Basically, just that parents today don't have to fear criminals so much as the busybodies trying to 'help.' I didn't copy the whole thing, but most of it. It was interesting. And I have to say I agree. I wont leave my kids in the car to run inside somewhere, not because I'm worried that they will be harmed or kidnapped, but because I'm afraid someone will call the cops.
Only in the past decade or so has “no child left alone” become the social and legal norm in the U.S.
A doctoral student in cognitive science at the University of California at Irvine, Thomas is the lead author of a recently published study designed to understand what’s going on.
After all, under most circumstances, the objective risk to children left by themselves is extremely low.
The chances that a stranger will abduct and kill or not return a child, the great fear driving the new norm, is about 0.00007 per cent or one in 1.4 million annually.
It’s much more dangerous to drive a child somewhere, or even to walk with one across a parking lot, than to leave a kid alone in a well-ventilated car.
News reports and crime shows feed exaggerated fears.
The researchers suspected that the overestimating of risk reflects moral convictions about proper parenting.
To separate the two instincts, they created a series of surveys asking participants to rate the danger to children left alone in five specific circumstances: a 2 ½-year-old at home for 20 minutes eating a snack and watching Frozen, for instance, or a 6-year-old in a park about a mile from her house for 25 minutes. The reasons for the parent’s absence were varied randomly. It could be unintentional, for work, to volunteer for charity, to relax or to meet an illicit lover.
Because the child’s situation was exactly the same in all the intentional cases, the risks should also be identical.
Asked what the dangers might be, participants listed the same ones in all circumstances, with a stranger harming the child the most common, followed by an accident.
The unintentional case might be slightly more dangerous, because parents wouldn’t have a chance to make provisions for their absence such as giving the child a phone and emergency instructions or parking the car in the shade.
But survey respondents didn’t see things this way at all.
“A mother’s unintentional absence was seen as safer for the child than a mother’s intentional absence for any reason, and a mother’s work-related absence was seen as more dangerous than an unintentional absence, but less dangerous than if the mother left to pursue an illicit sexual affair,” they write.
The same was true for fathers, except that respondents rated leaving for work as posing no greater danger than leaving unintentionally.
Moral disapproval informed beliefs about risks.
That was true even when the survey explicitly separated the two factors, first asking participants to rate leaving the child from 1 (nothing wrong) to 10 (highly unethical/immoral).
People rated the risk higher when they first made a moral judgment.
“People don’t only think that leaving children alone is dangerous and therefore immoral,” the researchers write.
“They also think it is immoral and therefore dangerous.
“That is, people overestimate the actual danger to children who are left alone by their parents, in order to better support or justify their moral condemnation of parents who do so.”
The result is a feedback loop that increases the legal and social penalties for leaving kids alone and reinforces the belief that even the briefest parental absence amounts to child abuse.
These beliefs don’t just affect busybodies.
They lead police, prosecutors, judges and jurors to overestimate risks.
Take what happened to Julie Koehler: she left her three daughters, ages 8, 5 and 4, watching a video in the minivan while she went into an Evanston, Illinois, Starbucks for three minutes. When she saw a police officer talking to the girls through the open windows, she thought nothing of it, until he returned and her 8-year-old started crying. She rushed out of the store, and the situation deteriorated from there.
Koehler is a public defender in the homicide division. She knew she hadn’t broken any laws and she had two lawyers, her husband and mother, to call to the scene.
She wasn’t arrested, but the state nonetheless initiated a child-abuse investigation.
Officials interrogated the kids, required a pediatrician’s exam, demanded that Koehler supply two references, and questioned them and her about her mental health, including whether she was on any medications.
“What if I was taking an anti-depressant? Would that have affected the outcome of the case?” she asks.
The investigation determined that the report of abuse was “unfounded.”
But it taught Koehler the hazards of leaving your kids for even the briefest time under the safest circumstances.
The real stranger danger doesn’t come from would-be kidnappers.
The world has gone crazy. 8, 5 & 4 and watching a video. They probably never even noticed mom has stepped away. But I doubt it was only 3 minutes if someone had time to call the police. Unless he was just in the parking lot for other reasons.
I remember waiting in the car reading a book while my mom did a week's worth of grocery shopping. I was probably a little older than 8. But we were left home alone for hours starting when we were 7 & 5.
The world has gone crazy. 8, 5 & 4 and watching a video. They probably never even noticed mom has stepped away. But I doubt it was only 3 minutes if someone had time to call the police. Unless he was just in the parking lot for other reasons.
I remember waiting in the car reading a book while my mom did a week's worth of grocery shopping. I was probably a little older than 8. But we were left home alone for hours starting when we were 7 & 5.
Oh good point about the time, I figured he was already there and happened to see them, but maybe not.
I get a welfare check on the kids if he sees them alone in the car. Make sure the A/C or heat is running & see how long they have been there. But an 8 yo old is old enough to say mom ran into Starbucks to get coffee. I think my average time in Starbucks is about 10 minutes. Wait in line, order, they make it. So cop either waits until mom gets back to leave or just goes on his way. No need for the overblown charges of child abuse.
I would have rather sat in the hot car than go grocery shopping.
Still would.
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