Posted on 06/03/2007 2:38:07 AM PDT by Lorianne
“325 in my zip code alone!”
You must live inside the Beltway.
I just tried 34141 area code and got 0 offenders. What a croc! I know that people living in that area code were convicted of “molesting an alligator”. The nice Game Warden said so.
You know, for all the talk of how dangerous riding a bicycle without a helmet is, for adults or children, I can’t remember any kid I knew ever suffering a serious head injury from a bicycle accident. Over the years and a bunch of different schools that must have been hundreds of kids I was at least acquainted with, and none of them ever ended up brain-damaged from falling from their bicycles. Including myself, and I took plenty of spills off bicycles (and skateboards and anything else with wheels) as a kid, once over 30 mph. Most bicycle helmets look dorky, and as you say, any kid over the age of nine wants anything but to look dorky.
Hey mom, the real reason we don’t ride bikes anymore is sort of the helmet thing but also the fact that neither of our bikes work. (Hint Hint). I like our development because it’s right next to the woods and even though you told us not to go in the woods, well...
I grew up in the 60’s. We were outside all the time - winter, spring, summer or fall. We played a lot of sports, spent time in the woods, and did plenty of things that you probably couldn’t do today. It truly was a different time.
We’re raising a generation of very fearful children. You shouldn’t teach your child to be fearful. Teach them to be smart, yes, but not fearful.
The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker, the best self-defense book out there. I strongly recommend for parents and kids.
Nope just your typical lovely midwestern town in Ohio!
There aren't more now. The rate of sexual assaults and abductions committed against children by strangers has actually declined over the last 30 years. It just appears to be more widespread because we live in a 24 hour news cycle and are constantly barraged with sensational child abductions and Amber alerts (most of which are perpetrated by non-custodial parents). The majority of children (I think about 90%) who are victimized are done so by an acquaintance. This has always been the case.
Are you always such an ass? You are practicing the same kind of judgment and closed-mindedness you wrongly accuse me of.
I never said anyone's perceptions were imagined. In fact, by definition, perceptions depend upon the perceiver, regardless of whether they are anchored in fact. I am saying that I don't think the *perception* that things are more dangerous now than in the 70's in necessarily based on an actual increase in crime. Given that the national crime rate has decreased for most of the last 30 years, I'd say that is a valid conclusion. Certainly, San Francisco is safer now than it was in the 1970's. That doesn't apply to every city and town, but overall that is the trend. Just because people are more aware of the crime around them and worry about it more than before doesn't mean there is more of it.
There is far more fearmongering over abductions and things now than in 1970, even though the odds of your child actually being abducted is far far less.
Nowadays when it happens its all over the news, and fear mongering to sell newspapers. It hits the primortial fear of every parent, but the reality is, your kid is SAFER today from such an event then they were when we were growing up.
I can’t imagine not telling my kids to GO PLAY....
"the sense that things have gotten more dangerous since the 70’s is imagined"
I didn't accuse him of judgement and close-mindedness. I was just making the point that -- as you say, "perceptions depend on the perciever" -- and that someone born in SF after the heyday of Haight Ashbury wouldn't have the same perceptions as people born at other times, in other places.
No, I'm not always an ass, but I reserve the right to be one now and then.
Given that parents are protecting their kids a great deal more now, I wonder if the decline in abductions tells us anything about the change in the number of people who might be inclined to do such a thing.
we live in a 24 hour news cycle and are constantly barraged with sensational child abductions and Amber alerts
Although horrific child abductions go back at least to Giles de Rais, it seems like the cases of horrible murders and imprisonment of children are more common these days than they were in the 1960's. It could just be media sensationalism as you say, but I find it notable that I never heard of such a thing back then, although I did read the newspaper. Perhaps it didn't used to be considered national news if a child was kidnapped unless their name was Lindbergh or something.
We didn't ever have to lock our doors back then either.
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