81–90 of 106 posts
Anyone know when this all changed? At the age of 5 I used to walk to school alone without me or my parents worrying. That would have been about 1958/9.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At 7 years old my parents would leave for work before I had to go to school, so I had to eat breakfast, dress myself and go to school, locking the door behind me - the walk was across few busy streets which I was told how to cross. Then I would come back before they were home so likewise, I had to let myself in and just wait for them to come back. I think nowadays if I did that with my son I would have child services…
I can't tell if you are advocating for that to still be common. Regardless, I just want to point out the survivor bias in anyone saying this should still be done based on stories like this one. The children in similar circumstances who were killed aren't here to talk about it. (Not trying to be rude)
Those things did happen and still do, but they were rare and impactful occurrences that had lasting influence on the lives of the people in the victims' social circles. If anything, each one will have been overrepresented in the self-reported stories of random commenters.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> United States is so rare that a child would have to be outside unsupervised for, on average, 750,000 years before being snatched by a stranger. Is this stat from 1980s or recent? If recent, what may be the likelihood that such stats are the outcome of parents' paranoia?
There are 300 kid abductions per year in the US, more or less the same amount of people who got struck by lightning or the same about of kids who drown in swimming pool. I don't see any hysteria around two of these topics though
Gun ownership advocates in particular love to bring up the stat that it's more dangerous for a household with kids to have a swimming pool than a gun.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are 300 kid abductions per year in the US, more or less the same amount of people who got struck by lightning or the same about of kids who drown in swimming pool. I don't see any hysteria around two of these topics though
Is that 300 kid abductions by strangers? Because just based on the amber alerts that I get where the police suspect a parent that number can not possibly be correct if not.
Correct. The number of abductions of children by their parents is three orders of magnitude higher.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At 7 years old my parents would leave for work before I had to go to school, so I had to eat breakfast, dress myself and go to school, locking the door behind me - the walk was across few busy streets which I was told how to cross. Then I would come back before they were home so likewise, I had to let myself in and just wait for them to come back. I think nowadays if I did that with my son I would have child services…
I can't tell if you are advocating for that to still be common. Regardless, I just want to point out the survivor bias in anyone saying this should still be done based on stories like this one. The children in similar circumstances who were killed aren't here to talk about it. (Not trying to be rude)
It's not really survivorship bias when the "survivors" are pretty much everyone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't tell if you are advocating for that to still be common. Regardless, I just want to point out the survivor bias in anyone saying this should still be done based on stories like this one. The children in similar circumstances who were killed aren't here to talk about it. (Not trying to be rude)
Do you think there was widespread death of latchkey kids in the 80s? Get a grip.
> ...we asked parents what they thought would happen if two 10-year-olds played in a local park without adults around. Sixty percent thought the children would likely get injured. Half thought they would likely get abducted. During summer vacation when I was 10 (early 90s) I'd leave the house in the morning and head down to the local park to play basketball or roam the neighborhood with the other kids. We'd ride our…
I guess I'm about your age, and I remember doing much of the same. Lots of time on my bike with friends, playing hockey or football in the street, "manhunt" at night around the neighborhood (we were too cool to call it hide-and-seek at that age). But I also remember playing video games indoors, and my mother reminding us about how her mother kicked her out of the house when she was young, and how they were outside un…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
this was probably before your country opened the doors to rapists and violent murderers to come live amongst yall though
I hate to break it to you, but the violent murderers have always been here and they're probably not the people you're thinking of... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_genocide_in_th... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treatment_of_slaves_in_the_Uni... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porvenir_massacre_(1918) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_…
> ...we asked parents what they thought would happen if two 10-year-olds played in a local park without adults around. Sixty percent thought the children would likely get injured. Half thought they would likely get abducted. During summer vacation when I was 10 (early 90s) I'd leave the house in the morning and head down to the local park to play basketball or roam the neighborhood with the other kids. We'd ride our…
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/north-carolina-child-kil... https://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/31/living/florida-mom-arrest... The US is seeming more bonkers day after day. These sorts of stories just don't make sense to me. We have issues in Ireland with children and teenagers going around engaging in anti-social behaviour but there is a balance to be found between these two extremes.
1) The US was rebuilt after WW2 to be highly car-centric, with disastrous results for pedestrian safety. It is actually more dangerous for children to move in public because of this automobile centricity in >95% of US spaces, which drives cultural shifts
2) US media is highly sensationalist; Fox News is popular and generally serves to make viewers frightened of the world
3) The US has 340M people to Ireland’s 5.6M people, so from a base rate, we’d expect ~60x more lurid headlines to come out of the US
> ...we asked parents what they thought would happen if two 10-year-olds played in a local park without adults around. Sixty percent thought the children would likely get injured. Half thought they would likely get abducted. During summer vacation when I was 10 (early 90s) I'd leave the house in the morning and head down to the local park to play basketball or roam the neighborhood with the other kids. We'd ride our…
this was probably before your country opened the doors to rapists and violent murderers to come live amongst yall though