"LEAVE ME ALONE, MOM AND DAD! Literally."
January 17, 2017 1:07 PM Subscribe

"The fact that people make the opposite judgment — that kids are in more danger when parents leave on purpose — strongly suggests that their estimates of risk have been unconsciously inflated to help justify their stronger moral disapproval of parents who choose to leave children unsupervised."

We’re really bad at judging risk to kids. We’re really good at judging parents.

(Previously)

posted by The Gooch (124 comments total) 37 users marked this as a favorite

It's unfortunate but demonstrably true that you're far more likely to have your kids lives ruined by sanctimonious busybodies than they are to be abducted by strangers.
posted by mhoye at 1:18 PM on January 17, 2017 [64 favorites]

In the example in the article where the mother left her kid in the car for 5 minutes to pick up headphones, isn't the problem less the bystander taking the video and more the police department and prosecutor who decided to press charges? The bystander's behaviour was encouraged by the authorities' actions.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:22 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]

I can't even get random strangers to stop telling me on the street that my kids aren't dressed warmly enough, shouldn't be running so fast, etc., even when they're A) not cold and B) not at any risk of doing anything more than maybe falling down and getting a little banged up, which I consider an acceptable risk for kids their ages.

Part of me wants to think this is a good thing - that I might someday benefit from someone else taking an interest in my kids' well being. Mostly, though, I wish they'd - and a lot of other parents- just learn the Life Changing Magic of Minding Your Own Fucking Business.
posted by ryanshepard at 1:33 PM on January 17, 2017 [53 favorites]

Think of this the next time my children run circles around you in Walgreens screaming "DO THE NAKED BUTT!" at the top of their lungs.

I'd love to leave them in the locked car for five minutes while I buy diapers and perhaps some bourbon, but thems the rules.
posted by selfnoise at 1:34 PM on January 17, 2017 [44 favorites]

I can't even get random strangers to stop telling me on the street that my kids aren't dressed warmly enough

What?!

This has not happened to me, and you can tell because I am not on trial for murder.
posted by selfnoise at 1:35 PM on January 17, 2017 [44 favorites]

Nice paragraph at the end tying in class privilege's hand in the social reproduction of poverty. But that prompts me to ask, if I agree with this (and I do, basically) then am I in a subtle way still allowing myself to moralize? And would that create some barrier between my intuitions and the scientific verifiable reality, I.e., of the sort in their methodology? This puzzles me and I'd ask the authors this, if this concern makes any sense at all.
posted by polymodus at 1:36 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

This has not happened to me, and you can tell because I am not on trial for murder.

I am a generic white guy descended from people in cold places, and live in an area with a lot of folks from Central and Latin America, who seem to have a radically different take on what it means to be appropriately dressed for cold weather. Also the appropriate amount of butting into other people's business. I suspect this is an artifact of both a more functional community culture and vastly better weather and try to be tolerant but, having been raised by grumpy people from New England, there are limits.
posted by ryanshepard at 1:40 PM on January 17, 2017 [13 favorites]

I've been rebuked by a stranger for letting my elementary school aged children run ahead of me to the end of the block, in a residential neighborhood with little traffic and sidewalks. They stop at the corner and wait for me to catch up. Stranger sternly warned me about leaving my children unsupervised because I was half a block behind them in clear visual range and he was the only other human we saw. Which I guess makes him the Stranger Danger he's so worried about!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:50 PM on January 17, 2017 [40 favorites]

This has not happened to me, and you can tell because I am not on trial for murder.

I once got concern-questioned because my kid was walking alone to the school that was LITERALLY ONE BLOCK AWAY. At age 10 or 11.

I have also been asked about her clothes, on days where she herself picked out her clothes, and I will tell you that many people were lucky I could not explode people with my mind.
posted by corb at 1:55 PM on January 17, 2017 [29 favorites]

I told my kids to tell opinionated bystanders "I'm fine, but thank you for your concern."
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:59 PM on January 17, 2017 [34 favorites]

I can't even get random strangers to stop telling me on the street that my kids aren't dressed warmly enough

What?!

I once had a stranger come up to me specifically to say that my toddler should be taken away from me and given to someone who would take care of her, because she wasn't wearing a hat. It takes a village!
posted by Catseye at 2:18 PM on January 17, 2017 [19 favorites]

We’re really good at judging parents.

Don't believe this? Go on AskMe and post a question about your kids.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:21 PM on January 17, 2017 [30 favorites]

I once inspired a stranger at a bus stop to have an utter weeping meltdown, threatening to call the police, and finally wailing that she hoped my baby, then a few months old, would die, because that was what I deserved for putting him in danger. The danger was that he was asleep in a Moby wrap affixed firmly to my body, under my coat, and he had started to get sweaty so I took his little hat off.
posted by milk white peacock at 2:35 PM on January 17, 2017 [87 favorites]

More broadly speaking, isn't it well established that we're pretty bad at judging risk in general?
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:55 PM on January 17, 2017 [21 favorites]

The craziness above is pretty much an American thing, with some spillover into Canada (although in Canada it's significantly easier to squelch with a raised eyebrow or look of disdain).

Here's the thing with kids in cars though: you have no way of knowing how long they've been there or how long they will be there. If they're asleep, and no-one shows up within a few minutes, what do you do? I called on one once. It was a summer day, though mild. The child was 1.5 or 2 and asleep, and I had no way to know for how long, or to be confident they were not in distress. I waited a few minutes than called. This was in Germany. I'm sure the parent (who showed up from a nearby house around the same time as the police) thought I was a stupid American. But I was not able to take it on faith they had been left intentionally.

Maybe leave a note with a time on the car if you have to leave a toddler/infant? Especially if they're asleep.
posted by lastobelus at 3:00 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

Go on AskMe and post a question about your kids.

They'll just tell you to dump them.
posted by thelonius at 3:02 PM on January 17, 2017 [65 favorites]

I've been rebuked by a stranger for letting my elementary school aged children run ahead of me to the end of the block, in a residential neighborhood with little traffic and sidewalks.

I'm not going to lie, I get anxious when I see a smallish child darting towards a street corner without a parent within a few paces. Kids do run into traffic all the time. I wouldn't yell at the parent (those little buggers are fast and slippery!), but I can and have stopped to make sure the kid actually pulls up at the corner.

Not for a kid who's seven or eight, though.
posted by praemunire at 3:03 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

Right, and I usually encourage the teens to run faster.
posted by notyou at 3:59 PM on January 17, 2017 [11 favorites]

Yeah, I'm quick to step in and help a kid who looks like he needs it but if I can see that their person(s) is nearby, sees them, and doesn't themselves appear to need help I just assume that they have things in hand and will instead just standby to be bemused.

Though I do love that thing where a young toddler just kind of picks a direction and starts running and they don't really have this running thing figured out yet. I just stand strategically in their path and wait. But that falls under the "person appears to need help" when they're running after them or something.

I'm certain that my mom left me in the car with my brother as young as 8 and my brother was 5. Sometimes because we didn't want to go into the store and it would be a quick trip or if she was delivering tickets to someone at the airport (she was a travel agent). She would bring us and leave us in the car to make sure that she didn't get towed (this would have been in the late eighties). I'm not really sure how young I was the first time she did that but I've never really thought anything of it. Still don't.
posted by VTX at 3:59 PM on January 17, 2017

Here's the thing with kids in cars though: you have no way of knowing how long they've been there or how long they will be there. If they're asleep, and no-one shows up within a few minutes, what do you do?

As someone who has smashed a car window to rescue an infant trapped inside, if you perceive a child in danger, you need to smash that window right now. If for some reason people balk at this, it is because they don't actually believe the child is in danger.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:03 PM on January 17, 2017 [17 favorites]

I saw a parent yesterday get suddenly worried because their child had decided to practice standing in a store entryway, just out of sight. I let the parent know where the kid was. They seemed torn between relieved and wary, like I was gonna start yelling at them for not watching their kid like a hawk at every possible moment.
posted by XtinaS at 4:16 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

" I wouldn't yell at the parent (those little buggers are fast and slippery!), but I can and have stopped to make sure the kid actually pulls up at the corner."

Oh, for sure, and that's the kind of neighborhood parenting that I don't mind a bit, when someone just hangs at the corner a bit to make sure the kid actually stops and then says hi and we chat a minute. But this is a neighborhood where we get maybe two? three? cars in a whole afternoon, and older kids play street hockey in the street. I think my kids are probably old enough to walk the two blocks to school and back home by themselves (I walked about a mile starting in kindergarten, across two fairly busy streets (with crossing guards)), but the school literally doesn't release children at the end of the day unless an adult comes to get them or they're put on a bus. It's a little nuts.

"I'm not really sure how young I was the first time she did that but I've never really thought anything of it. Still don't."

I, otoh, am afraid to leave my kids in the car at the gas pump to go pay cash for gas. I know someone who did have the cops called on them for that because there is literally no limit to busybodies.

Just this afternoon I had to run into the Walgreens for some allergy stuff, which took all of five minutes, and I had to take all three of my kids in as a caravan. They were pretty good today, but some days we've clearly been a three-ring circus of bad behavior.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:18 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

if you perceive a child in danger, you need to smash that window right now.

That's... kind of at odds with what this article is saying.
posted by Flashman at 4:32 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]

I was in China a few years back during the World's Fair (which was amazing), and at one point my mother and I were walking behind an elderly Chinese woman who had an adorable chubby-faced little baby on her shoulder, facing us.

Since I know that adorable chubby-faced little babies are one of my mother's special loves, I pointed the kid out to her, and she set about making faces and little happy noises at it as it giggled and gurgled in response.

Once it became clear to the elderly woman what was going on, she turned around, smiled very wide, and held the infant out to my mother to hold. Which she did, amidst much laughter and lack-of-common-language gesturing.

And all I could think about is how here in the US, that could never happen, because everyone assumes that the stranger is interested in their child because they want to either murder or fuck it.
posted by Myca at 4:41 PM on January 17, 2017 [49 favorites]

The craziness above is pretty much an American thing,..

You have clearly never been on mumsnet. =)
posted by madajb at 4:41 PM on January 17, 2017 [9 favorites]

I know I'm showing my age here, but when, exactly, did society start going completely insane about this? I mean, I know it has, but I know it wasn't like this when I was a kid, so not the 70's.
posted by kyrademon at 5:06 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]

My mom left me and my siblings in the car all the time and we all came out fine. We played outside without supervision all the time and came out fine. That was in the eighties. I think it's extremely unfortunate that kids don't get any independence; it can't possibly be entirely good for them. That said...

Crime of all types, including against children, has been steadily declining for decades, and there has never been a safer time to be a kid in America. Why, then, are so many of today’s parents — who walked to school and played outdoors unsupervised when they were young — afraid to give their own children the same freedom and independence?

I struggle to agree with this logic. Surely at least some of the reason crime against children is down is precisely because parents are more cautious, no?
posted by Sys Rq at 5:08 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]

Ugh. I love getting judged when my three year old is running like a maniac, yet nobody is willing to actually CATCH HIM when I obviously need help. They just stare and tut tut while I have a baby in my arms. That's why I leave him in the car to pick up a pizza. It's safer than getting run over.
posted by checkitnice at 5:08 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

Don't know, kyrademon, but tons of stuff like this happened to me when my firstborn was an infant, nearly 20 years ago (she says, sobbing morosely and wondering what the hell happened it was just yesterday wtf do you mean TWENTY YEARS????).
posted by cooker girl at 5:10 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

"And all I could think about is how here in the US, that could never happen, because everyone assumes that the stranger is interested in their child because they want to either murder or fuck it."

This I actually do all the time, let people admire and play with my baby, and let my kids politely speak to strangers. I mean, I'm right there, what's going to happen? (The worst thing that can happen is usually that my kids announce, "YOU LOOK OLD!" or "WHY ARE YOU BALD?" at the tops of their lungs and then I die of shame, but that's life.) I don't hand the baby over to hold as much solely because she's usually strapped in to her stroller or car seat when we're in transit, but if we're actually AT some place, I'm mostly happy to hand her around. She's not in a stranger-anxiety phase and my arms can use the break!

"when, exactly, did society start going completely insane about this? "

There are a whole bunch of trends at different moments, but the insanity really started ramping way up in the 90s, with 24-hour news and much smaller families and single parents and so on.

" I love getting judged when my three year old is running like a maniac, yet nobody is willing to actually CATCH HIM when I obviously need help."

I have occasionally screamed, "GRAB THAT TODDLER!" and most people STILL DON'T! But they still are very judgy about the fact that the toddler is running off.

"Surely at least some of the reason crime against children is down is precisely because parents are more cautious, no?"

Maybe a little, but the vast, vast majority of crime against children is committed by people they know, so hiding them from strangers does little good. And then "random" violent crime is down in general, for complex reasons, and that also involves a drop in crimes against children because it involves a drop in crime in general. But parents are mostly not cautious about preventing the sorts of crimes against children that actually occur; they're cautious about preventing 1-in-a-million crimes that hardly ever happen. They don't bother to research, say, their church Sunday school's policies for adults working with children to see if they're adequate to prevent the most common molestation scenarios, but they totally don't let their kid walk around the block alone because once or twice in the past ten years a kid has been lured into a van with candy by a stranger.

" I think it's extremely unfortunate that kids don't get any independence; it can't possibly be entirely good for them."

I worry so much about this. I try to come up with methods of "supervised independence" where they can gain mastery and be in charge, but where I can still at least passively supervise. But even so ... my 7-year-old loves to help in the kitchen and this year I've been letting him graduate to being the chef, while I'm just the "sous chef" who keeps an eye on stove safety, checks the meat is fully cooked, and lifts the heavy pots, but he does everything else. I'm absolutely positive at some point he'll manage to burn himself (I've burned myself twice since New Year's since apparently I have completely lost the ability to handle kitchen tools without disaster) and we'll go to the doctor and I'll get scolded for allowing my child to cook.

My younger son, when he was 18 months or 2 years or so, managed to cut his hand in the backyard enough that he needed a couple of stitches, and we got the full-on child abuse screener, followed by stern official warnings that if the back yard wasn't "childproofed," we shouldn't allow our child to play out there.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:37 PM on January 17, 2017 [32 favorites]

I'm not touching any stranger's child, no matter what they are yelling, until I believe there will be death or serious injury if I don't. Your bystanders are afraid they will be charged with a serious crime if they grab your running child.
posted by thelonius at 5:41 PM on January 17, 2017 [18 favorites]

If I can make eye contact with the mom, and she gives me the nod, I will catch the child, because boy howdy have I been there. But otherwise I don't, because maybe she is totally fine with the kid running all over? The exception is usually children under five exiting doors by themselves.
posted by corb at 5:46 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

I had someone walk up from behind me and tuck my baby's hands under her blanket this weekend at a rally, and it is only because I didn't feel like murdering someone literally while watching Bernie Sanders talking in front of us that I am free to speak to you today. I settled for holding the blanket in place and saying "Thank you, she's fine, she hates losing her freedom of movement, how about we watch the speeches, hm?"
posted by Etrigan at 5:47 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

I know I'm showing my age here, but when, exactly, did society start going completely insane about this? I mean, I know it has, but I know it wasn't like this when I was a kid, so not the 70's.

I think it really depends on the region and the local culture. It also ebbs and flows with mass social panics. Like, I grew up in the 90's, which is like core 'stranger danger' territory, but living in a small ~25,000 town in a rural state we just didn't seem to have that. Kids still walked around trick or treating, going on long bike rides, like sometimes out into the country to go to a lake, kids were equipped with warm clothing (not idiots, after all) but I never knew anyone to get mad at a parent for a kid not wearing a hat or whatever. When I was 13 I had a gun, a job and a car. Expectations for youth are weird.

I know it's not that way anymore, the town grew and the dominant social trends of the rest of the country trickled in, and it's a pretty normal town in that way now. Kids have supervised trick or treating at senior centers (which I think is actually probably better?), no one plays in the streets, and the well-worn trails from the bike path to the creek are now overgrown and forgotten. To me this seemed to start mid 00's, and had more or less become the standard by around 2009 or so. Out at the farm town, however, all bets are off for the kids who live there. They are still effectively feral, although video games and the internet reaching them has reduced that a lot I am sure.

But for what it's worth, if I was somewhere and heard someone yell "Grab that toddler!" I would instantly drop everything to see if I was in a position to do that, because toddlers are driven by strange motivations and prone to bad mistakes, and if someone really wants you to contain them there's probably a reason.
If I come across what appears to be a stray toddler wandering, I might try to contain it to a certain area by amusing it with my funny face and the many strange things I can make it do (total pro), and I think if I was basically certain it was lost I can imagine picking it up I guess, or in immediate danger I'd grab it, but otherwise I really can't imagine touching a stranger's kid.
I'm from a huge family and perhaps more used to being expected to aid in the raising of children I basically do not know, maybe that's a factor.
posted by neonrev at 5:58 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

My brother seems to be convinced that people will break in at night and kidnap his kids. When they stay over night the kids can't sleep in the guest room by themselves because it's on the ground floor of our house. At his own house he and his wife no longer sleep in their master bedroom because they wouldn't be able to hear if someone broke in and went into the kids' rooms, which are all clustered around the stairs. I don't get this because he isn't rich, he lives in a boring suburb of Toronto and we don't know of any kids who've been kidnapped.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:58 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

> I have occasionally screamed, "GRAB THAT TODDLER!"

I was out for a walk one day after work when a very small person came barreling around the corner, laughing hysterically. From somewhere out of sight, I could hear an adult-sounding person shouting a name, repeatedly. So I kind of blocked the toddler and was like "Hey! Where ya going! Let's stand here for a second!" and at that moment the kid's adult came running around the corner and he was all "THANK YOU!"

I live in an urban neighborhood in an urban city and it always makes me happy to see kids out and about doing stuff. There's a skate park around the corner, so I see kids on their way to and from it, and at the Walgreens buying snacks, and getting on or off buses. When I was 10, I had to take two city buses to get from where we lived to the school I went to, in a city where I really didn't speak the language. My mom went with me a few times but it didn't take long before I announced I could do it myself and I didn't need her to come with me. This was long before cell phones. I'm glad I got to do that. I feel for kids who never get to have experiences like that.
posted by rtha at 5:59 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]

(I was nine months pregnant and waddling after the toddler as fast as I could, within eyesight, and shouting at park employees to grab that toddler! who was fleeing the scene as fast as possible. I get why people might not want to grab random toddlers but I feel like this situation was pretty clear the few times it happened!)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:04 PM on January 17, 2017 [13 favorites]

In addition to the 24/7 news cycle leading people to overestimate risk, with cable came a proliferation of shows that encouraged the most judgy behavior. Judge Judy, talk shows of the Maury Povich variety with the endless parade of people making bad choices, Nancy Grace and her sanctimony, all the reality tv with the "hidden" camera that featured contestant/characters speaking ill of each other, reality tv that played up stereotypes of contestants/characters in order to make some statement about their moral fitness.

Media doesn't enforce empathy toward others and a best reading of a situation; it allows us to bask in judginess and superiority. Comment sections on the internet made us used to expressing that in a public forum. Now people trip over themselves to tell others they're Doing It Wrong.
posted by chaoticgood at 6:08 PM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]

Just as a point of reference, my mom left me, my infant sister, and some other kids in the car, with windows down, on a mild day, on a hill. That was the day 5 year old me discovered in the following order; what that handle beside the gear shift does, how gravity works, the sound a vw bug makes when it careens into a truck, how fast my mom can run down a hill in heels, and how sore my bottom could be once it was determined that everyone except the bug was ok. I think strangers may have lined up to help with the spanking. Nobody blamed my mom. But it was the 70s, and our parents would throw us outside after breakfast and expect to see us again when we got hungry.

Now, I'm twitchy about my kid going to the park a block or two away, and he's a teenager. Not because of trouble he's likely to get into, but because I'm worried that someone will call the cops because he's alone, and cop response is unpredictable.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:18 PM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

I totally agree with the perspective in this piece that everyone frets too much and it's insane, so this question is largely wankery. But I notice it's always presented as a paradox that (a) people are more obsessed with kids' safety even though (b) kids are safer than ever. Even I have made the argument that it's ridiculous to focus on safety when we're already so safe. But the piece doesn't really dig into whether (a) has helped to cause (b). In the same way that Victorian sentimentality for kids preceded the curbing of infant mortality rates, perhaps obsessing on child safety is one of the reasons kids are actually safer.
posted by Miko at 6:24 PM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

(I was nine months pregnant and waddling after the toddler as fast as I could, within eyesight, and shouting at park employees to grab that toddler! who was fleeing the scene as fast as possible. I get why people might not want to grab random toddlers but I feel like this situation was pretty clear the few times it happened!)

Well, you'd clearly just eaten a baby, and were aiming to make it two. I don't blame them.
posted by RustyBrooks at 6:29 PM on January 17, 2017 [84 favorites]

I can't even get random strangers to stop telling me on the street that my kids aren't dressed warmly enough

Ugh, I was taking my baby from the car into a mall a month or so ago on a relatively cold day. She was wearing fleece footie pjs and a hat, but wasn't wearing a jacket because it's not safe to have anything too bulky in a carseat, and we didn't have anything that fit that would work. I have a really warm sleeping bag type thing in the stroller, but I didn't want to take the time to get her strapped into it in the parking lot, because it was cold. So I just held her close and walked quickly into the mall - I'm sure we were outside for less than two minutes, maybe less than one. But that was long enough for some woman to yell at me from a mall security vehicle - "Get that baby a jacket!"

Also part of the reason I was going to the mall was to try and find a thin-but-warm-coat for the baby to safely wear in the car seat. Also my baby YELLS when she is uncomfortable and YELLS when she is too hot and doesn't really seem to mind being a little chilly (or maybe just has a fast metabolism bc she's a baby).

And I just wrote two paragraphs justifying my decision to have my baby briefly outside on a cold day without a jacket, because it was really upsetting to have that woman yell at me. This is my first winter as a parent and my first cold winter in many years (I recently moved), so maybe I'm more sensitive to criticsm right now - but I know I didn't do anything wrong. Gah, I'm annoyed that I'm still annoyed about it.
posted by insectosaurus at 6:38 PM on January 17, 2017 [27 favorites]

I kind of want to have a kid now, just so I can take it outside without a hat on.
posted by Slinga at 7:03 PM on January 17, 2017 [26 favorites]

I think that it is funny that almost everyone will agree that it's great for dogs to get enough exercise and outdoor time to make sure they are happy and well-adjusted but so many of us seem to think that keeping a child, with natural inclinations to explore, learn and gain independence, in some sort of 24/7 lockdown is somehow better for them.
posted by roquetuen at 7:08 PM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]

The exception is usually children under five exiting doors by themselves.

These are the only times I've ever grabbed someone else's kid, when the kid was already on their way out my store's door and 10 feet and closing from the busy street. I can't imagine blaming a parent for this either, especially when they are already juggling 2 or 3. Toddlers move fast, man. All it takes is one second and they're gone. It's not my place to scold the kid or the parent, but I feel it is my duty as a fellow citizen to stop a child whom I have good reason to believe is in imminent peril. I'd rather err on the side of caution and be wrong and face the music, than do nothing and watch a kid get creamed. How is there even a choice in that situation?
posted by xedrik at 7:08 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

Personally, I amazed that toddlers aren't dashing into traffic on a regular basis. I babysat for my neice and nephew once, and they ran me ragged! The only reason auto accidents weren't involved, was because there were no roads of any significance within 15 miles. I sure do feel for parents!

I wont touch your kid without you asking me to (unless its about to come to some harm) but if you say something, Im happy to help gently and kindly corral a wayward little one.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 7:26 PM on January 17, 2017

I told my stories the last time this general topic came up. The noticeable uptick in busybodies has definitely had an impact on my parenting.

The safer my kids are, the more likely I am to be harrassed. It's a stupid insidious Catch-22.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 7:29 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

I have totally intercepted strangers' runaway toddlers by stepping in front of them, or even putting my hand on the top of their head, while looking around for mom or dad. I typically say something like "hey kiddo, where're you going?" in a friendly voice to buy a couple of seconds to wait for mom/dad to either scurry over or give me the "no it's okay" nod. But I live in an urban center and this is often in the context of waiting for public transport, so there's a greater expectation that we're kinda in each other's personal space.

When I see a kid wearing unseasonable clothes, I generally assume it's a Battle Not Worth Fighting. On Sunday, in 40-degree temps, I saw a small Elsa in her sleeveless sparkly dress at a highway rest stop being resolutely NOT BOTHERED by the cold -- I caught her mom's eye and we both laughed knowingly. (I don't have kids, but I was one. And I have plenty of small children in my life. And I mean, c'mon, do these weirdly nosy people not remember being a kid?)

My parents were very anxious and very reluctant to leave me alone for any reason, back in the time that most people herald as the era of "don't come home till dark" parenting. (I'm 43.) They meant well, but it was stifling and when I see parents doing this now, especially people I know, I honestly feel kind of triggered. It's projecting anxiety onto their kids, and it's not fair.
posted by desuetude at 7:40 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]

I was walking with my daughter in Target when she was young, and she was saying, I want my mom! (as she was known to do at times). A woman stopped and said, "You are lucky that you look like her, or I would have called the police."

And I'm thinking, you are lucky my daughter is here, because you might still feel like calling the police if we were to have some words.
posted by SpacemanStix at 8:06 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

Once, when Baby Confusion was about 2.5 years old, he had a full-fledged toddler meltdown on the subway, while strapped to my back in a baby carrier -- pulling my hair, kicking my ribs, and screaming at the top of his lungs. A woman sitting near me commiserated, reached into her purse and offered me her flask of whiskey. That's the kind of bystander intervention I could have used more of.
posted by pleasant_confusion at 8:14 PM on January 17, 2017 [118 favorites]

What happens, parents, do you just get used to walking the line, do you all turn into Johnny Cash at some point? I ask because like praemunire, I occasionally get edgy. I don't interfere, but the worry is there. The one that stands out for me is kids running at high speeds (for a kid) on the sopping wet floor of the change room at the city pool, or leaping from bench to puddle (sometimes there's like an inch of water there! and this is a more than one time occurrence). I'm on yellow alert while their moms are chilling, fixing their hair (which I get, chlorine sucks for hair, and obviously you want to dry that, but. I mean I know their bones are still kind of soft, and they're full of HGH so they'd probably heal relatively well in the event of a cracked skull, but still that would be awful & I'd rather not be around for that, at least :/)
posted by cotton dress sock at 8:18 PM on January 17, 2017

(I mean #notallparents obviously. Maybe those moms are on constant yellow alert, just secretly. But yeesh, unsettling)
posted by cotton dress sock at 8:26 PM on January 17, 2017

I will always try to caution the kid themselves, rather than give shit to the parent. But, kid in a car...? Calling someone...
posted by Windopaene at 8:29 PM on January 17, 2017

People are hard-wired to protect children. In our media saturated environment, we are exposed to a constant barrage of disaster porn. The paranoia around protection of children I think is related to this saturation.
I recall a high profile crime in northern California that got huge media attention and led more or less directly to three strikes law. It's still seared into my brain on some level in terms of empathy and sorrow for that family. The amount of over-amped child protectiveness is related to people's disturbed sense of what's real based on the media they consume.
posted by diode at 8:34 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

The thing is that kids are carefully watched over and protected, every minute of their day. They can't even cross a street by themselves, much less go anywhere by themselves. They are usually driven everywhere they need to go instead of walking/biking.

Then college comes along, and it's "So long! Hope life treats you well!" That's got to be quite a culture shock. "Wait a minute! What just happened? You never even let me learn how to cross a busy street by myself and now you're just throwing me out to the world alone in a strange city?"

We need really need to be teaching our kids some autonomy before we just toss them out to the world to fend for themselves.
posted by eye of newt at 8:41 PM on January 17, 2017 [16 favorites]

Years later, when I recall the scolding vendor at the farmers' market who "jokingly" threatened to call CPS because my young baby wasn't wearing sunscreen, I still fantasize about slamming her damn overpriced blueberries down on the counter and telling her to go to hell, instead of blushing and paying for them and slinking away.
posted by daisystomper at 8:41 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

if I saw someone go in to pay for gas with a small child in the car I absolutely will raise a fuss because there have been several carjackings lately where they took the car while a kid was in it (afaik no children were actually harmed).

I also always check car seats for babies ever since reading that Gene Weingarten article a few years back.
posted by AFABulous at 9:02 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

I also always check car seats for babies ever since reading that Gene Weingarten article a few years back

This is one of the few instances where I can say that reading an article had a 100%, indelible effect on my life. In a hard way, but a good way. It pretty much guaranteed that I'll never have it happened to me, and since I can be absentminded, it put the fear of God in me regarding the possibility hence forth until the end of my days.
posted by SpacemanStix at 9:22 PM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]

Every now and then I like to sit and think about Weird Uncle Touchy and wonder how things play out in places where there isn't a word for "stranger" that rhymes with one for "danger".
posted by flabdablet at 9:46 PM on January 17, 2017

That article was my dad's biggest fear. He did forget to drop off my sister once. But as he was merging onto the freeway she woke up and told him he was going the wrong way. He always put his bag next to the car seat after that. Still puts his bag in the back seat to this day, and we're all (allegedly) adults.

Whenever we three kids were out and about with just him, it wasn't unusual to have a mom or two pay a little extra attention to his parenting. For example: If one of us was having a tantrum at church (mom didn't go), a mom would frequently follow him out when he took the screamer outside, usually at a distance. She'd "get some fresh air" and have half an eye on the situation. My dad is aggravatingly calm in the face of a righteous childhood meltdown, so they'd usually be satisfied and head back in.

My dad eventually noticed the moms didn't have a follower. There wasn't another unaccompanied dad, so he's not sure if it was because he was a dad, or something else. He points out that on occasion one of us would lose a shoe somehow, so maybe they just thought he was incompetent. No one vocalized their judgements, at least.
posted by ghost phoneme at 10:05 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

Man, growing up one of my favorite things to do was to hang out in the car with a toy or two while mom got groceries (yes, I'm still weird). I'm pretty sure it was more like 15 minutes in the car, not 5. I can't imagine how much more of my whiny bullshit she would have had to put up with if that kind of behavior got a call from the police. She was a single mom and had to have enjoyed that quiet time even more than I did.
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:27 PM on January 17, 2017 [9 favorites]

> (yes, I'm still weird).

If you are then I am, too. I have strong memories of not just sitting in the car in the grocery store parking lot, but playing on the shopping cart corral like it was a jungle gym while I waited for my mom to come out of the store. But this was back in the day, when cars only had lap belts and car seats for kids were as non-ubiquitous as you can get, and everyone smoked. Ah, the 70s.
posted by rtha at 10:48 PM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]

I remember being invited to "drive" the car (at age 5! I highly disapprove). (Technically, it was just handling the steering wheel, but there was a lot of IMretrospectiveO unwarranted trust in my ability to decide not to swerve hard, or who knows what.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 10:57 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

Chrissy Teigen Knows How to Hold Her Own Baby, Thanks
posted by Room 641-A at 11:16 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

People are hardwired to harass vulnerable mothers. Their kids are competition for our kids, so if we make parenting difficult for them they won't dare come and pick berries where we pick berries.

But there is a serious cognitive dissonance thing going on, because on the one hand you have the urge "protect all babies, moar babies, moar!" and on the other hand you have the "drive her away!" urge. So what happens is that we suddenly get a hate on for the mother for the sake of the baby. The emotion comes first, followed by the justification. The hatred and desire to harass is more likely to occur to when you see people not of your micro-culture - so you might feel contempt for a woman whose child wears Disney if you aren't a Disney fan and judge her to be ruining the child by encouraging it to value consumer junk, sexism or whatever. The most common public attack occurs over what the child is wearing.

Historically powerful people would announce that certain other people were unfit mothers and take their kids away from them, keeping the kids as servants (training them for a virtuous profession as domestic servant) or putting them into orphanages where they died of neglect, all in the name of not letting a slut keep her babies and corrupt them. Single mothers were frequently unable to retain custody. If the kids died in the orphanage it was all the mothers' faults because there were so many of them we couldn't afford to feed them.

This is part of the unreasoning hate of welfare queens. Some people should not be allowed to have babies!!!

Sometimes this comes out where women who are trying to enhance their child's status attack that child or her mother, although they will more likely attack the mother because it causes less cognitive dissonance. Thus you get the phenomena of the cheerleader's mother who tried to murder the rival cheerleader's mother in order to make the rival cheerleader lose and her own child win.

If the children have no mother, as the the street children in some areas do they become the direct target. I remember reading about merchants in South America killing street children after luring them into the store with an offer of food, and they justified it on the grounds that the street children shop lifted. There was a lot of sympathy in the area for the merchants.
posted by Jane the Brown at 11:22 PM on January 17, 2017 [21 favorites]

People may be hardwired to interfere, but the law should be the voice of reason. Most calls to the cops should get an answer something like "Yes, I understand you are only worried about the safety of the children, and that is commendable. But kids need to get out for unsupervised play sometimes. There is nothing illegal or wrong with a parent letting an eight-year-old child walk a couple of blocks to a playground alone, play on the playground alone or with others, and walk home alone. Concerned adults are welcome to take a bench in the playground, read a book, and keep half an eye on things as long as they don't interfere with the children or their parents. Thank you. Goodbye."
posted by pracowity at 11:45 PM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]

Miko, see this comment for why it's unlikely there's much of a correlation.
posted by greermahoney at 12:45 AM on January 18, 2017

When I go back to the US after doing fieldwork, one of the first things that I notice is just how few children there are. I can go entire days without seeing a person under eighteen, unless I just happen to be out at the right time to catch the walking bus.

It's real spooky, in a Children of Men sort of way.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 4:06 AM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

Have we mentioned how the reactions to kids are gendered, based on which parent is involved? Because they're absolutely gendered. My wife stayed home with our daughter for the first 3 months of her life, and maybe once a week had a story about some busybody chastising her for dressing the baby too warmly/not warmly enough/not in colors that made gender identification easy/whatever other outrage they could find. These stories filled me with rage, and I vowed to be a confrontational dickbag when encountering similar situations when I stayed home with her the following 3 months. And then... nothing. It was the fall, and sometimes it was a little brisk, but said baby would pitch an adult-sized fit if you tried to put socks on her, and so I shrugged and carried her around in a front-carrier with her bare feet dangling out. Never heard a word, aside from one old lady who showed concern until I demonstrated that I actually had a pair of teensy infant socks in my pocket, just in case she actually got cold.

Now that she's 3, the needle has flipped 180 degrees in the other direction, and my wife could give her a big ol' can of Red Bull and let her run in circles screaming through the grocery store without anyone batting an eye, but I get the side-eye from other moms when I take her to the playground by myself (and I resolutely refuse to touch anyone else's child, for reasons articulated upthread)

The patriarchy, everybody!
posted by Mayor West at 5:46 AM on January 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

I grew up in the 80s and still have dark stains on my knees that are, in fact, embedded asphalt. Do kids even get their knees skinned these days? In elementary school it was like a rite of passage, kids who had skinned knees would be all, "CHECK THIS OUT". Also climbed a lot of trees and rode a lot of bikes. There have been studies that risky play helps kids judge their abilities – I never had a broken bone until last year, age 39. And honestly, I wouldn't have had it if I'd listened to my body; I knew I was over-tired and yet there was just one more jump to do and I'd finish. I pushed myself to do it... and fell, breaking my wrist.

At real play, children are in charge, instinctively making hundreds of decisions as they assess and determine the levels of risk they want to take, physically, emotionally and socially: mastering, day by day, an increasing repertoire of skills, adding to their bank of experience.

Story for y'all parents to help see the silliness of critiquers: I was born with dark brown hair that has a shock of nearly-platinum blonde through the center part. My mother caught holy hell for "ruining her daughter's life" by "dyeing her hair" omg three-alarm fire. Once I was old enough I started telling people "it's natural," which got my mother criticized for "teaching her daughter to lie." Mom carried a baby photo of me to whip out and show them the newborn with skunk hair (it was wet, so the brown looked black and the blonde looked white).

Of course now that so many people dye their hair and I'm adult, I get "why the hell did you do your highlights so badly" gee thanks people.
posted by fraula at 6:21 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

Another anecdote: Last year I was at a Target in the suburbs and I left my kid (then six) to browse the toy aisle while I shopped for a winter coat for him in the nearby clothes racks. After a few minutes a well-meaning (I assume) but indignant woman returned him to me with a warning that my son had been about to leave the store with a "strange man," and that she had rescued the child for me but I should really be more careful.

Now, the kid had been promised a $10 Lego set on this trip and I knew there was no way he would seriously consider leaving the store without it. Nonetheless after the helpful woman left I had a conversation with him about the strange man, thinking it wise to inform store security. He said he hadn't seen any man, "just that lady, she seemed pretty upset."
posted by milk white peacock at 6:24 AM on January 18, 2017 [12 favorites]

OMG, people's goddamn obsession with babies and hats. My kid, up until recently, was pretty bald. He also hated hats. Now that he's older and more cognizant, I can make a deal with him that he leaves his hat on until we get to the car or house and then he can take it off and throw it. Not so in the past, he'd just rip it off or scream and claw at it. (Why, child, why? It's a hand-crocheted hat that looks like Princess Leia's signature buns! It's ADORABLE.)

I remember when my son was tiny, I'd just gone back to work and was picking him up from daycare. I was brand new at this, didn't have a system yet, hadn't worked up my arm muscles to carry the goddamn forty pound car seat, baby, diaper bag. I struggle out the door, limp across the parking lot (because, of course, goddamn people whose children can WALK steal all the spots closest to the door), try to figure out how to open my car without putting everything on the wet, muddy ground, and a lady breezes past me and says, "What, no hat?"

OH MY GOD, FUCK YOU. If you're so concerned, offer to HELP.
posted by Aquifer at 6:49 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

Ugh, I am really not looking forward to raising a kid in the US for this very reason. Indian society can be equally obnoxious or even more so in terms of poking their nose into your business but at least there's the compensating benefit that everyone seems to love babies and will grab them out of your hands any chance they get. It's widely acknowledged that it takes a village, whereas here they somehow want you to shoulder everything on your own while still maintaining a ridiculously high standard. At least I have my upstairs condo neighbors as an example - their kid who is maybe 7 or 8 is always playing in the backyard or at the side of the house with another kid, usually spraying each other with water from a hose (when it's warm anyway). Their older kid, who just entered high school, was spotted on my train the other day on her way back from school. So maybe it can be done?
posted by peacheater at 6:56 AM on January 18, 2017

When I go back to the US after doing fieldwork, one of the first things that I notice is just how few children there are. I can go entire days without seeing a person under eighteen, unless I just happen to be out at the right time to catch the walking bus.

Where do you live? You can't throw a rock without receiving disgusted, glaring looks from the parents of multiple underfoot toddlers in my neighborhood. They're everywhere!
posted by ryanshepard at 7:42 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

It's always the people with the least to fear who are the most afraid. Maybe it's because they're sheltered and don't have as much experience with the outside world besides what they see in the media or something, but it's ridiculous sometimes.

I moved from a working class urban neighborhood to the suburbs when my son was 11, and at least from my perspective, his same-aged friends' parents were treating them like 5 year olds. There was one kid who was literally not allowed to cross a street by himself, and these were mostly quiet residential streets. At least in the cul de sacs, he would walk the long way to get to the other side, but if he hit a through street, he'd be stuck. Another kid's mom would come accompany him, check out the environs, and then set a time to come get him like it was a toddler play date. My son was taking the city bus to school when he was about 8, and nobody in our old neighborhood called the cops or anything, but once we moved to the suburbs, everyone seemed to see danger lurking everywhere.

But the weirdest thing to me is that, even after they asked about the moral component, the respondents didn't have the self awareness to adjust their assessments of the dangers of leaving a kid in a car for bad reasons vs. good ones. What is that? Do grown adult humans have such an ingrained belief in Just World that they literally believe that the world will punish bad people and reward good ones? Because if so, they need to get out more too.
posted by ernielundquist at 8:10 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Wow all those busybody stories are horrifying for me as we are thinking of becoming parents... have any of you had that happen and then just like, told the busybody to fuck right off? No judgement if you haven't and I don't mean the question that way, I'm just wondering if doing that would make things worse or if it would make them back off or if this just happens so often that you legitimately can't fight all of them because it'd be so draining. I'm really not looking forward to this aspect of parenting if we get pregnant.
posted by FireFountain at 8:19 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

I don't have kids, but I try to be a helpful adult. If I see a kid (like, younger than 10) and I can't see their accompanying adult, I'll sometimes ask "do you have an adult around?" and I'll keep an eye on very small kids who are, for instance, hovering around a door look like they're going to make a run out the door when a parent isn't looking. I think of that as basic "I live in this society" level of "it takes a village."

Some of the examples of intrusion around this seem positively egregious. Fuck the fuck off, people.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:42 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think it's some kind of sick reaction to the growth in the percentage of moms in the workforce. In 1975 47% of moms with kids under 18 in the US worked. In 2013 it was 70%.

Meanwhile, I wish someone had been around to give my parents hell for the shit they did to me and my sisters when we were little. and my mom never worked.
posted by mareli at 8:45 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Thing is, it's scary when someone questions your parenting, because at least some subset of them have been known to call cops or child protective services on people they think are doing it wrong. There are people out there who have some extremely broad ideas of what constitutes child abuse, and who have extremely outsized trust in authority figures. Look around on the internet for a minute, and you'll see commenters calling to have people's kids taken away for feeding them foods they don't think are appropriate, giving them names they think are weird, letting them stay up later than they think they should, and all kinds of silly, shitty reasons like that. You'd like to think the authorities in cases like that would tell them to fuck off, but what if they don't?

I was not comfortable goading people like that until my son was a legal adult.
posted by ernielundquist at 8:46 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

This morning, I'm planning on sending my kids to walk the 2 blocks to school as usual...at -44F. I feel a little bad about it, actually---but not enough to drive them to school and fight the drop off craziness.
posted by leahwrenn at 9:02 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm not touching any stranger's child, no matter what they are yelling, until I believe there will be death or serious injury if I don't. Your bystanders are afraid they will be charged with a serious crime if they grab your running child.

I'm actually more concerned that they'll just get me all sticky.
posted by mudpuppie at 9:07 AM on January 18, 2017 [11 favorites]

Anyone else ever get a handwritten note tucked into the handle of your car door, "from one mom to another," telling you that your carseat wasn't properly installed? I'm not sure if it would have been more or less infuriating had I actually been a mom.

To be fair, I've had several rounds of car seat installation training (yes, it's a thing) and the number of car seats I see on a daily basis that are improperly installed would astound you.

I've never left a note, but if I decided to start, I could probably finish a notepad before leaving the mall parking lot.

(For those wondering, the easiest one to spot is car seats installed in the middle seat of cars that I know do not have lower anchors in the center postilion.
Parents have been told that the center is the safest and so will use one left anchor and one right anchor, something that is explicitly not allowed by most vehicle manufacturers, especially in older vehicles.)
posted by madajb at 9:09 AM on January 18, 2017

Think of this the next time my children run circles around you in Walgreens screaming "DO THE NAKED BUTT!" at the top of their lungs.

So that's who you are.

I have no idea of how to do the Naked Butt; my own free-range childhood, its many virtues notwithstanding, was severely deficient in that regard.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:22 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

This morning, I'm planning on sending my kids to walk the 2 blocks to school as usual...at -44F.

Yes, I know this is awful, but I'm going to laugh (and then be so ashamed) if I read in the news that your kids have been eaten by Akhlut, the gigantic wolf-orca hybrid of Inuit mythology. "Oh, if only she had listened to Mrs Busybody and not let her children walk alone in the Ice Kingdom!"
posted by pracowity at 9:32 AM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

I grew up in the US Midwest in the 1970s, and my Mom still tells stories of unsolicited childcare advice from older busybodies. "You should cut his hair, he looks like a girl!" is a particular favorite.

I think this must be one of those universal constants. Every generation thinks they invented sex. Every generation thinks the one that came before is a bunch of misguided busybodies. Every generation thinks the one that comes next is - oy, these kids today I tell ya.

And of course these sorts of parenting interactions are always hitting a nerve, they touch something the recipient cares about and frets over a lot. Perhaps one tends to remember such comments out of proportion to their actual frequency.

And maybe I shouldn't even talk, since after four years of stay-at-home parenting, I can't remember even one comment along these lines. Maybe I am getting credit I don't deserve on account of gender. Maybe I need to get out more. Maybe my hearing just isn't all that. Maybe my relatively advanced age means I have large stores of IDGAF and I just forget such things.
posted by Western Infidels at 9:33 AM on January 18, 2017

When I was in middle school--12 or 13 years old--my friend's mom left my friend and me and my friend's two little brothers who were late-elementary-school-aged in the minivan in the parking lot while she went to pick something up in the store. She did that thing where the car was sort of on but the engine wasn't: the radio was on and the air conditioner was on (this was Florida), and the keys were in the ignition.

My friend and I looked at each other for a second, and knew exactly what was going to happen. She scooted into the driver's seat, turned the ignition, expertly backed the minivan out of the parking space, and pulled into a parking space a few spots away. She turned the key back to where only the air and the radio were on, moved back to the passenger seat, and we all said nothing.

Her mom came back and looked confused, as she had parked in front of the store she was going to, and now the van was in front of a different store. She looked at us and we kept straight faces and no one said a word.

This is the danger of leaving your 12 or 13 year old alone in the car, especially with siblings and friends to perform for.
posted by millipede at 9:37 AM on January 18, 2017 [24 favorites]

> have any of you had that happen and then just like, told the busybody to fuck right off?

I haven't done that but I have ignored a busybody pointing at my kid and irately shouting "Whose child is this?" at a playground. He was fine. He wasn't hurting anyone. It was a playground and he was playing and I didn't feel like dealing with an uptight parent.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:51 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

I've gotten on my soapbox before, but I still can't believe how uptight people are about leaving children in the car. I'm much, much, MUCH more afraid of my lil' sprinter getting hit by a car then I would be if I knew he was strapped securely in his car seat while I dropped off a library book/grabbed the dry cleaning/whatever. Oh well, at least I'm getting my exercise chasing after him.

These instances seem to be increasing as some people feel that in order to avoid really horrible fringe cases, you need to come down on every instance that could (theoretically) lead to that case, without much discretion. It's a combination between fear of "always thinking about worst case scenarios" and a lack of trust in other people to make wise decisions for their own lives. Add to it that we keep distance from people socially more than we used to, people feel justified in making decisions about other lives from a distance without even knowing people or what their situations are. We just assume the worst, which is horrible for developing empathy for broader contexts, also.
posted by SpacemanStix at 9:55 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

Sounds like there needs to be some sort of Million Unaccompanied Kid March demanding the right to live their lives a little, combined with the right to universal sidewalks and bicycle paths so they wouldn't have to march down the middle of the street.
posted by pracowity at 10:13 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

It's unfortunate but demonstrably true that you're far more likely to have your kids lives ruined by sanctimonious busybodies than they are to be abducted by strangers.

If however many thousands of years of organized religion haven't already confirmed this, I don't know that we're going to make any headway with the people that try to get you arrested for letting a nine year old ride his bike a suburban block to the park.
posted by thivaia at 10:23 AM on January 18, 2017

You can bet that a lot of these parents who don't let their kids go places alone are not "overprotective" but instead worried about getting arrested or at least hassled by CPS because a neighbor lost their shit. And the fewer kids that are out, the more your little wanderer sticks out.

So much this. When we bought our current house, we had a young child, and we specifically chose a close-knit, kid-friendly, low-traffic neighborhood five unimpeded blocks from a beautiful park/playground/splash pad combo. But you never, and I mean never, see any kids walking or biking there on their own. Even older kids (10ish and up?). My kid is only 3 now, so of course she's always accompanied, and I hope that one day we'll be able to take advantage of the environment as we envisioned it when we moved in, but I just don't know.

I was born in 1981. When I was a toddler, we were at a community event or some such, and some woman we didn't know started smiling/waving/babbling with me in a friendly way. A few minutes later, she held out her hand, and I took it, and she led me toward the exit. My parents, who were standing nearby the whole time, called out sharply, and the woman immediately returned me to my parents, saying that she didn't think they'd been paying close enough attention to me and that she wanted to teach us all a lesson about stranger danger. My mom still gets so pissed off whenever she recounts this story.

The thing that is so frustrating about this article, this phenomenon, and even some of the comments here is that every goddamn minute of every goddamn day I am with my kid is a constant rolling cost/benefit analysis. Trust me when I say that my kid's safety and well-being (and I count learning independence and logical consequences as part of that well-being) is NEVER not at the absolute forefront of my mind, and even if it looks to you like I'm leisurely grocery shopping/drying my hair/whatever, I'm thinking about her, worrying about her, glancing at the time, trying to go faster. The thing that so many busybodies fail to grasp (or choose to ignore, I guess) is that parents KNOW their kids, know them more intimately than anyone else in the world could ever hope to, and that knowledge is built into every one of those thousands and thousands of daily calculations. They KNOW if they're likely to sprint or not, if they tend to wander in stores or not, if they're naturally reckless or cautious, clumsy or steady on their feet, if they run hot or cold, they've been adequately prepped with knowledge of what to do if they get lost or scared or a stranger approaches them or there's an emergency, and a million other circumstances I could name. My mom could tell me to stay in a certain spot in a department store, and I'd stand there like a statue until she returned (I spent many happy hours camped out in the book aisle of Target while she did the rest of the boring shopping). My brother couldn't handle that privilege without obliviously wandering, so he always had to stay with her or sit in the shopping cart. My mom once got shamed for not holding my brother's hand in front of a school pickup lane, where the road was at least 100 feet from the front door where they were standing, and she was just dumbfounded by the incident, because as she said, "He's my kid. I knew he wasn't going to run away from me and into traffic." I mean, of course there are always outlier incidents and true accidents, but...

As far as confronting busybodies, it's hard. I can't speak for anyone else, but people criticizing my parenting, even when I know I'm in the right, feels absolutely awful. The best I can muster in the moment is usually a cool, "Thank you for your concern, but we're fine." The rage always sets in later.
posted by anderjen at 10:51 AM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

Really? My car has a ridiculously low limit for LATCH (40 lbs for carseat + child), so we've given up on them entirely.

Yeah, seats in a non-approved position happens most often in smaller sedans. It's usually somewhere in the car manual, but who reads that these days?
A lot of car seat manuals (which are also never read) will say "not recommended, but see your vehicle manual".

Your car has a low-ish weight limit, but not atypical for certain manufacturers.
LATCH was designed for a different time and hasn't really kept up with modern usage (bigger (heavier) car seats in general, older kids in car seats for longer, etc.).
posted by madajb at 11:34 AM on January 18, 2017

Where do you live? You can't throw a rock without receiving disgusted, glaring looks from the parents of multiple underfoot toddlers in my neighborhood. They're everywhere!

I live very near an elementary school of about 200 kids.

School lets just after 2pm.
By 2:30, you wouldn't know the school was there.

I don't know where all those kids go, but they sure aren't outside playing.
posted by madajb at 11:40 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

I think this strongly ties into the fact that women, and especially white, middle class + women, are socialized to be fearful of the outside world.

There's just a whole world of bizarre worldviews and urban legends that you're inundated with from the time you're still a kid. There are serial killers hiding under your car waiting to slash your Achilles tendon and abduct you from parking lots. Dastardly villains playing recordings of crying babies outside your front door to get you to come outside so they can murder you. Pedophiles gathering intelligence about your family based on the information gleaned from the family stickers on your minivan. Nefarious drug dealers hanging out outside of daycares handing out tabs of acid and telling kids they're temporary tattoos. And then, you add all those ridiculous crime shows where evil supervillains meticulously plot out baroque and grotesque murders and brave FBI agents or similar track them down until it starts to feel real, and you end up spending inordinate amounts of time worrying about really weird and implausible dangers.

Of course it's ridiculous, and I hate it when busybodies harass people, but I also feel bad for people who genuinely think that the world is that dangerous. It sucks for them, too, because they end up pretty much never doing anything fun or interesting because they've been taught that the world is a hostile place and they don't belong there. I know otherwise intelligent, competent adult women who are afraid to do even some of the most banal things, like ride public transportation or go to a movie by themselves. So they're not just applying these weird guidelines to other people and their kids. They live like that.
posted by ernielundquist at 12:06 PM on January 18, 2017 [11 favorites]

I wonder what the dividing point is between passing on the stranger danger urban legends and switching over to the "we ate dirt and chewed on lead paint" Facebook memes.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:31 PM on January 18, 2017

I wonder what the dividing point is between passing on the stranger danger urban legends and switching over to the "we ate dirt and chewed on lead paint" Facebook memes.

Third kid, or first kid among your peer group, or last kid among your peer group.
posted by Etrigan at 12:35 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

> You can bet that a lot of these parents who don't let their kids go places alone are not "overprotective" but instead worried about getting arrested or at least hassled by CPS because a neighbor lost their shit.

Well then, many of those people have internalized that and made the alleged lurking dangers real in their minds. Because I see parents making themselves utterly sick with anxiety over every detail of risk-assessment to guard against a catalogue of imagined horrors. Is my friend's well-behaved 11 year old son able to occasionally walk three blocks (potentially) alone (if there doesn't happen to be another kid heading his way) through his own (urban, middle-class to upper-middle-class, village-like) neighborhood (with shops on each corner, where he is known), if Mom has a meeting and can't meet him where the bus drops him off? My friend would feel SO MUCH BETTER if it were just TWO blocks instead of three.

I'm not saying this to mock her. As the child of parents who behaved similarly, I'm saying that dealing with this level of anxiety is exhausting for parents and kids both. It was unusual for my parents to be so overprotective, but it's now the norm in the US.
posted by desuetude at 1:04 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

One of the main reasons I am not going to be a parent is I cannot handle this level of scrutiny and "correction" from strangers and family. My sympathies.
posted by agregoli at 1:17 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Then these poor kids who have been supervised every minute of their lives enter adulthood, and are mocked for "needing constant validation". What do you expect?
posted by Cranialtorque at 1:30 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

It's probably going to take more remote supervision to convince parents to use less in-person supervision: parents will put electronic leashes on their children so they know exactly where their children are and can even secretly eavesdrop on them.

It will be something the kid can't easily take off, like an ankle monitor for a criminal. And monitors will communicate with each other, so parents will track who else is with their kids, and the kids' monitors will communicate with criminals' ankle bracelets so parents will know when their kids are near evil strangers. And maybe communicate with cell phones? And the kids' bracelets will let out a warning if they're in supposed danger zones, like near a convicted molester's home, because those guys, besides wearing ankle bracelets, will be required to set up wireless warning beacons in their homes and vehicles.

So you end up with kids treated like criminals, or like characters in a video game, but at the same time, maybe they end up roaming by themselves in the woods again? Because their parents know they're in the woods and can see exactly where they are on a map, and they know who is with them and know that those five kids in that electronic cluster in the woods have at least five parents and the cops and CPS and various smart applications tracking them remotely.

Drone babysitter: "Where's Johnny? He's exactly right there, Mrs Jones, standing in the park, same spot as usual. He's with the usual friends. There's one kid we don't know, but by the sound of it, they're talking about school -- he's a new kid at school, I think, and they're explaining who is a good teacher and who is a bad teacher. Do you want me to swing by and intercept or shall I let him continue?"

That's my bet for what happens to kids in the future.
posted by pracowity at 2:12 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

I think this strongly ties into the fact that women, and especially white, middle class + women, are socialized to be fearful of the outside world.

Maybe (although I stand by anyone running barefoot on wet concrete being just unnerving to watch).

I think it's more down to things like alienation from community, or just the loss of community in some places, full stop, because of things like increased mobility, and fewer safe public spaces (because of e.g. poor urban planning, sprawl, inequality, other things, depending. Fewer eyes on the street, fewer people invested, more isolation, more unknowns).

Where/when I grew up, we'd be out playing tag and biking or whatever until sundown. We'd run errands to the store, no problem. No one worried - despite the sensation around satanic cults at the time - because if anything went wrong, someone's mom (and usually it was a mom, more stayed at home back then), or some neighbour (often a retired person), would have an eye or ear out for anything wonky. Or, there'd be an older kid around who knew to get someone if necessary, and was trusted by adults. (People married at roughly the same time, so there were huge cohorts of kids around. Parents knew each other, or at least knew of each other.) The crime rate in that city was actually not particularly low at the time; theoretically, people could have indulged fear if they wanted to, but the neighbourhood and trust in community were strong enough that only the most anxious did.
posted by cotton dress sock at 2:40 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

When I was a kid, we played outdoors unsupervised, in our neighborhood, with the other kids. However, my parents might have been unusual in letting their girl children do this - I knew other girls who lived nearby but they were almost never available for outdoors play. And MY parent's rules were biased against letting us play indoors at other kid's houses, so the girls were mostly out of reach. I happily played with the boys, though, and didn't think much of it. But I wonder if keeping the girls in, was the start of the trend that led to keeping everyone in?
posted by elizilla at 3:25 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Nefarious drug dealers hanging out outside of daycares handing out tabs of acid and telling kids they're temporary tattoos

FFS, ernie, stop handing out the trade secrets like they were free samples or some shit.
posted by flabdablet at 9:01 PM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

This article is so timely. My son played with a 7-year-old neighbor the other day, and her mom let her walk around the corner to our house and then back home later (no crossing streets). My mom was shocked and said she wouldn't let a kid do that until age 10 or 11 because of the "crazy people out there" (or something like that). She's worried that someone will abduct him. I thought, "Oh, great, this will be so fun when I start letting my 6-year-old do things like that. (My mom has major boundary issues.) I don't know how you ever convince people that stuff like that is safe if the statistics (decreased crime rates, etc.) don't help. The thing I'd be most worried about is him getting hit by a car because of the careless way people drive in our suburban neighborhood.
posted by trillian at 7:50 AM on January 19, 2017

The thing I'd be most worried about is him getting hit by a car because of the careless way people drive in our suburban neighborhood.

I read a great book on this topic a few years ago, The Science of Fear by Daniel Gardner. One of the things he brings up in the book is how parents, fearing "stranger danger", rarely allow kids to walk or ride their bikes to school anymore, preferring to drive them instead. Even though, statistically, doing so actually puts the child at far great risk, since the chances of being abducted while walking/biking to school are absurdly low, while the chances of getting into a car accident while driving to school are much higher.
posted by The Gooch at 8:52 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

I only have a 3.5yo, so I haven't had much opportunity to be commented on, I guess. And the only comments I tend to get are "cute hat!" because kiddo has an adorable crocheted Viking helmet-type hat.

I *like* to go to the park with my kid. He's too young to go by himself, honestly, but as a parent who works outside of the home for 45+ hours a week, I don't get a lot of opportunity to hang out with him. And I *like* hanging out with him. I want to see him play and interact with friends. When else will I be able to do that if I don't go to the park with him?

We hear so many stories of "oh, yeah, when *I* was a kid, I got to ...", but what about from the parents' perspective? I don't see too much of that.

But I think a big part of what happened, too, was Jacob Wetterling's abduction in the 80s. People wonder what happened between the 70s and 90s that made attitudes change? I think that was one of the big reasons, combined with everyone's better access to news and media.
posted by jillithd at 12:17 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Pracowity, if your idea was a real product, I guarantee you that it would fly off the shelves. Seriously, I'm willing to bet every parent in my neighborhood except me would buy one.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 12:28 PM on January 19, 2017

It will be something the kid can't easily take off, like an ankle monitor for a criminal. And monitors will communicate with each other, so parents will track who else is with their kids, and the kids' monitors will communicate with criminals' ankle bracelets so parents will know when their kids are near evil strangers. And maybe communicate with cell phones? And the kids' bracelets will let out a warning if they're in supposed danger zones, like near a convicted molester's home, because those guys, besides wearing ankle bracelets, will be required to set up wireless warning beacons in their homes and vehicles.

But what about the danger from people who haven't offended yet? Or haven't been caught? No, there's only one real solution: we all have to wear them. Of course, law enforcement will swear that there is no way that they, or the people that they get their funding from, will ever, ever abuse that.

A boot stamping on a face forever... for the children.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:16 PM on January 19, 2017

"Pracowity, if your idea was a real product, I guarantee you that it would fly off the shelves."

You can already get a wristwatch phone/GPS intended for children from your cell carrier; generally it has two buttons on it and you can program in two phone numbers (mom and dad, say), and the phone can accept calls from five numbers (mom, dad, grandma, etc.), and also sends its GPS location to designated phones (and can send alerts when kids cross designated boundaries). I think they add $10/month to your plan, since they're such limited devices.

We've met a couple of kids who have them -- typical use-cases include younger kids of divorced parents who have shared custody, so that if there's a miscommunication the kid can call for a ride, and also can call each parent independently whenever they want to without having to go through the parent (but aren't quite old enough for a phone-phone). That's nice. We also know several autistic kids who have them, which lets them have a little more independence while reducing risks of running off, getting lost, or just having a meltdown and being unable to reach a parent ... it lets them, say, go to peers' birthday parties without a parent having to attend with them. Schools are also willing to let younger kids have them at school since they can only make and take calls to a small handful of designated numbers, can't text, don't have apps, etc., so are a less-abuseable safety device rather than a fun distracting smartphone.

Anyway, we haven't met anyone who has one just out of parental paranoia yet; usually they have a pretty good use case either for the GPS tracker for a kid with some developmental issues, or a kid who needs a very limited cell phone.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:23 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

In one of the many lessons that we've had to counteract at home, our kindergartener learned all about Stranger Danger this week at school. So over dinner, we talked about how talking to strangers was fine, though GOING somewhere with strangers was not. If you can't find mom or dad or otherwise need help, the very best thing to do is talk to a stranger! Find a mom and ask her to help you!

(We also have had to have the talk that, no, contrary to what the teacher says, cops aren't ALWAYS going to be the best person to ask for help. Cops are like everyone else, some are good and some are bad.)
posted by rabbitrabbit at 3:41 PM on January 19, 2017

"Then these poor kids who have been supervised every minute of their lives enter adulthood, and are mocked for "needing constant validation". What do you expect?"
posted by Cranialtorque

It could be worse. During the extremes of sexual anxiety in the 1800's little boys were sometimes not allowed to hold it themselves while they were peeing until six or so years of age for fear they would learn that it felt good and take up masturbation which as good parents knew lead to insanity and perversions. They only got to hold it once their caretakers were sure they knew how naughty it was and wouldn't touch it more than necessary.

So if you think this generation is over-protective....

When a population drops relative to the rest of the population they experience a loss of power and rights. For example in societies where there are few women compared to men they have fewer rights. In China, for example due to selective birth control, there are fewer women than men, so that many men cannot get married. Despite this women have so little perceived right to their sexuality that a woman identified as a non-virgin, such as a divorcee is unlikely to be able to get married. Even young widows are considered an unacceptable partner because they are "used goods"

But if the population is considered loved - as women and children often are- the restriction of their rights and privileges appears in the form of protective restrictions. Women are not allowed to leave purdah for their own protection, they must ask for permission to travel, kids are not allowed talking to strangers, etc.

The sudden terror that the world is dangerous to our children coincides with the end of the baby boom and increases with every drop in the birthrate. Some of this, of course is a genuine thing where when people had fourteen or twenty children they just couldn't keep them all safe at home and people did not consider the death of child to misadventure unthinkable. But children nowadays are not given free time. Good parents do not allow them to really choose what to do. They get to pick between a short list of available extra-curricular activities that will look good on their university application. They get to be picky eaters on a short list of child approved foods that mainly consist of pizza and ready mac. They don't get to pick between Thai and Polish food, only inexpensive processed carbs that take no effort to prepare. The hugely restricted diet that many children eat now is regarded as a concession, (children are so spoiled!) which is much easier to accept than the fact that it may be impossible for the nice middle class family to actually get a healthy dinner cooked and on the table at a time when the kids are hungry, and if the kids actually had a choice of varied meals they might prefer them.

Similarly kids do not get to hold jobs now, or be responsible for significant things, like senior care, or keeping the woodbox filled. This is wonderful because it means they aren't being exploited; it also means that a fifteen-year-old knows that he or she is entirely on sufferance and not beginning to approach equal status with the adults. The trade off, of having the children safe from labour exploitation is that they also are deprived of bargaining for power with the value of their labour. I'm not saying it is bad, but I am saying that it is a loss of power and autonomy for many kids.
posted by Jane the Brown at 3:51 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

parents, fearing "stranger danger", rarely allow kids to walk or ride their bikes to school anymore, preferring to drive them instead. Even though, statistically, doing so actually puts the child at far great risk, since the chances of being abducted while walking/biking to school are absurdly low, while the chances of getting into a car accident while driving to school are much higher.

Not that I disagree with the larger point of many children being overly sheltered, but this is hardly a fair comparison. If you wanted to accurately compare the degree of risk in a child walking/biking to school vs. being driven to school, you can't look at abduction as the sole source of danger for the former; you'd need to take into account the risk of being in an accident while walking/biking as well, which is almost certainly more significant than the risk of abduction.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:07 PM on January 19, 2017

Ironically, the risk of being in an accident while walking/biking is increased by the people driving their children to school. If they'd walk or bike with their kids instead, everybody would be safer.
posted by Lexica at 7:42 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

If they'd walk or bike with their kids instead, everybody would be safer.

Indeed.

Some of my local schools run walking buses. I'm never quite sure whether to be encouraged or heartbroken.
posted by flabdablet at 6:11 AM on January 20, 2017

Why would you be heartbroken? My kid's school does walking buses during "Walktober," and they're fun.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:03 AM on January 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

Encouraged that they're walking, but heartbroken that an organized group event is the only way that what should be an ordinary walk to school seems to happen.
posted by asperity at 9:07 AM on January 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

At my school, walking buses are fun events where people meet and all walk together -- they're not supposed to be ordinary walks to school. I suppose it could happen every day, but it's actually a bit annoying (from the adult perspective) because you have to go as slow as the slowest Kindergartener, you're not taking the most direct route, etc. It's not the way I would want to go to school every day.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:50 PM on January 20, 2017

Oh, it looks like at your school they're every day events. Again, I'm not seeing why that's heartbreaking -- it sounds great to me. Kids get to walk with their peers, and fewer adults have to make the walk to school -- this is an issue if there aren't fulltime parents able to take the time every morning and the children are too young to reasonably walk to school on their own.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:54 PM on January 20, 2017

this is an issue if there aren't fulltime parents able to take the time every morning and the children are too young to reasonably walk to school on their own.

And there's the heartbreak.

I walked to school and back with my mother for the first week. After that, I walked on my own. I was five. This was normal.
posted by flabdablet at 7:47 PM on January 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Huh, interesting. As I recall I wouldn't've had the sense of direction to get myself to school on my own when I was five, and neither would my kids. It wouldn't've been t a "strangers will abduct you!" fear on my part, when mine were little, but "you are a space cadet and will get distracted and be late every day."

We're far enough from their elementary schools that they got buses, anyway.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:09 AM on January 22, 2017

I walked to school in elementary school, but most definitely did not walk there on my own at 5 years old. What was normal in my suburban neighborhood in the late 70s/early 80s was for parents to walk their kids to school until...at least second grade?

Alternately, for kids with older brothers and sisters, the older kids had to walk their little siblings to school. Not as in in "you're all going about the same time, walk together-ish," but rather "you, older child, are in charge of walking younger child, and no excuses will be accepted if you don't deliver them to the door of their classroom holding their hand and I will KNOW."
posted by desuetude at 7:10 AM on January 23, 2017

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