
Why Do We Judge Parents for Putting Kids at Perceived But Unreal Risk? - mindfulgeek
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/08/22/490847797/why-do-we-judge-parents-for-putting-kids-at-perceived-but-unreal-risk?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160822
======
rdtsc
Even since I was 10 or so I would often come back to school on my own. Then
let myself into our apartment. Eat some lunch, do homework, play until my
parents came home in the evening. I was effectively often alone for about 4 or
so hours.

I wouldn't let my kid do it here in US. Not because I wouldn't trust them or
think it is dangerous. But because I am afraid what neighbors, school, CPS
would do.

My co-worker let his kids play in the cul-de-sac for an hour while they
watched from the house. An anonymous neighbor reported them to police, and a
sequence of embarrassing calls at work ensued, statements to police, follow up
visits from police, etc.

And this is not some dangerous part of the city. This is suburbs, as safe as
they come.

But apparently you are never safe from neighbors with an agenda.

And the thing is, there is nothing you can say or do, even if you knew this
neighbor. "Well I was worried for the children!". Unless they openly confessed
it was because you cut the lawn wrong or they don't like the color of your
house, there is nothing you can do to them (well maybe turn evil and report
them for other irrational fears -- terrorism "but I was worried about this
country's safety, swear heard them talk about buying a lot of fertilizer").

The interesting thing is, once those in power act irrationally about
something. There will always be people to exploit that element. I heard from
my grandparents how neighbors would rat on each other imaginary things during
Stalin's times. The results were usually the neighbors family would be taken
in the middle the night and sent to Siberia never to be seen again. This is of
course, an extreme example but it illustrates, how irrationality can and will
be exploited.

~~~
JonnieCache
One hears of this kind of thing happening in the US all the time (obviously it
is a big place.) I always wonder what proportion of it is due to genuine
misplaced concern for the children, and how much of it is strife of the "they
don't like the color of your house" variety.

One thinks of Homeowner Associations and the way they place fines and pseudo-
legal orders on people, a concept which is utterly anathema to the english.
The two cultures have very different ideas of privacy.

~~~
jackcosgrove
Honestly, I think a lot of this nannying comes from middle aged people who
never had children, but maybe who wanted them and could not have them. So
there's an element of ignorance about how autonomous children can be, and also
jealousy and revenge against those who have what they wanted and can no longer
have.

~~~
CodeMage
Nannying is just one aspect of a more pervasive underlying cultural problem: a
lot of people here seem to feel entitled to impose their opinions and judgment
on others. Not just share them, but actually impose them.

~~~
ghaff
I'm not sure this is anything particularly new. There have always been
busybodies. What probably is newer is that the local government is, for better
or worse, quicker to inject themselves into domestic situations than they may
have been in the past.

The challenge is that, if someone sees behavior that isn't the norm in their
experience, and that they personally consider (rightly or wrongly) to be
insanely dangerous, what are they really to do? OK, they probably shouldn't
raise a stink if some kid is riding a bike without a helmet. What if they're
playing with firecrackers?

~~~
CodeMage
I agree, there are busybodies everywhere and they have always existed. What's
new to me, who have lived in two very different countries before coming here
to the US, is how often and how easily those busybodies recur to authorities.

Unlike other places I've lived in, here there is a real fear that someone will
dislike the way you raise your children and report you, creating much more
serious problems for you than they might do elsewhere, at least not with the
same ease.

I think it has a lot to do with what @stinkytaco said in his reply. It's a
breakdown in communication and the same thing happens in other aspects of our
lives, not just the child-rearing. I believe that this is what happens when
there's so much emphasis on personal, individual freedom at the expense of
larger communities those individuals form part of, all the way to the largest
community -- the society itself.

------
Afton
I'm most interested in the enshrinement into law of these risk assessments,
where if you disagree with the risk assessments you get flagged for CPS or
criminal judgement. Even if you 'win', society just imposed a massive,
_massive_ cost on you (and your children) for disagreeing about the relative
risk of an action.

There needs to be some way of walking this back, but I can't think what that
might be except literally trying to get a law in place giving parents broad
immunity. I can't even really imagine how such a law would be worded without
completely gutting CPS and related organizations in other countries.

~~~
1123581321
I think the struggle for civil forfeiture reform offers some suggestions.
Child Services operates similarly to these programs in that they can size
children and impose sanctions without a court finding any wrongdoing first.

Child Services makes use of broad powers and would indeed be "gutted" if they
couldn't act until neglectful parents were tried or pled guilty. I think that
is a good tradeoff. Similarly, I don't mind that civil forfeiture reform lets
drug dealers continue to drive sometimes. This is a major political
controversy, though.

~~~
Afton
Can't really agree though. The issue with child services is that they can act
faster than the criminal system. You might want to say that they couldn't act
to remove or otherwise enforce parental restrictions until criminal charges
are made (leaving other less adversarial actions available). An unintended
consequence of this may be that charges are made much more easily for the
purpose of unblocking child services.

Alternatively, it may be that we want to take the same 'rational' look at risk
that we want the courts/child services to take. Maybe the few kids that get
taken away 'unreasonably' are actually just the cost of having an otherwise
sane system. Lest that come off as callous, I just mean that if you have a
country of 300 million, you'll get some pretty far out scenarios played out.
You don't necessarily want to add process to protect those very few scenarios
that are outrageous because it may cost more (by e.g. tying CPS' hands so that
they can't take _actually_ at-risk children out of homes).

I guess I'm suggesting that this might, in the end, be much ado about nothing.
It's hard to say without numbers and analysis.

~~~
lukeschlather
Realistically, CPS is overloaded. I know people who've worked with CPS, and I
think if you went and worked with CPS for a few months you would change your
tune pretty quickly. They don't have the resources to take children and put
them into foster care on a hunch.

~~~
1123581321
The percentage of placements is at a nadir but will change as budget crises
are solved, child services scandals are forgotten, improved reporting and
improvement plan maintenance technology is deployed, outsourcing becomes more
common, etc. It is better to solve this problem than to rely on underfunding
to lessen the problem's impact.

------
nostromo
The same is true for terrorism of course. Terrorism catches our attention
because it's morally outrageous, not because it's statistically dangerous to
people in Western countries.

But if you talk with "regular people", you'll notice that media coverage gives
people an unwarranted fear of outlier events: terrorism, mass shootings, plane
crashes, etc.

In reality, almost everyone in the US should fear the real killers: obesity,
cancer, stroke, etc.

~~~
ams6110
I think it's almost 100% news media sensationalism.

News media today is not about investigative reporting, or real news. It's
about selling ads and getting eyeballs. So they report rare events as if they
happen every day and you need to keep watching so you know what to do about
it.

The news media today is toxic. You could do little more to improve your
outlook on life and the future than simply not watching it. At all. I haven't
watched a news program on any major network or any cable news in several
years, and I don't miss it at all.

~~~
kayla210
I agree. It seems like everything on the news is blown out of proportion and
beaten to death in an attempt to fill the day with "interesting" stuff. No,
this is just making people scared to go outside and actually enjoy life.

I've stopped watching the news and just read it whenever I hear of something
going on that piques my interest on the Internet. It's pointless for me to
watch 24-hour news coverage of a shooting or kidnapping that is just going to
make me think less of the world I live in.

------
larrik
> A 2-year-old was found unattended after his parents allegedly left home to
> play Pokémon Go.

> How much risk was there of some harm coming to the child while the parents
> were gone?

As a parent to young children, I would say pretty damn high, actually. Kids do
stupid things all the time, and if you aren't there, and they know you aren't
there, there is no limit to the stupid things a 2 year old can do. It's a
normal part of growing up, but that doesn't make it safe to do it alone in the
slightest.

That said, I agree with the gist of the article overall.

~~~
djsumdog
I could see that. A two year old could easily run out into traffic. A 7 or 8
year old, not so much.

I remember years ago about a women who had the police escort a kid to her
house because she'd let him bicycle to school (wearing a helmet and it was < 2
miles). That is kinda crazy. When I went to elementary school (early 90s),
there was a whole group of kids who walked to school. Sometimes the teacher in
charge of the gate would forgot to unlock it and we'd see them all pile up
while in homeroom (huge fence, took like 15 min to walk around so most kids
would just wait).

~~~
fireflash38
> A two year old could easily run out into traffic. A 7 or 8 year old, not so
> much.

You overestimate 7 & 8 year olds. I know I definitely did. Ran into the side
of a moving car.

~~~
gambiting
I used to walk to school all by myself when I was 7 - I had to lock the door
behind me, cross two roads to get to school, come back, let myself in, and
have a fruit or a sandwich while I waited for my parents to come back. That
was in 1998. Everyone walked to school - maybe one kid got dropped off by his
parents but he was from a "rich" family and no one liked him because of it.

~~~
vidarh
Same here. When I was 7 I had a half hour walk to/from school. Many of my
class mates had similar distances to walk. We we walked along busy roads, and
some had to cross them. We'd also be home alone for hours afterwards.

At one point my parents got worried that maybe it was to much, and got me a
child minder. I proceeded to boycott her by dropping my school bag, leaving to
play outside and not coming back until my parents would be there to pick me up
- after a couple of weeks of that they decided it was pointless and let me be
at home by myself again instead.

------
paulrpotts
My wife has been yelled at by strangers for filling up the car with gas, then
walking 25 feet from the gas pump to the payment window and paying for the
gas... because our kids were in the car 25 feet away.

She's had the police and the neighborhood watch called repeatedly because our
children were playing in our own yard.

It's not a world I recognize and I'm increasingly disturbed by people's
strange ideas about children.

~~~
arprocter
When I was a kid my parents would let me pump their gas. I also ran errands in
town by myself, and was left to look after younger siblings before my teens.

IMO the sooner you're given responsibilities the sooner you learn to be
responsible.

As when there was talk of raising the driving age because 'all these teens are
dying' \- it's inexperience, not so much the age which matters.

~~~
paulrpotts
Yeah, I myself was a latch-key kid, biked everywhere, had a landscaping job at
14 and worked in grocery stores throughout high school.

Although I'm not super-excited about putting teenagers behind the wheels of
cars until their brains have caught up with their bodies and they don't think
they are immortal any more...

~~~
arprocter
Anecdotal; but my first accident was in my 20s, several years into my driving
career.

I think the fact a lot of people's first car is normally old, cheap and crappy
has a lot to do with it. It's commonly believed it's an inevitability young
drivers will wreck and then we put them in the most unsafe vehicles
available...

------
BoppreH
Interesting research. Looks like a cognitive bias related to the reverse-Halo
Effect (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect)
). The mother left for some morally bad reason, so the predicted events
receive bad associations (larger risk).

Sounds easily exploitable too. Want to advertise something dangerous? Just
show people doing it in morally good situations.

~~~
derefr
I started out thinking that, but after considering it some more, I'm not sure
it's _just_ a halo effect.

Here's a chain of correlations: parents who leave their children alone at
random (rather than in a structured and pre-planned way) are probably more
impulsive. Trait-impulsivity is hereditary. Thus, leaving a (blood-related)
child alone is _predictive_ of that child taking more risks and being the kind
of child who _can 't_ be left alone safely.

(On the other hand, leaving a child you're the adoptive parent or guardian of
alone isn't predictive of anything.)

~~~
emodendroket
If it has some sort of deep evolutionary roots, why has it arisen in the past
like half-century?

------
mighty_atomic_c
This is a strong reason why I don't want to raise children in the U.S. I grew
up in a very controlled environment with very controlling, paranoid parents
and I am still dealing with the many consequences of that.

To think that I would be forced to raise children to be deficient per social
rules is unsettling at best, and disturbing when considering that this is
happening everywhere in the US.

What could the future hold in store? How much more extreme can this get?

------
tvaughan
I really wish people in the US would prefix these sort of statements with "In
the US, we ..." The rest of the world isn't so crazy. Speaking as if what
people in the US do is universal makes these sort of things seem as though
they're the result of the passage of time, that some other solution just isn't
possible, that the outcome was inevitable, and those people affected are
somehow victims. When really it's a matter of deliberate choices some people
made, in the US. Today's article on ADHD also suffers from the same myopic
perspective.

~~~
jessaustin
It's totally reasonable to want to distance yourself from this sort of thing.
However, NPR is an explicitly American news organization, and the _second_
sentence of TFA is prefaced with, " _In the United States today..._ "

Actually a lot of the crazy shit you might associate with "USA" is only
relevant for certain communities.

------
gph
I understand the overall thrust of this article, but I somewhat disagree with
the suggestion that my judgement of morality should have no impact on my
judgement of the risk to a child.

For instance a parent that would leave a 2-year old alone to go play pokemon
probably has other terrible parenting judgement/skills and most likely the
environment they leave the kid in IS actually more dangerous than someone who
accidentally leaves their kid alone.

They are standardizing risk assessment across all environments, but that's
statistics not reality. Certainly some peoples moral assessments have gone
overboard (it's crazy that kids can't go to the park unattended when they
reach a general maturity). But I don't think it's unreal to assess the risk to
a child as higher if you also think their parents are amoral and likely bad
parents. Those kids ARE probably at higher risk in my opinion, either from
their parents not being as cautious at establishing a healthy environment or
in not being good enough parents to teach their kids how to behave in a safe
manner when left alone.

~~~
StavrosK
> I somewhat disagree with the suggestion that my judgement of morality should
> have no impact on my judgement of the risk to a child.

The risk to the child for a specific situation does not change based on the
reason why a parent put the child in a situation, the same way that the
probability of getting hit by a landmine doesn't change based on whether
you're walking across a minefield to cheat on your spouse or to save a baby.

The researchers wasn't asking "how good of a parent do you think they are",
they were asking "how risky do you think this behaviour is", and it is
irrational to be changing your estimation of the risk in a situation based on
the reasons for being put in that situation (but what else is new when it
comes to human psychology).

~~~
cujo
>The researchers wasn't asking "how good of a parent do you think they are"

They may not have asked that question, but that seems to be the question
people were answering. Isn't it somewhat obvious that we almost never answer
the literal question?

If I consider the situation where the parent left their 2 year old alone to go
meet a lover vs going to work to put food on the table, I'll judge the former
situation more harshly. To explain myself, I'd say both situations put the
child at the same risk, but the first situation is not a responsible reason to
assume that risk.

In short, when you present these scenarios, you're not asking me,
"mathematically, which situation is more dangerous for the child?". You're
implicitly asking me, "is this parent making a responsible decision?".

~~~
emodendroket
The same result was observed (or even strengthened) even when morality and
risk were separated in the questionnaire.

------
Radle
Are there places in America where things are not this extreme?

I am looking for a career in IT, so coming to the Valley might be something I
am going to do in my career.

But I would want my kids to grow up in a different, more independent way. Like
I did in my home country.

(If I was in America now and thinking about getting children, this article
would be a 100% reason to go back to my home country, it totally gave me the
creeps.)

~~~
tbihl
Well, I grew up in a small town of 20000 in Virginia, and I don't think things
are, or were, like this at all. When I go home, I see children arrive at the
YMCA to play basketball unaccompanied. They also arrive at the library alone.
When I worked at the town pool as recently as 5 years ago, our most common
swimmers were kids who showed up alone on their bikes or skateboards. Thinking
back about 10-15 years ago when I was younger, I'd walk the 30 minutes to
school alone if I didn't want to ride the bus. My younger brothers did
likewise. The four of us would have firework battles in the yard; in hindsight
perhaps someone should have come out to discourage us on that last activity.
In the early 2000s, at age 7-10, I would spend most summer days down by the
creek with a friend or two. We'd set off by bike after summer swim team in
mornings, take our lunches, and spend most of the day there.

I guess that's all a decade in the past, but I would wager that it's media
portrayal that's more likely to have done most of the recent changing, not
crazy people. There have always been crazy people, but it seems like they all
organized to abuse CPS together suddenly over the last 10 years.

~~~
SmallDeadGuy
20000 is a small town for you? I guess I've never lived in a small town, only
in tiny villages between 300-900 people or cities of 100000+ but my nearest
town is ~20000 and I've always considered it pretty large with lots of
disconnected communities and areas.

------
iamthepieman
Children must be allowed to do dangerous things. Doing dangerous things does
not guarantee injury. Children, despite our observations otherwise, do not
have a death wish. They have a strong self-preservation instinct and
purposefully risky behavior is usually due to ignorance because they don't
understand how the world works yet. A child wants to touch the candle flame
because they don't know it's hot, not because they want to get burned.

Doing dangerous things is risky though. A child is NOT guaranteed to get hurt
everytime but if you allow them to explore the work and engage in risky
behavior they will get hurt eventually. It is my goal as a parent to let them
do dangerous things from an early age even when it scares me.

At one that means letting them walk without a walker anad without being there
to catch them all the time. At two-four it means letting them climb the stairs
on their own and letting them swing and go down the slide without hand
holding. At 5+ it means letting them build a fire, swim in the creek, shoot a
bow and arrow and climb trees. By giving them freedom (and responsibility -
but that's another topic) early they learn what their limits are and, I hope,
learn to judge for themselves what is safe for them. This may be different for
each of my kids and is almost certainly different than what I believe is safe
and or appropriate. Of course I am there to veto really misinformed decisions
(we are going to build a diving board into this 2 feet pool in the brook!) and
to provide direction and guidance.

Putting this into practice has resulted in one broken arm, three staples and
numerous small home-treatable cuts and bruises. I don't always like where this
philosophy puts me as a father. I many times say yes and then quietly follow
from a distance out of my own fear for their safety.

But because I know what a struggle it is to decide how to raise my children,
even if the ultimate decision is that I am not raising them so much as
watching them develop and prodding them occasionally, I try very hard not to
judge parents who have made different decisions and different trade-offs.

The article doesn't go into much detail about why people judge parents so
harshly but mostly focuses on changing social norms. I understand though. I
have to actively remind myself NOT to judge parents who make different
decisions than I do and I'm only aware of that because I have made decisions
that are different than most of my peers and acquaintances.

------
tn13
Bodies like CPS have to justify their existence and increase in budgets. If my
job is to go to office everyday and find parents to arrest the best way is to
lower the bar for "putting kids in danger".

It is okay to send your kids to play soccer or the hand-football americans
play where they can possibly receive life threatening injuries but it is not
okay to let them walk back home from school because all it takes a evil guy
with a van and candies to kidnap that kid.

~~~
b_t_s
Never attribute to malice... My mother was a CPS worker for a while so here's
a little perspective from the inside. CPS is generally wildly underfunded,
underpaid, and understaffed. It's staffed largely by bleeding hearts straight
out of college, most of whom will burn/churn out in a year or two. They've
never had kids; most are still kids themselves. There are a few lifers and
first job in a second career people, but they're the minority. It's one of the
more systematically dysfunctional branches of government.

------
Symbiote
Are perceived risks lower in smaller countries?

The article mentions Norway, which has a population of 5M. Even if the rate of
child abduction is the same as the USA, there will be far fewer scary stories.

1) How many foreign cases does the Norwegian media report?

2) Are Norwegians worried about them? I'd think "oh, America" and move on, but
I'd guess that if I lived in Idaho and the case was in Michigan I wouldn't be
so dismissive.

~~~
maxxxxx
Just watch news in the US. They indulge for hours in killings, child
abductions and other stuff. It's a very fear-driven society.

------
pkulak
I agree with this, but I still have a hell of a time letting my kids outside
unsupervised, not because of abduction or crime fears, but because of cars. At
least in the States, people don't give a crap about anything while they are
driving. Excessive speeding is the norm on all city streets, marked crosswalks
are a mild suggestion, and unmarked crosswalks do not exist. If 50% of the
land outside of my house were literal minefields I'm not sure it would be less
dangerous. I don't think anyone was abducted in my city last year, but 10
pedestrians died. A teenager was just mowed down in a crosswalk over the
weekend. That scares the shit out of me.

~~~
tbihl
For that, I recommend living in older neighborhoods and trying to get involved
in re striping streets narrower. Cars speeding are a clear sign that the speed
limit doesn't match the road design. When you make drivers feel uncomfortable,
they slow down and drive more carefully. When you make roads wide enough for
firetrucks to do three-point turns and with highway safety margins, drivers
will intuitively listen to the design language encouraging them to drive fast.

------
mhb
Ladders to help children get up to neck-breaking heights when climbing trees
(in Denmark):

[http://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2016/08/23/ladders-to-help-
ch...](http://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2016/08/23/ladders-to-help-children-get-
up-to-neck-breaking-heights-when-climbing-trees/)

------
pessimizer
It's the result of a bizarre American Protestant religious tenet that
gradually evolved into existence over the 20th century, namely: People deserve
health and happiness in life in inverse relationship to their degree of
cynicism; Children are born in a perfect state, without cynicism, therefore
_any effort by a cynical (by definition) adult that could protect a child from
anything that could possibly affect their health or happiness is mandatory._
The most important thing a child needs to learn is to control themselves and
to be optimistic, which will immunize them to the effects of adult cynicism,
_not_ how to handle themselves independently in the world, and especially not
math.

It's a complete inversion of the previous straightforward pre-20c mindset,
which was: adults take longer to make, are stronger, and they know more stuff,
so they're more important. Also, religiously, that babies are born
fundamentally broken, and need to gain understanding of the world before they
have any chance to fix themselves. Dead babies go to Hell, or at best an
endless purgatory.

IMO 80% of the character of its current expression comes from spoiled Baby
Boomers having a combination of condescension and hate towards their parents.
They were perfect, ruined by the world, and endangered by their parents
cynical reasoning about why we should be in Vietnam and hate communism
(something about sharing being evil and assuming the worst about everybody.)

~~~
tbihl
I buy your argument that we value children too highly in relation to adults,
but I think the connection to religion is under-formed at best. If nothing
else you need greater specificity of blame: surely there's a common theme with
higher correlation than whether people follow a church that split from
Catholicism 500 years ago, given the huge variation within that category.

Myself, I'd argue that the way we've built towns has lent itself to destroying
community and wealth. We put people in cars so they don't interact with their
surroundings. We put the cars on massive road networks we can't afford to
maintain (to say nothing of the sewer and water out to the edges of towns.)
Then a downturn cones and we cut services because the maintenance is crushing
us. We build places that aren't meant to last, and then only the rich can
afford to move to the next generation's good suburbs. Everyone left behind was
too poor to get out, and now they'll suffer decreased services and
accessibility as the local government spends on the new growth areas. Given
such a miserable setting, people are unable, by fact of their patterns of
life, to look out for one another. Culture breaks down, because there's no
community maintaining it. The earth-conquering strength of human teamwork is
not utilized in these places; the new suburbs are full of people wealthy
enough to overcome that, but the aging ones have no such strength.

------
rayiner
The worst part of parenting is dealing with other parents. Yuppie millennial
parents are the worst. I thought I grew up with overprotective Asian parents
but they let me wander all around the town at 7-8, stuff that's apparently get
them arrested in the Dame suburbs today.

------
aviv
I'm surprised they made no mention of
[http://www.freerangekids.com/](http://www.freerangekids.com/) or
(owner/blogger) Lenore Skenazy, both of which typically come up in such
discussions.

~~~
bryanlarsen
There is a mention of free range parenting, but not an explicit call out.

------
ars
I have my own theory. I think parents have gone so far in the r/K selection[1]
toward the K direction that people have gone completely overboard in
protecting children.

It would be very interesting to compare with cultures where having lots of
kids is still the norm.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory)

------
nefitty
If anyone else is interested in how Debra Harrell and her daughter's story
turned out, here is a recent FB update from a person who helped crowdfund $47k
to support them during the legal problems. Thankfully the charges were dropped
with seemingly no media coverage whatsoever. Unfortunately, it sounds like the
young girl is now experiencing anxiety issues from the trauma of being taken
by Child Protective Services.

[https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=532307546952426&id...](https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=532307546952426&id=274254686091048)

------
tillytal
The research actually looks kind of cool, but this headline and the whole
framing of the issue sounds like it was written by an alien. Uh, _why_?

We judge _everything_ on the basis of perception, not reality. That's just...
how this works.

And this is far from the most worrying thing Americans have a dramatically
detatched perception of danger about, right now. If you want to really address
this issue, and a few others besides, I'd stop worrying about how people
relate to kids or parents and start worrying about how they relate to
_reality_.

~~~
mindfulgeek
While there are plenty of ways people are disconnected from reality, the
impact on our culture when kids don't have independence and parents make
decisions out of fear has a significant impact on our world.

~~~
tillytal
Count me as reeeeally leery of ascribing harm to an amorphous "cultural
impact". Not that I think it's sensible or right that a child might not be
allowed to walk around the block, but that in general, as with any other thing
other people's parents seem to worry about, the kids are probably going to be
fine.

Contrasted with our outrageously inverted reaction to the real and fictional
(respectively) threats of climate change and terrorism, it's hard for me to
muster up too much outrage. Fix this without fixing them, it's hard for me to
clap too hard.

~~~
mindfulgeek
In general, kids and young adults are more unhealthy in measurable ways --
cancer, depression, suicide rates -- all higher. While this is just one aspect
of what is causing trouble, the lack of independence has been linked to kids
making really, really bad choices when they are finally alone. You can also
ask any college professor how the quality of problem solving and independence
has changed in the past decade or so.

In order to fix a problem, you need to fix the cause, not the effect. Many of
the causes of the poor decisions we make are due to conditioning of our
childhood. While adults cannot blame their bad decisions on their parents,
they certainly can see a root cause of much of their poor choices -- if they
can see it at all.

------
dghughes
I didn't read the entire article and I do not have kids but to me the world
seems more hostile than when I was a kid but I guess that's expected.

People seem much more opportunistic and are proud of it when I point out it's
not a compliment to be called such a thing.

Overall maturity seems really low I mean these days people act immature
compared to when I was a kid. I don't think I'd see adults in their 20, 30 or
40s chasing Pokemons in the 1970s.

These days people swear every second word around kids, seniors, just in public
gatherings as if it's nothing I'm sure I'll be mocked for thinking that's
wrong. Then again breasts are censored on TV but not when I was a kid.
Although contrasting that every now TV show didn't have "this show may have
words or situations that may offend someone" warnings after commercial break.

Then you have the "everyone is a winner" or "you can do anything" drilled into
kids in school I think that stunts maturity. If kids are going to be left
alone they need to know sometimes they can screw up big time and it's their
fault.

------
efa
Wish people (especially scientist) would just stick to the facts. In the
McDonald's case people were not "angry at this woman for not being a full-time
mom". They were angry that the child was left alone. No one has a problem with
a mom working and a care giver watching a child. And of course we have to
throw in a dig at evil McDonalds for not having childcare services.

~~~
harmegido
But why would they be angry at her for leaving the kid alone? What danger is
the kid in? What do they care what she does with her kid if the kid is in no
danger?

(Not to mention, how could she afford the child care?)

------
B-Con
Parenting is a 24/7 job. Parents make thousands of decisions balancing many
ideal and pragmatic factors. Seeing one parenting decision is not sufficient
for assessing their entire parental lifestyle. Putting aside the specifics of
this topic, it is curious how many people are quick to condemn a parent the
moment they make a single decision not up to the observer's standards.

------
kazinator
There is no such thing as "perceived but unreal risk". A risk is some sort of
estimate that harm will occur: a likelihood. No risk is real; it is always
perceived. There is only the question of how rationally founded is that
estimate. Some risks can be established via measurement. If the statistics
give some risk as 0.1%, but you perceive it subjectively as 30%, then there is
a degree to which your perception of risk is unrealistically inflated. Neither
the 0.1% nor the 30% are 'real' though; both are just a tool for guessing
about the future.

We judge people when their behavior hints at a risk estimate which differs
from ours. Anyone who estimates a risk lower than you do is reckless; anyone
who estimates it higher is a wimp.

Sometimes, estimates of risk are just culturally enshrined B.S., not founded
in anything. If you don't protect yourself from a certain risk in a certain
culturally endorsed, widely practiced manner, then you're an ignorant or crazy
cultural outsider. Likewise if you go too far in protecting yourself from
something.

~~~
mikeash
If I'm flipping a coin, would you not say that the real risk of a flip coming
up heads is about 50%?

~~~
kazinator
If I said that, I could drop the word "real" and still say the same thing.

"Real risk" in conversation is usually just an intensifier which means "risk
significantly greater than zero percent" implying that it's high enough to be
considered on its own, or ahead of other risks. That's already more or less
given by the 50% figure.

In this sense there is "no real risk" that the coin will land on its edge.
There is a probability attached which is too small to bother with; and
possibly lower than the probability that a crow will swoop from the sky and
snatch the coin before it lands.

~~~
mikeash
I think you kind of lost the plot here. In this context, "real" means the
actual fact-based risk, rather than an imagined risk. For example, if you've
flipped 10 heads in a row, a human suffering from the Gambler's Fallacy might
think the risk of a tail is 90%, while the real risk is still about 50%. We're
not talking about "real risk" as a synonym to "significant risk."

~~~
kazinator
I wouldn't feel the need to say that there is a real (true, actual,
mathematically determined, ...) risk of 50%, except to disagree with some
different figure posited by someone else.

------
Diggsey
The survey completely overlooks a very important possibility:

The participants know their own ignorance of the _exact_ circumstances of each
situation, and so they use their judgement of the parent's character to fill
in the gaps.

For example, when the parent leaves for an "immoral" reason, it reflects badly
on their character, so the participant would have less reason to believe that
they've thought about the child's safety.

On the other hand, when a parent whom the participant has judged to be of good
character leaves the child, they assume that the parent them-self has thought
through the safety implications and has judged it to be safe. Since the parent
would have more information than the participant, the participant is trusting
their judgement, and is able to determine that the situation is safer.

In essence, the stories told to the participants actually do have different
amounts of information in about the child's safety.

------
tbihl
When I saw this title, the thing that jumped onto my head was child car seats.
Beyond infant seats, child seats don't provide any significant benefit over
sitting in the back with a seatbelt. The difference between those two is an
often-perceived, but infinitesimal, risk.

On the other hand, we don't judge parents for driving their kids all over the
place, or living far away from things so that they're forced to drive many
miles with their kids. But that's a highly risky behavior.

If you live in a place that's walkable for your kids, you've probably
sheltered them from far more danger than child predators ever pose.

------
redsparrow
Here's a snapshot of what things are like in Berlin, Germany.

I dropped my 7 year old off at a new day camp (in the centre of the city) last
week. They asked me if she was allowed to leave on her own at the end of the
day.

Here are the rules for kids riding on the subway system:

"Children under four years of age may only use public transport if they are
accompanied by a person who is at least six years of age."

That said, you don't see a lot of little kids travelling alone but it seems
that the discretion is with the parents.

------
rrggrr
Divorced parents would have to answer to their formers spouse, their former
spouse's attorney, a child's rep, the Court, etc. for any serious mishap. Its
not worth the knee jerk tragic outcomes the Courts can produce. Therefore, a
divorced parent is best served playing it ultra conservative and ignoring this
article.

------
mangeletti
The minds and endocrine systems of children that at raised in safe and sterile
environments, under the constant, close attention of guardians, are
necessarily unprepared for the randomn inputs available in nature and society.

Children that grow up this way will be better suited for a virtual life, where
the number of variables is controlled.

------
skizm
Because info spreads more quickly now-a-days and even if 99% of people think
it's okay to leave a kid unattended in a given situation, the 1% that care are
more likely to see these situations and make a big stink out of them.

------
Unbeliever69
I judge parents that deny their children their childhood by "protecting" them
from perceived but unreal risks.

------
lazyant
Captain Fantastic is a great movie to get you thinking about kids' education
and safety.

------
jamesb7276
It's easy and lets us perceive ourselves as better than them.

------
platz
you have to multiply by an outrage factor as well. bad outcomes do not all
have unit '1'

------
helthanatos
People seem to confuse rates and percentages with figures. There may be less
on average, but more in reality. Not having so many kids on the streets may
also cause the crimes to be less. Children wear less clothes than they used to
and there seems to be more pedophiles, if those little kids were left alone,
more may be taken advantage of. The risk is real. Children don't know how to
react when confronted with maybe a drunk driver or someone that offered them
candy, so letting children on their own leaves real risk. However, whether it
should be criminalized for a rather small risk is debatable.

~~~
Bjartr
>There may be less on average, but more in reality.

Mind explaining this? I'm having trouble grokking it.

>Not having so many kids on the streets may also cause the crimes to be less.

The article accounted for this.

>Children wear less clothes than they used to and there seems to be more
pedophiles, if those little kids were left alone, more may be taken advantage
of.

What? Do you have any more information on any of these claims? It's coming
across as pure conjecture on your part.

~~~
helthanatos
1\. Smaller percentage of a greater amount. 2\. Oh well. 3\. Children wear
much smaller clothes than they used to.

------
DougN7
What's the difference between perceived and real? Someone preceiving it thinks
it's plenty real. I've never been in a traffic accident - is the need for seat
belts and air bags real?

~~~
drauh
Perception: there's a 75% chance my kid will be kidnapped by a pedophile.
Reality: there's a 0.01% chance of the pedophile kidnap, but a 75% chance of
drowning in the bathtub.

Numbers are made up.

Perception is not reality.

Another example: Trayvon Martin was a dark-skinned young male wearing a
hoodie. Perception: he is a criminal casing the houses in order to commit a
future crime. Reality: he was a kid walking home to his house.

Other examples: * Perception of the likelihood of terrorist attack, vs
likelihood of dying in a fatal traffic crash.

* Perception that vaccinations cause autism, vs reality that vaccinations prevent fatal disease.

~~~
SilasX
I'm sorry, but I think this is making the same errors in the opposite
direction.

1) Yes, child abduction/predation is unlikely ... _because_ we've adopted a
huge number of countermeasures that close of this vector. That doesn't (by
itself) mean you can just stop doing those measures and act like the risk is
still low.

2) The risk of death by bathtub is not 75%.

3) Terrorists ramp up efforts against any vector they've found to be weak.
While they _currently_ account for a very small percentage of deaths, that
doesn't mean we should have just shrugged our shoulders and done nothing, even
basic measures like locked cockpit doors and ending the recommendation of
passenger compliance.

4) Trayvon Martin was acting suspiciously and similarly to burglars -- peering
into houses around the time there had been other burglaries and reports of
similar behavior [1]. _OBVIOUSLY he didn 't deserve what happened_ (let's
count how many people miss this clause!), but we don't know, as you're
implying, that Martin was somehow merely walking home and not casing houses
during a spate of robberies.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin#Bac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin#Background_of_the_shooting)

~~~
dragonwriter
> Yes, child abduction/predation is unlikely ... because we've adopted a huge
> number of countermeasures that close of this vector.

Actually, most of the social "countermeasures" were adopted _after_ high-
profile single incidents in the 1990s (perhaps largely because the larger
1960s-1980s crime wave that had been the pretext for expanding government
powers in the law enforcement arena previously was ending, and a new pretext
was needed) and later, when the overall rate of incidents had been dropping
for decades (since, IIRC, the 1950s or 1960s), but media attention to them --
and hence public _perception_ of the prevalence of incidents -- had, at the
same time, been increasing.

AFAIK, there is little-to-no evidence that any of the "countermeasures" have
had any significant effect on the prevalence of child abduction/predation.

~~~
SilasX
The problem in claiming "the evidence says..." in cases like this is that the
body of potential perpetrators is intelligent and adaptive.

Say someone cracks a major bank account by guessing "password" as the
password. The bank changes the password.

I claim that the weak password was a security risk, and changing it was the
right response.

Someone comes a long and gives me a data-intense lecture about "well,
electronic bank theft was already declining, and it accounts for only a tiny
fraction of financial losses, so changing the password was a waste of time,
and was in the context of the IT department using a bunch of pretexts to order
people around".

How would you refute that, given all the evidence on their side?

~~~
Bjartr
I'm having trouble building an internally consistent response because of
things like how "changing a password" is a trivial change, i.e. I'm struggling
to take into account the hypothetical in a way consistent with your intent and
with what reality would have to work like for the hypothetical, as given, to
hold true.

Mind trying again with a different example?

~~~
SilasX
The smallness of the change doesn't affect the point I was making. [1] The
point is that you can't simply look at the raw _incidence rates_ and conclude
that specific added countermeasures are unnecessary or irrelevant to the
attacker's incentives.

If you agree with that, then you agree with my general point and it's just an
issue of which specific countermeasures survive a CBA.

[1] In fact, I chose a small change specifically to highly the absurdity of
being bound by low/declining attack rates.

------
tn13
If you ever see a kid alone outside the best course of action is to call cops.

1\. If you try talking to kid while the kid is alone you might be charged as a
sex offender, attempt to kidnap and what not. 2\. If you dont try to help and
if something happens to the kid may be later you might face some charges or
come under suspicion.

This is absolutely nothing to with what you feel and think. The risks for not
calling cops are simply very high.

~~~
orthecreedence
What?? If I see an 8 year old walking around outside by themself, my first and
only reaction is to do absolutely nothing and let that child go about their
business.

If something did happen to the kid, every person who happened to see that kid
and didn't flip their shit and call the cops is not morally or even legally
responsible in any sense.

If I saw a kid get snatched into a van, I'd call the cops and do everything in
my power to make sure that the kid was returned to his normal life, but _holy
shit, do not call the cops because you saw a kid outside_!

