In large swaths of suburbia, people almost never walk anywhere. When they want to "go outside" they take a car to the park. The result is that the concept of "waiting on a sidewalk for the bus" is so foreign they don't even consider it an option. Let alone "walking to the bus stop".

There are a few places where street life still exists – mostly really large cities and really small & old ones.

It's a tragedy how the convenience of taking a car right to the front door of some megastore has gutted city life. Shopping used to mean a walk down Main St. with more, smaller owner-operated stores and a high probability of meeting someone and stopping for some coffee. But that took longer, and you needed to live close by (=smaller houses/properties). And sometimes it rained, and those shop were more expensive, and we decided a worthy human being is in the office 46h/week.

(not that those aren't legitimate reasons. It's more a matter of taste, and most people apparently don't share mine).

Also a lost in sense of community. As the study shows, if you know the reasoning for why the mother left the kid in the car, people are less likely to judge the situation as dangerous.

If you all knew your neighbors, and you see someone's kid running around, you'll know why that kid is by themselves and probably less likely to called Child Services.

One of my coworkers had child services called on him. His son's school let out early. His son forgot his keys that day, so he climbed through an open window through the 2nd floor. Neighbor saw this...called Child Services.

Mom A doesn't just send the kids to the bus stop, she stands there with them. So mom B also begins standing. Then mom A starts meeting them at the bus in the afternoons....

There's no end to it. Parents say and do the "right" things because they are better parents -- or at least the optics looks like they are. So other parents are forced to follow suit. Given enough of this insanity, the next logical step is to start using the criminal justice system to enforce what being a good parent is.

The internet and social media are just making this worse, btw.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_danger#Criticism

> The concept has been criticized for ignoring the fact that most child abductions and harm result not from strangers, but rather from someone the child knows.

It's the same reason a new mom won't eat cheese or fish for the entirety of her pregnancy.

For a small price (inconvenience), they avert assuage that fear.

Secondly, social pressure.

While it's entirely unlikely your child will be kidnapped at a playground if left unattended, it's extremely likely someone will call the cops if they see an unattended little kid.

The reason is that the majority political philosophy in the US has shifted from libertarianism/classical liberalism to progressivism. The libertarian point of view is that people generally should be free to go about their own business in the manner they see fit. The progressive point of view is that we have a collective responsibility to police the wrongdoing of other people and fix it, using state power if necessary.

In the video where the guy goes off at the mother for leaving her kid in the car, you can see the progressive power dynamic in play immediately. The guy thinks she's doing something wrong so he gets involved. (Who is he? Doesn't matter. It's everyone's job to right wrongs.) It takes maybe 15 seconds before someone mentions the police, because the only way such intrusive activism works is when a higher power (can be state, law, society, science, God, whatever) is used to identify and enforce a definition of what's right. Even though the activist doesn't explicitly threaten to call the cops, during the confrontation they are mentioned constantly because the threat of state power is the only reason the mother even has to give this guy the time of day.

If you want to go a level deeper and ask why this political shift has occurred, it's likely that one contributing factor is urbanization which been underway in the US for some time--historically densely populated cities tend to be more authoritarian than rural areas because a crazy person can do more damage in a dense city (you don't see mass shootings happening in cornfields).

In addition though, I think a contributing factor is cars, cars , cars everywhere. Having grown up in East Germany, I would be much more concerned about letting my kids (if I had any) roam around in the exact same area where I grew up in very freely. The roads are much more dangerous now for inattentive playing children. And as a local issue, a vastly increased number of ticks in the forests around my childhood home, but as I said, that's just a local issue.

When families live in areas where they naturally commingle they tend to be interested in the welfare of others around them. I think that's why it's more of an issue in the physically isolating suburbs.

From the paternalistic insanity of authoritarian collectivism.