13 ms·

The Enduring Myth of Stranger Danger

83 points by apsec112 6y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
One thing to note though, is even with the crimes against children declining, it is still a really high number. According to the chart in the article, it is around 3,000 per 100,000 population. In comparison, the highest COVID mortality rate in the US is New Jersey with 253 per 100,000. The motor vehicle fatality rate in the US in 2018 was 11.18 per 100,000 population. Compared to those numbers, the crimes against children rate is extremely high.
- valtism 6y ago
  Yes, but how many of those crimes are from strangers? I've heard that most crimes are committed by those close to the victim - either family or friends.
- ____a 6y ago
  I was surprised so clicked through on the graph. Looks like it is 3,000 per 100,000 people, not just children. Graph should have had more context in the article posted.
- astura 6y ago
  Children are very rarely harmed by strangers, when they are harmed they are overwhelming harmed by people they known - parents, family, friends, neighbors, etc. When a young child is murdered, the killer is usually a parent or stepparent, not a stranger. Not only that but you are comparing apples (mortality) to pineapples (crimes in general).
- anm89 6y ago
  So what? So we should keep them in cages and walk them around on leashes? Bad things happen sometimes. It's not a reason to emotionally stunt your kids by sheltering them from being able to leave their homes and experience the world around them.
stevecalifornia 6y ago
Of all the missing children, less than 1% is non-family abductions. [1] I live in a safe suburb far from any major city and I let my 6 and 8 year old take themselves on a walk around the neighborhood when they check in with me first. Literally every time they go on a walk one or two adults stops and asks them where their parents are and sometimes the adult even calls us to warn us of the dangers of kidnapping. When I mention that we let our kids walk themselves to my parents I get lectured like crazy about how people will steal our kids. I am totally confident someone will lecture me in this thread. The stats don't match the fear. It's unreasonable and unhealthy to deny your children the experience of self-reliance and exploration. [1] https://www.missingkids.org/footer/media/keyfacts https://www.missingkids.org/footer/media/keyfacts
- vivekd 6y ago
  My parents raised me this way. And I must admit it was beneficial. I don't know if I'd be willing to do the same thing. I think as low as the prospect is, it might be because people tend to keep an eye on kids. Predators might be more likely to target kids who are around by themselves. Or prospective predators might be tempted by a kid they see walking around alone. If nothing else for the purpose of grooming. Sure we don't outlaw cars, but it's reasonable to minimize unnecessary risk while cars are a necessity in most urban areas. More importantly, there are greater dangers in the form of accidents. Kids aren't careful, they might run across the street where a driver has trouble seeing them. They might touch a down wire. There's a lot that could happen when you don't keep an eye on kids.
  - CaveTech 6y ago
    You've managed to turn a lived experience into an irrational fear. 100% safety cannot be guaranteed, for anyone in any place, but denying others the privilege for "what if" is in many ways a far worse suppression. I too was given autonomy when growing up, and I credit it to giving me comparatively far better life skills than my peers. I walked home and cooked myself lunch since the 4th grade. I did my own laundry. I spent untold hours in the park. It taught me how to look after myself and make critical judgements, skills that I watched some friends learn and develop in university 10 years after me. The stress of which can lead to drastically worse decisions when you're 20+ than when you're 10.
anm89 6y ago
So glad to see this. I think it is common sense but it's the kind of thing that it is not in any specific person's interest to speak out on.
muzani 6y ago
Half this article feels like whataboutism. Sure, child abuse comes from people known by the child, but it doesn't mean that if I don't let my kid out, she'll get abused by her mother. The car accident thing is also unrelated. Kids are more likely to die from swimming pools than stab themselves with kitchen knives, but I'm not going to let them play with kitchen knives. I also have doubt that "crimes have fallen" is a valid reason. Perhaps this is because of the prevalence of the Stranger Danger mindset? That said, I think it has gone a bit far. Kids and teenagers used to run around several generation ago. I'd rather my daughter take a bike ride outside, than sit in her room playing with Omegle.
- metabagel 6y ago
  Crime is down because lead was eliminated from automobile fuel. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime-roundup-for-2018/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...
CyberRabbi 6y ago
Crime rates have lowered since the 90s but they are still far higher than pre-1965 levels. We are a long way from safe 1950s America.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  I don't know much about US history, but I know this happened in the 50s, so "safe 1950s America" may require an asterisk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till
  - CyberRabbi 6y ago
    Wow that’s the first time I’ve heard of Emmett Till. Thanks for bringing than to my attention. That anecdote is very relevant to a discussion about long term trends in aggregate crime rate statistics. Reminds me of how the exceptional case of the Therac 25 shows us that medical devices are generally dangerous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
    - aaron695 6y ago
      Therac 25 saved lives. Yes is had critical errors that caused harm, but it was also life saving machinery. To be taken seriously on this topic, you need to look at harm vs good. And unfortunately perceived harm as well, since we live in a clown land and it affects reality. Therac 25 did stop a lot of innovation because of societies unwillingness to accept computer errors equivocal to human errors.
      - CyberRabbi 6y ago
        You make a great point about how the perception and narrative around the exceptional case of the Therac 25 held society back.
- smt88 6y ago
  Pre-1965 doesn't seem comparable for many reasons. Segregation is one, the economy is another, and the Vietnam War is yet another.
doggodaddo78 6y ago
Rather than automatically othering people prejudicially, it's better to know the signs of which people, including strangers, seem off. My mom said she was almost abducted by a stranger in a car trying to lure her in with candy, but this a rare occurrence. It happens, and kids need to be prepared to not blindly trust or mistrust everyone
I_Byte 6y ago
I really recommend you all look up the work of Social Phycologist Jonathan Haidt. Specially his work regarding his book “The Coddling of The American Mind.” In it he covers the consequences of over-protective parenting on today’s American youth and how those consequences have spilled over onto college campuses in the form of over-protective policies. As a kid myself I feel as though his work really resonates with me and I *highly* consider all current parents to become at least familiar with his research.
- haberman 6y ago
  Haidt is a founding member of this organization (Let Grow) and sits on their board: https://letgrow.org/our-people/ https://letgrow.org/our-people/
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  Great book and helps explain so much of emergent culture amount younger generations, particularly in institutions like universities. His coauthor, Greg Lukianoff is president of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Individual_Rights_in_Education https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Individual_Ri...). He also authored their guide to free speech on campus (https://www.thefire.org/research/publications/fire-guides/ https://www.thefire.org/research/publications/fire-guides/).
cik 6y ago
This is completely cultural. Here in Israel kids as young as 5 walk to school alone (not legally, just reality), and you'll frequently see a 6 year old taking the bus. The community looks out for them, parents give them cellphones (dumb phones), and we don't worry about stranger danger in this way. I send my 7 year old to the corner store a couple of times a week (pre British Super-COVID) to buy missing ingredients, a bottle of wine... basically whatever's missing. It takes a village to raise a child, and we're all responsible for society's coherence.
- dmje 6y ago
  Came here to say this. I think it's more than cultural, it's a US obsession to helicopter parent. We're in the uk and kids are widely allowed to roam, and good on the parents and kids for giving them autonomy. We live by the sea in a small town: my kids are 13 and 16 now but have been encouraged out for some years. How else are they going to learn how to interact with the world, learn how to negotiate roads, know not to fall in the sea? I'm sounding blase. I'm not, they're my kids and as such are as important to me as it gets, but parenting - maybe the hardest thing about parenting - is about letting go, knowing that you're making strong, independent adults.
  - cik 6y ago
    I really like that idea of making strong, independent adults. I firmly believe the whole point is to help them be better than I am, to guide but not push (well, push sometimes), and I think that independence is the key part of this. It has subtle ways of teaching other skills like critical thinking, story telling, decision making, communication, math, and others. I could never go back to the old model.
- dmitriid 6y ago
  Same in Sweden, though probably for kids starting from around age 8.
  - checkyoursudo 6y ago
    In Sweden here, my 6 y.o. takes the city bus to school from our town to the town a couple km away. When I lived in Germany, I would regularly see fairly young kids taking the U-Bahn, though I don't exactly know how young they were. Probably older than 6, but maybe not much older.
ctur 6y ago
There is an excellent podcast, You're Wrong About, which goes into the disparity between things we fear and what actually happens. Similar and relevant topics they cover: - Satanic Panic - Human Trafficking - Murder - Stanford Prison Experiment etc. A very common theme is "do-gooders" trying to do what they very naively think is a good thing but without data or rationality to back it up. Or, worse, people who manipulate those do-gooders into accomplishing other, more selfish/nefarious/evil goals. Really interesting stuff overall. https://www.buzzsprout.com/1112270 https://www.buzzsprout.com/1112270
gnicholas 6y ago
Does anyone know if there has been an increase in pedestrian fatalities in the last 5-10 years, on account of distracted drivers? I walk my baby in a stroller most days and it seems like 1/4 to 1/3 of drivers are looking at their cell phones. Some of the time they look up when they realize there’s a pedestrian, but I can’t imagine that there hasn’t been an uptick in pedestrian fatalities/injuries. I am very careful when I’m out walking (checking to see where the driver is looking, checking to see if there are other cars/obstacles that the driver might need to maneuver around at the point where he’s passing me, etc), but kids would never be this careful. Partly it’s because they can’t predict what a driver would do because they don’t know how to drive, and partly because kids are more likely to be goofing off and not paying attention. Also, kids heads/torsos are more at fender-level, making accidents more likely to be fatal. I do think the stranger danger piece is overblown, but I simultaneously wonder if there aren’t other dangers that have started increasing in the half decade or so since smartphones became very common.
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  This. Stranger danger isn’t what I’m concerned about at all, instead it’s can my kid be careful enough to not be killed by a car driven by someone not paying attention.
- KozmoNau7 6y ago
  Society in the US and EU is safer overall than it has ever been before, and the trend is towards ever greater safety. Yet we still get constant reminders of stranger danger and horrible crimes in the news. Instead of focusing on those, perhaps we should collectively focus a lot more on making traffic better and safer for pedestrians and cyclists, prioritize them heavily over cars. Distracted driving especially is something we could do something about, if we chose to do so.
  - CryptoPunk 6y ago
    Yes, and we should focus more on implementing self-driving cars, which if widely implemented, will see rapid incremental improvement through trial and error, until fatal car accidents are reduced to nearly zero as human error is taken out of the picture and software error approaches zero. The anti-profit/SV mindset needs to be rejected in favor of a pro-innovation mindset of libertarianism.
throwawaysea 6y ago
I do think it’s important to let children wander and roam unsupervised. The lack of open play and self direction is a malaise that I've anecdotally seen the effects of in younger employees entering the workforce. Like all things, balance is important. It’s okay to let them wander off while also teaching them to be alert and to trust their gut instinct when they sense danger (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_of_Fear https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_of_Fear).
coldtea 6y ago
These constraints sound batshit-crazy in a society where children play around the neighborhood, walk around the streets freely, go to school and back walking, play in city squares and such. Which includes a large chunk of the world, from western european countries, to Japan, to "dangerous" countries in Africa and Latin America. This used to be the case in the US too, up until the 70s-80s or so, and the advent of helicopter parents. And that in a period that general crime statistics were worse than now, but nobody would bat an eye if kids roamed and played around. The "stranger danger" idea is more cultural (about total control and isolation to private bubble) than about actual threat.
- gordian-mind 6y ago
  Your narrative is actually completely in reverse. Crime came at an absolute peak in the 90s, while growing exponentially in the two decades before that. This is why gradually all parents became helicopter parents: because the high-trust society they had grown up in just disappeared in front of their very eyes. Now, it's funny to see people like the author arguing that "Crimes against children have fallen since the early ’90s." when the 90s were the absolute crime peak and reason why this social change happened. But the crime levels are still nowhere near their base level (first half the 20th, 50s, 60s), that allowed people to trust each other enough to let their kids roam outside... In France the crime rate peaked in the 2000s, and all parents from the late 90s until now are helicopter parents.
  - dghlsakjg 6y ago
    I would be willing to believe that crime rates in the 50s and 60s are a false baseline for a variety of reasons. Primarily, the statistics about what is reported are going to be off. It seems like culturally (or at least anecdotally), we were less likely to lay formal charges and collect statistics about crime, especially crime related to mental health (We used to have doctors lock people up instead of cops). Additionally there are a lot more crimes to commit in modern times
    - gordian-mind 6y ago
troyvit 6y ago
> Considering that vast majority of child abuse is at the hands of someone they know, rather than a stranger (see this DOJ report, page 10), it begins to feel as if keeping kids indoors — with a babysitter, parent, relative, sibling, or step-parent — is actually LESS safe than them getting on their bikes and riding around. Let’s not restrict kids’ freedom due to a misunderstanding of actual risk. The majority of child abuse happening at the hands of someone the kids know could be because we don't let kids out of our sight more. If we let kids out of our site more would that number still be true? Point #2 reinforces this idea (anecdotally). It shows that child abuse has slowly been declining since 1991. The article says, "yeah well all crime has gone down" but are there any studies that show how that number correlates to increased protectiveness? I'm not saying the concept is wrong (I believe kids should have more freedom and wish my kids did). Just saying this article could tighten up its arguments better.

83 points by apsec112 6y ago

One thing to note though, is even with the crimes against children declining, it is still a really high number. According to the chart in the article, it is around 3,000 per 100,000 population. In comparison, the highest COVID mortality rate in the US is New Jersey with 253 per 100,000. The motor vehicle fatality rate in the US in 2018 was 11.18 per 100,000 population. Compared to those numbers, the crimes against children rate is extremely high.

valtism 6y ago
Yes, but how many of those crimes are from strangers? I've heard that most crimes are committed by those close to the victim - either family or friends.
____a 6y ago
I was surprised so clicked through on the graph. Looks like it is 3,000 per 100,000 people, not just children. Graph should have had more context in the article posted.
astura 6y ago
Children are very rarely harmed by strangers, when they are harmed they are overwhelming harmed by people they known - parents, family, friends, neighbors, etc. When a young child is murdered, the killer is usually a parent or stepparent, not a stranger. Not only that but you are comparing apples (mortality) to pineapples (crimes in general).
anm89 6y ago
So what? So we should keep them in cages and walk them around on leashes? Bad things happen sometimes. It's not a reason to emotionally stunt your kids by sheltering them from being able to leave their homes and experience the world around them.

stevecalifornia 6y ago

Of all the missing children, less than 1% is non-family abductions. [1] I live in a safe suburb far from any major city and I let my 6 and 8 year old take themselves on a walk around the neighborhood when they check in with me first. Literally every time they go on a walk one or two adults stops and asks them where their parents are and sometimes the adult even calls us to warn us of the dangers of kidnapping. When I mention that we let our kids walk themselves to my parents I get lectured like crazy about how people will steal our kids. I am totally confident someone will lecture me in this thread. The stats don't match the fear. It's unreasonable and unhealthy to deny your children the experience of self-reliance and exploration. [1] https://www.missingkids.org/footer/media/keyfacts https://www.missingkids.org/footer/media/keyfacts

vivekd 6y ago
My parents raised me this way. And I must admit it was beneficial. I don't know if I'd be willing to do the same thing. I think as low as the prospect is, it might be because people tend to keep an eye on kids. Predators might be more likely to target kids who are around by themselves. Or prospective predators might be tempted by a kid they see walking around alone. If nothing else for the purpose of grooming. Sure we don't outlaw cars, but it's reasonable to minimize unnecessary risk while cars are a necessity in most urban areas. More importantly, there are greater dangers in the form of accidents. Kids aren't careful, they might run across the street where a driver has trouble seeing them. They might touch a down wire. There's a lot that could happen when you don't keep an eye on kids.
- CaveTech 6y ago
  You've managed to turn a lived experience into an irrational fear. 100% safety cannot be guaranteed, for anyone in any place, but denying others the privilege for "what if" is in many ways a far worse suppression. I too was given autonomy when growing up, and I credit it to giving me comparatively far better life skills than my peers. I walked home and cooked myself lunch since the 4th grade. I did my own laundry. I spent untold hours in the park. It taught me how to look after myself and make critical judgements, skills that I watched some friends learn and develop in university 10 years after me. The stress of which can lead to drastically worse decisions when you're 20+ than when you're 10.

anm89 6y ago

So glad to see this. I think it is common sense but it's the kind of thing that it is not in any specific person's interest to speak out on.

muzani 6y ago

Half this article feels like whataboutism. Sure, child abuse comes from people known by the child, but it doesn't mean that if I don't let my kid out, she'll get abused by her mother. The car accident thing is also unrelated. Kids are more likely to die from swimming pools than stab themselves with kitchen knives, but I'm not going to let them play with kitchen knives. I also have doubt that "crimes have fallen" is a valid reason. Perhaps this is because of the prevalence of the Stranger Danger mindset? That said, I think it has gone a bit far. Kids and teenagers used to run around several generation ago. I'd rather my daughter take a bike ride outside, than sit in her room playing with Omegle.

metabagel 6y ago
Crime is down because lead was eliminated from automobile fuel. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime-roundup-for-2018/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...

CyberRabbi 6y ago

Crime rates have lowered since the 90s but they are still far higher than pre-1965 levels. We are a long way from safe 1950s America.

smnrchrds 6y ago
I don't know much about US history, but I know this happened in the 50s, so "safe 1950s America" may require an asterisk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  Wow that’s the first time I’ve heard of Emmett Till. Thanks for bringing than to my attention. That anecdote is very relevant to a discussion about long term trends in aggregate crime rate statistics. Reminds me of how the exceptional case of the Therac 25 shows us that medical devices are generally dangerous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
  - aaron695 6y ago
    Therac 25 saved lives. Yes is had critical errors that caused harm, but it was also life saving machinery. To be taken seriously on this topic, you need to look at harm vs good. And unfortunately perceived harm as well, since we live in a clown land and it affects reality. Therac 25 did stop a lot of innovation because of societies unwillingness to accept computer errors equivocal to human errors.
    - CyberRabbi 6y ago
      You make a great point about how the perception and narrative around the exceptional case of the Therac 25 held society back.
smt88 6y ago
Pre-1965 doesn't seem comparable for many reasons. Segregation is one, the economy is another, and the Vietnam War is yet another.

doggodaddo78 6y ago

Rather than automatically othering people prejudicially, it's better to know the signs of which people, including strangers, seem off. My mom said she was almost abducted by a stranger in a car trying to lure her in with candy, but this a rare occurrence. It happens, and kids need to be prepared to not blindly trust or mistrust everyone

I_Byte 6y ago

I really recommend you all look up the work of Social Phycologist Jonathan Haidt. Specially his work regarding his book “The Coddling of The American Mind.” In it he covers the consequences of over-protective parenting on today’s American youth and how those consequences have spilled over onto college campuses in the form of over-protective policies. As a kid myself I feel as though his work really resonates with me and I *highly* consider all current parents to become at least familiar with his research.

haberman 6y ago
Haidt is a founding member of this organization (Let Grow) and sits on their board: https://letgrow.org/our-people/ https://letgrow.org/our-people/
throwawaysea 6y ago
Great book and helps explain so much of emergent culture amount younger generations, particularly in institutions like universities. His coauthor, Greg Lukianoff is president of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Individual_Rights_in_Education https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Individual_Ri...). He also authored their guide to free speech on campus (https://www.thefire.org/research/publications/fire-guides/ https://www.thefire.org/research/publications/fire-guides/).

cik 6y ago

This is completely cultural. Here in Israel kids as young as 5 walk to school alone (not legally, just reality), and you'll frequently see a 6 year old taking the bus. The community looks out for them, parents give them cellphones (dumb phones), and we don't worry about stranger danger in this way. I send my 7 year old to the corner store a couple of times a week (pre British Super-COVID) to buy missing ingredients, a bottle of wine... basically whatever's missing. It takes a village to raise a child, and we're all responsible for society's coherence.

dmje 6y ago
Came here to say this. I think it's more than cultural, it's a US obsession to helicopter parent. We're in the uk and kids are widely allowed to roam, and good on the parents and kids for giving them autonomy. We live by the sea in a small town: my kids are 13 and 16 now but have been encouraged out for some years. How else are they going to learn how to interact with the world, learn how to negotiate roads, know not to fall in the sea? I'm sounding blase. I'm not, they're my kids and as such are as important to me as it gets, but parenting - maybe the hardest thing about parenting - is about letting go, knowing that you're making strong, independent adults.
- cik 6y ago
  I really like that idea of making strong, independent adults. I firmly believe the whole point is to help them be better than I am, to guide but not push (well, push sometimes), and I think that independence is the key part of this. It has subtle ways of teaching other skills like critical thinking, story telling, decision making, communication, math, and others. I could never go back to the old model.
dmitriid 6y ago
Same in Sweden, though probably for kids starting from around age 8.
- checkyoursudo 6y ago
  In Sweden here, my 6 y.o. takes the city bus to school from our town to the town a couple km away. When I lived in Germany, I would regularly see fairly young kids taking the U-Bahn, though I don't exactly know how young they were. Probably older than 6, but maybe not much older.

ctur 6y ago

There is an excellent podcast, You're Wrong About, which goes into the disparity between things we fear and what actually happens. Similar and relevant topics they cover: - Satanic Panic - Human Trafficking - Murder - Stanford Prison Experiment etc. A very common theme is "do-gooders" trying to do what they very naively think is a good thing but without data or rationality to back it up. Or, worse, people who manipulate those do-gooders into accomplishing other, more selfish/nefarious/evil goals. Really interesting stuff overall. https://www.buzzsprout.com/1112270 https://www.buzzsprout.com/1112270

gnicholas 6y ago

Does anyone know if there has been an increase in pedestrian fatalities in the last 5-10 years, on account of distracted drivers? I walk my baby in a stroller most days and it seems like 1/4 to 1/3 of drivers are looking at their cell phones. Some of the time they look up when they realize there’s a pedestrian, but I can’t imagine that there hasn’t been an uptick in pedestrian fatalities/injuries. I am very careful when I’m out walking (checking to see where the driver is looking, checking to see if there are other cars/obstacles that the driver might need to maneuver around at the point where he’s passing me, etc), but kids would never be this careful. Partly it’s because they can’t predict what a driver would do because they don’t know how to drive, and partly because kids are more likely to be goofing off and not paying attention. Also, kids heads/torsos are more at fender-level, making accidents more likely to be fatal. I do think the stranger danger piece is overblown, but I simultaneously wonder if there aren’t other dangers that have started increasing in the half decade or so since smartphones became very common.

seanmcdirmid 6y ago
This. Stranger danger isn’t what I’m concerned about at all, instead it’s can my kid be careful enough to not be killed by a car driven by someone not paying attention.
KozmoNau7 6y ago
Society in the US and EU is safer overall than it has ever been before, and the trend is towards ever greater safety. Yet we still get constant reminders of stranger danger and horrible crimes in the news. Instead of focusing on those, perhaps we should collectively focus a lot more on making traffic better and safer for pedestrians and cyclists, prioritize them heavily over cars. Distracted driving especially is something we could do something about, if we chose to do so.
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  Yes, and we should focus more on implementing self-driving cars, which if widely implemented, will see rapid incremental improvement through trial and error, until fatal car accidents are reduced to nearly zero as human error is taken out of the picture and software error approaches zero. The anti-profit/SV mindset needs to be rejected in favor of a pro-innovation mindset of libertarianism.

throwawaysea 6y ago

I do think it’s important to let children wander and roam unsupervised. The lack of open play and self direction is a malaise that I've anecdotally seen the effects of in younger employees entering the workforce. Like all things, balance is important. It’s okay to let them wander off while also teaching them to be alert and to trust their gut instinct when they sense danger (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_of_Fear https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_of_Fear).

coldtea 6y ago

These constraints sound batshit-crazy in a society where children play around the neighborhood, walk around the streets freely, go to school and back walking, play in city squares and such. Which includes a large chunk of the world, from western european countries, to Japan, to "dangerous" countries in Africa and Latin America. This used to be the case in the US too, up until the 70s-80s or so, and the advent of helicopter parents. And that in a period that general crime statistics were worse than now, but nobody would bat an eye if kids roamed and played around. The "stranger danger" idea is more cultural (about total control and isolation to private bubble) than about actual threat.

gordian-mind 6y ago
Your narrative is actually completely in reverse. Crime came at an absolute peak in the 90s, while growing exponentially in the two decades before that. This is why gradually all parents became helicopter parents: because the high-trust society they had grown up in just disappeared in front of their very eyes. Now, it's funny to see people like the author arguing that "Crimes against children have fallen since the early ’90s." when the 90s were the absolute crime peak and reason why this social change happened. But the crime levels are still nowhere near their base level (first half the 20th, 50s, 60s), that allowed people to trust each other enough to let their kids roam outside... In France the crime rate peaked in the 2000s, and all parents from the late 90s until now are helicopter parents.
- dghlsakjg 6y ago
  I would be willing to believe that crime rates in the 50s and 60s are a false baseline for a variety of reasons. Primarily, the statistics about what is reported are going to be off. It seems like culturally (or at least anecdotally), we were less likely to lay formal charges and collect statistics about crime, especially crime related to mental health (We used to have doctors lock people up instead of cops). Additionally there are a lot more crimes to commit in modern times
  - gordian-mind 6y ago

troyvit 6y ago

> Considering that vast majority of child abuse is at the hands of someone they know, rather than a stranger (see this DOJ report, page 10), it begins to feel as if keeping kids indoors — with a babysitter, parent, relative, sibling, or step-parent — is actually LESS safe than them getting on their bikes and riding around. Let’s not restrict kids’ freedom due to a misunderstanding of actual risk. The majority of child abuse happening at the hands of someone the kids know could be because we don't let kids out of our sight more. If we let kids out of our site more would that number still be true? Point #2 reinforces this idea (anecdotally). It shows that child abuse has slowly been declining since 1991. The article says, "yeah well all crime has gone down" but are there any studies that show how that number correlates to increased protectiveness? I'm not saying the concept is wrong (I believe kids should have more freedom and wish my kids did). Just saying this article could tighten up its arguments better.