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Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town

reason.com

121–130 of 203 posts

Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town

#121
post #94
post #5

When I was 8? I think, I used to take a bus to go get a VHS tape from the local rental shop. It's important for kids to have autonomy. In Japan, its pretty common to send even younger kids out on errands.

When I was growing up in the 70s, it was totally normal for a dad to give their under 10 year old kid some money and send them to the corner store to buy a pack of cigarettes for dad.

My Japanese friend told me his parents would send him to the store for beer at age 5. (He would successfully return with beer)

I gather things are different now over there...

Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town

#122
post #8

When I was five years old I would walk along a path and take a bridge across a river to visit my friend to play board games. By the time I was nine I was bicycling forty-five minutes to school on a 80 km/h road. The level of paranoia that's infected people around keeping kids near their parents is insane.

> 80 km/h road Non-American detected Please use Google Street View on the roads coming in to Mineral Bluffs, Ga, USA. No bike lines, and we're not even keen on emergency shoulder for cars and trucks!

Please use Google street view in any small town around the world and notice the prevalence of foot traffic. Even on roads with no shoulder, bike lane, sidewalk or similar. I've walked to school since I was 6 on roads not too dissimilar.

Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town

#123

Does anybody else get a feeling that this is fake? Reason is the only source (other news outlets just link to this article), there is no comment from the DA or the sheriff nor any documents or mention of official documentation that could corroborate the story. And the GoFundMe has very little info

She shows up int the "Fannin County Sheriff’s Office Arrest Report 10/28 – 11/3/2024," as Inmate 2512, charged with "Reckless Codnict," the charge in het article. (https://fannin.fetchyournews.com/2024/11/05/fannin-county-sh...)

Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town

#124

This kind of incident is a microcosm of everything that's going wrong in the western world

Fortunately for the rest of the Western world, I don't think most of it has to deal with the artificial community concern about children walking on their own that the US experiences.

Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town

#125
post #43

I don’t know what is up with the USA and its obsession that kids cannot have autonomy. I think many of us grew up where our parents didn’t know our location at all times. My parents used to tell me to be home by a certain time, but I used to roam the neighborhood, go get candy at the gas station, explore the forest. Maybe it is a sign of the eroding social trust in the USA where people do not believe that others in t…

I think a lot of it has to do with constant fear mongering on the news and its effect after 40+ years of it. Also the phenomenon of (I forgot what it's called) but where people are afraid of flying but not driving because they see constant news coverage of crashed planes.

Suburban paranoia and it it bleeds it leads.

Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but wouldn't the sheriff making the comment be own goaling the situation. Wouldn't her scenarios imply that she's shite at her job so that crimes like these are prevalent?

After witnessing the past decade, do you think even immediate logical contraditions matter in the least? Especially for the kind of people that think that society should be some kind of authority hierarchy, which is essentially a prerequisite of being a cop?

It's precisely that lack of awareness on their part that makes Cartman's "respect my authority" funny or any other trope as well like Tackelberry from Police Academy work (for the old farts) or Farva from Super Troopers (for those slightly less old).

Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town

#128
post #121
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was growing up in the 70s, it was totally normal for a dad to give their under 10 year old kid some money and send them to the corner store to buy a pack of cigarettes for dad.

My Japanese friend told me his parents would send him to the store for beer at age 5. (He would successfully return with beer) I gather things are different now over there...

Where is “over there”?

Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town

#129
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, the USA has 350 million people, and fifty states with materially different local norms. With this scale and amount of variety, "one in a million" freak incidents ought to be registered all the time. But, being freak incidents, they get amplified and thus seem to represent the entire country in the eyes of distant observers, foreigners, or just people from far enough away within the US. Ironically, this is the sa…

> With this scale and amount of variety, "one in a million" freak incidents ought to be registered all the time. I’m not sure “one in a million” and “freak incident” is the right mental model with this case. What is noteworthy that a whole series of people, most of them professionals, thought an unatended child walking is noteworthy and they should do something about it. The busybody who thought they should report it…

I agree that the idea that streets are dangerous for kids before 12 is not very sane, and much more widespread than I would like it to be. It depends though; now the police in NYC is efficient, and the crime level reasonably low, but 20 years ago the situation was different. IDK how things are in Georgia.

What I refer to as a "freak accident" is the jail time. I would expect issuing an official warning at most.

The problem is that this state of mind is that of the voters. It's not imposed by some oppressive authoritarian ruler, it's self-inflicted. Democracy, sadly, makes the unwholesome traits in people as visible as the most virtuous traits. E.g. Switzerland, the poster child of the most real democracy on this planet, only gave women voting rights in 1950s-70s, completely democratically.

Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town

#130

Does anybody else get a feeling that this is fake? Reason is the only source (other news outlets just link to this article), there is no comment from the DA or the sheriff nor any documents or mention of official documentation that could corroborate the story. And the GoFundMe has very little info

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