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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

by gph 10y ago

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.

mindfulgeek 10y ago
If their kid was sleeping and they stayed in range of a baby monitor, what is the risk there? Yes, it makes sense to make the risk higher if you perceive a parent as less apt, however, we are fast to judge that aptitude without knowing much of the context.
- gph 10y ago
  Did you read the article about the two-year old? The context is that they left him for over an hour and a neighbor found him wandering around outside. I don't know how much context was put into the actual study, and I agree that we make a lot of moral judgements without all the facts. But it seemed like the jist of the research was that our moral judgements of the parents should have no basis in our assessment of the perceived risks to a child. I refute that to an extent.
  - mindfulgeek 10y ago
    I didn't read the article about the two year old. Thank you for sharing the details! I think their research was in trying to understand why we've turned into a culture that is afraid to let their kids have freedoms that use to be common.
ggggtez 10y ago
> 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 > Letting children play is dangerous, being negligent is safe Very 1984.
- d4l3k 10y ago
  I read that as the parent is going "to go play pokemon" which means it's a reoccuring thing to leave the kid alone.
- gph 10y ago
  No, not at all what I'm saying. My point is that the parent who is accidentally negligent most likely is providing their child with a safer environment than the parents who intentionally leave their child alone. BTW have you even had a 2-year old? I doubt very much there was ever a point in history where 2-year olds were left with zero supervision. Sure it might be an older sibling or some other community member watching them, but I can't imagine how someone feels leaving a 2-year old alone at home is a reasonable thing.
  - bryanlarsen 10y ago
    "I doubt very much there was ever a point in history where 2-year olds were left with zero supervision." In Denmark today 0-2 year olds are regularly left outside in a baby stroller to nap while their parents are inside.
    - gph 10y ago
      That's not zero supervision IMO. The parent is easily within range of the child, and most likely checks up on them from time to time. Edit: I think a lot of people in this thread are getting the idea that I'm advocating parents need to helicoptor parent their 2-year olds 24/7. Not at all what I'm saying. I don't think you are greatly increasing risks to your child in that scenario.
  - dmichulke 10y ago
tn13 10y ago
The best thing to do here is to accept the fact that some parents will take more risk and some kids will die every year because of that. We cant do a zilch about it besides charging the parents after the incident has happened.
- DanBC 10y ago
  We can remove the children if the risks and behaviour are severe enough. Here's a mother who left young children (oldest was four) to fend for themselves for a day while she went off on a drink and drug "binge": https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/nov/17/binge-mother-drugs-drink-cocaine https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/nov/17/binge-mother-drug... Plenty of deaths feel preventable. Her's a mother who didn't supervise her children and they ran into traffic. That event caused social services to take interest in her, and they advised her to cover a garden pond. She didn't, and one day while she was not paying attention to her children one of them died. That's a tragedy for that family. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-34491753 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-34491753
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  I'm not convinced. I was under the impression that child-safe pool fences (legal requirement in Australia) have reduced the number of children drowning in the family pool. I was also under the impression that the various ad champagnes over the decades about not leaving children unattended in the bath have also reduced the number of kids drowning in the bath. I was also under the impression that requiring all new homes to have RDCs (Residual Current Device) installed has reduced the number of electrocutions of children and non-children. I was also under the impression that providing various first aid techniques can and does save lives. As far as I'm aware requiring all occupants of a motor vehicle (except buses, for some reason) to wear a seat belt, and requiring all new motor vehicles to be fitting with airbags, has reduced the number of children being injured or dying in motor vehicle accidents. Also see: traction control; ABS braking; smoke detectors; PDFs (Personal Flotation Devices); food safety regulations; bicycle helmets / skate helmets / etc; bicycle lighting; step barrier / balustrades & handrails; exit signs and fire escapes. I could go on. As someone who leans a little left of centre (but only a tiny bit, I'm a closet right-wing), I think some regulation is a good thing. But maybe that stance just encourages the weak to thrive, thereby diminishing the viability of the entire species. Only time will tell.
StavrosK 10y ago
> 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).
- gph 10y ago
  So you think a child being left alone in the home of a drug-addicted negligent parent will have the equivalent risk of a child of an otherwise caring parent who accidentally left them at home alone? I'm not saying the reason itself changes the risk. I'm saying the reason gives me insight into the kind of parent a person is and the likelihood of their being higher risks in the child's environment. Or to use your analogy, there's probably a lot more 'land-mines' in the house of a parent who leaves to play pokemon than in the house of a parent who left their child alone due to an accident or unforeseen circumstances. If you can't see that than you are blinded by your own sense of rationality.
  - gervase 10y ago
    I think you may have misunderstood the parent; the argument is that an unattended child in the home of a drug-addicted negligent parent is at the SAME level of risk whether that parent left them alone to purchase drugs, or whether they went to work, but that observers don't rate the two situations as comparable.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
      Well that sounds completely unreasonable to me. Isn't it more likely that the drug-addicted parents are more likely to leave drug related paraphernalia around. I'm talking about mostly-empty baggies of cocaine, methamphetamine, weed, whatever. Needles, bongs, half empty bottles of booze. Isn't the drug-addicted parent more likely to not be aware or not care or not notice all sorts of other safety related issues. Probably the working-parent shouldn't leave a child under a certain age unattended. But it seems perfectly reasonable that people should judge the drug-addict house as more dangerous. I don't claim to have full knowledge of every situation, but as someone who spent the better part of a decade injecting meth on a very regular basis I feel my opinion ought to carry some authority.
moises_silva 10y ago
> Those kids ARE probably at higher risk in my opinion My problem with those kind of statements is that you don't quantify the risk. Sure, "probably" at a "higher" risk. How much higher and does it really matter that is slightly higher? we do riskier activities all the time in exchange of convenience, fun, perceived necessity, etc. Sure, my kid is at a higher risk of injury by playing in the backyard (even if supervised) than by staying indoors in his room with padded walls, but at what cost? what about enjoying life a little more? Furthermore, you're judging just on the probability (not on the reality of the circumstances for those parents) that allowing one activity you don't agree with (playing pokemon leaving child unsupervised) implies a lot of other "bad parenting" habits. Even if that were true (and I'd like to see real concrete numbers), judging people that way is a nasty habit IMO.
CodeMage 10y ago
Others have already tried to explain this, but I'll give it another try from a different angle. Your judgment of morality should not be allowed to impact your judgment of the risk to a child, because that impact is based on your own assumptions. Those assumptions are highly unreliable, unlike factual risk assessment. If you need a reminder of why assumptions like yours are unreliable, here's a very short read that drives the point home: https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/66889970151/seananmcguire-cumbersome-cucumber https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/66889970151/...
adrusi 10y ago
You're absolutely right that you can sometimes take a parent's willingness to leave a young child unsupervised as an indication of worse general parenting, but the problem I have with your statement is that I don't think that indication is enough to draw any conclusions from. There are other reasons that a parent might leave their child unsupervised and you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that their reason is o e of those. Benefit of the doubt doesn't mean that you can't keep an eye out for other signs that theyre inadequate parents, or even that you can't go out of your way to investigate, but drawing those conclusions prematurely contributes to, and might even be the driving cause of the trend towards the oppression of children that we see today. Maybe you agree with this already, but it wasn't clear in your comment.
- gph 10y ago
  Yes I agree with this, from what I understand about the study it wasn't just the parents willingness to leave a young child unsupervised, but also what the parents then went and did while leaving the child unsupervised. I.E. I bet the environmental risks to a child whose parents leave them alone so they can play pokemon go for a couple hours is higher than a child whose parents leave them so they can go to work. I think in that instance our moral judgement of the parents is pointing us in the general right direction of the risk to the child. Though our moral judgement IMO massively overinflates that risk.
briffle 10y ago
If you want to get 'statistical' the single most risky thing you can EVER do to a child is to place them in a car. Yet, how does society morally look down on a parent that places their children at such a huge risk?
c22 10y ago
With no other information I'd assume the obsessive compulsive "gotta catch em all" parent would have a cleaner/safer home environment than someone so absent-minded they forgot their kid "on accident".

by gph 10y ago

mindfulgeek 10y ago

If their kid was sleeping and they stayed in range of a baby monitor, what is the risk there? Yes, it makes sense to make the risk higher if you perceive a parent as less apt, however, we are fast to judge that aptitude without knowing much of the context.

gph 10y ago
Did you read the article about the two-year old? The context is that they left him for over an hour and a neighbor found him wandering around outside. I don't know how much context was put into the actual study, and I agree that we make a lot of moral judgements without all the facts. But it seemed like the jist of the research was that our moral judgements of the parents should have no basis in our assessment of the perceived risks to a child. I refute that to an extent.
- mindfulgeek 10y ago
  I didn't read the article about the two year old. Thank you for sharing the details! I think their research was in trying to understand why we've turned into a culture that is afraid to let their kids have freedoms that use to be common.

ggggtez 10y ago

> 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 > Letting children play is dangerous, being negligent is safe Very 1984.

d4l3k 10y ago
I read that as the parent is going "to go play pokemon" which means it's a reoccuring thing to leave the kid alone.
gph 10y ago
No, not at all what I'm saying. My point is that the parent who is accidentally negligent most likely is providing their child with a safer environment than the parents who intentionally leave their child alone. BTW have you even had a 2-year old? I doubt very much there was ever a point in history where 2-year olds were left with zero supervision. Sure it might be an older sibling or some other community member watching them, but I can't imagine how someone feels leaving a 2-year old alone at home is a reasonable thing.
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  "I doubt very much there was ever a point in history where 2-year olds were left with zero supervision." In Denmark today 0-2 year olds are regularly left outside in a baby stroller to nap while their parents are inside.
  - gph 10y ago
    That's not zero supervision IMO. The parent is easily within range of the child, and most likely checks up on them from time to time. Edit: I think a lot of people in this thread are getting the idea that I'm advocating parents need to helicoptor parent their 2-year olds 24/7. Not at all what I'm saying. I don't think you are greatly increasing risks to your child in that scenario.
- dmichulke 10y ago

tn13 10y ago

The best thing to do here is to accept the fact that some parents will take more risk and some kids will die every year because of that. We cant do a zilch about it besides charging the parents after the incident has happened.

DanBC 10y ago
We can remove the children if the risks and behaviour are severe enough. Here's a mother who left young children (oldest was four) to fend for themselves for a day while she went off on a drink and drug "binge": https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/nov/17/binge-mother-drugs-drink-cocaine https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/nov/17/binge-mother-drug... Plenty of deaths feel preventable. Her's a mother who didn't supervise her children and they ran into traffic. That event caused social services to take interest in her, and they advised her to cover a garden pond. She didn't, and one day while she was not paying attention to her children one of them died. That's a tragedy for that family. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-34491753 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-34491753
TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
I'm not convinced. I was under the impression that child-safe pool fences (legal requirement in Australia) have reduced the number of children drowning in the family pool. I was also under the impression that the various ad champagnes over the decades about not leaving children unattended in the bath have also reduced the number of kids drowning in the bath. I was also under the impression that requiring all new homes to have RDCs (Residual Current Device) installed has reduced the number of electrocutions of children and non-children. I was also under the impression that providing various first aid techniques can and does save lives. As far as I'm aware requiring all occupants of a motor vehicle (except buses, for some reason) to wear a seat belt, and requiring all new motor vehicles to be fitting with airbags, has reduced the number of children being injured or dying in motor vehicle accidents. Also see: traction control; ABS braking; smoke detectors; PDFs (Personal Flotation Devices); food safety regulations; bicycle helmets / skate helmets / etc; bicycle lighting; step barrier / balustrades & handrails; exit signs and fire escapes. I could go on. As someone who leans a little left of centre (but only a tiny bit, I'm a closet right-wing), I think some regulation is a good thing. But maybe that stance just encourages the weak to thrive, thereby diminishing the viability of the entire species. Only time will tell.

StavrosK 10y ago

> 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).

gph 10y ago
So you think a child being left alone in the home of a drug-addicted negligent parent will have the equivalent risk of a child of an otherwise caring parent who accidentally left them at home alone? I'm not saying the reason itself changes the risk. I'm saying the reason gives me insight into the kind of parent a person is and the likelihood of their being higher risks in the child's environment. Or to use your analogy, there's probably a lot more 'land-mines' in the house of a parent who leaves to play pokemon than in the house of a parent who left their child alone due to an accident or unforeseen circumstances. If you can't see that than you are blinded by your own sense of rationality.
- gervase 10y ago
  I think you may have misunderstood the parent; the argument is that an unattended child in the home of a drug-addicted negligent parent is at the SAME level of risk whether that parent left them alone to purchase drugs, or whether they went to work, but that observers don't rate the two situations as comparable.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    Well that sounds completely unreasonable to me. Isn't it more likely that the drug-addicted parents are more likely to leave drug related paraphernalia around. I'm talking about mostly-empty baggies of cocaine, methamphetamine, weed, whatever. Needles, bongs, half empty bottles of booze. Isn't the drug-addicted parent more likely to not be aware or not care or not notice all sorts of other safety related issues. Probably the working-parent shouldn't leave a child under a certain age unattended. But it seems perfectly reasonable that people should judge the drug-addict house as more dangerous. I don't claim to have full knowledge of every situation, but as someone who spent the better part of a decade injecting meth on a very regular basis I feel my opinion ought to carry some authority.

moises_silva 10y ago

> Those kids ARE probably at higher risk in my opinion My problem with those kind of statements is that you don't quantify the risk. Sure, "probably" at a "higher" risk. How much higher and does it really matter that is slightly higher? we do riskier activities all the time in exchange of convenience, fun, perceived necessity, etc. Sure, my kid is at a higher risk of injury by playing in the backyard (even if supervised) than by staying indoors in his room with padded walls, but at what cost? what about enjoying life a little more? Furthermore, you're judging just on the probability (not on the reality of the circumstances for those parents) that allowing one activity you don't agree with (playing pokemon leaving child unsupervised) implies a lot of other "bad parenting" habits. Even if that were true (and I'd like to see real concrete numbers), judging people that way is a nasty habit IMO.

CodeMage 10y ago

Others have already tried to explain this, but I'll give it another try from a different angle. Your judgment of morality should not be allowed to impact your judgment of the risk to a child, because that impact is based on your own assumptions. Those assumptions are highly unreliable, unlike factual risk assessment. If you need a reminder of why assumptions like yours are unreliable, here's a very short read that drives the point home: https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/66889970151/seananmcguire-cumbersome-cucumber https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/66889970151/...

adrusi 10y ago

You're absolutely right that you can sometimes take a parent's willingness to leave a young child unsupervised as an indication of worse general parenting, but the problem I have with your statement is that I don't think that indication is enough to draw any conclusions from. There are other reasons that a parent might leave their child unsupervised and you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that their reason is o e of those. Benefit of the doubt doesn't mean that you can't keep an eye out for other signs that theyre inadequate parents, or even that you can't go out of your way to investigate, but drawing those conclusions prematurely contributes to, and might even be the driving cause of the trend towards the oppression of children that we see today. Maybe you agree with this already, but it wasn't clear in your comment.

gph 10y ago
Yes I agree with this, from what I understand about the study it wasn't just the parents willingness to leave a young child unsupervised, but also what the parents then went and did while leaving the child unsupervised. I.E. I bet the environmental risks to a child whose parents leave them alone so they can play pokemon go for a couple hours is higher than a child whose parents leave them so they can go to work. I think in that instance our moral judgement of the parents is pointing us in the general right direction of the risk to the child. Though our moral judgement IMO massively overinflates that risk.

briffle 10y ago

If you want to get 'statistical' the single most risky thing you can EVER do to a child is to place them in a car. Yet, how does society morally look down on a parent that places their children at such a huge risk?

c22 10y ago

With no other information I'd assume the obsessive compulsive "gotta catch em all" parent would have a cleaner/safer home environment than someone so absent-minded they forgot their kid "on accident".