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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

In the US leaving your baby unsupervised is likely to result in someone calling CPS and a bunch of trouble for you.

So while the chance of having your child kidnapped is vanishingly small, there are enough busybodies who believe the chance is high to result in the same net effect: you can't leave your baby unattended.

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That's a problem due to the American peoples acceptance of authoritarian policing; something that would be inconceivable in more enlightened countries.

In Germany you are arrested for home schooling. Different cultures have their flaws.

Why would that be considered a flaw? The rationale behind it is the same as behind the inability to name your child XAe or any random assortment of letters – to not make the future difficult for your child, even if you as a parent might want it. It is also one of the last tools that prevents parallel societies from forming. Not that German schools are ideal - they are a bit stuck in the past - but the common experience they create in each new generation is valuable.

Because my children are likely going to have ADHD like I do, and public schools are hell for us. When I was a child I cried every day, hated my parents and didn't understand what did I do that I deserved to be forced into that prison. I am not going to put my children through that. I don't care about your social engineering goals, I care about happy childhood for my children.

You might consider alternative schools like Waldorf or Montessori for your kids. It's not like there is only one kind of school available.

These legally operate as groups of homeschooled children where I live, and there actually is only one kind of "school". Yes, I'm considering that. One thing I definitely don't want is an "institution" that feels like it's entitled to do or require children to do whatever it wants, even if it has generally enlightened opinions and methods. If my child can't come at all for half a year, that's what will happen.

I agree, and in some countries it does feel like your children get 'institutionalized'. Still, even there, there are differences between schools. What my parents did was to visit the schools, talk to the teachers, see whether they had a good or a bad feeling, and insisting on getting me into a specific class. It does work, but of course all the schools and classes should ideally be good.

That's a good thing to do for sure. The problem is - my parents did that, and visited more than once, but every time they did, the teachers put up an act of being larger than life and the most enlightened experts of child development under the sun. Unfortunately, they believed them because the act was so good, and because years of life under communism taught them that going against institutions leads you to bad places.

I don't have the latter problem - I got the opposite problem from that, sometimes I hate the system a little bit too much - but still, remembering how the teachers used to threaten us if we don't put up our best act, meaning never speak out about the lies they told when other parents visited, I can't really trust few visits to give me an accurate impression.

Diversity of thought helps solve problems. It’s useful for the state to allow a small % of experimentation to reduce risk.

> It is also one of the last tools that prevents parallel societies from forming.

Consider German history. They had the Nazis in power. Half of Germany had the Communists in power. So, you don't want Nazis and Communists home schooling their kids - you want those kids in regular school, where they can be taught about democracy and human rights. But if the Nazis or Communists are in power, you absolutely want to be able to homeschool, rather than have that garbage beat into your kids day after day at school.

So given their history, I can absolutely see why they should be afraid of home schooling. But I can also see why they should want the freedom to do it.

From my experience with attending four schools in two countries - it is often the quality and the personality of the teacher that influences what I was learning, not so much the curriculum. I see very little chance for radical thought being taught at German schools, unless 70%+ of school teachers get replaced.

Home schooling is linked to religious extremism

If one was affected by the 80’s news cycle, it will seem that way in one’s head.

aha. Which assumption do you have about me ? Which 80s news cycle? Where?

Why does one think only one's news cycle from one's 80s leads one to think one will associate one's homeschooling with one's religious extremism?

as is facial hair, bro. unsubstantiated factoids are not a contribution.

Norway’s child protective services has 17 convictions against themselves and counting in the International Human Rights Court of Strasbourg.

That's just another dimension of the problem.

But let's be honest here, there are a lot of child snatches in the US. About 150 to 160 new reports yearly per 100000 kids. By comparison, Denmark annually reports between 50 to 75 new missing child cases per 100000 children.

(And even that obscures the starkness of the difference. Because in Denmark, they count children abducted to another country by a parent as a missing child if the country they are abducted to is a member of the convention. So you actually have to subtract about 35 to 40 cases per 100000 children from the Denmark numbers to get an apples to apples comparison to the US numbers. I just wanted to present the numbers in a fashion as friendly to your view as possible. And still there is a pretty stark difference.)

Aren't many cases of missing children in the US also abductions by a parent?

They aren't counted as missing children cases. That's "parental abduction" according to FBI stats. And also get special handling due to the convention if it's international.

Isn’t the same true of familial versus stranger abductions in the US? Like the vast majority are familial, correct?

If a parent takes them internationally, that goes into a different bucket in the FBI stats. (Maybe because of the convention? Since those get special handling.)

But if a parent takes them and they stay in the US, they will count as child abductions. Domestic family abduction is about 4.5% of the total in the US. Not the majority, but they do get the focus. What I mean by that is that if you look at Amber Alerts, about 58% are evoked by family abductions. So that's a huge asymmetry. 58% of Amber Alerts, but only 4.5% of missing kids. I think in the case of family abduction maybe you know about the abduction faster? So you report it faster? Not sure. I just always thought that was a huge asymmetry.

EDIT:

I just realized I didn't directly answer your question.

No. The majority are not familial.

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