18 ms·

Motherhood in the Age of Fear

108 points by rafaelc 8y ago

magduf 8y ago
This is exactly why I think it's absolute lunacy to have children in the US these days, and I actively advocate against it. If you want to have kids, move to a country where you aren't charged with a crime for leaving your kids alone under the age of 12. In Japan, kids are basically forced to walk themselves to school at the age of 7 or so, without their parents. Here, that would cause the parents to be thrown in jail. Raising kids in this country is dangerous to your personal safety if you want to avoid jail time. Don't do it. This article isn't exaggerating. From the end of the article: "Instead I worry about all the ways our country seems to be at war with children, even as we insist our greatest responsibility is to protect them." Exactly: we are at war with children, and parents too. The rational choice is to avoid the situation altogether. If you're reading on this board, you're probably affluent enough to head to greener pastures if/when you decide to have kids.
- vowelless 8y ago
  > if you want to have kids, move to a country where you aren't charged with a crime for leaving your kids alone under the age of 12. Or, you know, perhaps try to change the laws?
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    Changing the laws won't change the culture. The article clearly stated that she didn't do anything illegal, yet still wound up having to do 100 hours of community service just for getting 'caught' not-breaking the law. As they say, you can beat the charge, but you can't beat the ride.
  - magduf 8y ago
    Good luck with that. That can take decades. How long have people been trying to change the War on Drugs laws? By the time you get that done, you'll be too old to have kids. Changing the laws means changing the culture, and these laws are a byproduct of our culture of fear. You're not going to change that any time soon.
  - shadofx 8y ago
    The laws are put in place as a measured response to real threats. You need to remove those threats first before the laws can be changed.
    - jshevek 8y ago
      Generally speaking, there is nothing 'measured' about the way the democratic process is influenced by widespread irrationality and emotionalism. I see no reason to believe that these laws are a result of a measured response. I see reason to believe the opposite.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      I want to believe this is a blunt sort of satire, but I can't quite get there...
- mmsimanga 8y ago
  To add another data point. Middle-class South Africa is pretty much the same. The laws might not be as strict but there is a lot of peer/social pressure. You should see the traffic jam around schools including high schools where kids as old as 17 are dropped off.
- xamuel 8y ago
  Statistically, these "mother wrongly arrested" stories are about as rare as genuine child abductions. Avoiding parenthood because of them is as irrational as reporting a woman for leaving her child in the car for five minutes. (Not that that's an excuse for the abominable actions of law enforcement in the story. Shame on the police, prosecutors, and judges involved.)
  - magduf 8y ago
    The problem is it's not that rare. The police, prosecutors, and judges involved here are still there, and they're going to consistently act this way towards parents under their jurisdiction. The only rational way to deal with this is to leave that place. And many places in the US are just like this now; sure, you could move to rural Montana and maybe avoid this, but good luck getting a decent job there.
  - convivialdingo 8y ago
    I used to think the same thing, but having raised kids I have told my own two adult children to raise their kids abroad. The Stasi-like laws are real. Anonymous tips, school and medical required reporting laws, assumed guilt and state harassment are the status quo. I’ve known too many families that get caught up by CPS. In poor communities the harassment is disturbing. Parenting while poor is apparently against the law. Few parents know their limited rights - so they usually talk with CPS before consulting an attorney and get caught up in the system for years when they likely did nothing wrong. Every CPS encounter is for the primary purpose of gathering evidence against the accused. Those conversations are twisted into the most negative light possible, editorialized and presented as evidence in court. I’ve read the cases. There are 2.3M CPS cases a year(2014), and there are 3-4M children born each year. These statistics alone show a marked trend of state harassment against families. I appreciate and understand that CPS has a role in protecting children. I just think the system is broken, wrong and often unjust. CPS is likely causing more harm than good for most children, even if they help a small minority.
- war1025 8y ago
  One of the main reasons we moved to the community we did is that I was driving by a house on what happened to be the last day of school and saw multiple elementary school aged kids walking home alone or in groups. When I was little I would take the shuttle bus after school to the school for slightly older kids (4th and 5th grade), and from there a pack of probably 5 of us would walk to our baby sitter's half a mile away (just checked on maps). Happy to know there are at least some parts of the US that haven't given up on children being capable little humans.
  - mmsimanga 8y ago
    I also caught the school bus and sometimes walked home if I missed the bus. The driver a kindly but no-nonsense type of man used to kick you off the bus if you were being naughty (imagine doing that today). That meant you had a long walk home but taught one not to throw things on a bus :-). I digress, in South Africa catching the bus to school is closely related to financial standing. The poorer folk who do not own cars really have no choice but to put their children on the bus. There is no judgement and all the kids catch the bus. The middle and upper-class folk drop their kids off. I can't help but wonder if the kids catching the bus will grow up to be more independent and more balanced. Not only do they catch the bus, often their parents cannot afford aftercare so they begin to cook and look after themselves at scandalously young ages. I use the word scandalous sarcastically because in my day there was no aftercare and we could make ourselves a sandwich from a pretty young age.
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
Right now on Arstechnica there is an article about the ridiculous rate of death during labour in the US: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/why-do-so-many-moms-die-and-suffer-in-the-us-stupid-negligence https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/why-do-so-many-moms-... I feel like this is all somehow a strange result of personal responsibility mutated monstrously - society doesn't care about whether you live or die, but it'll do everything in it's power to make sure you're shamed for the slightest screw up.
- aidenn0 8y ago
  I see the same issue inverted when it comes to abortion; millions of people protesting to make sure you don't kill your child before it's born, but hardly anybody there to help you to raise the child after it's born.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    Or even during its birth. The water breaking is the beginning of the social darwinism water-slide.
  - colemannugent 8y ago
    I see this argument made quite frequently online and I don't get it. Isn't it obvious that more people think the state should prioritize preventing murders over helping people raise their children? Isn't the debate over the beginning of life more contentious than the debate over whether we should help raise other people's children?
    - Xavdidtheshadow 8y ago
      The issue is the hypocrisy of ensuring that a mother delivers a potential baby and simultaneously removing the social safety net that ensures it will be cared for once it arrives (even if she isn't financially able to).
    - ScottBurson 8y ago
      Many of us don't believe abortion is murder, so we think that it should be left to the woman involved to decide whether her life circumstances are appropriate for raising a(nother) child. If anti-choicers want to insert their own beliefs into someone else's very personal decision, it seems only reasonable to expect them to take some responsibility for the effects of that insertion.
cridenour 8y ago
24/7 news cycles have somehow convinced the US that this is the most dangerous time in history for children when in fact, the complete opposite is true. It's very sad.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  I was out with friends this weekend at a local event and one of them went "Why would you let your kid out of sight with all these pedophiles running around?" - there was zero evidence there were sex offenders around us - it was a family event, but just because of the sheer prevalence of news they had heard, it's warped their perception of the world enough to be fearful of the utterly irrational.
- onychomys 8y ago
  That and the rise of weekly detective shows that focus on sexual crimes. SVU is in its 19th season, somehow. Criminal Minds is about to start its 14th. And there are plenty of others like those. Contrast that with 30 years ago, when we had things like Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, and regular Law & Order. Those shows featured murders committed because of robberies and affairs and the like. The more modern versions are basically all pedophiles and rapists.
- tunap 8y ago
  Dr Sagan noted the trend & wrote a book about it before he died. Demon Haunted World https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_haunted_world https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_haunted_world
ravenstine 8y ago
How common is this, really? Are parents in the US being regularly harassed for minor things like in the article? I'm not trying to discredit this person's story, but it's easy to believe that this is an "issue" when everything is anecdotal.
- jsight 8y ago
  I feel like there is something really meta about your comment. I also feel like I have read this exact article about 3 years ago. EDIT: Oh, of course, I remembered this article by the same writer: https://www.salon.com/2014/06/03/the_day_i_left_my_son_in_the_car/ https://www.salon.com/2014/06/03/the_day_i_left_my_son_in_th... In some ways, I think the 4 year old article was better.
- jshevek 8y ago
  All I have are anecdotes, and I can't speak to the frequency of law enforcement getting involved, but regarding the general perception of what is 'appropriate parenting' there is a culture of micromanagement, paranoia, and shaming.
- magduf 8y ago
  In reality, it probably varies a lot by location. Apparently, in Utah (as stated in the article), they actually passed "free range parenting" laws. But try that in certain other metro areas and you're going to get in big trouble. Personally, I'd rather leave the country than live in Utah...
- rubidium 8y ago
  Yes. As noted in the article, the now-extensive reach and power of CPS-type investigations is the most damaging typical harrassment. Other parents concerns are annoying but a bit silly. Cops don't have much legal ground in the minor things, as noted. But CPS can pretty do whatever it wants.
  - blattimwind 8y ago
    I'm always fascinated by sentiments given by people living in the self-declared land of freedom of the form: > Cops don't [...]. But [govt agency] can do whatever they want. It seems to me as-if there aren't many real freedoms beyond the first one.
jshevek 8y ago
She makes a good point, here: "We do not think about the statistical probabilities or compare the likelihood of such events with far more present dangers, like increasing rates of childhood diabetes or depression. Statistically speaking, it would take 750,000 years for a child left alone in a public space to be snatched by a stranger. Statistically speaking, a child is far more likely to be killed in a car on the way to a store than waiting in one that is parked."
- Xcelerate 8y ago
  I thought this was easily the strongest point in the whole article. Penalties for negligence should be based on actual, calculated risks. End of story.
  - gnicholas 8y ago
    Well, there's a cost-benefit calculation. It's not all about the risk. If you want to get groceries, you have to drive, walk, bike, or take a bus to the store. Each has some level of risk, and some amount of inconvenience. Once you get to the store, there is some amount of risk to leaving your kid in the car. As she points out, it is infinitesimal. The ideal comparison would be to say that there's more risk of the kid being hit by a car while walking from the parking lot to the store than to just sitting in the car. Given the stats she quoted, I wouldn't be surprised if this were true.
- GW150914 8y ago
  That narrative is unacceptable to power structures that rule through fear. If people really internalized the fact that (for one example) a person in the UK is more likely to die from swallowing a bee than through terrorism, many totalitarian policies would be undermined. Likewise if most Brits accepted that it’s riskier riding a horse than taking MDMA, the war on drugs would suffer. Fear is just such a useful tool to keep people moving in the general direction you want that politicians and plutocrats will not give it up, and niether will marketers. Meanwhile the media has generally embraced sensationalism and fear for a very very long time. People are inculcated into a culture of fear to sell shit, to control them, to siphon money from them, and who’s left to show them the way out? The prototypical example is that so many people fear flying commercially, yet don’t blink at getting into their cars to drive.
nostromo 8y ago
I've noticed how casually people say, "that should be illegal" nowadays. Usually it's half-joking, but it expresses a real sentiment about how even mild transgressions are seen as legal matters. I have no doubt if you took a poll asking people if it should be illegal to leave a kid in a car for any amount of time you'd get overwhelming support. And, of course, that's how people like the woman in the article end up fearing prosecution after leaving her child alone for a few minutes. > Women are being harassed and even arrested for making perfectly rational parenting decisions. By the way, this may be even more true for men, who are routinely viewed with a skeptical eye when it comes to parenting decisions. The glee at which our current culture laughs at the perceived incompetence of men with regards to parenting has taught us all to expect fathers to be completely boneheaded at all times.
- magduf 8y ago
  It should be illegal to harass or prosecute parents for leaving their child alone for a few minutes.... What really astounds me is that I'm not that old, and I clearly remember being able to run around or ride my bike around town for miles without any adult supervision, at the age of 8 or so. Things have really changed in this country.
  - zrail 8y ago
    I'm 34 and I remember being left alone in the car all the time while my mom ran errands or whatever. I specifically remember a time when I discovered how the cigarette lighter (remember those?) worked when I burned the tip of my finger on it while my mom was in the post office. I rode my bike all over town. Several times my friends and I walked across town to the video store by ourselves, rented a Sega Genesis and a few games, and hauled it all back to someone's house and stayed up all night. I was probably around 12.
  - api 8y ago
    I did those kinds of things too and a lot more. Crime rates were much higher back then and there were no cell phones or other easy communication devices that would allow the kid themselves or a random pedestrian or motorist to rapidly notify authorities if something is wrong. The safer our society gets the more afraid we become and the less tolerant we seem to become of risk. I wonder if it's a cognitive analog of the hygiene hypothesis for allergies. There's a part of our brain that is built for a world of conflict, danger, and scarcity and in an abundant modern developed nation it just has nothing to do but declare war on phantoms and crusade against minute or non-existent risks. I've had debates with people recently about how bad crime is becoming and how dangerous things are. I show them graphs of crime and violence for the past 30 years. I often get total unironic disbelief -- as in they don't believe it and think the sources are biased and there's some kind of conspiracy to suppress the real statistics on crime. Things were much more dangerous in the 60s through the early 90s and people felt a lot safer.
jessaustin 8y ago
I certainly feel sympathy for the writer and anyone in a similar position. However, she writes as if every American is vulnerable to this sort of harassment, when in truth it's only those in most of America. In large swathes of USA, the general public would not call the police over this, and if they did the police would laugh at them. I live in such a place, although I'm not so sure about the community in which I've been working recently. It's no surprise that many communities have this dysfunction. Decades of carefully cultivating only one approved narrative, that you all must buy the same things and live the same way has been very good for marketers and the authoritarian plutocrats who employ them, but very bad for you. In an age of remarkable policy consensus (more war, more spending, more oppression, more, more, more), the heated political discourse often amounts to nothing deeper than, "They disagree with me! How dare they?!?" This doesn't leave much room for "Well, if Sally's parents let her play by the road, I guess you can too." You don't have to live where mothers are harassed like this, but let's face it the job market is better there. Still, you can visit the rest of America. Just drive in any direction. If you get more than fifty miles from an Applebee's or Best Buy, you can probably stop right there, or keep driving, or whatever. If you see a park, drop the kids off. It's fine.
- magduf 8y ago
  That's the problem: the places where you can parent rationally are also places where it's hard to find good food, good medical care, or good jobs. And strangely, the voters in those places are the ones that are usually pushing for more war and more defense spending.
  - aantix 8y ago
    I don't think that's the case at all. Lincoln, Nebraska. Population 250,000. My neighbors would watch my kids if they happen to be out playing by themselves. I'd do the same for them. No police involved. :) There's even modern medical care and grocery stores here. ;) Hillary Clinton won this county (Lancaster). She won Douglas county too (where Omaha is). It's nice.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
imbokodo 8y ago
A social worker I know told me about little girls with venereal diseases, which they got from their mother's boyfriends or stepfathers. Sometimes people make the decision to move to a place which is nice because of a homeowner association's strictness, then complain that the HOA is enforcing it's rules on them as well. Or the same really for living in a suburb with an eagle-eyed police force. If you live in an area where people want you to watch your kids then you will have to watch your kids. The real problem is children of very negligent parents who are not being protected, not yuppies who move to or travel to some uptight suburb and then complain the police enforce the law on them too.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  I don't think I understand your reasoning. The busybodies aren't calling the HOA; they're calling the police. If we punish those who are mostly guilty of having assholes for neighbors enough, is that going to make life better for an 11yo with gonorrhea? Wouldn't it be better for CPS to have more time to help children with actual problems?
newnewpdro 8y ago
Now is simply not a good time to bring people you care for into the world. It's a shit show on so many levels, and you're not likely to substantially improve it by raising a family in this environment.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents.
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    Huh? That's not my intention. It's my genuine view that if one wants to improve this situation, the best thing they can do is forgo children and get involved in education and politics. People become hamstrung with familial obligations, and we could really use a generation of more adults focusing on our nation's hygiene rather than growth.
    - dang 8y ago
      Alas, intention doesn't much influence this. If you bring in a generic flamebait trope, we're likely to get a generic flamewar thread. One way to counteract this is to make comments that are much more specific. Your second comment is a step in that direction.
doitLP 8y ago
Yet another example of what constant consumption of hyperbolic media coverage about horrific cases does to our collective psychology and ability to assess risk. In Iceland they leave sleeping kids parked in strollers outside the coffeeshop. I can't tell how many times I've wanted to do that. But then I remember the friend of a friend whose kids were taken away for doing just that.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  So, leaving your kid in the car is actually a significant danger for them in America, because it creates a risk of men-with-paper-trail taking your kid.
nisse72 8y ago
I'm reminded of Lenore Skenazy who in 2008 let her 9 year old son ride the NY subway alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenore_Skenazy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenore_Skenazy
- blattimwind 8y ago
  It says a lot about a society when "let her kid ride the subway alone" is enough to get the parent a Wikipedia bio.
- ycombobreaker 8y ago
  Lenore is directly referenced in the article! She is the Free-Range Kids blogger.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Odd that the headline skimmer didn't expect that...
    - nisse72 8y ago
      Haha I read the article but didn't actually remember the subway woman's name until I googled for the story.
- valenciarose 8y ago
  I rode the subway alone in NYC at the age of 10, during the 70s when the city and its subways were substantially more dangerous than they are now.
LordHumungous 8y ago
> “It’s not about safety,” Dr. Sarnecka told me. “It’s about enforcing a social norm.” That sums it up pretty well. We aren't in an age of fear so much as an age of self-righteousness. Everyone is constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to preen their moral superiority, and to condemn the failings of others, particularly in any situation involving children.
- sverige 8y ago
  Humungous what!? Are you harassing me!?
acd 8y ago
I think people are affected about consuming fear from news papers, tv news and movies. The Information Age has given us much more access to information than before. We are not accurately assessing how dangerous something is. Watching fearful content on tv can affect your subconscious mind that later leads to rational avoidance of “fear”. Why couldn’t fear and violent content on tv affect the brain? A tv Programme could be like a computer program instructions. Then you have to consume the right type of content. Micro mort the probability of dying from an activity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort
johngalt 8y ago
I agree with the overall theme of the article. People certainly overreact. It lost me when it attempted to make it a gendered issue. If anything, it has it backwards. Imagine that we had an article that described the tyranny of high expectations at work for men? And how privileged women were because expectations were so low that something incompetent for a man would be fine for a woman? I worry that we got stuck on 'men are privileged' and are incapable of seeing anything else in any facet of life. Any gap between men and women is measured with the same male privilege yardstick.
spicyusername 8y ago
Why didn't they just leave the car running though...
paulddraper 8y ago
Last weekend I took my family to the beach. A women started hollering that my ten month old was putting rocks in his mouth. I had to pretend I was as concerned as she was about it, and that it wasn't something he'd done a hundred times before in the backyard. Hearing that similar types of "neglect" get legal action has made my wife paranoid for years. So far, I assume it's a very rare getting-bit-by-a-shark-like occurrence. I hope I'm right and she's wrong.
LeanderK 8y ago
Question: I am a student in germany and in my early 20s. When I look back, for example at my summer holidays, we were biking for miles to spend the afternoon at a public swimming pool in a neighbouring village (approx. 40 min bike ride, maybe more). Or we were filming a lord of the rings-type movie deep in the woods, complete with building a small "castle". We also had a river in the woods my parents were always warning me that I can't get in there because I might drown, since it was more rapid than it looked like. So in elementary school I had nightmares for a few weeks of drowning inside the river, but that was all. I was still allowed to play there with my friends. For example, we once were building paper boats and see which one makes it the farthest. Friends in the city were allowed to use the public transport (it's how every got to school...) to move around freely in the city. Also, i clearly remember waiting in the car for my mom to get something. I can't imagine growing up without being allowed to explore the world, be it nature or man-made. Is this really different in the US?

108 points by rafaelc 8y ago

This is exactly why I think it's absolute lunacy to have children in the US these days, and I actively advocate against it. If you want to have kids, move to a country where you aren't charged with a crime for leaving your kids alone under the age of 12. In Japan, kids are basically forced to walk themselves to school at the age of 7 or so, without their parents. Here, that would cause the parents to be thrown in jail. Raising kids in this country is dangerous to your personal safety if you want to avoid jail time. Don't do it. This article isn't exaggerating. From the end of the article: "Instead I worry about all the ways our country seems to be at war with children, even as we insist our greatest responsibility is to protect them." Exactly: we are at war with children, and parents too. The rational choice is to avoid the situation altogether. If you're reading on this board, you're probably affluent enough to head to greener pastures if/when you decide to have kids.

vowelless 8y ago
> if you want to have kids, move to a country where you aren't charged with a crime for leaving your kids alone under the age of 12. Or, you know, perhaps try to change the laws?
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  Changing the laws won't change the culture. The article clearly stated that she didn't do anything illegal, yet still wound up having to do 100 hours of community service just for getting 'caught' not-breaking the law. As they say, you can beat the charge, but you can't beat the ride.
- magduf 8y ago
  Good luck with that. That can take decades. How long have people been trying to change the War on Drugs laws? By the time you get that done, you'll be too old to have kids. Changing the laws means changing the culture, and these laws are a byproduct of our culture of fear. You're not going to change that any time soon.
- shadofx 8y ago
  The laws are put in place as a measured response to real threats. You need to remove those threats first before the laws can be changed.
  - jshevek 8y ago
    Generally speaking, there is nothing 'measured' about the way the democratic process is influenced by widespread irrationality and emotionalism. I see no reason to believe that these laws are a result of a measured response. I see reason to believe the opposite.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    I want to believe this is a blunt sort of satire, but I can't quite get there...
mmsimanga 8y ago
To add another data point. Middle-class South Africa is pretty much the same. The laws might not be as strict but there is a lot of peer/social pressure. You should see the traffic jam around schools including high schools where kids as old as 17 are dropped off.
xamuel 8y ago
Statistically, these "mother wrongly arrested" stories are about as rare as genuine child abductions. Avoiding parenthood because of them is as irrational as reporting a woman for leaving her child in the car for five minutes. (Not that that's an excuse for the abominable actions of law enforcement in the story. Shame on the police, prosecutors, and judges involved.)
- magduf 8y ago
  The problem is it's not that rare. The police, prosecutors, and judges involved here are still there, and they're going to consistently act this way towards parents under their jurisdiction. The only rational way to deal with this is to leave that place. And many places in the US are just like this now; sure, you could move to rural Montana and maybe avoid this, but good luck getting a decent job there.
- convivialdingo 8y ago
  I used to think the same thing, but having raised kids I have told my own two adult children to raise their kids abroad. The Stasi-like laws are real. Anonymous tips, school and medical required reporting laws, assumed guilt and state harassment are the status quo. I’ve known too many families that get caught up by CPS. In poor communities the harassment is disturbing. Parenting while poor is apparently against the law. Few parents know their limited rights - so they usually talk with CPS before consulting an attorney and get caught up in the system for years when they likely did nothing wrong. Every CPS encounter is for the primary purpose of gathering evidence against the accused. Those conversations are twisted into the most negative light possible, editorialized and presented as evidence in court. I’ve read the cases. There are 2.3M CPS cases a year(2014), and there are 3-4M children born each year. These statistics alone show a marked trend of state harassment against families. I appreciate and understand that CPS has a role in protecting children. I just think the system is broken, wrong and often unjust. CPS is likely causing more harm than good for most children, even if they help a small minority.
war1025 8y ago
One of the main reasons we moved to the community we did is that I was driving by a house on what happened to be the last day of school and saw multiple elementary school aged kids walking home alone or in groups. When I was little I would take the shuttle bus after school to the school for slightly older kids (4th and 5th grade), and from there a pack of probably 5 of us would walk to our baby sitter's half a mile away (just checked on maps). Happy to know there are at least some parts of the US that haven't given up on children being capable little humans.
- mmsimanga 8y ago
  I also caught the school bus and sometimes walked home if I missed the bus. The driver a kindly but no-nonsense type of man used to kick you off the bus if you were being naughty (imagine doing that today). That meant you had a long walk home but taught one not to throw things on a bus :-). I digress, in South Africa catching the bus to school is closely related to financial standing. The poorer folk who do not own cars really have no choice but to put their children on the bus. There is no judgement and all the kids catch the bus. The middle and upper-class folk drop their kids off. I can't help but wonder if the kids catching the bus will grow up to be more independent and more balanced. Not only do they catch the bus, often their parents cannot afford aftercare so they begin to cook and look after themselves at scandalously young ages. I use the word scandalous sarcastically because in my day there was no aftercare and we could make ourselves a sandwich from a pretty young age.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

Right now on Arstechnica there is an article about the ridiculous rate of death during labour in the US: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/why-do-so-many-moms-die-and-suffer-in-the-us-stupid-negligence https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/why-do-so-many-moms-... I feel like this is all somehow a strange result of personal responsibility mutated monstrously - society doesn't care about whether you live or die, but it'll do everything in it's power to make sure you're shamed for the slightest screw up.

aidenn0 8y ago
I see the same issue inverted when it comes to abortion; millions of people protesting to make sure you don't kill your child before it's born, but hardly anybody there to help you to raise the child after it's born.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  Or even during its birth. The water breaking is the beginning of the social darwinism water-slide.
- colemannugent 8y ago
  I see this argument made quite frequently online and I don't get it. Isn't it obvious that more people think the state should prioritize preventing murders over helping people raise their children? Isn't the debate over the beginning of life more contentious than the debate over whether we should help raise other people's children?
  - Xavdidtheshadow 8y ago
    The issue is the hypocrisy of ensuring that a mother delivers a potential baby and simultaneously removing the social safety net that ensures it will be cared for once it arrives (even if she isn't financially able to).
  - ScottBurson 8y ago
    Many of us don't believe abortion is murder, so we think that it should be left to the woman involved to decide whether her life circumstances are appropriate for raising a(nother) child. If anti-choicers want to insert their own beliefs into someone else's very personal decision, it seems only reasonable to expect them to take some responsibility for the effects of that insertion.

cridenour 8y ago

24/7 news cycles have somehow convinced the US that this is the most dangerous time in history for children when in fact, the complete opposite is true. It's very sad.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
I was out with friends this weekend at a local event and one of them went "Why would you let your kid out of sight with all these pedophiles running around?" - there was zero evidence there were sex offenders around us - it was a family event, but just because of the sheer prevalence of news they had heard, it's warped their perception of the world enough to be fearful of the utterly irrational.
onychomys 8y ago
That and the rise of weekly detective shows that focus on sexual crimes. SVU is in its 19th season, somehow. Criminal Minds is about to start its 14th. And there are plenty of others like those. Contrast that with 30 years ago, when we had things like Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, and regular Law & Order. Those shows featured murders committed because of robberies and affairs and the like. The more modern versions are basically all pedophiles and rapists.
tunap 8y ago
Dr Sagan noted the trend & wrote a book about it before he died. Demon Haunted World https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_haunted_world https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_haunted_world

ravenstine 8y ago

How common is this, really? Are parents in the US being regularly harassed for minor things like in the article? I'm not trying to discredit this person's story, but it's easy to believe that this is an "issue" when everything is anecdotal.

jsight 8y ago
I feel like there is something really meta about your comment. I also feel like I have read this exact article about 3 years ago. EDIT: Oh, of course, I remembered this article by the same writer: https://www.salon.com/2014/06/03/the_day_i_left_my_son_in_the_car/ https://www.salon.com/2014/06/03/the_day_i_left_my_son_in_th... In some ways, I think the 4 year old article was better.
jshevek 8y ago
All I have are anecdotes, and I can't speak to the frequency of law enforcement getting involved, but regarding the general perception of what is 'appropriate parenting' there is a culture of micromanagement, paranoia, and shaming.
magduf 8y ago
In reality, it probably varies a lot by location. Apparently, in Utah (as stated in the article), they actually passed "free range parenting" laws. But try that in certain other metro areas and you're going to get in big trouble. Personally, I'd rather leave the country than live in Utah...
rubidium 8y ago
Yes. As noted in the article, the now-extensive reach and power of CPS-type investigations is the most damaging typical harrassment. Other parents concerns are annoying but a bit silly. Cops don't have much legal ground in the minor things, as noted. But CPS can pretty do whatever it wants.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  I'm always fascinated by sentiments given by people living in the self-declared land of freedom of the form: > Cops don't [...]. But [govt agency] can do whatever they want. It seems to me as-if there aren't many real freedoms beyond the first one.

jshevek 8y ago

She makes a good point, here: "We do not think about the statistical probabilities or compare the likelihood of such events with far more present dangers, like increasing rates of childhood diabetes or depression. Statistically speaking, it would take 750,000 years for a child left alone in a public space to be snatched by a stranger. Statistically speaking, a child is far more likely to be killed in a car on the way to a store than waiting in one that is parked."

Xcelerate 8y ago
I thought this was easily the strongest point in the whole article. Penalties for negligence should be based on actual, calculated risks. End of story.
- gnicholas 8y ago
  Well, there's a cost-benefit calculation. It's not all about the risk. If you want to get groceries, you have to drive, walk, bike, or take a bus to the store. Each has some level of risk, and some amount of inconvenience. Once you get to the store, there is some amount of risk to leaving your kid in the car. As she points out, it is infinitesimal. The ideal comparison would be to say that there's more risk of the kid being hit by a car while walking from the parking lot to the store than to just sitting in the car. Given the stats she quoted, I wouldn't be surprised if this were true.
GW150914 8y ago
That narrative is unacceptable to power structures that rule through fear. If people really internalized the fact that (for one example) a person in the UK is more likely to die from swallowing a bee than through terrorism, many totalitarian policies would be undermined. Likewise if most Brits accepted that it’s riskier riding a horse than taking MDMA, the war on drugs would suffer. Fear is just such a useful tool to keep people moving in the general direction you want that politicians and plutocrats will not give it up, and niether will marketers. Meanwhile the media has generally embraced sensationalism and fear for a very very long time. People are inculcated into a culture of fear to sell shit, to control them, to siphon money from them, and who’s left to show them the way out? The prototypical example is that so many people fear flying commercially, yet don’t blink at getting into their cars to drive.

nostromo 8y ago

I've noticed how casually people say, "that should be illegal" nowadays. Usually it's half-joking, but it expresses a real sentiment about how even mild transgressions are seen as legal matters. I have no doubt if you took a poll asking people if it should be illegal to leave a kid in a car for any amount of time you'd get overwhelming support. And, of course, that's how people like the woman in the article end up fearing prosecution after leaving her child alone for a few minutes. > Women are being harassed and even arrested for making perfectly rational parenting decisions. By the way, this may be even more true for men, who are routinely viewed with a skeptical eye when it comes to parenting decisions. The glee at which our current culture laughs at the perceived incompetence of men with regards to parenting has taught us all to expect fathers to be completely boneheaded at all times.

magduf 8y ago
It should be illegal to harass or prosecute parents for leaving their child alone for a few minutes.... What really astounds me is that I'm not that old, and I clearly remember being able to run around or ride my bike around town for miles without any adult supervision, at the age of 8 or so. Things have really changed in this country.
- zrail 8y ago
  I'm 34 and I remember being left alone in the car all the time while my mom ran errands or whatever. I specifically remember a time when I discovered how the cigarette lighter (remember those?) worked when I burned the tip of my finger on it while my mom was in the post office. I rode my bike all over town. Several times my friends and I walked across town to the video store by ourselves, rented a Sega Genesis and a few games, and hauled it all back to someone's house and stayed up all night. I was probably around 12.
- api 8y ago
  I did those kinds of things too and a lot more. Crime rates were much higher back then and there were no cell phones or other easy communication devices that would allow the kid themselves or a random pedestrian or motorist to rapidly notify authorities if something is wrong. The safer our society gets the more afraid we become and the less tolerant we seem to become of risk. I wonder if it's a cognitive analog of the hygiene hypothesis for allergies. There's a part of our brain that is built for a world of conflict, danger, and scarcity and in an abundant modern developed nation it just has nothing to do but declare war on phantoms and crusade against minute or non-existent risks. I've had debates with people recently about how bad crime is becoming and how dangerous things are. I show them graphs of crime and violence for the past 30 years. I often get total unironic disbelief -- as in they don't believe it and think the sources are biased and there's some kind of conspiracy to suppress the real statistics on crime. Things were much more dangerous in the 60s through the early 90s and people felt a lot safer.

jessaustin 8y ago

I certainly feel sympathy for the writer and anyone in a similar position. However, she writes as if every American is vulnerable to this sort of harassment, when in truth it's only those in most of America. In large swathes of USA, the general public would not call the police over this, and if they did the police would laugh at them. I live in such a place, although I'm not so sure about the community in which I've been working recently. It's no surprise that many communities have this dysfunction. Decades of carefully cultivating only one approved narrative, that you all must buy the same things and live the same way has been very good for marketers and the authoritarian plutocrats who employ them, but very bad for you. In an age of remarkable policy consensus (more war, more spending, more oppression, more, more, more), the heated political discourse often amounts to nothing deeper than, "They disagree with me! How dare they?!?" This doesn't leave much room for "Well, if Sally's parents let her play by the road, I guess you can too." You don't have to live where mothers are harassed like this, but let's face it the job market is better there. Still, you can visit the rest of America. Just drive in any direction. If you get more than fifty miles from an Applebee's or Best Buy, you can probably stop right there, or keep driving, or whatever. If you see a park, drop the kids off. It's fine.

magduf 8y ago
That's the problem: the places where you can parent rationally are also places where it's hard to find good food, good medical care, or good jobs. And strangely, the voters in those places are the ones that are usually pushing for more war and more defense spending.
- aantix 8y ago
  I don't think that's the case at all. Lincoln, Nebraska. Population 250,000. My neighbors would watch my kids if they happen to be out playing by themselves. I'd do the same for them. No police involved. :) There's even modern medical care and grocery stores here. ;) Hillary Clinton won this county (Lancaster). She won Douglas county too (where Omaha is). It's nice.
  - jessaustin 8y ago

imbokodo 8y ago

A social worker I know told me about little girls with venereal diseases, which they got from their mother's boyfriends or stepfathers. Sometimes people make the decision to move to a place which is nice because of a homeowner association's strictness, then complain that the HOA is enforcing it's rules on them as well. Or the same really for living in a suburb with an eagle-eyed police force. If you live in an area where people want you to watch your kids then you will have to watch your kids. The real problem is children of very negligent parents who are not being protected, not yuppies who move to or travel to some uptight suburb and then complain the police enforce the law on them too.

jessaustin 8y ago
I don't think I understand your reasoning. The busybodies aren't calling the HOA; they're calling the police. If we punish those who are mostly guilty of having assholes for neighbors enough, is that going to make life better for an 11yo with gonorrhea? Wouldn't it be better for CPS to have more time to help children with actual problems?

newnewpdro 8y ago

Now is simply not a good time to bring people you care for into the world. It's a shit show on so many levels, and you're not likely to substantially improve it by raising a family in this environment.

dang 8y ago
Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  Huh? That's not my intention. It's my genuine view that if one wants to improve this situation, the best thing they can do is forgo children and get involved in education and politics. People become hamstrung with familial obligations, and we could really use a generation of more adults focusing on our nation's hygiene rather than growth.
  - dang 8y ago
    Alas, intention doesn't much influence this. If you bring in a generic flamebait trope, we're likely to get a generic flamewar thread. One way to counteract this is to make comments that are much more specific. Your second comment is a step in that direction.

doitLP 8y ago

Yet another example of what constant consumption of hyperbolic media coverage about horrific cases does to our collective psychology and ability to assess risk. In Iceland they leave sleeping kids parked in strollers outside the coffeeshop. I can't tell how many times I've wanted to do that. But then I remember the friend of a friend whose kids were taken away for doing just that.

blattimwind 8y ago
So, leaving your kid in the car is actually a significant danger for them in America, because it creates a risk of men-with-paper-trail taking your kid.

nisse72 8y ago

I'm reminded of Lenore Skenazy who in 2008 let her 9 year old son ride the NY subway alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenore_Skenazy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenore_Skenazy

blattimwind 8y ago
It says a lot about a society when "let her kid ride the subway alone" is enough to get the parent a Wikipedia bio.
ycombobreaker 8y ago
Lenore is directly referenced in the article! She is the Free-Range Kids blogger.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  Odd that the headline skimmer didn't expect that...
  - nisse72 8y ago
    Haha I read the article but didn't actually remember the subway woman's name until I googled for the story.
valenciarose 8y ago
I rode the subway alone in NYC at the age of 10, during the 70s when the city and its subways were substantially more dangerous than they are now.

LordHumungous 8y ago

> “It’s not about safety,” Dr. Sarnecka told me. “It’s about enforcing a social norm.” That sums it up pretty well. We aren't in an age of fear so much as an age of self-righteousness. Everyone is constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to preen their moral superiority, and to condemn the failings of others, particularly in any situation involving children.

sverige 8y ago
Humungous what!? Are you harassing me!?

acd 8y ago

I think people are affected about consuming fear from news papers, tv news and movies. The Information Age has given us much more access to information than before. We are not accurately assessing how dangerous something is. Watching fearful content on tv can affect your subconscious mind that later leads to rational avoidance of “fear”. Why couldn’t fear and violent content on tv affect the brain? A tv Programme could be like a computer program instructions. Then you have to consume the right type of content. Micro mort the probability of dying from an activity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort

johngalt 8y ago

I agree with the overall theme of the article. People certainly overreact. It lost me when it attempted to make it a gendered issue. If anything, it has it backwards. Imagine that we had an article that described the tyranny of high expectations at work for men? And how privileged women were because expectations were so low that something incompetent for a man would be fine for a woman? I worry that we got stuck on 'men are privileged' and are incapable of seeing anything else in any facet of life. Any gap between men and women is measured with the same male privilege yardstick.

spicyusername 8y ago

Why didn't they just leave the car running though...

paulddraper 8y ago

Last weekend I took my family to the beach. A women started hollering that my ten month old was putting rocks in his mouth. I had to pretend I was as concerned as she was about it, and that it wasn't something he'd done a hundred times before in the backyard. Hearing that similar types of "neglect" get legal action has made my wife paranoid for years. So far, I assume it's a very rare getting-bit-by-a-shark-like occurrence. I hope I'm right and she's wrong.

LeanderK 8y ago

Question: I am a student in germany and in my early 20s. When I look back, for example at my summer holidays, we were biking for miles to spend the afternoon at a public swimming pool in a neighbouring village (approx. 40 min bike ride, maybe more). Or we were filming a lord of the rings-type movie deep in the woods, complete with building a small "castle". We also had a river in the woods my parents were always warning me that I can't get in there because I might drown, since it was more rapid than it looked like. So in elementary school I had nightmares for a few weeks of drowning inside the river, but that was all. I was still allowed to play there with my friends. For example, we once were building paper boats and see which one makes it the farthest. Friends in the city were allowed to use the public transport (it's how every got to school...) to move around freely in the city. Also, i clearly remember waiting in the car for my mom to get something. I can't imagine growing up without being allowed to explore the world, be it nature or man-made. Is this really different in the US?