Schneier on Security

@Schneier

Your great graphic depicts the English countryside, where there is 1 child predator per every 300 square miles.

That may be a slightly higher ratio in NYC.

Good for her.

Okay, so I've got three kids of my own (5yr, 3yr, & 2mo) and I admit that I am the "hovering" kind of parent.

I think two things are going on here:

1. The cost of surveilence of our kids is going down. Technology and societal pressures make it easier to spy.

2. Parent/child relationships are shifting to an increased value of the child. Parents see their kids futures as more valuable than their own. This has always been true to a certain extent, but with modern rates of change, our kids can expect an order of magnitude more change (and longer life) than we do.

I applaud Skenazy for her position and hope that I'll have the restraint to follow her example.

When I was 7 (late 70s) - I walked to school 3 miles away. I spent hours and hours away from home on bikes with friends 5, 10, 15 miles away in parks and downtown areas. They way kids are treated like dogs that need to be on a leash today disturbs me greatly.

While I applaud the fact that she's teaching her kid independence and also that she's not jumping on the paranoia parenting bandwagon... 9 in New York City strikes me as perhaps a bit extreme. It's New York City.

I would imagine that parents acting as if the "real world" was an extremely dangerous place where children are routinely killed, abducted or abused are raising future neurotics.

Also, come adolescence, the child may realize that the parent's fears have no rational basis and rebel by going to the other extreme, ie by engaging in activities which rational people would consider dangerous.

I live in Princeton, NJ, possibly one of the safest places on Earth. But I see ads in the newspaper from parents who want to hire someone to walk their 12 year old child home from school (in the afternoon). I can't understand their reasons.

I'm not even a parent, and I find the pretentious idea of a "parenting expert" inherently offensive to the individuality of children.

Amazing, even the naysayers on this blog can't be rational. Don't talk to us about "that may be slightly higher in NYC" or "It's New York City". Those are irrational, emotional responses. If you want to discuss this properly, come up with statistics and actual risk, not appeals to emotion that since it's New York City it must be dangerous just because of the name.

I support this kind of rational thinking, but I have a newborn, and propose this paranoid thought:

What if abduction/etc. statistics are going down BECAUSE parents constrain their kids more. Would that mean that "free-range" kids :) are at higher risk, because they're in a smaller pool of exposed targets?

In InfoSec terms, the threat is constant, but the overall attack space is reduced?

"It's New York City."

What does that mean?

I don't have children yet, but I have two sisters who are two and five years younger. My parents let me pretty much roam free, but my sisters were always more restricted. When I was in high school, I became really protective of them. Looking back, I'm not sure why I was so protective.

Today, I feel being overly-protective is counter-productive. Eventually, kids have to figure out how to get around and be independent adults.

I have a friend who grew up with hovering parents. He is deathly afraid of venturing into Chicago past sundown, including "safer" areas like Wrigleyville and Lincoln Park. He has not been mugged or otherwise has any reason to fear the city, except that his parents ingrained in him that the city is dangerous, and even more so when it's dark. I don't want my future children to grow up that way. Hopefully I can follow Skenazy's example.

When I was 9 my mom would let me ride my bike downtown (a mile or so) to go to the library. This was in a small-to-medium size city. But she grew up in New York City, so our city seemed bucolic, I'm sure.

The fact is that every time I've been to NYC and have had some kind of trouble (lost, not sure how to navigate subway, not sure which sandwich is the best one to buy) some New Yorker has invariably noticed and pointed me in the right direction. There are many measures of "friendliness" but in terms of people helping each other out NYC is one of the best places I've ever been.

@ Michael Ash

Did you read Isao's comment? Interesting idea.

Separately, do we really need to do a study to conclude that there are more child predators in NYC than in the English countryside?

Is everyone too afraid to make decisions based at least somewhat on common sense? Or must we have a study proving that the sidewalk outside actually is solid enough to support our weight without falling through?

"Why don't you go outside your house?"

"Because I haven't seen a study proving I'm even in a house. I'll need to see the stats first."

I'm all for not letting fear rule life, but it really isn't safe for kids to be out alone without some safety guidance. Many crimes are opportunistic. In the SF bay area in the past year, there has been an incident of a man forcing a girl into his car. (http://cbs5.com/local/san.mateo.abduction.2.682225.html)
I can recall once walking home as a kid where an unfamiliar car was slowly tailing me. I instantly turned to a house and began knocking on the door at which point the car drove off.

Key things to teach your children:
Don't talk to strangers except ones identified as officials.
Don't go anywhere without letting someone else know where you are.
Be aware of your surroundings.

I find it interesting that she trusted her son with his own safety in an urban environment, not to mention $20 and a fare card, but didn't trust him not to lose a cell phone. While I applaud her letting a kid be a kid, it seems to me that she also has some risk assessment problems.

I wonder if she made her son demonstrate that he had the requisite skills before letting him go solo? I would hope so. Sounds like they at least rehearsed the route beforehand.

'And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, "Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I'll abduct this adorable child instead."'

I think this falls under people who aren't security experts not thinking like the criminals would and not understanding that there *are* malicious opportunistic people out there.

@++Don
> she trusted her son with his own
> safety ... but didn't trust him not
> to lose a cell phone.

My thoughts exactly. I'm ok with everything she did except for that.

Either she loves the cell phone more than her child, or she is mentally challenged.

@Urox

"I can recall once walking home as a kid where an unfamiliar car was slowly tailing me."

Probably some do-goody control-freak, looking to "save" a child from the big-bad world, and, best of all, immerse your parents in a world of shit.

So nine is too young to get yourself home again? Wait, I did that when I was six, every day after school. In a not very good city neighborhood and with no "crosswalk guards", thank you very much.

Nine is too young to be wandering around without supervision? Wait, I did that when I was nine. We called it a "paper route". It's one of those old-fashioned things you may have forgotten about.

Nine is too young to be running errands without an adult right there? Wait, I did that when I was eight. I figured out how to get to and from the grocery store by myself, including crossing major city streets.

Nobody killed me. Nobody ran over me. Nobody stole me. Really, nobody even seemed to notice that I existed. What's the big deal here? Why are these people freaking out?

More pointfully, if this were a black or Latino kid on welfare, would anyone have noticed? If you can't afford a cell phone in the first place, are you likely to have people threatening you for not giving your kid a cell phone?

@Skenazy's Choice

"Either she loves the cell phone more than her child, or she is mentally challenged."

... or you have selectively quoted from the narrative. Go ahead and re-read it.

I agree that kids need to learn independence but they also need to learn to balance a checkbook, drive a car and file taxes but I'm not handing my checkbook, car keys and my w2's to my 8 yr old son anytime soon. Its not because he doesn't know how to add or drive or cheat (allegedly) but that as a child he doesn't have enough life experiences to make mature decisions.

I agree that each generation seems to be more protective, but I'll go one step further than Isao and state that parents today are way more informed about their community than was the case decades ago. Don't believe me, ask your parents/grandparents where the sex preds were when they were growing up. They probably didn't know. Today there are websites showing every arrest, sexual predator and worst in your neighborhood. The communities as a whole were alot more ignorant of the what lurked out there back then.

The woman was irresponsible and lucky.

About the cell phone: So she hands him her cell phone. She's staying at the store. Now how's he going to call her?

This doesn't sound like an event that was planned in advance, and very few people carry a spare cell phone just in case they might need to lend it to someone.

I remember during a trip to japan marveling about how society their accepts children riding mass transit to and from school on their own; in much the same way we accept children riding school buses. Except the difference is they have no school buses, it's just mass transit.

I'm glad to see that one parent is comfortable doing that here. I hope that encourages other parents to make the same step because i believe in the end it will be for the best.

@City versus countryside:

"The English countryside"? Sheffield? It's a city of over half a million inhabitants, and it was in 1919 too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield

@twice: No, *he* stayed in the store. She left, presumably to go home. He could have called her at home if he had gotten lost (assuming they have a land line), although he might have needed to wait for her to get there.

As for whether or not it was planned in advance, her column strongly implies that it was. He had been asking for weeks to be allowed a subway solo, so that's what she did.

@City versus countryside:

That map that you keep referring to as "English Countryside" is, in fact, a major conurbation in the north of England, famed for its steel mills and other heavy industry (albeit that the works are nowadays often derelict - e.g. the defunct coking works and colliery at Orgreave in the dead centre of the map).

The bulk of what's on that map is urban industrial sprawl with a high population density.

The boy *was* safe. Then it became national news that he travels alone.

@City versus countryside

I did read Isao's comment. I don't believe it's true. There's still plenty of opportunity out there. Lots of parents are like the one that is the subject of this story, just not getting so much press for it.

The trouble with common sense is that it's either uncommon or unsensible. Common sense tells you that you're safer taking a bus than a plane. Common sense tells you that you'll be healthier if you constantly wash your hands and always avoid dirty. Common sense tells us a lot of things that simply aren't true. Common sense tells us that New York City is dangerous and that it's not safe for a child to be alone in it. Reality tells us that New York City is in the bottom 10th percentile for overall crime in cities over 100,000, with a slightly higher homicide rate and much lower rape rate than the national average. New York City today is the safest city out of the ten largest in the US, and violent crime has dropped by 75% over the past dozen years. Common sense is only worth listening to when it's actually correct.

As far as more child predators in NYC than in the English countryside, I have to wonder why this question even arises. The chances of any child being attacked by a child predator are so miniscule that changes in that risk are essentially irrelevant. The dangers to a child in New York City, small as they are, are mostly not due to child predators.

In any case, even if you do want to worry about child predators, your question is the wrong one. The right question is how likely a child is to encounter one in a situation where he is able to do something nasty. New York City may well have more simply because it has vastly more people, but the quantity per population could vary widely. What's more, a child who is willing to scream and make a scene when someone does something bad to him will be perfectly safe in NYC in daytime because there will always be crowds of people to see and rescue him. The same is not true in the countryside, where a noisy child can be abducted without any undue attention.

My 10 year old has lost 4 cell phones in the past year, but navigates all around our town without a problem. Now I have a rule where he only gets a new phone every 6 months so spends 75% of the time without one. Maybe here kid is like that too.

Incidentally, my kid has been to New York and Chicago and leads my mother in law around on the street, subway, and in taxi's with no problems and he speaks only basic english (grew up in Chile).

@city

I doubt the *ratio* is any different. The number may be higher in NYC, because there are more people there, and that's how ratios work. But given the choice to my child being approached in the country or the city, I'd say the city, since there would be people around that could be witnesses or (admittedly less likely) step up and help.

You're ringing my bell.

In the late 40s, early 50s I traveled alone across New Haven by public buses every day for school. Nobody thought anything of it.

We boys hiked and romped all over East Rock Park, a large forested trap rock formation with miles of trails. We walked from our homes (or flats) several miles to the park.

By 11, I could lead my younger sister from New Haven by train to Grand Central, take the subway to Penn Station for a connection to Pittsburgh. That was probably unusual, but I had the train schedules to go by, and I could read them.

I had no difficulties getting around all over the place. Nobody thought anything of it.

We hitchhiked miles away to our favorite swimming hole. This was at nine or ten. We always tried to be the first one in for the season, which meant swimming in late March. Brrr.

We (me and my friends) were aware of dangers of course. We had a bogeyman we called Piccolo Pete (it was an Italian neighborhood, thus "piccolo". Non-Italian kids often misheard it as "Pickeled Ol' Pete".) Nobody ever saw him because he did not exist, but he did bad things to boys, meaning we were aware of dangers.

IMO, we are being overly protective of kids. It has caused a complete breakdown in the street games of kids. Who plays Ring O'Leevio anymore? Kick the Can? Splits? Stickball? Mumblety Peg? There is a painting by Brueghel of country kids in the Middle Ages playing. I can recognize the games we played. A continuous line of kids's activities stretching back to pre-history, now broken and gone forever. Any boy who brought a jacknife to school for Mumblety Peg today would surely scandalize the school administration, and be in deep trouble. I would dread to see the evening news account.

I had a wonderful time in the Childhood Republic, and regret its destruction.

"I trusted him to ask a stranger" - When my son started to go by public transport alone, I advised him to ask or address a woman in case of any problems. This definitely makes a difference - Don't tell your kids just to ask a stranger, please!

@ City versus countryside

That image also shows urban areas of Sheffield and Rotherham. They might not be as big as NYC but the area is a large industrial centre in the UK.

@Michael Ash

"a child who is willing to scream and make a scene when someone does something bad to him will be perfectly safe in NYC in daytime because there will always be crowds of people to see and rescue him."

Well, substitute 'child abductor' for 'child predator'. In a child abduction, don't we often hear that the child didn't scream, yell, or attract any attention at all? We hear later, when the child is recovered and asked why he didn't yell out at the moment of abduction, he says "Because the guy said he had my family kidnapped and would kill them if I yelled.", and that seems sensible to 8 year olds. Don't we? Teaching children independence and good judgment doesn't require risking their lives and wellbeing unnecessarily, does it?

The bottom line is child abduction is, amont other things, a crime of opportunity, is it not? Do these guys roam the countryside (BTW looks like Sheffield is not even close to 'countryside', and hasn't been for a long time--my mistake) where there are relatively few children compared to a densely populated city? Or do they prowl where many children congregate?

I don't know the answer, and it's a good question for the statistics of a study to help answer. Whether or not more crime happens in a city compared to the countryside is a question that requires nothing more than common sense to answer correctly. The answer is 'yes'.

A small GPS transmitter on a bracelet / chain of the kid (optional: letting the kid know) and a receiving interface that periodically records the coordinates of the signal. A parental commitment to consult the data only in the extremely rare event that the kid is missing. Will not work in subways and other 'dark' areas.

We have twins, boy and a girl. My daughter is normal and we let her pretty much roam within a four block radius of our small town. Lots of kids here get that privilege. Our son is autistic and we keep him in sight but he has some friends who we trust to have him over who know how he is and their kids are super people who help him along.

You should parent to need, not societies view.

@City versus countryside

"BTW looks like Sheffield is not even close to 'countryside', and hasn't been for a long time--my mistake"

Looks like you are making a lot of mistakes lately, @City versus countryside. That and many statements unsupported by fact or argument.

Maybe we should bring back the death penalty ... but only for trolls.

I am happy this subject is getting attention. As many other commenters have pointed out here, they did similar things when they were children and nothing bad happened. My personal pet peeve is parents who insist their children wear bike helmets while riding on their driveway. When I was a child, no one wore a helmet and I don't know anyone who died or suffered severe injures because they weren't wearing a helmet. I do know people, however, who have died because they fell asleep at the wheel while driving or who fell down the stairs while drunk, both of which people do little to nothing to protect against.

The world is a remarkable place and we loose something when we fear it. I think the balance has tipped too far and needs to be corrected, which this mother is bringing to the attention of people.

From kindergarten through fourth grade we lived in an old suburb and I walked to school alone. I did everything I was told to, and I would have made the perfect victim because I never had to do any thinking for myself.

From 7th through 12th grade, we lived in the country and I walked to school alone, with most of my route through fields and woods. It was there I learned some survival sense: if you see or hear big kids coming, go hide.

I also got sent on errands after dark, so I learned the dark hides me as well as anyone who might be lurking around. I learned to skirt around lighted areas because they would reveal me to anyone hiding in the dark.

Thanks to personal experience, I've come to develop a keenly honed reflex: the moment trouble appears, vanish.

@Michael Ash, safety of country -vs- city -- this has been the case in the past, too:

From Sherlock Holmes, _The Adventure of the Copper Beeches_

"The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among
the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. Had this lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I should never have had a fear for her. It is the five miles of
country which makes the danger. "

I'd suspect modern suburbia of being closer to country than city in this respect.

@jonathan millett: How long is your son usually in possession of a cell phone before losing it? Long enough to ride mass transit across town? I'm not suggesting that the kid be given his own cell phone, just that the chance of him losing it on a crosstown subway/bus trip was pretty slim. Like I said, it sounds like a risk assessment problem to me.

@jonny

"But given the choice to my child being approached in the country or the city, I'd say the city, since there would be people around that could be witnesses or (admittedly less likely) step up and help."

Who really wants to be the parent who gets to be the exception, the parent whose child does get abducted? It takes only a few seconds of imagining the pain in your gut you'd feel if your child got taken, compared to the benefit the child gets from feeling "ecstatic with independence". From there, two seconds of thought mulling "Is this a risk/reward tradeoff I want to make?", and the answer becomes clear.

Perhaps a better question is, is it possible that if we installed surveillance cameras all along the route our children would walk to and from school, would the cameras deter the child abductors?

My data point: I don't remember exactly when I was allowed to start roaming long-distance (i.e., more than a couple blocks) without adult supervision, but I do remember that when I was 11, I was trusted to do that and bring my little brother along with me. This was in a smallish city that was part of a major metropolitan area.

@tomm -- Re: Only ask women for directions.

While I agree with your premise, I have taught my children that asking any stranger is safe. In other words, what are the odds that the person they ask for directions or help is a child molester or abductor?

However...If the *adult* is asking them for help (to find a puppy or play a game) then RUN AWAY FAST.

The boy on the subway was likely safe from predators, but possibly not safe from hooligans.

@Heather: I'm a cyclist myself. I wear a helmet every time I get on the bike, as do all the other cyclists I know. It's like wearing a helmet on a motorcycle or seat belts in a car: accidents are rare, but the potential for serious head and neck trauma is quite real. Helmets are a cheap and easy protection. My son is too young to ride a bike yet (he's only 2, and still has trouble reaching the peddles on his trike). But once he's old enough, he'll definitely wear a helmet whenever he gets on the bike. There might not be any threats in the driveway, but that's not what it's about. It's about setting the habit of always wearing a helmet, because sooner or later he's going to outgrow the driveway.

@Skenazy's Choice
Not giving the child a cell phone decreased the number of reasons to rob the child. His shoes would probably have been worth it alone, however.

There are a lot of irrational reasons people keep their kids safer. But, I think the roads are more numerous and car-filled than they were 40 years ago.

My seven-year-old is not ready to go out on her own. Note, I'm just assessing my daughter here, not all seven-year-olds. But she can't even be trusted to get herself to sleep at a reasonable time.

I don't think that there is any doubt that children are different than they were when I was one. I think in many ways they are more mature earlier than they used to be, but less independant. ('Why?' is a completely different question, of course.)

I'll continue to be the final arbiter on what my child is ready for, regardless of her age. Just as the parent in the article did. Which is as it should be.

Interestingly there is a documentary on UK TV this very evening about "Cotton Wool Kids".

This is from the guide write-up for the show (which I didn't watch) on Channel 4 (part of the Cutting Edge series)

Adel, Sam and Toni believe Britain has never been more dangerous. They fear teenagers allowed out on their own will be stabbed or mugged, and younger kids abducted. So they keep their offspring under close supervision. And with terrible stories in the newspapers every day, perhaps it's not surprising. But is Adel right to ban his 13-year-old son from going out with his friends, and should Toni tell her nine-year-old daughter that everyone they pass on the street is a potential kidnapper?

@++don

Helmets on bikes certainly don't protect against neck trauma, and it's very possible they contribute to it

The almost certainly protect against bruises and scrapes to the head if you hit your head, but it's very unclear if they protect against serious injuries to the head

The URL attached to my name below links to an article in the NY Times about the creative uses to which people are putting inexpensive GPS tracking devices. The very last sentence talks about parents using it to monitor their children's driving habits. *Sigh*...

We don't just protect hypothetical children against physical threats, we protect them against information and metaphysical threats as well.

In the US we protect children from information deemed "harmful to minors". The information is usually things that make some of the more repressed adults uncomfortable. (Usually dealing with the more pleasurable aspects of biology or other adult pleasures.) When they can't find actual children harmed by these things, they create hypothetical children. These "children" are so infirm and fragile that the single viewing of a nipple for a fraction of a second will scar them for life. Words that are deemed "naughty" will cause them to become dope fiends and renounce Jesus.

Instead of the media pointing out that the people yelling "protect the children" are a bunch of neurotic wankers, they just join in on the bandwagon. What it does is make for a country filled with the most unstable and irrational armed loonies on the planet.

The whole country needs to be sectioned, starting at the top down.

"It's about setting the habit of always wearing a helmet, because sooner or later he's going to outgrow the driveway."

"It's about setting the habit of always wearing a helmet, because sooner or later he's going to outgrow the driveway."

Always? I'll assume you mean "always on a bike", in which case I have to ask what evidence you have that cycling is particularly dangerous to the head.

On the other hand, if by "always" you really mean always, then I salute your consistency in recognizing that helmets could be useful walking, in cars, running, etc. Climbing ladders. In lots of places.

Anyone who believes that things have "never been more dangerous for kids" need to watch the movie "M". Same problems, different year. We are just a bit more twigged out over what is going on.

The controversy over this is rather absurd; I had a post about it on my blog last week. There are a host of cognitive biases that make us overestimate threats against children, and also to overestimate threats from other people (i.e. due to evil intent) vs. from our environment (due to simple accident.) The media plays a large part in this, with sensational fear-mongering taking up half of every news report. On the other hand, the media is just telling us what we want to hear -- and we want to hear it because it was in our evolutionary interest to during the hundreds of thousands of years before there was a media.

There's no clear solution on a societal scale, but we still have to try our best to get people to assess risk rationally, and not via emotion and bias.

This is a great article. It's about time people started to make unpopular decisions based on observations of the FACTS, and not based on popular fears.

To j0nner_ca and others who say "But it's New York!". Where do you live? Do you live in New York City? Have you ridden the subway line that this child knows how to ride? If not, I suggest you shut up and keep your opinions to yourself. You are only showing yourselves to be victims of fear.

@x

"what evidence you have that cycling is particularly dangerous to the head."

I'm not ++Don, but here are a couple of ideas:

"what evidence": Seeing a person with a cracked skull from a bike crash taken to the hospital. Anecdotal, so useless, right?

"cycling is particularly dangerous to the head"

Cycling isn't. Crashing while cycling is.

"particularly dangerous to the head":

You're more likely to lose a finger in a bike crash than to have a head injury. So unless you're gonna wear 'finger helmets', because it's more rational, I don't want to see you wearing a helmut on your head, either. Regarding serious head injury, there's no function that the internals of the head perform that fingers can't do just as well.

At least not in my case.

@++Don

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bike_helmet#The_helmet_debate

Long story short: if you are free riding, BMX'ing, or generally a-fixin' to wipe-out, a helmet might -- probably not, but might -- do you some good. I'd recommend body armor first though.

Otherwise, there no definitive benefit to bike helmets has been conclusively observed.

Which, at this point in the data collection process, is excellent evidence there is no benefit. Any positive effect, if present, will be minuscule.

But of course, if your kid crashes, and isn't wearing a helmet, you will be pilloried ... much like how if a 9 year old boy was kidnapped from the subway in New York City, the neck of a certain woman would be, right now, forced onto the chopping block for public execution, with FUD-sters like @City versus countryside cheering wildly.

I don't know about NYC. Haven't been there.

But around here (city of about twelve thousand or so in Ohio) the idea that letting a nine-year-old cross town by himself is dangerous would come across as extremely kooky. The kid's nine for crying out loud, he'll be fine, as far as getting across town goes. Sane parents are concerned about things like what the kid is going to do and particularly who he's going to spend time with when he gets there, not whether he's going to arrive. Is he really going to the library to do homework? (Choke, hahaha, yeah, right, maybe it's time to have a talk with him about telling his parents the truth.) Is he going to the library to hang out with other kids his age and maybe get on MySpace? (And what kinds of kids are hanging out there these days?) Is he actually going somewhere else entirely and the library is just what he wants you to believe? These are the rational fears, not "can he get to the library all by himself".

When I was a kid I got into a number of bike wrecks. (At least 20, maybe more.) I landed on my head once out of all of those crashes. A helmet would not have helped in that case. (Landed in a field head first. Head was fine. I still have back problems to this day because of it.) Most of the damage I took was knees and arm scrapes. Never broke a bone. Never needed stitches. (Little brothers are another story.)

The problems that helmets solve are few and far between. Of course, since we have covered pretty much every square inch of our lives in concrete, maybe they happen more often.

@Anonymous

"there no definitive benefit to bike helmets has been conclusively observed."

So what? There's no conclusive evidence that the food you ate today is not poisonous, or that your spouse is not a space alien. Yet you conclude both are not true. How?

How does a person get out of bed in the morning without a conclusive study proving it's wise to do so?

What the Wikipedia studies show is that better helmets work better, and that you have to wear the helmet correctly. Since common sense can be too much to ask for, here's some evidence, inconclusive as it is:

http://blogs.consumerreports.org/safety/2006/09/bike_helmets_no.html

http://www.metrokc.gov/health/news/04051501.htm

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/481959/skull_study_proves_bike_helmets_work/index.html?source=r_health

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/481959/skull_study_proves_bike_helmets_work/index.html?source=r_health

Double-posted the third link, above. Here's the fourth.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Bike-Helmets-As-Life-Saving-Accessories&id=1092239

'More pointfully, if this were a black or Latino kid on welfare, would anyone have noticed? If you can't afford a cell phone in the first place, are you likely to have people threatening you for not giving your kid a cell phone?'

This bears repeating. The segment of the mass media that serves helicopter parents appears laughably ignorant of the fact that their idea of 'normal' behavior is not even a possibility for many people in the US and most people globally, for economic reasons as well as cultural differences.

Whatever; affluent American suburbanites always seem to think they're the whole world, and the mass media in this country seem sometimes to have been set up for the exclusive purpose of frightening them. Which is sort of the purpose of advertising, now that I think of it.

@heather, x et al,

I personally knew two people who died of head injuries incurred in bicycle accidents. One wiped out in the rain and his head struck the curb. The other was hit by a drunk driver and hit his head on a nearby tree. Personally, I have been in one bicycle accident where I sustained head lacerations that a helmet would have prevented (sideswipe in traffic), and another where I was wearing a helmet and it very likely prevented head injury (blowout on gravel). So, for all of you offering your personal anecdotes as the norm, here's some to the contrary.

I always wear my helmet when I ride, and I make my kids do it too, just like I always wear my seat belt in the car.

@jt, perhaps you could present some evidence of your claims on helmets.

Skenazy was on NPR as well:

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5&prgDate=04-09-2008&view=storyview

The real problem isn't whether people should wear bicycle helmets or let their 9 year-olds ride subways. The problem is that the people opposed to these views think its perfectly rational to bully into submission those who do not share their penchant for hysteria. The self-righteous among us cause a far bigger problem for society than those who are perceived to push the envelope of risk.

This is great.

When I was about 6 I started riding the train to school (K). It was pretty simple: get put on the train by Mom, Conductor knew when I had to get off and so did I, A taxi knew to be waiting for me.

As I got older, I got more flexability and at 7 my little brother would go with me when he started pre-k.

By the time I was 8-9, changing train in the city was no big deal.

Now, my mom is one of those hyper-protective sorts now that I have little kids (2&4) and thinks they can't be out of multiple supervision for 1 sec.

Whe I remind her how she raised me she goes into denial, but can't explain how I got to school.

The whole thing is preposterous. When I get into a drunken argument about this with my overprotective parent friends I ask then to look at the statistics - and then look themselves in mirror ervytime they put their kids in a car.

That said, I am a geek and can't wait to wire my kids withs a cell/gps system so I can momitor their every move. I will justify it that it lets me give them more freedom knowing I can track them.

Reminds me of the story of a Danish woman who left her baby outside a cafe in NYC, and got into some trouble about it:

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/annette_sorensen/index.html

I think the real issue hasn't been addressed here... in the graphic, George, age 8 in 1919, was allowed to walk 6 miles to go fishing by himself.

What kind of parents did he have?! Six miles? And that area was likely wooded too. That means there were bears. Bears could have mauled poor George, and obviously, his parents were horrible people who didn't realize that people shouldn't go outside, lest they might be attacked by bears.

Worst. Parents. EVER. [/tongue in cheek]

@ City versus countryside

If my child were not taught to scream, yell, kick, bite, and punch while being abducted then I would not let him outside either. I believe you're mixing up cause and effect, here. If children are being abducted silently in this manner it's because they're too sheltered, too unwilling to do anything without an adult's permission, and too familiar with movies and television instead of the real world. A well raised child such as this one will realize that adults lie, that strangers who do bad things need to be stopped, and that drawing the attention of a crowd is the best way to stop them.

Teaching independence and good judgement certainly doesn't require risking their lives unnecessarily. Nobody here is saying that it does. What we are saying is that the activity which prompted this article is NOT risking their lives unnecessarily, or even risking them at all.

You're absolutely right that you only need common sense to answer the question of whether children are at greater risk in the city or in the countryside. However, you do need more than common sense to answer this question correctly.

You're also completely ignoring the question of whether this risk is even worth examining. Child abduction is so rare that taking any significant measures to prevent it is not worthwhile. Do easy things to prevent it, of course, but there's no point in worrying about it when you occasionally let your child make a trip alone in a city. Put that mental effort into things which actually have a reasonable chance of hurting your child's future, such as dangerous drugs, failing to cultivate intelligence, and not getting sufficient physical exercise.

ok,had to post more.

first of all: @alan at April 10, 2008 03:58 PM hahahaha, that is great.

@"Black/Latino kids"

If you follow the popular press, as I think it is safe to say most of the helicopter parents do, they should fear having a blond daughter. As far as I can tell from Fox News, pretty blond women are abducted and murdered continously while, men, boys, the ugly, the brunett, non-caucasians, etc. have nothing to fear.

""what evidence": Seeing a person with a cracked skull from a bike crash taken to the hospital. Anecdotal, so useless, right?"

Two things:

Your anecdote doesn't say *anything* the *effectiveness* of helmets in preventing serious injury.

Cracked skulls in cycling are very rare.

Security, as Bruce constantly reminds us, is about tradeoffs. Let's look at the security risks here:

- Miniscule chance kid is abducted, bullied, or mugged while traveling one of the safest cities around, versus

- Near certainty that kid will turn into a neurotic overweight learned-helplessness poster-child if he is stuck in secured areas all his life.

I strongly suspect that risk B is more serious than risk A. Indeed I rather intend to secure my daughter against risk B more zealously than against risk A when such tradeoffs arise.

I routinely rode my bike (without a helmet, fwiw) about 3 miles a day to and from school in third grade (I was 8), and about 4 miles on the weekends to a buddy's house. I was accosted once, by a larger kid who tried to steal my bike... I got away from him because I had the bike, and he didn't.

I don't have crime statistics handy for San Jose, CA in 1979, so I cannot verify the relative safety of the town in crimes against minors relatively to the crime statistics in New York. That said, it seems a reasonable course of action for a nine year old to have the autonomy to take a subway.

Regarding the cell phone, its use as an emergency notification system is not terribly large in most scenarios. Any child that is independent enough to ride a subway at 9 is likewise smart enough to find a phone if they get lost or take the wrong train. And while I personally would give my kids a cell phone, it's not outside of the realm of probability that you can have a child that's perfectly responsible for their own safety and yet still the sort of person who will lose their shoes if they're not tied to their feet, so I don't think that Skenazy's comparison is valid.

@ City vs Countryside

> The bottom line is child abduction is, amont other things, a
> crime of opportunity, is it not?

Yes, but it is not this sort of opportunity - you're trying to equate it improperly.

The staggering preponderance of kidnapping and molestation crimes targeting children are people well known to the child, not total strangers who select targets of opportunity.

I have a friend who grew up in NYC in the 60's, when it was demonstrably more dangerous than it is now. She started taking the subway around town at age 7 and never had any problems.

Yes, there may be creeps around, but there are also a lot of eyes around. And these days, you are GUARANTEED that there is someone with a camera no matter where you are. Some kid starts screaming, it's very likely that someone will come to help (yes, even in NYC), and at the very least, multiple people will probably be taking your picture on their phones.

@city: "Who really wants to be the parent who gets to be the exception, the parent whose child does get abducted?"

Who wants to be in the plane that gets hijacked? Who wants to be in the building that gets attacked by terrorists? Who wants to be the dude that gets hit by lightning?

According to your logic, we shouldn't fly, work or live in tall buildings, or go outside.

She does NOT have a risk assessment problem. People lose cell phones by probably the 10s of thousands every day. It's easy to do. Child abduction or molestation is vanishingly rare by comparison.

Losing the cell phone is a very reasonable thing to be concerned about. A child being abducted from a very public place with a lot of people around is not.

Thank goodness there are still mothers like this out there. I remember being 9 or 10 and taking the bus from my suburban town to downtown Dayton, OH to take ballet or go to the orthodontist without my parents. I also rode my bike around the neighborhood or otherwise disappeared for hours into neighbors' houses with nary an incident, I was just expected to be home for dinner.

In an era when people are driving their 6th graders 3 blocks to school, I like to hope that I'll be as big on pushing the independence as my parents were once our kids are of age. They'll have cell phones, though.

Back when I was a kid bike helmets did not even exist. Even if you wanted one, the materials in the modern bike helmet did not exist. About the closest thing was a football helmet and that would have been unwieldy and stupid looking.

That far-off era was the late 1970s.

Most of this safety gear is pretty recent. Not just from a safty standpoint, but from a materials standpoint.

A doctor has a patient who has smoked for 20 years and never developed lung cancer. Does he conclude that smoking does not cause lung cancer, or that smoking is safe? No. Anecdotal evidence is not conclusive.

So one child traveled on the subway alone and was not accosted. Meanwhile, in Boston, they have undercover cops patroling to catch predators who prey on adults. If all kids were allowed to take the subway alone, the number of serious crimes against children on the subway would be substantial and intolerable.

Is Bruce Schneier the author of all these blog posts, or are some of the posts ghost written by someone else? The posts seem to alternate between good balanced insights and mind-numbing naivite.

You want data? Look at the data. The article itself says that crime is lower now than it was back when kids doing this sort of thing is common.
Look at how many kids are accosted during the course of their childhood. Compare to how many kids there are.
There are probably dozens if not hundreds of kids that travel the subways alone; they just aren't making national news.

Typical mum - what she gives with one hand, she takes away with another. Her son's friends now know that he can cross NYC on his own, and that the NYT is writing articles about him. This is cool. His school friends will be impressed.

Then with one blow she ruins it all - he was last seen SHOPPING FOR HANDBAGS IN BLOOMINGDALES... he will never live this down. Forget the subway, he's more in danger from the school bullies.

On a more serious note, I agree entirely with the mother's view (which also seems to be that of the majority here). I understand that the majority of attacks on children are from family and friends (sorry, no reference to hand), which would seem to indicate that keeping them constantly close to home may be curiously counterproductive.

And on the tangential bike helmet debate, there is a well-used acronymn in the motorbike community: ATGATT. All The Gear, All The Time. It doesn't matter whether you're riding round the world on a motorbike or up and down your front drive on a bicycle, a fall to tarmac with an unprotected head can be fatal, no matter what speed.

@Anonymous

"Who wants to be in the plane that gets hijacked? Who wants to be in the building that gets attacked by terrorists? Who wants to be the dude that gets hit by lightning?"

Nobody. But in each of your examples, the life you're risking is your own (do with it what you will.)

In my example, the life at risk is your child's.

Do you really expect people to be as brazen with the life of their child(ren) as they might be with their own life?

@Synonymous

You sound familiar.

"So what? There's no conclusive evidence that the food you ate today is not poisonous, or that your spouse is not a space alien. Yet you conclude both are not true. How?"

Didn't you, under another pseudonym, say the other day you can't prove a negative?

@Pat Cahalan

"The staggering preponderance of kidnapping and molestation crimes targeting children are people well known to the child, not total strangers who select targets of opportunity."

Non-abductive molestation crimes, yes. But for abductions too? You sure about that? How about some stats, please.

For those of you bleating about "child abduction" and claiming it is a "crime of opportunity", how much do you really know about child abduction? Are you aware that 98.8% of all abductions are by family members, such as the mother, father or grandparents, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children? In other words, the vast, VAST majority of abductions are actually custody disputes. Whether or not your child rides the subway alone in NYC is immaterial to this risk. Rationally, the very best way to protect your child from abduction is to get some really good marriage counseling, practice discussing difficult issues without fighting with your spouse, and schedule a weekly date night for the two of you. Preferably with the TV news turned off.

Agoraphobic Nation. When are we going to wake up?

@ City versus countryside

The fact that you imply that flying in commercial airliners, occupying tall buildings, or going outside is "brazen" says more about your attitude than anything else you've said.

@City versus countryside

"How about some stats, please."

http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/child_abduction/4.html

100-130 cases per year. Further, "Though the victim in most of these cases did not know the suspect, there was previous contact between them prior to the crime."

You are your biggest direct threat to your own children. They are arguably _safer_ on the NYC subway than in the same house with you. Can't deal with the truth? Ironically(!): then don't have children.

We need a "clean air act" for Toxic Fear Emissions.

Nancy Grace would be paying big bucks to stay out of jail. (And the penalties from the Bush administration would pay for the war and remove the national debt.)

"98.8% of all abductions are by family members, such as the mother, father or grandparents"

Well if that's true, then my argument that there's a worrisome risk of child abduction by strangers falls apart.

@Michael Ash

I think there's a difference between remaining on the golf course for those last three holes during a lightning storm on the one hand, and "going outside" on the other, don't you?

I take risks every day that I wouldn't subject my children to. I think most adults do. Is it such a crazy idea to protect your children until they get to age 15 or 17, when they've had a chance to see (in other, less fortunate accident victims) a bit of the consequences of risky decisions, and then turn them loose at age 18 to go take the risks themselves that they want to take with their own lives?

I was raised in a urban environment, and although i didn't spend a lot of time roaming the city alone i certainly didn't grow up in a climate of paranoid fear. I went to and from school alone or with my friends, and we played and went on outings on our own during our free time.

My mother taught me the common sense stuff that i needed to know, and showed me how to be safer and less vulnerable. Keep your head up and eyes open; walk with confidence even if you don't feel it, even if you're lost; don't show fear; never be afraid or embarassed (a big one with girls) to be loud - and when in doubt, scream your head off; always wear shoes you can run in; don't talk to a stranger alone, and if you need adult help look for a woman or someone working (in a bar or a shop, sweeping the street, driving a bus) or someone with visible kids...

She also was very, VERY clear about the sneakier kinds of assult, like anyone who asks you to keep a secret from your parents, and to trust my instincts about people. Statistically, i'm pretty sure getting run down by a car or molested by someone you know are the biggest dangers for kids these days.

We didn't have cell phones when i was growing up, and i came home to an empty house for years with no trouble. Yes, sometimes i was creeped out, or thought i was being followed, but i learned from those scary experiences and used them to protect myself ("what could i do differently next time so that won't happen?").

I think a parent's job is to give the child the tools he/she needs to live on their own. To that end, doing it all "for them" defeats the purpose (like never asking them to do housework). A parent's job isn't to seal the child into a plastic bubble until their 18th birthday (25? 36?) and then turn them loose and ignorant out into the world.

I also think that a HUGE part of all parenting is based on the particular kid involved. Children are people; they are not all the same. Every kid is ready for different kinds of learning, different amounts of independence and structure, at different times in their development. I don't think this is a geographical issue, but an individual one based on the temperment of the child.

If i had a child i would probably buy them a phone, but not in an attempt to spy on them; i would want them to be able to contact me in case of an emergency. When i was growing up there were payphones everywhere, and i was required (by my mom) to carry a few dimes in my pocket so i'd always be able to make a call. Yes, payphones were a dime back then.

Two more little things:
1) in my opinion countrysides are more dangerous than cities because a) no one can hear you if you scream and b) one might be under a false sense of security, not spotting the psycho until it's too late. In the cities, the psychos pretty much wear their crazy on their sleeves.

2) Never underestimate the ubiquitousness of kind strangers. Honestly, most people are in fact pretty nice, and NYC is one of the better cities for kindness-to-strangers.

As the parent of an 8.5-year-old boy in a major metro area, I find it funny that the only risk this mother, Bruce Schneier, or 80% of the commenters on this post seem to be able to consider is child abduction. This is roughly akin to observing that shark attacks are incredibly rare, and it is therefore OK to allow a 9 year old boy to go SCUBA diving out in the ocean alone.

@Thomas H. Ptacek

"This is roughly akin to observing that shark attacks are incredibly rare, and it is therefore OK to allow a 9 year old boy to go SCUBA diving out in the ocean alone."

Yes! And how many 9 year olds have crashed a plane? Probably none -- you have to be an adult to demonstrate that kind of incompetence! So it must be totally safe. Heck, airlines should be hiring them.

And what about brain surgeons? I can't remember the last time, if ever, there was a malpractice suit against a 9 year old brain surgeon. Are the medical schools tapping this unplumbed resource of raw talent?

And I bet if we checked, it would be shown that the guy who designed that bridge in Minnesota was likely some 40-something dimbulb. Do I need to go further? Is it not obvious where the systemic flaw really is?

And finally, what about people who form utterly idiotic, content-free arguments based on a complete misrepresentation of the situation at hand? I can only testify to events I have witnessed, but I think all of these people were well over the age of nine.

Could it be that intellectual honesty is one of those innate characteristics of the human mind -- show in exuberant abundance by 9 year olds -- and it takes decades of practice to shut it off completely?

What do you think, Mr. Ptacek?

@Viking

"1) in my opinion countrysides are more dangerous than cities because a) no one can hear you if you scream and b) one might be under a false sense of security, not spotting the psycho until it's too late. In the cities, the psychos pretty much wear their crazy on their sleeves."

Psychopaths are quite difficult to discern in advance. You've probably spoken with a few, and never suspected a thing. There is a good reason for this too, if you choose to think about the matter.

Frankly, though, the #1 threat to anyone is other people, and most of that is people who you consider family or friends. Very few people walk out into the street and just start firing away.

The truly predatory ones are almost always drawn to large population centers, as this wastes a minimum amount of their time. The idea that some crazy person would wander around in the wilderness looking for victims ... well, it's just not a reasonable concern.

There is only one subtle thing to remember: roads. If you can be seen from one, you are still at some risk. Not as big as in-city, but not the almost imperceptible risk of the general "countryside".

when i was 10-11 yrs old ,i took the subway from 241st in the bronx [i lived in mt vernon-5 miles away--rode bike]
to coney island many a time with a cpl friends & never had a problem

@Urox,

"In the SF bay area in the past year, there has been an incident of a man forcing a girl into his car."

"An" incident? Let's take you at your word.

Firs we need to estimate the number of girls in SF.

http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/bayarea.htm
AGE - 2006 est., children 5 to 17 years (inclusive) = 1,137,060

The youngest (5 to 6) will rarely be let out alone, and the oldest (16 to 17) are practically adults, reducing their risk of abduction (though not other crimes), so let's exclude those groups. Assuming a linear spread across the age group, 9 / 13 * 1,137, 060 = 787,000. Less than half of these will be female, giving us a final wet finger estimate of, say, 380,000 potential abductees. Based on the 2000-2006 census info the probably group grows slowly from year to year (reducing the individual risk) but let's pretend it doesn't.

Assuming each of these travels alone an average of 10 times per week (home to school and school to home, subtract holidays but add some weekends; going out with her friends not included) we discover that there's one chance in 3.8 million each year that your girl child will be abducted.

She's probably at greater risk of falling off a ladder and dying.

Obviously you can mitigate the risk of abduction by accompanying your daughter everywhere. And you can mitigate the risk of falling off a ladder by not having any ladders in your home.

A similar question came up at another site, and one commenter noted that you'd be blamed more if yours was the only child taking such a risk. In the old days (or in other places) it seems less hazardous because everyone else is making the same choice.

This may be one reason why so many opinion makers supported the war. Since everyone else was doing so, there wouldn't be much blame attached to making the wrong choice, and there was always some slight chance that the war would go well.

@ City versus countryside

I have no idea what you're talking about with that golf course example. Nobody mentioned such a thing before and I can't figure out how it's supposed to apply.

Yes, I would say that it is a crazy idea to protect your children absolutely until a certain age, at which point they become legal adults and can do anything they want. Such a steep cliff from absolute safety to absolute responsibility will destroy a person. People learn badly by watching other people, and children doubly so. If you don't give them a chance to experience difficulties for themselves (in a controlled and safe manner!) then they will not be able to handle it once it is thrust upon them. Watching other people is simply not enough. Now I'm not suggesting that children need direct experience for everything. I would not recommend, say, giving them a bit of cocaine in order to keep them off drugs. But they need to experience injury and failure as well as safety and success. If their first chance to fail occurs at age 18 then they're going to fail hard, and they won't have the safety net they would have had if they had been 8.

As far as risk taking and children goes, I think that most of these risks are overrated in general. I'm a glider pilot, and I'm under no illusions about the safety of this activity. It is by far the most dangerous activity I've ever done regularly when examining injuries and fatalities per hour of exposure. It's most likely the most dangerous activity I've ever done regularly even when not considering hours of exposure; I expect that my chances of dying in a flying accident are greater than my chances of any other kind of violent demise. What's worse, driving my car would be second on the list and most of that is done to get to the airport so I can go fly!

If I ever have children I will happily support any desire they have to fly with me or to become pilots themselves. It is legal in the US to fly a glider alone at the age of only 14, and I would be delighted to have a child who was able to do that. I wouldn't push them into it, but the risk of this, the most dangerous thing I do, is still so low that I wouldn't hesitate to let my child do it. The benefits far outweigh the risk involved.

This isn't just idle talk. I know many people who have taken their children flying and many delightful young people who have flown solo at an early age. Nobody ever calls them bad parents despite the fact that you are three times more likely per hour to die in a glider than in a single engine aircraft. But do something perfectly safe like put your kid on a subway alone and suddenly everyone thinks you're out of your mind, despite the fact that people routinely did this 40 years ago and there was no epidemic of murdered children.

There's little more pathetic than a good portion of the parents today. One need not look much past this very thread to see the mewling emotionalism and paranoia.

That said, they're your kids. Screw them up however you like. I'm just glad none of you parented me.

The article "Avoiding Strangers" at http://archive.mailtribune.com/archive/2005/0728/life/stories/01life.htm talks about the advice to avoid strangers. Some are questioning as to whether the common "stranger danger" advice should be reconsidered. In 2005, when a kid got lost in the Utah woods, concerns about strangers caused him to hide from rescue parties. In the article, there are some additional interesting aspects. One parent, who questioned the ability of kids to identify hostile individuals, said that they do not have any better alternative to the advice of "stranger danger."

The article also talks about officials who recommend the "stranger danger" advice. Supposedly, the public attention about sex offenders and kidnappings makes it hard to convince parents to believe otherwise. It also could be said that law enforcement has their specific interests, just like others. Though a crime such as child abduction might be rare, law enforcement still has to deal with it. (Though it may not be mentioned, law enforcement has to deal with crimes even when "someone else" is the victim.) Perhaps interestingly, one officer does recommend identifying strangers that can be safely approached if the need arises.

The Jacob Wetterling Foundation has expressed concern about whether "stranger danger" advice could cause problems. See http://www.jwf.org/readArticle.asp?articleId=119 Among other things, parents sometimes expect kids to talk to adults that are not familiar to them.

@ tomm

What, precisely, would make asking a woman safer?

Perverts are not automatically tagged with penises and stubble for easy tracking, y'know. Read _Gift Of Fear_, and teach your kids to trust their instincts; they'll be a lot safer than if they simply aim for a skirt and cross their fingers.

@grace, Gavin de Becker's sequel to 'The Gift of Fear' ('Protecting the Gift' about teaching safety to kids) gives the specific advice to teach lost kids to approach women, not security guards or other (usually male) uniformed personnel. This is because the great preponderance of violent/sexual exploiters of children are male, and uniformed security personnel (also usually male) are, as an overall group, significantly riskier than women for a child to approach. (Note that this is not saying that police are a threat to child safety, but uniformed security personnel are (apparently they profile similarly to violent criminals), and a young child may not be able to make the distinction.)

@alan, bike helmets certainly did exist in the late 1970s. I still use my 1979 Bell helmet, made of styrofoam with a mylar cover, and they were not new then, although certainly rarer.

If I recall correctly, modern helmets basically came in with the modern ten-speed (in the USA, this would have been in the 1970s), which raised the performance bar of bicycles to lethal levels as regards accidents and collisions.

I grew up in Kotka (60000 inhabitants), Finland in 80s. I remember being allowed to always roam pretty much as far as I wanted to. When I was 7, me and my 9 years old sister travelled together about 700km to Oulu, by train. When I was about 12 when I started visiting Helsinki on my own. No harm ever came to me despite talking to strangers on pretty much all of my longer distance travels.

To me not allowing a 9 year old to travel to school or close by store and back on his own seems almost like inprisonment of the child.

I have been long wondering what kind of adults these children will grow up to be. If they are taught all adults are dangerous and evil, will they be excessively distrusting of others even when all grown up? What will they think about themselves? And more importantly, how limited idea of adulthood have their acquired as the result of being shielded from most of their fellow humans?

"You are your biggest direct threat to your own children. They are arguably _safer_ on the NYC subway than in the same house with you. Can't deal with the truth? Ironically(!): then don't have children."

This is a probabilistic fallacy due to frequentist thinking. In a Bayesian approach one can add in additional "priors" (e.g. "I love my children and would never harm them") which would lead to the correct conclusion that my children are in more danger of violence outside the home than in.

If this mother fumbled on a risk assessment, it was when she told people about this. The chance of hysterics actually managing to "protect" her kid from her is low, but compared to the chance of the kid getting hurt it's enormous. Still, I'd think it should be low enough to make that action quite safe too.

What people, even here, seems to be forgetting is that people, generally, is really, really nice. Especially to kids. To hurt a kid one would have to either be close enough in age to feel bullying would not make you look like an idiot, I'd say about less than five years older, or a psychopath. The first one is more likely, but have less substantial consequences. Both would probably be hindered by bystanders.

(Rest is worthless anecdotal evidence):
- (Public transport is safe anecdote:)
When I was 5, in the mid eighties, I rode the bus alone to kindergarten. Worst experience I had was the bus driver forgot to stop (I wasn't tall enough to reach the stop-button, and had to tell him to let me off, but this time he forgot).
- (People are nice to kids anecdote:)
Another time, when I were about 8, I got lost waiting for my older brother to pick me up. Since I were rather sissy for my age, I started crying. A group of scary looking (mohawks, leather and spikes, probably knives in their pockets) teenagers approached me, asked what was wrong, and managed to help me find my brother who were at the _other_ signboard outside the train station. Either I was lucky, or, and in my opinion more likely, even rebelling criminal teenagers wants to help rather than hurt little kids.
- (Bike helmet anecdote)
I've fell of my bike onto tarmac lots of times. Always been an incredible reckless cyclist. I also did some martial arts training as a kid, which, if nothing else, taught me to fall without getting hurt. I think such training (much of it is just training your body to reflexively protect the head and neck when loosing control) would help more than helmets for avoiding injury. That being said, the main reason I don't wear a helmet is that I find it uncomfortable.

The question is even more fundamental: why do parents have kids? Children do NOT ask to come to this world, remember? None of us did. We all find ourselves in a blown-up world, plenty of fear and sadness, where we cannot play as they want, we cannot be really happy because we're always lacking *something*, most of us cannot eat properly every day. I say US not THEM, it's the same planet for all of us.

Poor people born in rich countries are racist and greedy for stupid things, rich people in rich countries do not travel to poor countries because of fear; rich people born in poor countries cannot get visas not even for a holiday trip, and poor people in poor countries (~75% of world population) just starve and die. Let's close our doors! Let's forget about each other! Only the NASDAQ and the iPhone count, after all.

Heck, those of us who live in *civilized* countries must endure school, to learn how the system lies to us night and day, and not happy with that we're told that we should not go alone to school, and we should call home, and we should do this, and clean your room, and do not lend things, and do not talk to strangers, and have fear, and do not live your dreams, do not write your thoughts on a blog for fear of what they'll say, and whatnot.

Nice message to our kids! It's amazing that kids love parents so much, because it'd be a good idea for all of them to blow themselves on the head at age 10 and leave this planet to heal itself. "You fucked it up, daddy! BYE".

And why all of this?? Because of two people who had sex one night. Our lives are so ridiculous that we think that having a kid will give us a sense in our life. I know girls who had a kid just to keep their partner, and now just don't know what to do with the child. I do not say that people shouldn't have sex whatsoever (leave that to dummy religion fanatics everywhere) but rather that we should all think TWICE before taking the decision of bringing a new life to this overcrowded planet.

Wake up people. This is already too ridiculous to continue. This mother is an example for us all, because she OVERCAME FEAR to bring freedom to her child. WE WILL ALL DIE PEOPLE. Let the kid be proud and happy, he'll love her mother more than ever because of those minutes of freedom. Geez.

One of Japan's more popular TV specials is "First Solo" -- the camera crew trails a young child to the store or some other errand for mom and dad, who wait anxiously for the kid to return home safely. The youngsters are usually 5 or 6 years old, and sometimes take an even younger sibling with them. Yes, I know the camera crew is there, and that Japan is considered a very safe country. Still, an unusual theme for a TV program.

My children walk in teams to elementary school -- an older (6th grade) student is the hancho (team leader), everyone meets at the local park or other landmark at 7:45, and then they're off to school. The way home is with friends or by yourself.

On the morning commute it is not unusual to see four or five 7-8 year olds going to their private elementary school.

I grew up in Chicago, and was in my teens when the Gacy killings were uncovered -- caught a lot of crap the night I got home at 7 p.m. I love my parents, but I wish they would have seasoned the fear with a bit of self-defense training.

Want an example of completely overreacting parents? I live in Luxembourg, next to Belgium and quite close to Neufchateau. Neufchateau has a very famous "inhabitant", for he sits in prison and he's a notorious child offender. I'm talking about Dutroux. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutroux)

A few years ago, I remember him escaping and through the whole Belgium parents took their kids from playgrounds, kept them inside... on a beautiful sunny day.
You could say "that's reasonable if you live in Neufchateau and surroundings". Yeah, sure, but exactly this scenario happened at the Belgian coast... a good 300km further.

Besides, an escaped inmate surely has other things on his mind than molesting the next child... Get away, keep under cover, etc.....

I fall into the middle of this argument. I didn't watch the interview, and I haven't seen any mention on what kind of self-defense training her son's received (keeping a safe distance from strangers, watching environment, not necessarily martial arts).

My mother was approached by a pervert offering her $5 to help him find his dog, this was in the 1950s, so that was a lot of money. But she remembered what her mother taught her, and declined. This was in a small tourist town in New England.

When I was a young teen in Houston was when the police finally found the candy store manager that had nabbed and sexually tortured many young teen boys.

Sometime around 2000, two teen girls came running into the ER at the hospital I worked at because a man tried to nab them while walking in the neighborhood nearby.

Last year many different kinds of police cars raced through my sleepy old neighborhood, which caught all our attention since we hardly ever see police here. It was a medium-speed chase from a neighborhood north of us of a guy trying to nab a kid, with a past record of doing so. He was trying to get to his family's home in our neighborhood.

There was a report on the local news last night of a girl that was nabbed and sexually abused, the guy had a history.

I don't know how often kids are nabbed, raped, killed, or never found in NYC, but there's different levels of safety for children in different areas throughout the world, so people that make fun of people that are concerned parents are obnoxious and small-minded as far as I'm concerned.

Other than the police chase last year, our neighborhood is usually safe from human predators (there's occasionally packs of dogs, most are friendly, but not always; I've been chased many times, and sprayed one, and almost shot a small pack that jumped our fence trying to get our rabbits).

So if I had children, I'd teach them to never let a stranger get withing grabbing range, to travel in groups while walking (I'd prefer they ride a bike, to make escaping from human and dog predators easier), and maybe a baton self-defense class. I'd give them an old cell phone that wasn't as desirable, or expensive, so they wouldn't be jumped for it, or cost a lot to replace it. I'd also teach them how different areas are usually safer than others, but to always keep an eye out for trouble, but not to dwell on it at all times.

I wouldn't want to over-protect a child so much that they'd grow up to be a nervous wreck; I still go do errands at night, but I do pack legal weapons (and have shown them to potential attackers a few times). But I'd want a child of mine to wear rose-colored glasses thinking nothing would ever happen to them like many in this thread seem to think.

I do think the people accusing the NYC mother of child abuse are over-reacting though.

"I'd teach them to never let a stranger get withing grabbing range,"

Never? Maybe your kid would end up like that kid who was lost in the woods and kept evading the people searching for him.

Never? Well you kids can't visit cities or crowded towns then.

She is a enlightened and wise mother.

I especially liked the fact that she gave her child a phone card, as I am very skeptic about giving a cell phone to a kid: do you think that a kidnapper would allow the kid to phone home once he has assaulted him? Furthermore, a kid with a cell phone is more likely to use it all the time to call his pals, hence lowering his awareness on the world around and attracting phone robbers. Kids had no cell phones years ago and they weren't unsafer at all.

(110 comments... Sure a popular debate.)

Not a chance. I shouldn't be afraid, ok, I get it Bruce. But there's no way I would let my kids do anything like that alone. Managing fear is about managing risk.

This scenario is like a wing falling off a plane during a flight. Sure, the chances are really, really, low (I hope), but the consequences are really, really severe.

Similarly, even if the odds are low, the consequences of my child getting hurt without anyone they know and trust around to help them would keep me from ever following this lady's example.

@csrster

"This is a probabilistic fallacy due to frequentist thinking. In a Bayesian approach one can add in additional "priors" (e.g. "I love my children and would never harm them") which would lead to the correct conclusion that my children are in more danger of violence outside the home than in."

Dead is dead, in the hospital is in the hospital. Does it matter if the event occurs in the house or on the street? More than violence can harm a child. But all of this is ok: as others say, if you want to tie your kid up at home for his/her "protection", that is a decision for you alone to make.

This story, and security in general is about managing risks. I, too, would never let my kid do the same thing in NYC. But then again, I don't live in NYC.

So I have no idea what the city is like, from within, as a citizen.

But I have heard, from people who did, that it's a very good place to be, that the people are very kind to one another.

So it makes sense, for them. Not me. Even knowing all this, and this women's experience, I would still not do it.

I simply would not be able to manage the risk.

Also, to all commenting about the cell phone loss thing; I always say that I trust my wife with my life, but not my wallet. It sounds like a contradiction, but when you think of it, it's just the duality between grand emotions and common day life.

Anonymous: A good argument is weakened, not bolstered, by fallacious reasoning.

@csrster

"A good argument is weakened, not bolstered, by fallacious reasoning."

Indeed it is. So why are you employing one?

Go ahead, find a family murder-suicide case where it was the direct intent of the instigator to create the family -- just to kill them all a few years later.

Your extra prior needs to be supported by _evidence_, not simply intent.

@csrster: "I love my children and would never harm them"

Parents who beat their children love them, too. Just because someone loves someone does not mean there cannot be violence.

Maybe even the contrary: A parent who loves their child only wants "the best" for him/her and thinks that the ends justifies the means. Therefore, violence is not ruled out, as long as it is for "the best".

Kristine

Anonymouse, I believe what Mr. Ptacek was trying to say is the kid is much more likely to get hit by a car or run into by somebody with weightier matters on their mind like watching for other people or run over by a cyclist who can't stop or having something fall on his head, than he is to be abducted. When my stepdaughter goes out, yes, abduction is a concern (particularly when she's "forgotten" what time it was and not returned home on time) but mostly, it's accidents I worry about. Same for my wife - and she was raped at 8 and would spare her daughter that pain.

With respect to the graphic, it would be interesting to plot change population density over time vs allowed wandering range. I suspect that the number of jerks per square kilometer has increased proportionally to the allowable travel distance.

Just a thought.

My husband and I were discussing this story, and started talking about how it's not always irrational fear of something bad happening to your child that instills restrictive parental behavior. Oftentimes, it's the (quite reasonable) fear that other parents will judge you and/or report you to authorities for what they perceive as lax parenting.

@ City vs Countryside

>> "98.8% of all abductions are by family members, such as the mother,
>> father or grandparents"

> Well if that's true, then my argument that there's a worrisome risk
> of child abduction by strangers falls apart.

You never really had an argument... and this is precisely Bruce's point, actually.

Not that you (and the other people on this thread who are reacting negatively to the woman's decision) don't have lines of reasoning... but that your lines of reasoning don't constitute an argument.

People confuse the two, all the time. Lines of reasoning are great, but when they rely upon probability rather than true/false propositions, they require evidence to constitute an argument.

Most people don't bother to look for the evidence. They rely upon anecdotal information and other biased sources.

@ prontissimo

> I simply would not be able to manage the risk.

As a fellow parent, I understand people who have difficulties deciding what is (and isn't) safe behavior for their children. You're certainly within your grounds to choose not to emulate this woman's choice.

You aren't managing the risk, however. "Managing risk" requires weighing failure probabilities. You're choosing not to weight them, but arbitrarily assigning a maximal negative value to the probability of child abduction.

Again, I understand why people do this, but you are relying upon an emotional decision, not a real analysis of the threat involved.

I've only made a few short visits to New York in the last few years, but I remember seeing a lot of kids walking around and I had the impression that with buses, trains, easily navigable street grid and lots of people it was an ideal place for kids to get around on their own.

On the other hand, there are plenty of adults who would never go more than a few blocks from their home or place of work without a car, cell phone, or companion, let alone their kids.

A very comforting statistic I heard recently was that in all of New York City in 2006 or 2007 there were only something like 30 murders committed by strangers, the rest being committed by family, acquaintances, and criminal connections. So, if you can't think of someone who might want to kill you, you're probably safe.

"There's some bullies"

Yes there are. They're at school, where the normal kid is sure to meet them everyday.

So I haven't had time to read the previous comments so I'm sorry if I'm repeating but... Are we sure it's safe for 9 year olds to boil eggs?