I’d argue that if “free range” parenting was more encouraged, people would see the utility in being more sociable and friendly with their neighbors. Kind of a “hey, I’ll serve as a watchful eye over your kid if you’ll do the same for mine” thing.
Keeping the leash even tighter on kids only perpetuates lack of community cohesion, so that it gets progressively worse with each generation.
We propose a hypothesis, then we test it scientifically. Otherwise we’re blowing smoke out our ass.
Are you new here?
Those data were easily available. You’re welcome to find similar data to support you hypothesis.
Those statistics are fine, but your appeal to authority does nothing to support your hypothesis.
Decrease of ~260 deaths over the same period.
Has anyone disputed that? The important question is: Is the risk significant? Especially with respect to other risks children face. They’re also less likely to be kidnapped by strangers, but that risk is minuscule. We can quantify the risk of putting a child in a car. It is real. It is greater than many other risks. But should we confine the child to home? No, because the benefits of access to locations that require transportation in a vehicle probably outweigh the risks. “Common sense” gets us stranger danger, antivaxers, and GMO protests. People have a significant mismatch between perceived and actual risk (PDF). Thus, common sense can result in increased injury and death, and in missing out on various benefits.
WTF, can’t believe you throw GMOs in there like that (I would vote to ban them tomorrow–yesterday!)…but that’s a subject for another thread, I suppose.
Case. In. Point.
Okay, Monsanto.
I’d argue that getting to know the neighbors and being able to rely on each other is a good thing.
IANASociologist, but a criticism often expressed about Americans by people from other cultures is that “Americans have no roots”; this is the negative side of a series of American positive mythos, such as the obsession with the self-made man and with independence. IME, there are actually two large groups within the US: the “rootless” who can’t tell you their grandmothers’ maiden names, believe one should put oneself through college and view “living with your relatives” beyond age 18 as a capital-s Sin and the “rooted” Hyphenated-Americans whose family includes a handful of women that have everybody’s contact information, where financial aid between family members is viewed as normal and so is living with relatives where neither of the people involved is below 18.
That paragraph was an intro to this: maybe the change in Milennials is not due to parenting, but to the growth of the hyphenated section. The values you listed for the Milennials are rooted values.
It doesn’t really make the parents think more cautiously, it fucks up their risk-assessment circuitry by making events that for the most part are freak things look like everyday events.
For example, if there was a child abduction in say… Illinois in 1975, you might hear about it in Houston sometime later on the back page of the paper, if the kid was found dead or something like that. If they found the kid, it wouldn’t have even made the news in all likelihood.
Nowadays, it’ll be on CNN, the web and the broadcast news within minutes after being reported, and the talking heads will be breathless about it. Or if it’s more local, people will get Amber Alerts pushed to their phones, regardless of where they are or what they’re doing.
That kind of thing makes people far more aware of these sorts of things and makes them seem far more common and scary than they really are.
It’s kind of like how flying commercially is one of the safest possible ways to get from point A to point B, and that most people statistically are more likely to be killed driving to the airport than on their flight. But everyday car wrecks either don’t make the news, or barely make the local news, but any airline crash anywhere in the world makes major news in minutes. So people get kind of weird about flying when there’s no reason to whatsoever.
It’s not that simple. When I drive, or ride in the car, I am always sober, always wearing my seatbelt, never texting or talking on the phone, always in a car in good repair, and probably driving in reasonable weather conditions. I am a very conservative, defensive driver. That’s the comparison you have to make to the possibility of a car accident, not the generic national fatality rate.
Now, flying doesn’t bug me, because that’s not really risky, either. But it’s true that the average flyer has a lot fewer variables under their control than the average driver.
ETA: In the same way, when I am assessing risk for my kid, I am going to look at what I know about my kid–and that changes things.
Except that’s all boilerplate rhetoric recycled from “stranger danger” et al, ad nauseam, and does not address the child unintentional injury mortality in those “good old days”.
Organized sports is associated with an elevated risk of injury and death. Yet they are also associated with a number of physical, emotional, and financial benefits.
bump is talking about comparing risks between modes of transportation. You are reducing risks in how you drive, and each of those things are more or less self-evident without appeal to statistics. bump is correct however - if you look at a chart of actual risk versus perceived risk you’ll see that issues that get into the news are considered far riskier than they are. The perfect example is that most people think there are more murders than suicides, which is not true. Most suicides are not reported. It is called availability and behavioral scientists know it well.
And how are the other drivers in your route?
It is not that I survived. It is that none of my friends back in the day when free-range parenting was called parenting survived also.
<testimony>
When I was growing up in the '50s and '60s I was at far more risk from the lack of even seat belts in cars, let alone car seats, no bicycle helmets, concrete under the monkey bars and no latches in cabinets, child proof plugs in outlets or childproof caps on medicine bottles. Fixing those risks is good. Walking 4 blocks to school by myself (no busy roads to cross) was good. Walking three blocks to the candy store not only gave me independence but also taught me how to deal in stores without my mother being present. Going to the park with my friends at 8 - 10 was no big deal. Back then NY could afford a parkie to look after things, but there were few if any parents there except for ones with really small children. Heck, at 13 I was ready to take the bus and subway to the NY Worlds Fair both with friends and by myself.
Kids are smarter than some people give them credit for, but still need to make local mistakes. If you never let a kid make a mistake, how can he grow?
I am not saying I am eliminating risk, and I am not even arguing that generally it is more risky to drive to the airport than fly to your destination. I am just saying that when assessing risk, one has to look at one’s actual personal circumstances, not national averages.
It would be foolish to make an appeal to the national risk of having a gun in the house if you know you have a toddler who is obsessed with toy guns, or a suicidal teen. In the same way, I think it’d be foolish to let national average driving statistics play much of a role in my decision on whether or not to let my toddler come along when I drive to the grocery store in my neighborhood.
That’s a bit of a broad statement. It’s true if you’re talking about football or skiing; but surely not tennis, that my wife, kids and I play.
This strikes me as a fallacy, akin to “that which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”. I know several people who are organic gardeners. The one whose plants come out the best of all grows them indoors, under lights, protected from all bugs and weeds, totally babied.
You do realize it would be a terrible thing if they were reported, and people knew how many there are…right?
Let’s stay away from accusations of trolling unless you’re in the Pit.
It depends on how much of an increase we’re talking about, I guess. You can definitely get hurt playing tennis. Hard courts aren’t much fun for your joints and you could sustain all kinds of arm and leg injuries. Concussions are probably less prevalent. =P
It’s not fallacious at all. On the other hand you’re sort of exaggerating it. Yes, we learn by making mistakes. That doesn’t mean you have to let a child make every kind of mistake because some are lethal. But opportunities to have responsibility, make mistakes and learn are important.
Would you say those plants are wise and productive members of their community, fulfilled and satisfied with their lives? Or would you say they’re plants?
That doesn’t seem all that relevant.
No way am I saying that you shouldn’t drive - just that people who are in fear of certain activities are often way off base. There are things you can do - like not drinking and not texting - which can reduce the chances that you cause a crash, and other things to do which reduce the chances of getting killed in a crash. Luckily I had bought a Saturn with a very strong frame. It came in handy when an idiot ran a red light on a Sunday afternoon in full daylight and rammed into the driver side door when my wife was driving my car. She escaped with just some soreness. Those are the real statistics. Look at how many people post here who are convinced that they are such good drivers that they are not being dangerous speeding or talking on cellphones.
Another common mistake people make is overestimating the likelihood of low probability events. People scared of driving to the grocery store are making that kind of error.
I’m an organic gardener because I’m too cheap to buy pesticides. 
Indoor vegetables would be more expensive and you could grow fewer of them. A parent living a life which involves watching a kid all the time would soon go nuts - and never have a second.
When my oldest kid was a baby she’d get up and cry at 2 am every night. Was it colic, something awful? Our pediatrician said let her cry, after checking that there really wasn’t anything wrong. In four days she started sleeping through the night. Like I said, kids are better adapted at surviving then some people think.
I’m not making any value judgments about reporting them - just stating that because they are not reported, people underestimate the number.
This whole conversation has been broad. You’re rallying against something you haven’t even defined. “Free range parenting” could be anything from giving an eight-year-old an hour to play unsupervised in his back yard to allowing him to ride a subway train all day long, all by himself. Maybe if you were more specific about what you’re against, you wouldn’t get such broad statements in response.
Despite what you believe, science supports that it contains some truth. See the phenomonem of hormesis.