> a high crime area
What exactly do you expect to happen to your 6 year old? They’re not a very useful target for anything I can think of.
What exactly do you expect to happen to your 6 year old? They’re not a very useful target for anything I can think of.
Crime is not an urban phenomenon, and when we describe it as one, we're flaming stereotypes. I don't think it was intentional and my point was not to denigrate the parent comment, but to encourage us to avoid accidental constructs like this.
At least in west coast cities, visible crime is just a fact of life. It borders on gaslighting to suggest that its not.
https://www.city-journal.org/violent-crime-in-cities-on-the-...
More children die from non-violent crime. The person who drives 10 over the speed limit down a suburban street is a child-endangering criminal, but so many people think the crimes they commit aren't "real" crimes.
If you want to look at data, overall rural child mortality exceeds urban child mortality in the United States; some of these causes are criminal, others are not. Motor vehicle death are the leading cause of child mortality, and for children under 18 exceed deaths from murder 2:1. Within vehicle deaths, for example, seatbelt usage is one of the predominant differentiators between rural and urban outcomes, and guess which areas have the lowest seat belt usage, and a disproportionately high number of deaths as a result? Yep, those "low crime" rural areas. Those parents who don't buckle up their kids are all criminals, too. I'm tired of seeing the label "crime" only applied to people committing certain crimes, in certain areas. It's applied in the most racist possible way in this country.
Ask the suburban kids to describe the inner city? Dangerous. Crime-ridden.
Ask the inner city kids to describe inner city? Community. Know their neighbors.
Mind you, I'm not necessarily with the GP. It seems like a question of only marginal relevance. But the parent reads like a low-effort dismissal that doesn't actually address the point.
As someone who grew up in the suburbs, and has since lived in a rough part of the city, it also resonated with my personal experience.
In the suburbs, nobody generally knows each other. In the city, due to density, you just have more neighborhood interactions.
Sometimes inner city interactions are uncomfortable or with crazy people, but they're generally non-violent.
If I had to peg percentages, I'd say:
Inner city: 30% awesome/interesting/helpful strangers, 55% ambivalent strangers, 10% unpleasant strangers, 4.5% crazy strangers, 0.5% potentially violent strangers
Suburbs: 15% awesome/interesting strangers, 70% ambivalent strangers, 15% unpleasant strangers, 0% crazy/potentially violent strangers
But if you are adopting from a foreign country beware that it is easy to kidnap some baby from a remote village. Some of the less ethical adoption agencies have done this in the past.
No, that doesn't sound right.
Other than gangs recruiting young and something accidental (kid caught in crossfire), I agree, I can’t see the very young being targeted.
We have a lot of unhoused neighbors in our neighborhood. When they are on bad fent trips, they can get pretty irrationally violent, though I've never heard of a kid being attacked before.
"neighbors" are people who live nearby, in the neighborhood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse#United_Stat...
That’s around the age when kids started dealing drugs where I grew up. I knew kids who threw bricks through windows and huffed paint when left alone.
Bad areas are bad.
This is DARE level propoganda. What person is spending real money to give a 6 year old drugs?
This entire article is about rebuffing the "it happened once somewhere so it might happen anywhere" scare tactic that people use to prosecute well-meaning parents for letting their children experience independence.
I hate to say this, but this is an amazing lack of imagination over what could happen ( based merely on what did happen before and not coming up with wild scenarios ). I am saying this as a likely free range parent ( still internally debating, but a lot will depend on how my kid handles things ).
Terrible things happen. They aren't likely to happen.
<< Terrible things happen. They aren't likely to happen.
I think this is the wrong way of looking at this. Most people believe that lightning does not strike people that often. This does not give one has carte blanche to prance around the backyard with a metal rod.
Or, to use less crazy example, my street is relatively quiet and slow. And yet, I still look both ways crossing the street, because you never really know. Individual disposition and approach affects statistics.
I do these things knowing the risk but knowing the happiness they give me outweighs that risk.
Personally, I feel like the benefits to kids of greater independence (developing social skills, learning to deal with being uncomfortable, learning to see things through on their own) outweigh the risks of that independence (sex trafficking or sexual assault, bullying).