371–380 of 531 posts
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Mostly pedophilia and ransom would be my main concern.
That basically never happens with strangers on the street. If you're worried about that, pay more attention to teachers ("nearly 9.6% of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct") and your partner ("of the girls living with a stepfather, 3.7% reported sexual experiences with him") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse#United_Stat...
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The US is a low trust society, because of all the poverty. You really notice the difference if you travel to Europe. It turns out that having half of the population be economically unsafe makes everyone and everything unsafe.
Parts of the US are like this, but huge swaths of Americans don't even bother locking their front doors.
Now, however, people lock their doors because of meth heads even in the extremely rural areas of the southeast.
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Your analogy makes no sense. If I ground my child, preventing them from leaving the house, that's a reasonable punishment. If I prevent an adult from leaving my house, that's kidnapping. There are some things you can do to your child that you cannot do to another adult. And that's normal and good.
That's fair, and I don't disagree that parents and guardians should have rights over their children to punish them for discipline. That said, you certainly still can't spank your pets... Look, I agree that the state should have a lot of leeway in letting parents decide what is best for their children. But in and of itself, spanking is the direct use of physical harm (the fact people even split straws on whether or no…
He got to see what would happen.
And you know what? He never did anything like that again.
I don't think that spanking should be a go-to punishment, but in some cases, especially those involving high danger, a small child needs to have a fundamental fear of breaking certain rules.
I'd rather have to give a child a spanking for trying to run out into the road than to have a dead child and some sort of moral superiority.
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I don't understand what's either astonishing or even wrong about that sequence of events by the government. Person calls 911 and reports child abuse. The government takes the situation seriously and investigates. The government determines there was no issue. Person being investigated is upset. Other than the person calling 911, who do you want to do something different? You want the first responder to dismiss the cas…
The sequence of events that is wrong here, is that if a person calls 911 claiming that there is child abuse going on, and the "child abuse" is a child playing outside or walking to the park alone, the person should be fined. There is a difference between "I saw little Johnny outside for hours in the cold, I think there is child abuse." or "I saw bruises all over little johnny, I think there is child abuse." and "A ch…
Using the future knowledge that the investigation turned up nothing to suggest it should not be done isn't really something that can be applied.
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The use of the phrase "high crime area" in this context, when just referencing child safety, is itself problematic. Everyone who is reading that phrase right now is forming a mental picture of what it means, and I guarantee it's not a picture of illegally burning garbage in the yard while drinking raw milk, sitting on an unpermitted deck, listening to an illegally downloaded MP3 while making a trade on their phone ba…
I was in a college class that had a mix of inner city and suburban kids. Ask the suburban kids to describe the inner city? Dangerous. Crime-ridden. Ask the inner city kids to describe inner city? Community. Know their neighbors.
I remember reading a news story about a poor single mom who was renting a room in an extended stay and working in a pizzarea across the street from it. She left her 9? year old alone in the room so she could work. Cops show up and take her kid and arrest her for child endangerment. They made it illegal to be a poor single working mom.
They made it illegal to be a single mom and not provide adequate childcare. Many families have both parents working, so the situation of needing to find someone to look after your child is not unique to single parents. That said, this is one of the reasons raising children on your own is more difficult.
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I don't understand what's either astonishing or even wrong about that sequence of events by the government. Person calls 911 and reports child abuse. The government takes the situation seriously and investigates. The government determines there was no issue. Person being investigated is upset. Other than the person calling 911, who do you want to do something different? You want the first responder to dismiss the cas…
If someone makes a false claim that results in personal expenses for me that sounds like libel or defamation. Allow me to find out who they were so I can sue them. I value my time at least for say $1000 per CPS visit and $300 per hour I have to spend dealing with the investigation they knowingly initiated with their libel. The laws hiding the identity of people abusing children by making these trumped up reports shou…
Then you don't know what libel or defamation is. But, yes, if someone makes a false report against you and that results in injuries to your reputation you can totally sue them for slander, libel or defamation (depending on how the report was filed).
As far as I know, no laws hide the identity of people reporting crimes. However, for very good reasons, we allow people to report crimes anonymously.
The US seems to be the only country that has this problem. Children here (Norway) walk to school on their own at the age of five or six, some of them take buses. "Ashley Smith, a foster dad, testified about being investigated for neglect because one afternoon his daughter, 8, was doing her homework on the front lawn. A passerby reported an “unsupervised” child (not knowing Ashley was actually inside). The upshot: “We…
Car-centric culture and gun-centric culture is making our society to be like this. Also, most states defund mental health institutions. Finally, the 24/7 news cycle covers a lot of crazy behaviors, encouraging copycats to one-up the crime even more. Is it a surprise if Americans are more paranoid than ever?
Yet that is entirely refuted by crime stats.
What the 24/7 news cycle does is runs out of real news 30 minutes into the 24 hour cycle and then fills the public head with deceptive and disproportional hysteria. The kind of stuff that makes them say that Car-centric culture and gun-centric culture are something remotely new. :)
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I live about a half mile from my kid's school and we walk most days, or I bike. However, it has been... eye opening. We live in a fairly urban area of Nashville, but my street doesn't have sidewalks. We've been yelled at multiple times (me, my wife, and our kindergartner) by drivers to "Get out of the road!" (This is on a 25 mph street.) There are ditches and uneven ground on both sides of the road. Even the sidewalk…
Large parts of the US seem like a nightmare society. I can’t imagine how limiting life must be when your basic freedoms like walking are so restricted.
I just gave cars berth, and wandered into the ditch when necessary. So the ground is uneven; never bothered me any. I didn't feel particularly restricted; I just went where I wanted to go, however I needed to do it. Probably not the best place to walk with your kid, I'll grant.
What did get to me was freeways; the idea that you have this huge swathe of road that's just straight out illegal to cross on foot.
What's really limiting, though? Not having access to a vehicle when you need one...
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When China was adopting kids to abroad, I'm sure that happened. These days, I'm not sure if child trafficking is still a problem, I only hear anecdotes, and its all domestic (because China doesn't allow kids to be adopted abroad anymore except in very rare circumstances).
China is not the only country adopting. There are places in Africa to watch out for. Though many have stopped adopting as abuse was too common for the benefits.