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Interesting article. I feel this is more a problem in the US. I live in Switzerland and you often see kids walking alone or in pairs going to and from school al

Interesting article. I feel this is more a problem in the US. I live in Switzerland and you often see kids walking alone or in pairs going to and from school all by themselves - and yet no kids seem to be kidnapped or exposed to inappropriate behavior.

Miner49er 4y ago
That's how it was in the US until fairly recently. It changed in the last decade or two. I'm not sure why. Crime hasn't gotten any worse, as far as I know.
- rendall 4y ago
  It started in the 80s, related to the Satanic Panic, particularly the McMartin preschool trials. Before that, it was expected that even very young children could be outside alone even in urban settings.
  - msmenardi 4y ago
    The kids who were raised in that era grew up, had kids, and passed the generational trauma down the line. We'll grow past it eventually, but it takes time for people to heal and the trauma to filter out of the population.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      > We'll grow past it eventually, Don't take this for granted. I suspect this behavior is actually caused by an inherent anxiety in some subset of the population. When they don't have real (and likely) dangers to worry about, they will find some kind of tiny risk and overamplify it as something to focus their anxiety on. Removing all things dangerous from the environment will only serve to amplify their tendency to do so. A mum in a high risk high crime neighbourhood is probably more likely to let her kids roam free (and less worried) than mums in upper-middle-class neighbourhoods where there is virtually zero crime. My hypothesis is that the solution is to let children experience activities that are moderately dangerous (ideally through risk of pain, minor injury or some social stress, with risk of death or permanent injury kept minimal). This helps (I think) callibrate their ability to estimate risk as they grow up. This would allow them to ignore imaginary risks like the one discussed here, and may help them identify situations that come with real danger.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      The people who were the driving force behind all the "Satanic Panic" stuff are still around, too. And some of them still pose as experts on "recovered memories" and other stuff like that.
  - greenglass 4y ago
    This too was a media driven hysteria. You can see how the news amplifying a few rare kidnapping and molestation cases, if it bleeds it leads style, is directly correlated to the public intrigue. A lot of movies and tv shows took on these themes as well. Much like the red scare and more recent mass hysterias driven by an unscrupulous news industry political complex.
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  The problem we have in the US is we tend to placate to the vocal minority, rather than realizing that they are in fact just a vocal minority. Say you have 10 parents that let their kids play outside. No one has a problem with this until an 11th parent shows up and it mortified, think the kids will all get hurt if they are allowed to be outside like this. That parent makes a stink, take it to the city council, and a rule is put in place that you can't let your kids go outside without supervision. The folks making the rules think to themselves "well we had to act, there was such an outcry". Meanwhile the outcry is really just the outsized screams of one parent, and you've just screwed the other 10 parents.
  - foobarian 4y ago
    I think it's more subtle than that. If you are the city council member, doing something about it is a lot easier than not. Saying "I don't think we should make our children safer" is politically difficult. So the rules slowly ratchet up.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > The problem we have in the US is we tend to placate to the vocal minority, rather than realizing that they are in fact just a vocal minority. I think it's related to trauma fetishization combined with child worship. Trauma fetishization: The person who is most traumatized by a thing should be the one who dictates policy about that thing. People who have lost children qualify, and we literally name the laws after their dead children. Child worship: Children are without trauma, and therefore without neurosis. When you traumatize them or through inaction allow them to be traumatized, you have created neurosis, which is the source of all problems in society.
    - unethical_ban 4y ago
      There was a post about an abortion rights rally, with the poster saying "Keep our women safe". Someone came in and said, essentially, "I appreciate the message and the support, but can we drop the possessive 'our'"? It was called out that the "our" was itself supportive and indicative of community. The person replied "I came from a small town where men used 'our women' as a signal of ownership and I shudder when I hear it". My internal response: Okay? You're asking everyone to change a good-faith saying because it triggered a bad memory for you? Get over it.
- dariusj18 4y ago
  Because people got super freaked over the risk of pedophiles, though they should worry more about their family members perpetuating sexual abuse than a random stranger.
  - aksss 4y ago
    To some degree perhaps aggravated by people having less kids, therefore the kids they do have are extremely valuable to them, driving demands that the world be nerfed up.
    - t0mas88 4y ago
      I'm not sure it works that way. It's not like you care less about your first child after having a second. They're all the most loved thing you have in life.
      - aksss 4y ago
        It's all anecdote, but I believe I've witnessed it many times - families with four kids don't love them any less, but they are less attentive to any one, less photos are taken, by kids 3 & 4 things aren't really "new" and scary like they are with kid 1. Couples with a single kid, particularly after trying for a while, have come across as highly protective and hyper-focused. I'm just speculating here - I recognize I don't know nuffin about it, ultimately.
        BenjiWiebe 4y ago
        I'm an oldest child, 3 siblings. My experiences and observations would agree with you. Sometimes it even gets just a little annoying - how come my youngest sibling gets to do things at a much younger age then I was allowed to? :)
        kbelder 4y ago
        I've had four... five? I lose track. You're right, in that it's not that you care any less about your later kids, but you tend to be more pragmatic about child rearing. Better at recognizing the important events and problems, while shrugging off and ignoring the trivial stuff. You learn that you don't need to worry about a kid eating a crayon, and you recognize that certain pain cries mean "I'm not really hurt." You realize that sometimes the best thing you can do for a kid is ignore them and let them figure stuff out themselves.
- somethoughts 4y ago
  Conversely - it'd be interesting to investigate whether other statistics have improved over the past decade with parents being increasingly responsible for their kids after school - reduced shoplifting, reduced graffiti, reduced smoking/drug use, reduced teen pregnancy, etc. Its quite possible that increased organized sports and after school activities (particularly robotics, math, computer science) could actually improve the capabilities of society as compared to just leaving the kids unattended after school.
  - jhugo 4y ago
    I'd suspect quite the opposite; kids who have their time filled with organised activities and have no time to come up with their own may be less likely to develop important skills like creativity, self-reliance, and be more reliant on structure and authority.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  Watch the local news or get on your nextdoor group and it is all packed full of crime stories. A lot of people are addicted to feeling scared all the time, and the media is feeding them.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  Perception of crime has gotten worse as people consume more fear driven media.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dudul 4y ago
As mentioned in the article, people don't care about facts. Kidnapping is at an all time low in the US. The only instances are family members during a nasty divorce or things like that. "Think of the children" is the main weapon politics have to push regulations and more control. It is important that everybody thinks that kids are in danger at all time otherwise it would stop working.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > As mentioned in the article, people don't care about facts. Kidnapping is at an all time low in the US. The only instances are family members during a nasty divorce or things like that. I agree that kidnapping is probably at an all-time low, but it's an unbelievable claim that it's all "family members during a nasty divorce or things like that." I personally know a family who's kid was kidnapped (briefly) by a non-family member. > "Think of the children" is the main weapon politics have to push regulations and more control. It is important that everybody thinks that kids are in danger at all time otherwise it would stop working. That's not what's going on here. It's a cultural issue. You've got a longstanding issue with crime, especially particularly "worst fear"-type crime, getting disproportionate attention in the media, creating false impressions and seeds for fear-fantasies. Now, added to that is new cultural obsession with abuse and victim-hood; and the idea of completely stamping that out is possible, and it should be achieved whatever the cost. You might have a politicians exploiting this cultural issue to accomplish other things, but they certainly didn't create the phenomenon of hyper-vigalent school paraprofessionals.
  - mgkimsal 4y ago
    > I personally know a family who's kid was kidnapped (briefly) by a non-family member. Sorry to read that, but it's still a statistically small percent that happens to. One can say "but even one is too much", and I appreciate the sentiment, but optimizing for the .1% isn't always a good path. > they certainly didn't create the phenomenon of hyper-vigalent school paraprofessionals. "they" probably contributed to the culture that produced the current school paraprofessionals. EDIT: Some interesting numbers at https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/nonfamily https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/nonfamily - of abductions reported to them, 1% are by non-family members, meaning... 99% of reported cases (to their org) are by family members. That may not line up with 'law enforcement' numbers exactly - there's not a clear indication as to what gets reported to them. But the ~1% matches up with other numbers I've seen in the past on missing children. It's almost always a family member or someone known to the child.
ido 4y ago
Same for me. I live in Berlin (biggest city in Germany) & have 2 kids of my own and haven't seen anything remotely as paranoid here as what you read about US cities.
- twothamendment 4y ago
  I'm not saying there aren't bad things in the US, but the things in the news are not normal everywhere in the US. But for big cities? I think I'll take my chances in Berlin.
marban 4y ago
Most parts of Europe are fine but Japan's the best by far.
mmcgaha 4y ago
As a parent in the US, here is how it feels. If I let my young kids roam and something happens to them, there is a high likelihood that some goody-goody-holier-than-thou prosecutor will decide to make an example out of my "neglect".
roguecoder 4y ago
Switzerland is so much more heavily controlled than the US, which is part of what leads to that outcome. Most Americans would flip out if anyone told them what weekend to plant their flower box or that they aren't allowed to hoard ammo for their guns at home.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  Switzerland actually has a legal requirement for all men to store ammo for their state-issued assault rifle at home. Also, many Americans live in HOA communities with regulations that make Switzerland look like libertarian utopia.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    Switzerland banned reservists from storing issued ammo for their assault rifle at home 15 years ago. However, this only applies to issued ammo (and IIRC the identical govt-subsidized stuff you buy at the range). You can still store your own ammo just fine. Most of those in US who saw that story didn't understand this distinction and believed that it applies to all ammo storage at home. Which is how we got all those memes about Swiss being "heavily regulated" in that regard unlike US.
christoph 4y ago
I can't find the exact article I was thinking of that was posted here a year or two back about young Japanese children being set free out into the world, almost as a right of passage, to run errands etc., but this Bloomberg captures a lot of what I remembered. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-28/in-japan-small-children-take-the-subway-and-run-errands-alone https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-28/in-japan-... Personally, I believe there is a compounding net good for society allowing children a decent amount of independence at a young age. Japan is certainly different to many other countries in terms of public safety, but I don't believe the outside world is the awful, scary, dangerous place the media constantly paints it out to be. It breaks my heart that I rarely see children playing outside in the streets anymore in the UK, when my youth in the 80s was basically spent largely outside without adult supervision.
mateo1 4y ago
Urbanisation, rates of internal migration and car-centric cities make some places objectively more dangerous for kids than others.

Miner49er 4y ago

That's how it was in the US until fairly recently. It changed in the last decade or two. I'm not sure why. Crime hasn't gotten any worse, as far as I know.

rendall 4y ago
It started in the 80s, related to the Satanic Panic, particularly the McMartin preschool trials. Before that, it was expected that even very young children could be outside alone even in urban settings.
- msmenardi 4y ago
  The kids who were raised in that era grew up, had kids, and passed the generational trauma down the line. We'll grow past it eventually, but it takes time for people to heal and the trauma to filter out of the population.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    > We'll grow past it eventually, Don't take this for granted. I suspect this behavior is actually caused by an inherent anxiety in some subset of the population. When they don't have real (and likely) dangers to worry about, they will find some kind of tiny risk and overamplify it as something to focus their anxiety on. Removing all things dangerous from the environment will only serve to amplify their tendency to do so. A mum in a high risk high crime neighbourhood is probably more likely to let her kids roam free (and less worried) than mums in upper-middle-class neighbourhoods where there is virtually zero crime. My hypothesis is that the solution is to let children experience activities that are moderately dangerous (ideally through risk of pain, minor injury or some social stress, with risk of death or permanent injury kept minimal). This helps (I think) callibrate their ability to estimate risk as they grow up. This would allow them to ignore imaginary risks like the one discussed here, and may help them identify situations that come with real danger.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    The people who were the driving force behind all the "Satanic Panic" stuff are still around, too. And some of them still pose as experts on "recovered memories" and other stuff like that.
- greenglass 4y ago
  This too was a media driven hysteria. You can see how the news amplifying a few rare kidnapping and molestation cases, if it bleeds it leads style, is directly correlated to the public intrigue. A lot of movies and tv shows took on these themes as well. Much like the red scare and more recent mass hysterias driven by an unscrupulous news industry political complex.
_fat_santa 4y ago
The problem we have in the US is we tend to placate to the vocal minority, rather than realizing that they are in fact just a vocal minority. Say you have 10 parents that let their kids play outside. No one has a problem with this until an 11th parent shows up and it mortified, think the kids will all get hurt if they are allowed to be outside like this. That parent makes a stink, take it to the city council, and a rule is put in place that you can't let your kids go outside without supervision. The folks making the rules think to themselves "well we had to act, there was such an outcry". Meanwhile the outcry is really just the outsized screams of one parent, and you've just screwed the other 10 parents.
- foobarian 4y ago
  I think it's more subtle than that. If you are the city council member, doing something about it is a lot easier than not. Saying "I don't think we should make our children safer" is politically difficult. So the rules slowly ratchet up.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > The problem we have in the US is we tend to placate to the vocal minority, rather than realizing that they are in fact just a vocal minority. I think it's related to trauma fetishization combined with child worship. Trauma fetishization: The person who is most traumatized by a thing should be the one who dictates policy about that thing. People who have lost children qualify, and we literally name the laws after their dead children. Child worship: Children are without trauma, and therefore without neurosis. When you traumatize them or through inaction allow them to be traumatized, you have created neurosis, which is the source of all problems in society.
  - unethical_ban 4y ago
    There was a post about an abortion rights rally, with the poster saying "Keep our women safe". Someone came in and said, essentially, "I appreciate the message and the support, but can we drop the possessive 'our'"? It was called out that the "our" was itself supportive and indicative of community. The person replied "I came from a small town where men used 'our women' as a signal of ownership and I shudder when I hear it". My internal response: Okay? You're asking everyone to change a good-faith saying because it triggered a bad memory for you? Get over it.
dariusj18 4y ago
Because people got super freaked over the risk of pedophiles, though they should worry more about their family members perpetuating sexual abuse than a random stranger.
- aksss 4y ago
  To some degree perhaps aggravated by people having less kids, therefore the kids they do have are extremely valuable to them, driving demands that the world be nerfed up.
  - t0mas88 4y ago
    I'm not sure it works that way. It's not like you care less about your first child after having a second. They're all the most loved thing you have in life.
    - aksss 4y ago
      It's all anecdote, but I believe I've witnessed it many times - families with four kids don't love them any less, but they are less attentive to any one, less photos are taken, by kids 3 & 4 things aren't really "new" and scary like they are with kid 1. Couples with a single kid, particularly after trying for a while, have come across as highly protective and hyper-focused. I'm just speculating here - I recognize I don't know nuffin about it, ultimately.
      - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
        I'm an oldest child, 3 siblings. My experiences and observations would agree with you. Sometimes it even gets just a little annoying - how come my youngest sibling gets to do things at a much younger age then I was allowed to? :)
      - kbelder 4y ago
        I've had four... five? I lose track. You're right, in that it's not that you care any less about your later kids, but you tend to be more pragmatic about child rearing. Better at recognizing the important events and problems, while shrugging off and ignoring the trivial stuff. You learn that you don't need to worry about a kid eating a crayon, and you recognize that certain pain cries mean "I'm not really hurt." You realize that sometimes the best thing you can do for a kid is ignore them and let them figure stuff out themselves.
somethoughts 4y ago
Conversely - it'd be interesting to investigate whether other statistics have improved over the past decade with parents being increasingly responsible for their kids after school - reduced shoplifting, reduced graffiti, reduced smoking/drug use, reduced teen pregnancy, etc. Its quite possible that increased organized sports and after school activities (particularly robotics, math, computer science) could actually improve the capabilities of society as compared to just leaving the kids unattended after school.
- jhugo 4y ago
  I'd suspect quite the opposite; kids who have their time filled with organised activities and have no time to come up with their own may be less likely to develop important skills like creativity, self-reliance, and be more reliant on structure and authority.
lamontcg 4y ago
Watch the local news or get on your nextdoor group and it is all packed full of crime stories. A lot of people are addicted to feeling scared all the time, and the media is feeding them.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Perception of crime has gotten worse as people consume more fear driven media.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dudul 4y ago

As mentioned in the article, people don't care about facts. Kidnapping is at an all time low in the US. The only instances are family members during a nasty divorce or things like that. "Think of the children" is the main weapon politics have to push regulations and more control. It is important that everybody thinks that kids are in danger at all time otherwise it would stop working.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tablespoon 4y ago
> As mentioned in the article, people don't care about facts. Kidnapping is at an all time low in the US. The only instances are family members during a nasty divorce or things like that. I agree that kidnapping is probably at an all-time low, but it's an unbelievable claim that it's all "family members during a nasty divorce or things like that." I personally know a family who's kid was kidnapped (briefly) by a non-family member. > "Think of the children" is the main weapon politics have to push regulations and more control. It is important that everybody thinks that kids are in danger at all time otherwise it would stop working. That's not what's going on here. It's a cultural issue. You've got a longstanding issue with crime, especially particularly "worst fear"-type crime, getting disproportionate attention in the media, creating false impressions and seeds for fear-fantasies. Now, added to that is new cultural obsession with abuse and victim-hood; and the idea of completely stamping that out is possible, and it should be achieved whatever the cost. You might have a politicians exploiting this cultural issue to accomplish other things, but they certainly didn't create the phenomenon of hyper-vigalent school paraprofessionals.
- mgkimsal 4y ago
  > I personally know a family who's kid was kidnapped (briefly) by a non-family member. Sorry to read that, but it's still a statistically small percent that happens to. One can say "but even one is too much", and I appreciate the sentiment, but optimizing for the .1% isn't always a good path. > they certainly didn't create the phenomenon of hyper-vigalent school paraprofessionals. "they" probably contributed to the culture that produced the current school paraprofessionals. EDIT: Some interesting numbers at https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/nonfamily https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/nonfamily - of abductions reported to them, 1% are by non-family members, meaning... 99% of reported cases (to their org) are by family members. That may not line up with 'law enforcement' numbers exactly - there's not a clear indication as to what gets reported to them. But the ~1% matches up with other numbers I've seen in the past on missing children. It's almost always a family member or someone known to the child.

ido 4y ago

Same for me. I live in Berlin (biggest city in Germany) & have 2 kids of my own and haven't seen anything remotely as paranoid here as what you read about US cities.

twothamendment 4y ago
I'm not saying there aren't bad things in the US, but the things in the news are not normal everywhere in the US. But for big cities? I think I'll take my chances in Berlin.

marban 4y ago

Most parts of Europe are fine but Japan's the best by far.

mmcgaha 4y ago

As a parent in the US, here is how it feels. If I let my young kids roam and something happens to them, there is a high likelihood that some goody-goody-holier-than-thou prosecutor will decide to make an example out of my "neglect".

roguecoder 4y ago

Switzerland is so much more heavily controlled than the US, which is part of what leads to that outcome. Most Americans would flip out if anyone told them what weekend to plant their flower box or that they aren't allowed to hoard ammo for their guns at home.

thematrixturtle 4y ago
Switzerland actually has a legal requirement for all men to store ammo for their state-issued assault rifle at home. Also, many Americans live in HOA communities with regulations that make Switzerland look like libertarian utopia.
- int_19h 4y ago
  Switzerland banned reservists from storing issued ammo for their assault rifle at home 15 years ago. However, this only applies to issued ammo (and IIRC the identical govt-subsidized stuff you buy at the range). You can still store your own ammo just fine. Most of those in US who saw that story didn't understand this distinction and believed that it applies to all ammo storage at home. Which is how we got all those memes about Swiss being "heavily regulated" in that regard unlike US.

christoph 4y ago

I can't find the exact article I was thinking of that was posted here a year or two back about young Japanese children being set free out into the world, almost as a right of passage, to run errands etc., but this Bloomberg captures a lot of what I remembered. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-28/in-japan-small-children-take-the-subway-and-run-errands-alone https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-28/in-japan-... Personally, I believe there is a compounding net good for society allowing children a decent amount of independence at a young age. Japan is certainly different to many other countries in terms of public safety, but I don't believe the outside world is the awful, scary, dangerous place the media constantly paints it out to be. It breaks my heart that I rarely see children playing outside in the streets anymore in the UK, when my youth in the 80s was basically spent largely outside without adult supervision.

mateo1 4y ago

Urbanisation, rates of internal migration and car-centric cities make some places objectively more dangerous for kids than others.