261–270 of 531 posts
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for those of us who ticked off at CPS, that's kind of the point. who you want "anywhere near children" should have nothing to do with my relationship with my kids.
> who you want "anywhere near children" should have nothing to do with my relationship with my kids. The laws against child abuse argue against this kind of absolutism. Do you have something against those, too?
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The U.S. federal government gives the States' child protection service agencies money grants that are conditional on those agencies actually taking children from their homes. You get what you subsidize, and if you subsidize petty tyranny, you'll get petty tyranny.
Works that way with lots of things. My kid gets a pretty generous existence off ~10% of our post-tax salaries. Not because we are rich, we just don't waste money. In a divorce, the state says I would need to pay 20% pre-tax (like 30% post-tax) or go to fucking jail . There's no rational reason why the kid is always going to need 3x the money in a divorce, and that reason be so dire it's worth throwing someone in jail…
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> The US seems to be the only country that has this problem. Here's my take on the issue from 5 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32680201 Summary: We don't have safe roads and in most American suburbs traveling by car is often the only reasonable option available.
so did something happen in the last 20 years to make roads unsafe? because the issues addressed by this type of legislation are recent.
I think it was a problem that started to feed back on itself once people started spending more time indoors and isolated themselves from their neighbors more.
Stupid, careless, wreckless people obviously existed during the heyday of the American suburbs, but I reckon that far fewer of them came roaring down suburban streets at 60mph since they knew that Nicky, Tony, and Tommy might be outside playing stickball and that Tony's dad, also named Tony, would throw you a neighborhood-sanctioned beating if you were to pull such a stunt... and nobody saw nothin'.
No, instead, you drove carefully until you got to the highway and THEN it was drag racing time.
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…
For whatever reason this took off in America more than most other places. US culture seems very prone to moral panics and crime scares.
The fact is that the vast majority of child abuse and abduction is committed by a family member or someone known to the child like a teacher, pastor, neighbor, coach, etc.
Stranger abductions are horrific and terrifying but they are nowhere near the top of a list of bad things likely to happen to your kids.
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It also depends on where you live. If you are a suburban or rural kid, playing outside all you want is fine. Let them explore the neighborhood. If you live near a highway though, or a high crime area, then you might want to reconsider what you want to allow. You still need common sense. My main worry is people who live in relatively safe areas, like a suburban neighborhood, but with neighbors that will STILL call CPS…
> a high crime area What exactly do you expect to happen to your 6 year old? They’re not a very useful target for anything I can think of.
IMO, three things need to happen to make this go. First, the media needs a sea change towards not making parents hysterical. We've seen this happen in waves ever since there was mass media (D&D, satanism, metal, gangs, etc., in my personal lifetime) but this is the first time I think it's actually caught on as a cultural standard for something like 2 decades straight. Second, social media needs a sea change towards n…
My friends with kids will frequently say “Well things aren’t like they were back in our day”. “Our day” being the 80s and 90s.
Yes, things aren’t like they were back in our day - crime has been on a steady downward trend (absent a tiny rise relative to prior years in 2020). By all available data regarding violent crime this is one of the safest periods to have ever lived in human history.
When I talk to my mom about her youth (into her 20s) in the 1950s - 1970s (and into my childhood) there were at least a few known active serial killers roaming the country (Ted Bundy, Green River, John Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc, etc) at any given time. Anonymous drifters would roll into small towns and randomly kill entire families (In Cold Blood). People were disappearing left and right. Muggings and random violence in cities like New York was completely out of control (compared to today’s standards). Sexual assault especially was on a completely different level.
In my lifetime alone from 1993 to 2019 violent crime has fallen 49% [0]. The chances of me or anyone in my family being victims of violent crime today is HALF what it was “back in our day when things were different”. Yes, things are very different. Better. Safer.
Turn off 24hr news, get off social media, and go outside and enjoy it.
[0] - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about...
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Car-centric infrastructure and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
I am really surprised every time I see this vehement hatred of cars. I lived in NYC my whole life and didn't have a car, but now we got kids so we happily moved for the house-and-car-in-the-burbs life and it's absolutely better. People make this choice for a reason. Just curious, do you have a family and do you shlep them by bus everywhere?
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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…
No offence, but that sounds like a terrible place to live.
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I walk my kids to school in the US, but I definitely see kids as young as 6 walking without a parent. I choose to walk with my kids because I enjoy it, and it's easy exercise. That said, a lot of parents still drive their kids - the vast majority I would say. Even people who live within walking distance. It definitely is faster if you look at it in a vacuum: you save 10 minutes round trip! And when casually discussin…
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…
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> a high crime area What exactly do you expect to happen to your 6 year old? They’re not a very useful target for anything I can think of.
Such extreme privilege right here. Kids that young will be pressured into using drugs and committing crimes, mostly vandalism and theft, but sometimes worse. That’s around the age when kids started dealing drugs where I grew up. I knew kids who threw bricks through windows and huffed paint when left alone. Bad areas are bad.