Missing Child Posters

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

Cecil remarked on the lack of current data on the issue of how many children were found as a result of missing child posters in this column:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020705.html

However, if Cecil really wanted to get the answer, he should have gone to the place where all America goes to get stuff.

Walmart!!!
While walking into Walmart today to buy deckstain, right by the front entrance was a bunch of posters of missing kids.

Underneath it was a notice that said “Over 1,248 children found to date as a result of Walmarts poster program!!”

At least that’s what I think it said. I made a note to remember the number, but it might have been 2,841 instead of 1,248.

I think I inhaled too much deckstain.

At any rate Cecil gets paid to do this, and I probably don’t need to go back to Walmart. Also, Cecil has all this free help, and I’m here staining my deck, inhaling fumes by lonesome.

So, if Cecil wants the real number he can call Walmart, or better yet take a trip there himself, look at the poster, pick up some Ho-ho’s and maybe some charcoal brickets and find out for himself. Or he can send one of his free interns to go do it (and if you wouldn’t mind, could you pick me up some of those paint rollers?)

But I’m not going back to Walmart today. Absolutely not.

Though if Cecil wants to put me on the payroll or include me on his advisory board, or send me a coffee mug I’ll go and look tomorrow, and write the number down.

But I’m not doing it today, and that’s final.

If he wants to know, he’ll have to go himself (and remeber the paint rollers please.)

2

About 20 years ago, shortly after the great baseball strike, I read that Dodger star Steve Garvey’s wife suddenly disappeared–she had been a regular on a morning talk show in Los Angeles. The next thing I knew, she was shacking up with composer Marvin Hamlisch in New York, and the Garveys’ two daughters were with her as well. It’s bad enough (I come from a broken home myself) that this happened at all, but it was particularly galling that, for the rest of his playing career, Garvey was jeered by fans in Shea Stadium when the Dodgers or the San Diego Padres went there to play the Mets. The hecklers would taunt him with, “Hey Garvey–where’s your wife?” When I was watching the opening ceremonies for the 1984 Olympics in the L. A. Colisuem, and the announcement came that a song Hamlisch composed was about to be played, I left the room in disgust. I often record things off TV, but I decided I’d rather drink barttery acid than record anything composed by that crum… :mad:

3

And this has exactly what?!? to do with missing child posters, or have you been sniffing deckstain all day, too?

4

Yeah, you lost me on that one too, Dougie.

I just wanted to chime in and say I saw on Oprah a while back that they did an experiment where they took a kids picture and put it on a missing child sign with his description and what he was wearing, etc. They put the sign on the doors at a mall and parked the kid a few feet inside the door at a bench (in the same clothes and everything) and waited to see how long it would take for someone to “find” him. They were there several hours and nobody did. Quite a few people actually took the time to read the flyer and study the kid’s picture, then walked right past him. I’m not sure what the point of this experiment was other than the scare the crap out of people and maybe give them the idea that it’s “bad” when a child is kidnapped. :rolleyes: Actually, this might’ve been the show where they were teaching kids to fight back and kick out taillights when they were locked in a trunk, etc, so I suppose it was one of those “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” deals.

5

I reckon what Dougie’s question is, how many of the parent abductions are resolved. I think that there is some sentiment that “its not so bad” if it is the parent and not some stranger.

The problem with that is, if the judge did not grant a parent custody, there is probably a good reason for not doing so; it might just be that the parent who does have custody is better suited to care for the children. Notice it is not always the mom, either.

Just because you love a child does not mean that you are equipped to care for one.

6

Scylla, you point out Walmart’s poster as a source of information, but how reliable is it? Is it trustworthy statistics? Who gathered them and how? Were there other influences that lead to the returns of the children?

See that’s the problem. We really don’t know how reliable the statistics are, and Cecil does a good job of pointing out that “[t]he one more or less official analysis of missing-kid statistics” is questionable.

dougie did say “hijack”. I think the connection was that the mother ran off with the two daughters. Kind of just disappeared without notice. But she was a custodial parent, so it really wasn’t very on topic. Without any more details, I’d be hard pressed to find fault either way. shrug

voguevixen, it seems startling that the demo Oprah did was so unsuccessful, but Oprah missed the point that Erik (the questioner) made:

In other words, it’s not so much the kid standing directly under the poster as you seeing the poster and thinking, “Hey, isn’t that Bobby from softball practice?” Though there is some hope that it will work in abduction cases if it happens immediately.

Case in Houston recently the teenage kid turned out to be a runaway who saw the poster so called in.

As for the comments on “true” abductions, I think both have a point. Cecil points out that a non-custodial parent abduction is illegal and a bad thing. This may be because of abuse, or may just be who can provide better in a bitter divorce. However, the point I think Erik was making is that however bad parental abductions are, they are a different thing than abductions by total strangers, often for nafarious purposes. A custody dispute abduction is one thing, an abduction to molest and kill the child is something else.

The thing is, the “missing” posters are probably more effective for custody dispute abductions than other types, with runaways maybe next (as opposed to throwaways, because who’s put out the missing poster on them?).

7

Logically speaking, there is no such thing as a “missing” child UNLESS the child is living on the street, as we see in Brazil, but not in the USA (yet.)

That is, the “missing” children are in the custody of SOME adult: Charles Manson’s brother, perhaps, but some adult. The police in Brazil have been known to kill street children but here in the USA the police remand the rug rats to foster homes.

Therefore and in this sense only there is no such thing as a “missing” child.

Of course, what the campaign means is “missing” with respect to the legal and legally custodial parent.

But many children “missing” in this regard happen to be pawns in custody battles. In most, the courts have awarded custody to the mother even in cases where she is borderline unfit, and commanded the Dad (represented by Mom’s attorneys as a monster) to release the kids while paying child support.

Usually, this is the best of all possible worlds. But in some cases the mother has used maternity to get some power over a father who would like perhaps to avoid 16 hour days followed by the genuine labor of fatherhood, and therefore refuses to work as hard as Mom would like. Man wants be chillin, but unfortunately and in our society (in view of the expense of day care in the absence of decent support for families) man gonna work instead.

Many men crack under the strain, especially when they see the rich be chillin.

As a result, a war starts where man be coded as a kidnapper. Owing to the lack of family support, lawyers end up making decisions that should me made by the village.

Perhaps these missing children campaigns (especially when sponsored by corporations by WalMart, who we know, thanks to Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed, cares about profits and not people) are really just a species of social enforcement of complete privatization of what should be a social responsibility.

It takes a village to raise a child. But in America today, we vastly prefer to create cockpits of dysfunction, with Mom working three shifts and Dad, one long shift, where the complete absence of support in the form of day care and educational facilities that are a joke creates what we laughingly call “stress.”

Brother Cornel West be writing about this oppression of parents. It seems that as soon as a person in our society exercises his human right of parenthood (as spelled out by the United Nations) he is viewed as exploitable, from corporate software jobs where you make a lot of dough but work 16 hours a day (8 of which aren’t paid) to having to work 3 McJobs.

These “missing children” campaigns assuage corporate guilt and have the useful function of policing behavior and scaring kids. They ensure that parents are frightened into silence and conformity.

8

Someone ought to tell that to the folks at Wal-Mart. I happened to be in two of them today, as well as a Sam’s Club (wholesale club store run by the Wal-Mart corporation) and noticed that of all of the “abducted by non-custodial parent” only two were cases of non-custodial dad abductions, while the rest (well over 30 between the three stores) were non-custodial moms running off with their kids.

This is a trend I’ve noted at Wal-Mart, so much so I’ve commented to my husband more than once that I wondered why so many women were not only losing custody, but were so upset at the loss and so determined that dad should not see the kids at all that they felt justified to flee with the kids.

Either it’s happening in amazingly high numbers across the country (and more often with Hispanic couples than those of other races/backgrounds) or Wal-Mart wants us to think that it does.

9

Actually, Cecil 'ol buddy, we teeming millions DO pay for some Missing Child Posters, as IRS publications & tax form booklets have missing children on/in them and have had for several years.

B R

10

I understand Cecil’s point that abductions by non-custodial parents are also wrong, but I have wondered if by not generally distinguishing the types of kidnapppings, parents that aren’t threatened by custodial kidnappings are needlessly worrying that their kids will be grabbed by random kidnappers. I see parents that are scared to let their kids be on their own at all, and I think we have lost something.

11

Are you under the impression there are no children living on the street in the US?!?!?

12

spinoza1111 appears to be under several misconceptions, not that I could figure out everthing he was saying.

First, I’m confused by the use of “missing” as somehow only meaning runaways and not applying to children who are not with their parents and their whereabouts unknown. That is the meaning missing - they are not where they should be and the ones who should know where the child is don’t. Same way your keys are missing if you can’t find them.

Also, the US is plagued with children living on the streets, though not to the extent of Brazil. Also, in the US, they tend to be teenagers, whereas I think Brazil has prepubescent children without homes or families. The “Oliver Twist” type of orphans.

Then there’s some befuddling tirade on the American corporate system. And what the hell is this supposed to mean?

13

Irishman confirms that as opposed to what I said, there ARE children living on the streets of the USA, YET CALLS A “tirade” against the American corporate system “befuddling.”

Wjat I meant was that cities in this country have laws against kids on streets and for the most part these laws are enforced, although not primarlily in the interest of the kids themselves…more as a sort of civic beautification project.

Whereas in Brazil the cops have been known to kill the homeless children. American cops don’t.

However, if there are homeless kids who are genuinely not in custody of a homeless parent, then perhaps we do need some tirades against the American corporate system.

As to what the hell I mean it is that the Missing Child campaign may be a form of control of parents who refuse to be exploited as parents through their spouse.

Another poster has pointed out that in many cases the abductor in a mother. OK, I was wrong. The campaign is not primarliy to control Dad. It’s part of a war against women which creates collateral damage, in the form of fathers who genuinely lose their rights,

14

VogueVixen thinks I think there are no homeless children, using the downsized Political Correctness I am familiar with…in which thought is based on sailing from one keyword to the next.

Unlike Brazil, in which children have been killed by police, the United States has and in general enforces laws against a homeless minor who is not accompanied by a parent living on the street.

A homeless child in almost any part of the country will, if not accompanied by a parent, be placed in some sort of (usually horrible) shelter.

We’re not yet at the point Brazil reached, but we will if the McDonalization of the economy continues.

Even a homeless and sober adult, if reasonably well-dressed can in most municipalities get 24 hours if he goes to the police station.

I am not denying the massive homelessness and the massive abuse of children in the USA, much of which occurs because parents are exploited as a cheap labor force, guilt-ridden because they had sex and now must be punished for having sex for the rest of their lives at McDonald’s.

What I am doing is accurately narrating the situation not least in the event that owing to the collapse of the telecom industry I find little old me in need of a home.

Merely leaping about in an approved Politically Correct style reminds me of what my old chums in SDS used to do when drunk. They’d caricature their opponent as a male chauvinist or classist whatever and the rest of the debate would proceed on this basis.

Unlettered except in the ravings of David Horowitz (the new Right figure whose unreadable leftish tome, The Cold War Colossus, was at the time required reading during Horowitz’ leftie days) they did not know that Allen Ginsberg called this style of argumentation Stalinist.

15

I think I should point out that I know something about “abductions” of children, by either parent, when, as I see it, the issue of custody is immaterial, unless some kind of formal accusation has been brought either as a criminal charge or as an issue to be handled by a family court. In the case most familiar to me it alludes to the separation of my older brother and his estranged, and later divorced, wife, who went off with their three little kids to God knows where. This is especially paniful to my mother, who has not seen these grandchildren in more than 20 years. :frowning:
In the case of Steve Garvey: This happened in 1981, of course, several years before any charges were made against him by anybody, and if his conduct during ther marriage were consistent with this, his ex-wife would have seized on it immediately. But they had two daughters, one age 8 and one age 6 at the time of the abduction, kidnaping, child-stealing, or whatever we choose to call it. That anyone–in this instance, Cyndy Garvey or Marvin Hamlisch–who is often in the public eye, should pull such a stunt, is even more galling than if plain citizens were involved.

16

spinoza - while the homeless children in the US may not need fear specifically being targeted by the Police, it’s not necessarily true that those homeless kids walking the streets would be picked up and taken home, either. The streets are quite dangerous for kids.

on the OP.

I agree w/the letter writer re: how the missing kids pics are to work - they hope that people who are part of the childrens’ lives will recognize them (neighbors, teachers etc). And of course, this would most likely work best with non custodial parental kidnappings (where presumably the child would go to school) vs. runaways and/or the thankfully rare sterotypical stranger kidnapping (where the stranger has nefarious designs upon the child).

RE: accuracy of stats etc. I feel that in many cases until and unless the child is found, the root cause of the ‘missing’ would not necessarily be known (ie accident vs. runaway vs. stranger abduction can all seem very similar at the outset).

and Scylla - buy a mask, those fumes are not a good thing.

17

NinetyWt said:

OK, first of all, it’s not fair to assume that there must be a good reason for a judge to grant custody to one parent over another -in the 70’s, for example, it was extremely difficult for a father to gain custody, regardless of his ability to be the primary caregiver. There was (and still is, I think, though I can’t provide a cite right this second) a stereotype that fathers just weren’t capable of taking care of a child. I just don’t think you can assume that the non-custodial parent must have something “wrong” with them. (OK, I know you didn’t say that, it just sorta read that way.)

And as for the sentiment that in the case of a parental abduction
“it’s not so bad” well, tell that to the mom who doesn’t know where her child is for years…

If, for the most part, taxpayers aren’t funding the poster campaigns, then as long as even one child is found, it’s a successful campaign…

:Cricket steps off soapbox:

18

spinoza1111, I find the tirade befuddling in part because this forum is Comments on Cecil’s Columns, not Great Debates. I also have a hard time decyphering how you connect having children to corporate enslavement.

You know, I was going to address more of your responses, but then I realized I’d only be guilty of furthering the inappropriate debate. Plus the fact that your posts now make it seem you should really be posting in The Pit.

However, one or two comments are relatively on topic.

The only way I can make sense of this is to think you mean one parent (aka the father) abducts and runs off with the children because the other parent (aka the mother) expects financial support and yet retains custody and, perhaps, prevents visitation. If so, all I can say is that in the above the father is in the wrong. Custody and visitation should be decided via the courts. (Not that I’m saying the courts are always correct. That’s a totally different discussion.)

Comments like this lead me to believe you have a personal grudge to air. Anyway, I fail to see a connection between Missing Children posters leading to fathers losing custody/visitation rights, except as a consequence of their actions.

dougie_monty said:

While this is tragic, I am not convinced these are missing children. They have a parent and a home. There’s no law stating you must remain in contact with your ex-in-laws, even with children involved.

19

There may not be a law, Irishman, but there is such a thing as a vestige of common decdency and courtesy…

20

Actually, my understanding is that the women almost always get custody - and then often interfere with the father’s visitation rights. There’s a whole father’s rights movement dedicated to trying to level that particular playing field. www.ifeminists.com had an article about it (http://www.ifeminists.com/introduction/editorials/2002/0709a.html)