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Comment by tomc1985 | Hacker News Reader

tomc1985

Probably because helicopter parenting is in vogue (at least in the US). It is seriously messed up that you can have CPS called on you for letting your kid wander freely in the neighborhood

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“we’ve morphed from being a village that helps raise children to a parenting police state,” -Petula Dvorak

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/free-range-kids-and-our...

I can't get my kids out of the house. I try. All of their friends are on SnapChat and/or Steam games. No one leaves their rooms. It is really depressing. Kids are not getting fresh air anymore.

How old were your kids before they got their smartphones/computers?

in our area, most kids seem to be carrying iPhones by 4th grade. sad, but there it is.

My wife's a teacher. ~1/2 of the kids around here have smartphones by 2nd or 3rd grade, all but the children of "weirdos" (maybe 2-3%) have them by 5th. The schools don't make them leave them at home anymore like they did back when regular ol' dumb phones started to show up in kids' possession. Sometimes kids will be texting during class and it's their friggin' parents they're texting, as in, their parents contacted them during class. This is not as rare an occurrence as one might hope. Teachers can't confiscate them for practically any reason because most parents freak out if they do. No parental support for discipline basically = teachers can't do it (it's ineffective and a bigger headache than it's worth).

This at lower- to middle-middle class schools, not the rich ones. And we're deep in flyover country, not anywhere trendy.

Mystery power outages that seem to hit only our house have been known to occur in my neighborhood on fine weather days. It's like a ghost in the breaker box or something...

Kids today learn faster than we did also. One they he will fix the breaker box for you and its GG dad.

I truly consider that my kid will be able to use the internet against me in ways inimaginable. Its exciting!

"Man I have no idea where we keep the key for this thing"

"Dont worry dad, I'll know how to pick locks in a sec"

"Oh man who snuck in and welded the thing shut and buried it under 5 feet of concrete? What are the odds?"

I told you, its an exciting time to be a parent.

My parents used to swipe critical computer parts from my machine as punishment, to take it away. Things like power cords, keyboards -- little stuff that cripples the computer. But I had spares for days, stuffed in a little box in the back of my closet :)

Growing up, I didn't need my parents to do that. Getting an IBM PC clone to play the latest games in the 80s required a constant effort of flipping dip switches, pulling jumpers, and reseating chips. Not to mention the whole EMM/EMS thing.

I'm still figuring out what I'm going to do for my son to give him the same... incentives.

One day the kid may outsmart the sly, old fox. Hopefully, today is not that day!

That's awesome! I'm going to use that one

I just shut off the wifi and turn off the data on their phones

Sounds like a problem of the US. It’s not (yet) like that in Europe. We spend a lot of time outside with kids not matter how bad the weather is.

As a European, I disagree. I spent most of my time playing videogames, and my childhood was during the 90s. Maybe because I was city kid.

I spent a lot of my teenage years playing videogames, but I was very rural, maybe theres a sweet village sized spot for it being safe enough to be outside, whilst also having people to be outside with.

I lived in a city (pop. 100k) and most preteens and older walked alone. You don't need a village, just safe roads (single lane, limited speeds) and parks spread throughout the city so that people (young and old) are around.

When was that.

Late 90s/early 2000s. But my younger brother did the same for the past eight years.

Don’t listen to one anecdotal opinion and conclude it’s a US problem. My neighbors kids are outside almost everyday after school and I know of others who have sports practice and other daily activities that aren’t spent inside.

The main difference between US and Europe is the way the cities are setup. Much more walkable and urban centric in EU. Populations are much denser. It was a nice change of pace to be able to walk everywhere last year when I was in Italy.

What happens when you take away the phones as a consequence (other than surly behavior)?

Sign them up for sports! Start with signing them up for everything as the season hits. Try everything once. Let them pick which things they continue with.

Go to the park to practice said sports as a family. Take breaks to play on the play structures. Repeat as needed.

we do, but I am also sick of every requirement to go outside being a scheduled event. there is no spontaneity to their lives, they only go outside when there is a practice or game for one of their sports.

btw their entire middle school is like this. I hope this is not a sad preview of their adult lives...locked in their homes on screens.

I don't have kids, and I'm still pretty young (23), but one of my favorite things to do as a kid was go camping with my family.

Have you thought about a "spontaneous" roadtrip and weekend camping trip somewhere with no reception?

Joining scouts will also make a fair amount of camping happen. Not spontaneously.

What happens if you want to go somewhere cool like a National Park? Do they not want to come along? Is there anything you can trade? Maybe an hour more of game time?

How old are your kids if you don't mind me asking? I'm from Easter-Europe so obviously a much different culture - my child's 3.5 and spends ~4 hours outside every day (except when he's sick or it's really raining outside) and I don't think that's enough to be honest - that's still 20h/day from his childhood spent trapped between 4 walls :(

early teens. they should be outside.

Teenagers don't really play outside.

I was outside all the time before age 13 - after that I started going to the mall and talking on the phone and working on the computer in lieu of outdoor activities.

This was back in the early 90s. No need to panic.

Don't you have an equivalent to football (soccer) wherever you are?

I've heard many parents of teenagers complaining that it's hard to get them off their football matches (5-a-side soccer is huge here, and any street can become an impromptu pitch).

Of course, depends on the kid, you couldn't take me off books and computers (when available) as a teenager.

One of the things our kids did was Riekes Nature Studies[1] which gave them one day a week where they spent in a variety of activities with other kids in a large park nearby (Huddart Park in Woodside). This became one of their favorite things to do because not only were many friends present, the facilitators were excellent at engaging the interests in a wide variety of kids. I remember "forcing" my youngest daughter to go and once she went she couldn't stop talking about how great it was and developed many friends that persist to today.

As a parent I came to realize that kids are unlikely to try new things spontaneously if they already have an activity they could be doing which meets their expectations of interest. So as a parent it was incumbent on me to give them the exposure to new experiences in order for them to develop their own understanding of what they did and didn't like.

[1] http://www.riekes.org/nature/

I sometimes ssh in and turn off the computer if my wife has told the kids to turn it off already. But seriously, you're the adult, turn it off and take them outside.

Did you put effort into raising them to behave differently?

Why did you give them continuous phone and steam access?

Because otherwise they will be loners. All of their friends are online. If you are offline, you are alone. I don't like this but in 2017 it is the reality for teens.

The question was why do you give them continuous phone and steam access? - continuous being the key word here. Limiting their device usage to a few hours a day does not make them socal outcasts.

Ah, even that's a phase. Wait 'til they get a girlfriend/boyfriend and a taste of freedom. Suddenly it's all bus passes and coffee shops and wandering around downtown in every weather. Can't get them home.

(But when they are home, yeah, it's text text text.)

Why do you feel that it's so important that kids get "fresh air?" My parents relentlessly tried to get me to get off the computer and go outside. I hated it, and in retrospect I can't see how it did me any good.

Limit their access to these devices. After a pre set amount of time you take away their devices or data and they have to figure something else to do.

Or maybe because fathers are much more involved than 50 years ago? There are probably a load of reasons and I don't think it's just helicopter parenting.

My father in law never changed a nappy for any of his 3 children, and that was normal. It certainly isn't now.

Fathers can't be involved if they aren't around.

Single motherhood rate in 1950: 5%

Single motherhood rate in 2010: 41%

Fathers can be around without being married to the mother.

From a technical perspective sure. From a statistical perspective, the point is a distraction.

It's not, because unmarried long-term cohabitation has exploded.

How long term? As long as a whole childhood?

Unsurprisingly most unmarried parents break up before their kid is an adult.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/terry-gaspard-msw-licsw/livin...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2004878/Unmarried-pa...

Yes. Do you really think most unmarried families have both mother and father in the household, though? Regular contact with the father would be a lot more difficult if he's not around except on weekends.

From the numbers, back in the 50s kids probably only saw their fathers on the weekends in married families. It is startling to see how much more time fathers get with their kids nowdays.

Whilst now we're much more progressive and kids don't see either parent!?

By the numbers, kids see more parents nowadays, though.

No, but I do think an increasing share of full-time two-parent families are unmarried (and married families aren't necessarily living together), and people can get married or begin cohabitation after a child is born, so comparing rates of unwed motherhood is misleading on the magnitude (though consistent with the direction, so far) of any change in the share of children living in single-parent families.

There's no reason for an indirect proxy when the actual figure of interest is available:

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-192...

Sure, the majority still are together, but the gap is widening. Quoting your link:

"During the 1960-2016 period, the percentage of children living with only their mother nearly tripled from 8 to 23 percent and the percentage of children living with only their father increased from 1 to 4 percent."

That means the percentage of families living together is declining.

Thanks for the link BTW. That data is way more relevant than the marriage statistics in this conversation.

> Do you really think most unmarried families have both mother and father in the household, though?

Depends on the country you are in. Here in Norway, quite definitely yes.

About 26% of couples are unmarried now.

Poor working class people?

Absolutely.

It's impossible to get many benefits like WIC, rent assistance, heating assistance, etc if you are married, and it's difficult to afford childcare if mom is working and family cannot chip in, especially when you consider that many industries don't provide full-time jobs or sick time. It's cheaper for mom to stop working due to the child and bridge the gap with public assistance until the kids are around age 3, where there are more/cheaper daycare slots.

My wife worked for a utility with alot of blue collar guys -- easily 30% of the guys there had stay-at-home girlfriends with the kids. Not all of them were on public assistance, but people making $30-40k can't afford infant/toddler daycare.

You hit the bullseye with this one. Parents remain unmarried in a monogamous, cohabiting relationship because the government pays them to not get married. Every benefit that has a household means test attached is an additional incentive to strategically realign the membership of your households.

So you designate one household as the mooch household, and one as the worker household. The latter tends to be ineligible for all manner of otherwise useful benefits, working full-time at minimum wage, and benefits may even be curtailed working part-time. The other can collect the maximum available benefits.

This also leads to some strange behavior in states that have common-law marriages.

> It's impossible to get many benefits like WIC, rent assistance, heating assistance, etc if you are married

Well, more accurately, it's more difficult if you are married to someone who had income because it affects the means test. Of course, for many of those you can't get them unless you identify and secure a child support order against the parent of your children, and then that child support is also treated as income in the means test for the program, so just staying unmarried (with it without cohabiting) doesn't actually solve the problem.

http://www.prb.org/pdf10/single-motherfamilies.pdf

This paper says it's 24%. Do you have a source for 41? That's too high.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/18/the-u...

Your statistic is for the fraction of children living in single-mother households. dinoleif's statistic is for the fraction of babies born to single mothers. So your statistic doesn't count babies who are adopted to two-parent households or whose father later marries the mother (probably plus other factors I'm not considering). I'd say your statistic is more directly relevant to "is there a male adult living in the same house", but dinoleif's for "is the child being raised with a legally committed biological father".

There's quite a difference between the 5-41% jump in this first comment, and the 8-23% jump you read in the stats dragonwriter posted.

That was precisely dragonwriter's point in the other thread (I can't nest there any further): your unmarried statistic was not particularly germane.

Further, your comment don't quite make sense in context. OP shows how the statistics in the article shows fathers have become more involved. You say they can't actually be more involved because they're not around?

The article gives statistics broken down by mother/father time as well - there is a substantial increase in both.

Unlikely -- As a parent, I am regularly exposed to messaging from local, state and the federal government, public school system, healthcare professionals, and parental advice "experts" on the importance of family bounding and spending time with my children.

I go out of my way to be more attentive to my children in the evening after work, and during the weekends. Their day to day lives are significantly more structured than my own upbringing.

Perhaps the rise in family time is due to this decades long mass messaging campaign around the developed world. And I don't think this is bad! Why? This social response is natural response to the rise in use of social media, entertainment and other electronic distractions.

The concerning thing, though, is the way we start demonizing and going after parents who are unable to do this because of, say, their jobs not making it feasible.

Happened to co-worker. They don't even know which neighbor did it, but it resulted in embarrassment, including calls at work from police, home visits etc.

What age was the child?

Maybe 2nd or 3rd grade. Playing in the front yard with parents watching from the house.

I've read in some paper about Ice Cream Test:

Whether your 7 years old can get to the corner store and back after buying an ice cream there without encountering any dangers such as traffic.

Immediately thought that you could be jailed for that in some jurisdictions. Having said that, I think the number of people who let their kids free-range is decreasing everywhere unfortunately.

In Japan, there is a tv show that secretly follows 4 or 5 year old kids on their first trip to the store alone. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9eMZp8KsZ5k

So free ranging is not decreasing in all countries, just a few.

Corner store? You mean the Mega-lo-mart only accessibly after hopping on the free way?

Where I live my kids can go on a 5 minute walk through a quiet neighborhood then cross one street to get to McDonalds. If they go a different direction they wind up at Subway.

In 10 minutes they can go to a wide variety of places, everything from IHOP to a dollar store. Albertsons is an 11 minute walk. Less if they run. More if they stop and play at the park on the way.

Not all of suburbia is big box malls off of freeways. There are a lot of little strip malls around as well. And you can choose a place for how walkable it is.

That's anecdotal.

10 minutes of walking won't even get you out of my subdivision. Plop down a 15-minute radius on my map and there are literally zero places of business anywhere in it.

This is largely due to zoning. There is a strip of land zoned for local businesses a mere 10 minutes away, but unsurprisingly, no one has chosen to build anything on it.

You can't always prioritize walkability if you have a limit on your housing budget. My current place costs $11k/year, and the commuting to work by car isn't entirely horrible. But walking anywhere is really out of the question.

I live in a suburban neighborhood. We're near a number of stores and restaurants without crossing any streets, and the number multiplies if you allow a crossing or two. An actual grocery store is about half an hour's walk, but it's closer than the freeway, and you'd pass three or four convenience stores and about a dozen restaurants within the same distance.

Getting to Mega-lo-mart would be a 45 minute walk, and involves going under the toll road overpass and crossing about 4 streets (so, a little farther than I'll want my kid going anytime soon).

There was always some stigma against free-range parenting (think the grocery store scene in Home Alone) but it's gotten much, much worse

What we would now call "free range parenting" was normal until recently.

I think the word we're missing is pedophiles, we don't let kids roam far due to the increase fear of pedophiles - although I suspect the risk level havent changed as much as the publicity. Im probably better with traffic back then than I am now. Back in my day say when we were 9 or 10 so, we're be away from home for several hours at time during school holidays, sometimes we'd venture a little further than we'd admit to our parents - and bunk on a train to nearby city to cause a bit mayhem there etc.., we're try a get back before tea time incase the parents started calling each other and stories weren't solid. At age of 7 we certainly accustomed to the local shops and parks. I speak to parents now and the phrase often is 'the world is a different place' they mean there a new awareness of nonces. That's the unfortunate truth, of course there were still extremely cagey parents back then too, I felt sorry for those kids.

This seems improbable. Of course it depends a bit on the number of hours required to effectively helicopter parent, but the data for USA mothers indicates something like a 100% increase in time spent since 1965 resulting in two total hours a day, which seems far to little for any kind of omnipresence (similar results for fathers). Of course, these numbers are "on average" so you might argue that there are helicopter parenting subpopulations contributing to this increase, but this data can't provide evidence for or against that. The data in Denmark (where there really has been an orders of magnitude increase) and in France (with the decrease) seems like interesting places to look into. It could be that systematic reporting biases have a significant role to play in these results.

How do you count when stay at home mom (norm in middle class 50ties) does housework or reads/solves crossword while the kid is playing around and she is answering those "look what I done" requests? It is both speding time with kid and not spending time with kid.

This is a very good question and would seemingly be implicated in a critical view of the reporting methodology. I have been impressed with the work the NYT data team shows on their github (or whatever). It looks like the economist has an account: https://github.com/economist-data-team but in a few minutes searching around couldn't find any links to data sources. There was a footer mentioning that you could read more on the marriage special report, but I encountered a paywall :)

You don't need to spend time with someone to micromanage them.

Then micromanaging is not related to the OP research about spending time with them.

I think it is less in vogue than you imagine. Every single parent I interact with via my son's activities expresses a lot of distain for it and generally promotes free time for their kids.

I think the tide is turning back to free-range parenting.

You won’t have CPS called on you for letting your children wander and play in the neighbor. Please don’t spread nonsense.

Edited with my response to everyone depositing articles about the Meitivs:

Nobody “called CPS on” the Meitivs. Somebody called the polic because they saw the children wandering around a parking garage (not a park like in many of the news stories. See [1].) The police officer then called CPS several times wondering what to do with children before finally driving over to CPS when they were dragging their heels[2]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/free-range-family-again.... [2] Not that I think CPS is great. As a teacher, it’s basically impossible to get CPS to do anything unless the parents are abusing the children right in front of you on school property. Part of that is CPS being overworked and underfunded/understaffed. Part of that is that is it still usually better to keep the kids with their parents instead of foster care. And part of it is CPS not having the resources to have more options besides arrest parents or do nothing (like offering social services to the parents). Also I would argue there is a difference between letting your children play in the neighborhood outside your house and just leaving your children at the park for hours. I have had students who haven been abandoned at the park with their younger siblings.

Depends on your neighbors and your neighborhood. Definitely not a universal, but it can fit an existential.

"The Maryland parents accused of child neglect for letting their children roam freely had to retrieve their children from Child Protective Services after they were removed from a park Sunday by police."

http://www.wusa9.com/news/local/silver-spring/md-free-range-...

I'll just go let my best friend know that the several CPS inspections she had to endure last year when she left her kids at the park unattended were not real.

Anyone can call CPS for just about anything, and having someone pick through your home and point out every little flaw, with the threat of taking your kids away is a real issue. Please don't downplay it, and don't downplay how shitty people can be to each other.

I'm not very familiar with how CPS works and the law there--do you have any right to refuse unless they present some evidence that warrants such invasive next steps?

Seems like a passive-aggressive parental version of Swatting someone.

Don’t know what it’s like on the “receiving end” but in my state when I notify CPS it’s a very, very involved process that usually takes at least an hour. You can do it by phone or internet form and both require extensive information about the child, parents, family members, address, etc. It’s definitely not something you can just do because you don’t like your neighbors and want them arrested in five minutes.

I agree with the spirit of your argument, but I am pretty sure that this actually has happened.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/13/parent...

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/free-range-family-again...

[2] Not that I think CPS is great. As a teacher, it’s basically impossible to get CPS to do anything unless the parents are abusing the children right in front of you on school property. Part of that is CPS being overworked and underfunded/understaffed. Part of that is that is it still usually better to keep the kids with their parents instead of foster care. And part of it is CPS not having the resources to have more options besides arrest parents or do nothing (like offering social services to the parents). Also I would argue there is a difference between letting your children play in the neighborhood outside your house and just leaving your children at the park for hours. I have had students who haven been abandoned at the park with their younger siblings.

I do think the lose-your-kids-to-CPS fear is a little overblown. But it's a little silly to say "they didn't call CPS, they called the police". The outcome is the same, and people almost always call the police instead of CPS directly.

The original comment I was responding to specifically said “you can have CPS called on” you. Many people then pointed out the case of the Meitiv family even though nobody called CPS on them. Somebody called the police because they saw children playing in a parking garage unattended. Nobody called the police and said “the Meitiv’s children are playing in the neighborhood unattended.”

"you can have CPS called on you" doesn't imply a direct relationship between the reporter and CPS. The end result is the what matters.

I think it does. The statement is very clear and straight forward. It is a different statement than “you could be investigated by CPS for leaving your child on a parking garage.”

A quick Googling says otherwise. Here's one of many. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/protective-services-called-on-m...

This literally happened to me last week in Fresno, CA at @dmpayton's house. Fortunately, it's not possible to directly call CPS here; one needs to go through the police first. The police arrived and questioned me. I explained to them that I had no intention of changing my behavior and that I didn't want to answer any questions. They were polite and eventually left.

But it was still bizarre. I don't understand why the response (to the caller) isn't, "M'am, there's no violation of the law in your description of this event. Please keep this line open in case of actual emergencies."

Yes, you will.

http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/11/11-year-old-boy-played-in-... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/neighbor-calls-cops... https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/22/canadian-mo...

Do you have any more "corrections" to make?

That first one (the only one I read) is such a nightmare. Just wow.

I live in the boonies and my kid gets to roam far and wide by himself. There's some risk involved, but it's never crossed my mind that I'm being negligent.

I think it would be more negligent to keep him indoors--not that it could qualify as criminally negligent in any sane universe.

When I was 6 years old my mom used to let me ride my bike all over town (a 5 mile jaunt) all day long. When I was 8, me and my friends used to walk 4 miles to school to play basketball, then spend rest of day playing in woods. Eventually when I was around 13 one of my friends lost an eye due to our experiments with explosives, but other than that we all survived.

Maybe I should call CPS on my mom. What's the statute of limitations.

I used to go to my friend's house when I was 8. It was through the woods, across the railroad tracks, and about 2 miles down a fairly busy residential road with no sidewalks. By 13 I went anywhere I wanted. Even on the city bus or whatever.

Most of my life the rule was "be home by dinner" (6pm)

Also I stayed home alone and watched my little sister after about age 11. I had a single father.

My friends and I also played with explosives--we got into one buddy's father's black powder stash--but the only casualties were one guy's eyebrows. And his pride, once his mother noticed.

I think your citations are instances of confirmation bias; also, you're only citing a handful of examples, and they're examples so extreme they made national news. (They're also each a year apart.)

Even in large cities kids roam alone in their neighborhoods and parks. I live in SF, and regularly see kids under 10 skateboarding or riding their bikes on their own around my neighborhood. Now that I'm a parent, I also see toddlers running around fields in GG Park, barely within in earshot of their parents.

Odds are, if you don't see kids running around your neighborhood, it's either because you live in a neighborhood without many children (like most of SF), or you tend to be at work during the hours in which most children play.

It's unfortunate, but it happens regularly in today's world.

Everyone is pointing out various news articles that show that people do indeed call CPS when you let your kids play by themselves at a playground. I won't dispute that it happens, but to me this is similar to how we view other low-probability events. If I let my kids walk to school or the playground by themselves there's also a chance they can get hit by a car crossing the street. I can teach them safety rules and arm them with the tools they need, but there's always that chance. If you were so inclined I'm sure you could find countless articles about unsupervised kids getting hit by cars (or whatever other horrible thing you wanted to dig up, child abduction, etc etc). And yet that's a low-probability risk that we readily accept for the trade-off of fostering a child's independence and not being held hostage by every small risk in this world. Some asshole calling CPS and causing serious annoyance and maybe even emotional trauma is a real risk, but I'd argue it's super low probability (lower than the risk cars on the street pose). So yes, it happens, but that doesn't mean we have to change our behavior. We just have to accept that risk just like we do thousands of others in the course of daily life.

Many are sharing personal experiences as well.

I have not had CPS called on me. But I do have friends who dealt with that. In fact I know more people whose had CPS called on them than I do people who have been in car accidents. So it doesn't seem to be a super low probability event.

What also has me concerned is that my kids are heading towards puberty. Over 1/4 of all registered sex offenders committed their crime while minors. The single year of your life that you are most likely to become a registered sex offender is 14. It is massively more likely that they will have their lives destroyed that way than by an accident.

I would definitely not call car accidents a low probability event.

What? Please explain how a minor can become a registered sex offender. I'm not American, sometimes America just confuses us foreigners.

You now qualify if you (as a 14 year old) send a nude selfie to someone else. Manufacture & distribution, something like that.

We (rational Americans) are as perplexed as you are how that could possibly qualify.

https://forum.freeadvice.com/juvenile-law-90/mooning-sexual-...

A bit off-topic: I've been in 12 car accidents, I think. 2 while I was driving a car, neither my fault. One while I was driving a motorcycle, also not my fault.

Most were before I was old enough to be driving.

5 of the vehicles were totaled, including the motorcycle.

Anyway I find it strange that some people have never been in one. I'm not sure I know anyone who hasn't.

That is crazy. When you say they were 'not your fault', how not your fault were they? Sometimes things aren't your fault, but you could also drive more defensively and expect other people to mess up. Sometimes things are not your fault and there is nothing you could do, like when you are stopped at a stoplight.

In the three accidents where I was driving:

A ford explorer in front of me on a 2-lane road going about 45mph turned into an apartment complex, then used their drive to do a big sweeping U turn back across my lane, and through a stop sign (for the driveway people turning onto the main road). I was 17 years old but I don't fault myself for not driving more defensively. The guy just turned into the apartments, when he swooped back out I swerved but it was all very quick. That's not something you're prepared to defend for until you've seen it happen, frankly.

The next one was very minor, but we had two left-hand turn lanes and we were approaching a traffic light. I was in the right-hand lane, with no cars directly in front of me. I had a red car to my left, and a black car in front of him. The light turned yellow, and the black car was going to stop. The red car swerved quickly into my lane to go around the black car, and he clipped the front of my car. It knocked off a light cover, but otherwise no real damage. He ran the light and did not stop. There was no time to react, he literally yanked his wheel over, and I could not swerve right anyway, as there were vehicles there.

On the motorcycle, I was driving on a two-lane road behind a large vehicle, I think it was an SUV. Someone was waiting to turn left in the opposite lane (so they wanted to turn across our lane). There were many cars behind me as well. The person didn't see me and turned after the SUV passed. They stopped halfway through the turn, by which time I had already put down the bike while slamming on the brakes. The bike hit the car and totaled, and I slid down my lane with virtually no injuries. I was fairly well equipped so I just had a couple of very minor scrapes. She had no insurance. This accident was most avoidable in theory. Perhaps I could have positioned myself better, and she might have seen me. But probably not. I could not have swerved around her, though, unless I anticipated her stopping halfway. If she didn't stop halfway, and I swerved right, I would have gone through her passenger window. If I swerved left, it was a head-on collision.

During all of the other accidents, I was not the driver.

Well, maybe the OP means a car accident that wasn't a small fender bender with damage to 1 car or no damage to either. Or they are young or live in a city with not many cars.

I am not sure what the sex offender thing had to do with CPS being called on you. Were you giving another example of a low probability event?

> You won’t have CPS called on you for letting your children wander and play in the neighbor. Please don’t spread nonsense.

You're absolutely wrong and I know first hand of a couple of neighbors where exactly this has happened.

Just because you haven't experienced it first hand it doesn't mean you have proof positive that it never occurs.

Growing up I was allowed to roam the grounds of wherever we were freely unsupervised. As with many of us gen-Y'ers. In spending time with various women with kids I have noticed that parents nowadays are way more likely

a) hover over their children (in a playground for example) so as to be no more than 10-20 feet away from them at all times

b) eyeing any adults in the play area without a nearby child suspiciously

c) Occasionally chastising or otherwise harassing parents that don't do this, in the same way that nosy people chastise others over their actions.

Given the prevalence of stories and my own observations, I think you are wrong. I also think the quality of the institutions being talked about vary greatly depending on where you are. When I was in high school my friend had CPS called on her parents after a particularly nasty fight (her family was prone to loud fights) and it took them a couple weeks to convince CPS to get off their backs.

I know you're already getting a torrent of anecdotes right now, but I really think it's important not to sweep this under the rug. I have a co-worker who lives in a nice suburban neighborhood and had CPS called on him because his child was allowed to play in the park across the street from his house unsupervised. His child was interviewed by a social worker, his house was searched for drugs, the contents of his fridge were evaluated, and he had to go to court. In my state, it only takes one person to call, and once that person calls, an investigation is legally required, regardless of how spurious.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arreste...

And yet people wonder why children grow up to be completely unprepared for the world...

Can you cite some cases of that happening, preferably a pattern of said cases?

Man that meme really went wild huh

Yes, CPS in one state did something ambiguous and alarming to self-proclaimed "free range" parents.

No, you probably don't have the full story that a guy who had never seen the children before was concerned about their safety in that part of town, he decided to call 911 instead of talking to the kids and coming off as a creep.

Yes, that one town's police department did get the CPS' attention, and the CPS did an investigation and found something arbitrary which is rightfully concerning.

No, this isn't indicative of the entire US culture or widespread neighborly paranoia about children walking unattended.

It sick in its own right that society has demonized talking to any children that aren't your own or in your care. Police should not have been called in that situation and just asking if the kids are ok or lost should not be viewed as a creepy action.

I'm torn. I fully agree with you. I also think quickly calling the cops to check on them as you go do something else shouldn't be that big of a deal. Because, to my mind, police should be part of the community. Ideally, not strangers in uniform.

No, I don't think that is the case most (any?) place. :(

I'm also afraid to look at the statistics, as I fear I'll see that this is another slant in class/race standings. :(

Indeed, if you do call the cops they should be able to send someone to speak to the children to check they're OK, make sure they've not absconded or something, rather than making an incident out of it.

It's extremely unusual to see unescorted children where I live, below early teens or so. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to hear about someone calling the police after seeing a child outside on their own; that's just the current culture.

I live in a small gated community, in among other ungated neighborhoods. I see kids playing around my neighborhood, but never leaving it on their own. I hear grumbling from some of my neighbors even about that.

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