Also mature is projecting your issues off on to other people in a way that affects your own kid. And we won’t even get into letting your issues run amok and not ever taking responsibility for them.
Ha. Now I get it. You’ve made decisions just like this in your past and they’ve made just about as much sense. Pats on the back for that sort of thing are --------> that way.
To the OP: Forget about them. No matter what the reason is, they’d be high maintenance pains in the ass if you had to deal with them frequently. It sucks for your daughter, but I’m sure it’ll save you both heartache in the long run.
Maybe the reason isn’t that you’re a man, but that they think you’re black. You haven’t done any black things, recently, like rob or shoot anybody have you?
Maybe you could send proof you’re white.
A receipt from Whold Foods should do it.
I think it’s the opposite: it’s an item that IS under our control. I mean, my husband or my BiL or my father are, statistically, more likely to molest my son than a random stranger. But there is no way I can actually determine if they are molesters, and it would be doing my child a tremendous disservice to deny him time with his father, grandfather, and uncles because of a small chance that he will suffer abuse. So I have to simply accept that abuse could happen from those directions but what will be will be, and hope we are lucky–and frankly, our odds are pretty good.
But what I can control is the access my son has to random strangers, and there is a degree to which I can control that without denying him an essential part of his childhood. So while “marital status” isn’t really on my radar, I can imagine circumstances where I wouldn’t let my son visit or stay overnight with a particular family. I might know, statistically, that staying at home is more likely to lead to abuse than staying at a strangers. But the risk/reward calculation is so totally different that there is no real comparison.
I wouldn’t tell anyone that I thought the tiny risk of them abusing my son wasn’t worth the also tiny advantage of developing a particular friendship, off course, because that’s rude and pointless.
Yeah. One of the on-going problems about child abuse is that people aren’t aware of how damn common it is.
There were a couple thousand kids in my high school. Given the stats on abuse (of various sorts) it is likely there were more than just the six I knew about.
I can think of several kids I grew up with who, looking back, it’s really obvious that something along these lines happened to them, although not necessarily with their father or other male relative as the perpetrator. It may well have been someone outside the family, or even a female offender.
I used to work with a woman who mostly associated with ex-convicts, and was married to one as well. :eek: It was mysterious to all of us why she did this, because she was not raised in that environment at all. She talked a lot about how parents didn’t have any hesitation about their kids playing with her son when he was with his dad, but didn’t want them going over to her house, and her explanations didn’t make any sense.
Her husband was NOT a reformed criminal by any stretch of the imagination, either; going into more detail could potentially identify the family. She probably made 5 times as much money as her ex-husband, and this is the only reason I can think of why he didn’t have primary, or even sole, custody.
If being “open and honest” means implying that the guy is a potential child molestor, then yeah, absolutely she should lie. No matter what a person’s past issues, you just don’t go around implying that people are criminals for no reason. That’s HER problem, not his, she has no right putting it on him. It’s not about him being “delicate”. I am not trying to dismiss people who’ve had trauma in their pasts. But it doesn’t give you the right to blame complete strangers, or make them feel like shit, when they’ve done nothing wrong.
Obviously she’s too delicate to use proper ettiquette.
You do know that Sandusky’s wife was in the house when he raped those boys, right? :dubious:
There may be, but that’s not what’s going on here. You literally can’t not let your child be with any potentional child molester. By not letting the child be with the OP, they in fact saying that they think he is a probable child molester. (Assuming that is the issue at all, of course.)
I mean, my dog is a possible child molester. (We haven’t definitively proven that dogs can’t make moral choices.)
One need not have the ability to make moral choices in order to molest a child, so your dog is a potential threat regardless.
First off, while I cannot be certain that I do not go into a fugue state and molest my own child then conveniently forget about it, I’m comfortable that I remain a potential child molestor and will notice and remember if I one day realize my potential. Now I can accompany my child to birthday parties and play dates and remain alert for other potential molestors, making sure my child is never alone with another adult. I can’t very well invite myself to a sleepover though.
Now the odds of one adult realizing his or her potential are what they are. Add a second adult and do we increase the risk, as we now have two potential molestors? Or is it now less likely, as if only one of the pair is a molestor, they run the risk of the other noticing and taking some action. In the case of the hypervigilant parent, it is possible that the assumption is that neither parent would ever be alone with the guests, as perhaps that is how they conduct themselves at home, to avoid false accusations or the appearance of impropriety.
Taking the leap of assuming that someone must be categorized as a probable molestor rather than potential if one avoids the sleepover for this reason is inaccurate. If I assess a 1% chance that a person is a molestor, and I send my daughter on 100 such outings and she is molested once, isn’t that one too many times? Yet to be a PROBABLE molestor, the person would be more likely than not, so >50%. I could easily conclude that even the small chance is not worth taking and nix the sleepover without thinking the dad is at all likely to be anything more than a potential molestor like the rest of us.
I see all three possibilities too, but number three seems most likely due to “I’m sure you understand,” assuming that’s the precise wording (or close enough) that the other Dad used.
“I’m sure you understand” means “most people would be concerned about this.” Not that they have specific reasons for it.
You wouldn’t explain your specific reasons, sure, but would you act as if your reasons were normal? Not say something like “I’m really sorry, but we’re just not comfortable with this right now. It’s not about you, it’s just not doable right now. Hope you’re OK with that.” Something that makes it about your experiences without being specific, not the fact that he is a big scary MAN and all big scary MEN are dangerous beasts to be avoided at all points.
Of course, humans are not perfect, and we don’t always phrase things as we should, but the phrasing they actually chose - “I’m sure you understand” - doesn’t happen by accident.
It’s fucking awful to be accused of being a potential child molester. Yes, not as bad as being accused of being one, by light-years, but it leaves you feeling dirty and looking at the world in a different light. Cite: my experience as a lesbian teacher, being asked by a former boss (who terminated my contract days later) whether it bothered me that everyone thought lesbians were paedophiles. Well it hadn’t before, but now it does, thanks.
Like in the situation in the OP, it’s not something that’s caused me massive trauma or anything, but I still remember the conversation word-for-word years later, and it still makes my stomach crawl.
Forgot to answer the OP: yes, I would, and yes, I have. Only if I knew the Dad, but same goes for Mums.
My daughter and I also have specfic issues regarding sexual abuse that I’m not going to go into on this publically-searchable messageboard that her friends and mine could see, but that doesn’t mean I am incapable of thought.
This 1% chance x 100 sleepovers calculation only applies if you send her on sleepovers with 100 different parents. Even then, the odds would still be in favour of the girl not getting molested.
Where does 1% come from anyway? What kind of logic leads a parent to the conclusion that there’s a 1% chance that a single father of a (presumably quite normal) young girl is going to molest their kid?
I didn’t say there IS a 1% chance. I’m saying that IF someone assesses the risk at 1% (the same way they assess any risk: irrationally and falsely) they would still consider that too great of a risk, yet not come anywhere near the realm of “probably.”
If the weather report says there is a 1% chance of rain, do you mentally translate that to “it’s probably going to rain”?
I don’t see why you think 100 different parents are necessary before it makes sense not to take the chance. If there is a 1% chance on any given day that someone will drop a bomb on your kid’s school, do you send them for 50 days but never 100?
The fact seems to be that 20% of girls (since the original question is about a girl) are victims of childhood sexual abuse. Other than the obvious, not molesting her yourself, what can you do to keep it from happening to your daughter? Should you be suspicious of your own spouse, not letting him/her be alone with the child? Maybe YOU shouldn’t, but obviously there are others that should, and they don’t know who they are, so how can you be certain you don’t belong in that group?
Do you eliminate time spent at Grandma and Grandpa’s? Aunt and Uncle’s? Single Uncle’s (he always DID seem a bit off somehow…)? If you do those things, you are paranoid. If you don’t, you are not careful enough and after your child is molested, people will cluck about how YOU should have noticed what was happening.
There is no great answer. Child molestors don’t necessarily “seem” like child molestors, and if they did, how would we know what that even means?
I know being thought a “potential child molestor” is nothing to make space on your resume for, but thinking others should “know” somehow that you are not one seems ridiculous. There are child molestors getting busted for decades of molesting children, people that have been placed in positions of trust because nobody suspected them. Yes, it is rare, but molestation isn’t, and maybe if people near those people had been more suspicious, it could have been prevented.