Thursday, March 29, 2007

Crazy for Children's Safety

Kevin Drum references this article in the LA Times about the completely unreasonable fear of sexual predators that parents across the nation seem to have.

The magnitude of this fear is baffling to me, as is the idea, expressed by one person in the article, that the number of predators has increased in the last 30 years "because of the internet." Whaaaaaaaa?

Come off it. I don't have any evidence to back myself up, but I'm fairly confident that the small percentage of people who are pedophiles have always been around. In the past, we didn't know about it, and when we did, we didn't want to.
I doubt that priests molesting children is a new thing either - just imagine how often it happened in the 30's, or god-forbid, the middle ages.

What has changed is the media, our openness to formerly taboo subjects, and an increasing safety paranoia that makes this a soft spot to go after a parents natural fear-response to any perceived threat to their child.

If you don't think we've gone crazy with fear, just look at what's happened to Halloween. I hear (I'm only 25) that back in the day people used to give out homemade pie and apples, but all of this stopped, and now people are even afraid that the candy might contain needles or poison, rumours of which are almost entirely false or greatly exaggerated. You'd think it would be obvious that the biggest dangers associated with trick-or-treating are falling and getting hit by a car.

To me, the salient statistic in the article is the fact that 90% of molestations are perpetrated by someone known to the family, so that the 'don't talk to strangers' rule will not help in the least. And while staying indoors all the time MIGHT cut down on the risk of a random assault, if someone has been watching your kid and plotting, they are going to wait for the ripe moment, and keeping the kid from biking to school is not going to help.

The fact is we have become inordinantly risk averse in this country. People die at all ages, all the time (and as bad as molestation is, it's better to be molested than dead). There is nothing you can do to negate the fact that risk (and risk of death) is an inescapable part of the human condition, and that we should accept that, and manage the risks in a sensible and rational fashion.

Matt adds that driving (being driven in) cars is probably the most dangerous (in terms of threats to the child's life) thing that kids do. I would bet this remains true until past 40. Whenever I hear of some safety hysteria (like New York City wanting to ban metal baseball bats for little league) I always think to myself that driving to the game (event, party) is probably the most dangerous part.

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