Oh for goodness sake. Can we please take a reality pill?

Your kid is on a PLANE. Unless you're flying Southwest, seats are preassigned. Unaccompanied minors sit in the few rows and flight attendants check in on them constantly. And there's someone else unrelated to the "man" sitting in the same row, too.

Does anyone care to posit the risk of your kid ending up next to a pedophile who is clever enough to figure out a way to abuse the kid without the seatmate or flight attendant noticing and without the kid doing anything to resist?

I'm guessing the chances are about 100x higher that the plane will crash.

Get a grip, people.

Anonymous wrote:A plane is a pretty open, public place and the flight attendants are keeping an eye on the kid anyway.

It would be great if they could somehow identify sex offenders and keep them away from the kids.

You raise a good point. There is likely nothing keeping registered and identifiable sex offenders from sitting next to unaccompanied minors on airplanes. That is just wrong.

A plane is a pretty open, public place and the flight attendants are keeping an eye on the kid anyway.

It would be great if they could somehow identify sex offenders and keep them away from the kids.

Yes I would be much more comfortable if my son was seated next to Debra LaFarbe, Tyler Wolf, or Mary Kay Letourneau

Yes. Kids shouldn't fly alone until they're 57.

Anonymous wrote:Who cares. Children should not be flying alone.

+1 you send your kid out into the world unaccompanied, you get what you get.

Anonymous wrote:That is hysterical. Good for your DS!

Good for making him afraid there are bad guys lurking in every bathroom? Yay!

That is hysterical. Good for your DS!

Sad. I hope my child will speak up/ ask to be moved if there is anything untoward (male or female) in the seat next to him.

Quick story: My then 6 yo DS wanted to go to the men's bathroom at the library one day. Being the cautious mom I am, I whispered to him that if someone touched him in there, he should scream as loud as he could and I would go in and deal with it. So he enters the bathroom and before the door has time to close, he yells at the top of his lungs: "HELLO? ARE THERE ANY BAD GUYS IN HERE?"
The well-enunciated challenge echoed through the WHOLE of the library and everyone turned their heads to look at me, since I stood closest to the bathroom door.
Ugh. But now I can laugh about it.

That's terrible. Agree with PP, the word is misandry. That's pretty much the same as saying that, because theft in Washington DC is mostly perpetrated by black men, no black man can sit within three rows of the galley, because they'll probably steal the little liquor bottles.

Misandry. I think it is terrible. men and women alike can be rude. If a child is uncomfortable sitting next to man that is likely due to being raised in a home where men were either absent or spoken about negatively. There should not be anything about simply being in the presence of a man that make s child uncomfortable. there may be specific men or women or characteristics of either men or women that make a child uncomfortable but to say that men in general make someone uncomfortable is just discrimination and hate.

I find it problematic.

Who cares. Children should not be flying alone.

I think it would be nice if all airlines did that. My DD flies solo and it makes me uncomfortable when she tells me she was put next to a man. She doesn't really like it either, because women or other kids generally chat with her, and the men are rude, from what she tells me.

Men not allowed to sit next to unaccompanied minors on flights. What do you think?

http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_c2#/video/business/2012/08/14/tsr-pkg-endo-male-passengers-treated-like-pedophiles.cnn