7 ms·

> Part of this simply has to do with nosy busy-bodies ready to pounce on the phone to call Child Protective Services (or equivalent) whenever they see a child o

by samtho 4y ago

> Part of this simply has to do with nosy busy-bodies ready to pounce on the phone to call Child Protective Services (or equivalent) whenever they see a child out and about on their own. I get the impression that this problem happens a lot less frequently than social media and our personal echo chambers would have us believe. I am skeptical the prevalence is actually significant because this situation sounds like an outrage tactic to members of the population that grew up more “free range.” This is something I would like to be proven wrong on, if the data supports it.

laverya 4y ago
"If you do this and someone objects, you will have your kids taken away. But don't worry, people very rarely object! You don't have anyone in your neighborhood that really doesn't like you, right?" This is not nearly as reassuring as you may think it is.
- samtho 4y ago
  I suppose it’s hard for me to really understand this situation. I live in a mixed-income neighborhood within a major US city and there are tons of kids that walk around in transit to/from school, the park, the bus stop, with younger kid always accompanied by older ones (10 and up). My neighborhood is fairly tight knit and if a kid goes “missing”, it’s usually because their phone died or something and the parent overreacted after not being able to reach them. I would be concerned if I see a kid walking alone without any clear purpose/destination, but even then, an isolated incident is not going to be a call to CPS.
  - laverya 4y ago
    > I would be concerned if I see a kid walking alone without any clear purpose/destination, but even then, an isolated incident is not going to be a call to CPS. You're damning yourself with faint praise, here. Giving kids independence means that they're regularly going to be outside alone (or with friends), and often without a clear purpose or destination. And it's sort of sounding like you'd be considering calling CPS over that.
    - samtho 4y ago
      The situation I was trying to describe is when a kid is clearly lost, not just playing around. This is a concern I would have if I saw an adult in the situation with a similar remedy: ask if they need help.
  - 4bpp 4y ago
    > I would be concerned if I see a kid walking alone without any clear purpose/destination, but even then, an isolated incident is not going to be a call to CPS. Do you realise how threatening this sounds? You are all but implying that if you, conversely, see a kid outside a few times and can't figure out their purpose/destination, you might just call CPS. I wouldn't trust most kids to manage to look unambiguously purposeful to adult strangers most of the time (when I myself was in 4th grade and going to a primary school in a neighbouring town, I would frequently get distracted by something and miss three or four once-in-30-minutes buses in a row), so you're essentially saying that you may CPS on a whim after seeing the same kid multiple times in a row. If I lived in the US and knew I had neighbours like that, I would not risk letting any kids go outside on their own.
    - brailsafe 4y ago
      I think this is a logically unsound, or at best uncharitable interpretation. My read of it is simply that calling CPS would hypothetically be an exaggerated reaction, even in circumstances that are unusual in their day to day context, and would require at least a higher bar if not much higher bar, and presumably other measures having been taken, like talking to them
  - qball 4y ago
    >I would be concerned if I see a kid walking alone without any clear purpose/destination Yeah, God fucking forbid they exercise their human right to movement in a way that offends your sensibilities.
    - samtho 4y ago
      That’s more out of a concern of are they lost or needing help.
- franga2000 4y ago
  The objection here isn't "I don't have neighbours that would do that", it's "even if they do, CPS would laugh in their face because this is a normal thing for a child to be doing". At worst, they might come by to ask some questions the first time. It would seem there are in fact a handful of crazy CPS workers out there that think this is truly unacceptable, but there's a ridiculously tiny chance of you getting one of those and it is my understanding you can still fight them in court if the case ever gets that far.
  - sidlls 4y ago
    It likely varies by region and social standards within different communities. I personally know people who have had CPS called on them because they let their kids (young teens, around 13 or so) walk to the store (~0.5 miles) alone. It's not a "ridiculously tiny chance", where I live. And nobody should have to fight them in court: that's the whole point--the fact that it can get that far, or even as far as a single CPS visit for "some questions", is beyond absurd. It's a ridiculous stripping of autonomy and growth for children, and an humiliating and infuriating experience for parents.
    - franga2000 4y ago
      My whole point was that while CPS might get called by some idiot neighbour, the chance of them doing anything is basically nonexistent, especially not something as drastic as taking away custody. It reduces down to: "I'm not going to do [perfectly legal and normal thing] because [person who doesn't like me] might report me to [authority figure]". By that logic, I shouldn't eat meat because my vegan neighbour might report me to the police for murder. When I was a teen, me and my friends had the cops called on us me multiple times for things as absurd as sitting on the stairs in the building I lived in or rollerblading up and down the street, but every time, the cops kindly explained to the grumpy old pensioner that called them that this was perfectly legal, nobody was being harmed and to not call about nonsense like that again. People always have and always will try to report others for things they don't like. But that's like half of the cops' or CPS's job - to take those reports, figure out what actually counts as a crime, investigate whether it actually happened and only then charge the suspect.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> I get the impression that this problem happens a lot less frequently than social media and our personal echo chambers would have us believe. It seems to make headlines whenever it happens not because it’s happening all the time, but because it’s such a weird thing to happen. A lot of people can no longer tell the difference between headlines for rare events and headlines for things that happen all the time. If they see a headline, they just assume it’s extremely common. Social media has also amplified the idea that men can’t take kids to a park without people assuming they’re child predators. Prior to having kids, I thought taking my kids to the park was going to be a high risk activity and that I’d have to defend myself against paranoid moms who couldn’t understand why a man was at the kids park. Reddit circulated this meme like it was gospel. Then I finally had kids, went to the park, and nothing of the sort has ever happened. My local parks are almost a 50/50 split of moms and dads and everyone has always been friendly.
- miriam_catira 4y ago
  I know a few women personally who have blatantly told me that they are suspicious of any man they see near their kid's park. They haven't ever mentioned confronting anyone, but they've both said that they watch them.
  - Auracle 4y ago
    I was hired for a photoshoot of a teacher at an elementary school. As I was setting up a tripod, a light with a big softbox and the like outside the front of the school I had a resident busybody come up to me and "just make sure" none of the kids outside in the playground would be in the shot. Of course, I could have legally done so as they were outside in a public place...and the earlier part of the shoot was in the teacher's classroom with her students. I had another shoot where I was covering someone's engagement that was near a playground. I had my wife with just to diffuse anybody worrying about a man with a long lens near a playground but clearly not photographing any children - and sure enough, she had to talk to a lady about it. Another time I was going to photograph a high school senior at a playground the next day, so I scoped out my old elementary and middle school playgrounds (no camera equipment on me!). I made it all of 10 feet onto the elementary school playground before I had a woman essentially accuse me of being a creep. There were plenty of moms there. It didn't even seem to occur to her that I could have been a father, or just walking across the space to get to the baseball field or whatever. For the record I'm a decent looking guy and I don't think I put out creep vibes in the least.
sidlls 4y ago
My neighbors were reported by someone in the neighborhood.
qball 4y ago
>I get the impression that this problem happens a lot less frequently than social media and our personal echo chambers would have us believe. You don't need modern technology for that; the 1980s panic over child abductions (which was the precipitating event for this state of affairs) was overblown so hard that reasonable parents are far more at risk of their children being abducted and harassed by the State than they ever were at random. To claim social media is a root cause is incorrect, though technology does empower the hysterical and exacerbates their damage in other ways. Because children aren't people, there's no human/legal rights concerns generated by taking away their right to free movement and quiet enjoyment of property (unlike, say, mass violence with a weapon vs. the human right to those weapons)- anything is fair game when it comes to public safety, after all. Some US states have slowly been passing anti-hysterics laws with respect to movement and enjoyment of property rights for children (as in, not getting abducted off their front lawn or walking down the street by cOnCeRnEd PaReNtS), but it's very far from universal. But the fear of State violence [inherently at gunpoint] is still there in most of the world, and I understand the non-hysterical holding back out of fear, conflating legality and general don't-rock-the-boat Milgram-type obediance with morality, etc.... even though it's slowly killing their kids.
- stametseater 4y ago
  The 1980s and particularly 90s stranger danger panic was driven by national for-profit news organizations generally, and the programming demands of cable news specifically. There is only so much real national news to go around, certainly not enough to fill 24/7 television programming, so these orgs turned to blowing up local crime stories to the national news market. On a national level there's always another missing child story so a national news org can keep these stories coming on a regular basis, creating a false impression of how common these crimes are. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome
scelerat 4y ago
Personally this has happened to me once. I was visiting my parents and the town I grew up in. I went for a walk by my old elementary school and walked onto the grounds. It was late in the afternoon, well after classes were done and most of the students and teachers would have left. A hundred yards away, some children were playing soccer. I stopped to watch for a bit. It was only a few seconds before a woman came up to me and very curtly asked, "what do you think you're doing here?" I said I used to go to school here, and I was on a walk. She said, "you need to leave." I asked her why and she repeated that I needed to leave. Just super hostile. I didn't want a big confrontation, so I left.

by samtho 4y ago

laverya 4y ago

"If you do this and someone objects, you will have your kids taken away. But don't worry, people very rarely object! You don't have anyone in your neighborhood that really doesn't like you, right?" This is not nearly as reassuring as you may think it is.

samtho 4y ago
I suppose it’s hard for me to really understand this situation. I live in a mixed-income neighborhood within a major US city and there are tons of kids that walk around in transit to/from school, the park, the bus stop, with younger kid always accompanied by older ones (10 and up). My neighborhood is fairly tight knit and if a kid goes “missing”, it’s usually because their phone died or something and the parent overreacted after not being able to reach them. I would be concerned if I see a kid walking alone without any clear purpose/destination, but even then, an isolated incident is not going to be a call to CPS.
- laverya 4y ago
  > I would be concerned if I see a kid walking alone without any clear purpose/destination, but even then, an isolated incident is not going to be a call to CPS. You're damning yourself with faint praise, here. Giving kids independence means that they're regularly going to be outside alone (or with friends), and often without a clear purpose or destination. And it's sort of sounding like you'd be considering calling CPS over that.
  - samtho 4y ago
    The situation I was trying to describe is when a kid is clearly lost, not just playing around. This is a concern I would have if I saw an adult in the situation with a similar remedy: ask if they need help.
- 4bpp 4y ago
  > I would be concerned if I see a kid walking alone without any clear purpose/destination, but even then, an isolated incident is not going to be a call to CPS. Do you realise how threatening this sounds? You are all but implying that if you, conversely, see a kid outside a few times and can't figure out their purpose/destination, you might just call CPS. I wouldn't trust most kids to manage to look unambiguously purposeful to adult strangers most of the time (when I myself was in 4th grade and going to a primary school in a neighbouring town, I would frequently get distracted by something and miss three or four once-in-30-minutes buses in a row), so you're essentially saying that you may CPS on a whim after seeing the same kid multiple times in a row. If I lived in the US and knew I had neighbours like that, I would not risk letting any kids go outside on their own.
  - brailsafe 4y ago
    I think this is a logically unsound, or at best uncharitable interpretation. My read of it is simply that calling CPS would hypothetically be an exaggerated reaction, even in circumstances that are unusual in their day to day context, and would require at least a higher bar if not much higher bar, and presumably other measures having been taken, like talking to them
- qball 4y ago
  >I would be concerned if I see a kid walking alone without any clear purpose/destination Yeah, God fucking forbid they exercise their human right to movement in a way that offends your sensibilities.
  - samtho 4y ago
    That’s more out of a concern of are they lost or needing help.
franga2000 4y ago
The objection here isn't "I don't have neighbours that would do that", it's "even if they do, CPS would laugh in their face because this is a normal thing for a child to be doing". At worst, they might come by to ask some questions the first time. It would seem there are in fact a handful of crazy CPS workers out there that think this is truly unacceptable, but there's a ridiculously tiny chance of you getting one of those and it is my understanding you can still fight them in court if the case ever gets that far.
- sidlls 4y ago
  It likely varies by region and social standards within different communities. I personally know people who have had CPS called on them because they let their kids (young teens, around 13 or so) walk to the store (~0.5 miles) alone. It's not a "ridiculously tiny chance", where I live. And nobody should have to fight them in court: that's the whole point--the fact that it can get that far, or even as far as a single CPS visit for "some questions", is beyond absurd. It's a ridiculous stripping of autonomy and growth for children, and an humiliating and infuriating experience for parents.
  - franga2000 4y ago
    My whole point was that while CPS might get called by some idiot neighbour, the chance of them doing anything is basically nonexistent, especially not something as drastic as taking away custody. It reduces down to: "I'm not going to do [perfectly legal and normal thing] because [person who doesn't like me] might report me to [authority figure]". By that logic, I shouldn't eat meat because my vegan neighbour might report me to the police for murder. When I was a teen, me and my friends had the cops called on us me multiple times for things as absurd as sitting on the stairs in the building I lived in or rollerblading up and down the street, but every time, the cops kindly explained to the grumpy old pensioner that called them that this was perfectly legal, nobody was being harmed and to not call about nonsense like that again. People always have and always will try to report others for things they don't like. But that's like half of the cops' or CPS's job - to take those reports, figure out what actually counts as a crime, investigate whether it actually happened and only then charge the suspect.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> I get the impression that this problem happens a lot less frequently than social media and our personal echo chambers would have us believe. It seems to make headlines whenever it happens not because it’s happening all the time, but because it’s such a weird thing to happen. A lot of people can no longer tell the difference between headlines for rare events and headlines for things that happen all the time. If they see a headline, they just assume it’s extremely common. Social media has also amplified the idea that men can’t take kids to a park without people assuming they’re child predators. Prior to having kids, I thought taking my kids to the park was going to be a high risk activity and that I’d have to defend myself against paranoid moms who couldn’t understand why a man was at the kids park. Reddit circulated this meme like it was gospel. Then I finally had kids, went to the park, and nothing of the sort has ever happened. My local parks are almost a 50/50 split of moms and dads and everyone has always been friendly.

miriam_catira 4y ago
I know a few women personally who have blatantly told me that they are suspicious of any man they see near their kid's park. They haven't ever mentioned confronting anyone, but they've both said that they watch them.
- Auracle 4y ago
  I was hired for a photoshoot of a teacher at an elementary school. As I was setting up a tripod, a light with a big softbox and the like outside the front of the school I had a resident busybody come up to me and "just make sure" none of the kids outside in the playground would be in the shot. Of course, I could have legally done so as they were outside in a public place...and the earlier part of the shoot was in the teacher's classroom with her students. I had another shoot where I was covering someone's engagement that was near a playground. I had my wife with just to diffuse anybody worrying about a man with a long lens near a playground but clearly not photographing any children - and sure enough, she had to talk to a lady about it. Another time I was going to photograph a high school senior at a playground the next day, so I scoped out my old elementary and middle school playgrounds (no camera equipment on me!). I made it all of 10 feet onto the elementary school playground before I had a woman essentially accuse me of being a creep. There were plenty of moms there. It didn't even seem to occur to her that I could have been a father, or just walking across the space to get to the baseball field or whatever. For the record I'm a decent looking guy and I don't think I put out creep vibes in the least.

sidlls 4y ago

My neighbors were reported by someone in the neighborhood.

qball 4y ago

>I get the impression that this problem happens a lot less frequently than social media and our personal echo chambers would have us believe. You don't need modern technology for that; the 1980s panic over child abductions (which was the precipitating event for this state of affairs) was overblown so hard that reasonable parents are far more at risk of their children being abducted and harassed by the State than they ever were at random. To claim social media is a root cause is incorrect, though technology does empower the hysterical and exacerbates their damage in other ways. Because children aren't people, there's no human/legal rights concerns generated by taking away their right to free movement and quiet enjoyment of property (unlike, say, mass violence with a weapon vs. the human right to those weapons)- anything is fair game when it comes to public safety, after all. Some US states have slowly been passing anti-hysterics laws with respect to movement and enjoyment of property rights for children (as in, not getting abducted off their front lawn or walking down the street by cOnCeRnEd PaReNtS), but it's very far from universal. But the fear of State violence [inherently at gunpoint] is still there in most of the world, and I understand the non-hysterical holding back out of fear, conflating legality and general don't-rock-the-boat Milgram-type obediance with morality, etc.... even though it's slowly killing their kids.

stametseater 4y ago
The 1980s and particularly 90s stranger danger panic was driven by national for-profit news organizations generally, and the programming demands of cable news specifically. There is only so much real national news to go around, certainly not enough to fill 24/7 television programming, so these orgs turned to blowing up local crime stories to the national news market. On a national level there's always another missing child story so a national news org can keep these stories coming on a regular basis, creating a false impression of how common these crimes are. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome

scelerat 4y ago

Personally this has happened to me once. I was visiting my parents and the town I grew up in. I went for a walk by my old elementary school and walked onto the grounds. It was late in the afternoon, well after classes were done and most of the students and teachers would have left. A hundred yards away, some children were playing soccer. I stopped to watch for a bit. It was only a few seconds before a woman came up to me and very curtly asked, "what do you think you're doing here?" I said I used to go to school here, and I was on a walk. She said, "you need to leave." I asked her why and she repeated that I needed to leave. Just super hostile. I didn't want a big confrontation, so I left.