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Comment by jrumbut | Hacker News Reader

> This - unlike millions of today's kids - is why my generation were and still are a much more resilient lot and not afraid of the world than is the present younger generation.

I marvel at this logic. Who raised the present younger generation?

Children didn't make the rules that they can't buy train tickets. They weren't born afraid. Their resiliency hasn't been molded yet.

The question isn't "why are kids this way?" The question is "why are we raising children this way when we weren't raised this way ourselves?"

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>The question is "why are we raising children this way when we weren't raised this way ourselves?"

I feel like the investment into individual children is much much higher than it used to be (time/resources/emotions). When you have 5 kids it's not that you don't care, but you literally can't be as protective about them as you can when you're only raising one or two. And then as people have less children the norms gradually change.

Also media hysterics.

The same number of kids were probably abused in a variety of ways 50 years ago. Maybe more than today, even. But what most people knew about the news was what was in the local paper and maybe they watched 30 minutes of national news on TV.

They didn't have a device in their pocket alerting them in real-time about a kidnapping story in another state.

People are not good at assessing probability of risk. If they hear about something, they think it's likely. So they get more and more afraid.

You've got it wrong--the actual rate of abuse has gone down considerably, not merely the same as it used to be. You are right that it's being magnified by the news competing for eyeballs.

And the greatest risk isn't the stranger, it's people you know and trust. The vast, vast majority of people aren't going to harm a kid--you teach kids that if they need help they should go up to an adult and ask. That reduces the risk much further.

Do you have a source for this? I would love to have this in my back pocket for future discussions about this topic.

I'm not sure about abuse statistics, but these are the U.S. stats for kidnapping: https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2021-ncic-missing-person...

2021 missing-person stats:

- 94.5% (231k) runaway

- 1% (2,555) abducted by non-custodial parent

- 0.1% (331) abducted by stranger

- 4.3% (10k) adult

The real change started with the kidnapping and murder of Eton Patz in 1979. The case was nationally publicized, and was one of the factors leading to putting pictures of missing children on milk cartons. That really scared a lot of parents (I do understand that the fear was mostly irrational).

https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/kidnappings/etan-p...

I don't worry at all about kidnappings.

What I worry about is CPS and police officers claiming child endangerment. In my state you can be charged with child endangerment just for leaving the kid strapped into the seat on a moderate day while you walk in to pay the gas station attendant. You could potentially be arrested and charged for letting a 7 year old play alone at the park for a bit.

The kidnappers are real. But they're the CPS and police, and they can't wait to put your kids into a brutal kids-for-cash foster care system. They draw their salary under the guise of "safety" while victimizing children and sapping their independence. And busybodies everywhere have a device at the ready in their pocket, that allows them to invite months of scrutiny into your life based on 30 seconds of effort on their own part, after which the law prevents you from finding their identity or facing your accuser.

Irrational reactions to statistically anomalous "stranger danger" and similiar are why CPS has that power in the first place.

A good point, although it's worth noting CPS and police are not so statistically anomalous as strangers who kidnap children.

I believe the real shift was generational: by 1979 it was the cusp of the earliest Boomers who were raising young kids. They weren't like their parents, growing up in post-war life: They were scared of urban pollution and crime, and didn't have a popular collective experience like WWII, but a divisive one(the 60's, in sum) which helped produce a variety of bogeyman narratives of dangerous Vietnam veterans roaming the streets, illegal immigrants selling drugs, Satanic cult leaders and so forth. Part of the embracing of Reagan's America was in overlooking the parts of this narrative that were self-inflicted by prior US actions, and moving blame to scapegoats. Thus, "stranger danger", distrust of the city, and a general self-alienation with society in favor of personal safety was normalized at that time.

There were definite benefits to the Boomer outlook at the time: smog was curtailed, health-conscious diet and regular exercise became a popular idea(albeit heavily fad-driven). But it also created a more litigious, low-trust climate, which has only driven in the alienation further. Today's political climate is a sort of crescendo on all those concerns, and I see in the current working-age generations much greater willingness to change the deal.

I am living in Switzerland, in a rather good 20k town, I get out of my building, I see 2 permanent drug dealers. And there is a constant stream of news about murders or tentative ones. Oh and we have judges who are protecting rapists, e.g. saying they were looking for being raped, yes an actual judges, fuck that shit.

Our era is just different.

Drug dealers are not going to harm your children.

Certainly not time since many more families are dual income or have only one involved parent. Also the quality of the time matters. Weekend time and after-work time is not equivalent to morning and midday productive time.

>Certainly not time since many more families are dual income or have only one involved parent

Your time investment is even greater value (to you) since you have less out-of-work time overall.

Just yesterday I was listening my grandmother talking me about her life. He told me about a kid about 7 years old who went to the field with some horses so they could eat, and then he was killed by some other kids who were threw rocks at him. My wife asked if the culprits were punished and my grandma told her that was not the case. She told us that the police didn’t cared much, and the parents were too busy with the rest of the kids to try to pressure the authorities.

Not sure if what you’re saying is the norm or if I’m an outlier but I have more than 5 kids and fall into the group that had a relatively relaxed childhood yet restricts activities out of fear (or whatever it should be referred to).

"I feel like the investment into individual children is much much higher than it used to be (time/resources/emotions)."

Why, and is this important and or a problem? BTW, I don't claim to have an answer.

Because literally every form of media today constantly tells people that they need to be afraid of going outside, and most people buy it, even though our society (at least here in the US) is almost certainly safer than when they were growing up.

How many times have you seen someone saying they were afraid walking down the sidewalk because... someone else was also walking down the sidewalk?

You are right, but I don't think it is just the fault of the media, this is how the human brain works. No one is losing their minds with fear at dull but distressingly common causes of death like heart disease and car accidents. It is the rare, dramatic, unexpected kinds of death and violence that govern our thoughts.

People fear flying for psychological reasons of control/helplessness, not for logical statistical reasons. Fear of 'scary' death is like the negative version of the inaccurate and over-optimistic math that causes people to buy lottery tickets.

This is exactly my point. Part of being an adult in the modern world is being discerning in your media consumption and just a pinch of courage (obviously, specific circumstances might require a lot more).

It's OK to feel nervous if you run into someone unexpected outside, everyone gets that way sometimes. It's how you handle that feeling.

>"why are we raising children this way when we weren't raised this way ourselves?"

Because CPS will come and you'll be charged with child endangerment if you let your kid have "too much" independence. And naturally the kids will ask questions about why they can't do this or that, and many people will know "because CPS would take you away" is a bad answer (or one the kid will ignore) so they lie about the dangers. It's a shit sandwich situation to be in.

Free range parenting laws are the answer. Three states have passed legislation that clarifies that "neglect" does not include allowing children to engage in independent activities. In said states, parents can be much more confident that nosy neighbors can't ruin their lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-range_parenting#Legal_pro...

> Because CPS will come and you'll be charged with child endangerment if you let your kid have "too much" independence.

How often does that actually happen?

How often would it have to happen for you to risk your right to vote, defend your family, get any reasonably well paying job, and retain custody of your children?

If you search for something as simple as "charged for leaving child at park" there's no shortage of anecdata, and many if not most aren't something crazy like abandonment.

The laws in my state are vague enough that parents can and have been criminally charged for merely letting a confident 7 y/o play at the park while they briefly ran an errand. Unfortunately the state doesn't keep statistics like "how often did we frivolously charge parents."

> How often would it have to happen for you to risk your right to vote, defend your family, get any reasonably well paying job, and retain custody of your children?

Okay so you don't know and if we look at the numbers this is just fear mongering.

> this is just fear mongering.

Not OP, I don't think it's fear mongering. The actual numbers are immaterial, all that matters is whether parents are scared that this might happen. If they're scared, they'll avoid leaving their children unattended. As a former educator I can confirm that many parents are scared, and that this fear is likely to continue so long as stories of these laws being enforced hit the news once every few years. We can average 1-2 cases every few years and as long as they get the right broadcast, that's all it takes.

The implication the parent is that you should be afraid of the thing happening a lot when in reality it doesn't happen with any statistical significance unless you happen to be in a special set like Native Americans (due to historical government actions).

This is the definition of fear mongering.

You just proved CPS takes action way more than the kind of fear mongering stuff (stranger kidnapping / stranger commiting murder). For instance, in the largest county in my state up to 60% of black homes may end up investigated by the time the child is 18. [0] Fear mongering?

https://imprintnews.org/child-welfare-2/nearly-half-of-child...

I never claimed to know the numbers.

You've made the assertion "if we look at the numbers this is just fear mongering." Now it's time to show your proof, what is the numbers. I'm very curious because my own state keeps no statistics on what percent of their charges are frivelous.

That's why this is fear mongering, because you're insisting that it's very concerning and thus you should act on it, when in reality it's not that concerning a problem: https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubpdfs/canstats.pdf

Of the 73M children in america - Of which 7.9 million children went through CPS - Of which 16% were substantiated (1.2M) and received services - 22.9 percent of those (275k) were removed from their home.

First of all I appreciate showing the numbers of removals. You've shown the number of removals is sky high -- 0.3% number of removals PER YEAR as there are children. While the same child may be removed multiple times, were it the case it were a unique child each time that would come out to a roughly 5% chance of a removal over the period of custody. Of course CPS will claim basically all those removals are valid, but we have very little independent third party verification to see if that is actually the case.

Unfortunately, again, you were unable to provide what percent of charges (or in your presentation, removals) are actually frivolous. You counter a very small chance of stranger kidnapping (less than 1k a year) with "legitimate" CPS kidnapping at 275k a year. Orders of magnitude more relevant -- Wow!

So you have really no data to present here, other than a ceiling of roughly 5% chance at the worst, which is absolutely bone-chillingly large. Plenty significant enough to take it seriously when you see people being charged for letting their kid play at the park. People take precautions about pools and guns, etc, both of which have a lower percent chance than our possible CPS ceiling here of unexpectedly removing the child from your arms.

> You've shown the number of removals is sky high -- 0.3% number of removals PER YEAR as there are children

The CDC reports that between 140,000 – 710,000 hospitalizations per year are due to the flu. No one out there is saying that it's "sky high".

> Of course CPS will claim basically all those removals are valid, but we have very little independent third party verification to see if that is actually the case.

This is actually just nonsense.

> "legitimate" CPS kidnapping

This is just a deranged position to take.

> So you have really no data to present here, other than a ceiling of roughly 5% chance at the worst, which is absolutely bone-chillingly large.

While we're here I would also like to talk about how many of those 275k a year are sacrificed to the God of the Deepest Waters, Lord of Whales (and Wales), The Evercrescent. A vast number I'm sure!

Look we know when this stuff happens, they've got records and the CPS has been taken to court (and they've lost!). But unless you're talking about black or native american families, the amount is so minimal as to not warrant this fear mongering.

This quote comes to mind:

  Hard times create strong people
  Strong people create good times
  Good times create weak people
  Weak people create hard times

...which is a recent internet meme typically associated with counterfactual pseudo-history.

Oh? I had never heard of that association. I just liked the quote (:

Could you share a link or something on that topic? I'm curious.

Certainly, the concept long-predates the internet. A bit like the yin/yang symbol, where there's a little "dot" of one color inside the other, symbolizing a similar cyclical concept of one arising from the other.

Here's a super detailed deconstruction by a historian: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...

I can’t share any links, but I’d posit that “things getting better, then getting worse, then getting better” can seem subjective and self-fulfilling.

Totally tangential but you’ve described a Mormon concept https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/bc/content/shared/conten...

people->men in the original quote

Ah, I typed it from (faulty) memory.

Though I suppose I like it this way — kinda like the updated Star Trek "To boldly go..." for TNG (:

I believe that there was much less violence in the past than there is now. Or at least that's the perception, hence, we want to avoid that our kids get into real trouble. Not that it wasn't the case 30 years ago, however, things have changed and I think in most places didn't change for the better. But it clearly depends on where you live.

They were raised on addictive electronic forms of media and TV sitcoms of the 90’s that filled in absentee parents fighting their own demons (substance abuse, divorce, jail, broken homes, sexual abuse, poverty, etc.)

I was raised prior generation (I'm Boomer/Gen X cusp) and pretty much on my own during the day at 4-years-old. Just around the block thing.

And I totally agree with you. Same with the "everyone gets a participation trophy" bullshit - it's not the kids, it is the parents. Kids don't have control over that.

The answer is "the media." There's a saying in media, "If it bleeds, it leads." Meaning horrible stories are the best stories. And so, with the advent of the 1980s and cable, then with internet exploding media channels in 2000, the world is awash with bad stories. And it seeps into society.

People get in actual trouble now if they let their child walk 1 mile to school and if it is elementary school. Police car trouble.

The actual crime rate is way, way declined over time, across the board. However, the perception of crime rate is it is going up.

So parents want to protect their children against all these manufactured bad things.

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