I have a conservative Facebook friend who seldom lets an opportunity slip by in which he can make a political dig. He’s a parent himself, and on the subject of having your neighbors calling the cops on your kids while they play outside unsupervised, he said this:
“We live in a pretty conservative community so hopefully my anxiety is unjustified.”
The clear implication being, a conservative person is less likely to call the cops about kids running loose than is a progressive person. But is that really true?
One the one hand, it seems to me that conservatives today are more driven by fear, in a general sense, than are liberals. On the other hand, conservatives are also more about freedom from government (including police, I suppose) interference in their personal lives and decision making. (Yes, one might quibble that this is not true re: sexual orientation, but it’s probably more true than not across all issues.)
So, are people at one end or the other of the political spectrum more likely to call the police when they see children playing alone at a playground? Or is it just a matter of certain people being nosy busybodies, without any correlation with political affiliation?
I’m curious if there any studies or surveys on the topic, but also I’m interested in the opinions of the SDMB community. Thanks!
I think it’s more that, by definition, conservatives prefer to keep things the way they were in the past. Since, as they see it, kids used to play outside unsupervised in the past, they should be more in favor of them continuing to do so today.
IME, conservatives are much more likely to *bitch *about helicopter parents, but about equally likely to be helicopter parents. That is, conservatives will prattle on about how everyone’s a pussy now, but when they won’t let their kids walk to school by themselves they’re not raising pussies, they’re just being sensible.
I don’t know if there would be a political bias in this, I bet it’s more “I don’t like those particular parents and I’ve got a chance to screw them over!”
From my set I don’t see a correlation. I have the conservative friends that taught their kids to shoot at the age of 6. They have a ranch, go horseback riding, ride ATVs, and are as free range as you can get. Almost to the point that I have worried about my kids when we are with them. Almost. On the other hand another conservative family I know don’t let their kids stray at all. If their kids want to come over, they will walk them even though we live only 1 block away in one of the safest and best neighborhoods in suburban Denver. Their kids are 13 and 11 mind you, not little by any means. Their are so wound up by their very conservative mother that they can’t take a bite of a cookie for fear it might have dairy or gluten :eek:. And no, they do not have celiac disease. I have seen them eat gluten without ill effect on many occasions.
For the liberal side I can think of representative couples that are much the same. Some of the families give their kids free reign without fear and some are incredibly overbearing and protective.
If I average over all the people I know, I don’t really see any trends in this regard. YMMV and all that.
To be honest, I don’t think it is possible to answer this question.
I have not evaluated these and make no claim to how accurate or unbiased they are, just showing they exist and that this belief is a thing. Hell, for all I know all those articles, even though years separate them, are citing the same study and that study may be flawed. Whatever. You wanted a cite.
I don’t think there’s a partisan correlation here either. I know conservative overparenting types and liberal overparenting types. It seems to me to be more a function of region, generation, and the nature of the family structure and the parenting roles chosen by the parents or extended family.
This “calling the cops on free range kids” seems to be a fairly recent development. Very disturbing, but the free range parents seem to always win on the merits of the law. The problem is that it chills their freedom to parent because it’s such a scary thing to have happen. Police departments and child welfare agencies need to be instructed by elected officials to not substitute their own judgement for the judgement of the voters and parents. If the consensus eventually becomes such that we no longer tolerate kids under 16 or whatever being outside alone, then that can be duly enacted into law.
Let me take a wild guess: You’re not a conservative.
I think this is more of a generational and socio-economic thing rather than a political thing, based on my own experience. Still, I doubt anyone has actually studied it. But that won’t stop people from projecting their politics onto it.
There are definitely many liberals who think “free range” is good for chickens and children and there are definitely conservatives who think kids need to be more self-reliant. And there are liberals and conservatives who think their precious snowflakes must be guarded against any and all dangers at any cost.
Well no, but do you disagree that conservatives are more likely to complain about kids these days, entitled millenials, political correctness, and any number of things that they consider to be way worse now than at some nebulous time in the past? And, again IME, this includes conservatives in their early 20s who aren’t even old enough to remember the time they’re reminiscing about. There’s just a general attitude that people were tougher “back in the day,” and that includes kids and their parents.
And yet, like everyone else in this thread, I’ve seen that conservatives and liberals are about equal in their likelihood of being over-protective parents or caregivers.
Yeah, it kinda gets my goat that my father-in-law, an ultra-conservative small business owner, will complain to no end about how young people are entitled, soft, and unwilling to do hard work (say, at his company), but when he sees my kids struggling with some task he’s the first one to rush in and do it for them. How does he think kids learn independence and how to work hard? It boggles the mind.
Plenty of Libs and Cons share the same desire to use the power of politics to control the lives of others. This is one of those bi-partisan efforts grind the boot heel of government down on the common man. We can expect this to be a slippery slope as today our right to … wait, what are we talking about here? Oh yeah, kids and stupid doting parents. Bah, can’t stand those annoying brats, or their children.
Neither, but I’m pretty sure the usual suspects will find some way to blame the other side for doing something, or not doing something. :smack:
Can anyone identify the political affiliation of the man who actually called the police, based on his voice, accent, or choice of words?
***Man walking his dog called cops on ‘free-range’ kids ***-
I think it crosses political lines. See it’s old-fashioned and The Way it Ought to Be until one of those kids throws a rock off an overpass or falls out of a tree and is severely injured. Then it’s Where Are the Parents? all over the comments section. My own particular belief is that there are people who live, breathe, and seem to thrive on complaining about how other people do things. I tend to tip toe away no matter which side of the political spectrum they fall on.
Social conservatives seem to be more afraid of “bad guys” than liberals are, in my experience. It’s not so much that they are afraid of their kids falling down a well as they are of nebulous dark forces–made even scarier by the news–that are constantly on the prowl for their children. They are also more likely to worry about bad influences. Kids who are unsupervised are more vulnerable to bad influences.
But I don’t know if this manifests in more “helicopter” parenting.
I think it’s more of a class thing than a political thing. There’s only so much helicoptering you can do when both parents have to work double-shifts every day and Meemaw lives an hour away.