I must update my last post:
I have been told and shown that that last case concerning the library and high school has in fact been remedied recently. Very recently. After years of badgering by parents.
I’ve had many conversations about this with my wife and other people around my age. Born in 1964 in the suburban Detroit area, I ran around by myself or other kids my age all day long. Played in a patch of woods behind the house that’s now apartment buildings. Walked to and from school by myself from Kindergarten on. Rode my bike for miles. We had requisite warnings to not accept rides or candy from strangers, but that was about it.
The time it all changed for me was when I was 12, around 1976-77. Someone who became known as the “Oakland County child killer” kidnapped and killed 4 children around my age in the area over a certain period of months to maybe a year. The killer was never caught, though I’ve read there’ve been some theories as to who it may have been. I remember it being a scary time for us kids and though our parents drastically curtailed our freedom to run all over the neighborhood by ourselves, we didn’t really mind at the time.
Boys Beware
Remember when “San Francisco” meant “gay Mecca?” I’m old enough to remember when it meant only Rice-A-Roni: for homosexuality your place-marker was Boise, Idaho
I read the free range parenting book while my wife was pregnant with my son. It really resonated with us and reaffirmed our commitment to at least be aware of the signs of “helicopter parenting”.
Now my son is five, and we let him play outside with a set of rules and minimal supervision. If he’s the only kid outside, he has to stay on the sidewalks and our driveway. If the neighbor kids are out, he can ride and play in (we live on a dead in street with very little traffic) and around the entire street. He’s allowed to ride to the corner store around the block if he’s with his buddies and he lets us know beforehand. He’s not allowed to go into anyone’s house without at least telling us beforehand. As long as we have a general idea of where he should be, we’re comfortable with him playing without being under our constant gaze.
I’m sure it got got some odd looks from the neighbors at first, to see a 5 year old playing outside without his parents in sight, but no one ever outright complained, and over time we’ve started seeing more kids on our street playing unsupervised, so I like to think we’ve started a trend. It’s nice, reminds me so much of my own childhood, and I’m glad I can allow my son to have that experience. 
That is exactly what came to my mind.
Good point. I would even propose that the sexual predator danger was greater in the past than it is today because of the extreme penalties given to offenders who are caught, and the fact that people are more willing to talk about the problem and arguably more likely to follow through to see that offenders get convicted. Back then, pervs were probably diddling kids left and right but nothing, or hardly anything, was done about it. People didn’t want to think about it, they told kids to forget about it, it was nothing, etc.
Good point, this is a fear of a lot of men. It’s sort of a cost/benefit thing - while there’s really nothing you can do to completely remove the threat of being falsely accused of a crime, most crimes don’t create a lot of worry because hey, even if I somehow get falsely accused, or maybe even convicted, of DUI, possession of an unregistered handgun, tax evasion, or second-degree mopery with intent to commit factionalism, I can still pull my life back together, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. But even an accusation of a sex crime against a child basically means your life as you know it is over. Cf. Michael Jackson, who lived much of the later part of his life as a “potentially dangerous” person even though he was never convicted of doing anything to kids.
There’s a simple and obvious way to greatly mitigate the sex crime accusation danger - don’t be alone with kids, and don’t touch them. Don’t agree to watch them over the weekend, don’t let them sit on your lap, etc.
There are people who won’t let their children come over to play if only my husband will be here. They want both of us, or just me. And it’s not my husband-- it’s their policy in general not to let their children go play where only the male parent/guardian is home. Really awful for kids of single fathers.
Are males statistically a greater threat to molest children than females?
In terms of offenders nabbed by the legal system, males are overwhelmingly more likely. Yet a third of sexual abuse victims say their abuser was female:
Offenders are more likely to be relatives or acquaintances of their victim than strangers.[116] A 2006–2007 Idaho study of 430 cases found that 82% of juvenile sex offenders were known to the victims (acquaintances 46% or relatives 36%).[117][118]
More offenders are male than female, though the percentage varies between studies. The percentage of incidents of sexual abuse by female perpetrators that come to the attention of the legal system is usually reported to be between 1% and 4%.[119] Studies of sexual misconduct in US schools with female offenders have shown mixed results with rates between 4% to 43% of female offenders.[120] Maletzky (1993) found that, of his sample of 4,402 convicted pedophilic offenders, 0.4% were female.[121] Another study of a non-clinical population found that, among those in the their sample that had been molested, as much as a third were molested by women.[122]
I guess women just don’t get caught, partly because no one suspects.
I think that molestation of non-family members is more likely to be done by men, but that may have to do with male attitudes of privilege, than that women never have the desire. Women may simply think they can’t get away with it, maybe because they won’t successfully intimidate their victims into not reporting. Or maybe women have greater access to children they are related to.
However, sex crimes in general are more often committed by men, so probably child molestation is as well. Maybe if you look at sub-types of sex crimes against children, you can find a few that women are more likely to commit, or that men and women commit in equal numbers, but the majority of all crime is committed by men.
Again, I don’t know why, but I would guess that probably the discrepancy between men and women molesters may be smaller than the “90% are men,” or other things like that we usually hear; however, even though men probably still commit most sex crimes both against children and other adults, it doesn’t follow that most men will commit a sex crime. Even the rape stat of “1 in 3 women” doesn’t suggest that 1 in 3 men commits rape, just that the ones who do are very busy.
It’s more important to know the parents of your children’s friends, than to make arbitrary rules like “no men alone,” IMO.
Here’s a case from Hawaii: A man made his 8 year old son walk a mile from school to home to discipline him :
http://thegardenisland.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/father-punished-for-old-school-discipline/article_74fc9c34-e705-11e3-b1ea-001a4bcf887a.html
“Robert Demond was sentenced to a one-year probation, a $200 fine and to a child parenting class for a misdemeanor charge of second-degree endangering the welfare of a minor.”
I played out on the street from a very early age, about 4 or 5. It was a quiet, residential street. When I was 8/9 I got a big boy’s bike and slowly went further and further away from home. By age 11 I was out all day, cycling up to 40 miles, and would be back just before dark. I loved being out and, as it was the 70s/80s, there were only three tv channels and not much else to do at home.
I feel sorry for kids who aren’t allowed anywhere. I guess some weren’t when I was young but my peer group was pretty close-knit. In my teens I was approached by unknown guys on a couple of occasions, I let them know I wasn’t interested at all in their advances and that was that. I blame schools today, all you need is a secret codeword between the kid and who’s picking them up, or the kid/teacher can just ring the parents and check. Not being allowed to walk yourself home must make you feel a little institutionalized and/or childlike, possibly a little insulted. If it was pretty safe to be out back in the 80s, now all kids have their own phones surely it’s even safer now?
It seems to be the latest and hippest parenting trend to bemoan “helicopter parenting” and advocate for its opposite, “free range parenting”. This is often paired, as we see ITT, with reminiscences about how much less closely parents watched their children back in the '70s and earlier. But am I really the only one who looks back at that era and feels like I dodged a bullet?
In my case, it was when I was about ten years old. My parents let me at that age hang out by myself downtown all day on weekends, and take the city bus home. No cell phone of course, so just pure faith that they’d see me in a few hours.
I was hanging out at an arcade, and some guy (maybe thirty years old or so) started chatting me up. I had certainly learned all the “don’t talk to strangers” stuff, and especially not to accept rides from them, but for whatever reason that didn’t kick in. He offered me a ride home, and I actually accepted it (I know, right?). My radar was not pinging at that point, and I just wanted the easy ride rather than walking to the bus stop and waiting.
Fairly soon after we pulled out of the parking lot, though, I belatedly had the realization of, essentially, *“WTF did I just do?!?” *My mouth got dry, I felt kind of hot and prickly all over, my heart raced, I had a lump in my throat, all that jazz. So I did at least smarten up a bit at this point, and fortunately for me it wasn’t too late. I quickly asked if we could stop at a convenience store and get some candy. He was agreeable, and we pulled in. The moment I got out of that car, I felt such a great sense of relief. It was very public and there were lots of people around–and I knew there was NO way I was getting back in that car, or giving up any more info.
In the store, the guy offered to pay for my candy, but I politely yet tersely refused. He urged me to get back in the car to take me the rest of the way, but again I declined. “How far from here do you live?” he pressed (and looked pained). I said “not far, just a few blocks over that way”–and pointed in a direction about 90 degrees off from the actual direction to my house, which was a little under a mile away.
Finally, he gave up, looking dejected (or at least that’s how I remember it) and drove off. I lingered a little longer until his car was out of sight, and then bolted in a zigzag path through parking lots and backyards, taking special care to be sure he was not lurking anywhere around when I came out of the trees and entered my own yard. I didn’t go back to that arcade for a long time, and I never saw him again.
Now, maybe it was all innocent. Maybe. But what thirty year old dude just chats up a ten year old boy at an arcade and offers him a ride home, plus candy? I think, as I say, I probably dodged a bullet there, and tend to think it’s not so bad that these days parents are a little more reluctant to let kids that young hang around public areas unsupervised.
There may or may not be fewer active predators now who target kids they don’t know. But there are certainly (since that “latest, hippest trend” of “free range parenting” is–like most hip, au courant trends–not practiced by the vast majority of parents) far fewer potential targets for that kind of predator, and the ones that are there at the park or wherever are less likely to be surrounded by crowds of other kids. So in part it may be one of those paradoxical things like “tragedy of the commons” (though not quite the same thing), where even if it would be collectively safer if everyone went “free range”, it is quite possible that it’s individually dangerous to leave the herd and put your kid out there alone, or close to alone.
Ditto for me in the time frame but -------- we laughed it off and totally ignored it all. We roamed, mostly in small groups, all over several communities from like age 6 on and over several counties from like age 10 on. Hikes, bikes, down the river on rafts, hitchhiking sometimes. All of that. And well through 1980 I can’t remember anyone in either place I grew up having a “bad result” from doing so. As a kid 16-18 I was a lot more leery of picking up hitchhikers than in hitchhiking myself - getting sued was more a concern than getting abducted. I can remember kids playing alone around the same woods and parks alone as we did up until the mid 80s or so.
The case around here (Pittsburgh) that changed things was
and the various milk carton campaigns. I can’t prove it but I think a lot of that drove more kids nuts from hovering parents than it saved (or rescued) kids from kidnappers.
I should add that the “I did ____ as a kid and I’m fine” strikes me as akin to the anthropic fallacy.
Yeah, I love those Facebook posts: when we were kids, we tattooed each other with rusty nails and we’re fine!
LOL, exactly.
I see so much of that in my FB timeline; when I posted this story earlier today, I got crickets–total lack of any response or even “likes”. I could picture all my FB friends’ sour faces, with me acting as the buzzkill.
I was a pre-teen in the 1970s and remember getting lectured about it at school, but my folks let me do anything I wanted.
When I was ten or so, I sold flower and vegetable seeds door-to-door for a fundraiser, and once I figured out how much money I could make, I started doing it for myself.
I outfitted my bike with a set of baskets, and ranged far and wide seeking out new territory. I only had one encounter with a creepy guy, and luckily my danger flag went up immediately went he invited me into his house.
Get this, the guy had Christmas decorations up, actually an entire Christmas village in his yard, and it was March or April. He was a fat dude with a white beard, so I’m assuming that he worked as a Santa during Christmas time.
I’m always weirded out by old dudes who play Santa Claus, I would not let my kids go near a department store Santa. It’s a dumb tradition anyway.
This should provide a sobering rejoinder to the “free range parenting” movement:
http://www.hrsa.gov/healthit/images/mchb_child_mortality_pub.pdf
Check out Figure 9 (about 60 percent of the way down) in particular. It looks like one of those misleading graphs that starts at some high number so the change looks more dramatic, but it’s not. Kids were dying like flies from accidents (“unintentional injuries”) back in the '70s, and such deaths had dramatically dropped (by around 70 percent) by 2007. I’d guess that mortality rate is even lower now, given that child deaths from car accidents dropped by almost half just between 2002 and 2011.
Also interesting in the HRSA PDF are Figures 11 and 12, that look uncannily like maps of a recent presidential election (with Utah and New Mexico playing their usual roles as outliers on such maps, the exceptions that prove the rule).
I don’t think that it’s an indictment of “free-range” parenting, nor an endorsement of helicopter parenting. For one thing, homicides among young older children and young teens seem to have tripled in the time period looked at. Also, I don’t think free-range parents object to basic safety precautions such as car seats and bicycle helmets, which are probably two of the biggest lifesavers contributing to the reduction in death from accidents.
You’ll also notice that in the figures that compare 1907 to 2007, the impact of vaccines in reducing early childhood deaths is obvious, and probably good treatment for asthma has helped a lot as well. One odd thing I have noticed, which I don’t have a cite for, it’s just a personal observation, as someone who interacts with the parents of young children a lot, because I have a young child, and I worked at his preschool for a while, when he was 1-3 years, is that some of the worst woo-believing parents, who tend to be anti-vax, are also helicopter parents. I have no idea what the connection is, other than some weird “My child, I do what I want” kind of ethic.
We had one parent at my son’s preschool whose child was already showing signs of an anxiety disorder at age 2 & 1/2, that I think was entirely induced by the* constant* monitoring and interference by her mother, and this mother was seriously into woo: homeopathy, and depriving the child of a whole list of foods from refined sugar to wheat. I never asked, but I’m sure the kid wasn’t vaccinated. She was a home birth as well. I can’t begin to describe how interfering this mother was. She carried her perfectly-able-to-walk kid into the classroom every day, and then played with her in the classroom for 10-15 minutes “to make sure she was engaged” before she’d leave her, picked her up at the end of the day, and carried her back out. She also said these really long good-byes to her, and then wanted to talk to us (the teacher, and me, the classroom aide) for several minutes, before she’d actually get out of there. She also wanted us to carry her daughter out whenever we had a fire drill, because her kid was “sensitive.” We told her we couldn’t do that, because we had ten kids to be responsible for. She complained to the principal, who set her straight, thank goodness.
Where are you getting that? My reading of the data is that homicides have been more or less flat, and it’s “unintentional injuries” that have plummeted.
More on that from the National Bureau of Economic Research:
There is also evidence that the increasing attention paid to children by parents (aside from extreme outliers like the woman in your anecdote) accrues benefits beyond simply protecting them from danger:
I also want to note that it is really unfair that the “free range” side of the argument apparently gets to name themselves *and *their opposition, the latter with the sneering “helicopter” appellation.