an allegation of neglect against a child (adopted or biological) will be fully investigated.
On the other hand, if it's anything like where I am, then foster parents are at least used to allegations. My wife and I had at least one abuse allegation per year filed against us when we were foster parents. It was somewhat disconcerting the first time. The fifth time, when the social worker showed up it was more "Hi Zoë, how's it going? What's the allegation this time?"
I guess it's only natural that people outside the country aren't exposed to our local news, but this kind of crazy shit happens all over the US. You probably hear about our insane politics and people who don't believe in science, but there's so much more. People in the USA are really nuts.
We also have this problem in Canada, but being as we import a great deal of our culture from the US, we're frequently "America-lite" for things like this.
From what I see in media more supervision for children (compare to what was norm 25-50 years ago) is a trend across most economically developed countries. But the US is definitely the most extreme case.
I would not be surprised if there is an inverse correlation between birth rate and "child protect" laws - the less children a country have the better it tries to protect (to the point it harms everybody). But child hostile laws (and they abuse by police and social services) like in the US definitely not encourage young people to rise kids.
East Asian countries have among the lowest birth rates, but their children largely are allowed to travel by themselves to school from like 7 years old.
The US may be the most extreme case of this problem, but not every country has it as good as Norway either.
I'm from Spain and sadly no kid here goes to school on their own at 5 or 6. Most start at 8 or 9, and typically "experts" recommend 7 as the absolute lower bound. While not as car-centric as the US, we still have too many cars in every city (and too fast) to feel safe leaving kids alone at 5 or 6.
Norway is also far from perfect, we have an increase in parents driving their kids to school because of the dangers from the traffic made by parents driving their kids to school
It's a paranoid US millennial parenting thing. I'm a younger Gen Xer and my parents would lock me out of the house from the time I got home from school until the sun went down. I was at the bus stop for 6:30 every morning.
Fellow younger Gen-Xer here, when I was growing up this trajectory was already clearly starting.
My parents were oldschool Italian immigrants and let me run wild, often accompanied by a relatively small subset of neighborhood kids whose parents also didn't worry.
But there were already plenty of boomers panicking about child molesters reported in the news, locking their kids up inside. Then as minorities started moving into the predominantly white racist midwestern neighborhood, the fears went into overdrive.
That is not astonishing, that is the stupiest shit one can imagine. And because of the monkey nature of humans and the dominance of the US american 'culture' in the world, that will spread to other countries, too.
"Italy amends law to allow kids to go home from school alone
Italian schools can let children walk home alone without fear of legal repercussions, after the senate approved an amendment to a law that said they had to be picked up by an adult.
..
Under-14s will require written permission from their parents or guardians to leave school unaccompanied, according to the amendment, which passed the senate’s budget committee on Monday."
How can you get something right about any Italian law?
Sure they correctly cited what has been defined by the law but that doesn't mean jackshit in practice.
Once a law is written, it can change substantially once it gets put into practice, by the many and many little details.
In theory the parents "authorize" their kids to exit the school alone.
In practice, individual schools can decide whethers that's reasonable or not. The criteria for what's reasonable or not begin with reasonable stuff like "it must be safe", "the child must be mature enough", "the child must walk on your sidewalk", "the child must know the rules of the road" ....
But then after a while most schools just ended up with blanket rules like "possible starting from the 5th grade" (since only those kids are generally old enough to meet all the other criteria; so even if your kid meets them before, tough luck).
And some schools don't even allow that. Basically you have to fight for your right, which usually requires you to band with other parents otherwise you have no chances winning.
But once you band with enough parents, there is a simpler solution which requires no fighting: you just add a bunch of other parents to the list of trusted people, and so a group of kids exits with one adult supervision and they usually just walk together to their respective homes, possibly letting the kids to leave the group once closer to home (sometimes called "piedibus")
So yeah, in practice people get more or less what they want, but oh boy how different this is in practice than what you'd read in the newspapers.
It's not really a problem in the US either. Kids are walking or biking unsupervised everywhere. Only a few isolated cases like the one you mentioned make the headlines.
The US is a low trust society, because of all the poverty. You really notice the difference if you travel to Europe. It turns out that having half of the population be economically unsafe makes everyone and everything unsafe.
I made the same observation when I moved to the US, it was so weird to me that SF the city is pretty much devoid of children. They're all effectively locked up and prohibited from roaming. No-one trusts children, no-one trusts adults around children, no-one trusts strangers.
But I went skiing in Lake Tahoe one weekend, and suddenly all of that disappeared. Suddenly, you have children freely interacting with strangers, there's much less adult supervision, and a whole lot of trust in others again.
It's such a contrast, and you can experience it by simply driving for a couple of hours.
The kinds of strangers you are likely to meet in SF are not to be trusted. It's not irrational on an individual level, it's just a societal madness in the USA.
I lived in LA, and would not let my wife walk around after dark let alone my daughters. There were a few individuals who lived under bridges that would regularly assault women. And we lived in a "good" area. We moved to an even better area and within a couple months there was a shooting, high speed chase, and a drunk driver rolled his car into our neighbor's yard.
I lived in the Bay Area for two years. It’s a shit hole. It’s dirty, dangerous, and expensive.
I’ve lived in NYC (the Bronx), Seattle, and Saint Louis. Never felt anywhere close to the terror I felt living in San Jose and commuting to Los Gatos and San Francisco.
We fled from San Jose to Phoenix a year after having our daughter. Kids walk to school in our neighborhood. A bunch meet up at the corner near our house and all scooter together to the local school.
SF is actually a city that is devoid of children. They're not hidden, they just don't exist because housing is too expensive. People with kids mostly leave.
It's been a common pattern for a very long time in the US for new graduates to often live in a city especially if that's where their job is and then move out when they start a family. That was the pattern with essentially everyone I knew who went into finance in Manhattan.
SF is full of mentally ill homeless people and drug addicts. Some literally camping in the doorways of homes. It's also covered in vomit and human feces. No way I would let my kids run around unsupervised there
Historically, people teach their kids how to navigate their local environment safely.
In rural environments, that can include wildlife dangers and natural hazards and in urban environments, it can include human dangers and industrial/sanitary hazards.
Environmental danger is not new. The culture of isolating kids rather than educating them is. Whether the new strategy is better for the kids is an open question, but seems crazy to some of us.
I let my 11 year old ride his bike to the park, 7-11 etc on his own or with friends. I don't live in SF though. I think it's a little different when the danger is another human and they are mentally ill or addicted to drugs. You can tell the kids to stay away from them but the kids are kids they can't necessarily outsmart an adult looking to cause them harm.
Adults are killed by homeless people in SF. They are an irrational danger that is difficult to prepare for. There are also a lot of them. It's one thing to say if you see a homeless person stay away but it's another when there are dozens of them camped on the sidewalk. Telling my kids to instead walk in the road is not a great option either.
You are not wrong and 99% of the time doing as you suggest is valid. Hordes of crazy people are a danger of a different breed.
>Historically, people teach their kids how to navigate their local environment safely.
And historically, society would drive insane and homeless people out of nice areas. Middle and upper middle class people weren't letting their kids hang out with drifters in the past.
As someone who plans to teach their kid to bike to school, walk to friends' houses, watch for cars, play safely in the yard, climb trees etc... Who has also lived in SF... There's no way I'd expose a kid to the dangers of walking around that city!
We left because my wife was terrified to be alone outside of our apartment. She would be followed, harassed, threatened. Because we saw crimes occur in broad daylight and experienced the indifference of police when we called.
Comparing the environmental danger of avoiding snakes and not diving into water where you can't see the bottom to navigating the streets of San Francisco as a small, alone human is ludicrous.
Historically a city would be run with order in mind but SF no longer is. It’s a lawless place without defined borders of what’s safe and what’s not. If SF could clean up its act then maybe it would be different. But it’s the same reason as the 1970s when parents in cities began having to shelter their kids more. We’ve just allowed to streets to be taken over by the mentally ill, drug addicted, and creeps and everything that comes with that.
It can even vary from one suburban neighborhood to another, without much difference in actual safety between the neighborhoods. Our last neighborhood had roving bands of kids wandering about and picking up and losing members here and there all day long in the Summer, just like it was 1975, everyone was totally chill about it. It was great. Our new one like two miles away is a "kid plays in the yard" neighborhood and we've had people come by more than once to make sure we're aware our kids are on their bikes on the other side of the neighborhood (yeah, we know).
SF is devoid of kids because it is a super expensive place to raise kids in SF, and the schools are so messed up you need to go private or move. Also, a lot of same sex couples don't adopt.
Really strange to hear what life for US urban kids and pedestrians has become like. Can't have been always like that. As a proof, there's an episode of The streets of San Francisco where three boys break into a supposedly abandoned mansion in their neighborhood (looking like those SF hills but what do I know).
I remember watching 'The Phantom Tollbooth', which is set in San Francisco and has the main boy walking home from school through the city, and feeling how odd that seems now.
We have a whole media industry unrestrained by responsible regulation peddling fear.
Look at the court disclosures about Fox News personalities retaliating against Fox reporters actually reporting the truth. They knew the election fraud story was bullshit, but these folks have no higher purpose and want grandma to be scared.
I grew up in India, a much poorer nation than the US, and I played outside all the time, walking to relatives' houses and going to hang out with friends. I highly doubt it's the poverty causing this kind of thing in the US. Seems more to me the high amount of media "stranger danger" affecting people's viewpoints.
I think this is a key perspective. In the US you will have rich neighborhoods where kids play freely outside and poor neighborhoods where kids play freely outside. It is in the mixed neighborhoods there is an overwhelming fear of children playing
the highest murder rate in US is 15.8 Louisiana while the highest in India is 6.5 (Patna). Most places in India have half or lesser murder rates compared to the average in US. India in general is just a much safer country, not in the same league as China, Japan but far safer than US. Growing up in Bangalore, I walked the streets regularly at 2AM when I was a teen, something that I’m scared to do as a full grown adult in SF
I don't know how it is where you grew up in India, but where my wife's family lives in the Philippines, poverty is very different than here. They are much poorer than us, but at the same time, much more secure. Losing a job is not good, but they would not lose their home or starve as a result due a combination of not being in debt-slavery and familial/social networks close by.
If we lost one of our two jobs, we'd be utterly fucked. We have no family nearby, and the housing market is so fucked we'd be in dire straits within a month.
The US is a low trust society because we're told not to trust people through highly negative news stories. The result is the US being primed to think there are child murderers and rapists under every bush, etc, etc. Ancedent to this unintentional effect was the incentivised "if it bleeds it reads" motivation for promotion of the highly negative.
Both of these things can be true at the same time. The news can overemphasize the worst, AND we can have an epidemic of drug problems, mental illness, and the crimes that those bring.
Yet oddly, when I was a kid, and the crime rate was roughly double what it is now, we didn't have this problem.
There were drugs, oh you betchya, cocaine and crack and all these other cool things the D.A.R.E. officers were telling us about. There was crime, about twice as much of it as today. But us kids were out there riding our bikes around and playing till the streetlights came on.
US is a low trust society because of a culture that reveres individualism and independence to the detriment of everything else, especially community and freedom from being abused in favor of freedom to abuse. Every man for themselves means kids need to constantly be supervised.
That culture is created by a media environment manufactured by companies whose employee base are well represented on this site. This line is pushed on us, ad nauseam. Unsurprisingly, most of us are sick from it.
An alternative view is that our individualistic culture is simply an evolution of the American idea of "rugged individualism" -- an idea which somewhat predates the tech industry.
that's not a contradiction. if society in hungary is low trust (which i doubt btw, unless something changed since i was there last more than a decade ago) then this low trust does not extend to the safety of their children.
letting kids wander about shows high trust in their kids not getting into danger. in the US people don't even trust that.
My impression is the opposite - it is easy to encounter unsupervised children in a poor neighborhoods but practically impossible in upper-middle class ones.
Helicopter parenting is common in families where one of parent stays at home with one or two kids and directs all energy into supervising and 'developing' them. Having high income such families have disproportionate political power and able to enforce this model of rising kids on society at large.
I've been through a lof of the balkan areas in the 1990s, also yugoslavia/serbia during the sanctions before the 1999 nato bombing and fast after, and during all those times in all those areas there was A LOT of poverty.
Kids were playing outside all the time... from urban belgrade, parks and playgrounds surrounded by huge socialist buildings, to rural villages. Going to school? Sure, kids 7, 8, 9yo walking alone to school was (and still is) a normal thing. Usually elementary schools (6/7->14/15yo) were walking distance, but some still had to use a public/city transport. High schools meant a bus/tram for a majority of kids. During weekends seeing a bunch of kids outside even late at night was normal and still is.
I can back that claim. Unfortunately, it's no longer the case - not exclusively for the low trust reason, though - but that kids of school age, in my experience, now largely rush home after school to text to their same group of friends they just physically separated from, and play games.
I believe the altered persona they can assume when texting, and freedom of expression they can have using that medium, over doing it in person, is of very high appeal, and something I find concerning for the future of society...
I'm sure that poverty can play a factor in worsening social trust, but can the reason for anything as complex in society only have 1 cause? Also, arguing your point, there's far poorer countries that are far more trusting. And arguably at the US's "poorest" (maybe during the Great Depression to WWII period) there was a much different social attitude to strangers than exists now.
I'd say that commenters have brought up some good factors like mentioning the media's business model in hyping up negative clickbait, but personally I'd say that the increasingly heterogenous population is closer to the biggest factor. Identity politics drives a wedge between most groups that can tend to make you distrust the motives of almost anybody, even if the stranger is a member of your own group. As long as identify politics persists, countries with an increasingly heterogenous population will have even lower trust.
The people living in poverty very very rarely hurt a stranger's children. It's the cops who show up and take them, absolutely destroying their sense of security and growing independence.
That study says poor people are more likely victims. Doesn't even say who is performing the crimes (doubtful, but based on this study could be rich people robbing the poor or whatever), nor does it show the rate at which those in poverty victimize a stranger's child (which despite your sidestepped report here was what you replied to).
For example, despite all the worries about kidnappings, there are only a few hundred kidnappings of children by complete strangers every year.
As an aside (and separate point): The data in there was all 12+. I'm gonna be the one to come out and say it: if the hypothetical reality is the teenager is growing up in a hell-scape world of death-match-violence then unfortunately it's one of those cases of "nows the fucking time to get out there and learn how to (gradually) adapt to the hellscape while we try to make it better." (which honestly is a little what driving feels like when you turn 15)
What you've linked doesn't really contradict what the commenter said; he's arguing that folks don't generally hurt kids, poverty notwithstanding, and that tends to be my experience.
I'm not going to believe either of you. What you offered was not responsive to his claim because it didn't address risks to children, which are the topic.
"False" is your assertion. You have the burden of proof in that claim. If you just wanted proof you should have asked for that rather than make a new, different assertion. The person you replied to took the 3rd option of the tri-state, which requires no burden, which is to merely remain skeptical.
There's a section about poor people more likely to be victims of _stranger_ violence, which backs up your point. I didn't see much about children specifically, but I guess all other things being equal... Just such a sad thing to think about that I don't _want_ to think it unless there's hard evidence.
There's no reason why a multi-racial society can't let their kids go out to play. Being multi-racial doesn't mean a country has to turn itself into a shit hole. Moreover, if it's because the races hate each other, then stop encouraging the hate.
I live in a French neighborhood with multiple races (mostly white+arabic+black) and it's very safe, children play outside be themselves and no parent or neighbor ever care.
Granted that the average is as you say. But averages conceal the truth that the racial composition of those US districts that I have seen personally is generally not average, they tend to be overwhelmingly white or overwhelmingly black (mostly the Raleigh-Durham Triangle). In Norway we don't have many areas where that happens.
I don't understand what's either astonishing or even wrong about that sequence of events by the government. Person calls 911 and reports child abuse. The government takes the situation seriously and investigates. The government determines there was no issue. Person being investigated is upset.
Other than the person calling 911, who do you want to do something different?
You want the first responder to dismiss the case because they don't think it matters? A lot of abuse went on for years because of that.
You want the government to take the kid while investigating?
You want the government to just not investigate and take the kids?
You want the parents not to be worried going through the process?
I just don't know how else I would want the government to react. It was far too lax in the past in investigating credible accusations. And if we have to error on one side or the other it should be helping abused kids.
The sequence of events that is wrong here, is that if a person calls 911 claiming that there is child abuse going on, and the "child abuse" is a child playing outside or walking to the park alone, the person should be fined. There is a difference between "I saw little Johnny outside for hours in the cold, I think there is child abuse." or "I saw bruises all over little johnny, I think there is child abuse." and "A child was walking outside alone, there is child abuse".
Of course what happened in this case wasn't child abuse. But the reporter didn't say "I saw them playing outside". They said "the child is being neglected". Yes, it turns out the reasons for the person calling saying so were wrong. But if the child wasn't being given food or medical care it would have been reported the same way. So the government had to investigate.
Using the future knowledge that the investigation turned up nothing to suggest it should not be done isn't really something that can be applied.
If someone makes a false claim that results in personal expenses for me that sounds like libel or defamation. Allow me to find out who they were so I can sue them. I value my time at least for say $1000 per CPS visit and $300 per hour I have to spend dealing with the investigation they knowingly initiated with their libel.
The laws hiding the identity of people abusing children by making these trumped up reports should be re-evaluated.
Edit: CPS investigation technically is a civil and not criminal investigation (typically) so you can see the very clever hack below did using word 'crime' to hide the fact the law prevents revealing identity of callers in this 'civil' complaint. In fact their wordsmithing is pretty brilliant in they also tried to redefine the elements of defamation which include damages or harm to reputation rather than damages from harm to reputation. 10/10 for lawyering and 0/10 for faithful rebuttal.
> If someone makes a false claim that results in personal expenses for me that sounds like libel or defamation.
Then you don't know what libel or defamation is. But, yes, if someone makes a false report against you and that results in injuries to your reputation you can totally sue them for slander, libel or defamation (depending on how the report was filed).
As far as I know, no laws hide the identity of people reporting crimes. However, for very good reasons, we allow people to report crimes anonymously.
In this case, Texas had protections for "free range parenting", but that only applied to CPS. The local police department still threw the book at the parents as retaliation.
I think people need to realize that police departments themselves have a hand in propagating these myths. Terms like "sex trafficking" are loosely defined and used freely to convey a danger that is almost completely fabricated - that children are abducted off of their own lawn by complete strangers.
The reality is that the vast, vast majority of both child abductions and sex trafficking are done by people the children know, and completely unrelated from each other. And few of the these cases are actually solved by police!
And yet we are all victims of a kind of PR ruse intended to steer resources to a specific set of government agencies tilting after hypothetical problems.
First, the media needs a sea change towards not making parents hysterical. We've seen this happen in waves ever since there was mass media (D&D, satanism, metal, gangs, etc., in my personal lifetime) but this is the first time I think it's actually caught on as a cultural standard for something like 2 decades straight.
Second, social media needs a sea change towards not making parents hysterical. I think that's where the 2 decades straight came from.
Since neither media nor social media will change anything that lowers their viewership, that means the audience needs to reject the hysteria. That leads me to the third thing.
Third, California needs to explicitly adopt play outside laws, and free range parenting needs to become the normal standard in Hollywood movies that -don't- involve kids falling into drugs or other trouble, and -don't- portray the parents in question as overwhelmed or neglectful. As a country, we seem to take a lot of our impression as to what's "right" from California, particularly for parenting and other age-related things, irrespective of local laws.
I think CA adopting the laws may happen eventually. They don't conflict with our normal legal standards for parenting. I think it'd just have to be an explicit and well-publicized adoption to spark much of a landslide elsewhere, much like with CO and recreational cannabis.
The media and social media hysteria is very real and highly elevated.
My friends with kids will frequently say “Well things aren’t like they were back in our day”. “Our day” being the 80s and 90s.
Yes, things aren’t like they were back in our day - crime has been on a steady downward trend (absent a tiny rise relative to prior years in 2020). By all available data regarding violent crime this is one of the safest periods to have ever lived in human history.
When I talk to my mom about her youth (into her 20s) in the 1950s - 1970s (and into my childhood) there were at least a few known active serial killers roaming the country (Ted Bundy, Green River, John Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc, etc) at any given time. Anonymous drifters would roll into small towns and randomly kill entire families (In Cold Blood). People were disappearing left and right. Muggings and random violence in cities like New York was completely out of control (compared to today’s standards). Sexual assault especially was on a completely different level.
In my lifetime alone from 1993 to 2019 violent crime has fallen 49% [0]. The chances of me or anyone in my family being victims of violent crime today is HALF what it was “back in our day when things were different”. Yes, things are very different. Better. Safer.
Turn off 24hr news, get off social media, and go outside and enjoy it.
Not only is crime lower, but there were no cell phones back then! Today a child is only a phone call or text away at any time, and it is trivial for a parent to track their child in real time. As a child in the 80s I would regularly come home from school, fling my book bag in the house, get on my bike, and ride off with the other kids, not to return until nightfall. My parents had no idea what I was doing or where I was going. The level of fear and paranoia now is insane.
Recently a friend of mine was walking in a public park in LA while there was a children's event happening on the field. He was making phone calls and watching the kids have fun and play for a few minutes.
He got confronted by a hysterical mob of parents, demanding to see his phone if he was taking pictures of the kids! He shows them that he has no pictures, they still are vivid calling him a threat and call the cops on him. One couple was incredibly heated and both threatening him directly. I believe he said the mom said something like "if there weren't so many ring cameras around I would bash your face in right now".
Police said something to him about "the times we live in..." and being careful lol!
Wildest thing to me is that his appearance is of a young clean cut college student. I would maybe understand if he seemed a bit older but still with no proof nor proximity to children this is a ridiculous experience.
I think it's smart to frame this as an anti-poverty issue. People often imagine "suburban" families falling victim to overreaching child neglect laws and enforcement. In fact poor children are separated from their families for reasons of child welfare far more often than non-poor kids. (Of course, this ends up affecting black families disproportionately.) Families are being broken up in the US for the crime of being poor.
Editing to add a link to a study detailing "Drivers of Inequalities among Families Involved with Child Welfare Services: A General Overview" for folks who find the Bar Association's article to be limited in scope.
> Over 50 percent of Black children in the U.S. will experience a child welfare investigation before their eighteenth birthday (nearly double the rate of white children). Nearly 10 percent of Black children will be removed from their parents and placed into foster care (double the rate of white children)
While the numbers above sound horrendous (and they really are!) I wish they normalized the data to only consider poor households. That would give a much better picture of how much of the existing system is biased against a given race vs being biased against poor people in general.
>> Over 50 percent of Black children in the U.S. will experience a child welfare investigation before their eighteenth birthday (nearly double the rate of white children).
So more than 25% of all children experience a child welfare investigation?
>> Over 50 percent of Black children in the U.S. will experience a child welfare investigation before their eighteenth birthday (nearly double the rate of white children).
> So more than 25% of all children experience a child welfare investigation?
This is precisely like the situations which are present in every large company, where people fight to protect stupid, manual processes and digital paperwork in the name of justifying their existence at the company.
After cities fund these departments, people work very hard at justifying their employment, and trying to increase their metrics, to make it look like they're having an impact.
"We" recently ran afoul of the police because my son was caught having been handed an illegal substance in the high school bathroom. The investigator threatened us with prosecution for possession, then admitted it probably didn't rise to this action, and then ran down a litany of programs and counselors she could get our son involved with. I could tell she was salivating at the thought of getting our son put into these programs, just to be able to say something like, "We 'helped' 17% more kids this year; we need more funding!"
The investigator seemed to be on the hunt for names; we declined to have our son give a statement at all.
My wife is a counselor herself; we're dealing with that side of it.
My wife's parents had a child welfare investigation because my sister-in-law was somewhat clumsy in middle and high school and had some "odd" bruises. Of course, my in-laws hasn't done anything abusive, and the investigator concluded as much, but I'm sure it counts as one of those >25%.
Your quote isn't from the article but a link in a post by kyoob (currently below this) that you aren't even replying to (were you so eager to beat hn's post throttling you put this on the main thread?). Kyoob's post already acknowledges this is also a poverty issue so your complaint seems a bit off the topic at hand.
It doesn’t sound like complaining. I think it could be a good faith point (and not someone just trying to find a way to downplay modern racism), although kyoob acknowledged it.
Obvious confounding factors should also be controlled for (or at least controlled in a side note).
The Let Grow organization that wrote this article and help advance legislation protecting parents, advocates for a parenting style that lets kids grow into resilient, independently-thinking adults. This is more than just protecting parents or preventing unnecessary breakup of families.
From that lens, the question I have is, how does this kind of parenting style help poor families?
Advocating for laws that promote reasonable childhood independence benefits families where all the adults have to work more hours to get by, leaving their kids in safe but unsupervised situations more often.
It means involving toddlers into helping in small ways (and having to pay attention to the toddler’s capacity), even if that help initially involves many mistakes.
People who are barely treading water may not have the resources to do something like that, being too exhausted.
Further, you are mistaking safety for well-being. There are situations where overall mental and emotional well-being comes from the confidence built on taking calculated risks. You can only do that when the family and community has a solid social safety net.
To think that protecting poor people’s ability to parent grossly misses the point of this.
You are right. Thank you for respecting it. I was trying to convey that the frame in which we are approaching this is off, so the arguments I brought up falls outside of what you are saying. I have a bad habit of not indicating that I am changing the frame, so that can lead to confusion, and often to the experience that I'm talking past other people.
poor families have less resources/time to provide for continuous supervision for their children. so they use this parenting style by default. what helps them is that this style gets legal protection, so they are not targeted for letting their kids run unsupervised.
This parenting style isn’t exactly the same as unsupervised parenting. It is still very mindful, and can still require a lot of thought and effort on the part of the parent, something that poorer families might not have the time, energy, or resources to execute on.
How is this differentiated from neglect due to just simply being too exhausted to parent?
what is the point that you are trying to make? that this law won't help children of poor families because they are most likely going to be neglected anyways?
that would be a bold claim to make. sure, being poor means less resources, but it does not automatically lead to neglect. even a very busy parent can be mindful about their children in what little time they get to spend together. what matters here is quality, not quantity.
letting children run around alone is not and should not be an indicator of neglect. therefore such a law does help poor families as it reduces the chances that they will be harassed for letting their children play unsupervised.
there are enough other ways for eg. teachers in school to observe and notice when children are actually being neglected.
the primary problem is that we are applying our middle class standards to what should be proper parenting, and that is wrong. parenting in poor families is naturally different, but that does not mean that poor parents can't make the effort or be mindful about their childrens upbringing.
People here seem to think that this parenting style means to let kids roam around unsupervised, and that is all there is too it. But it is not exactly the same. It still requires time, thought, and energy on the part of the parents.
Yes, but it can happen to well-to-do families too -- if someone thinks your medical routine seems suspicious, for instance, even if it has been recommended by a doctor. Casting it as a poor people's issue or a black issue runs the risk of complacency because others decide it couldn't happen to them.
I recently moved from a very low average income city to a very high average income city. In my former city it was nearly unheard of for children to unsupervised, despite most people having large families, because there was a very real concern about kidnapping/human trafficking and other issues (and this concern wasn't unfounded, this city made national news for masked men in a van grabbing multiple children while their parents were holding their hands in a Walmart parking lot and bailing).
In my new city, I see 7-8 year old kids outdoors playing without any significant supervision in the neighborhood and allowed to walk to school on their own or walk/scooter to a friends house. It's a stark difference. There are complex issues here, and a lot of nuance, but on its face this made a statistical truth really obvious to me, which is that socioeconomic status nearly directly correlates to physical safety and crime rates. The simple truth is that the high average income city is just a much much much safer place for anyone to exist in, to walk in, and this includes children.
I feel like every time this issue gets discussed, there's always people ignoring the socioeconomic factor, and worse, pointing it out is taken as a blanket attack on poor people.
It's not socio-economics - it's Crime. They are correlated, but where they are not, children walk to school despite the poor neighborhood.
When I grew up in India, we were dirt poor and we literally hitchhiked to and from school each day from the age of maybe 7.
Students would get out of school, walk to the nearest busy intersection, and ask people to let us ride on the back of their motorbikes to get home. No helmets, no traffic lights, no sidewalks, no cell phones.
This wasn't in some rural area - this was in central Mumbai decades ago where people were poorer than the poorest US neighborhoods. ...yet the danger of being kidnapped or assaulted was effectively zero. It was far more common to be attacked by a stray dog than by any of the millions of dirt poor people in the city.
One factor (my guess - I observe anecdotally) is the high rate of drug use in the US. Drug use among the poor in India was extremely uncommon. However in the US (at least these days), it seems to be common among most people arrested (just my observation).
In almost all of the West, crime is associated to poverty. If you commit a robbery, being a poor is an "explanation". Individuals are rarely blamed, your circumstances determine your behaviour not your values.
This assumption breaks down once you leave almost any inner-city area, see levels of poverty that are at least as high in rural areas and there are very little crimes against people (although things like drugs are often common).
Drugs are part of it, culture, attitudes towards poverty, police behaviour, sentencing, social policy (i.e. welfare state, healthcare)...but yes, crime is basically out of control in societies with virtually non-existent levels of poverty.
Also, this doesn't have much to do with the subject. In the US, there have been cases of children walking through residential neighbourhood, a neighbour calls the police, the parents are arrested and then have to give up their children (there was one case where the parents actually lost their jobs too because they had jobs working with children, and they put on a register for child abusers)...suburban people have a fetish for crimes against children, crimes like this get treated very harshly but they let shoplifters or robbers walk free because of inequality, police in the US have no capacity for working with the community, it is completely unrelated to reality.
Drug use was always common and not just among people arrested.
"The War On Drugs" really butchered how we view that. Goodhart's Law states that "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." Since at least the 80s, incarceration for drug use has been batshit crazy in the U.S. It's the metric, so it's what people work for. So of course it's common among most people arrested.
But how does it relate to actual crime? Or to people feeling that kids are able to play outside safely?
Well, since I was a kid, crime rates have dropped in half (literally they're like 40-49% what they were in the late 80s early 90s). Maybe some part of that is indeed because we incarcerated so many people for drugs instead of actual crimes. But maybe not, and also even if it did, that doesn't change anything for the better. Things are actually worse now, societally. Why?
Back then, in objectively more dangerous times, it was normal for kids to play outside and everyone thought that was ok. Now, in objectively much safer times, that's not a thing.
I really don't think we can pin that on drugs or even crime. Especially not when we've incarcerated so many many people because of drugs and also crime rates have dropped in half.
No, there must be a societal effect that isn't really related to drugs or crime or actual danger.
This is interesting to me because growing up poor and with a single parent, I was allowed to run wild at a very young age. There was a whole crew of young kids in our apartment complex that would hang out and wander around unsupervised during daylight hours. Our parents were busy working and they probably needed some occasional time alone in those tiny apartments (my mother and I shared a 1 bedroom).
As for "high income cities" it doesn't get much higher income than Manhattan and I would be shocked if I saw some under-10 kids wandering around here on their lonesome!
I remember reading a news story about a poor single mom who was renting a room in an extended stay and working in a pizzarea across the street from it. She left her 9? year old alone in the room so she could work. Cops show up and take her kid and arrest her for child endangerment. They made it illegal to be a poor single working mom.
They made it illegal to be a single mom and not provide adequate childcare. Many families have both parents working, so the situation of needing to find someone to look after your child is not unique to single parents. That said, this is one of the reasons raising children on your own is more difficult.
As a 9 year old (admittedly not in the US), when there was a day without school but my parents still had to work, I was allowed to stay home on my own and ride my bicycle to a town 5km away to buy lunch. My 7 year old brother wasn't allowed to stay home, but came on similar trips with me.
The adequate childcare for a responsible 9 year old might be "tell them to call 911 if there's a serious emergency, or text you if anything comes up".
This is how I grew up in the US (central FL) in the 90's. I was 6-7 when I was riding my bike down to the corner store ~0.5mi away, and ~10 I was staying home and watching my sisters when necessary.
I was perfectly capable of cooking and looking after things. I just don't get this hysteria that seems to have gripped so many people. We are living in one of the safest times to be alive.
I grew up like this too (in the US in the 80s). I now have an 8 year old, and I think she would be fine at home alone for a while if necessary (especially with easy access to me via phone/Alexa/whatever).
However, in my state (Illinois), the government has made it illegal to leave my kids home alone until they are 14 (14!) years old. This is insanity, but I don't dare risk it because on the off chance anything happened and the police found out, I fear the government would take my children away.
I don't think the hysteria is coming from the average American. I think it is coming from nanny-state politicians who want to campaign on "cracking down on child abuse" or whatever.
14 is insanely old. 1/3 of my class were latchkey kids by 6th grade, and my (very overprotective compared to my peers') mom got a job when I was in 7th grade so I came home to an empty house at 13.
Firstly, many societies around the world would consider 9 yo to be mature enough to do things like....go to the shops, use a telephone, go to a friends place to play, or look after a pet. Or in this...stay at home?
I'm not sure if it's specifically an American thing (and seemingly by extension, Australia, since there's so much cultural osmosis), but it does feel like we are infantilising our children, right into their young adulthood. Apparently it's normal now for somebody in their 20's to continue living with their parents, and have their parents do things like cook all their meals for them, do their laundry, etc
Secondly, what you're suggesting specifically targets poorer, or possibly Black people - I'm not sure if that's your intent? However, you're basically saying it's not OK to be poor, and not be able to afford things like a live-in nanny, or daycare (if available).
A nine-year-old home alone for hours was downright common in the 80s and 90s, let alone back in the "golden age of unsupervised kids" (so I hear, anyway) 70s. It was basically fine.
I'm a recent immigrant to the US, and when talking to locals I need to bite my tongue to not say "for the land of the free, you sure have an awful lot of rules".
As much as America prides itself on their freedoms, they have rules that would baffle most developed countries. And at the same time they are incredibly loose in other contexts, such as safety and quality control e.g. substances that are banned in the EU are legal here.
After living in the US for 20 years we moved our family home to New Zealand as the kids were starting high/middle schools (11/13) - largely so that the kids could be independent - take the bus to school, hang around down town with their friends after school, learn how to use a map, navigate a city space in their heads etc etc we now have (20 years later) smart independent adults making their way in the world, some of their primary school friends back in the US are still living at home
Corporations are only free if they are associated with rich people. Small businesses often get screwed for one reason or another pretty much everywhere (the exact reasons vary from place to place).
This seems like a reasonable proposal to protect parents against subjective interpretation of the law. Responsible parents should be able to gauge the capabilities of their children and give them Independence based on that was capabilities opposed to fear of third-party criminalization
The problem is that there are busy bodies that will involve third parties, possibly with good intentions, but still.
For example
> But people have very different ideas of what “proper supervision” entails (as you know if you have, say, a spouse). One parent lets their kids play outside at age 6, another not till 12.
My kids play outside on their own now. At 3 and 6. My 6 year old has been doing so since about 3. Once she could follow basic rules (ie: dont go there).
At their current age we let them ride bikes in the street even, with the older in charge and both having to get well off the road the minute they see cars.
we watch them from the window but the point is to avoid intervening or helicoptering and allowing them to explore and be independent.
In fact we have to limit some media/shows that portray the parents as toys (ie: Bluey) because we notice it tends to stunt their independence and skews their overall expectations of a parent child relationship.
> The problem is that there are busy bodies that will involve third parties, possibly with good intentions, but still.
Important point. These Childhood Independence laws are a good start, but they need to be paired with "Mind Your Own Business" laws that have strong penalties for people who call the police or protective services when there is no neglect. It's too easy for busy bodies to falsely report someone and wreck their lives over nothing--and then hide behind the ol' Good Intentions excuse. People should have to be able to verbally articulate evidence of abuse when they call in to report children playing in their front lawns or walking to the store, and if they don't, their victims should at least be able to sue them for damages.
And if this also has the effect of cutting down the number of people casually calling the police on each other--all the better!
I think that's a big point regarding parental expectations, both from the child's and the parents point of view. Lack of child Independence goes hand in hand with increased expectations on parents to provide for their children. If a child gets hurt, the expectations often that the parent failed for not helicoptering Enough and assuring a risk-free environment. I didn't live it but my impression is that earlier Generations took more of a s** happens attitude and hope that it would be a learning experience
Agree. And its important to find a doctor that would support that as well. For example our pediatrician actively looks down on parents that bring their kid in for every sniffle and has told me outright that it should be normal for kids to have bumps and bruises or even break a limb (of course in ways that are indicative of activity) as it shows the kid is developing across the board, including motor skills.
> I didn't live it but my impression is that earlier Generations took more of a s* happens attitude and hope that it would be a learning experience
I did and enjoyed that aspect and its one I want to allow my kids to experience. And the Pediatrician agrees.
It goes hand in hand with why we are also avoiding overly competitive extra curriculars too, like baseball etc. I want them to be free after school to go play in the woods and be bored enough to get creative and explore the world around them.
some media/shows that portray the parents as toys (ie: Bluey) because we notice it tends to stunt their independence and skews their overall expectations of a parent child relationship.
could you elaborate on that please? bluey seems to promote a healthy parent-child relationship (at least in the few episodes that i saw). how does it stunt their independence and skew their expectations? are you suggesting that showing parents that are always available gives the wrong idea to children about their parents? how would that play out?
There are many episodes where the treat the parent as a toy. Specifically the dad.
For example. Theres an episode where the father is trying to give the kids a bath. They repeatedly ignore him that its time to be done playing it bathe. Or to stop splashing and make a mess. And by repeatedly i mean there's no control, eventually the Mom walks in and groans, there's a huge mess, kids still aren't bathed etc etc.
Its an overarching theme that the dad is largely a toy. And even when he tries to be stern or strict its joked and laughed off and ignored. Moreover that the kids cant really have "fun" without the dad being actively playing.
Overall the lesson is the kids learn the dad was right in the beginning and much effort would be saved by them listening, but that falls flat on a 3-6 year old passive listener (they do pick it up sometimes in the moment).
And there are actual times where I CANT be actively playing. I love to but its a time and place thing. There are times i have to fix things, clean up, prep dinner, etc etc. And our style is the kids in those moments need to be able to go and play.
Additionally, in our house, theres a time and place for playtime and joking and a time and place where you need to listen and do what we say. It can be a safety issue otherwise (ie: no stopping or listening in a store, parking lot, street etc). And even more the kids have to learn that when I say (or they say) "enough" that means enough and you need to respect the wishes of others, family or not.
Overall Bluey is decent, better than most even, and certainly tries to break that 50-80's mold of parents "not your firends" and theres a huge barrier/gap. But with all things, theres a happy medium. So as a result we have to moderate their intake of it (and plenty of other shows too). Bluey is just a good example where the fanbase can be rabid in their support, and sometimes forget that kids are kids and dont understand context or "real" vs "fake" well at all, something we as grown ups see as second nature now.
The Let Grow organization is doing more than just protecting parents. It's advocating for a parenting style that leads to more resilience in the next generation that will be voting, making and enforcing laws, and directing the future of this nation and humanity in general.
A big perpetrator of this is the designed environment surrounding car culture.
I moved somewhere where there's plenty of foot traffic, specifically so my kid will walk/bike to school and that is seen as completely normal.
Most Americans do not understand how horrible car dependence is for personal independence, yet defend it to the end for some reason. It's really a shame.
That doesn't really explain the changes over time in US behavior and child Independence. The US had a very strong car culture in the '50s to '80s as well, but children would still roam the streets on bicycle and on foot
It’s one thing to accomodate cars, it’s another for the entire landscape to optimize against them.
The average suburban family in the 1980s had a car. They also had well maintained sidewalks, civic organisations, and - in many cases - stores within walking or biking distance.
Post WW2 suburban communities had small roads (road width is a major factor in, i.e., how fast people feel safe driving), sidewalks, and - in general - were designed for a higher population density because this is what people wanted and were used to.
Over time, development optimised for housing and garage space with lower population densities. No one wants to go outside and walk or play if there’s no where to go.
Cars are extremely space inefficient, so when cities are built for cars it is done at the expense of more efficient transportation methods. And what you're left with in the end is a very inefficient transportation system that REQUIRES a car. An efficient system would simply make cars optional and therefore you have more independence as you have more options - not to mention a system better at moving people.
Follow Brent Toderian @BrentToderian and Bella Chu @bellachu10 on twitter for more.
it's that everything is designed around cars.
as a 15 year old i traveled through multiple countries in europe on my bike, alone.
as a 17 year old in the US i was not able to go anywhere without getting a ride in a car. any interesting places to go to were to far away to even reach conveniently by bike. everything was designed around and dependent on cars.
as a very independent youth i considered this experience an interesting lesson on what it means to be dependent, but most certainly growing up there would have been different. i have seen other youth struggling with the sudden change when they turned 18 and were expected to act like independent adults instead of the dependent youth they were until then.
> any interesting places to go to were to far away to even reach conveniently by bike.
Isn't this just a result of the country being more spread out in general? For this reason, cars are obviously useful. And because people have them... well, yes, it becomes circular. I think bikes are a pretty common thing to own in the U.S., though. Adults mostly use them for recreation, but minors definitely use them to get around. What part of the U.S. were you in? This is probably a large factor.
> as a very independent youth i considered this experience an interesting lesson on what it means to be dependent, but most certainly growing up there would have been different. i have seen other youth struggling with the sudden change when they turned 18 and were expected to act like independent adults instead of the dependent youth they were until then.
Generally in the U.S. you get your license as soon as possible (around 16), and work out whatever situation you can for a vehicle. It's true that we seem to be developing a dependency problem in the U.S., pushing maturity further and further out, but I don't think cars are the issue. Maybe in large cities; I can't really speak to the situation in those.
Isn't this just a result of the country being more spread out in general?
yes, but why is that? because people chose it that way and cars supported it. yes, it is circular. it could have developed differently, only high density urban centers where you don't need cars and large swaths of empty in between. these urban centers exist. eg. new york, dc and a few others that i am not familiar with, but contrast with san diego and los angeles and many others which are spread out for no good reason.
suburbia is the name of the disease that is responsible for this problem.
bikes are a pretty common thing to own in the U.S., though. Adults mostly use them for recreation, but minors definitely use them to get around.
sure, kids bike around in the neighborhood to visit their friends, but that also counts as recreational use. they are not using them to go to school, or to the movies or for errands, because they can't. the distances are to far.
the area i am talking about was one of those bedroom communities outside of D.C. probably the worst example. there was literally nothing of interest there, except maybe forests, but i didn't know about those because i didn't have access to a map. my friend there didn't get a car until he was able to save up for one by himself. his parents weren't poor. but they weren't rich either, so he had to pay for himself. which didn't happen until he was 18.
cars absolutely are the issue because not every youth can afford them, and even if they can, getting the freedom to move around at 16 is a far cry from 10year olds who have access to public transport
> yes, but why is that? because people chose it that way and cars supported it.
The country is a hell of a lot older than the automobile, and much development occurred before it. It's spread out in general because we had a lot of land compared to the number of people who were rapidly settling it.
> it could have developed differently, only high density urban centers where you don't need cars and large swaths of empty in between.
Not everyone wants to live in an urban center. I would be chronically depressed in such an environment.
> new york, dc and a few others that i am not familiar with, but contrast with san diego and los angeles
These are all huge cities --- metropolises --- (okay, DC is a bit of a weird one) and while they have large populations, I cannot consider them representative of the U.S. overall.
> the area i am talking about was one of those bedroom communities outside of D.C. probably the worst example.
Absolutely; this is not representative of the U.S.
> they are not using them to go to school, or to the movies or for errands, because they can't
Because they don't want to. This used to be different. Some decades past, it was not unusual to bike a few miles (say, less than 10) to get where you wanted to go. It was also not considered unreasonable to walk a few miles to school everyday, often over terrain that I see people in this thread calling "unwalkable". Society changed.
When I didn't have a license for several years, I biked everywhere. My maximum range for a day trip was about 35 miles. I don't do that anymore; it's just far more convenient to do that sort of thing in a car, especially, you know, when there's a foot of snow on the ground. But the way I see it, you do what you have to do.
> cars absolutely are the issue because not every youth can afford them
Yes, but in general, that means you borrow your parents' car, and save for something cheap. Something you repair and maintain yourself if you need to. Used auto prices got kind of crazy since the pandemic, but my experience growing up with decidedly non-wealthy families, is that people found a way.
One thing that is a real issue financially, is the insane premiums on mandatory auto insurance in some areas, notably New York state.
we had a lot of land compared to the number of people who were rapidly settling it
that, and many people came to america to start a new life away from the oppressive landlords in europe. many were also poor, meaning that they had to provide for themselves, which is easier if you have land to grow your own food. so quite naturally people favored to be away from the cities.
but modern suburbs are not that. i can understand living in the city where the jobs are or out in the country where you grow your own food. suburbs have neither of that.
i grew up in cities and on farms growing crops and herding cows. when i lived in american suburbs i found those depressing. i have been to a few places, and while DC bedroom communities may be the worst, suburbs elsewhere were not much better. it doesn't help that in movies you see much of the same. so if those suburbs are not representative, then what is?
> It doesn't help that in movies you see much of the same. so if those suburbs are not representative, then what is?
Well, I do think that Hollywood is biased towards certain demographics.
> but modern suburbs are not that. i can understand living in the city where the jobs are or out in the country where you grow your own food. suburbs have neither of that.
Many people want the city job with the space to raise kids; without the claustrophobia of the big city. Midwestern suburbs achieve that, but suburb means different things to different areas. My suburbs are not the suburbs of the coasts. Still, I would think the general logic would apply, but having not lived in such places, it is not really my place to judge. Maybe they really should just die out and be replaced.
Personally, I hate suburbs almost as much as the city; I belong in the country.
I guess, if I were to say one thing for certain: the country is large. Sweeping statements about it can be difficult to make with accuracy.
A friend was going to drop off a package at UPS, when his kid fell asleep in the car on the way. Although there are parking spaces 10 feet from the UPS store (which has huge glass windows, so he could have seen the kid the whole time), he chose not to go inside.
He had googled and discovered that it is illegal to leave a child unattended in a car in CA for any period of time. It would have taken 30 seconds in the store to drop off the package. But my buddy wanted to be law-abiding, so he waited until the kid woke up before going in to drop off the package.
When I looked it up I saw that it's an infraction (not a misdemeanor or felony), and the penalty is only $100. [1] But it could lead to CPS being called, which is a much, much bigger deal.
So why not make the law something reasonable, related to how long the child is actually left in the vehicle, and whether the parent is creating a risk to the life of the child (based on temperature, for example)? It seems like the people who are likely to be influenced by this law are those who are sensitive/compliant enough to even know it exists, and people who would consider leaving their kids in the car and forgetting for 15 minutes would be completely unaffected.
I shudder every time I see a thread related to this topic (child protective services making insane decisions with no oversight, because the law is vague enough to let them do so).
It's not just the vagueness of the law, it's a system and culture in which pursuing a bullshit claim draws no punishment, but ignoring a claim that a reasonable person would judge to be bullshit and turning out to be wrong may ruin your life.
I feel that with the burgeoning politicization of this function (consider their role in anti-transgender laws) things can go in a very dark direction very fast.
Well, no surprise it's underfunded if it has to investigate literally every third kid (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34916782) - if they tightened up the criteria so that CPS would ignore at least half of this unreasonable number of cases, then they might have enough funding; they seem to be doing so much work that shouldn't be done at all.
I think we should vocalize the concept of "negative work" more often. That being work with which society as a whole would be better off if left undone.
There's some other fundamental problem if cops and CPS were pulling these stunts anyway. Maybe some better mechanism for recourse against overreach is needed?
You've got basically four avenues for this, leading to some kind of CPS and police overreach.
1) Cops just seeing a kid walking. It happens.
2) CPS hearing rumors, whatever.
3) Vindictive exes and people "in house."
4) Busybody neighbors, the nosy Karens.
Both police and CPS probably have some "duty" to begin some sort of action upon reporting, but I think separating the reporting from the action is important. And false reporting ought to be penalized, as in, let's not weaponize our systems.
First I'd like to know the incidence rate. We tend to see a few specific examples regurgitated repeatedly for several years after they occur, which leads me to suspect that it perhaps doesn't happen that often. This is a nation of 330 million people, after all, so it's unrealistic to expect stupidity will happen zero times.
I agree with what you say in principle, but if that's true the (possibly) few cases of overreach have to have remedy for those that are injured. But now we're starting to get into the territory of issues of qualified immunity are an issue (recently discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34901629, for example).
Having said that, I think the tendency of state agencies, in a political landscape where we regularly justify increased legal intrusiveness into our lives using "think of the children" arguments, to use state power to force our personal cultural prerogatives, and to ask the state to generally solve our problems for us, will be for "stupid" child protective actions to increase over time.
So I applaud the actions to nip this is in the bud... assuming you're right.
In many places, cops will nearly always show up when called. I left an 8 year old kid in a car (parked in the shade) for 5 minutes when running an errand and as I was getting in the car, a cop showed up. Someone had called 911. Cop asked how old the kid was, I said "8" and they rolled their eyes and left.
The problem happens further up the funnel than the actual law. The usual pattern is something like: parent gets reported by local busybody, gets investigated and/or arrested, everything is dismissed after a couple of weeks but in the meantime their life has been massively disrupted. Changing the law doesn't necessarily fix that because what the parent was doing was never illegal in the first place.
Ideally, the parent should at least be able to sue the busybody for damages in this case. If no evidence of wrongdoing is found, the busybody should be identified so the parent knows who to take legal action against.
Wouldn't that create a bad incentive to not report crime then? Seems like the right response is to have the police/CPS act properly than to try and hold Karen's accountable.
It would definitely disincentivize false reporting, and make people think twice if they are not sure. Which would be good incentives. We have far too many people calling the police casually for non-emergency reasons and as a bad faith way to bring violence to someone they don't like, like SWATing. Every month another E-911 dispatch center complains they're overloaded. There's a subset of Americans who simply can't mind their own business and feel they have to go out and bully people, and the lack of accountability and consequences just encourages them.
Yes, there may be a handful of real crimes that go unreported, but I'm kind of neutral on that. It's not the public's job to tattle on each other by triggering a potentially deadly police response. Having strong accountability for the reporter would mean only the most serious, obvious, violent crimes get reported.
Something that I've noticed, though I can't say whether it's a cause or an effect (or neither) is that today's kids (including my own to some extent) are much more busy than I ever was.
I never had homework in grade school, and if I was doing organized activities, they were pretty minimal (one afternoon per week of cello lessons, and a half hour a day of practicing). Today, kids have homework starting in the early grades, and multiple extracurriculars that involve being driven somewhere. There's no time to go outside.
Also, we're not in a baby boom, so the houses with kids are more scattered. When I was a kid, there were a couple dozen other kids up and down the street, so we weren't ever playing outside alone. And we were looking out for one another, even if not precisely in the way that our parents hoped.
Aha! I think it is a glimpse into the future of the country here (Germany).
When I was young, I walked to school starting at age 6, and I walked to kindergarten even earlier. (And I played naked in the garden, in a small swimming pool with neighbour's kids (all genders).) It was also no problem to be sent to buy cigarettes, which in hindsight, I find less OK...
Today, parents drive their children to school by car, in walking distance. I don't know how they have time for that, but they cause traffic jams they then complain about.
From here, I am sure we will get a situation like in the US where parents may get into trouble if they give their children some independence.
And from there, the US now gets laws that make it reasonable again to give some independence. Which will follow here, too, I am sure.
> but I could never get the cashiers to let me buy cigs for my parents
Absolutely no problem. I was even sent by the school janitor during breaks to buy him cigarettes (i.e., off school campus -- I am sure that wasn't legal even back then). Different times...
Is this problem not a result of the mass psychosis about pedophiles and child-eating devil-worshippers that went on in the late 80's? As far as I understand it, kids were more independent prior to that period. There was a time where the news bites would have you think you couldn't walk a few feet without there being the remains of a victim buried somewhere near you.
America is an extremely peaceful place for many millions of families. There are thousands of smaller communities throughout the vast country where crime is background noise and kids can and do run around outside if they want, even today.
Some places are running untested, never before seen dev code in production trying to improve the justice system, and they virtually always make things much worse, like California is doing and certain metros around the country.
America is home to over 21M individuals with a net worth of $1M or more.
For them, America is free; perhaps more free than <insert EU country here>.
The remaining 310M exist to create freedom for the 21M. They are pacified with the propaganda of class: the "middle class"; the "working class"; the poor; the prisoners.
Each person below the peak of the pyramid is taught from a young age to fear becoming part of the level below.
Each person below the peak of the pyramid is taught from a young age that every level is rigged with a series of doors which lead directly to the basement in which they will find the good old 13thAmendmentLoophole™.
Additionally, each person below the peak of the pyramid is taught from a young age that there exist a few hidden doors on each level which lead to a secret route that goes directly to the top. These doors were initially installed by Horatio Alger Jr, but have been maintained by countless persons since. Rumors exist that John Steinbeck scrawled expletives on a few.
Since 1971 or so the the pyramid has evolved into an incredibly-slippery cone. It keeps growing and growing, but getting thinner and more slippery as time goes on. Rumors exist that it is stretching itself to Mars, but I imagine it will likely fall short of that since the cone is made from plastic.
Our relationship to actual, in-practice freedom has always been kind of... weird, considering how obsessed with freedom we seem to be. We seem more concerned with high-level theoretical freedom than with actual liberty we experience in the day-to-day, which is indeed sub-par compared to many of our peer states. And we didn't credibly try to even extend that much freedom to ~every US adult until the last quarter or 30% of our country's existence.
Instead of defunding the police we should just turn half the police force into traffic cops. Take away their squad cars, give them bicycles, and just have them run speed traps in every neighborhood.
No need for even speed traps. I think anywhere with a police force should be required to also set up and fund a parallel "Helper Force" of at least equal manpower, whose job is to assist people in trouble rather than shoot or arrest them. Whenever there is a situation where a deadly violent response is not needed, the Helper Force could be deployed instead of the police.
Could it also be that in general, Americans are having fewer children so there are that many more out of touch adults out there? How many of the people reporting solo kids have children of their own?
This has got to be a big component of it. There was a thread I watched on reddit that showed a kid jumping on the trays on an airplane, it did look bad but it was like a 15 second video. Literally anyone's kid might do this if god forbid you doze off for 5 minutes on the airplane where it is more or less impossible for the kid to escape.
There were thousands of comments almost all stating how awful the parents are for not maintaining constant concentration every single second for their kids entire lives such that they weren't able to stop a kid from god forbid jumping up and down for a few seconds while mom fell asleep. It made it clear to me especially the common 20 something feels a deep sense of power to control other's children while simultaneously having no practical understanding of the situation.
In my own lobbying efforts I’ve found it very easy to get bipartisan support and things passed
It comes down to psychology and understanding people
A decade ago I would have thought getting any legislative body’s attention would be difficult, but all the special interests moved to far extremes of their parties for … reasons … to pursue things that will never get passed. They just left the center unguarded and forgot how to communicate, it seems. I understand this phenomenon is a reflection of broader society, just am surprised that it has affected “shadow organizations” or professional lobbying groups that have navigated so many political environments over time. Anyway, seize opportunity when you see it.
It is kind of addicting to alter reality in places you cant even register to vote in.
If you believe a handful of cases of overzealous cops/social workers questioning the decisions of parents occuring sporadically over decades spread wide and far across the land in a country of 332,000,000 is indicative of a widespread problem, you have fallen for the social media outrage-generation agitprop trick.
Golf clap.
Articles about this rehash the same three cases endlessly and wikipedia articles about media and organizations related to childhood independence are so devoid of citations and examples that if they were about any other subject they would be deleted.
I blame Ottis Toole for the kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh, and Adam's dad for terrorizing Americans into this.
The difference between my childhood and those a generation later can not be more stark. We were free to roam far and wide, they were never let outside.
The generation after that had phones and internet, and never wanted to go outside.
I am becoming more and more happy that I don’t live in that country. Everything seems insane. It has turned insane, it seems to totally have lost its way the latter decades.
For some deep history on this particular cultural expression, I highly recommend reading Albion's Seed.
This cultural folkway of extreme supervision traces its roots all the way back to the Puritans' child-rearing folkway: "breaking the will." It's no coincidence that the most egregious of these family harassment cases take place in Puritan colonies.
I emphasize once more, for a very interesting and useful background on this and many other American cultural habits, read Albion's Seed. You will gain a very rich and deep understanding of modern American politics and regional-cultural values.
But it wasn't like this before tho... ~20-30 years ago it was perfectly normal for American kids to be all over outdoors playing by themselves... what caused the regression?
Yeah, I'm willing to believe that New England always has the highest level of busybodies, but the problem is that the overall level of busybodies has increased nationwide.
Part of the issue is that roads and American autophilia make the world unsafe and inaccessible without transportation. Conspiracy theorists want to say that the “push for 15 minute spheres is the state trying to control us” but that is just so braindead it hurts to look at.
Very worrying to see this here. The fact that the population has resorted to using the government to create such a bill goes to show the problem is not being looked at in the right perspective. A silly solution to a serious problem
I live in a small town in Canada, it's extremely common to see 5 to 10 year olds riding toboggans downhill to school every day.
The ones who live downhill from school walk up in the morning carrying their tobaggans, and then ride them home at the end of the day.
Also at our local ski hill, once kids are old enough to ski, it's perfectly normal for them to ski "alone" - they just ask any random adult to help them onto the chairlift. Getting off is no problem. The parents ski where they want, or have a coffee in the main building while the kids are out doing that.
It's extremely common to see packs of 5 to 10 year olds skiing around without any adults.
Everyone loves it that way, and nobody wants it to change.
This is neat and all, but the problem is very much downstream of the children-out-of-wedlock problem, which is downstream of so-called "sexual liberation" (a misuse of both the term "sexual" and the term "liberation"), which is downstream of an inconsistent sexual education, which is downstream of an inconsistent ethics of sex, which is downstream of the Fall (save for a few unmentioned steps).
I don't see what you are talking about here? The article is discussing passing laws to prevent CPS from charging people with child abuse for not helicopter parenting their children. As other people have mentioned, children aren't in much danger and so this increases their independence. I assume by children-out-of-wedlock problem you mean that there are more single parents now? (I have not checked if this is true) I don't understand how more parents being single is related to the CPS/busybody neighbors/police overreaching more though.
When you disintegrate the family unit, you stimulate the demand for outside intervention, especially in the form of state-backed "services". Like anything, because no one watches the watchers (except other watchers appointed appoint to watch the watchers that are not themselves watched), there is plenty of room for abuse of power. CPS has been out of control for decades now, and it largely has to do with the fact that in many states the first resort is removing the child from their parents.
I'm not necessarily poopoo-ing the laws they're trying to pass, I'm just saying that these laws don't really address the bigger issue of the why these services were brought into being in the first place (widespread child abandonment and neglect in mostly industrialized areas), and they do not address the question of whether or not the genesis of these services has anything to do with why they behave the way they do.
The problem is very-much downstream, not wholly-determined. Obviously this issue criss-crosses with other issues, such as race, infrastructure, compulsory education, et cetera. But I would rank doctrine of sex as the brightest star in this constellation. It isn't a coincidence that the UK is second behind us. Its founding event was the invention of divorce.
Not sure what constitutes "abuse" in your book, since it is an extremely vague charge and men and women tend to exercise their malevolence in ways befitting their own aptitudes (men typically with more brawn, women typically with more subtlety). But in any case, I hate to break it to you but divorce was not created for the purpose of "womens' liberation", it was created to justify serial monogamy.
This law will not give "poor kids more independence", it absolves the parent or guardian of legal responsibility for their children being unsupervised.
I can't be the only one that's seen the hundreds if not THOUSANDS of children (under 18) fighting, causing mayhem, attacking innocent people, and property destruction videos that circulate all over the internet.
Will this help edge cases? The mom working at the pizza shop across the parking lot of a hotel where her child is staying? Sure.
> I can't be the only one that's seen the hundreds if not THOUSANDS of children (under 18) fighting, causing mayhem, attacking innocent people, and property destruction videos that circulate all over the internet.
I can’t think of a worse way to assess the state of society than by consuming viral videos circulated online. This is a really disturbing way to form or justify opinions.
Really? You don't think social media, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, OnlyFans, 4chan, et al, is a mirror image of the current society as a whole?
How do you assess the state of society? Without looking at the content said society produces?
The news makes money when you're engaged. The easiest way to keep you engaged is with anger and fear. That's why "if it bleeds, it leads" is a traditional maxim of television media. Social media is the same. They're trying to make money by keeping you engaged.
Neither the news nor social media is trying to give you a mirror of society. They are telling you the worst things that happen to keep you watching, not to give you a realistic picture of risk levels of activities.
Is this something you're not familiar with? Most adults have at least some awareness of this.
I understand your concern and feel that part of the problem is that in many areas in the US it's not comfortable or safe for adults to be out walking (unless they are with their dog.) The streets aren't set up for it, the police think it's weird behavior, and as a result people stay inside which means there is less adult supervision for the children out in public.
If you ever visit Europe you can expect to have your mind blown as you will see nine year olds walking themselves to school, taking public transit independently, as the norm. This works because there are always adults out and about.
If you ever visit most of the United States, your mind will be blown as well. Every morning all the kids in my neighborhood walk to the elementary school, from kindergarten up. There are crossing guards at a few key crossing points, but for the most part the kids are left unattended.
Parent's aren't being investigated for negligance because of 15-18 year olds. This is about 8 year olds. They're not the ones being reckless.
Also perhaps if young kids get a bit more freedom, they'd make more reasonable decisions when they're older? This could even help the "mayhem" you're worried about.
You haven't read the text of any of the bills, have you?
> A CHILD IS NOT NEGLECTED WHEN ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN INDEPENDENT ACTIVITIES THAT A REASONABLE AND PRUDENT PARENT, GUARDIAN, OR LEGAL CUSTODIAN WOULD CONSIDER SAFE GIVEN THE CHILD'S MATURITY, CONDITION, AND ABILITIES
Which part of this language triggers your apocalyptic fears?
Actually after reading the bill you linked (apologies I was looking at the other states bills) you left out the main point that does actually reduce my "apocalyptic fears"
IV) REMAINING IN A HOME OR OTHER LOCATION THAT A REASONABLE AND PRUDENT PARENT, GUARDIAN, OR LEGAL CUSTODIAN WOULD CONSIDER SAFE FOR THE CHILD.
So not roaming around the city or in a random location.
I left out all the examples because they are "including but not limited to"—the text I included is the main bit that defines what the principle of the law actually is, the bullets are given by way of example and to spell out specific cases that should never be left to a judge to interpret.
If a parent could reasonably decide that a child should be allowed to roam free, taking into account that child's maturity, this law would allow that parent to decide that.
No, you're restricting it more than the law calls for. A child is not neglected when they are allowed to participate in any activities that a reasonable and prudent parent would judge to be within their capabilities. You're getting too fixated on that one example, and there are a lot of places in the US where a child of a certain age can and should be allowed to roam pretty much anywhere.
You're correct the language does leave it up to judicial interpretation, and I find that to be a weakness in the law, because it leaves too much room for police and CPS to claim that they thought they were doing the right thing.
I think they should restrict activity in the way I understood it. Restrict to home and or a safe location and remove the judicial interpretation. I would be 100% fine with that.
This is how you get children who never grow up able to take care of themselves. All of those things you're so worried about children doing? To the extent they happen at all, you're just pushing those things off until they're 18, delaying the developmental process and shoving those growing pains into the workforce and adult society. Moreover, it's hard to learn how to cope with independence without some measure of... independence. Another thing you don't want to be first learning at 18.
I strongly suggest you put down the devices and go live a little. As others have explained, social media feeds are not in any way an accurate or reasonable reflection of societal norms.
Everything you listed is already a crime or will swiftly involve child services for due to obvious behavior problems in the children. These laws are entirely about protecting responsible parents who want to let their children learn to peacefully navigate the outdoors in a city.
that's a different problem. or are you seriously suggesting that even teenagers not be allowed to be unsupervised until they are 18? that's ridiculous.
"Ashley Smith, a foster dad, testified about being investigated for neglect because one afternoon his daughter, 8, was doing her homework on the front lawn. A passerby reported an “unsupervised” child (not knowing Ashley was actually inside). The upshot: “We went through a period of eight weeks of not knowing if we would continue being able to keep our children,” said Ashley."
That's just astonishing!