How Dangerous Is Childhood? (final)

And paranoia:

Furedi, the British author, points to the ban on small plastic prizes from children’s snacks. “There is no evidence that any child has ever choked to death (on a prize) – but the theoretical possibility that one just might do so one day is undeniable, and that is enough to justify a ban.”

Stearns points to the alleged dangers of Halloween: the idea that within each plastic pumpkin lurks a chocolate bar injected with straight pins or razor blades.

“As far as we can determine, this never happened. But it changed the whole pattern of Halloween.”

Police departments and hospitals now screen kids’ candy; parents tag along for the night.

“Boy, if my parents had come along with me, I would have been furious,” says Stearns. What’s becoming troubling to more folks watching as the years go by: Hand-wringing parents no longer make kids roll their eyes. More kids have come to believe they need the protection. They feel inferior to the task of growing up, of making their own decisions, of trusting their own common sense.

Of ending up victims like those little kids on TV.

Actual odds of dying

In the end, though, numbers don’t lie.

By all accounts, childhood is far less dangerous now than it once was, even back in those mythic, gentler times. In 1930, almost 11 percent of the population died before reaching age 20. For children born in 2000, that number will be 1.3 percent. (Most of those deaths: accidental injuries, and not, for the record, as a result of toys.)

But, as Stearns, the “Anxious Parents” author, says, “we’re addicted to stuff that makes us insecure.

“It’s like being mesmerized by a cobra.”        

This article is reprinted with the permission of the author, Nicole Neal, The Palm Beach Post.

Complete article ” How Dangerous is Childhood“

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How Dangerous Is Childhood (con’t)

The casualties in this world of parental paranoia:

•  Walking to school – barefoot, in the snow, and uphill both ways – used to be the norm. But so few children walk to school today – about 10 percent nationwide – that Oct. 4 has been named International Walk to School Day.

A major reason the K-8 crowd is sealed into the backs of SUVs and transported: Parental concerns about safety.

And those concerns “have as much to do with ‘stranger danger’ – the chance that a child walking to school will be snatched off the sidewalk by a complete stranger – as a fear of traffic,” states a Salon.com article about “Safe Routes to School,” an effort started several years ago to get more kids walking and biking to school.

Wendi Kallins, project manager for the Marin County, Calif., program, describes one father who attended a Safe Routes meeting: Intellectually, he understood his child was highly unlikely to meet a grisly end on the walk to school. But emotionally? “With my pretty blue-eyed daughter, I’m convinced she will be the one.”

“When you’re dealing with gut-level fears,” Kallins is quoted as saying, “there’s not much you can do.

“The whole level of fear in our culture is increasing.”

And so a vicious cycle ensues: Fewer children walk, so they don’t travel in the protective packs that once gave parents comfort. The increase in traffic heading to schools makes it more likely that a kid will be hit by a car, most likely driven by a parent. (Fifty percent of the children hit by cars near schools are hit by parents of other students, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.)

And kids miss a chance for exercise, social interaction and a dose of self-reliance.

•  The death of play.

Much has been written about the overscheduled child and the lost art of play. Structured fun does far less to bolster creative thinking, self-sufficiency, teamwork building and social and problem-solving skills.

Almost all parents wistfully wish that their kids could experience playtime as they knew it, when children organized their own games and came home when the streetlights were turned on.

Yet no one seems willing to let their children simply go out and play. There’s the fear – that word again – that kids will be left behind if they don’t take part in the requisite number of classes and organized activities. There’s also a hands-off approach to other people’s children that didn’t exist 30 years ago, so parents can no longer count on “the village” to discipline or even keep an eye on their child. And many kids simply don’t want to play outside – video games and computers are the new playgrounds of choice.

But a 2001 Time magazine article quotes a Sarasota mom who sums up many parents’ sentiments: Unsupervised play is also dangerous.

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How Dangerous Is Childhood (con’t)

The real statistics

Child abduction is the airplane crash of parental fears.

Intellectually, we know the odds: The chances of dying aboard a plane are slim (Lifetime odds: 1 in 500,000, and that’s for frequent fliers). But emotionally, we aren’t convinced. Flying scares us.

The difference, though: Despite our fears, we continue to fly. To refuse to board a plane would be to condemn ourselves to a limited life.

But we think nothing of limiting our children’s lives, based on fears that are even less likely to be realized.

As most people know by now, the majority of child abductions are custody related. There are also thousands of “lesser” nonfamily abductions, which “do not involve elements of the extremely alarming kind of crime that parents and reporters have in mind,” according to a 2002 U.S. Department of Justice report. Examples included in the report: a 17-year-old girl held in her ex-boyfriend’s car for four hours; a 14-year-old boy held at gunpoint by a man who accused him of hunting on his property; a 15-year-old girl forced into the boy’s bathroom at school and sexually assaulted.

Not happy scenarios, but not Lifetime television special material, either.

But how common are what the Justice Department calls “stereotypical” abductions, the nightmare-caliber crime involving a stranger or slight acquaintance who whisks away a child with the intention of holding him for ransom, keeping him or killing him?

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How Dangerous Is Childhood?

By NICOLE NEAL

Palm Beach Post

August 13. 2006

 

Adam Walsh’s childhood wasn’t the only one that ended 25 years ago.

Childhood – and parenthood – would never be the same.

On Aug. 10, 1981, the severed head of the South Florida boy was found in a canal in Vero Beach.

If a 6-year-old could be taken from a mall after being out of his mother’s sight for just minutes; if he could be murdered and decapitated; if his killer could elude authorities, then our world must be a truly dangerous place for children.

It’s an understandable response to what was surely one of the most horrific crimes of the 20th century.

But the fallout – a culture of parental paranoia that has become the norm today – may be just as tragic.

The casualties, beyond the death of one innocent little boy, are many:

The death of simple childhood pleasures.

The death of peace of mind.

The death of common sense.

The death of self-sufficiency.

Just last month: “FLORIDA PARENTS FEEL THE WORLD IS GETTING RISKIER FOR THEIR CHILDREN” bellowed a press release on the Web site of theNational Center for Missing & Exploited Children, one of the organizations formed in the wake of the Walsh murder.

But how dangerous is childhood?

And just as important, how dangerous is the pervasive belief that childhood is dangerous?

In our effort to protect children from even the most remote chance that they might be harmed, in teaching them that danger lurks around every corner, have we reared a generation of overly fearful young adults, emotionally tethered to their parents and seemingly incapable even of walking across a college campus without holding someone’s hand via cellphone?

Of course, not every woe in the overparenting saga can be traced to Adam Walsh’s tragic death. Sharing the blame: The relatively new tendency to focus on and over-analyze kids, and a social sea change that has devalued self-reliance and resilience and encouraged everyone to see themselves as victims of something.

But there’s no doubt parenthood has changed dramatically in the past 25 years, and little Adam’s murder was among the first turns of the screw.

 

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