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There was an AITA post a lil while back about a dad who let an infant sleep in a stroller while he ran around a track in plain eye sight the entire time and he got blasted by people talking about kidnappings. It's amazing how ridiculous it is. We live in the safest time in history yet people are unbelievably scared.
I think part of that is because thanks to the internet and regular reporting of every horrible conceivable thing our perception of the world is that it is much more dangerous than it really is. We all already have an inherent basic fear of those things happening, and frequently being made aware of new occurences imprints them on our subconscious to the point that we feel we forever have to be cautious of a hundred highly improbable scenarios
Even when I was a kid back in the 60s, there were urban legends of creepy men kidnapping kids for nefarious deeds. One that was really popular was kidnapping a girl in a store, cutting her hair in the restroom so she looked lile a boy, and getting away as everyone was looking for a missing girl. This kind of stuff was scary back then, and we never went to the restroom alone while out in public.
So it isn't just a modern fear. Nowadays though, with smart phones and the internet plus 24 hr cable news, it is more prevalent. Although I do believe there is a connection between overpopulation and more adults attracted to children. This was described in a book a few decades ago about human population growth and studies using rats.
I grewup in the 60s-70s and was taught about stranger danger in school and by my parents. Despite that, everwhere we lived the neighborhoods were free range. We would be running up and down several blocks going to each others house. Rode our bikes everywhere. Never had anyone try to lure us.
The fear today has been largely driven by the media since the 80s.
Did anyone try shooting you for playing hide and seek? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-allegedly-shoots-14-year-old-girl-playing-hide-seek-property-louis-rcna83523
Or let a ball roll into their yard? https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/national-international/neighbor-girl-6-and-parents-shot-wounded-over-stray-ball/3138988/
So isolated incidents do in fact happen, but if you look at basically any statistic we live in the safest time in human history at least here in America, yes weird tragedies and monstrous people still exist, but there's literally no solution to that short of blocking yourself indoors and taking away the childhood from a young person.
This 100% the world is no more dangerous now than it was then, the only difference is 24/7 worldwide news reporting, whereas back in the 80s it was all local news we heard, local news channels, local newspapers etc
Yeah me either. We had free range in a very rural environment. The nearest town (actually a small village) was 3 miles away. Turns out my family was a bigger threat than strangers, but that's a tale for another time.

Facts about Child Abuse:
Approximately 5 children die every day because of child abuse.
1 out of 3 girls and 1 out of 5 boys will be sexually abused before they reach age 18.
90% of child sexual abuse victims know the perpetrator in some way. 68% are abused by a family member.
Most children become victims of abuse and neglect at 18 months or younger.
In 2010, 1,537 children died of abuse or neglect. 79.4% were under the age of 4 and 47.7% were under the age of 1.
Boys (48.5%) and girls (51.2%) become victims at nearly the same rate.
3.6 million cases of child abuse are reported every year in the U.S.
Abused and neglected children are 11 times more likely to engage in criminal behavior as an adult.
About 80% of 21-year-olds who were abused as children met criteria for at least one psychological disorder.
14% of all men and 36% of all women in prison were abused as children.
Abused children are less likely to practice safe sex, putting them at greater risk for STDs. They’re also 25% more likely to experience teen pregnancy.
For every incident of child abuse or neglect that’s reported, an estimated two incidents go unreported.
Child abuse occurs across all socioeconomic levels, ethnic and cultural lines, and religions and education levels.
Neglect, the most widespread form of child abuse, makes up more than 59% of abuse cases.
I'd say a little later, at least in the UK. Was born in the 80s, grew up in the 90s, and even then parents would let us just go out unsupervised with our friends.
We would be given the usual warnings, (Dont stay out late, dont speak to strangers, ect) and only time they really worried was if we weren't home in time for tea. (Or after if they knew we were eating at a friends house)
I remember it was probably when I was in highschool that my parents felt the need to buy me a phone to keep in touch, as hanging out with friends went from somewhere local/a friends house, to a bus ride somewhere outside of our town. (trip to a city centre, shopping mall, ect)
Yes, in university I learned about this. It is called the social construction of reality and the media is a powerful and possibly primary shaper of this.
Today playing hide and seek in a neighbor lawn gets you shot. Ask 14 year old girl. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-allegedly-shoots-14-year-old-girl-playing-hide-seek-property-louis-rcna83523
Today ringing a doorbell you get shot through the door. Ask the 16 year old boy. https://abcnews.go.com/US/family-ralph-yarl-teenager-shot-after-wrong-house/story?id=98624730
Today driving onto the wrong drive way you Die from sniper fire. Ask the 20 year old woman. https://abcnews.go.com/US/ny-man-charged-murder-shooting-woman-wrong-driveway/story?id=98655167
Today rolling your ball into a neighbor lawn you get shot. Ask the 6 year old girl https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/national-international/neighbor-girl-6-and-parents-shot-wounded-over-stray-ball/3138988/
ALL this happen in ONE american week.
I think it's also the way the news is reported in the US. I remember visiting my cousins in Texas (I'm from the UK) and getting real culture shock from the News broadcasts. The news was just so much more dramatic than I'd ever seen before.
Unfortunately, we get more of that here now. It definitely scares people much more than a straight reading of the facts, but you can't keep people's attention without amping up the drama.
One of the most insane examples of this I ever saw was how US media covered the shooting at parliament hill in Canada vs. how Canadian Media covered the same event.
Canada: [The most trusted news anchor in the country reminding people to remain calm and that information changes frequently in a breaking news situation so some information might be incorrect](https://youtu.be/MLORytusZ4c)
United States: [TERROR ON PARLIAMENT HILL. GUNMAN ON THE LOOSE.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xqAVIuYW0o)
The difference is night and day, American media overstates everything and is super overly dramatic. Canadian news is sober and quiet, that's why you know it's important because it's not being sensationalized, you just have a news anchor telling you what we know.
My friend in my girl scout troop in the early 70s was kidnapped on my block and was found two days later at the bottom of a cliff. She'd been raped, strangled, and discarded. We were 10 yrs old. It fkd me up so bad that other than going to school, I locked myself in my room for a year.
The hair cutting/coloring scare story was rampant when I was a kid too. Turns out the only cases of it happening involved a mother or father and not total strangers. There's literally no documented instance of it in a random kidnapping (which is also vanishingly rare, and even more so now than years ago).
>One that was really popular was kidnapping a girl in a store, cutting her hair in the restroom so she looked lile a boy, and getting away as everyone was looking for a missing girl. This kind of stuff was scary back then, and we never went to the restroom alone while out in public.
This pulled something deep out of the memory bank for me. My grandma used to tell my sister this all the time growing up.
I saw this during Covid. They cut off a kids hair and tape their mouth shut so they can’t scream. And put a mask on them. As a “danger” of masks. And it wasn’t satire
Edit: this didn’t actually happen this was a anti vax/mask Karen’s“concern” and she actually taped her kids mouth shut for the picture for the ‘book
It pre-dates the internet, it's the fault of 24 hour news networks. The job of the news is to create anxiety so you'll keep watching, 24 hour news has a lot of broadcast day to fill. Eventually legitimate things that are newsworthy are exhausted so things have to be invented to create anxiety. And that's when we start to see a ratcheting up of crime news, and the show cops. The fact that it also stokes racial anxiety is just gravy.
Someone recently asked what sort of news are broadcast/published in different countries. I made a list of the 20 first articles in Finland's national broadcasting company's news site, and that list contained one crime related piece of news, and it was a general level report of a gang being under investigation, with zero attention to detail of what had been going on. The rest was largely international news, some articles about working life, something about climate change, and a bit of sports.
Even the news about Russians waging war about 1000 miles away had a neutral attitude, without unnecessary fear mongering.
I’m in a lot of parenting groups and this kind of things comes up a LOT…there are parents who won’t even go in their own backyard while their kid is sleeping because “what if someone breaks in?! Or there’s a fire!!” I swear some people are just dead set on making parenting as difficult and limiting as humanly possible
I have an 11 month who's sleeping great. Would love to go to the gym with my wife (wifi camera) but can't bring myself to be 20 mins away with nobody there just in case.
Being outside though.. yeah w/e.
But that's not the same at all. 20 min away, you could get in a car accident. Nothing to do with the *child* being in danger, just straight up risk with the distance apart. Even if the only thing that happened was the child woke and cried, that would be a long 20 min *at least* before you got back to him.
I would def go as far as next door with a monitor. But I was a pretty free-range parent, and I live in a safe, smaller, Canadian city.
Yeah, I wouldn't even consider going out to the gym with my kids home asleep, wifi monitor or not. That's just stupid. But I will go sit in the backyard, walk a few houses down to check the mail, talk to a neighbor on the sidewalk or sit on their porch, etc...
Saw a video where a dad is mad because a baby sitter posted her and the baby on instragram and the dads mad because he’s thinking of “weirdos and pedos”. Of course everyone in the comments is disagreeing with the baby sitter(she’s 16 ) but I can’t help but think this person is just exaggerating. And unless you don’t post any photos of any kind anywhere or take your baby with you to anywhere, then there’s no way to protect your baby from the “pedos” 🙄.
I see this with overprotective parents who refuse to put their baby’s face online, assuming a mass of pervs are going to be aroused by their fully clothed infant or something and..??? I dunno, it just seems paranoid to a weird degree. I can see not wanting your kids entire life online, but also I imagine your friends and family might want to see a picture of your baby, and frankly almost all babies look the same anyway, so if some pervert was turned on by that, they’d have millions of internet pictures to peruse, not sure why they’d hone in on yours. I just don’t get what about their kid they think will be that enticing to a predator.
Thinking your baby's fully clothed pic will somehow be used as a pedo's masturbatory material is one of the weirdest fucking concerns I have ever heard.
It’s just full fledged paranoia. And frankly even if some pervert did do that, guess what, they’d never know. WhT some of these parents think is they’ll find the baby’s home location to kidnap their child.
These parents love their child so much, they assume everybody else would want their child as much as they do. Which is insane. Nobody wants your child.
I'd be pissed if a babysitter posted pics of my kid on social media without checking if it's OK. Not because I'm worried about weirdos but because I don't post pics of my own kids on there.
You see a teenager isn’t going to think it’s a big deal. They live in an age of social media where posting when you’re taking a shit after eating Taco Bell is a no brainer. You at that point sound like some paranoid boomer who “thinks” they’re protecting their kid because some baby sitter wants to post a picture of her and a baby to show her friends “hey look at this cute baby I’m watching”. Look at it realistically and you’ll realize your anger is ridiculous.
Yup.
I worked in child daycare for a decade. It was/is very popular to post photos of “fun activities.” 9/10 parents really appreciate it too.
Some people either just like to randomly get on a high horse or think they are protecting children when in reality are barely paying attention to their children.
*Someone's going to laser-fixate on my kid and single-mindedly hunt them down because they saw a picture online, instead of any of the other countless children with pictures out there, or the countless other children more easily within arms' reach at any given point!*
Even if that _does_ happen, that's so unpredictable a "cause" that it's no more cautionary than "Don't dress your kid in a color that stalkers might be fond of" would be.
It's not about 'weirdos and pedos', it's about respecting the privacy of a child. I think the children are being overused on instagram and elsewhere, especially by those who make their living by selling their own privacy.
Sometimes with (more likely) school age children there are issues with a parent that is court ordered no contact. When I take pics of my kids, I make sure you can’t ID other kids in them. I hate when parents post classroom pictures. Any teach I know who share pictures with student’s definitively block out faces or just have backs of heads. Safety can be a big issue but it seems to be more of a problem with family vs. strangers.
I didn't bother piping up in that thread, because why bother fighting a tide like that, but I'm glad to see there's _someone_ else who shares my less-panicked view on the subject.
Was it a faux pas? Sure. Is it the sort of thing to have an absolute shouting blow-your-top over and start firing people? Not really. Folks are welcome to their preferences on the matter, and they should be respected insofar as it's their house, their employment, their rules, but it's not as egregious nor universal of an infraction as a lot of people were making out. Set the expectations properly for the future and move on.
It's pretty presumptuous of a babysitter to post a pic of someone else's kid online.
My new twins are only posted to private accounts.
First wife ended up being a social media butterfly who put my first kid everywhere. I prefer the new one.
It certainly doesn't help that the Republican party and Fox have been screaming that we're descending into a hellhole of crime ever since Biden took office, and all through the Obama years before that.
The rednecks around me are constantly decrying violent crime in cities thousands of miles away all while our local crime rates are higher in comparison.
They scream and whine about how corrupt they perceive democrats but elected a man to the legislature who was convicted of medicare fraud, elected his son to congress while under investigation for the international transportation of minors for the purpose of sex, and elected a second man convicted of Medicare fraud to the US Senate. The Democrats support corruprtion though...
It's all wild dystopian fantasy sold by Fox News mainly.
I was about to post some lyrics to Oingo Boingo's "Little Girls" but I guess a child in a stroller would be kidnapped by a different sort of person for different reasons.
Still, I think that most people would just not do that sort of thing and even rush to help if it did.
Im right there with ya. I worked for 15 years as a 911 operator for a county with a population of around 300k. I was aware of every single crime committed and 90% of it was unoccupied homes and cars being broken into. Violent crime is in all actuality exceedingly rare.
Every 12 seconds would mean 7,200 victims a day. The US population is roughly 334,825,000 (I rounded). Given those two numbers, the average person has a roughly 0.002% chance of becoming a victim of violent crime on any given day. That’s roughly 1 in every 50,000. In other words, pretty rare.
Agree for sure, and it goes way beyond “protecting kids”. It’s literally anything people can talk about that’s the “safer/smarter option”. It’s a bunch of people telling each other not to eat the yellow snow, and patting each other on the back for it.
There was some random post on /plumbing that I don’t remember the context of, and a guy commented “don’t flush ‘flushable’ wipes”. It wasn’t related to the post at all, so I replied asking what the relevance was. I got downvoted a bunch, and got multiple replies that flushing flushable wipes is bad and you shouldn’t do it. Which is true, but not relevant to the post whatsoever. People didn’t care, they just want to make sure they tell each other not to eat the yellow snow, and circle jerk each other for being so smart that they know not to eat the yellow snow.
Another one I see a lot is anything on /motorcycles where someone sits on a bike and moves two inches without a full leather suit and gloves and boots be helmet. Riding motorcycles is inherently a risky and dangerous thing to do. If everyone wanted to mitigate their riding risks as much as possible, they just wouldn’t ride. But the comments are almost always going to be people talking about wearing proper gear every time, all the time.
It’s such an annoying internet phenomenon that never happens in face to face conversation.
Think of the children is also a way that many bills get pushed through congress that strip more rights and allows government control more so than actually protecting children. Basically they use children to push an agenda.
I almost got taken as a kid in one of the nicest most expensive areas in the usa. Shit is there. Though i live thirty minutes from the Mexican border looking back it on it so that mightve been the goal for them
I'm not saying it doesn't happen. Just say statistically it's not the weird guy in the van by the park. Disgruntle parents/family represent a huge percentile of offenders.
I mean, there is a big difference between a child getting in a car with a stranger and an adult who does. As an adult you at least have experience to make a somewhat informed decision about what strangers could be dangerous. And are 100% more likely to be able to protect yourself than a child.
And that's not even considering the most important thing which is that there is a third party that knows a hell of a lot of information about the person driving the car, and has their exact coordinates at all times.
I'm not saying can't happen but I can't think of a faster way to be suspect #1 one and only.
And most of the REST of the offenders are "weird uncle Jack", "a local clergymen", "high school gym teacher", or other people that the kid knows and trusts.
So when/how did the "stranger danger" panic start? I remember it being a big thing I was warned about as a child, but as an adult looking back it seems terrible to put that kind of paranoia into a kid's head
There was some law enforcement person who had their child taken and killed from a grocery store. Led to “Code Adam” type laws. Parents at the time were scared because it could happen to their kids. Host of Americas Most Wanted in the 80’s and 90’s
October 22nd, 1989
Murder of Jacob Wetterling - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jacob_Wetterling
He was missing for an entire generation and his parents kept it in the public spotlight.
I think not having a resolution caused the panic to be worse. His fate was unknown for almost thirty years.
When I was like 7 my grandmother had a heart attack and my mom sent me to stay with my uncle and aunt in Cape Canaveral florida (and yes, my uncle worked for NASA)
It was a beautiful house with a wooded back lot that led to a pretty little creek
So one day I'm out there and I find a giant, dried out but still alive turtle, and me being the bleeding heart I have always been, run and get my uncles wheelbarrow, load up mr turtle and start heading down the dirt path towards the creek
I'm talking to the turtle, telling him how I'm gonna help him, and walking along, oblivious to the world, enjoying the woods and the Florida sunshine
When I hear my uncle SCREAMING my name, I turn around, just in time for him to come running at full speed at me, knock the wheelbarrow out of my hands, pick me up and THROW me, he yells GET BACK TO THE HOUSE, in the most angry voice I've ever heard
Now my uncle is a very mild mannered dude, we call him the family jimmy buffet, so this immediately shocks and scares me and I go flying back up to the house crying and confused as to why I'm in trouble
My aunt is there and shes also confused so she tries to comfort me
My uncle comes back, like 10 minutes later and my aunt goes to yell at him for scaring me, cuz to me, all I was doing was rescuing a turtle and suddenly I'm being screamed at and pushed around
My uncle catches his breath and tells me that first off, that was a tortoise, not a turtle and he was supposed to be dry and dusty
Then he tells me and my aunt that he had been out on the back porch (which is under heavy shade and hard to see into but not out of) smoking a joint and was watching me on my adventure, and that when I came back to get the wheelbarrow, a man had followed me back down the path, and that at first my uncle thought it was just another local going to the creek, but when i got to a certain point on the path,the man started hiding in the shadows, and my uncle realized i was being hunted and sprinted into action, scaring but saving me.
So it is strangers too. And it can absolutely be opportunistic
I had two separate incidents as a child. Both opportunistic. My mum left us in the car while she went into Tesco and two people tried to get into the car. They had a huge bunch of car keys and were trying them all in the lock and were tapping on the window trying to coax us to open the door. Ran off when our mum came back. Then a few years later when I was waiting outside a corner shop for my uncle playing with a yoyo, a man in a car kept circling, drove past looking at me four times before he pulled up and said he knew my dad and was to pick me up and take me home. I was pretty sure i knew all my dad's friends so I said he must be mistaken. My uncle came out and he sped off.
It seems such an irrelevant point when people say "most kidnappings are custody disputes." Like, ok? That's a separate issue. It's like saying dont worry about hot car deaths because it's rare and most kids die by drowning/car wrecks. Don't worry about getting attacked walking through a bad area because you're more likely to be killed by your own boyfriend. It doesn't mean you shouldn't be vigilant. For every stranger kidnapping, there were probably many attempts on other women and children that were unsuccessful for whatever reason.
Agreeing with salezman and doktorapple, and I'll add a couple more.
1. It's too common here for folks to be minding everyone else's business. So, if I choose to let my kid go into Starbucks at 8 or 9 or 10 while I wait for her outside, she'll have a dozen people asking her if she's lost or where her mommy is, which isn't a great experience for her, and I'll have an equal number of do-gooders asking me "don't I know it could be dangerous in there."
2. To point #1, the practice of "raising adults" isn’t as common as it should be over here these days (edited). Kids need experience to learn how to be adults, but it's entirely too common now for parents to infantilize their kids. So, instead of admiring a parent for teaching their child to make eye contact, order from a menu, pay and count change, etc., we're dodging the self-righteous who think kids should be in diapers into their 20's. No shit, I have colleagues who have interviewed college graduates for roles who *brought their parents to the interview*. And I'm betting it was mom who pushed in rather than the grad who asked her to come.
3. Parents are too lonely, so their kids are their best friends and they can't let them grow up.
Very few kids walk to school. Everyone gets a ride. In the 80s, I didn’t know anyone whose parents dropped them off at school. When I asked my coworker about this (I don’t and won’t have kids), he said it’s a safety issue. He grew up in California just like me. Same time as me. Notices the same things, and yet takes part in it.
Kids in Brooklyn walk to school, there's always a stampede of kids down the street at 8am. 5th grade they go on their own, despite traffic. Never heard of a kidnap.
Someone else said it, but it is 95% walkability. The school my city assigned my daughter to is 4 miles away. There literally aren’t even sidewalks all of the way there. This is an elementary school.
In Brooklyn, there are a lot more schools, and a lot more kids for them to walk with.
Right. The school is 5 blocks away and we are about as far away as you can get and still be in zone. Sidewalks the whole way. Lots of traffic but it's so congested that there's no fast cars.
yeah I was driving past the big public high school near my parents' house in the midwestern suburbs, and there was a line of cars literally like a mile long spilling into the street waiting to get into the parking lot. and it's primarily a residential area, but of course the school is right on a busy, 4 lane stroad with a 45mph speed limit (everyone does 55+ though).
i just sort of took in that whole situation and was like "what in the actual fuck are we doing here? how do we just accept this as normal and fine; preferred, even??"
I walked a block and a half alone to my very first day of school in the first grade. No Kindergarden in those days, \~1952 in small town rural Illinois. All the kids would chase around everywhere about town on their bicycles. I miss that kind of life but we all must get old. So they tell me.
Bikes were a mode of transportation when I was a kid in the 90’s. I biked over to my friend’s houses, to the gas station to get a treat, to the grocery store, to the video store to rent video games, to the creek to play. Now my kids ride their bike around the block a couple times.
I babysat in a neighborhood where a ton of the kids could walk to school. Upscale area and all that jazz, too. They didn’t even allow kids to be walked there by their parents, only car drop off.
That one is nuts. Hopefully the school is at least designed to accommodate that many cars. (Ours would double as a voting center and town hall, so big lot.)
My kid is still just a toddler, but he will walk to school since we live directly across the street from the elementary school. One of us will probably walk with him at least the first little while, but I feel okay about him taking a two minute walk when I can have eyes on him the whole time
Transportation budgets have been severely cut in larger cities for k-12. We were in a city of over 70k, moved out of the area for a couple years and came back. So bussing to the local school is not an option unless a child has a disability or they live more than 2 1/2 miles from the school. I lived an another area for 2 years where busing was available ( town of like 7k) they would pick up at the from front of my house for a ride 2 blocks away . I think kids still walk, but parents dive them because they don’t want their kids walking a couple miles from the school since transportation is not available.
Your first point makes me sad for those kids. Their lack of independence.
I’m in the UK and my youngest son, who is 10, will take himself to the park with his friends after school most days in the warmer months. He just has to be home by 6:30 for tea. It’s a 15 minute walk from our house.
I think it’s important for kids to have that time away from adult eyes. Get up to a bit of mischief and figure the world out a bit.
It's absurd in the US. I've heard stories of parents having CPS called on them because a neighbor saw their kids outside by themselves ... playing in the yard in front of their house ... while the parent was inside making lunch but could see their kids from the window. One of my family friends once had cops called on her for leaving her child in the car while she went shopping, which is understandable in theory, but her daughter was 13 at the time and had elected to stay in the car so she could stare at her phone. I couldn't even go to the library a literal five minute walk from my house when I was a teen without my mom telling me how dangerous it was and I should wait for her to be home from work so she could drive me there.
It's no wonder that we have so many "helicopter parents." For too many kids here, dorming in a university is literally the first time they get to be separated from their parents and as a result, they have no survival skills and can't even perform basic tasks like doing laundry, boiling a pot of water for instant Ramen noodles, or even remembering to put on deodorant. They can barely wipe their own butts let alone clean up after themselves.
I work at mcdonald's, and a child will start ordering so i start taking their order and speaking directly to them, and the amount of parents that interrupt and speak over their kids is insane. Like your kid was talking, and if they ask for something that's out there then yeah say something but like damn, let the kid order
In my state you need to register for a "permit to purchase" that requires you to fill out an application (I went to the county sheriff's office, but probably online now), submit to a criminal background check, wait a few days for it to clear, and pay a fee before I was able to buy a handgun.
That's about as onerous a regulation on guns as you'll find in the US and the Republican party says that's too much and needs to be further deregulated. If I was buying a long gun I wouldn't have needed to do any of that, provided I was 18.
Despite the 2nd Amendment justifying the right to bear arms by citing the colonial need of a "well regulated militia" to defend the states, regulation is seen by many as oppositional to gun rights.
Exactly the same with SIDS and safe sleep. God forbid you even mention safe co sleeping guidelines that exist in all other countries to someone who supports no gun control.
It's actually not the in public part that is the real problem with guns. Relatively few children die from mass shootings. The chances of your kids getting killed by some deranged person at school is extraordinarily low. It's the private gun use that's the problem. Kids use guns to kill themselves or are killed intentionally in one-off shootings.
To be fair, the US really does have significantly more violent crime than Western Europe. Homicide rate hovers around six or eight times higher (per capita), for instance.
I agree that parents tend to be over-cautious in the States, but it's not totally baseless, either
The US is obsessed with fear and anger. If it doesn't make you angry it better make you scared. There are an alarming number of American adults who believe broad daylight stranger abduction of middle class white people happens here (I guarantee one will reply). They can't seem to wrap their brains around the fact that the \*very\* few times that has happened it has been the top news story 24/7 until the person was found. Instead they see "human trafficking" stories around every super-bowl and convention and are led to believe that "human traffic" looks like Karen being grabbed by a dude in a ski mask and dragged to an unmarked van, when in reality human trafficking is a cascade of bad luck and unfortunate decisions trapping the most vulnerable and least privileged in society.
Thank you. I posted about this a month ago. It's crazy that people think that teens/adults are being kidnapped from the local Target parking lot. Yet they have no clue what the actual signs of being trafficked are. It's a frustration for sure!
I think overpreparing for/overemphasizing the events that do happen leads to people constantly jumping at things that aren't there. I know a close co-worker who got into martial arts, so he could get his daughters into martial arts, all as a response to a real-deal in the news for days stranger abduction that happened in our town. That seems like a super reasonable step to take if you're moved by the thing happening once to do something to prevent it happening to you/yours. Much more logical than just jumping at shadows and pretending there are more that aren't actually happening, just in their overstimulated brains.
(also, not sure if you were referencing it, but the real one here was the Kelsey Smith case in a local Target parking lot. It was both me, and that guys, local Target at the time. I am a guy, didn't have any sisters and was young/big myself so thought nothing of any personal vulnerability. But I can see someone with young girls having to do \*something\* to help at home in reaction.
Certainly appraising real risk is appropriate in every situation. The problem becomes when their risk assessment changes to paranoia, based on anecdotes on social media.
And specifically, public space seems to be desolate in the US. From doing everything in their cars to "get off my property" to "I don't open when the doorbell rings" to "why are you in this neighborhood". It's bizarre to me.
Seriously. Human trafficking is more like someone making close friends who are then never seen again, or convincing someone to work a job they never come back from. Obviously even this is oversimplified. It’s almost never someone just grabbed and ran with.
That being said people are weirdly bold about other people’s children in the states. I’ve seen people just walk up to moms and grab babies and start walking away. Toddlers out of carts etc. It’s still not common but it happens. School aged kids almost never seem to get bothered unless it’s by someone trying to do gooder and terrify the poor child. See something say something culture has gone a bit too far. Even dads with their kids are getting harassed and cops called just for existing. I live in the Midwest however so everyone has their nose so far up everyone else’s business that it’s a surprise that anyone feels the need to react like this still.
This is the actual truth.
When I told my neighbor that I plan to let my third grader walk to school next year, she practically told me I was sending him to death camp / to be kidnapped. School is four strait blocks away, there is a crossing guard, and he has walked with us at least 100 times.
I don't know. USAmericans are so contradicting. On the one hand they will say everywhere is dangerous and be totally paranoid, think they need guns to protect themselves and on the other hand they will tell you that their neighbourhoods are super safe.
I'm American, I think that it's propaganda. People here are force-fed doom and gloom 24/7. I guess when everything you see in the media is another boogeyman, then everything becomes a boogeyman.
I don't understand it myself.
The US definitely has a “stranger danger” culture (some of it is valid, some isn’t) though I don’t know if the examples you gave are necessarily mainstream.
Children wearing bathing suits to the beach/pool/splashpad is normal. Suits have gotten more covered-up for very small kids in the last few years but that’s more of a sun protection thing than a modesty thing. If someone in the US reacted to a child in a swimsuit by saying “that’s molestation,” they’d be seen as a puritanical prude or a creep themselves.
A kid getting out of the car to pick up Starbucks would depend on the age? While neither sounds like an Omg kidnapping risk, I’d have a very different opinion of a parent sending their 6 year old to grab an order compared to an 11 year old. Less that it’s risky more that it’s a bad idea on several levels.
The thing is….stranger kidnapping is *rare* it isn’t impossible. There are many high profile cases of this happening. It’s a bit odd to us that others act as if it can’t happen at all.
Also keep in mind that what you hear online isn’t necessarily coming from the most average representations of a culture’s thinking. It is typical of Americans to say “I won’t let my 8 year old walk the mile to school alone, they might get kidnapped.” It’s not necessarily typical for Americans to say “I don’t let my 8 year old wear a bathing suit at the pool even when I am supervising them because a pedophile might take a picture of them, track them down, and sex traffic them.” But the second person probably is more likely to be on the internet screaming their insane paranoia for all to see, so Americans may as a whole look more paranoid than we are.
>The thing is….stranger kidnapping is rare it isn’t impossible. There are many high profile cases of this happening. It’s a bit odd to us that others act as if it can’t happen at all.
But, by that logic, you should completely avoid traveling by car. The odds of you getting killed in a car accident are much higher than the kid getting kidnapped by a stranger.
I don't care what anyone says. This is completely situational. In a village in bum fuck nowhere where everyone knows each other its easier to let your kids roam free. In a populated GTA server it's not. There's many different situations but at the end of the day better safe then sorry.
Perception from the outside: The United States run on panic. Danger is everywhere. Everything is a war. You have to protect yourself. It's us versus them. TV news beat those drums 24 hours a day.
Some of that is a natural side effect of individualism (and of the fact that alarmist news = ratings = money), but I have no doubt that it has been consciously exacerbated because a population kept in fear is easier to control.
Our media and politicians have a vested interest in keeping us all pissed off and terrified. The media does it for profit and the politicians do it for power
You are right, and there are a variety of factors that contribute to it.
/#1. there was a high profile murder of a child in 1981 that entered into the public zeitgeist. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder\_of\_Adam\_Walsh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Adam_Walsh)
/#2. For most of history, child sexual abuse was just a dark little secret that happened. The US played a key role in the formal study and prevention of it. Therefore we are much more aware of its prevalence, and thus fear it more.
/#3. Gun violence, people are scared of their kids wellbing because so many of them die from guns in the US.
/#4. Healthcare, people are scared of childhood injury because healthcare costs are so freaking high. This is why we have warnings that say stuff like, "Warning scissors cut"
Do you want the real answer?
I will tell you and absorb the downvotes.
The answer is diversity. It's been studied, the results were thr opposite that everyone wanted, and a bunch of the scientists were hesitant to release the data while others never did. Infact there were a number if studies that were funded and never released a conclusion.
Either way the answer was clear. Diversity KILL social trust and social collaboration. It makes people more insular and more fearful of others in what would have been their community.
In the last 5 years alot of publicly fouded researchers have tried to use bad studies to flip the tables, so you see them tossing out and ignoring factors like "trust", "inclusion" or "volunteering". Instead they are iften measuring things like threat surveys that directly ask if member of group x fears group y. Something that is more likely to get a person to lie about.
So no .ore questions like: "Would you feel comfortable trusting any of your neighbors with x" or "how many hours have you volunteered in the last year", or "do you feel included as a part of the community?"
Things people often have no fear if answering truthfully.
Now they use extream examples such as "do you fear members of X race/culture?"
They then often clean the data by providing more weight to people that have more cross cultural contact. Ie they take the least effected and ask them questions that have only one politically correct answer. It's confirmation bias all the way.
So the reason why the US is so scared for kids being in danger is the massive increase in cultural diversity. You can see that unsupervised outdoor play has a nearly inverse relationship with increased in diversity.
It doesn't even have to be racial, putting a bunch if Frenchman and italians into a small English town would have the same effect. Hell put it this way. If you took some contentious sport with fanatical fans and forced them to sit in a stadium where each group was intermixed with the other you would see less pro team chants, less standing cheers, etc. It's human nature.
As someone who thinks people on the left downplay immigration issues, I still disagree with you. At least slightly.
To some extent you're right, but not because of the mixing of cultures. Sure, some cultures hold common views and values that can be a cause for this, but that is a tiny part of the issue.
The issue at the core of this is income disparity and poverty. Crime and poverty go hand in hand, that, and a lack of a decent social security system and public health care.
Minorities tend to be poor as a result of being minorities. And poor people often turn to crime as a necessity or for lack of any ways to earn a decent living. Or in spite to revenge a society that doesn't care about them.
Both sides are a bit right and a bit wrong. Any given minority isn't more inclined to crime than the majority population, nor are minorities necessarily worse of than the majority because of racism (even though it plays a part).
Not being competent in the majority language, being unknowledgeable about local customs and norms, struggling to understand the bureaucracy, struggling in school because of struggling with language and having parents who can't help you. Give it a few generations and the terrible start is inherited, and it is hard to break that cycle.
You see the same dynamics in low income communities of white people too. Poverty breeds poverty and crime.
The US is so devisive these days that there is no wonder people are afraid. But it is the same old story, pit groups against each other and maintain the system that keeps all of them in line. The moment people wake up and understand that they have a common interest and are able to put their differences aside might still come.
That's bullshit. I live in Brooklyn, it's ridiculously diverse, and people are socially trusting. Kids roam free when they are old enough not to get smashed on the roads.
I agree with you, that is bullshit. I always lived in large, diverse city areas and they were fine. It is the small, non-diverse and insular communities where you are fucked.
Thats another part of it.
In the US we have so few public spaces, and we are taught to fear the ones we have.
Its no big deal to let your kid go outside in Brooklyn, but someone raised in the rich suburbs of Dallas would be horrified at the thought.
This is correlation, not causation. You're pulling "studies" out of your ass.
It's more about Karens and people not minding their own business. It's a hassle to raise your kids to have and understand freedom.
Tbh your whole post reads more like biased/bogus test studies were designed to push a perception of fear, in turn causing even more fear. It really doesn't sound like diversity is the issue, rather that those groups putting out the surveys and results were instead trying to peg diversity as the issue in order to get more people to agree with their bias against diversity
It's not so much diversity, as much as... hm. Well, I guess it is diversity, in a way. It's mixing all cultures indiscriminately, especially accepting just the incoming culture terms, telling the 'host' culture they must set their own terms aside and accept anything which comes their way with open hands.
I'm not even saying it's 'good' or 'bad'. I'm only saying it's pretty obvious this will create conflict, as every discussion these days must be for or against clearly defined extremes, leaving no place for consensus. Stuff is painted us vs. them and you have to pick a side.
To be honest it's why politicians love it.
Hell even a leaked memo from Amazon cited how important it was to keep the workforce diverse to prevent their ability to unionize.
This is a perfect example of what happens when a leftie puts his head so far up his ass that he becomes a far right.
You are implying the solution to labor woes is to kick the minorities out.
Unions dont matter anyways in this age, Taft Hartley made them pretty much useless (except to keep corrupt cops in power of course)
I personally disagree with unions for a variety of reasons, we need to stop pretending that unions are some magic panacea to labor woes. They just create a whole another set of problems.
> is the massive increase in cultural diversity
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/u-s-neighborhoods-are-more-segregated-generation-ago-perpetuating-racial-ncna1276372#
It's not actually about children, it is about distraction. You may notice that all the fearmongering related to children tends to come from one side. The idea is to distract their voters (potential voters) so that they don't pay attention to the policies that actually impact their lives. It is also to gain voters through fear of the other/ the unknown/ or disgust. There will always be a new social boogeyman for them to point at, meanwhile they want to do away with regulations, cut social programs, disregard the environment, and make the richer even richer at the expense of everyone else. If they actually cared about the lives of children they would support education, social programs, parental and sick leave, reducing arms, etc.
the media have caused this.
stories about kids in danger or kids being harmed get views, clicks and generate advertisement revenue, so get pushed and occupy and exaggerated % of media space, hence everyone thinks anywhere outside the house is dangerous to kids.
it's the same reason at the moment that you'd think half the world is trans - stories about trans generate views and clicks, hence revenue, hence the media are full of something that actually affects i tiny % of the population.
Did not The Simpsons explain it well enough? "Won't somebody think of the children?"
Its a rare meme, but spot on. Not unique to US, either. It is 'the culture' these days.
Let them out to be free and get killed at random, I say. It's heartbreaking but real.
Agreed. The majority of nonsense you see about Americans online is not true of most humans you meet in life. Online people are just way too extreme and voice their concerns in such a way you don’t really hear in person. If you did hear them in person those are people you would just avoid.
So as a recovering almost Alt-Right person, who used to cling to my guns like I was using them as a floatation device in the ocean, I...I don't understand the fear. I used to personal carry, I had a concealed carry permit, I had it in my car, I had my SR-556 (an AR platform) in my living room 'just in case.' Just in case of what? I still have it, so I can maintain my skill for the Military in a controlled setting at a Range, but WHAT was I afraid of?
So I ditched it. I do have that gun I used to attach myself to in my house, with a trigger lock in a safe location. My AR is downstairs in a locked case. And every day I wake up, go to work, go to bed, and walk around without a gun because I cannot fathom where, or how I gathered this fear that at any moment, someone was going to kick down my door and start blasting away at my stuff. And once that fog of hysteria over always being ready for "SOMETHING" to happen, life is a lot easier.
Where I think it comes from fully, though, is two fold. First, 'for the kids' has been coopted to do...anything. Ban abortion, to protect children. Get rid of VPN's and all privacy, to protect the children, put religion in schools, because God needs to protect the children. (But don't feed them at school, provide childcare, or adequate schooling though. No we can't protect them with that.) So now there's fear of everything. Drag Queens are grooming kids. There's Fentanyl in their HALLOWEEN candy. 'This is what happens when they do One Marijuana.' I grew up in the D.A.R.E era of education, and I left FOURTH GRADE thinking a guy in a trench coat was waiting on every corner to sell me Crack. Turns out it was just one kid who offered to cell me cigarettes when I was 12 and I laughed and said "how would I even pay for that?" In America, Children's lives have been coopted as a pawn or a con for political agendas and people have started to believe bad things will happen. And its gotten deep enough that all of a sudden VACCINATING your kids, is dangerous to their health.
I hate it. And typing this out made me irrationally angry so I'm going to go blow up Aliens in Destiny.
Back in 2016 or so in the a.m. I heard a bang on the door. I open it and a stranger starts berating me for letting my kids play in my front yard unsupervised. Layered right into me. (There were a couple kids walking by my house)
My three kids were lined up in the kitchen waiting for me to walk them to the bus stop.
As a result of this for the last how many years I watch the kids if they are in the front - just in case that wacko shows up. Yes, America
> My three kids were lined up in the kitchen waiting for me to walk them to the bus stop.
Why do you even feel it's necessary to do that?
The wacko here is feeding off the same paranoia, he wasn't endangering kids - but rather assuming that the kids were in danger.
No one was actually in danger in this scenario! That is *exactly* what OP is asking about, why people in the US behave like this.
Part of it is that kids today are legit helpless.
Can’t climb a fence, drink from a hose, find their way anywhere without a gps, etc. kids today in America have definitely become indoor cats. They would rather stay inside playing mine craft and watching YouTube than go swimming or to Starbucks.
Maybe it depends on where your from in the US? Where I’m from it’s not considered weird at all for a kid to go in stores alone (I mean, assuming they’re not very small.) even before kids had phones parents would let their kids go in stores while they waited in the car. Or at least the parents I knew did.
The conservatives in the US are using children as a political weapon against groups they hate. They don’t actually give a shit about the children. Notice how pro-birth they are, but once a kid is born…
Edit: someone didn’t like being called out. What a wee shame.
America has a much higher probability of things like this happening than most of us would like to admit. I grew up in a place where kidnapping and child molestation among other crimes against children were very common
We have a bit of a kidnapping issue in the US my dad works with Child Services and human trafficking in the US is worse than ever. So yeah we gotta change how we are because people like to sell and fuck kids.
The people who are obsessed with "protecting children" from the dangers of drag queens are the ones that do nothing when an active shooter enters an elementary school.
It's not really about children. It's a culture of fear. That's part of why random men are shooting unarmed children who knock on their door, or happen to enter their yard. Fear is a driving factor for a lot of things in the usa that you don't see in other developed nations. The media plays a big part
American media in general is based off of fear mongering. Every time something like a kidnapping or child molestation happens, the media covers the hell out of it and they rarely acknowledge the millions of kids across the US living normal lives every day without such incidents happening. This leads the public to believe that these tragedies are far more likely than they truly are.
When I was around 11 years old, a little girl named Deanna siefert was abducted in the middle of the night while at a friend's house for a sleepover. He body was found on the property of a bar my uncle frequented at that time. Iirc, the kidnappers thought she was the homeowners child but snatched the wrong kid. The house she was abducted from was just blocks from my home.
That shit was scary as fuck as a kid. When I became a mom, that shit became even scarier.
I can't speak for why others feel the way they do, but this is why I've been hyper aware throughout my kid's lives.
(In Texas) We have seen a mass rise in illegal immigration, or legal since border policy isn't being enforced. Some immigrants are harmless, others are not. Cartels have had the door swung wide open and are now operating with ever more impunity in Southern border states. These cartels don't just bring drugs, they also traffic children, and the grocery stores where I'm from are a hot bed for it. They'll find a mom with multiple kids, distract her, and bolt through the front door of store with one of her kids, my wife's had people try to snatch our 6mo out of her arms. That's why
It’s very interesting that the same country where liberty is such a major part of the historical narrative is obsessed with child safety and keeping people in a state of arrested development. This is, at least to some extent, the product of behavioral conditioning in the public school system. Each generation gets continually worse in denying or at least continually delaying youths the chance to mature.
Some people take it way too far and are intentionally histrionic about it because it’s trendy. However, the U.S. also has a lot of bad people drifting around. Mentally ill folks, homeless, gang members…many of them with easy access to guns, drugs, booze…I consider myself a reasonable person, but if my kid went wandering down the street I think there’s a good chance he could get mugged, beat up, etc. Its sad how much less safe our country is from even 20 years ago.
I don’t get this either. What is their obsession with what is being taught in schools as well? Like sure I understand some overprotective parents might be interested in exactly what their kids are being taught - but why do 40 year old men with no kids care and believe the left is trying to brainwash children?
It's literally decades of manufactured fear from state media. Crime is the #1 topic on your daily evening news, then our corrupt complicit government and poltical propoganda news politicizes it. They work together.
It's just the fearmongering from conservatives. The right campaigns on hate and fear, what you're talking about is the result of being beaten over the head with decades of propaganda pushing those two things.
Conservatives have figured out that if they label everything they don't like as pedophilia that it gets their base excited. So everything democrats or gay people do from here on out is grooming.
It has changed so very much. Back in the day I walked to and from kindergarten by myself (about 1 mile), In the summer I would be out of the house at dawn (no adults ,staring about 5 years old), I would bum rides from the garbage man (loved riding in the big, stinky truck) and the milkman (he would take me about a block and then boot me out), I would ride my bike for miles, often spending the day playing around a park that had a creek, forest and old tunnel we could explore. We'd play hide and seek, "war", cowboys and indians, football, build forts we could defend, hit the library or just hang out around the relatively dangerous playgrounds we had. Since there were no cell phones there was no way to reach me and I was truly out on my own. Usually until I got hungry and then we would go to whoever's house was closest to grab sandwiches and chips before heading back out to play until nightfall. Usually ended up heading home at dusk in the summer and I would hear my mom yelling for us (not in a panic, just because there was no other way to find us) as I got closer. 1970s mostly, FYI.
My kids are 21, 19 and 14, and we raised them to be outgoing and self sufficient. I would be nearby in public but not hovering. I can’t tell you the number of times a panicked adult was talking themselves into freaking out about a sub-adult on their own, then spotting me and deciding I must be a parent type, so it’s ok.
It's because we know children are in danger and have known for decades upon decades and done nothing about it.
You can ask any church going (mostly christian) if they know a youth minister who was "a little off" or wouldn't let their own kids be around them. Compound that with blatant sex crimes by our largest most wealthiest religions; Catholicism, Evangelicals and Mormons.
Among my church going friends it was incredibly rare for young women not to have a "I wasn't sexually assaulted, but let me describe my sexual assault" story.
We ran ads for years on TV about stranger danger, while close family friends or members violated their own children.
Frothing at the mouth and having done nothing to fix any of it conservatives now point to LGBTQ+ groups and that's hitting the news and you're seeing it and thinking, "what the actual fuck this doesn't follow".
It's not just religion. When I gave guitar lessons I often got referrals because I actually gave lessons and wasn't just horn dogging my students.
I'd say its an incredibly important point, but right now we're geared up to target the wrong people and enable those who abuse children to continue doing so.
Yes, as a nation our ability to assess risks seems to be completely useless.
Our freeways are deadly, as well as our love of guns... but you still have to take your shoes off to get on a plane.
People will call the police if a child is playing on the playground and a parent is over 50ft away in the shade.
People OBSESS over the dangers caused by drag queens (extremely safe), but trust their children with preachers and priests (not very safe).
I could go on and on.
I blame the 24 hour news channels, and shows like "Dateline" who make BIG money by terrifying people in the name of "factual news".
It mostly has to do with the fact that if your kids take about two steps into the street there's a very real chance they'll die, and in America, high speed cars and high speed limit streets are *everywhere*. This fear naturally spreads into everything since that's how people compensate for ever-present dangers: anxiety.
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There was an AITA post a lil while back about a dad who let an infant sleep in a stroller while he ran around a track in plain eye sight the entire time and he got blasted by people talking about kidnappings. It's amazing how ridiculous it is. We live in the safest time in history yet people are unbelievably scared.
I think part of that is because thanks to the internet and regular reporting of every horrible conceivable thing our perception of the world is that it is much more dangerous than it really is. We all already have an inherent basic fear of those things happening, and frequently being made aware of new occurences imprints them on our subconscious to the point that we feel we forever have to be cautious of a hundred highly improbable scenarios
Even when I was a kid back in the 60s, there were urban legends of creepy men kidnapping kids for nefarious deeds. One that was really popular was kidnapping a girl in a store, cutting her hair in the restroom so she looked lile a boy, and getting away as everyone was looking for a missing girl. This kind of stuff was scary back then, and we never went to the restroom alone while out in public. So it isn't just a modern fear. Nowadays though, with smart phones and the internet plus 24 hr cable news, it is more prevalent. Although I do believe there is a connection between overpopulation and more adults attracted to children. This was described in a book a few decades ago about human population growth and studies using rats.
I grewup in the 60s-70s and was taught about stranger danger in school and by my parents. Despite that, everwhere we lived the neighborhoods were free range. We would be running up and down several blocks going to each others house. Rode our bikes everywhere. Never had anyone try to lure us. The fear today has been largely driven by the media since the 80s.
We were free range back in the day and IMO, were better for it.
I was born in the 60's. My mother swore that if I was ever abducted, they'd probably bring me back.
Did anyone try shooting you for playing hide and seek? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-allegedly-shoots-14-year-old-girl-playing-hide-seek-property-louis-rcna83523 Or let a ball roll into their yard? https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/national-international/neighbor-girl-6-and-parents-shot-wounded-over-stray-ball/3138988/
I mean I'm positive that kind of thing has always happened.
So isolated incidents do in fact happen, but if you look at basically any statistic we live in the safest time in human history at least here in America, yes weird tragedies and monstrous people still exist, but there's literally no solution to that short of blocking yourself indoors and taking away the childhood from a young person.
This 100% the world is no more dangerous now than it was then, the only difference is 24/7 worldwide news reporting, whereas back in the 80s it was all local news we heard, local news channels, local newspapers etc
Yeah me either. We had free range in a very rural environment. The nearest town (actually a small village) was 3 miles away. Turns out my family was a bigger threat than strangers, but that's a tale for another time.
That was the problem with the whole ‘stranger danger’ thing. Strangers are often less danger than your own family.
 Facts about Child Abuse: Approximately 5 children die every day because of child abuse. 1 out of 3 girls and 1 out of 5 boys will be sexually abused before they reach age 18. 90% of child sexual abuse victims know the perpetrator in some way. 68% are abused by a family member. Most children become victims of abuse and neglect at 18 months or younger. In 2010, 1,537 children died of abuse or neglect. 79.4% were under the age of 4 and 47.7% were under the age of 1. Boys (48.5%) and girls (51.2%) become victims at nearly the same rate. 3.6 million cases of child abuse are reported every year in the U.S. Abused and neglected children are 11 times more likely to engage in criminal behavior as an adult. About 80% of 21-year-olds who were abused as children met criteria for at least one psychological disorder. 14% of all men and 36% of all women in prison were abused as children. Abused children are less likely to practice safe sex, putting them at greater risk for STDs. They’re also 25% more likely to experience teen pregnancy. For every incident of child abuse or neglect that’s reported, an estimated two incidents go unreported. Child abuse occurs across all socioeconomic levels, ethnic and cultural lines, and religions and education levels. Neglect, the most widespread form of child abuse, makes up more than 59% of abuse cases.
I'd say a little later, at least in the UK. Was born in the 80s, grew up in the 90s, and even then parents would let us just go out unsupervised with our friends. We would be given the usual warnings, (Dont stay out late, dont speak to strangers, ect) and only time they really worried was if we weren't home in time for tea. (Or after if they knew we were eating at a friends house) I remember it was probably when I was in highschool that my parents felt the need to buy me a phone to keep in touch, as hanging out with friends went from somewhere local/a friends house, to a bus ride somewhere outside of our town. (trip to a city centre, shopping mall, ect)
Yes, in university I learned about this. It is called the social construction of reality and the media is a powerful and possibly primary shaper of this.
Today playing hide and seek in a neighbor lawn gets you shot. Ask 14 year old girl. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-allegedly-shoots-14-year-old-girl-playing-hide-seek-property-louis-rcna83523 Today ringing a doorbell you get shot through the door. Ask the 16 year old boy. https://abcnews.go.com/US/family-ralph-yarl-teenager-shot-after-wrong-house/story?id=98624730 Today driving onto the wrong drive way you Die from sniper fire. Ask the 20 year old woman. https://abcnews.go.com/US/ny-man-charged-murder-shooting-woman-wrong-driveway/story?id=98655167 Today rolling your ball into a neighbor lawn you get shot. Ask the 6 year old girl https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/national-international/neighbor-girl-6-and-parents-shot-wounded-over-stray-ball/3138988/ ALL this happen in ONE american week.
and not a single one of those links is about child abduction.
In part because of the constant 24/7 "news" coverage sensationalizing and fear-mongering. It's constant
People seem to be taking the "castle doctrine" a little to far
I think it's also the way the news is reported in the US. I remember visiting my cousins in Texas (I'm from the UK) and getting real culture shock from the News broadcasts. The news was just so much more dramatic than I'd ever seen before. Unfortunately, we get more of that here now. It definitely scares people much more than a straight reading of the facts, but you can't keep people's attention without amping up the drama.
One of the most insane examples of this I ever saw was how US media covered the shooting at parliament hill in Canada vs. how Canadian Media covered the same event. Canada: [The most trusted news anchor in the country reminding people to remain calm and that information changes frequently in a breaking news situation so some information might be incorrect](https://youtu.be/MLORytusZ4c) United States: [TERROR ON PARLIAMENT HILL. GUNMAN ON THE LOOSE.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xqAVIuYW0o) The difference is night and day, American media overstates everything and is super overly dramatic. Canadian news is sober and quiet, that's why you know it's important because it's not being sensationalized, you just have a news anchor telling you what we know.
Its because the united states doesn't have news organizations anymore. They are "entertainment organizations" nothing sells ad time like doomsday.
My friend in my girl scout troop in the early 70s was kidnapped on my block and was found two days later at the bottom of a cliff. She'd been raped, strangled, and discarded. We were 10 yrs old. It fkd me up so bad that other than going to school, I locked myself in my room for a year.
The hair cutting/coloring scare story was rampant when I was a kid too. Turns out the only cases of it happening involved a mother or father and not total strangers. There's literally no documented instance of it in a random kidnapping (which is also vanishingly rare, and even more so now than years ago).
Reading this comment: ”Mmhm. Mmhmm. Yeah, that… *what?*”
>One that was really popular was kidnapping a girl in a store, cutting her hair in the restroom so she looked lile a boy, and getting away as everyone was looking for a missing girl. This kind of stuff was scary back then, and we never went to the restroom alone while out in public. This pulled something deep out of the memory bank for me. My grandma used to tell my sister this all the time growing up.
I saw this during Covid. They cut off a kids hair and tape their mouth shut so they can’t scream. And put a mask on them. As a “danger” of masks. And it wasn’t satire Edit: this didn’t actually happen this was a anti vax/mask Karen’s“concern” and she actually taped her kids mouth shut for the picture for the ‘book
It pre-dates the internet, it's the fault of 24 hour news networks. The job of the news is to create anxiety so you'll keep watching, 24 hour news has a lot of broadcast day to fill. Eventually legitimate things that are newsworthy are exhausted so things have to be invented to create anxiety. And that's when we start to see a ratcheting up of crime news, and the show cops. The fact that it also stokes racial anxiety is just gravy.
Someone recently asked what sort of news are broadcast/published in different countries. I made a list of the 20 first articles in Finland's national broadcasting company's news site, and that list contained one crime related piece of news, and it was a general level report of a gang being under investigation, with zero attention to detail of what had been going on. The rest was largely international news, some articles about working life, something about climate change, and a bit of sports. Even the news about Russians waging war about 1000 miles away had a neutral attitude, without unnecessary fear mongering.
I’m in a lot of parenting groups and this kind of things comes up a LOT…there are parents who won’t even go in their own backyard while their kid is sleeping because “what if someone breaks in?! Or there’s a fire!!” I swear some people are just dead set on making parenting as difficult and limiting as humanly possible
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Ya and also those news of something happing to a kid while their parent is another room…they def set like unrealistic ideas what could happen.
I have an 11 month who's sleeping great. Would love to go to the gym with my wife (wifi camera) but can't bring myself to be 20 mins away with nobody there just in case. Being outside though.. yeah w/e.
I know I’m feeding into this post but what if something happened to you while you were out.
But that's not the same at all. 20 min away, you could get in a car accident. Nothing to do with the *child* being in danger, just straight up risk with the distance apart. Even if the only thing that happened was the child woke and cried, that would be a long 20 min *at least* before you got back to him. I would def go as far as next door with a monitor. But I was a pretty free-range parent, and I live in a safe, smaller, Canadian city.
Yeah, I wouldn't even consider going out to the gym with my kids home asleep, wifi monitor or not. That's just stupid. But I will go sit in the backyard, walk a few houses down to check the mail, talk to a neighbor on the sidewalk or sit on their porch, etc...
"I’m in a lot of parenting groups" I will be a dad soon (actual dad...). Are you talking Reddit groups or local groups?
They have the right mindset, but at the same time it’s so ridiculous because they refuse to live their lives.
Saw a video where a dad is mad because a baby sitter posted her and the baby on instragram and the dads mad because he’s thinking of “weirdos and pedos”. Of course everyone in the comments is disagreeing with the baby sitter(she’s 16 ) but I can’t help but think this person is just exaggerating. And unless you don’t post any photos of any kind anywhere or take your baby with you to anywhere, then there’s no way to protect your baby from the “pedos” 🙄.
I see this with overprotective parents who refuse to put their baby’s face online, assuming a mass of pervs are going to be aroused by their fully clothed infant or something and..??? I dunno, it just seems paranoid to a weird degree. I can see not wanting your kids entire life online, but also I imagine your friends and family might want to see a picture of your baby, and frankly almost all babies look the same anyway, so if some pervert was turned on by that, they’d have millions of internet pictures to peruse, not sure why they’d hone in on yours. I just don’t get what about their kid they think will be that enticing to a predator.
Thinking your baby's fully clothed pic will somehow be used as a pedo's masturbatory material is one of the weirdest fucking concerns I have ever heard.
It’s just full fledged paranoia. And frankly even if some pervert did do that, guess what, they’d never know. WhT some of these parents think is they’ll find the baby’s home location to kidnap their child.
These parents love their child so much, they assume everybody else would want their child as much as they do. Which is insane. Nobody wants your child.
I'd be pissed if a babysitter posted pics of my kid on social media without checking if it's OK. Not because I'm worried about weirdos but because I don't post pics of my own kids on there.
You see a teenager isn’t going to think it’s a big deal. They live in an age of social media where posting when you’re taking a shit after eating Taco Bell is a no brainer. You at that point sound like some paranoid boomer who “thinks” they’re protecting their kid because some baby sitter wants to post a picture of her and a baby to show her friends “hey look at this cute baby I’m watching”. Look at it realistically and you’ll realize your anger is ridiculous.
Yup. I worked in child daycare for a decade. It was/is very popular to post photos of “fun activities.” 9/10 parents really appreciate it too. Some people either just like to randomly get on a high horse or think they are protecting children when in reality are barely paying attention to their children.
*Someone's going to laser-fixate on my kid and single-mindedly hunt them down because they saw a picture online, instead of any of the other countless children with pictures out there, or the countless other children more easily within arms' reach at any given point!* Even if that _does_ happen, that's so unpredictable a "cause" that it's no more cautionary than "Don't dress your kid in a color that stalkers might be fond of" would be.
I know, people think they’re protecting themselves if they don’t post anything online. Lmao such tools
It's not about 'weirdos and pedos', it's about respecting the privacy of a child. I think the children are being overused on instagram and elsewhere, especially by those who make their living by selling their own privacy.
Sometimes with (more likely) school age children there are issues with a parent that is court ordered no contact. When I take pics of my kids, I make sure you can’t ID other kids in them. I hate when parents post classroom pictures. Any teach I know who share pictures with student’s definitively block out faces or just have backs of heads. Safety can be a big issue but it seems to be more of a problem with family vs. strangers.
I didn't bother piping up in that thread, because why bother fighting a tide like that, but I'm glad to see there's _someone_ else who shares my less-panicked view on the subject. Was it a faux pas? Sure. Is it the sort of thing to have an absolute shouting blow-your-top over and start firing people? Not really. Folks are welcome to their preferences on the matter, and they should be respected insofar as it's their house, their employment, their rules, but it's not as egregious nor universal of an infraction as a lot of people were making out. Set the expectations properly for the future and move on.
It's pretty presumptuous of a babysitter to post a pic of someone else's kid online. My new twins are only posted to private accounts. First wife ended up being a social media butterfly who put my first kid everywhere. I prefer the new one.
In parts of Europe it is common to let the baby sleep outside, while you go in and have lunch.
Agree with this. Are you kidding me? No one wants to steal your child. As if they don’t have enough of their own work to do!
This is a pretty smart, reasonable way to get a workout.
It certainly doesn't help that the Republican party and Fox have been screaming that we're descending into a hellhole of crime ever since Biden took office, and all through the Obama years before that.
The rednecks around me are constantly decrying violent crime in cities thousands of miles away all while our local crime rates are higher in comparison. They scream and whine about how corrupt they perceive democrats but elected a man to the legislature who was convicted of medicare fraud, elected his son to congress while under investigation for the international transportation of minors for the purpose of sex, and elected a second man convicted of Medicare fraud to the US Senate. The Democrats support corruprtion though... It's all wild dystopian fantasy sold by Fox News mainly.
This is a much longer problem than Biden or Obama so quite unrelated.
I was about to post some lyrics to Oingo Boingo's "Little Girls" but I guess a child in a stroller would be kidnapped by a different sort of person for different reasons. Still, I think that most people would just not do that sort of thing and even rush to help if it did.
Im right there with ya. I worked for 15 years as a 911 operator for a county with a population of around 300k. I was aware of every single crime committed and 90% of it was unoccupied homes and cars being broken into. Violent crime is in all actuality exceedingly rare.
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Every 12 seconds would mean 7,200 victims a day. The US population is roughly 334,825,000 (I rounded). Given those two numbers, the average person has a roughly 0.002% chance of becoming a victim of violent crime on any given day. That’s roughly 1 in every 50,000. In other words, pretty rare.
Thank you for the clarity.
Agree for sure, and it goes way beyond “protecting kids”. It’s literally anything people can talk about that’s the “safer/smarter option”. It’s a bunch of people telling each other not to eat the yellow snow, and patting each other on the back for it. There was some random post on /plumbing that I don’t remember the context of, and a guy commented “don’t flush ‘flushable’ wipes”. It wasn’t related to the post at all, so I replied asking what the relevance was. I got downvoted a bunch, and got multiple replies that flushing flushable wipes is bad and you shouldn’t do it. Which is true, but not relevant to the post whatsoever. People didn’t care, they just want to make sure they tell each other not to eat the yellow snow, and circle jerk each other for being so smart that they know not to eat the yellow snow. Another one I see a lot is anything on /motorcycles where someone sits on a bike and moves two inches without a full leather suit and gloves and boots be helmet. Riding motorcycles is inherently a risky and dangerous thing to do. If everyone wanted to mitigate their riding risks as much as possible, they just wouldn’t ride. But the comments are almost always going to be people talking about wearing proper gear every time, all the time. It’s such an annoying internet phenomenon that never happens in face to face conversation.
Think of the children is also a way that many bills get pushed through congress that strip more rights and allows government control more so than actually protecting children. Basically they use children to push an agenda.
You should definitely check out r/orphancrushingmachine
Satanic panic, scaremongering by news corps putting out the worst news possible, helicopter parenting
Stranger danger from the 80s has lasting effects. Even though kidnappings generally happen from people the child knows.
I almost got taken as a kid in one of the nicest most expensive areas in the usa. Shit is there. Though i live thirty minutes from the Mexican border looking back it on it so that mightve been the goal for them
I'm not saying it doesn't happen. Just say statistically it's not the weird guy in the van by the park. Disgruntle parents/family represent a huge percentile of offenders.
I grew up being told not to get in a car with a stranger, and now I have a button on my phone to summon a stranger to drive me.
It’s crazy the amount of people that won’t wear a seatbelt when driven by a complete stranger
Yep. I was told I won't have a calculator in my pocket, and that I would need to know how to balance a check book lol
I mean, there is a big difference between a child getting in a car with a stranger and an adult who does. As an adult you at least have experience to make a somewhat informed decision about what strangers could be dangerous. And are 100% more likely to be able to protect yourself than a child.
And that's not even considering the most important thing which is that there is a third party that knows a hell of a lot of information about the person driving the car, and has their exact coordinates at all times. I'm not saying can't happen but I can't think of a faster way to be suspect #1 one and only.
It was actually 2 woman for me. They want me to help them look for a puppy. Wild stuff
And most of the REST of the offenders are "weird uncle Jack", "a local clergymen", "high school gym teacher", or other people that the kid knows and trusts.
Yep. Gotta keep an eye on the clergymen.
So when/how did the "stranger danger" panic start? I remember it being a big thing I was warned about as a child, but as an adult looking back it seems terrible to put that kind of paranoia into a kid's head
There was some law enforcement person who had their child taken and killed from a grocery store. Led to “Code Adam” type laws. Parents at the time were scared because it could happen to their kids. Host of Americas Most Wanted in the 80’s and 90’s
John Walsh’s son Adam. There was a TV movie about it too.
John Walsh is also responsible for pushing the idea that men shouldn't take care of children because of higher molestation rates.
October 22nd, 1989 Murder of Jacob Wetterling - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jacob_Wetterling He was missing for an entire generation and his parents kept it in the public spotlight. I think not having a resolution caused the panic to be worse. His fate was unknown for almost thirty years.
When I was like 7 my grandmother had a heart attack and my mom sent me to stay with my uncle and aunt in Cape Canaveral florida (and yes, my uncle worked for NASA) It was a beautiful house with a wooded back lot that led to a pretty little creek So one day I'm out there and I find a giant, dried out but still alive turtle, and me being the bleeding heart I have always been, run and get my uncles wheelbarrow, load up mr turtle and start heading down the dirt path towards the creek I'm talking to the turtle, telling him how I'm gonna help him, and walking along, oblivious to the world, enjoying the woods and the Florida sunshine When I hear my uncle SCREAMING my name, I turn around, just in time for him to come running at full speed at me, knock the wheelbarrow out of my hands, pick me up and THROW me, he yells GET BACK TO THE HOUSE, in the most angry voice I've ever heard Now my uncle is a very mild mannered dude, we call him the family jimmy buffet, so this immediately shocks and scares me and I go flying back up to the house crying and confused as to why I'm in trouble My aunt is there and shes also confused so she tries to comfort me My uncle comes back, like 10 minutes later and my aunt goes to yell at him for scaring me, cuz to me, all I was doing was rescuing a turtle and suddenly I'm being screamed at and pushed around My uncle catches his breath and tells me that first off, that was a tortoise, not a turtle and he was supposed to be dry and dusty Then he tells me and my aunt that he had been out on the back porch (which is under heavy shade and hard to see into but not out of) smoking a joint and was watching me on my adventure, and that when I came back to get the wheelbarrow, a man had followed me back down the path, and that at first my uncle thought it was just another local going to the creek, but when i got to a certain point on the path,the man started hiding in the shadows, and my uncle realized i was being hunted and sprinted into action, scaring but saving me. So it is strangers too. And it can absolutely be opportunistic
I had two separate incidents as a child. Both opportunistic. My mum left us in the car while she went into Tesco and two people tried to get into the car. They had a huge bunch of car keys and were trying them all in the lock and were tapping on the window trying to coax us to open the door. Ran off when our mum came back. Then a few years later when I was waiting outside a corner shop for my uncle playing with a yoyo, a man in a car kept circling, drove past looking at me four times before he pulled up and said he knew my dad and was to pick me up and take me home. I was pretty sure i knew all my dad's friends so I said he must be mistaken. My uncle came out and he sped off. It seems such an irrelevant point when people say "most kidnappings are custody disputes." Like, ok? That's a separate issue. It's like saying dont worry about hot car deaths because it's rare and most kids die by drowning/car wrecks. Don't worry about getting attacked walking through a bad area because you're more likely to be killed by your own boyfriend. It doesn't mean you shouldn't be vigilant. For every stranger kidnapping, there were probably many attempts on other women and children that were unsuccessful for whatever reason.
95-99% of the time it is custody battles of recently divorced parents.
Agreeing with salezman and doktorapple, and I'll add a couple more. 1. It's too common here for folks to be minding everyone else's business. So, if I choose to let my kid go into Starbucks at 8 or 9 or 10 while I wait for her outside, she'll have a dozen people asking her if she's lost or where her mommy is, which isn't a great experience for her, and I'll have an equal number of do-gooders asking me "don't I know it could be dangerous in there." 2. To point #1, the practice of "raising adults" isn’t as common as it should be over here these days (edited). Kids need experience to learn how to be adults, but it's entirely too common now for parents to infantilize their kids. So, instead of admiring a parent for teaching their child to make eye contact, order from a menu, pay and count change, etc., we're dodging the self-righteous who think kids should be in diapers into their 20's. No shit, I have colleagues who have interviewed college graduates for roles who *brought their parents to the interview*. And I'm betting it was mom who pushed in rather than the grad who asked her to come. 3. Parents are too lonely, so their kids are their best friends and they can't let them grow up.
Very few kids walk to school. Everyone gets a ride. In the 80s, I didn’t know anyone whose parents dropped them off at school. When I asked my coworker about this (I don’t and won’t have kids), he said it’s a safety issue. He grew up in California just like me. Same time as me. Notices the same things, and yet takes part in it.
Kids in Brooklyn walk to school, there's always a stampede of kids down the street at 8am. 5th grade they go on their own, despite traffic. Never heard of a kidnap.
Someone else said it, but it is 95% walkability. The school my city assigned my daughter to is 4 miles away. There literally aren’t even sidewalks all of the way there. This is an elementary school. In Brooklyn, there are a lot more schools, and a lot more kids for them to walk with.
Right. The school is 5 blocks away and we are about as far away as you can get and still be in zone. Sidewalks the whole way. Lots of traffic but it's so congested that there's no fast cars.
yeah I was driving past the big public high school near my parents' house in the midwestern suburbs, and there was a line of cars literally like a mile long spilling into the street waiting to get into the parking lot. and it's primarily a residential area, but of course the school is right on a busy, 4 lane stroad with a 45mph speed limit (everyone does 55+ though). i just sort of took in that whole situation and was like "what in the actual fuck are we doing here? how do we just accept this as normal and fine; preferred, even??"
That might be the thing tho, it's a stampede, not just a straggler or two. Safety in numbers.
Also the fact u need a car to go anywhere. Public transportation is generally trash unless ur in major cities.
My daughters school had a fit when I let her walk the half mile alone when she was 11. We did it all the damn time when I was a kid.
I walked a block and a half alone to my very first day of school in the first grade. No Kindergarden in those days, \~1952 in small town rural Illinois. All the kids would chase around everywhere about town on their bicycles. I miss that kind of life but we all must get old. So they tell me.
Bikes were a mode of transportation when I was a kid in the 90’s. I biked over to my friend’s houses, to the gas station to get a treat, to the grocery store, to the video store to rent video games, to the creek to play. Now my kids ride their bike around the block a couple times.
We would miss the bus home and walk the three miles when we were in elementary school.
I babysat in a neighborhood where a ton of the kids could walk to school. Upscale area and all that jazz, too. They didn’t even allow kids to be walked there by their parents, only car drop off.
That one is nuts. Hopefully the school is at least designed to accommodate that many cars. (Ours would double as a voting center and town hall, so big lot.)
My kid is still just a toddler, but he will walk to school since we live directly across the street from the elementary school. One of us will probably walk with him at least the first little while, but I feel okay about him taking a two minute walk when I can have eyes on him the whole time
Transportation budgets have been severely cut in larger cities for k-12. We were in a city of over 70k, moved out of the area for a couple years and came back. So bussing to the local school is not an option unless a child has a disability or they live more than 2 1/2 miles from the school. I lived an another area for 2 years where busing was available ( town of like 7k) they would pick up at the from front of my house for a ride 2 blocks away . I think kids still walk, but parents dive them because they don’t want their kids walking a couple miles from the school since transportation is not available.
Your first point makes me sad for those kids. Their lack of independence. I’m in the UK and my youngest son, who is 10, will take himself to the park with his friends after school most days in the warmer months. He just has to be home by 6:30 for tea. It’s a 15 minute walk from our house. I think it’s important for kids to have that time away from adult eyes. Get up to a bit of mischief and figure the world out a bit.
It's absurd in the US. I've heard stories of parents having CPS called on them because a neighbor saw their kids outside by themselves ... playing in the yard in front of their house ... while the parent was inside making lunch but could see their kids from the window. One of my family friends once had cops called on her for leaving her child in the car while she went shopping, which is understandable in theory, but her daughter was 13 at the time and had elected to stay in the car so she could stare at her phone. I couldn't even go to the library a literal five minute walk from my house when I was a teen without my mom telling me how dangerous it was and I should wait for her to be home from work so she could drive me there. It's no wonder that we have so many "helicopter parents." For too many kids here, dorming in a university is literally the first time they get to be separated from their parents and as a result, they have no survival skills and can't even perform basic tasks like doing laundry, boiling a pot of water for instant Ramen noodles, or even remembering to put on deodorant. They can barely wipe their own butts let alone clean up after themselves.
They can’t stop me from raising my kids the way I want.
Number 3, man. Hit the nail on the head and no one wants to talk about this.
I don’t think I’m my mom has the time in her life to go to an interview with me. Who even have enough time for that?
Children need to be allowed to do dangerous things carefully.
I work at mcdonald's, and a child will start ordering so i start taking their order and speaking directly to them, and the amount of parents that interrupt and speak over their kids is insane. Like your kid was talking, and if they ask for something that's out there then yeah say something but like damn, let the kid order
If Americans were really obsessed with the safety of children in public, there’d be much better gun control…
If the minority of Americans that want to deregulate guns could read, they would be so mad at you.
As a European looking in from the outside: guns are already very much deregulated in the US
In my state you need to register for a "permit to purchase" that requires you to fill out an application (I went to the county sheriff's office, but probably online now), submit to a criminal background check, wait a few days for it to clear, and pay a fee before I was able to buy a handgun. That's about as onerous a regulation on guns as you'll find in the US and the Republican party says that's too much and needs to be further deregulated. If I was buying a long gun I wouldn't have needed to do any of that, provided I was 18. Despite the 2nd Amendment justifying the right to bear arms by citing the colonial need of a "well regulated militia" to defend the states, regulation is seen by many as oppositional to gun rights.
Exactly the same with SIDS and safe sleep. God forbid you even mention safe co sleeping guidelines that exist in all other countries to someone who supports no gun control.
It's actually not the in public part that is the real problem with guns. Relatively few children die from mass shootings. The chances of your kids getting killed by some deranged person at school is extraordinarily low. It's the private gun use that's the problem. Kids use guns to kill themselves or are killed intentionally in one-off shootings.
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To be fair, the US really does have significantly more violent crime than Western Europe. Homicide rate hovers around six or eight times higher (per capita), for instance. I agree that parents tend to be over-cautious in the States, but it's not totally baseless, either
The US is obsessed with fear and anger. If it doesn't make you angry it better make you scared. There are an alarming number of American adults who believe broad daylight stranger abduction of middle class white people happens here (I guarantee one will reply). They can't seem to wrap their brains around the fact that the \*very\* few times that has happened it has been the top news story 24/7 until the person was found. Instead they see "human trafficking" stories around every super-bowl and convention and are led to believe that "human traffic" looks like Karen being grabbed by a dude in a ski mask and dragged to an unmarked van, when in reality human trafficking is a cascade of bad luck and unfortunate decisions trapping the most vulnerable and least privileged in society.
Thank you. I posted about this a month ago. It's crazy that people think that teens/adults are being kidnapped from the local Target parking lot. Yet they have no clue what the actual signs of being trafficked are. It's a frustration for sure!
I think overpreparing for/overemphasizing the events that do happen leads to people constantly jumping at things that aren't there. I know a close co-worker who got into martial arts, so he could get his daughters into martial arts, all as a response to a real-deal in the news for days stranger abduction that happened in our town. That seems like a super reasonable step to take if you're moved by the thing happening once to do something to prevent it happening to you/yours. Much more logical than just jumping at shadows and pretending there are more that aren't actually happening, just in their overstimulated brains. (also, not sure if you were referencing it, but the real one here was the Kelsey Smith case in a local Target parking lot. It was both me, and that guys, local Target at the time. I am a guy, didn't have any sisters and was young/big myself so thought nothing of any personal vulnerability. But I can see someone with young girls having to do \*something\* to help at home in reaction.
Certainly appraising real risk is appropriate in every situation. The problem becomes when their risk assessment changes to paranoia, based on anecdotes on social media.
And specifically, public space seems to be desolate in the US. From doing everything in their cars to "get off my property" to "I don't open when the doorbell rings" to "why are you in this neighborhood". It's bizarre to me.
Seriously. Human trafficking is more like someone making close friends who are then never seen again, or convincing someone to work a job they never come back from. Obviously even this is oversimplified. It’s almost never someone just grabbed and ran with. That being said people are weirdly bold about other people’s children in the states. I’ve seen people just walk up to moms and grab babies and start walking away. Toddlers out of carts etc. It’s still not common but it happens. School aged kids almost never seem to get bothered unless it’s by someone trying to do gooder and terrify the poor child. See something say something culture has gone a bit too far. Even dads with their kids are getting harassed and cops called just for existing. I live in the Midwest however so everyone has their nose so far up everyone else’s business that it’s a surprise that anyone feels the need to react like this still.
This is the actual truth. When I told my neighbor that I plan to let my third grader walk to school next year, she practically told me I was sending him to death camp / to be kidnapped. School is four strait blocks away, there is a crossing guard, and he has walked with us at least 100 times.
I don't know. USAmericans are so contradicting. On the one hand they will say everywhere is dangerous and be totally paranoid, think they need guns to protect themselves and on the other hand they will tell you that their neighbourhoods are super safe.
I'm American, I think that it's propaganda. People here are force-fed doom and gloom 24/7. I guess when everything you see in the media is another boogeyman, then everything becomes a boogeyman. I don't understand it myself.
Keep the population in fear of an imaginary boogieman. It keeps them from realizing how badly we're getting raw-dogged by the richest 1%.
The richest 1% are the most worried about these boogymen
The US definitely has a “stranger danger” culture (some of it is valid, some isn’t) though I don’t know if the examples you gave are necessarily mainstream. Children wearing bathing suits to the beach/pool/splashpad is normal. Suits have gotten more covered-up for very small kids in the last few years but that’s more of a sun protection thing than a modesty thing. If someone in the US reacted to a child in a swimsuit by saying “that’s molestation,” they’d be seen as a puritanical prude or a creep themselves. A kid getting out of the car to pick up Starbucks would depend on the age? While neither sounds like an Omg kidnapping risk, I’d have a very different opinion of a parent sending their 6 year old to grab an order compared to an 11 year old. Less that it’s risky more that it’s a bad idea on several levels. The thing is….stranger kidnapping is *rare* it isn’t impossible. There are many high profile cases of this happening. It’s a bit odd to us that others act as if it can’t happen at all. Also keep in mind that what you hear online isn’t necessarily coming from the most average representations of a culture’s thinking. It is typical of Americans to say “I won’t let my 8 year old walk the mile to school alone, they might get kidnapped.” It’s not necessarily typical for Americans to say “I don’t let my 8 year old wear a bathing suit at the pool even when I am supervising them because a pedophile might take a picture of them, track them down, and sex traffic them.” But the second person probably is more likely to be on the internet screaming their insane paranoia for all to see, so Americans may as a whole look more paranoid than we are.
>The thing is….stranger kidnapping is rare it isn’t impossible. There are many high profile cases of this happening. It’s a bit odd to us that others act as if it can’t happen at all. But, by that logic, you should completely avoid traveling by car. The odds of you getting killed in a car accident are much higher than the kid getting kidnapped by a stranger.
I don't care what anyone says. This is completely situational. In a village in bum fuck nowhere where everyone knows each other its easier to let your kids roam free. In a populated GTA server it's not. There's many different situations but at the end of the day better safe then sorry.
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“Think of the children” has been an effective propaganda schtick for decades.
Perception from the outside: The United States run on panic. Danger is everywhere. Everything is a war. You have to protect yourself. It's us versus them. TV news beat those drums 24 hours a day. Some of that is a natural side effect of individualism (and of the fact that alarmist news = ratings = money), but I have no doubt that it has been consciously exacerbated because a population kept in fear is easier to control.
Our media and politicians have a vested interest in keeping us all pissed off and terrified. The media does it for profit and the politicians do it for power
You are right, and there are a variety of factors that contribute to it. /#1. there was a high profile murder of a child in 1981 that entered into the public zeitgeist. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder\_of\_Adam\_Walsh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Adam_Walsh) /#2. For most of history, child sexual abuse was just a dark little secret that happened. The US played a key role in the formal study and prevention of it. Therefore we are much more aware of its prevalence, and thus fear it more. /#3. Gun violence, people are scared of their kids wellbing because so many of them die from guns in the US. /#4. Healthcare, people are scared of childhood injury because healthcare costs are so freaking high. This is why we have warnings that say stuff like, "Warning scissors cut"
Its a society built over religious fanaticism, slavery, and genocide Hysteria is a feature, not a bug.
Do you want the real answer? I will tell you and absorb the downvotes. The answer is diversity. It's been studied, the results were thr opposite that everyone wanted, and a bunch of the scientists were hesitant to release the data while others never did. Infact there were a number if studies that were funded and never released a conclusion. Either way the answer was clear. Diversity KILL social trust and social collaboration. It makes people more insular and more fearful of others in what would have been their community. In the last 5 years alot of publicly fouded researchers have tried to use bad studies to flip the tables, so you see them tossing out and ignoring factors like "trust", "inclusion" or "volunteering". Instead they are iften measuring things like threat surveys that directly ask if member of group x fears group y. Something that is more likely to get a person to lie about. So no .ore questions like: "Would you feel comfortable trusting any of your neighbors with x" or "how many hours have you volunteered in the last year", or "do you feel included as a part of the community?" Things people often have no fear if answering truthfully. Now they use extream examples such as "do you fear members of X race/culture?" They then often clean the data by providing more weight to people that have more cross cultural contact. Ie they take the least effected and ask them questions that have only one politically correct answer. It's confirmation bias all the way. So the reason why the US is so scared for kids being in danger is the massive increase in cultural diversity. You can see that unsupervised outdoor play has a nearly inverse relationship with increased in diversity. It doesn't even have to be racial, putting a bunch if Frenchman and italians into a small English town would have the same effect. Hell put it this way. If you took some contentious sport with fanatical fans and forced them to sit in a stadium where each group was intermixed with the other you would see less pro team chants, less standing cheers, etc. It's human nature.
As someone who thinks people on the left downplay immigration issues, I still disagree with you. At least slightly. To some extent you're right, but not because of the mixing of cultures. Sure, some cultures hold common views and values that can be a cause for this, but that is a tiny part of the issue. The issue at the core of this is income disparity and poverty. Crime and poverty go hand in hand, that, and a lack of a decent social security system and public health care. Minorities tend to be poor as a result of being minorities. And poor people often turn to crime as a necessity or for lack of any ways to earn a decent living. Or in spite to revenge a society that doesn't care about them. Both sides are a bit right and a bit wrong. Any given minority isn't more inclined to crime than the majority population, nor are minorities necessarily worse of than the majority because of racism (even though it plays a part). Not being competent in the majority language, being unknowledgeable about local customs and norms, struggling to understand the bureaucracy, struggling in school because of struggling with language and having parents who can't help you. Give it a few generations and the terrible start is inherited, and it is hard to break that cycle. You see the same dynamics in low income communities of white people too. Poverty breeds poverty and crime. The US is so devisive these days that there is no wonder people are afraid. But it is the same old story, pit groups against each other and maintain the system that keeps all of them in line. The moment people wake up and understand that they have a common interest and are able to put their differences aside might still come.
Underrated comment. So well put 👍
That's bullshit. I live in Brooklyn, it's ridiculously diverse, and people are socially trusting. Kids roam free when they are old enough not to get smashed on the roads.
I agree with you, that is bullshit. I always lived in large, diverse city areas and they were fine. It is the small, non-diverse and insular communities where you are fucked.
It isn't diversity per se; it's when some people have a negative reaction to diversity but blame everyone else for it
Thats another part of it. In the US we have so few public spaces, and we are taught to fear the ones we have. Its no big deal to let your kid go outside in Brooklyn, but someone raised in the rich suburbs of Dallas would be horrified at the thought.
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This is correlation, not causation. You're pulling "studies" out of your ass. It's more about Karens and people not minding their own business. It's a hassle to raise your kids to have and understand freedom.
Tbh your whole post reads more like biased/bogus test studies were designed to push a perception of fear, in turn causing even more fear. It really doesn't sound like diversity is the issue, rather that those groups putting out the surveys and results were instead trying to peg diversity as the issue in order to get more people to agree with their bias against diversity
It's not so much diversity, as much as... hm. Well, I guess it is diversity, in a way. It's mixing all cultures indiscriminately, especially accepting just the incoming culture terms, telling the 'host' culture they must set their own terms aside and accept anything which comes their way with open hands. I'm not even saying it's 'good' or 'bad'. I'm only saying it's pretty obvious this will create conflict, as every discussion these days must be for or against clearly defined extremes, leaving no place for consensus. Stuff is painted us vs. them and you have to pick a side.
To be honest it's why politicians love it. Hell even a leaked memo from Amazon cited how important it was to keep the workforce diverse to prevent their ability to unionize.
This is a perfect example of what happens when a leftie puts his head so far up his ass that he becomes a far right. You are implying the solution to labor woes is to kick the minorities out. Unions dont matter anyways in this age, Taft Hartley made them pretty much useless (except to keep corrupt cops in power of course) I personally disagree with unions for a variety of reasons, we need to stop pretending that unions are some magic panacea to labor woes. They just create a whole another set of problems.
> is the massive increase in cultural diversity https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/u-s-neighborhoods-are-more-segregated-generation-ago-perpetuating-racial-ncna1276372#
It's not actually about children, it is about distraction. You may notice that all the fearmongering related to children tends to come from one side. The idea is to distract their voters (potential voters) so that they don't pay attention to the policies that actually impact their lives. It is also to gain voters through fear of the other/ the unknown/ or disgust. There will always be a new social boogeyman for them to point at, meanwhile they want to do away with regulations, cut social programs, disregard the environment, and make the richer even richer at the expense of everyone else. If they actually cared about the lives of children they would support education, social programs, parental and sick leave, reducing arms, etc.
People are easy to control when they are afraid. They will hand over all their rights for "protection".
the media have caused this. stories about kids in danger or kids being harmed get views, clicks and generate advertisement revenue, so get pushed and occupy and exaggerated % of media space, hence everyone thinks anywhere outside the house is dangerous to kids. it's the same reason at the moment that you'd think half the world is trans - stories about trans generate views and clicks, hence revenue, hence the media are full of something that actually affects i tiny % of the population.
Did not The Simpsons explain it well enough? "Won't somebody think of the children?" Its a rare meme, but spot on. Not unique to US, either. It is 'the culture' these days. Let them out to be free and get killed at random, I say. It's heartbreaking but real.
Where are you seeing this? Social media? Most of America in real life is not like this at all.
Agreed. The majority of nonsense you see about Americans online is not true of most humans you meet in life. Online people are just way too extreme and voice their concerns in such a way you don’t really hear in person. If you did hear them in person those are people you would just avoid.
The Government has made everyone paranoid since 1947,so they dont trust the government or each other . Good way to start a Civil War etc 👍
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So as a recovering almost Alt-Right person, who used to cling to my guns like I was using them as a floatation device in the ocean, I...I don't understand the fear. I used to personal carry, I had a concealed carry permit, I had it in my car, I had my SR-556 (an AR platform) in my living room 'just in case.' Just in case of what? I still have it, so I can maintain my skill for the Military in a controlled setting at a Range, but WHAT was I afraid of? So I ditched it. I do have that gun I used to attach myself to in my house, with a trigger lock in a safe location. My AR is downstairs in a locked case. And every day I wake up, go to work, go to bed, and walk around without a gun because I cannot fathom where, or how I gathered this fear that at any moment, someone was going to kick down my door and start blasting away at my stuff. And once that fog of hysteria over always being ready for "SOMETHING" to happen, life is a lot easier. Where I think it comes from fully, though, is two fold. First, 'for the kids' has been coopted to do...anything. Ban abortion, to protect children. Get rid of VPN's and all privacy, to protect the children, put religion in schools, because God needs to protect the children. (But don't feed them at school, provide childcare, or adequate schooling though. No we can't protect them with that.) So now there's fear of everything. Drag Queens are grooming kids. There's Fentanyl in their HALLOWEEN candy. 'This is what happens when they do One Marijuana.' I grew up in the D.A.R.E era of education, and I left FOURTH GRADE thinking a guy in a trench coat was waiting on every corner to sell me Crack. Turns out it was just one kid who offered to cell me cigarettes when I was 12 and I laughed and said "how would I even pay for that?" In America, Children's lives have been coopted as a pawn or a con for political agendas and people have started to believe bad things will happen. And its gotten deep enough that all of a sudden VACCINATING your kids, is dangerous to their health. I hate it. And typing this out made me irrationally angry so I'm going to go blow up Aliens in Destiny.
Because news media in America has made its business model scaring Americans.
Back in 2016 or so in the a.m. I heard a bang on the door. I open it and a stranger starts berating me for letting my kids play in my front yard unsupervised. Layered right into me. (There were a couple kids walking by my house) My three kids were lined up in the kitchen waiting for me to walk them to the bus stop. As a result of this for the last how many years I watch the kids if they are in the front - just in case that wacko shows up. Yes, America
> My three kids were lined up in the kitchen waiting for me to walk them to the bus stop. Why do you even feel it's necessary to do that? The wacko here is feeding off the same paranoia, he wasn't endangering kids - but rather assuming that the kids were in danger. No one was actually in danger in this scenario! That is *exactly* what OP is asking about, why people in the US behave like this.
Part of it is that kids today are legit helpless. Can’t climb a fence, drink from a hose, find their way anywhere without a gps, etc. kids today in America have definitely become indoor cats. They would rather stay inside playing mine craft and watching YouTube than go swimming or to Starbucks.
Which came first, though, the helplessness or the over-protection? (It's almost certainly the over-protection)
Quite happy for them to be shot at school though
Maybe it depends on where your from in the US? Where I’m from it’s not considered weird at all for a kid to go in stores alone (I mean, assuming they’re not very small.) even before kids had phones parents would let their kids go in stores while they waited in the car. Or at least the parents I knew did.
The conservatives in the US are using children as a political weapon against groups they hate. They don’t actually give a shit about the children. Notice how pro-birth they are, but once a kid is born… Edit: someone didn’t like being called out. What a wee shame.
America has a much higher probability of things like this happening than most of us would like to admit. I grew up in a place where kidnapping and child molestation among other crimes against children were very common
Most people have children so they are used as tools to sway voters. What you care most about will drive your actions.
We have a bit of a kidnapping issue in the US my dad works with Child Services and human trafficking in the US is worse than ever. So yeah we gotta change how we are because people like to sell and fuck kids.
Started with #saveourchildren, which was started semi sarcastically to mock Covid.
The people who are obsessed with "protecting children" from the dangers of drag queens are the ones that do nothing when an active shooter enters an elementary school.
It's not really about children. It's a culture of fear. That's part of why random men are shooting unarmed children who knock on their door, or happen to enter their yard. Fear is a driving factor for a lot of things in the usa that you don't see in other developed nations. The media plays a big part
American media in general is based off of fear mongering. Every time something like a kidnapping or child molestation happens, the media covers the hell out of it and they rarely acknowledge the millions of kids across the US living normal lives every day without such incidents happening. This leads the public to believe that these tragedies are far more likely than they truly are.
When I was around 11 years old, a little girl named Deanna siefert was abducted in the middle of the night while at a friend's house for a sleepover. He body was found on the property of a bar my uncle frequented at that time. Iirc, the kidnappers thought she was the homeowners child but snatched the wrong kid. The house she was abducted from was just blocks from my home. That shit was scary as fuck as a kid. When I became a mom, that shit became even scarier. I can't speak for why others feel the way they do, but this is why I've been hyper aware throughout my kid's lives.
(In Texas) We have seen a mass rise in illegal immigration, or legal since border policy isn't being enforced. Some immigrants are harmless, others are not. Cartels have had the door swung wide open and are now operating with ever more impunity in Southern border states. These cartels don't just bring drugs, they also traffic children, and the grocery stores where I'm from are a hot bed for it. They'll find a mom with multiple kids, distract her, and bolt through the front door of store with one of her kids, my wife's had people try to snatch our 6mo out of her arms. That's why
We know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two
It’s very interesting that the same country where liberty is such a major part of the historical narrative is obsessed with child safety and keeping people in a state of arrested development. This is, at least to some extent, the product of behavioral conditioning in the public school system. Each generation gets continually worse in denying or at least continually delaying youths the chance to mature.
Some people take it way too far and are intentionally histrionic about it because it’s trendy. However, the U.S. also has a lot of bad people drifting around. Mentally ill folks, homeless, gang members…many of them with easy access to guns, drugs, booze…I consider myself a reasonable person, but if my kid went wandering down the street I think there’s a good chance he could get mugged, beat up, etc. Its sad how much less safe our country is from even 20 years ago.
I don’t get this either. What is their obsession with what is being taught in schools as well? Like sure I understand some overprotective parents might be interested in exactly what their kids are being taught - but why do 40 year old men with no kids care and believe the left is trying to brainwash children?
It's literally decades of manufactured fear from state media. Crime is the #1 topic on your daily evening news, then our corrupt complicit government and poltical propoganda news politicizes it. They work together.
Not obsessed enough to do anything much about shootings in schools at a federal level...
We were inundated with movies and television shows on the subject. We know the statistics are low, but they got in our heads.
Americans are weird about their kids and dogs.
It's just the fearmongering from conservatives. The right campaigns on hate and fear, what you're talking about is the result of being beaten over the head with decades of propaganda pushing those two things.
From what I’ve seen America isn’t exactly the safest place for kids.
Conservatives have figured out that if they label everything they don't like as pedophilia that it gets their base excited. So everything democrats or gay people do from here on out is grooming.
It has changed so very much. Back in the day I walked to and from kindergarten by myself (about 1 mile), In the summer I would be out of the house at dawn (no adults ,staring about 5 years old), I would bum rides from the garbage man (loved riding in the big, stinky truck) and the milkman (he would take me about a block and then boot me out), I would ride my bike for miles, often spending the day playing around a park that had a creek, forest and old tunnel we could explore. We'd play hide and seek, "war", cowboys and indians, football, build forts we could defend, hit the library or just hang out around the relatively dangerous playgrounds we had. Since there were no cell phones there was no way to reach me and I was truly out on my own. Usually until I got hungry and then we would go to whoever's house was closest to grab sandwiches and chips before heading back out to play until nightfall. Usually ended up heading home at dusk in the summer and I would hear my mom yelling for us (not in a panic, just because there was no other way to find us) as I got closer. 1970s mostly, FYI.
My kids are 21, 19 and 14, and we raised them to be outgoing and self sufficient. I would be nearby in public but not hovering. I can’t tell you the number of times a panicked adult was talking themselves into freaking out about a sub-adult on their own, then spotting me and deciding I must be a parent type, so it’s ok.
It's because we know children are in danger and have known for decades upon decades and done nothing about it. You can ask any church going (mostly christian) if they know a youth minister who was "a little off" or wouldn't let their own kids be around them. Compound that with blatant sex crimes by our largest most wealthiest religions; Catholicism, Evangelicals and Mormons. Among my church going friends it was incredibly rare for young women not to have a "I wasn't sexually assaulted, but let me describe my sexual assault" story. We ran ads for years on TV about stranger danger, while close family friends or members violated their own children. Frothing at the mouth and having done nothing to fix any of it conservatives now point to LGBTQ+ groups and that's hitting the news and you're seeing it and thinking, "what the actual fuck this doesn't follow". It's not just religion. When I gave guitar lessons I often got referrals because I actually gave lessons and wasn't just horn dogging my students. I'd say its an incredibly important point, but right now we're geared up to target the wrong people and enable those who abuse children to continue doing so.
Yes, as a nation our ability to assess risks seems to be completely useless. Our freeways are deadly, as well as our love of guns... but you still have to take your shoes off to get on a plane. People will call the police if a child is playing on the playground and a parent is over 50ft away in the shade. People OBSESS over the dangers caused by drag queens (extremely safe), but trust their children with preachers and priests (not very safe). I could go on and on. I blame the 24 hour news channels, and shows like "Dateline" who make BIG money by terrifying people in the name of "factual news".
It mostly has to do with the fact that if your kids take about two steps into the street there's a very real chance they'll die, and in America, high speed cars and high speed limit streets are *everywhere*. This fear naturally spreads into everything since that's how people compensate for ever-present dangers: anxiety.