Don't parents sometimes tattle on other parents they deem to be irresponsible, according to their own standards of just what children ought to be able to do by themselves? I seem to remember reading some anecdotes here the last time this topic came up.
Not just other parents, people in general. Also in my experience a woman is under much more scrutiny as a parent than a man (e.g. exact same activity -- with dad: "So great to see dad bonding with kid" -- with mom: "I can't believe she would let her kid do that!")
Per walking / public transit to school, Japan is always the big example where many kids do so on their own. I feel like I've read this is mandatory there, but a quick search finds no backing evidence so maybe not.
I'm curious though in Japan whether this is part of a general trend combating helicopter parenting, or if it's just a one-off social norm.
It's been common in Japan since before the second world war.
My wife, who went to school in Japan, says it's seen as a good thing, to encourage independence.
There's a popular TV show, where they follow small kids (maybe 4 or 5?) on their first "trip alone" to do a chore, obviously they're being followed by a camera crew. But the TV show promotes kids taking responsibility for themselves (and it's cute of course).
The US is just seen as a much more dangerous country than Japan. I mean, it actually does have a higher crime rate.
Sorry, this is all purely anecdotal. But I believe it to be the general case (would as always love to see data).
It's not mandatory, but it is common. It's a social norm that has been common practice for many years. It's common both in towns and in the countryside.
I would say (but don't have data to show) that there's is a slow trend against it. Possibly because of recent high profile abductions...
In Switzerland kids often walk to Kindergarten (age 4/5 and up) alone. At least I know I did (okay it was only like a 5 minute walk in my case). For school in can't remember anyone ever being brought by their partents. (Probably excluding the first few days of course).
So this quote
> the Ministry had checked with their lawyers “across the country” and the Attorney General, and determined that children under 10 years old could not be unsupervised in or outside the home, for any amount of time
has me really like WTF.
Edit: A bit more background now that I'm thinking about it. It's completely normal for kids in Kindergarten to go there alone, the first day each kid gets a reflector thingy(?)[0] they wear to walk there so they can be seen easily while crossing streets. Every morning you see a bunch of little kids toddling to Kindergarten, I've never really thought about this being different anywhere else.
Any country not in North America? In Belgium, the bus company had to ask parents not to put children under 5 alone on the bus, which happened in a couple of instances (see [1], in Dutch). Presumably they have no problems with kids older than that.
Europe is a lot more relaxed and kids are given a lot more freedom. When we were kids we just were expected to wait for the other sibling and take a 20min tram ride home together. At 15 I probably started spending nights not at home occasionally (I also never caused any real trouble, so we built trust with my parents).
Though there was a difference if you as a Central European visited France for example. The kids were way behind us in being relaxed and confident without parents around.
My parents put me on a train to the other side of the country to visit an Ajax game when I was 12, lol. Someone we knew picked us up there, but still... Not as bad as described here.
Usually my mom would just say: 'home when the lights turn on'.
While helicopter parenting is a thing here in Germany, too, it is still possible to use your sane judgement as a parent for a lot of things. My daughter is not yet in school (so I am not into a peer group that talks about such stuff), but I see the 7-year-old neighbour kids walking to school without supervision, just as it has been the custom here in my own childhood. I have to admit there are fewer of those on the street (and more accompanied by parents), but kids still have the same freedoms in law that I had. Heck, in anti-gun Germany they are allowed to shoot at shooting clubs beginning 12, doing their first solo flight in (sail)planes at 14 and have their boat driving license at 16. I often critisize our country for its obese body of law, but life of kids is not too much restricted.
There currently is discussion about how parent should stop bringing their kids to school and let them ride the bus or walk. In the often narrow streets in front of German schools, parents drive their children to the gate of the school in their SUVs and endanger everybody around them.
Milan at 8.30 AM is like a battle field of screaming moms and nannies trying to get kids off these giant tank-like-cars but the car is parked in the middle of the street or on the sidewalk
My mother, a former Austrian primary school teacher has, in her words "dragged this mother out of her car and showed her what could've happened." I think that the school doesn't let parents drop kids off right at the door any more for this reason, they have to go to the parking lot down the street instead. Most kids that live near walk or cycle to school (once they're allowed to).
Edit: I think the school recommends that parents walk with the first graders for a certain time (those that are in walking distance) until they feel that the kid knows the way and the rules and feels safe.
Yes, exactly. In fact, kids are usually taught the way to elementary school in the last year of Kindergarten (for the non-Germans: "Kindergarten" here is approximately pre-school in the US. It is where kids go until they are about 6.)
The social expectation is that every kid walks or takes public transportation (unless that is not possible). There are usually no dedicated school buses, but the public buses have extra timeslots. You meet your friends on the way to school, which is an important experience. Everything is safe, especially because it is the social norm.
I have the opportunity to live either in the US or Germany, and the increasing craziness and hysteria around how children are treated is the major reason for me to stay with my family in Germany.
Interesting, first time I hear that thing about walking to elementary school in Kindergarden.
Growing up in Munich (in the 80s) this was definitely not the case, least of all because not all children from the Kindergarden would end up in the same elementary school.
Over-protecting kids is probably not the main point here. Bureaucrats tend to focus on only one goal: not taking any responsibility or risks. Letting kids being independent is a risk for them, even if this is for their own good. And you can carefully explain to them the case, with scientific evidences, but they are not accountable for anything, and won't bother to change their mind. Because there is a second thing bureaucrats hate: admitting they were wrong.
The counterpoint is, however, that the 'risk' is real: while most parents wouldn't hold the ministry accountable for minor risks, 'most' is not 'all'. They're doing CYA for a reason, not because they get jollies from it.
It's the same reason why politicians say nothing of substance anymore. In the olden days, the occasional slip-up would slide. These days if you say the wrong thing, you can spend weeks or months defending it, and it can even cost you your job.
It's not just a case of 'bureaucracy gone crazy', but also of 'we demand too much of them'. The stereotypical example is that teachers used to just teach, and now they need to be nurses and social workers as well.
> In the olden days, the occasional slip-up would slide. These days if you say the wrong thing, you can spend weeks or months defending it, and it can even cost you your job.
I think Trump is proving you wrong.
But I get your point, the risk is really because a few people are idiots with too much powers to break things.
We see the same things with the medical personal: they get very cautious and conservative because they are held accountable when something goes wrong, whether it's their fault or not.
But then forbidding idiots to have power would not be very democratic wouldn't it ?
Trump isn't really proving me wrong. He made a lot of promises. He's completely unable to get any of them done; he's a completely ineffective politician. He's alienated his own staff and political allies. He won't survive the next election, and doesn't even want to. He doesn't care to stay, and without impeachment, there's no way to remove him. Total amount of elections won = 1, total amount of 'stuff done' = 0.
Trump doesn't care about keeping his job or doing his job and he effectively can't be fired (which is rare for most positions). If you don't care about those kinds of ramifications, then you don't need to defend your slip-ups. He really is an atypical case here.
'coming back' means they lost their job at some point. And Trump hasn't 'come back', because he's still in his first ever term as a politician (and it's extraordinarily difficult to fire him - a US president has literally never been successfully impeached, though one retired to avoid it possibly happening). I also never said that this was an ironclad rule and that you were permanently dismissed from your position, never to return again in your lifetime. But if you do lose your position, it's far from guaranteed that you'll get it back; it's a considerable risk to lose it, hence folks in authority play it safe.
Are you saying though, that France has not seen politicians and other positions of authority say less of substance than in past decades? That they're not watching their tongues any more than they used to? That errant comments aren't taken out of context by the public and used to vilify the person who said it? Well, more power to you; the rest of us should be so lucky - all over the anglo world, this pattern has been noted, rising with the 24-hour news cycle (which rewards 'gotcha!' journalism).
But who gave them this power? I could be wrong but I don't think in most European countries the government can take kids away from parents for anything other than outright physical abuse or rape.
The point of parenting isn't to avoid getting criticized for being a "bad parent", or to do things that make you look like a "good parent". The point is to provide the necessary conditions for children to learn how to be independent and successful adults. This involves taking reasonable levels of risks, and figuring out what amount of risk-taking is reasonable, and learning how to navigate the world in general.
The "Cover Your Ass" culture which results in mandating helicopter parenting is sadly widespread, and not just in Canada.
We need to be ever vigilant to stop petty bureaucrats everywhere from making arbitrary rules and taking away valuable freedoms and discretion. Do what you can at work and in your personal life to maintain freedoms.
EDIT: One simple thing we can do is make a donation to the legal fighting fund established by the writer of this article to fight this draconian Canadian regulation. There are links to the legal fund donation page in the linked article.
At least in Menlo Park, CA, I'm seeing more kids walking to school. You can now drive down a road that passes three schools around 3 PM without being caught in a traffic jam of SUVs queued up for kid pickup.
I wonder if computer use is helping. I used to see kids struggling under enough backpack for a weekend campout. The backpacks seem to be much smaller now. Maybe more content is on tablets and laptops.
Computer use is likelier helping through the existence of cell phones. They're essentially electronically supervised, so the physical supervision feels less necessary to observers.
Bureaucrats have little stake in this but see high risk to their careers so they want to play safe. Only way to affect change is to somehow convince them that this is good for their career. Or get lucky enough and find the one person who believes in and cares enough to push the issue through the system.
I walked the whole city I was born in and took whatever busses and trolleys I wanted (I knew all the routes) when I was 7-9 years old (in the 80's) in a city of 300-400k people. This is simply insane and stupid. It's the reason why I will never have kids in the US or Canada. What kind of shitty culture and society allows this kind of degradation of kids? Is it any wonder they grow up not knowing how to live? It's shameful and disgusting to allow children to be policed in this way. I'd blame it on government/bureaucracy, but it only follows the norms of the shitty culture that enables it.
Yes, tell me more about how shitty my culture (and by extension) the people of that culture are. Any other insult you want to lay on a group of 300+ million people that you've so carelessly stereotyped without giving a careful thought about it?
I think the question the Ministry official asked him about what would happen if the kids start fighting is an important part of the equation.
Society has gotten more legalistic. The bus driver or a random adult passenger doesn't have legally defined authority to discipline the author's kids, which means they don't have the authority at all.
But basic human decency demands you intervene if you see little kids fighting or doing something dangerous (even if you'd just roll your eyes if it was a couple of drunk guys).
This tension propagates through the system until somebody basically rules kids can't ride the bus unsupervised until they're old enough to be unsympathetic.
I'm sympathetic. But given the article is against "fact-free" parenting. I didn't find the data presented very compelling.
Basically you'd need to know how common crime against children traveling unsupervised on buses in a similar scenario.
The closest example presented is kids in New York riding the subway, so presenting stats on that would be useful.
I'd also like more details on the Japanese example, it's honestly not uncommon to hear news reports of kids being abducted in Japan. I'd personally be interested in the stats, but as a comparison point it doesn't make sense unless you can normalize for the overall lower crime rate that Japan has.
If anyone has good data against "Helicopter parenting", I'd be curious to see it.
> And the odds of your child being kidnapped by a stranger on the bus? Incredibly long. A 2003 study in Canada found just one case nationwide of a stranger abducting a child, in the entire two years prior.
I personally found the article very compelling. This kind of mindless fear, in direct contradiction of clear evidence, makes my blood boil.
Every "bet" consideration needs to include possible loss, not only the odds. Losing your child is for many people not that far off from losing their own life, so people tend to react in a very cautious way.
> Losing your child is for many people not that far off from losing their own life,
Usually losing a kid is due untreatable diseases and bad parenting (like driving them to school without taking proper safety measures and suffer the consequences of an accident)
There's no evidence that going to school alone is more dangerous than staying home with grandpa's guns
Of course it is. One incident in two years, out of a population of tens of millions, is effectively zero. Regardless of how many kids ride the bus, if there were a significant number of predators out there waiting to abduct children, there are sufficient opportunities available that it would happen with some regularity. It's not for lack of unsupervised bus riders that it's such a rare occurrence.
> One incident in two years, out of a population of tens of millions
I'm pointing out that overall population is not relevant.
The "fraction of a fraction" is the ratio of children who ride the bus alone, and get abducted. It seems that is relevant information when trying to contextualize the danger in allowing a child to ride a bus alone.
Isn't it possible that very few children ride the bus alone in Canada? Particularly given the fact that there seems to be governmental/social pressure against this?
So the population of unsupervised children riding buses might be 10? or 100? or 1000000? we don't know.
1 in 10 would be high, though given the limited size of the dataset, possibly not very statistically relevant.
It seems doubtful that this is a very useful dataset.
So, I'm now reading the article he cites to support this.
It's an old article, from 2013. It states that:
"Police statistics show 25 children of the 46,718 reported missing in 2011 listed as "abducted by stranger."
And then goes on to show that in the majority of cases that the abductor was known to the parents.
So, the useful dataset would be.
* How many of the children were abducted with unsupervised?
* In the Canadian population how many children in total are left unsupervised regularly.
From that we could calculate:
Percentage of children left unsupervised regularly who are abducted.
Percentage of children not left unsupervised regularly who are abducted.
Of course, correlation != causation. But if there is no difference between the two populations then that would tell us something. However, there isn't enough data in the article to make this assertion.
Fair enough. The original statistic could well be inaccurate. I was simply responding to the comment that it's irrelevant without knowing the number of underage bus riders.
What is the relevance of the statistic present? I can't see is? (honestly).
If no (or very few) children are left unsupervised in Canada, then the statistic isn't relevant to calculating the probability of unsupervised (or lone traveling) children being abducted is it?
I'm using personal experience. I live in Canada, and I'm a parent, so I tend to frequent places that kids congregate. From my experience there are plenty of opportunities out there for someone to abduct children if they were halfway intelligent and motivated to do so. If indeed there was only one incidence over a two year span in the entire country (although your reference is apparently 25, not one?) it therefore suggests a lack of potential abductors.
> it therefore suggests a lack of potential abductors
Or a lack of unsupervised children?
I don't know. I think you're probably correct. But really the assertion would be might stronger if there was more than anecdotal evidence to back it up.
This is what I'm trying to say the data presented in the article, is on the level of anecdotal evidence. Which, tends to weaken the argument rather than strengthen it.
It can be blamed fairly directly at the news selling your attention for advertisements. If they can frighten you they can get you to watch, and the attention of worrying parents has quite a bit of value. Capitalism doesn't work very well when combined with the task of serving the public with needed information.
While I agree with the general assertion in the article, cherry picking statistics for just one, very rare, crime isn't compelling evidence. Why not present the stats for all relevant crimes?
Robbery much harder and often unreported or reported as bullying.
Robbery/theft/assault etc. seems like the ones you'd actually care about. Murders and kidnappings of children by strangers are so rare that any data about them is essentially meaningless.
Honestly I'd be far more worried about my kid being hit by a car than being a victim of any crime.
Or maybe they try something stupid (we all did stupid things as kids and I don't expect my kids to be smarter than I was) and wind up drowning in the river or falling off something.
1) More common than with adults. Statistics one this are widely available. Sometimes even details. Drops rapidly with age.
Main cause of vehicular accident deaths is actually crashes. Some 20% deaths and injuries are estimated to be preventable by consistent child restraint/seat usage.
Drunk parent drivers are responsible for about 20% of the total under 15 vehicular accident deaths...
2) Compare say multiple person being in a vehicular accidents when one is a child. Also make sure to include a reduction in car crashes including a child as some of those would become pedestrians. (Data is also available, but no idea how many kids would walk.)
School busses exist and work.
3, 4) Stats are not readily available.
5) Stats are available, most of those happen near the parents anyway. Essentially negligence with very small kids or stupidity like having kids near unguarded aquifers or drops. Such areas are rare in cities.
CDC has data for the US only. The suspicion is that suburban development is the main cause, not walking to school or to school bus.
In actual cities the rates should be lower as roads are not mixed with recreational or pedestrian areas as much, at least in Europe. It is still the leading cause though. (WHO has good data.)
Quite a few accidents are also caused by biking...
The post I was replying to specifically said he's scared that his kid could be hit by a car when going to school on his own
It's fairly obvious that accidents are the most common cause of death for kids
My point is that parent supervision don't protect them from being hit or end up in a car crash or fall down from a bridge
p.s.: main cause doesn't mean it is common
I believe it's not very common, it's catastrophic for their young body when it happens, but not common
Critical part is actually "going to school". Typical stats on accidents do not say where you were going, but at most where you actually were.
My suspicion is that most vehicular accidents happen during play or free roaming, especially in an unsupervised kid group, not when actually going somewhere on their own.
i got hit by a car, walking home from the double-transfer public bus i rode alone to & from elementary school everyday.
it increased my pain threshold dramatically which effectively ended the bullying i'd been subject to up to that point. the whole experience was a net positive.
>Or maybe they try something stupid
that's the fastest way to become smart in my experience. humans are remarkably adept at not dying and even ballsy kids can judge their competence well enough if they're given the opportunity to learn their limits.
Practically all crime is at an all-time low, but that's largely beside the point.
Is the risk of robbery intolerably awful, or have we become unreasonably timid? I think that America (and to a significant extent Canada) is still in the throes of zero tolerance culture, where any risk is intolerable and any action to mitigate risk is justified.
Two kids get into a scuffle at school? Expel them both. Don't worry about what happens to those kids, don't worry about who started the fight, don't worry about the chilling effect on normal childhood behaviour, because we have zero tolerance for violence. The war on drugs, the war on terror, the broken window theory, mandatory minimum sentences, three-strike laws, the criminalization of poverty, the school-to-prison pipeline. When the only acceptable rate of crime is zero, the ends always justify the means.
Hearing reports of a thing on the news is actually a signal that such things are not common. That's why you don't see every little (or even big) traffic accident on the news. It's not special. It happens every day.
Incidentally, the regularity of pedestrians being killed by drivers - to the extent that many folks (sorry, anecdata) blame the pedestrian more than the driver because walking is seen as the aberration, is my biggest fear about letting a kid run about. Funny enough people move their families to the suburbs for "safety', thereby increasing their miles driven and increasing the kid's risk of getting killed by a car.
There are so many potential biases involved, that I'm not sure I would use "hearing it on the news" as a statistical metic to drive my personal evaluation.
Obviously, if you're using it to set policy, some kind of study would be valuable.
The point is, this guy shouldn't have to prove that it is safe. Rather, the state should have to prove that he did something wrong, as defined by a law. If the state thinks that this is wrong, the state should provide evidence that it is wrong and get a law passed. The state in this case is acting like a terrorist organization. It has no law on its side, and is at least implicitly threatening to take away the kids.
This seems tangential to what I was trying to (perhaps unclearly) express.
I personally would agree with author of the post. However, the author is saying "it's not dangerous to do this", as opposed to "it is a basic human right to do this". He is also asserting that the opposing view is not supported by the facts (it's "fact free").
That's all fine. But then the author presents statistics he's gathered, none of which really strongly support his case. And in fact, I would not be surprised if you could cherry pick statistics to support either case.
It would be better to either:
1. Find better statistics.
2. Not present poor statistics, and then say "look here this supports my argument", when it doesn't.
You seem to be arguing with a point I'm not trying to make.
But if you are suggesting that the decision should be fact based and present an argument with supporting statistics. Then those statistics should be relevant to your argument.
The statistics presented in the article were not relevant. If it is not dangerous, it should be possible to show this with data... the data presented in the article is poor and doesn't support his case well.
I find it incredible that these bureaucrats routinely threaten people with taking away their children. Aren't even the most reasonable people going to get dangerous when faced with that kind of a situation? I don't have kids but I can't even imagine.
Yes, but they'll most likely have a Police escort when they come and take your children away. If you want to escalate it further then for sure you will not be getting your children back under your care any time soon.
Back around 1960, when I was eight and my little sister was six, we went with our dad to a chess tournament at the Mechanics' Institute in San Francisco. [1]
Of course if you're six and eight and not really into chess, nothing could be more boring. So we asked Dad if we could do something else. He gave us a few nickels and quarters and said "sure, how about riding the cable cars and go see the town?"
So we did! It was the most awesomest thing ever. We rode every cable car we could find, walked around town and saw the sights. The best part was when we found a street with our last name on it!
Everyone was nice. The cable car operators saw that we were a couple of kids riding around on our own, so they showed us how the grip and the brakes worked, pointed out interesting things to see, and made sure we knew how to ride safely - even when we were sitting on the outside of the cable car kicking our feet.
We forgot to ask for lunch money, so when we got back to the chess club as Dad was finishing his games, he took us out for a bite to eat and we told him all the stories of our adventure.
This won't happen today in San Francisco city, because of decrease in social capital. I live downtown and I will not anyone's kids to wander around like that. First, you'll be lucky if MUNI driver is even remotely friendly, then there are druggies on the street, and so on. Illegal immigration, homelessness fueled by liberal/leftist policies, crime, gangs, drug trade have turned the city into a place quite unrecognizable compared to 1960. Leftism is a cancer, and a road to third world culture, paved by good intentions.
Just checked your other comments. You really seem to HATE "leftism". You really should think about the fact that you are calling the political direction of many other people "cancer"
I think that's a big part of the problem right there. Politics doesn't have two sides; it's got far more dimensions and nuances than that, but in some cases it's been turned into a brutal, hatred-prone "us and them" of a ridiculously simple and inflexible two tribe system.
>Illegal immigration, homelessness fueled by liberal/leftist policies, crime, gangs, drug trade have turned the city into a place quite unrecognizable compared to 1960.
Sounds like something that should be backed up by a data point if you're looking to contribute something to the discussion.
>Leftism is a cancer, and a road to third world culture, paved by good intentions.
You've given exactly one point, with no references. When you jump to extreme conclusions such as the one you're making, that undoubtably creates a 'cancer' you're speaking of because it puts down any intelligent discussion. Without that, how can you or I be informed? I would argue that extremes such as that are what contribute to a political climate where its more important what party or political idealogy you belong to, than what you're actually saying.
Because this one vilifies a large group of people based on their political preferences; and politics is basically a battle to see whose opinion will be reflected in reality.
"language X is better than Y" is an opinion we accept at face value without sources, since it doesn't affect users of language Y, and has limited impact if it's wrong. Comparing a political stance to a disease does affect the users (implies they're 'sick' and need treatment) and has a big impact if it's wrong (and the non-leftism policies get put into place).
Compare "Perl is better than PHP" to "PHP is the brain tumor of server-side web languages".
Plus: there's no indication of which policies have caused this situation, so it's presumptuous to claim they're caused by leftism.
> vilifies a large group of people based on their political preferences
If I say Marxism is evil, aren't I also vilifying subscribers to that philosophy? That's fine, since it's a choice; both to take ideological criticisms personally, and to subscribe to it in the first place.
> Comparing a political stance to a disease does affect the users
> If I say Marxism is evil, aren't I also vilifying subscribers to that philosophy?
Yes, and I would not be surprised to see people challenging that statement/asking for facts.
> > Comparing a political stance to a disease does affect the users
> I can't see how.
See my example from the post you quoted. Does it make sense? Try to put yourself in the shoes of a professional, successful PHP programmer who is aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the language & is comfortable weighing up the various trade-offs.
> I would not be surprised to see people challenging that statement/asking for facts.
Then we disagree. I distinguish ideology from person.
> Try to put yourself in the shoes of a professional, successful PHP programmer
I'd say that programmer has too much of their ego invested in their choice of language. The question is not of being merely unhappy about criticism, but being personally affected.
Would you happily say the same wrt criticism of a belief in flat-earth?
Do you? you said you agree that "X is evil" villifies subscribers that philosophy.
> Feeling unhappy because of criticism is being personally affected
Not really, there is a difference between "I am a bad person" and "I subscribe to a bad ideology". The difference is you can un-subscribe if persuaded.
You seem more interested in scoring points than in a genuine discussion.
> Do you? you said you agree that "X is evil" villifies subscribers that philosophy.
It does. That's what those words mean. I didn't say I would find them evil (which is what you're claiming I meant). You haven't asked me how I feel about any particular economical-political theory.
Is there something I could say that would cause you to reconsider your stance? If there is not, then please consider if this is the most productive use of your time.
General increase in risk aversion. Same reason there are seat belt laws, helmet laws, firecrackers are illegal, you have to take your shoes off to get on a plane, lawn darts are banned, and people fear second hand smoke. To tie it back to the parent comment, there is data that shows more individualistic people take more risks, so perhaps it is tied to the decline of individualism, and religion. Regarding kids specifically, people use to have more, so they would learn that they are pretty durable after raising a few. When you only have one, all your eggs are in one basket, so there is a greater tendency to overprotect.
Parent, or parent-parent? I'd put "safety" laws on the left side of the political spectrum, so decline in individualism & religion would correlate to more safety laws.
Conformity and individualism aren't exactly the same, though there is clearly overlap. Religious people might conform more in terms of things like dress, but at the same time be more open to individual rights. Go back to Declaration of Independence and the idea mean are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." It's not a coincidence that Communism is an atheistic political philosophy.
According to my point of view, in Western Europe urban areas only the poor kids wander around and just because their parents don't afford to control them. However in Eastern Europe, nowadays not correlated with leftist policies, kids wander around..
I know mostly in Portugal and Spain, but I've lived in Brussels for a few months and saw plenty of kids walking to school as well. I seem to remember the same in Budapest, but it was a short stay.
I always bike to school on my own since I'm 8 or 9 years old, I think. Back home during lunch if my parents are home and back again. It's only 1 or 2 km but still. Every kid just biked to school.
Even in the UK, which is rapidly approaching US is many cultural aspects, there is absolutely no issue with kids walking themselves to school or playing outside without supervision. I'm not saying there aren't cases where someone overzealous gets authorities involved because they think kids are in danger, but in general you see loads of kids walking to school and taking the bus/metro on their own.
I guess that's mostly due to the fact that more people have cars nowadays so it's just easier to drop your kids off than it was 30 years ago. Especially if you drive to work anyway, you might as well drop them off and pick them up after. It doesn't feel to me like it's because people feel less safe for kids to walk to school, it's just that driving them there is a lot more viable than it was few decades ago.
> because of all these problems caused by the cancerous lefties!
"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
The attitude of accepting the status quo, blaming someone, and proudly doing nothing is far more politically "cancerous" than any misguided policy.
Can't you think of ways to increase the "social capital"? Don't you share the good intentions that, as you admit, inspired a long period of "leftist" Californian governments?
> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
> We ban accounts that use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle, regardless of which politics they favor.
The way blame gets assigned and risk gets assessed by human society is often quite pathological.
In a typical setting, there are options A & B. As an example, let A be the option to allow young kids to ride independently on a bus and B the option to legislate against letting young kids ride independently on a bus.
The cost of A seems high to human emotions and the lazy thinker, typically involving rare but high-impact events (something really bad happening to the well-trained kid taking a bus) that get cherry-picked as important to consider.
The cost of B seems low to human emotions and the lazy thinker, typically involving diverse continual low-impact events (all kids affected by legislation losing out on chance to learn independence, environmental impact of using a car instead of public transport) that get neglected because of their low emotional appeal and more complicated accounting. (It may be hard to prove that lots of low-impact things add up to a big thing -- there are too many things and causal relationships to point to.)
In many cases, the cost of A is actually objectively lower than the cost of B, so A is the better option. In such cases, whereas all options and their consequences should be considered together with their probabilities, in reality, option B is often deemed to be the better choice, and A a bad choice, because the cost of A appeals more strongly to emotional. Consequently, someone who picked A (law-maker or bureaucrat) gets blamed but someone who picked B doesn't get blamed and is harder to blame, including in court. To protect themselves, they pick the inferior option.
I think this sort of pathological risk assessment is the root of the cover-your-ass culture that permeates society.
What must be the most painful part of this is that he's in a weak position having shared custody. A normal parent could just give the middle finger and they'll never have their kids taken away for a single minor behaviour like that. But someone with tenuous custody has to bend over backwards to look like they're doing it right. It seems he could actually lose his kids quite easily because they have another home ready to go to.
It's amazing an institution as such power, and that they can exercise such power, not based so much on a legal ground as on moral ground. Yeah they mentioned lawyers, but there is no law against what the parent did.
About the result yes. But the procedures they engage can have a tremendous impact on one's life, and even more when a court is involved, whether they are right or not.
Can you imagine having to kiss some distant bureaucrat bottom, accepting they invade your life, endangering your reputation, making you question your choices, threatening you to loose your kids, making them look at you differently, all that __even before any decision is taken__ ?
I‘m really glad this parent is fighting the decision; no ministry should be able to interfere with personal freedoms when the stakes are so low, basing their decisions on far fetched court cases that have nothing to do with the situation.
As a point of comparison, school kids in Austria typically walk to school or use public transit on their own from first grade (6-7 years old).
In the beginning of the school year, older students watch zebra crossings and block traffic when kids need to cross.
I don't mind the idea of the state protecting children. What I mind is it happening without essential protections such as a right to jury trial, a presumption of innocence, and illegal behavior being limited to what is defined by actual laws written by elected representatives.
What we have here is the terror of the police state. Anonymous tips, petty bureaucrats making life changing rulings on a whim with no clear laws to establish legal behavior. I would love to see the whole thing challenged as unconstitutional and abolished and folded into the much more functional justice system.
In the OPs situation he can just politely tell the child protection team that he's heard their advice, but that he disagrees, and that he's not going to change his behaviour.
The social workers then put all the information together and take it to their lawyers, who'll either say it's not strong enough to go to court, or ask him if he really does want to ignore the advice because they think they have a good case.
At that point I assume they go to court, and then the state has to persuade the judge that he's an unfit parent and that removing the children is the only option - that nothing else will do. He doesn't have to prove he's a good parent; the onus is on the state to make their case.
The court has to respect his parenting choices, unless those choices are harmful or neglectful or put the children at risk of significant harm.
The court also has to take into account the views of the children, and it's likely these children will be happy about the travel arrangements, and will be persuasive to a judge.
This (quite old) report includes information on Canadian parents allowing children to engage in risky activity (11 year olds taking cannabis, for example) and Canada ranks 17th, which is pretty poor.
Saying that he could "just" do this in my opinion really simplifies it too much. You must be terribly sure of your case to open yourself up to such a risk.
Also, in many countries, child protection services can preemtively declare you an unfit parent and place your children in foster care, pending a decision from a judge, which may well take months.
> Also, in many countries, child protection services can preemtively declare you an unfit parent and place your children in foster care, pending a decision from a judge
Good luck if you're male and working, and the other parent is female and on social welfare. The mother can simply claim you're violent, or otherwise unfit to be a parent, and hey-presto you're fucked. She gets legal aid, the guy has to spend 5+ years and $35,000+ of his own money getting nowhere because the Family Court of Australia is extremely reluctant to force the female parent to comply.
Your comment is irrelevant to the claim made, which was
> in many countries, child protection services can preemtively declare you an unfit parent and place your children in foster care, pending a decision from a judge,
For a child to be placed in foster care in Australia either the parent has to agree or a judge makes a decision. It's not possible for a child to be placed in foster care without either of those.
> but that he disagrees, and that he's not going to change his behaviour.
I don't think that's how it works, in this day and age.
As Adrian mentions in the article:
Being a divorced, single dad who has his kids 50% of the time, I have little recourse to challenge the Ministry’s decision. Disobeying it even in the slightest (i.e. allowing a trip to the corner store by my 9.75 year old), could result in the Ministry stripping me of equal custody of my children, a remarkably draconian outcome I would never risk.
This is very similar to how it would work in Australia. The cards are especially stacked against you if you're unfortunate enough to be the bearer of a Y chromosome during a separation involving children.
> could result in the Ministry stripping me of equal custody of my children,
It's not true though.
The ministry can't strip him of equal custody rights, they can only go to court. A judge is the only person who can strip his rights away.
THe claim is:
> Disobeying it even in the slightest (i.e. allowing a trip to the corner store by my 9.75 year old), could result in the Ministry stripping me of equal custody of my children
And that claim is just bullshit. Show me any case in Canada where this has happened.
In Australia men don't have a 50% custody right. The mother can just cease participating in the shared parenting plan. She could say "he lets them roam the streets unsupervised". Then it goes back to court, the courts tell the mother "you have to participate", and then she "forgets" or her "car breaks down" or she "doesn't have enough money for petrol". This can also, though rarely, work with the genders reversed.
The result is the same: The Government strips you of custody because someone claimed you stepped out of line.
I don't meant to sound like I have an axe to grind, but I do, so that's how it comes across.
But you're talking about a totally different situation.
OP isn't talking about a mother frustrating the will of the court (and I agree that's a problem); OP is talking about an agent of the state removing children from a parent.
If anything your argument just supports my point: she's violating her child's convention right to a family life with its father, but the courts can't do much about it.
If this "the state can just take your children" argument held any water the state, after the court cases, would see the mother breaking the court order and take the child off her. They don't, because it's very hard to do.
Social workers, CPS and similar people have a lot of power, both through direct action like testimony and reports, or more indirect/passive-aggressive action like filing anonymous complaints or withholding/providing key data strategically.
Most judges are doing to hear "child endangerment" and do exactly what they recommend, or what is called for. People performing assessments have broad discretion in many types of determinations. When you suffer from a serious medical malady like a stroke, the social workers/discharge planners in hospitals and rehab facilities have even greater power with less accountability.
That last one is useful here. The parents were misusing alcohol; were violent; had neglected their child. Their child had gone into foster care. The local authority is applying to have the children adopted. The judge rejects that because the judge thinks the child should maintain contact with the parents. (And eventually go back to the father).
There's also talk about judges separating children from fathers, but that's not true either. This case, written so the children will understand, nicely illustrates that:
The judge ordered that the children should continue to have contact with their father, even though he was a violent and aggressive man. After that order was made the father was arrested, charged, and convicted of firearms offences, and got a prison sentence.
I don't know how it works in Canada, but in California, CWS has the right to remove your children to foster care if they deem the child is at risk of harm, and then the courts get involved.
Considering that forcibly removing children from their parents is a highly traumatic situation, I can understand how someone might not want to do what you suggest.
Also, at no point is a jury involved in the disposition of the children; it's a single judge and a 3+ party trial (parent(s), child, state, &c.).
Also people don't realize this anymore, but when you're a single parent and have FIVE kids, you HAVE to teach your kids independence, cause you can't be behind each and every one of them all the time! When one of them gets sick (which is just about every other week), you're pretty pleased that the others can get to school by themselves.
I used to walk to school at the age of what, 8? There was one really quite busy road I had to cross on my own, the rest was residential. But learning to cross the road is something that was dogmatically addressed from a very young age. "Stop. Look. Listen." I remember learning about that aged 5ish? My parents knew I could cross the road, they'd taught me, the schools had taught me. It was tested in the crucible of parental observation and then I was trusted to continue.
Of course someone could come along and kidnap me as I blithely wandered along the pavement. But frankly if we're going to spend our lives obsessing about extreme tail risks then we've already lost.
But frankly if we're going to spend our lives obsessing about extreme tail risks then we've already lost
Yes. And the tail risks are asymmetrical here. Bureaucrats take on responsibility for thousands or hundreds-of-thousands of children in their district. They look bad however few of these kids are harmed or killed. So what might be a perfectly acceptable risk for an individual family is not acceptable to the local government.
The more they interfere and assume responsibility for children the more additional responsibilities their offices will be loaded with when things go wrong. Which will cause further problems, et cetera, because although parents love and provide for their children, institutions don't know how to (and can't afford to).
I wanted to make a small donation but I am not comfortable entering my credit card information on a website I know nothing about. This is the first time when I wanted to make a donation, and there was no PayPal option to do it.
Nowhere in his article does Crook mention any specific names of government workers he interacted with, specific dates when he met with caseworkers, or specific actions or enforcements the government would take regarding his case.
In an article full of links to specific stats and empathy inducing images of his children, he does not show a single government correspondence.
I hope my assumption is just misguided cynicism, and that there actually is a concrete reason to give this man money.
"In a June 23 letter that Mr. Crook provided to The Globe and Mail, the ministry said it looked into concerns that "you were pulling the children's ears and allowing them to take transit unsupervised." Asked about the ear-pulling, Mr. Crook said it was treated as an afterthought in the investigation and follow-up, and that the main focus was the bus trips.
The letter says there are no child-protection concerns and that the children are safe in their father's care."
192 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 232 ms ] threadGood night... glad I live in America.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/living/feat-maryland-free-rang...
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/31/living/florida-mom-arrested-so...
I'm curious though in Japan whether this is part of a general trend combating helicopter parenting, or if it's just a one-off social norm.
Not sure if they're common/representative, but two interesting things the mother demonstrated (2:14):
1. She can track the kid via GPS
2. When asked, she said she would never let her son walk alone to school in the United States
My wife, who went to school in Japan, says it's seen as a good thing, to encourage independence.
There's a popular TV show, where they follow small kids (maybe 4 or 5?) on their first "trip alone" to do a chore, obviously they're being followed by a camera crew. But the TV show promotes kids taking responsibility for themselves (and it's cute of course).
The US is just seen as a much more dangerous country than Japan. I mean, it actually does have a higher crime rate.
Sorry, this is all purely anecdotal. But I believe it to be the general case (would as always love to see data).
I would say (but don't have data to show) that there's is a slow trend against it. Possibly because of recent high profile abductions...
So this quote
> the Ministry had checked with their lawyers “across the country” and the Attorney General, and determined that children under 10 years old could not be unsupervised in or outside the home, for any amount of time
has me really like WTF.
Edit: A bit more background now that I'm thinking about it. It's completely normal for kids in Kindergarten to go there alone, the first day each kid gets a reflector thingy(?)[0] they wear to walk there so they can be seen easily while crossing streets. Every morning you see a bunch of little kids toddling to Kindergarten, I've never really thought about this being different anywhere else.
[0] https://www.max-der-dachs.ch/files/shopimage/photo/8/vga_leu...
[1] http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20141120_01386041
Though there was a difference if you as a Central European visited France for example. The kids were way behind us in being relaxed and confident without parents around.
Usually my mom would just say: 'home when the lights turn on'.
This was pre kids-have-phones era...
Milan at 8.30 AM is like a battle field of screaming moms and nannies trying to get kids off these giant tank-like-cars but the car is parked in the middle of the street or on the sidewalk
Edit: I think the school recommends that parents walk with the first graders for a certain time (those that are in walking distance) until they feel that the kid knows the way and the rules and feels safe.
The social expectation is that every kid walks or takes public transportation (unless that is not possible). There are usually no dedicated school buses, but the public buses have extra timeslots. You meet your friends on the way to school, which is an important experience. Everything is safe, especially because it is the social norm.
I have the opportunity to live either in the US or Germany, and the increasing craziness and hysteria around how children are treated is the major reason for me to stay with my family in Germany.
In bigger cities, I've seen kindergarten trips take the S-Bahn. I guess that also counts as a kind of preparation.
It's the same reason why politicians say nothing of substance anymore. In the olden days, the occasional slip-up would slide. These days if you say the wrong thing, you can spend weeks or months defending it, and it can even cost you your job.
It's not just a case of 'bureaucracy gone crazy', but also of 'we demand too much of them'. The stereotypical example is that teachers used to just teach, and now they need to be nurses and social workers as well.
I think Trump is proving you wrong.
But I get your point, the risk is really because a few people are idiots with too much powers to break things.
We see the same things with the medical personal: they get very cautious and conservative because they are held accountable when something goes wrong, whether it's their fault or not.
But then forbidding idiots to have power would not be very democratic wouldn't it ?
Trump doesn't care about keeping his job or doing his job and he effectively can't be fired (which is rare for most positions). If you don't care about those kinds of ramifications, then you don't need to defend your slip-ups. He really is an atypical case here.
Not in my experience.
I France we have politicians lying, cheating and even being condemned coming back all the time.
The implication in the comment above is that he's already in France. So going to RI or NJ would be going further.
Are you saying though, that France has not seen politicians and other positions of authority say less of substance than in past decades? That they're not watching their tongues any more than they used to? That errant comments aren't taken out of context by the public and used to vilify the person who said it? Well, more power to you; the rest of us should be so lucky - all over the anglo world, this pattern has been noted, rising with the 24-hour news cycle (which rewards 'gotcha!' journalism).
We need to be ever vigilant to stop petty bureaucrats everywhere from making arbitrary rules and taking away valuable freedoms and discretion. Do what you can at work and in your personal life to maintain freedoms.
EDIT: One simple thing we can do is make a donation to the legal fighting fund established by the writer of this article to fight this draconian Canadian regulation. There are links to the legal fund donation page in the linked article.
I wonder if computer use is helping. I used to see kids struggling under enough backpack for a weekend campout. The backpacks seem to be much smaller now. Maybe more content is on tablets and laptops.
Society has gotten more legalistic. The bus driver or a random adult passenger doesn't have legally defined authority to discipline the author's kids, which means they don't have the authority at all.
But basic human decency demands you intervene if you see little kids fighting or doing something dangerous (even if you'd just roll your eyes if it was a couple of drunk guys).
This tension propagates through the system until somebody basically rules kids can't ride the bus unsupervised until they're old enough to be unsympathetic.
Basically you'd need to know how common crime against children traveling unsupervised on buses in a similar scenario.
The closest example presented is kids in New York riding the subway, so presenting stats on that would be useful.
I'd also like more details on the Japanese example, it's honestly not uncommon to hear news reports of kids being abducted in Japan. I'd personally be interested in the stats, but as a comparison point it doesn't make sense unless you can normalize for the overall lower crime rate that Japan has.
If anyone has good data against "Helicopter parenting", I'd be curious to see it.
> And the odds of your child being kidnapped by a stranger on the bus? Incredibly long. A 2003 study in Canada found just one case nationwide of a stranger abducting a child, in the entire two years prior.
I personally found the article very compelling. This kind of mindless fear, in direct contradiction of clear evidence, makes my blood boil.
Usually losing a kid is due untreatable diseases and bad parenting (like driving them to school without taking proper safety measures and suffer the consequences of an accident)
There's no evidence that going to school alone is more dangerous than staying home with grandpa's guns
Without knowing if, and how many children rode the bus alone, this information is not meaningful.
Are you suggesting chasing accuracy in a fraction of a fraction?
> One incident in two years, out of a population of tens of millions
I'm pointing out that overall population is not relevant.
The "fraction of a fraction" is the ratio of children who ride the bus alone, and get abducted. It seems that is relevant information when trying to contextualize the danger in allowing a child to ride a bus alone.
So the population of unsupervised children riding buses might be 10? or 100? or 1000000? we don't know.
1 in 10 would be high, though given the limited size of the dataset, possibly not very statistically relevant.
It seems doubtful that this is a very useful dataset.
It's an old article, from 2013. It states that:
"Police statistics show 25 children of the 46,718 reported missing in 2011 listed as "abducted by stranger."
And then goes on to show that in the majority of cases that the abductor was known to the parents.
So, the useful dataset would be.
* How many of the children were abducted with unsupervised?
* In the Canadian population how many children in total are left unsupervised regularly.
From that we could calculate:
Percentage of children left unsupervised regularly who are abducted.
Percentage of children not left unsupervised regularly who are abducted.
Of course, correlation != causation. But if there is no difference between the two populations then that would tell us something. However, there isn't enough data in the article to make this assertion.
If no (or very few) children are left unsupervised in Canada, then the statistic isn't relevant to calculating the probability of unsupervised (or lone traveling) children being abducted is it?
Or a lack of unsupervised children?
I don't know. I think you're probably correct. But really the assertion would be might stronger if there was more than anecdotal evidence to back it up.
This is what I'm trying to say the data presented in the article, is on the level of anecdotal evidence. Which, tends to weaken the argument rather than strengthen it.
Robbery much harder and often unreported or reported as bullying.
Robbery/theft/assault etc. seems like the ones you'd actually care about. Murders and kidnappings of children by strangers are so rare that any data about them is essentially meaningless.
Or maybe they try something stupid (we all did stupid things as kids and I don't expect my kids to be smarter than I was) and wind up drowning in the river or falling off something.
But why?
Is it common for them to be hit by cars?
Is it safer for them to go to school with parents?
And if someone hits you while you are trying to protect your kid, is it less traumatic?
And if while you take them to school you hit someone else's kid, is it less traumatic?
Is it common for kids to drown or fall and die while parents are not there?
From what I see it is common for adults to drown while they're trying to save someone else (usually not kids, but other adults)
If you start thinking about everything that _could_ happen, you wouldn't let your kids go out
Kids spend a lot of time alone and still they manage to survive
Why going to school should be any different?
2) Compare say multiple person being in a vehicular accidents when one is a child. Also make sure to include a reduction in car crashes including a child as some of those would become pedestrians. (Data is also available, but no idea how many kids would walk.) School busses exist and work.
3, 4) Stats are not readily available.
5) Stats are available, most of those happen near the parents anyway. Essentially negligence with very small kids or stupidity like having kids near unguarded aquifers or drops. Such areas are rare in cities.
Fear of your kid being hit by a car is just perception
driving them to school with the false sense of security that when they are with their parents kids are safer is more dangerous
However, driving the kids to school is probably no better than them just going on their own looking at stats of car crashes with kids involved.
Anyway, as expected, parents tend to behave highly irrationally when safety of their own children is involved.
According to CDC it's the second most common cause of accidental injury death among children aged 5-14 (after being in a car crash)
In actual cities the rates should be lower as roads are not mixed with recreational or pedestrian areas as much, at least in Europe. It is still the leading cause though. (WHO has good data.)
Quite a few accidents are also caused by biking...
The post I was replying to specifically said he's scared that his kid could be hit by a car when going to school on his own
It's fairly obvious that accidents are the most common cause of death for kids My point is that parent supervision don't protect them from being hit or end up in a car crash or fall down from a bridge
p.s.: main cause doesn't mean it is common I believe it's not very common, it's catastrophic for their young body when it happens, but not common
This is precisely where are now.
http://southpark.wikia.com/wiki/Child_Abduction_is_Not_Funny
>Or maybe they try something stupid
that's the fastest way to become smart in my experience. humans are remarkably adept at not dying and even ballsy kids can judge their competence well enough if they're given the opportunity to learn their limits.
Is the risk of robbery intolerably awful, or have we become unreasonably timid? I think that America (and to a significant extent Canada) is still in the throes of zero tolerance culture, where any risk is intolerable and any action to mitigate risk is justified.
Two kids get into a scuffle at school? Expel them both. Don't worry about what happens to those kids, don't worry about who started the fight, don't worry about the chilling effect on normal childhood behaviour, because we have zero tolerance for violence. The war on drugs, the war on terror, the broken window theory, mandatory minimum sentences, three-strike laws, the criminalization of poverty, the school-to-prison pipeline. When the only acceptable rate of crime is zero, the ends always justify the means.
https://www.brennancenter.org/publication/crime-trends1990-2...
Which commonly takes the form of "If you can't afford X then you shouldn't be doing Y"
Obviously, if you're using it to set policy, some kind of study would be valuable.
I personally would agree with author of the post. However, the author is saying "it's not dangerous to do this", as opposed to "it is a basic human right to do this". He is also asserting that the opposing view is not supported by the facts (it's "fact free").
That's all fine. But then the author presents statistics he's gathered, none of which really strongly support his case. And in fact, I would not be surprised if you could cherry pick statistics to support either case.
It would be better to either:
1. Find better statistics. 2. Not present poor statistics, and then say "look here this supports my argument", when it doesn't.
Or at least, apply caveats to the data...
But if you are suggesting that the decision should be fact based and present an argument with supporting statistics. Then those statistics should be relevant to your argument.
The statistics presented in the article were not relevant. If it is not dangerous, it should be possible to show this with data... the data presented in the article is poor and doesn't support his case well.
Of course if you're six and eight and not really into chess, nothing could be more boring. So we asked Dad if we could do something else. He gave us a few nickels and quarters and said "sure, how about riding the cable cars and go see the town?"
So we did! It was the most awesomest thing ever. We rode every cable car we could find, walked around town and saw the sights. The best part was when we found a street with our last name on it!
Everyone was nice. The cable car operators saw that we were a couple of kids riding around on our own, so they showed us how the grip and the brakes worked, pointed out interesting things to see, and made sure we knew how to ride safely - even when we were sitting on the outside of the cable car kicking our feet.
We forgot to ask for lunch money, so when we got back to the chess club as Dad was finishing his games, he took us out for a bite to eat and we told him all the stories of our adventure.
What a great day!
[1] https://chessclub.org
I think that's a big part of the problem right there. Politics doesn't have two sides; it's got far more dimensions and nuances than that, but in some cases it's been turned into a brutal, hatred-prone "us and them" of a ridiculously simple and inflexible two tribe system.
Sounds like something that should be backed up by a data point if you're looking to contribute something to the discussion.
>Leftism is a cancer, and a road to third world culture, paved by good intentions.
You've given exactly one point, with no references. When you jump to extreme conclusions such as the one you're making, that undoubtably creates a 'cancer' you're speaking of because it puts down any intelligent discussion. Without that, how can you or I be informed? I would argue that extremes such as that are what contribute to a political climate where its more important what party or political idealogy you belong to, than what you're actually saying.
Why? People state their opinions and experiences on HN all the time without such a requirement.
"language X is better than Y" is an opinion we accept at face value without sources, since it doesn't affect users of language Y, and has limited impact if it's wrong. Comparing a political stance to a disease does affect the users (implies they're 'sick' and need treatment) and has a big impact if it's wrong (and the non-leftism policies get put into place).
Compare "Perl is better than PHP" to "PHP is the brain tumor of server-side web languages".
Plus: there's no indication of which policies have caused this situation, so it's presumptuous to claim they're caused by leftism.
If I say Marxism is evil, aren't I also vilifying subscribers to that philosophy? That's fine, since it's a choice; both to take ideological criticisms personally, and to subscribe to it in the first place.
> Comparing a political stance to a disease does affect the users
I can't see how.
Yes, and I would not be surprised to see people challenging that statement/asking for facts.
> > Comparing a political stance to a disease does affect the users
> I can't see how.
See my example from the post you quoted. Does it make sense? Try to put yourself in the shoes of a professional, successful PHP programmer who is aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the language & is comfortable weighing up the various trade-offs.
Then we disagree. I distinguish ideology from person.
> Try to put yourself in the shoes of a professional, successful PHP programmer
I'd say that programmer has too much of their ego invested in their choice of language. The question is not of being merely unhappy about criticism, but being personally affected.
Would you happily say the same wrt criticism of a belief in flat-earth?
So do I? Bit of a non-sequitur…
> Would you happily say the same wrt criticism of a belief in flat-earth?
Happily? What a loaded question.
Would I expect a flat-earther to respond to claims which criticized their point-of-view by requesting evidence? Yes I would.
edit
> The question is not of being merely unhappy about criticism, but being personally affected.
People are affected by criticism simply by receiving it. Feeling unhappy because of criticism is being personally affected. Words can harm and kill.
Do you? you said you agree that "X is evil" villifies subscribers that philosophy.
> Feeling unhappy because of criticism is being personally affected
Not really, there is a difference between "I am a bad person" and "I subscribe to a bad ideology". The difference is you can un-subscribe if persuaded.
> Words can harm and kill
that's a non-sequitur..
> Do you? you said you agree that "X is evil" villifies subscribers that philosophy.
It does. That's what those words mean. I didn't say I would find them evil (which is what you're claiming I meant). You haven't asked me how I feel about any particular economical-political theory.
Is there something I could say that would cause you to reconsider your stance? If there is not, then please consider if this is the most productive use of your time.
I disagree. Care to back up that personal insult?
> Is there something I could say that would cause you to reconsider your stance?
Same to you.
Because we're literally talking about an article about how fact-free policies are a bad thing.
What did happen in the western world that made parents not allowing their kids to wander around?
He proposed one explanation in a contrived way: leftist politics. Instead of mindless downvoting, how would you explain it?
Or how about don't feed the trolls?
wat? Well, since I can only speak for the country I grew up in.
Switzerland: Definitely not the case. Letting kids wander around alone is the norm here, and no, that's not because everyone is poor.
I think environmental difference are more important than cultural.
"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
Yeah. Cancerous lefties indeed.
> We ban accounts that use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle, regardless of which politics they favor.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In a typical setting, there are options A & B. As an example, let A be the option to allow young kids to ride independently on a bus and B the option to legislate against letting young kids ride independently on a bus.
The cost of A seems high to human emotions and the lazy thinker, typically involving rare but high-impact events (something really bad happening to the well-trained kid taking a bus) that get cherry-picked as important to consider.
The cost of B seems low to human emotions and the lazy thinker, typically involving diverse continual low-impact events (all kids affected by legislation losing out on chance to learn independence, environmental impact of using a car instead of public transport) that get neglected because of their low emotional appeal and more complicated accounting. (It may be hard to prove that lots of low-impact things add up to a big thing -- there are too many things and causal relationships to point to.)
In many cases, the cost of A is actually objectively lower than the cost of B, so A is the better option. In such cases, whereas all options and their consequences should be considered together with their probabilities, in reality, option B is often deemed to be the better choice, and A a bad choice, because the cost of A appeals more strongly to emotional. Consequently, someone who picked A (law-maker or bureaucrat) gets blamed but someone who picked B doesn't get blamed and is harder to blame, including in court. To protect themselves, they pick the inferior option.
I think this sort of pathological risk assessment is the root of the cover-your-ass culture that permeates society.
Can you imagine having to kiss some distant bureaucrat bottom, accepting they invade your life, endangering your reputation, making you question your choices, threatening you to loose your kids, making them look at you differently, all that __even before any decision is taken__ ?
This is madness.
Again, the state can't do anything without going to court, and when they go to court they have to prove their case, he doesn't have to prove anything.
No he isn't. Children have a right to be with their parents, and it's important that fathers are involved with their children.
It would still need to go in front of a court.
Do you have evidence that Canadian courts ignore those rights?
As a point of comparison, school kids in Austria typically walk to school or use public transit on their own from first grade (6-7 years old).
In the beginning of the school year, older students watch zebra crossings and block traffic when kids need to cross.
What we have here is the terror of the police state. Anonymous tips, petty bureaucrats making life changing rulings on a whim with no clear laws to establish legal behavior. I would love to see the whole thing challenged as unconstitutional and abolished and folded into the much more functional justice system.
The social workers then put all the information together and take it to their lawyers, who'll either say it's not strong enough to go to court, or ask him if he really does want to ignore the advice because they think they have a good case.
At that point I assume they go to court, and then the state has to persuade the judge that he's an unfit parent and that removing the children is the only option - that nothing else will do. He doesn't have to prove he's a good parent; the onus is on the state to make their case.
The court has to respect his parenting choices, unless those choices are harmful or neglectful or put the children at risk of significant harm.
The court also has to take into account the views of the children, and it's likely these children will be happy about the travel arrangements, and will be persuasive to a judge.
This (quite old) report includes information on Canadian parents allowing children to engage in risky activity (11 year olds taking cannabis, for example) and Canada ranks 17th, which is pretty poor.
http://cwrp.ca/publications/401
Also, in many countries, child protection services can preemtively declare you an unfit parent and place your children in foster care, pending a decision from a judge, which may well take months.
Which countries allow this?
It doesn't happen in England.
Good luck if you're male and working, and the other parent is female and on social welfare. The mother can simply claim you're violent, or otherwise unfit to be a parent, and hey-presto you're fucked. She gets legal aid, the guy has to spend 5+ years and $35,000+ of his own money getting nowhere because the Family Court of Australia is extremely reluctant to force the female parent to comply.
> in many countries, child protection services can preemtively declare you an unfit parent and place your children in foster care, pending a decision from a judge,
For a child to be placed in foster care in Australia either the parent has to agree or a judge makes a decision. It's not possible for a child to be placed in foster care without either of those.
I don't think that's how it works, in this day and age.
As Adrian mentions in the article:
Being a divorced, single dad who has his kids 50% of the time, I have little recourse to challenge the Ministry’s decision. Disobeying it even in the slightest (i.e. allowing a trip to the corner store by my 9.75 year old), could result in the Ministry stripping me of equal custody of my children, a remarkably draconian outcome I would never risk.
This is very similar to how it would work in Australia. The cards are especially stacked against you if you're unfortunate enough to be the bearer of a Y chromosome during a separation involving children.
It's not true though.
The ministry can't strip him of equal custody rights, they can only go to court. A judge is the only person who can strip his rights away.
THe claim is:
> Disobeying it even in the slightest (i.e. allowing a trip to the corner store by my 9.75 year old), could result in the Ministry stripping me of equal custody of my children
And that claim is just bullshit. Show me any case in Canada where this has happened.
In Australia men don't have a 50% custody right. The mother can just cease participating in the shared parenting plan. She could say "he lets them roam the streets unsupervised". Then it goes back to court, the courts tell the mother "you have to participate", and then she "forgets" or her "car breaks down" or she "doesn't have enough money for petrol". This can also, though rarely, work with the genders reversed.
The result is the same: The Government strips you of custody because someone claimed you stepped out of line.
I don't meant to sound like I have an axe to grind, but I do, so that's how it comes across.
OP isn't talking about a mother frustrating the will of the court (and I agree that's a problem); OP is talking about an agent of the state removing children from a parent.
If anything your argument just supports my point: she's violating her child's convention right to a family life with its father, but the courts can't do much about it.
If this "the state can just take your children" argument held any water the state, after the court cases, would see the mother breaking the court order and take the child off her. They don't, because it's very hard to do.
Most judges are doing to hear "child endangerment" and do exactly what they recommend, or what is called for. People performing assessments have broad discretion in many types of determinations. When you suffer from a serious medical malady like a stroke, the social workers/discharge planners in hospitals and rehab facilities have even greater power with less accountability.
Maybe that's true in the US, but it just isn't true for Canada (which uses forced adoption rarely).
It's not even true in England, which is criticised for using forced adoption quite heavily.
There's a suspicion that judges just rubber stamp these applications. It's bizarre to think that they do.
Here are a few cases from England.
In this one the local authority gets a kicking from the judge: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2014/22.html
And another: http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWFC/...
That last one is useful here. The parents were misusing alcohol; were violent; had neglected their child. Their child had gone into foster care. The local authority is applying to have the children adopted. The judge rejects that because the judge thinks the child should maintain contact with the parents. (And eventually go back to the father).
There's also talk about judges separating children from fathers, but that's not true either. This case, written so the children will understand, nicely illustrates that:
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2016/9.html
The judge ordered that the children should continue to have contact with their father, even though he was a violent and aggressive man. After that order was made the father was arrested, charged, and convicted of firearms offences, and got a prison sentence.
Considering that forcibly removing children from their parents is a highly traumatic situation, I can understand how someone might not want to do what you suggest.
Also, at no point is a jury involved in the disposition of the children; it's a single judge and a 3+ party trial (parent(s), child, state, &c.).
I used to walk to school at the age of what, 8? There was one really quite busy road I had to cross on my own, the rest was residential. But learning to cross the road is something that was dogmatically addressed from a very young age. "Stop. Look. Listen." I remember learning about that aged 5ish? My parents knew I could cross the road, they'd taught me, the schools had taught me. It was tested in the crucible of parental observation and then I was trusted to continue.
Of course someone could come along and kidnap me as I blithely wandered along the pavement. But frankly if we're going to spend our lives obsessing about extreme tail risks then we've already lost.
Yes. And the tail risks are asymmetrical here. Bureaucrats take on responsibility for thousands or hundreds-of-thousands of children in their district. They look bad however few of these kids are harmed or killed. So what might be a perfectly acceptable risk for an individual family is not acceptable to the local government.
The more they interfere and assume responsibility for children the more additional responsibilities their offices will be loaded with when things go wrong. Which will cause further problems, et cetera, because although parents love and provide for their children, institutions don't know how to (and can't afford to).
Nowhere in his article does Crook mention any specific names of government workers he interacted with, specific dates when he met with caseworkers, or specific actions or enforcements the government would take regarding his case.
In an article full of links to specific stats and empathy inducing images of his children, he does not show a single government correspondence.
I hope my assumption is just misguided cynicism, and that there actually is a concrete reason to give this man money.
"In a June 23 letter that Mr. Crook provided to The Globe and Mail, the ministry said it looked into concerns that "you were pulling the children's ears and allowing them to take transit unsupervised." Asked about the ear-pulling, Mr. Crook said it was treated as an afterthought in the investigation and follow-up, and that the main focus was the bus trips.
The letter says there are no child-protection concerns and that the children are safe in their father's care."