> People didn't think it was okay to commit crimes targeting child victims, they just didn't think of those things as crimes at all (which, at the time, they weren't). See, this is the problem he's pointing out: if it wasn't considered ok, it would have been a crime. The point being that children as a whole weren't seen as a protected class the way they are now. At best, you might treat the child of a wealthy person…
People treated their children well enough for us to exist! If we had a time machine and brought an ordinary American from the 1950's to the present, or asked ~40% of Americans nowadays, chances are they'd be horrified by what they'd see as the legalized murder of tens of millions of children (abortion). I'm not trying to bring politics into this (I'm strongly pro-choice), just pointing out that the definitions of "cr…
Low life expectancies in the past weren't because most people died in their 40s / 50s. They were heavily depressed by infant and child mortality - if you survived to adulthood, you had a reasonable chance of living to a ripe old age.
"The road started out as freeway but quickly became a rural highway, one lane in each direction. The speed limit was 45 or 50mph, fairly fast for that kind of road, it was quite busy and I was in a line of cars doing the speed limit." I'd be hard pressed to call a rural area a residential neighborhood.
> "I passed a little outpost of houses whose mailboxes were on the opposite side of the street." I used to live on a road like this, it's not exactly a neighborhood like in most cities (so "residential neighborhood" may not have been accurate) - it's a linear neighborhood along the road. We were lucky enough to have our mailbox at the end of our driveway, not across the street; if our mailbox had been across the stre…
I live on a street like this with my mailbox on the opposite side of the street. In the winter, I always get my mail a day late since I refuse to retrieve it in the dark. Speed limit is 25mph but average speed is closer to 40mph. City can't be bothered to enforce the limit no matter how much we demand it. Sidewalks are being considered and might finally go in sometime before 2030.
All the people talking about being unable to handle/comprehend the death of their child, and especially the one line of conversations about the impact of losing one child when you have many more, made me think about something. For most of human history, losing some children was expected. Child mortality rates for most of our history have been abysmal. As species, what impact did that have on us? Child abuse has a lon…
Well, there are still currently regions of the world where high child mortality is common. Stories from those areas might provide some insight on what you are wondering.
There is a truly sickening amount of victim blaming going on in this thread. People need to take a step back from your selfish perspectives and realize that there are real consequences when we try to make ourselves feel better by saying "it can't be helped" or "there's nothing you could have done". It's not the little boy's fault that he got hit, nor is it nobody's fault. The fault belongs with the driver who hit him, with the road engineer whose design encourages negligent driving, and the society that prioritizes convince for motorists over basic safety.
I can barely bring myself to read stories like this now. I never really thought about it before my son was born, but there's always this dread you live with in the back of your mind. This little helpless person has your life in it's hands. The world and fate is trying to take them out, and if they succeed you'd never recover. You can learn to live with pain, but I don't believe you ever get over something like that.
Same here. I cringe when I see the common HN rhetoric that parents now a days are over-protective. Go say that to parents who lost a child and now live in regret. Kids are unpredictable. I remember being 7 years old and waiting with my mom to cross a busy street. For some reason that today is unknown to me, I decided to just run across the street as soon as the lights turned yellow. I almost got hit and my mom almost…
Just be sure you have a realistic sense of the risks.
Excellent points. There was an article where the author interviewed a bunch of kids a few decades back and examined how they played and then revisited them 20 years later to see how their kids played. The original group of kids played across a very large area (something like a couple square miles of woodland) and roamed across their hometowns with little oversight. Two decades later their children by comparison were…
Part of it is society, too. If you were to let your (young) children play in the woods at a mile from your house... and something happened to them, there's a fair chance that society would blame you nowadays. Heck, I'd venture to guess that there's a fair chance the court could take away your parental rights in a situation like that. What is considered acceptable by society has changed a LOT over the years.
I would probably blame the sensational news coverage nowadays, we didnt have this 20 years ago. Back then news would contain sports/world events and bigger stuff. You hear about so many bad things happening you never think about the probability of it actually happening to you. Like all we read is "Child kidnapped" not "First child kidnapping in a year with lowest kidnap rate ever and in a place so far away that its not relevant to you".
A little girl cycled of the pavement a while ago, just as I was passing, good brakes and no traffic from the other side. Very close call and I have not yet gotten over it yet, nightmares and daily thoughts about it. I am pretty sure her mom also remembers it vividly. Kids can be totally unpredictable like that and how it all ends is hugely dependent on circumstance.
You're a good person; listen to your subconscious! You can't change the unpredictability of kids, but you ~can stop driving, and model good non-driving behavior for your kids and the other people around you.
How come you think I can stop driving? If I stop driving I can kiss the business I built up over the last 10 years goodbye, there is absolutely no way that I can work without the level of mobility and reliability that a vehicle affords.
I have on occasion experimented with public transport in the country where I live and it simply does not work at a reliability level that I can trust not to result in regular embarassment due to inability to be where I need to be when I agreed to be there. This is a pretty bad state of affairs but I did not create that state of affairs and the day that this is fixed I will be more than happy to stop driving.
As it is, between email and driving I do not know which I hate more and as soon as I shut down my business and can retire I will be happy to get rid of both.
Please do not make assumptions about other peoples lives.
There is a truly sickening amount of victim blaming going on in this thread. People need to take a step back from your selfish perspectives and realize that there are real consequences when we try to make ourselves feel better by saying "it can't be helped" or "there's nothing you could have done". It's not the little boy's fault that he got hit, nor is it nobody's fault. The fault belongs with the driver who hit him…
This discussion boils down to should the kid(or all kids) have been monitored a bit more? If so would it have affected him negatively in his later years? Blame game or not this discussion has a lot of merit.
I'm a mother with a young child. I don't think the childless and males can ever really understand the process of being pregnant for 9 months and then giving birth. I empathize with her, but if she killed my child. I could never forgive her.
I don't think the childless females can ever really understand the process either...
I am a dad, and I saw a change in my wife the DAY my first son was born. It's easy to forget but we were all on the other side of having children at some point (regardless of gender). It's something that changes you, your relationships, your priorities.
If someone accidentally killed my child I don't know that I'd forgive them either. I know that it would tear my family apart and would ruin the rest of my life. I hope it doesn't happen to anyone.
My cousin passed away tragically as a child before I was born, I'm now 41. My aunt and uncle still talk of him and cry every holiday. I credit myself with being able to reason and work through just about anything but i have no answer for the death of a child. Edit: I'm not one to shy away from something difficult but i won't be reading this story either.
I think the reason for my dread was sparked by my uncle. He was shot and killed on Halloween in his 20's, before I was born. But growing up very close to my grandmother, she treated me like his replacement because I guess I'm a lot like him. She even called me by his name sometimes. Even though he was older, my entire life she's been a shell of a person in many ways. When my grandfather died, we thought she was going…
My grandmother lost a nephew (nick) in the early 80's he died in a motor cycle accident. His brother (Jared) was shot and killed behind a pool hall in the late 70's by some guys that where butt hurt about loosing some games of pool and the money that went along with it. Her other nephew (the only surviving brother, Wes) did 20 years in prison due to some guys robbing him and raping his wife (He was a drug dealer, they ended up dead, he ended up in prison you get the picture). Anyways long story short she never got over Nicky, she always said he was the good one and she felt guilty that there must have been something more she could do. She too lost her husband (the most important and influential man in my life) but to this day she will tell you the lose of Nicky hurt the worst. He was like a son to her. We have had a lot of tragedy in our family, in addition to our loss of Joey which I talked about above and Nick and Jared, my cousin Shawna was murdered at 23 by her boyfriend and her father was killed years later by some guys that robbed him at his ranch. But the point is there are certain people that hurt worse than others and for my grandmother it was Nicky, she always confided in me, that until I came along that she had the strongest bond to Nicky more so than my own father (Nick was born before him). I did not really understand when I was a child why she held so tightly to me until I was older and had children of my own. Now I get it.