alt Hacker News> Around 35% of American families have been investigated by CPS
What??
> Fully 50% of Black voters in our poll agreed that allowing a 10-year-old to play unsupervised at a park for a few hours was grounds for a CPS call. 33% of white voters and 37% of Hispanic voters said the same.
I am speechless. Has so much changed in the 20 odd years since I was a kid? I was playing outside unsupervised from maybe age 9. What honestly are the kids supposed to be scared of?
Replies
Cars, I nearly got run over as a kid a few times
Now as an adult I'd be worried about cycling around with cars that would hit me in the chest and not the legs on impact
Also cars make it very easy for a stranger to pull up and kidnap, parents subconsciously know that and factor it into their decisions
There was also youth clubs where I grew up and a BMX track and no phones so play was mostly happening outside
Society is going to continue to degrading as long as debts keep increasing
Debts will keep increasing because the only way to create new money is everytime someone gets a loan the bank injects the principle into the economy but then expects interest on top so there will never be enough money in the economy for everyone to pay off all their debts
We'll either get mass debt forgiveness or societal collapse and so far we've opted for societal collapse
That is a shocking stat, although I see that the source article only looked at the 20 most populous counties in the US: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8325358/
I wonder if that causes some selection bias (e.g. density correlating with poverty).
Loads of things, but the big thing that changed in past decades is the media. A case of a child getting abducted or killed goes nation- or worldwide now, which makes everyone feel less safe in letting their kids roam free.
Not kids, parents are scared, kids have no say unless they are already addicted to gaming, tv or whatever their latest addiction is, and then they themselves don't want to go and just sit and consume.
Even if the chance something actually happens is terribly low it became unacceptable. Death of any type became unacceptable, so got injuries, bullying is end of the world. Maybe due to having 1-2 kids instead of 10 and seeing occasionally other kids around die from whatever, so what was sort of normalized is shocking now.
Parenting got much, much harder, expectation of what a good parent is are stratospheric compared to - kid didn't die, you didn't beat him up (too much), didn't rape him and similar level. The more you invest yourself into any activity including parenting the the less you can ignore or accept failure of any sort. And so on.
I grew up free as a bird too, had a small bicycle and roamed fields and city too, but cars were few and slow ones. Its still possible but even for my kids it has to be outside of roads, luckily we live now next to forest and vineyards with roads closed to regular traffic. So it seems its whole societal change of mindset, not limited to US (although there I believe its the worst due to everything car-centric, few continuous pedestrian walks etc)
> What honestly are the kids supposed to be scared of?
CPS it seems.
I'm an 80s kid, I was playing outside at age 6 unsupervised / with my friends. I feel like this should be pretty normal and totally agree with your last line:
What honestly are the kids supposed to be scared of?
I have six young kids. This attitude is absolutely prevalent (and it's insane). I've been chewed out by a cashier for sending an 8 year old into a store alone. I've had a person run out of a restaurant, panicking, and grab my 2 year old because she was walking too far ahead of me. I've had people tell me it's unsafe to let me 10, 8, and 5-year olds bike together in the park ahead of me while I walk.
Just giving my kids space when I'm nearby, in sight of them has terrified countless onlookers.
No one has actually called CPS on me, thankfully, to my knowledge. But the general atmosphere is absolutely crushing for people who want to try to safely let their kids learn independence.