Violent crime rates, including those against children, have continued to decline year over year in Western countries for a very long time now. It is now safer for children to be out alone at younger ages than ever before. The odd thing is that paranoia is at an all time high. Leaving a five-year-old unsupervised, even at home, is flirting with a visit from child protective services. There is less to protect children from than ever before, but parents are more protective than ever. It has reached the point that same are concerned that today's children aren't given enough freedom to experiment and fail.
This is not by choice. It is enforced by society and law. Consider what would happen if you sent a three-year-old out on an errand as is done in Japan. A child that age, alone on the street, will attract attention, primarily of the concerned and meddling kind. The child will be asked where their parents are and promptly returned to them. The parents will be chewed out for reckless child endangerment as a bare minimum.
While one can argue today's child-associated paranoia is a result of fear-mongering by the media, the real problem is that it's backed up by the law. Parents who are too trusting and permissive will soon find themselves in court. That has to change.
> is flirting with a visit from child protective services.
No doubt. Co-worker let kids (probably 5-6 years old), play outside, in a cul-de-sac. While they were inside watching. Sure enough, anonymous neighbor called cops. CPS and cops got involved. Embarasing calls at work, monitoring from CPS (regular visits to "check" on them for a period of time), headaches, lost time.
Heck, the neighbor might have just not liked the color of their lawn and they knew that calling CPS and cops about kids will ensure maximum punishment for minimum risk to them ("Hey, I was just thinking about the safety of the children").
Once those in power act irrationally about anything. That will always be exploited. It was exploited many years ago in the Soviet Union. Neighbors would have spats about goats eating grass on the wrong side of the fence. Then one of them would denounce the others as "enemies of the people" and bam! family sent to Siberia in no time.
The laws vary by jurisdiction. Many parents that I know believe it is illegal to leave a child alone if they are under 12. Maybe it is in some locations, but not where I live. In my state and town, there is no statutory definition of when a child can be left alone. However, there are explicit warning that negligent decisions can result in other charges.
And I think that is completely fair - some towns are safer than others, some children are more self sufficient than others, and every parent needs to make their own decisions. Hopefully educated and wise decisions.
We emigrated to the US when I was 6, and I started school a few days after our arrival. My parents were graduate students and we lived in a housing complex for foreign graduate students with families, but it would be more apt to call it a commune of sorts; it was extremely safe, collective, elaborately enclosed, and geographically separate both from campus and the rest of the town. I honestly can't imagine a safer place for kids. Every one of the 100+ residents had children, and there were lots of stay-at-home moms out in the backyard at pretty much all times.
The one thing that all foreigners could agree on, from dozens of nationalities around the globe, was that it was completely normal for a school-aged child to get home from school by themselves and spend the afternoon and/or early evening alone, calling on neighbours or others on hand if they needed help. Practically, many of these graduate students struggled to survive on tiny stipends, and took (sometimes not so legal) jobs to make ends meet. They also had to work harder than any American to try to have a chance of staying in America after their studies were complete.
Indiana state law and campus law enforcement did not take kindly to this. I was probably the only child of ex-Soviet extraction that was not at some point kidnapped by the university's security and turned over to an American foster family for two or three days while they sabre-rattled the parents with child neglect charges. These poor students had no money, no understanding of the US legal system, and they were helpless and scared. Many of them had to go through the "welcome to America, here's your middle finger!" experience. It was almost an established hazing ritual to be harassed by CPS/social services.
This harassment was a routine occurrence, and after a while, I learned that university security were not our friends, subconsciously souring me on police for life when I otherwise had no traumatic experiences on which to base that. They were always watching us, profiling us, trying to identify patterns such as seeing a child out after dark (which is like 4:30 PM in the winter in northern Indiana) routinely. Did they not have anything better to do? It was absolutely bewildering for almost all of the residents to learn that US state law considered it child neglect to leave a child unattended until age twelve; this would be unthinkable in most places around the globe.
I love being a parent. But I am beginning to intensely dislike other parents in my generation. I grew up with overprotective asian parents, but American millennial parents are a whole level of crazy above that.
According to free-range child advocate Lenore Skenazy, there are a little over 100 stranger abductions per year in the US. [1]. Therefore, abductions are a not a big deal.
According to Wikipedia, 100 years ago, there were about 100 lynchings per year in the US. [2] Therefore, lynching is a big deal.
I love this meme about the media. Quick question: for you, personally, when was the last time you saw a media story about an abducted child? When was the last time you saw a media story about paranoid helicopter parents, etc, repeating the ideas you see above? In my experience, the ratio is 1:10 if not 1:20.
There's a very straightforward reason why parents keep their kids indoors: the same parents, while outdoors, regularly encounter human beings that they wouldn't trust their kids around. Deinstitutionalization anyone? Free-range mental patients or free-range children: pick one. [3]
Perinatal mental illness is a significant cause of death of women - in the UK suicide is the third leading cause of perinatal death.
Many women experience mental illness during or after pregnancy. Ignorant, stigmatising views like yours about mental illness make it harder for women to seek help for their mental health problems.
And your wider point is wrong. There's no evidence that people with a mental illness pose a risk of harm to other people or to children.
"And your wider point is wrong. There's no evidence that people with a mental illness pose a risk of harm to other people or to children."
And yet I keep hearing about this need to prevent the mentally-ill from acquiring firearms. Is that just more ignorance? I'd be genuinely interested in hearing your take on that.
This is standard Risk Management stuff - the likelihood of causing damage may be low, but when you bring guns into play the magnitude of the potential damage is greatly increased. So the overall risk with guns, even with a low likelihood, is worth mitigating.
(I'm strongly against gun ownership by private citizens. I struggle with questions like these but I'll try.)
1) It's mostly ignorance. When we look at mass shooters we see histories of violence, or of drug and alcohol addiction, or sometimes mental illness. The drug and alcohol addictions and previous history of violence are better predictors of future violent behaviours.
2) Reducing access to means and methods is an important part of suicide prevention. People who complete suicide are more likely to have a mental health problem than the general population. Reducing access to guns would help those people. This does not need to be done through law. The taboo around suicide doesn't seem to stop people doing it, but does it does stop people seeking help. Ideally people would work together with their clinicians and carers to identify and ameliorate risk.
3) Some politicians seem to suggest that if you stop mentally ill people having guns you stop all mass shootings. That's clearly not true. You stop some of them. But when we talk about mental illness it's not clear what those politicians means. Do they mean serious, life long, psychotic style illness (rate about 2 people per 100)? Or the subset of that group who have command-hallucinations? Or do they mean everyone who's had a diagnosable mental illness? (Where diagnosable would be defined by DSM 5) - someone who was treated for depression two years ago? Someone with hoarding? Someone with OCD that was treated four years ago? It's odd to see people who are pro-gun using this argument, because their calling for about 1 in four people to be prevented from gun ownership. And not all mass-shooters use their own guns. Harper-Mercer (killed 9 people) used a mix of guns owned by him and his family; Lanza used guns bought by his mother.
4) Looking at mass shooters we see sometimes see failed checks: people with histories of violence are allowed to buy guns; people are prevented from buying some guns (eg rifles) but allowed to buy others (eg shotguns). Wong's background check took longer than 3 days, so he was allowed to buy a gun. He went on to kill 13 people.
> There's no evidence that people with a mental illness pose a risk of harm to other people or to children.
Of course not. The cause of helicopter parenting is irrational parents who perceive, obviously due to media stereotypes, that people with a mental illness cause a risk of harm to other people or to children.
That said, I owe you an apology. I don't think my style in the thread above is good.
If I were moderating a site like HN, I think I'd have explicit guidelines for anyone wanting to present a perspective which is a minority view or in any way otherwise controversial.
My guidelines would recommend special care in keeping your presentation with a completely neutral tone and an absolute absence of snark.
And in particular, the poster should be explicitly informed that his or her opponents will not, cannot, and probably even should not be held to anything remotely like the same high bar. Because that's life, kid.
I largely agree, though perhaps not with the twist at the end.
In my opinion, someone with a contrarian view has an added responsibility: the responsibility of one who possesses more truth than others, since that is what having a minority view feels like (and maybe is). One has a duty to consider others' difficulty in hearing that truth. If you use the truth as a weapon, you trigger resistance and discredit it, which deprives others of it for longer. This harms them and sets back the cause of the truth, even while expressing it. The greater the truth, the more harm in that case.
When one knows one's view is unpopular there's a temptation to be pre-emptively defensive. One laces comments with snark, ridicules the conventional, and so on, as a way to flip the dullards the bird in advance, since you know they will reject your truth anyhow. It's like a Dostoevsky character who can't help tweaking the nose of the person he's talking to. Some even cultivate the art of packing as much snark into their language as possible, having given up on persuasion. I think it's fear of being rejected that causes it, plus a desire to show off: see what a contrarian I am.
What happens of course is that people react badly to being provoked, except for a few who identify with your side and join in the provoking. To us this feels like the dullards rejecting the truth; to them it feels like we're fanatics and assholes. Then we get a loop of anger and noise. Such discussions are all the same and learning is no longer possible.
The principle that the one who sees more (or thinks he does) has more responsibility is a way of keeping open a discussion in which people can still learn things and figure the truth out together. When one isn't up to this responsibility, maybe one should be silent until one is, not as a matter of censorship but of continence.
From within, a monoculture is easily mistaken for an absence of ideology.
From outside, this thread looks like a set of mocking, contemptuous dismissals of anyone who doesn't agree with that ideological monoculture. Even without any dissenting thoughts, it remains a flamewar; just a flamewar with only one side. Perhaps I'm alone in finding that a little creepy.
From outside, this thread looks like a set of mocking, contemptuous dismissals of anyone who doesn't agree with that ideological monoculture.
What's the evidence that causes you to believe that there is an "ideological monoculture"[1] here? I don't know how close to a majority it is, but I'd guess there are many people that would agree with you. I for example 'vouched' for your top comment in this thread, since I thought it was wrongly flagged. But I cringed when I saw your 'Weimerica', because that's just not a useful means of discourse, and will cause people to dismiss your earlier (worthwhile) content.
I'd guess that Dan's response to you came from the same sentiment: you started well, but then veered off into "sheeple" territory[2]. Consider: is he more likely to offer corrective advice on "tone" to people with ideas he wants to see more of, or to those whose ideas themselves are unwelcome? Rather than concluding that your ideas aren't welcome here, consider that the problem might simply be the tone.
[1] Speaking of monoculture, did you know that Dan isn't American? Happy Thanksgiving, Dan!
[2] Regardless of the aptness of the term, I find "sheeple" a reliable indicator of a failed argument.
I guess I wouldn't define a silent perspective, whether majority or minority, as present in the conversation.
It is one phenomenon when everyone agrees. Probably everyone is right. When everyone who speaks agrees, and everyone who doesn't agree doesn't speak, that's quite a different pattern.
As I noted above, I agree: I think the problem is the tone. In combination with this pattern, of course.
(I should have just noted that it seems possible that the reason American parents find their children less safe in public is that they're right. Parents are worried about assaults and kidnapping. I couldn't find statistics on child assault and/or kidnapping, but the Japanese rape rate is roughly 27x (not 27%) lower than the American [1]. Given this fact, it's not immediately obvious why one should search for an additional cause of the disparity.)
Wherever our moderator is from, his perspective is an American perspective. This is an objective factual statement, like the fact that English is an Indo-European language. Probably in the same geographic region 100 years ago, there was a living pre-American intellectual tradition. But it hasn't existed since 1945 at the latest.
(The most concentrated remaining geographic locus of pre-American ideology is -- by no coincidence -- the subject of this article. Nippon Kaigi anyone? But I don't believe Dan is Japanese. And even Japan isn't exactly what it once was.)
> You don't think the incoherence of the following posts
> proves the flaggers correct?
I lack certainty, but I think the post I vouched for is still a useful addition to the conversation. Generally, I try to flag (and recently, unflag) individual posts rather than expected user behavior.
That said, I probably wouldn't have tried to recover it if I'd read the Weimerica comment first. The later posts have some oblique insights. I can why one might downvote them (I didn't), but (unless I missed something) they don't seem flagworthy.
> are you saying happy thanks giving to me (not a mod) or dang (a mod)?
I was saying Happy Thanksgiving to the moderator Dan Gackle, since Monday is the Thanksgiving holiday in Canada. I hoped this was clear since he's the author of the grandparent comment, but I suppose other Dan's can share the goodwill!
Well, they're not exactly locking up people with mental problems and throwing away the key in Japan, either. They take the trains like anyone else, and yes that includes people talking loudly to themselves or occasionally shouting for no reason.
> Leaving a five-year-old unsupervised, even at home, is flirting with a visit from child protective services
Most accidents happen in the home. Most people do a poor job of making their home safe for infants. (EG look at the number of people in the UK who buy socket covers but who don't bolt their TVs to the wall)
Perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by "leave a 5 year old unsupervised" - does this mean "parent in the home but in different room"? Or "parent pops out to the local shop for half an hour"?
Because five year old children are far too young to be left unsupervised for anything over short lengths of time, and if a parent is regularly doing that they probably need a chat from child protection social services.
A 5 year old child is old enough to go to a grocery store, buy stuff, and walk back home. I’ve done it, all my neighbors did it, and everyone I know has done it.
Kids being at home for an hour or 2 at that age is no issue either.
> A 5 year old child is old enough to go to a grocery store, buy stuff, and walk back home. I’ve done it, all my neighbors did it, and everyone I know has done it.
Depends on where the family lives, how far the grocery store is and on the kid maturity.
Please , don't make general statements like that. Some 5 y.o. are mature enough to do that, some aren't. I wouldn't let my kid go to the grocery store alone if I lived in a crime ridden ghetto with shootings everyday and prostitution+Joes on the corner of my house, and neither would you.
Well, if I could find a single district in my state where prostitution would be in residential areas, or where daily shootings happen, sure, I wouldn’t let kids out there either.
But that does not happen. We kids walked a kilometer or two to the library, stores, bakery, etc. Always. As far as I can remember. With like 10 we started taking the bus halfway across the city to sports clubs or stuff.
That's my problem with your message ,because it is not true ,and it is not something that should be encouraged before it is made sure the environment in which the kid will evolve alone IS safe.
In fact, in my country, doing that can be used against parents in child neglect cases.
So no everyone does not do that and everyone should not do that.
Also, how do you suppose a child is going to go to school? Parents will be both at work already, how’s the kid going to go to primary school if not alone?
The current cultural trend in the United States is essentially that its citizens are helpless and need the government to do everything for them and to protect them from themselves. ;-)
If two parents left for work and let their 6-year-old walk to school, they'd be risking serious legal trouble and/or the possible confiscation of their child by the government.
It’s effectively an impossibility to do it differently – kids have to walk to school, and have to take bike or public transit at age 10 to secondary school – often biking 20km in one direction, or using the bus halfway across the city.
Parents can’t afford to waste time (or money) taking their kids to school when those can go to school perfectly safe anyway.
So it makes sense that children age 10 would be able to use the bus and go into the city and buy stuff themselves.
I generally agree with you. When I was growing up we weren't this (over?)-protective. Culturally, it was a completely different world from today. :)
Anyway, in the United States, most school districts operate their own bus systems and, in most areas, these buses pick up and drop off the children very near to their house, if not right in front of their house.
Still, many children are driven directly to/from school each day by a parent. Most people that I know who do this have work schedules that are flexible enough to accommodate this.
Your hyperbolic snark misses the fact that children are in fact helpless to defend themselves against abusive and neglectful parents, and thus the state needs to fill that role.
We agree that the state sometimes oversteps the role (one or two cases of children who walked to school being aggressively pursued by child protection social workers per year) but it's frustrating that you ignore the hundreds of deaths (4 per day) caused by abusive or neglectful parents, and the many thousands of deaths caused by carelessness.
In 2008 about 1,700 children died as a result of abuse or neglect.
My apologies. I believe my intent was misinterpreted. I was not, in the slightest, commenting on the need for social services; I was commenting on the general cultural attitude that children need to be constantly coddled and, tangentially, that it is the state's job, not the parents', to ensure that the children arrive safely to school (e.g., via school buses).
In the poorer parts of big cities it's not uncommon to see prostitutes on the same blocks as you'd find residential housing.
There are some major through-roads in my city where it's common to see prostitutes, and of course there are apartments and houses just off the main roads.
> A 5 year old child is old enough to go to a grocery store, buy stuff, and walk back home. I’ve done it, all my neighbors did it, and everyone I know has done it.
I was one of those kids. Grew up in a Southeast asian country. Shop snacks and stuff from grocery stories up to 5 blocks away from my house (blocks are about the same size as the ones in SF downtown). Beyond 5 blocks, my parents would not approve until I get to like 7 yrs.
Everyone I know – literally everyone – did this. Walk to the library, walk to the bakery, walk to school, etc. Often around a kilometer each direction.
From 5 on, as with 6 we had to walk to school for 1.4 kilometer, and back, so there was no alternative.
And with 10, when many kids go to secondary school, we have to use public transit to get to school anyway, so many kids started at that age to take bus/metro/etc to go to other places, too.
I think DanBC is being sarcastic in suggesting that the only reason you think this is normal is that all the kids who died at 5 years old while going to the grocery store, are no longer around to provide a counterexample because they're dead.
But, maybe not. Poe's law rears its head once again.
Did "child protection social services" bear this child? Did they feed this child? Did then nourish with this child? Did they play with this child? Did they buy this child clothes?
Why should then we ever hear any kind of chatter from them?
This is not by choice. It is enforced by society and law. Consider what would happen if you sent a three-year-old out on an errand as is done in Japan. A child that age, alone on the street, will attract attention, primarily of the concerned and meddling kind. The child will be asked where their parents are and promptly returned to them. The parents will be chewed out for reckless child endangerment as a bare minimum.
While one can argue today's child-associated paranoia is a result of fear-mongering by the media, the real problem is that it's backed up by the law. Parents who are too trusting and permissive will soon find themselves in court. That has to change.