7 ms·

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 them

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.
  - vivekd 6y ago
    I don't buy the dichotomy that many are presenting in this thread. The either your parents let you walk around on your own or you'll have less life skills. I think you can teach kids life skills and independence while also keeping an eye on them.
- erikerikson 6y ago
  How much harm is caused by not teaching them to be safe in such circumstances? More pointedly how much harm is caused by not giving them individuated and appropriate but also real independence? Skills take time and practice to develop. What would you expect to result from a failure to actively and persistently develop the independence that a child will require for the rest of their life? The same dynamic has come up with COVID. There is known harm through infection but also through isolation. In my family we are extremely conservative and careful (probably overly, privileged-ly, and wastefully so) but we ensure regular playdates with a small set of children with careful parents so that our young child can still develop friendships and social skills. And, you know, be a kid. Taking a year off that, particularly at the current age of my child would be extremely harmful so we spend all of our risk chits on that. Similarly, while never doing anything would reduce many active risks studies have shown being sedentary is more deadly than smoking. A cost to benefit maximization process is almost always appropriate.
smnrchrds 6y ago
> Of all the missing children, less than 1% is non-family abductions. How much of it is because stranger danger is false, and how much of it is because parents no longer let their children out of their sight? I am not making a statement, I am genuinely curious and I am asking a question hoping someone knows the answer. But I wonder if the reason so few children are harmed by strangers is that children's unsupervised interactions with strangers have now shrunk to almost nothing, so there is almost no opportunity for harm anymore.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  This is not a new trend, it's always been the case. My quick search shows in 2001 in the US of 50,000 minors reported missing, around 100 were abducted by strangers. I didn't immediately find any older data but I've heard this same thing since I was a kid. https://web.archive.org/web/20150216071609/http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/forensics/americas_missing/2.html https://web.archive.org/web/20150216071609/http://www.crimel...
  - goblin89 6y ago
    Does it mean that all of the missing cases apart from that hundred were resolved and confirmed as not abductions by strangers? Otherwise, how many of the remaining cases were? I suspect this number might make a world of difference.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      I believe most of those cases were resolved, including adults there are only a couple thousand unresolved missing persons cases per year. Using different years of data for this, which isn't ideal, but in 2012 ~99.6% of missing persons cases were resolved. Those remaining cases wouldn't make a significant difference. https://www.npr.org/2013/05/07/182000622/majority-of-missing-persons-cases-are-resolved https://www.npr.org/2013/05/07/182000622/majority-of-missing...
  - jay_kyburz 6y ago
    Yeah, but that's still 100 kids!
kqr 6y ago
> Of all the missing children, less than 1% is non-family abductions. This can be interpreted to mean that the ensemble probability of an abduction -- the expected number of abductions from a single walk around the neighbourhood -- is low. However, the practise of letting your children walk results in many walks over time, and it takes just one abduction to make the situation really bad. In other words, over time, the probability of an abduction will (albeit slowly) go towards 1. Have you made any attempt at calculating this "lifetime probability" of abduction, instead of looking just at the probabilities of one-off walks? Not lecturing; genuinely curious because I will soon have to make this decision for my oldest and I want to base it on data, but with a representative model. (My instinct is, of course, to raise my children the way I was raised and that aligns with my feelings on the subject, i.e. "Let them have walks!" but I'm looking for a nuanced perspective on both sides before submitting to my biases.)
- RealityVoid 6y ago
  Haha, I can not tell if this is satire or what. Somehow, I doubt the statistics of this so much that my first reaction is to chuckle.
  - kqr 6y ago
    I'm not sure what's funny. I'm looking for nuanced perspectives on both sides before I default to my biases, and I prefer arguments to be based on evidence. That's all. I edited my original comment to clarify this.
    - RealityVoid 6y ago
      I'm sorry, I did not want to sound mean, but the statistical claim made just felt so wrong to me as to be amusing. I can not formally prove it wrong, it just... Triggered the hummour detector.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  > This can be interpreted to mean that the ensemble probability of an abduction -- the expected number of abductions from a single walk around the neighbourhood -- is low. Not just low, very low, for the lifetime probability to be low enough for it to be that number.
isaac21259 6y ago
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/795/ https://xkcd.com/795/ Although I do agree the risk of stranger danger is overblown.
- gorgoiler 6y ago
  That’s certainly the nationwide stat. I wonder what it is when adjusted to the cohort of people standing out in the open during a storm that is currently striking things on the ground. Or to put it another way, 100% of lightning deaths occur when standing outdoors in a storm.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    That last point is factually incorrect. There have been lightning fatalities indoors via phone lines and plumbing.
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      So, nearly 100%.
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        About 1/3 of lightning injuries occur indoors, per the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/victimdata.html https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/victimdata.html (that's admittedly an injury figure, not a fatality figure, but it's probably wildly more common than you'd guess)
        gorgoiler 6y ago
        That’s really interesting, thanks.
I_Byte 6y ago
Personally, all I can say is thank you and keep it up. I am almost 18 myself and my parents have been raising me in manner where I had little meaningful responsibility delegated to me during my earlier years. Because of this and with college just around the corner adulthood feels incredibly overwhelming. I highly recommend you look up the work of Social Phycologist Jonathan Haidt. Specially his work regarding the book “The Coddling of The American Mind.”
- copperx 6y ago
  Thank you for the book suggestion.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chalst 6y ago
If you restrict it to abductions, the picture is less rosy: around 1 in 6 abductions are non-family abductions. The stand-out statistic is over 90% of missing children are runaways. Working on this risk, reducing the chance that your kids will choose to run away, does look the better risk-reduction strategy.
yaur 6y ago
I believe that the real risk here isn't that your kids will be taken by a "stranger", but that they will be taken by social services.
- rlonn 6y ago
  social services are strangers, aren't they?
D13Fd 6y ago
When I was young I lived in a semi-urban area (circa 1990-1996). From about second grade on, I was free to roam to neighborhood, and I did. I spent most of my time playing unsupervised with neighborhood kids, walking to the comic book shop, the book store, the convenience store, the hobby shop, the pool, the playgrounds, the parks, and so on. I never once had any kind of issue. I wish I could give my kids the same experience, but sadly I live in a much less dense area these days, and there is nothing within a mile or so for them to really do, and no friends. It’s sad.
engineeringwoke 6y ago
Dutch parents salute you
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
I think the ratio is likely much greater than 1% simply because what most people consider an "abduction" doesn't include "non-custodial parent took off with the kid(s)." Child abductions seem to suffer the same problem as "mass" shootings. Most of the research is being done by people who have a vested interest in making them look common so they create a definition that includes a bunch of stuff that most people wouldn't consider to be applicable (gang/drug violence in the case of mass shootings, non-custodial parent taking off with the kid(s) in the case of child abductions). Of course if the goal is to prevent the named event using a watered down definition that mostly captures other stuff to build your data sets is not going to build you a very informative data set for that goal.
yencabulator 6y ago
I walked a mile to school and back every weekday, mostly in a group with neighbor's kids, when I was 6. Americans are weird.

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.
- vivekd 6y ago
  I don't buy the dichotomy that many are presenting in this thread. The either your parents let you walk around on your own or you'll have less life skills. I think you can teach kids life skills and independence while also keeping an eye on them.
erikerikson 6y ago
How much harm is caused by not teaching them to be safe in such circumstances? More pointedly how much harm is caused by not giving them individuated and appropriate but also real independence? Skills take time and practice to develop. What would you expect to result from a failure to actively and persistently develop the independence that a child will require for the rest of their life? The same dynamic has come up with COVID. There is known harm through infection but also through isolation. In my family we are extremely conservative and careful (probably overly, privileged-ly, and wastefully so) but we ensure regular playdates with a small set of children with careful parents so that our young child can still develop friendships and social skills. And, you know, be a kid. Taking a year off that, particularly at the current age of my child would be extremely harmful so we spend all of our risk chits on that. Similarly, while never doing anything would reduce many active risks studies have shown being sedentary is more deadly than smoking. A cost to benefit maximization process is almost always appropriate.

smnrchrds 6y ago

> Of all the missing children, less than 1% is non-family abductions. How much of it is because stranger danger is false, and how much of it is because parents no longer let their children out of their sight? I am not making a statement, I am genuinely curious and I am asking a question hoping someone knows the answer. But I wonder if the reason so few children are harmed by strangers is that children's unsupervised interactions with strangers have now shrunk to almost nothing, so there is almost no opportunity for harm anymore.

boomboomsubban 6y ago
This is not a new trend, it's always been the case. My quick search shows in 2001 in the US of 50,000 minors reported missing, around 100 were abducted by strangers. I didn't immediately find any older data but I've heard this same thing since I was a kid. https://web.archive.org/web/20150216071609/http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/forensics/americas_missing/2.html https://web.archive.org/web/20150216071609/http://www.crimel...
- goblin89 6y ago
  Does it mean that all of the missing cases apart from that hundred were resolved and confirmed as not abductions by strangers? Otherwise, how many of the remaining cases were? I suspect this number might make a world of difference.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    I believe most of those cases were resolved, including adults there are only a couple thousand unresolved missing persons cases per year. Using different years of data for this, which isn't ideal, but in 2012 ~99.6% of missing persons cases were resolved. Those remaining cases wouldn't make a significant difference. https://www.npr.org/2013/05/07/182000622/majority-of-missing-persons-cases-are-resolved https://www.npr.org/2013/05/07/182000622/majority-of-missing...
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  Yeah, but that's still 100 kids!

kqr 6y ago

> Of all the missing children, less than 1% is non-family abductions. This can be interpreted to mean that the ensemble probability of an abduction -- the expected number of abductions from a single walk around the neighbourhood -- is low. However, the practise of letting your children walk results in many walks over time, and it takes just one abduction to make the situation really bad. In other words, over time, the probability of an abduction will (albeit slowly) go towards 1. Have you made any attempt at calculating this "lifetime probability" of abduction, instead of looking just at the probabilities of one-off walks? Not lecturing; genuinely curious because I will soon have to make this decision for my oldest and I want to base it on data, but with a representative model. (My instinct is, of course, to raise my children the way I was raised and that aligns with my feelings on the subject, i.e. "Let them have walks!" but I'm looking for a nuanced perspective on both sides before submitting to my biases.)

RealityVoid 6y ago
Haha, I can not tell if this is satire or what. Somehow, I doubt the statistics of this so much that my first reaction is to chuckle.
- kqr 6y ago
  I'm not sure what's funny. I'm looking for nuanced perspectives on both sides before I default to my biases, and I prefer arguments to be based on evidence. That's all. I edited my original comment to clarify this.
  - RealityVoid 6y ago
    I'm sorry, I did not want to sound mean, but the statistical claim made just felt so wrong to me as to be amusing. I can not formally prove it wrong, it just... Triggered the hummour detector.
saagarjha 6y ago
> This can be interpreted to mean that the ensemble probability of an abduction -- the expected number of abductions from a single walk around the neighbourhood -- is low. Not just low, very low, for the lifetime probability to be low enough for it to be that number.

isaac21259 6y ago

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/795/ https://xkcd.com/795/ Although I do agree the risk of stranger danger is overblown.

gorgoiler 6y ago
That’s certainly the nationwide stat. I wonder what it is when adjusted to the cohort of people standing out in the open during a storm that is currently striking things on the ground. Or to put it another way, 100% of lightning deaths occur when standing outdoors in a storm.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  That last point is factually incorrect. There have been lightning fatalities indoors via phone lines and plumbing.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    So, nearly 100%.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      About 1/3 of lightning injuries occur indoors, per the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/victimdata.html https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/victimdata.html (that's admittedly an injury figure, not a fatality figure, but it's probably wildly more common than you'd guess)
      - gorgoiler 6y ago
        That’s really interesting, thanks.

I_Byte 6y ago

Personally, all I can say is thank you and keep it up. I am almost 18 myself and my parents have been raising me in manner where I had little meaningful responsibility delegated to me during my earlier years. Because of this and with college just around the corner adulthood feels incredibly overwhelming. I highly recommend you look up the work of Social Phycologist Jonathan Haidt. Specially his work regarding the book “The Coddling of The American Mind.”

copperx 6y ago
Thank you for the book suggestion.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

chalst 6y ago

If you restrict it to abductions, the picture is less rosy: around 1 in 6 abductions are non-family abductions. The stand-out statistic is over 90% of missing children are runaways. Working on this risk, reducing the chance that your kids will choose to run away, does look the better risk-reduction strategy.

yaur 6y ago

I believe that the real risk here isn't that your kids will be taken by a "stranger", but that they will be taken by social services.

rlonn 6y ago
social services are strangers, aren't they?

D13Fd 6y ago

When I was young I lived in a semi-urban area (circa 1990-1996). From about second grade on, I was free to roam to neighborhood, and I did. I spent most of my time playing unsupervised with neighborhood kids, walking to the comic book shop, the book store, the convenience store, the hobby shop, the pool, the playgrounds, the parks, and so on. I never once had any kind of issue. I wish I could give my kids the same experience, but sadly I live in a much less dense area these days, and there is nothing within a mile or so for them to really do, and no friends. It’s sad.

engineeringwoke 6y ago

Dutch parents salute you

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

I think the ratio is likely much greater than 1% simply because what most people consider an "abduction" doesn't include "non-custodial parent took off with the kid(s)." Child abductions seem to suffer the same problem as "mass" shootings. Most of the research is being done by people who have a vested interest in making them look common so they create a definition that includes a bunch of stuff that most people wouldn't consider to be applicable (gang/drug violence in the case of mass shootings, non-custodial parent taking off with the kid(s) in the case of child abductions). Of course if the goal is to prevent the named event using a watered down definition that mostly captures other stuff to build your data sets is not going to build you a very informative data set for that goal.

yencabulator 6y ago

I walked a mile to school and back every weekday, mostly in a group with neighbor's kids, when I was 6. Americans are weird.