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Why Do We Judge Parents for Putting Kids at Perceived But Unreal Risk?

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Re: Why Do We Judge Parents for Putting Kids at Perceived But Unreal Risk?

#271

Post by c22 »

gph wrote: post #32

I understand the overall thrust of this article, but I somewhat disagree with the suggestion that my judgement of morality should have no impact on my judgement of the risk to a child. For instance a parent that would leave a 2-year old alone to go play pokemon probably has other terrible parenting judgement/skills and most likely the environment they leave the kid in IS actually more dangerous than someone who accid…

With no other information I'd assume the obsessive compulsive "gotta catch em all" parent would have a cleaner/safer home environment than someone so absent-minded they forgot their kid "on accident".

Re: Why Do We Judge Parents for Putting Kids at Perceived But Unreal Risk?

#272

Post by c22 »

cmurf wrote: post #72
gph wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not at all what I'm saying. My point is that the parent who is accidentally negligent most likely is providing their child with a safer environment than the parents who intentionally leave their child alone. BTW have you even had a 2-year old? I doubt very much there was ever a point in history where 2-year olds were left with zero supervision. Sure it might be an older sibling or some other community member watc…

>I doubt very much there was ever a point in history where 2-year olds were left with zero supervision. Your comment seems culturally biased. See the movie Babies? The Mongolian baby Bayar was often left alone for hours.

They also took him home from the hospital tied to a board on the back of a motorcycle!

Re: Why Do We Judge Parents for Putting Kids at Perceived But Unreal Risk?

#273

Post by fweespeech »

harryh wrote: post #139
fweespeech wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/11/11-year-old-boy-played-in-... > One afternoon this past April, a Florida mom and dad I'll call Cindy and Fred could not get home in time to let their 11-year-old son into the house. The boy didn't have a key, so he played basketball in the yard. He was alone for 90 minutes. A neighbor called the cops, and when the parents arrived—having been delayed by traffic and rain—they were arre…

You know how if you talk to an overprotective parent about how it's really ok to let their kids wander around outside on their own a little they're always at the ready with a link to a news story about something horrible happening? And you know how that news story is always anecdote and not data? That's pretty much what you just did.

> A couple of very slightly uncomfortable conversations seems like a small price to pay for raising your kids in the manner you deem appropriate.

That is what I responded to.

> You know how if you talk to an overprotective parent about how it's really ok to let their kids wander around outside on their own a little they're always at the ready with a link to a news story about something horrible happening? And you know how that news story is always anecdote and not data?

You implied the extent of the risk was a couple uncomfortable conversations based on an anecdote. Hypocrisy much?

Based on personal experience, I don't have much faith in the quality of CPS investigations.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/in-a-yea...

> One statistic that stood out in the report: since 2008, the number of referrals to child protective service agencies (hereafter CPS) has increased by 8.3 percent, even as overall rates of actual child victimization declined by 3.3 percent during the same period. There is no system that can totally avoid putting parents who don't deserve it through investigations, despite the fact that even the best moms and dads would regard the ordeal as nightmarish. Over time, however, the number of undeserving parents so burdened seems to be increasing–and the number is large (note that "screened out" referrals are the ones deemed not even worth investigating):

The numbers are clearly moving in the wrong direction for the rate of reporting.

> He goes on to explain that while taking kids from parents in this fashion is only permitted in emergencies as a matter of law, the way things play out in practice is very different. "According to statistics published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, more than 100,000 children who were removed in 2001–more than one in three–were later found not to have been maltreated at all,"

Given CPS investigates gets ~3.4 million complaints a year and there are ~74 million kids, a substantial number of these complaints are screened out because they are basically random/irrelevant.

I'm not in the habit of ignoring 1 in 20 odds, especially if I've got a 1 in 5 shot at it being something serious.

That is alot higher than the risk of terrorism, for instance, affecting me personally.

Re: Why Do We Judge Parents for Putting Kids at Perceived But Unreal Risk?

#274

Post by fweespeech »

harryh wrote: post #263
laughinghan wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's relevant. I am certain that I am far from alone in expecting CPS to incorrectly take children more than 115/3.2 million = 0.0036% of the time, which means that even without knowing the exact percentage of the time that CPS is mistaken, I was convinced by those numbers that a random kid has a higher chance of being mistakenly taken by CPS than abducted by a stranger. Are you telling me that even though…

Yes, I do think it's less than 0.0036%. First we see from the data that CPS declared 2.5 million of those 3.2 as "non-victims" so we can eliminate type 1 errors from almost 80% of the population right there. Of the remaining 700k it's not inconceivable at all that in a big percentage of cases there were actually significant parental problems. Frankly I bet that type 2 errors are much more common that type 1 for this…

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/in-a-yea...

> 2.5 million of those kids were declared 'non-victims.' Another 686,000 were 'abused' or 'neglected.' And an estimated 1,640 kids died as a result.

Their error rate on non-victims is a helluva alot higher than that.

I don't have faith their error rate for victims is much better given we don't have data for that.

Re: Why Do We Judge Parents for Putting Kids at Perceived But Unreal Risk?

#275

Post by harryh »

fweespeech wrote: post #273
harryh wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know how if you talk to an overprotective parent about how it's really ok to let their kids wander around outside on their own a little they're always at the ready with a link to a news story about something horrible happening? And you know how that news story is always anecdote and not data? That's pretty much what you just did.

> A couple of very slightly uncomfortable conversations seems like a small price to pay for raising your kids in the manner you deem appropriate. That is what I responded to. > You know how if you talk to an overprotective parent about how it's really ok to let their kids wander around outside on their own a little they're always at the ready with a link to a news story about something horrible happening? And you kno…

Does CPS have problems? Sure. No doubt. And as a society we should work on fixing these problems.

But when it comes to your own individual life, you can either live your life in fear of the boogeyman or you can live your life the way you want to live it. Let your kids live their lives the way you think they should.

And if CPS shows up one day when they shouldn't, you lawyer up and fight.

That's what a grownup does.

Re: Why Do We Judge Parents for Putting Kids at Perceived But Unreal Risk?

#276

Post by DanBC »

harryh wrote: post #275
fweespeech wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A couple of very slightly uncomfortable conversations seems like a small price to pay for raising your kids in the manner you deem appropriate. That is what I responded to. > You know how if you talk to an overprotective parent about how it's really ok to let their kids wander around outside on their own a little they're always at the ready with a link to a news story about something horrible happening? And you kno…

Does CPS have problems? Sure. No doubt. And as a society we should work on fixing these problems. But when it comes to your own individual life, you can either live your life in fear of the boogeyman or you can live your life the way you want to live it. Let your kids live their lives the way you think they should. And if CPS shows up one day when they shouldn't, you lawyer up and fight. That's what a grownup does.

You might want to look at the burden of proof needed to remove a child from a family; or at the disruption a family experiences with a full on CPS investigation.

And that's ignoring the huge cost involved.

Re: Why Do We Judge Parents for Putting Kids at Perceived But Unreal Risk?

#277

Post by fweespeech »

harryh wrote: post #275
fweespeech wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A couple of very slightly uncomfortable conversations seems like a small price to pay for raising your kids in the manner you deem appropriate. That is what I responded to. > You know how if you talk to an overprotective parent about how it's really ok to let their kids wander around outside on their own a little they're always at the ready with a link to a news story about something horrible happening? And you kno…

Does CPS have problems? Sure. No doubt. And as a society we should work on fixing these problems. But when it comes to your own individual life, you can either live your life in fear of the boogeyman or you can live your life the way you want to live it. Let your kids live their lives the way you think they should. And if CPS shows up one day when they shouldn't, you lawyer up and fight. That's what a grownup does.

> But when it comes to your own individual life, you can either live your life in fear of the boogeyman or you can live your life the way you want to live it. Let your kids live their lives the way you think they should.

> That's what a grownup does.

The sheer condescension and lack of empathy you packed into a single comment is quite sad, tbh.

I tell you I have personal experience with CPS...and your response is I am terrified of a monster under my bed that isn't real.

K.

> And if CPS shows up one day when they shouldn't, you lawyer up and fight.

Most people can't afford $50k legal bills to fight the government. Are you really this isolated and ignorant that this doesn't even occur to you?

Look, Harry, you say things like this:

> Yes, I do think it's less than 0.0036%.

I show you the false negative rate is a helluva alot higher than that and you still spout when you clearly have no clue what you are talking about.

Just walk away before you continue to embarrass yourself.

Re: Why Do We Judge Parents for Putting Kids at Perceived But Unreal Risk?

#278

Post by harryh »

fweespeech wrote: post #277
harryh wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does CPS have problems? Sure. No doubt. And as a society we should work on fixing these problems. But when it comes to your own individual life, you can either live your life in fear of the boogeyman or you can live your life the way you want to live it. Let your kids live their lives the way you think they should. And if CPS shows up one day when they shouldn't, you lawyer up and fight. That's what a grownup does.

> But when it comes to your own individual life, you can either live your life in fear of the boogeyman or you can live your life the way you want to live it. Let your kids live their lives the way you think they should. > That's what a grownup does. The sheer condescension and lack of empathy you packed into a single comment is quite sad, tbh. I tell you I have personal experience with CPS...and your response is I a…

I'm not embarrassing myself. There is a lot of research literature that makes me pretty convinced that the way Americans raise their kids has gotten worse. We are, as a society, overprotective. We don't let our children out into the world enough. We don't let them experience independence early enough. We don't let them fail at small things so that they develop resilience. These are big problems.

In order to fix this we've gotta be a little defiant. If one person acts differently they're gonna be the oddball and the system is going to knock them down. Maybe it's CPS. Maybe it's a nosey neighbor. Who knows. This gets better when A LOT of people start acting differently.

Sure. If you're poor or otherwise not in a position to fight the system I don't expect you to be first in line. But I've got a dollar that says that doesn't apply to you or DanBC or some of the others in this thread. The median Hacker News reader is a white engineer with a good salary and is, more that almost anyone, in a position to stand up to the system if it causes them problems. I'm in that group too. It's our responsibility to make things better, not just for ourselves but also for the people that aren't in a position to do so on their own.

That's what I think.

Re: Why Do We Judge Parents for Putting Kids at Perceived But Unreal Risk?

#279

Post by fweespeech »

harryh wrote: post #278
fweespeech wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But when it comes to your own individual life, you can either live your life in fear of the boogeyman or you can live your life the way you want to live it. Let your kids live their lives the way you think they should. > That's what a grownup does. The sheer condescension and lack of empathy you packed into a single comment is quite sad, tbh. I tell you I have personal experience with CPS...and your response is I a…

I'm not embarrassing myself. There is a lot of research literature that makes me pretty convinced that the way Americans raise their kids has gotten worse. We are, as a society, overprotective. We don't let our children out into the world enough. We don't let them experience independence early enough. We don't let them fail at small things so that they develop resilience. These are big problems. In order to fix this…

> I'm not embarrassing myself.

Making blanket statements with numbers that in no way reflect reality doesn't embarrass you? Making statements about other people's life experiences from a position of clear ignorance of how the system works doesn't embarrass you?

I'm honestly concerned for you at that point because you remind me of that family friend my parents had that lived out in the desert and believed in conspiracy theories because he "felt" they were real.

> There is a lot of research literature that makes me pretty convinced that the way Americans raise their kids has gotten worse. We are, as a society, overprotective.

I'm waiting for your evidence that the risk is less than 0.0036% as you previously stated you "felt" it was.

> That's what I think.

I care about facts that can be reinforced by actual evidence on some level. You clearly do not have any in regards to the topic at hand.

---

The rest of it is a tangent about your opinion on "solutions" that are, ultimately, irrelevant, unless you have evidence you've succeeded with these tactics on some level politically. Do you have such evidence?

Are you even aware the burden of proof is a preponderance of evidence in many states (for instance NY?) Or that they allow hearsay which is little more than gossip?

http://www.jdbar.com/Articles/Child-Neglect/child-neglect.ht...

> For a disposition hearing, evidence need only be material and relevant, meaning that hearsay is permitted. In addition, any new facts occurring up to the date of the dispositional hearing may be considered by the court at a dispositional hearing.

---

Look, if you can't back up BOTH of your opinions with clear citations showing it is true you need to stop.

Re: Why Do We Judge Parents for Putting Kids at Perceived But Unreal Risk?

#280

Post by helthanatos »

Bjartr wrote: post #186
helthanatos wrote: post #152

People seem to confuse rates and percentages with figures. There may be less on average, but more in reality. Not having so many kids on the streets may also cause the crimes to be less. Children wear less clothes than they used to and there seems to be more pedophiles, if those little kids were left alone, more may be taken advantage of. The risk is real. Children don't know how to react when confronted with maybe a…

>There may be less on average, but more in reality. Mind explaining this? I'm having trouble grokking it. >Not having so many kids on the streets may also cause the crimes to be less. The article accounted for this. >Children wear less clothes than they used to and there seems to be more pedophiles, if those little kids were left alone, more may be taken advantage of. What? Do you have any more information on any of…

1. Smaller percentage of a greater amount. 2. Oh well. 3. Children wear much smaller clothes than they used to.
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