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| ▲ | Loughla 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| That's not really an answer though. My kid walks home from his friend's houses in the woods at night alone all the time. He has never once been eaten or kidnapped. Statistically your children are more likely to be victimized by you than a stranger. So by your logic, you should probably keep them away from you. Right? |
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| ▲ | hylaride 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Nominally I agree with you, but your example is classic survivorship bias. The chances of getting kidnapped are and always were far, far, far less than automobile related injuries and deaths, yet we just see that as a normal risk of modern life. I have been wondering if the fact that the current generation of 20-somethings isn't going out as much is because of this "over parenting" that they received. I'm sure it's also TikTok, living costs, and avoiding other vice related behaviour (drinking, sex) at such high rates, but it does make me think... | |
| ▲ | dlisboa 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | That's a useless statistic in this context. Statistically you're more likely to be killed by yourself than someone else. So, do you kill yourself to get it over with? Do you let a shooter shoot you because statistically it's better that the gun is on their hands than yours? Ridiculous, right? It's just a zero insight use of numbers. | | |
| ▲ | Loughla 4 days ago | parent [-] | | That's literally my point. I did exactly what you did, just in a different context to point out the absurdity of the statement. | | |
| ▲ | lucyjojo 2 days ago | parent [-] | | i see it as blatantly ignoring risks because they don't align to your worldview |
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| ▲ | Mistletoe 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The risk they die from drug overdose or something because they are maladjusted from being hovered over may be orders of magnitude greater. We live in a far safer time than people think with regard to violent crime (see graph below) and a far more dangerous time with regard to mental health and depression. Also obesity. Most people die from heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. All made more prevalent by shuttling your kid around constantly instead of them using their own two legs like nature intended. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/31/violent-c... |
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| ▲ | jdross 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It is precisely this anxiety that is the issue being discussed. Parents are terrified of what might happen to their kids, so too little happens to their kids (both good and bad) |
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| ▲ | rendaw 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Do you let your children ride in cars? The risk of death in a passenger vehicle is over 100x that of being kidnapped. |
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| ▲ | mothballed 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I wrote a long winded thing about my personal experience but deleted it because it was too personal and too depressing to think about. The summary is that the risk of a CPS investigation of a kid playing or walking independently is probably 10-100x that of suffering a car accident. And the average car accident is way less traumatic than being ripped away from your family, tossed in a foster home, and feeling like your parents have abandoned you forever because they could not protect you from the state. | | |
| ▲ | Thorrez 4 days ago | parent [-] | | That's terrible. What's the solution though? Stop letting kids play outside? I think the solution should be to reform CPS so it's not so traumatizing, and have more governmental awareness campaigns of the benefits of kids playing outside. I see government billboards all the time about anti-smoking, eating healthy, prediabetes screening. There can similarly be billboards promoting kids playing outside. | | |
| ▲ | mothballed 4 days ago | parent [-] | | 1) Childhood independence protection 2) At the bare minimum, victims of CPS reports should be able to face their accuser. Currently laws anonymize reporters, this is not compatible with an open and balanced justice system. Also, needs to be heavy penalties and liabilities for abusing CPS reporting -- asymmetrical risks would end up with just getting the same result over and over again. 3) Cultural change. People that curtail child independence of others' children should be shamed, publicly. People that let their kids have independence, left the hell alone. | | |
| ▲ | em-bee 4 days ago | parent [-] | | there would not be any issue with anonymous reports if CPS would look for actual evidence before doing anything else, and reject any anonymous report as baseless if no evidence is found. innocent until proven guilty must hold here too. |
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| ▲ | 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | mgraf1 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Your analogy is missing something. Not letting a child explore the world has an opportunity cost. They miss out on opportunities to develop independence and psychological resilience. The book "The Anxious Generation" covers this in detail. |
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| ▲ | Loughla 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I work at a college, and can tell you that (while everyone views their childhoods with rose colored glasses), at my institution, statistically kids today are less able to cope with difficulty than they were when I started my career. When I started, the top three reasons for students leaving the institution were a) family priorities (work), b) transportation, and c) grades (overall GPA less than 1.5). For the 2024-25 academic year, the reasons were a) anxiety, b) grades (overall GPA between 2.5 and 3, with less than 2 'd' or 'f' grades for the final semester), and c) unstated reason related to interactions with faculty or staff (difficult conversations about study habits, or realistic major/timeline conversations). In other words, they hit one small barrier, or have to shift gears even slightly, and everything goes to pieces. We don't let them make decisions when they're kids and the stakes are low, and then don't understand why they can't make decisions when they're adults. . . Or, there are a minority of parents that seem to enjoy making every decision for their kids. It's not great. |
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| ▲ | rurp 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The chances of your kid being abducted by a stranger because you let them walk home from school are so many orders of magnitude lower than 0.5% that the analogy doesn't make any sense. You're probably more likely to kill them by handing them a plate of food or some other benign every day factor that isn't nearly as dramatic as anything the national news covers. |
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| ▲ | phito 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That sounds like maladaptive anxiety. |
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| ▲ | 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | dec0dedab0de 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 1 in 100k cancers also disappear spontaneously, should I wait and see for my kid and not treat them? As a parent, a cancer survivor, and the child of a high anxiety parent, Yes, yes you should wait and see. Every doctor's visit is a chance to catch something worse. That said, if you're a chill parent reading this, you should probably be more proactive about it. There is a middle ground, overreacting is usually worse than under reacting, but it is important that you react. |
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| ▲ | 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
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