I have three daughters they were only allowed to overnight with people we really knew well. I can only go by the U.K. but a single father having a little girl staying over could start the rumours going around. in the U.K. it is a very sensitive issue at present
Moms in general seem to not trust any man to be around children, even his own. Try even taking your own kids to the park.
I do, it’s not an issue.
When I was 5 I rode my bike to kindergarten on my own. That was back in the single income days when mothers stayed home and kept a watch on everything. Today parents line up to pick their grade school children up lest they be kidnapped and murdered.
Times and attitudes have changed. It only takes a couple of missing children in the news to make parents distrustful.
Which is an unfortunate side effect of a more connected world. Back in the days of small communities and news travelling slowly, nobody knew about Bob’s kids being abducted on the other side of the country, they only knew about things that happened in their community and so they understood that rare events don’t happen very often. Now we see news about every mildly noteworthy event around the world and because we are not very good at appreciating just how many people there are out there, we fail at assessing the risk.
Have you tried putting on pants first?
It’s quite normal these days for parents to be what many would call “overprotective”. The problem is 100% safety is impossible and so each parent decides the best way to get to mitigate risks.
I believe that it is a self-reinforcing phenomena: I read about problem, tips to avoid problem. I get worried and go one step further. Enough people go one step further and the next time you read about the problem your one step is the new normal so you go even further. Since you can never reach 100% the cycle continues as you attempt to reach 100% like an asymptote.
The thinking goes like this:
Will my daughter be molested if she is allowed to sleep over -> Maybe
Will she be molested if she doesn’t sleep over -> maybe (think Elizabeth Smart or Amorous husband) but less likely
Therefore the only reasonable answer is to say no since likelihood of molestation is lower if she doesn’t go.
It doesn’t really matter what the change in likelihood is the person will always choose the option perceived to have lower danger. Really it is a sickness caused by an irresponsible media and a personality geared towards worry. The parent never sleeps soundly because they can never be 100% sure their child is safe.
Its problematic because kids are far safer today then they were in the 70s or 80s.
I think part of the problem is that you can’t fight the world. What other people think of you and your parenting has ramifications on your life and your children’s lives, even if you are ultimately correct.
Suppose the rest of the world makes some sort of irrational or ignorant assessment of the risks of such-and-such activity. You’re the only rational and knowledgable one. So you let your kids engage in it, while most other people don’t. The problem you’re going to have is that people are going to think you’re an irresponsible parent and will be distrustful of you and possibly of your kids. And if something ever does go wrong, no matter how unlikely this may have been, society will be quick to jump to the conclusion that you’re to blame, for being so irresponsible and neglectful.
Bottom line is - as in so many other things - that while you do have some flexibility and can push the envelope a bit in the direction that you believe to be correct, you can’t stray too far from what society thinks is correct, or you will suffer the consequences.
I rode my bike to kindergarten in the early 60’s. I don’t see that happening today.
To be fair, a man in his 50s riding on a bike to a kindergarten class… one where he has no children enrolled… might raise some flags. 
“No! I left my matchbox car in there! I want it back. Just ask Mrs. Grayson…”
But that doesn’t mean it was safer then- it just means parents were more comfortable with the idea. I walked to school and traveled to Manhattan at a younger age than most of my kids classmates did- and NYC was definitely not a safer place in the 70’s than it was in 2000. And there are a lot of reasons for the parents to be less comfortable- everything from cable news letting me know that a kid was abducted in Texas (which my parents wouldn’t have known about in the 70’s) to the things that that make it harder to know your neighbors to the problems of being the only parent who lets their kid walk home from school. But those things have nothing to do with safety.
I walked to school and traveled to Manhattan at a younger age than most of my kids’ classmates did- and NYC was definitely not a objectively safer place in the 70’s than it was in 2000. I would practically go bug-eyed when their NYC- raised parents said " It’s so dangerous nowadays".
I thought I would post an update to this thread. To recap: I’m a single dad and my daughter wanted her friend (who I will call Jessica) to spend the night but the other parents wouldn’t allow it because there would be no female here.
Update…
The kids were in second grade at the time. At the end of that year, our neighborhood was rezoned and my daughter switched to a grades 3-7 school while the other girl stayed at the K-3 school. They spent a year at different schools, then when the other girl joined my daughter at the 3-7 school, they didn’t have any classes together. I don’t know what relationship, if any, they had, but Jessica wasn’t on my radar at all that year.
This past year (5th grade), they were in the same class and quickly became best friends. One day near the start of the year, my daughter asked if Jesse could spend the night. I didn’t recognize the name and just assumed it was a new friend. She gave me Jesse’s dad’s phone number and I texted him and we made plans. I picked them up at school and Jesse spent the night but I didn’t recognize her. I hadn’t seen her in 3 years and they probably spent 99% of their time in her room playing games and watching movies that night anyway. For whatever reason, I just didn’t recognize her at all and assumed she was a new friend.
But her dad came to pick her up the next day and I recognized him immediately. Holy shit, that was the kid? She just spent the night here? I hadn’t even spoken to the parents. We had only sent like 4 text messages back and forth making plans.
He asked to speak to me alone. Oh boy, this doesn’t sound fun.
We went outside and he brought up the time he wouldn’t let her spend the night. He apologized and blamed it on the mother being overprotective. He said they were divorced now and he had no problem with his daughter coming over anytime. 2-3 weeks later she spent the night again, but her mom was the one who picked her up. When she picked her up, we basically replayed the same scene I had earlier with the dad, except she blamed him for being the overprotective one.
Ok, whatever.
Now they spend the night together all the time. So, it’s a happy ending!
Oh yeah, and her mom, divorced and single, keeps hitting on me. Unfortunately, she’s not my type at all so although things are going well with the kids and with sleepovers, now I feel awkward every time the mom is involved.
So, it’s a mostly happy ending anyway!
That is a function of perspective, not safety. For example, people typically think that the roads are more dangerous today than they were in 1960. But they’re not. The number of fatalities per capita per year is roughly half of what it was back then. Granted, a lot of that improvement is down to improvements in vehicle design, and the US has been slow to jump on the pedestrian safety bandwagon. But most objective measures of safety are either better today, or no worse. For example, the homicide rate is about the same today as it was in the 1960s (though it was much higher for a lot of the intervening period).
Awesome update!
Meh, to each his own. Parents can be really weird, and I say that as a son and as a father of 3 girls.
Some parents just don’t do the sleepover thing with their kids. It’s pretty rare in the
Chinese culture to have sleepovers. My kids have friends that will come hang out until midnight but then get picked up. Whatever. Life is too short to get inside another parents head.
Having several kiddos doing the sleepover can alleviate the generally unfounded fears of some parents.
Parents being weird isn’t something to get offended by. Maybe a good moment to figure out how to make it a win win for the kids or a teaching moment.
Or maybe fortunately. It’s possibly she’s overprotective or maybe she has her own set of issues. For one reason or another, they’re divorced and while I have dated divorced women, this sounds like one you might not want to get mixed up with.
I had an issue (tangentially related), where I a wife called in an order for some Christmas gifts for clients each year and each year we’d send them out wrong, like so wrong that I’d have to refund her the money and wonder if I was going nuts. It got to the point where I’d make her fax the order over (so I could show send her own fax back in her handwriting when she claimed we did it wrong). After a few years of this they were divorced and A)the husband (while placing the order) apologized and said she did that to everyone, it was just ‘what she did’ (I think she thought she was saving money w/o realizing she was pissing off vendors) and B)I heard from other’s that knew the couple that she was kinda wacko.
IOW, IIRC the beginning of the story, and I didn’t go back, maybe this is one you don’t want anything to do with.
Which brings me back to why I first posted, when I started reading the update, before I got to the part about you not recognizing the name, my thinking was to decline the sleepover (both ways, your kid can’t go there either). If they ask, I would have said something like ‘I’m sorry, we tried this a few years back and you made it pretty clear that for some reason you didn’t trust me with your kid so I think we’ll just take a pass, but thanks for the invite’.
Obviously it all worked out though.
Having said that, if it all possible, I wouldn’t let the mom find out. I wouldn’t hide it, but I certainly wouldn’t be the one to mention it and and I’m guessing the dad knows not to either. You wouldn’t want to find out that she’s still vindictive and using the kid as a pawn. It happens (even unknowingly) pretty often.
Dude, fate is calling. You have to close the circle - let the mum sleep over and molest her.
Don’t molest the crazy, crazy fights back. And not just in Soviet Russia.
Indeed. I’m sure I’d understand - I’d understand that they were paranoid assholes.