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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

Schools have created this problem by meddling in the parenting process for the last few decades. Calling the police if the kid walks home by himself. Calling social services if they come to school without lunch. Involving juvenile justice authorities if two kids settle an argument with a bit of fighting.

Now after they have parents thinking that one false move and their kids will be placed in foster care, they complain about overparenting.

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I think that the schools where kids show up without lunches and the schools where parents are doing their children's homework are very different places. The article even concedes that the issues that the authors are trying to fight against are very much "first world problems" at the end of the day.

I think that the schools where kids show up without lunches and the schools where parents are doing their children's homework are very different places.

Maybe that holds in segregated urban areas, but the vast majority of the country is not near a city. Certainly my small-town high school had both of those groups, because when there's only one high school around, that's unsurprisingly where everyone goes.

I think the majority of the population (of the US) lives in urban areas.

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2012/03/us-urban-population-w...

My friend's high school does not permit lunches from home; they require religious or medical permission that they must have a specific diet, and have to be eaten in a separate room, and lunches are checked to ensure no peanuts/etc.

I guess I've finally become a hopeless cynic, my first reaction to that statement was that somebody in the school administration and somebody in the company supplying the food to the district probably have a tidy little financial arrangement propped up by the peanut allergy boogeyman.

Count me in. Someone is making money, whether it's a an external contract or just the school itself. For Christ's sake, parent said high school. What high school student can't handle their own peanut allergy? Oh my, what if 16 year old Timmy trades his turkey sandwich for a peanut butter and jelly? Won't someone think of the teenaged children! I can't believe a high school gets away with that shakedown, you'd think that would be illegal.

Where does that peanut allergy thing come from suddenly? When I was a kid no one had any allergies and now every other kid seems to due from a peanut.

It is caused by American parents not feeding their babies peanut butter like other cultures do.

Isn't the US basically the only country where peanut butter is even a thing? There are some others but not many. Mainly English and Dutch speaking countries, Indonesia and the Philippines.

To be fair, the people making those decisions are (probably) parents themselves and those policies exist to protect the school or appease parents (or just make them feel superior, but that's a bit cynical).

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