Why Do We Judge Parents For Putting Kids At Perceived — But Unreal — Risk?

[Anonymous]

Interesting article. Love articles that examine relative risks!

"So here's another possibility. It's not that risks to children have increased, provoking an increase in moral outrage when children are left unattended. Instead, it could be that moral attitudes toward parenting have changed, such that leaving children unsupervised is now judged morally wrong. And because it's judged morally wrong, people overestimate the risk."

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/08/22/490847797/why-do-we-judge-parents-for-putting-kids-at-perceived-but-unreal-risk?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160822

[Anonymous]

"I don't have children myself, and I guess I was surprised that people are SO judgmental about other people's parenting." As a FTM I'm not surprised and get judgement left and right about my parenting choices from complete freaking strangers piping up.

[Anonymous]

No eye roll necessary but pp is there any evidence that our more protective behaviors have addressed the problem. If it's the wrong solution, we need to know!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting article. Love articles that examine relative risks!

"So here's another possibility. It's not that risks to children have increased, provoking an increase in moral outrage when children are left unattended. Instead, it could be that moral attitudes toward parenting have changed, such that leaving children unsupervised is now judged morally wrong. And because it's judged morally wrong, people overestimate the risk."

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/08/22/490847797/why-do-we-judge-parents-for-putting-kids-at-perceived-but-unreal-risk?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160822

I don't buy this research. The added fact about the parent's "immorality" probably just makes them seem more irresponsible and hence riskier. Eg, they won't come back in an hour, but in 5 hours.

Also that story about the Pokemon parents was bad! Far from harmless.

[Anonymous]

Great article and I completely agree with the conclusion.

"Each kid is different, of course, and the people best qualified to decide how much responsibility and independence any given child can handle are that child's parents. Parents' rights to make these decisions should be respected unless there is a clear, immediate and significant risk to the child's safety."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting article. Love articles that examine relative risks!

"So here's another possibility. It's not that risks to children have increased, provoking an increase in moral outrage when children are left unattended. Instead, it could be that moral attitudes toward parenting have changed, such that leaving children unsupervised is now judged morally wrong. And because it's judged morally wrong, people overestimate the risk."

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/08/22/490847797/why-do-we-judge-parents-for-putting-kids-at-perceived-but-unreal-risk?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160822

First, I didn't click through all the links in the article, but the link to support "eight times more children are killed in parking lots than in parked cars" is completely bogus. It's a 2014 NYPost article saying that 19 to 23 kids had died in hot cars during January-August 2014, as compared to an estimated 68 struck by cars. That is not in any way support for saying that leaving your kid in the car is safer. Actually very disappointing from NPR.

That aside, I don't agree with the article's conclusions about moral attitudes toward parenting. I think people consider the need to take the risk, and have negative views of unnecessary risk. Driving is statistically really risky, but I need to get my child to school and we are not a society set up around walkable schools. So, the driving risk is not seen as that bad, compared to other options. Leaving your kid alone in a house so you can play Pokemon is an unnecessary risk, even if statistically unlikely to have a bad result. The reason we're divided about a mom leaving her kid to play in the park while the mom works is that we disagree, culturally, about access to childcare and income for a person in that mom's situation -- i.e., about her choices and the need to do that.

People also consider perceived control. Although it's false to believe you completely control your driving risk -- you can always be hit by someone else -- you do have the choice to drive safely. When your child is unattended, you have no control over the events or the aftermath, e.g., getting your child to safety or medical help.

I do think there are "recent" factors, including the constant barrage of unlikely horror stories shared over media in a way they weren't previously. I also think that culturally we (everyone, including moms) are uncomfortable with the tension between being a mother and a worker (and a person with hobbies, etc.) and so you see a lot of mommy-wars judgment and guilt over whether you are doing enough for your kid, including spending enough time supervising them and protecting them. That's the negative side of control.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting article. Love articles that examine relative risks!

"So here's another possibility. It's not that risks to children have increased, provoking an increase in moral outrage when children are left unattended. Instead, it could be that moral attitudes toward parenting have changed, such that leaving children unsupervised is now judged morally wrong. And because it's judged morally wrong, people overestimate the risk."

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/08/22/490847797/why-do-we-judge-parents-for-putting-kids-at-perceived-but-unreal-risk?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160822

First, I didn't click through all the links in the article, but the link to support "eight times more children are killed in parking lots than in parked cars" is completely bogus. It's a 2014 NYPost article saying that 19 to 23 kids had died in hot cars during January-August 2014, as compared to an estimated 68 struck by cars. That is not in any way support for saying that leaving your kid in the car is safer. Actually very disappointing from NPR.

That aside, I don't agree with the article's conclusions about moral attitudes toward parenting. I think people consider the need to take the risk, and have negative views of unnecessary risk. Driving is statistically really risky, but I need to get my child to school and we are not a society set up around walkable schools. So, the driving risk is not seen as that bad, compared to other options. Leaving your kid alone in a house so you can play Pokemon is an unnecessary risk, even if statistically unlikely to have a bad result. The reason we're divided about a mom leaving her kid to play in the park while the mom works is that we disagree, culturally, about access to childcare and income for a person in that mom's situation -- i.e., about her choices and the need to do that.

People also consider perceived control. Although it's false to believe you completely control your driving risk -- you can always be hit by someone else -- you do have the choice to drive safely. When your child is unattended, you have no control over the events or the aftermath, e.g., getting your child to safety or medical help.

I do think there are "recent" factors, including the constant barrage of unlikely horror stories shared over media in a way they weren't previously. I also think that culturally we (everyone, including moms) are uncomfortable with the tension between being a mother and a worker (and a person with hobbies, etc.) and so you see a lot of mommy-wars judgment and guilt over whether you are doing enough for your kid, including spending enough time supervising them and protecting them. That's the negative side of control.

Interesting point, but why would people have a more negative view of "unnecessary risk" today than in the 70s?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting article. Love articles that examine relative risks!

"So here's another possibility. It's not that risks to children have increased, provoking an increase in moral outrage when children are left unattended. Instead, it could be that moral attitudes toward parenting have changed, such that leaving children unsupervised is now judged morally wrong. And because it's judged morally wrong, people overestimate the risk."

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/08/22/490847797/why-do-we-judge-parents-for-putting-kids-at-perceived-but-unreal-risk?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160822

First, I didn't click through all the links in the article, but the link to support "eight times more children are killed in parking lots than in parked cars" is completely bogus. It's a 2014 NYPost article saying that 19 to 23 kids had died in hot cars during January-August 2014, as compared to an estimated 68 struck by cars. That is not in any way support for saying that leaving your kid in the car is safer. Actually very disappointing from NPR.

That aside, I don't agree with the article's conclusions about moral attitudes toward parenting. I think people consider the need to take the risk, and have negative views of unnecessary risk. Driving is statistically really risky, but I need to get my child to school and we are not a society set up around walkable schools. So, the driving risk is not seen as that bad, compared to other options. Leaving your kid alone in a house so you can play Pokemon is an unnecessary risk, even if statistically unlikely to have a bad result. The reason we're divided about a mom leaving her kid to play in the park while the mom works is that we disagree, culturally, about access to childcare and income for a person in that mom's situation -- i.e., about her choices and the need to do that.

People also consider perceived control. Although it's false to believe you completely control your driving risk -- you can always be hit by someone else -- you do have the choice to drive safely. When your child is unattended, you have no control over the events or the aftermath, e.g., getting your child to safety or medical help.

I do think there are "recent" factors, including the constant barrage of unlikely horror stories shared over media in a way they weren't previously. I also think that culturally we (everyone, including moms) are uncomfortable with the tension between being a mother and a worker (and a person with hobbies, etc.) and so you see a lot of mommy-wars judgment and guilt over whether you are doing enough for your kid, including spending enough time supervising them and protecting them. That's the negative side of control.

Interesting point, but why would people have a more negative view of "unnecessary risk" today than in the 70s?

I'm not sure if I agree that they they do. I actually think some of this nostalgia is for experiences in the more distant past, that took place in a different cultural context. I was born in 1979 and I never walked anywhere alone, played in the park alone, etc. I accept that some of my cohort must have, but I don't think it's really universal. I think that people have this idealized idea of '50s or '60s culture -- which was one of the first generations to have a middle class where the kids didn't need to work within or outside the home -- that they are mentally moving that forward in time and applying it to the childhoods of people who are parents now. But a lot of us who are parents now actually grew up in the '80s stranger-danger atmosphere.

So really, you're only talking about a short period of time (at most, '50s to early '70s) when childhood might have been like that. If you go back past the Boomers, then kids were working, or their parents were working and there was limited childcare. Pre-'50s you also saw larger families, correlated with higher death rates for children due to disease and injury. Rather than modern parents moving away from some "timeless" hands-off approach to parenting, it's at least as likely that our current parenting attitudes developed in response to the pre-Boomer (pre-'50s) child raising approach not working well for the first generation of kids who were both healthy and idle.

[Anonymous]

Totally true. So frustrating. Just look at that other thread where I said by first grade my kids walk to the bus stop by themselves and by third grade are definitely making their own lunches.

Sometimes when my daughter is angry she'll ask to go to the park three blocks away and play tennis against the wall. I let her. I was once in a coffee shop and my DD wanted to go to a toy store two blocks away to buy something. I didn't want to go so I let her. She came back crying with some stranger following her who said to me "Your daughter was CRYING at the toy store ALONE." She was crying just because she didn't have enough money for the toy she wanted. But I was a terrible mother because I wasn't there to prevent her from getting upset. When I wasn't properly alarmed that DD had gotten upset, the woman immediately switched to "And she was ALONE - ANYTHING could have happened." You mean like a strange angry lady following her two blocks back to a coffee shop?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Totally true. So frustrating. Just look at that other thread where I said by first grade my kids walk to the bus stop by themselves and by third grade are definitely making their own lunches.

Sometimes when my daughter is angry she'll ask to go to the park three blocks away and play tennis against the wall. I let her. I was once in a coffee shop and my DD wanted to go to a toy store two blocks away to buy something. I didn't want to go so I let her. She came back crying with some stranger following her who said to me "Your daughter was CRYING at the toy store ALONE." She was crying just because she didn't have enough money for the toy she wanted. But I was a terrible mother because I wasn't there to prevent her from getting upset. When I wasn't properly alarmed that DD had gotten upset, the woman immediately switched to "And she was ALONE - ANYTHING could have happened." You mean like a strange angry lady following her two blocks back to a coffee shop?

Yeah, some of the evidence is disappointing in this article- as pointed out by PP regarding the struck by car etc.- but I do agree with the moral conclusions the article comes to and the idea of free range parenting when it is appropriate for your kid and that the parent is the best judge of that.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I'm going to judge parents who leave their 2 year old unattended while they go off to play Pokemon Go. How stupid. Sorry.

I'm also going to judge a mom who allows her 9 year old to hang out at a public park for hours alone while mom is at work. That's too much responsibility for a 9 year old child. A 9 year old left home alone for a few hours with firm rules and boundaries in place - I'm not going to judge.

A 4 year old left alone in a car while his mom dashes in/out of a store. I'm not going to worry about. A 4 year old left playing in a fountain in front of the store while his mom window shops I'm going to judge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting article. Love articles that examine relative risks!

"So here's another possibility. It's not that risks to children have increased, provoking an increase in moral outrage when children are left unattended. Instead, it could be that moral attitudes toward parenting have changed, such that leaving children unsupervised is now judged morally wrong. And because it's judged morally wrong, people overestimate the risk."

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/08/22/490847797/why-do-we-judge-parents-for-putting-kids-at-perceived-but-unreal-risk?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160822

First, I didn't click through all the links in the article, but the link to support "eight times more children are killed in parking lots than in parked cars" is completely bogus. It's a 2014 NYPost article saying that 19 to 23 kids had died in hot cars during January-August 2014, as compared to an estimated 68 struck by cars. That is not in any way support for saying that leaving your kid in the car is safer. Actually very disappointing from NPR.

That aside, I don't agree with the article's conclusions about moral attitudes toward parenting. I think people consider the need to take the risk, and have negative views of unnecessary risk. Driving is statistically really risky, but I need to get my child to school and we are not a society set up around walkable schools. So, the driving risk is not seen as that bad, compared to other options. Leaving your kid alone in a house so you can play Pokemon is an unnecessary risk, even if statistically unlikely to have a bad result. The reason we're divided about a mom leaving her kid to play in the park while the mom works is that we disagree, culturally, about access to childcare and income for a person in that mom's situation -- i.e., about her choices and the need to do that.

People also consider perceived control. Although it's false to believe you completely control your driving risk -- you can always be hit by someone else -- you do have the choice to drive safely. When your child is unattended, you have no control over the events or the aftermath, e.g., getting your child to safety or medical help.

I do think there are "recent" factors, including the constant barrage of unlikely horror stories shared over media in a way they weren't previously. I also think that culturally we (everyone, including moms) are uncomfortable with the tension between being a mother and a worker (and a person with hobbies, etc.) and so you see a lot of mommy-wars judgment and guilt over whether you are doing enough for your kid, including spending enough time supervising them and protecting them. That's the negative side of control.

Interesting point, but why would people have a more negative view of "unnecessary risk" today than in the 70s?

I'm not sure if I agree that they they do. I actually think some of this nostalgia is for experiences in the more distant past, that took place in a different cultural context. I was born in 1979 and I never walked anywhere alone, played in the park alone, etc. I accept that some of my cohort must have, but I don't think it's really universal. I think that people have this idealized idea of '50s or '60s culture -- which was one of the first generations to have a middle class where the kids didn't need to work within or outside the home -- that they are mentally moving that forward in time and applying it to the childhoods of people who are parents now. But a lot of us who are parents now actually grew up in the '80s stranger-danger atmosphere.

So really, you're only talking about a short period of time (at most, '50s to early '70s) when childhood might have been like that. If you go back past the Boomers, then kids were working, or their parents were working and there was limited childcare. Pre-'50s you also saw larger families, correlated with higher death rates for children due to disease and injury. Rather than modern parents moving away from some "timeless" hands-off approach to parenting, it's at least as likely that our current parenting attitudes developed in response to the pre-Boomer (pre-'50s) child raising approach not working well for the first generation of kids who were both healthy and idle.

I was born in '79, too, and I did those things. Which is surprising, because my mother leans toward the anxious side. I think so much of it has to do with your neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting article. Love articles that examine relative risks!

"So here's another possibility. It's not that risks to children have increased, provoking an increase in moral outrage when children are left unattended. Instead, it could be that moral attitudes toward parenting have changed, such that leaving children unsupervised is now judged morally wrong. And because it's judged morally wrong, people overestimate the risk."

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/08/22/490847797/why-do-we-judge-parents-for-putting-kids-at-perceived-but-unreal-risk?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160822

First, I didn't click through all the links in the article, but the link to support "eight times more children are killed in parking lots than in parked cars" is completely bogus. It's a 2014 NYPost article saying that 19 to 23 kids had died in hot cars during January-August 2014, as compared to an estimated 68 struck by cars. That is not in any way support for saying that leaving your kid in the car is safer. Actually very disappointing from NPR.

That aside, I don't agree with the article's conclusions about moral attitudes toward parenting. I think people consider the need to take the risk, and have negative views of unnecessary risk. Driving is statistically really risky, but I need to get my child to school and we are not a society set up around walkable schools. So, the driving risk is not seen as that bad, compared to other options. Leaving your kid alone in a house so you can play Pokemon is an unnecessary risk, even if statistically unlikely to have a bad result. The reason we're divided about a mom leaving her kid to play in the park while the mom works is that we disagree, culturally, about access to childcare and income for a person in that mom's situation -- i.e., about her choices and the need to do that.

People also consider perceived control. Although it's false to believe you completely control your driving risk -- you can always be hit by someone else -- you do have the choice to drive safely. When your child is unattended, you have no control over the events or the aftermath, e.g., getting your child to safety or medical help.

I do think there are "recent" factors, including the constant barrage of unlikely horror stories shared over media in a way they weren't previously. I also think that culturally we (everyone, including moms) are uncomfortable with the tension between being a mother and a worker (and a person with hobbies, etc.) and so you see a lot of mommy-wars judgment and guilt over whether you are doing enough for your kid, including spending enough time supervising them and protecting them. That's the negative side of control.

If you look closer you will find that those tragic deaths were the result of children being left in the car unintentionally for hours. They were not the result of a parent making a calculated decision to leave the child in the car while they ran into the store.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting article. Love articles that examine relative risks!

"So here's another possibility. It's not that risks to children have increased, provoking an increase in moral outrage when children are left unattended. Instead, it could be that moral attitudes toward parenting have changed, such that leaving children unsupervised is now judged morally wrong. And because it's judged morally wrong, people overestimate the risk."

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/08/22/490847797/why-do-we-judge-parents-for-putting-kids-at-perceived-but-unreal-risk?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160822

I don't buy this research. The added fact about the parent's "immorality" probably just makes them seem more irresponsible and hence riskier. Eg, they won't come back in an hour, but in 5 hours.

Also that story about the Pokemon parents was bad! Far from harmless.

You don't "buy" this research?

[Anonymous]

Born in 1970, grew up in DC. It really was just 'normal' and no one questioned that was normal that even early elementary kids played outside and wandered the neighborhood until dinner time, walked to school alone, came home alone after school (latch key) etc. The norm has changed. I think the shift started when there were some really high profile child abductions (like Adam Walsh) and there was a string of child murders in Georgia etc which changed the perceived risks and started a big national conversation (what evolved to stranger danger etc). By the time my brother - six years younger - was going through school, many fewer latch key kids.