Ugh.

[conuly]

So we're in the middle of this whole "thing" about safety and unattended children and whatnot over elsewhere.

And somebody who thinks this woman should not have left her 12 year old babysitting her younger siblings in the mall (actually, I agree with that, I just disagree that it was criminal or that the children were in any particular danger) goes "The world has changed for the worse, it's not safe, doesn't anybody remember Adam Walsh????"

You know what? I don't remember Adam Walsh. You know why? Because he died before I was even born!

When the statistics show that every measure of crime (including violent crime against children, which is what's relevant here) has gone down since then ("do you want your kid to be that low statistic???"), and the facts and the evidence all show that kids today are safer than they were when I was growing up and for a good decade or two before that as well, what does that say about your argument ("If something terrible had happened to any one of those children then nothing would have been written like that and it would be total outrage at the mother then") if the only specific thing you can think of to bolster it is a case that is thirty years old?

Not that any specific cases would make a difference. Horrible things happened to kids in the 50s and the 30s and the 90s and in the past year as well. The question isn't whether or not these things happen, but what the appropriate response to that fact is.

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

12 is the age that I started babysitting. I would generally do this in someone's house though. Although by about 14 I was probably babysitting such that sometimes I took the kid for a walk in the neighborhood. I was also 14 when I went to a go convention. My father was in the tournament, but I wasn't competing. Since lots of people were, I ended up babysitting for a few kids. At one point I was in the building watching 2 four year olds and an infant. Nobody seemed to have a problem with this. There were strangers about. I also decided that watching two 4 year olds wasn't harder than watching one and had the advantage that they could play games with each other. In hindsight, I think this is only true with some four year olds. These were both pretty well behaved kids, so I probably got fairly lucky. For example, they both were able to understand and willing to comply with the need to just sit there for a few minutes while I change the baby's diaper.