HOW TO BE AFRAID

[defrog]

Following up on yesterday’s post, in which I pointed to a column on how society has reached a point where parents are afraid to let their kids go out and play in the same way that most people my age or older were allowed to 30 years ago, which begged the question: is the world really more dangerous, or are parents just more afraid?

trillsie raised a good point about awareness. Basically, we know a lot more now than we did 30 or 40 years ago. So we know of more things that are harmful to us and our kids, and so we worry more.

Fair call. The question remains, though: how much should we be worrying about all these “new” dangers, and are our concerns proportionate to the actual risk?

I’ve linked to this before, but it’s worth relinking: Bruce Schneier wrote a brilliant piece after the Virginia Tech shootings about how  people tend not to be very good at analyzing risk, especially when it comes to threats we hear about but rarely encounter in real life.

In case yr in a rush, I’ll paste the relevant bits:

We fear being murdered, kidnapped, raped and assaulted by strangers, when it's far more likely that the perpetrator of such offenses is a relative or a friend. We worry about airplane crashes and rampaging shooters instead of automobile crashes and domestic violence – both far more common.

In the United States, dogs, snakes, bees and pigs each kill more people per year than sharks. In fact, dogs kill more humans than any animal except for other humans. Sharks are more dangerous than dogs, yes, but we're far more likely to encounter dogs than sharks.

I tell people that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens." It's when something isn't in the news, when it's so common that it's no longer news -- car crashes, domestic violence -- that you should start worrying.

But that's not the way we think. Psychologist Scott Plous said it well in The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making: "In very general terms: (1) The more available an event is, the more frequent or probable it will seem; (2) the more vivid a piece of information is, the more easily recalled and convincing it will be; and (3) the more salient something is, the more likely it will be to appear causal."

So, when faced with a very available and highly vivid event like 9/11 or the Virginia Tech shootings, we overreact. And when faced with all the salient related events, we assume causality. We pass the Patriot Act. We think if we give guns out to students, or maybe make it harder for students to get guns, we'll have solved the problem. We don't let our children go to playgrounds unsupervised. We stay out of the ocean because we read about a shark attack somewhere.

And so on. I recommend reading the whole thing (especially for the links Schneier includes to back his points).

Obviously, none of this means that it’s okay for yr kids to play in the bad part of town or take candy from strangers, or whatever, or that parents are silly to worry. It’s all human nature. But it’s also worth knowing that the world outside isn’t as dangerous as it looks on CNN, to say nothing of how dangerous both al Qaeda and the Bush administration have tried to make it look.

Again, it's easy for me to talk, because I have no kids and don't intend to. Plus, I'm a child of the Cold War – when I was growing up, we had the prospect of global thermonuclear annihilation to look forward to every morning. Talk about exaggerated risk.

But I think it stands to reason that if you let fear dictate yr life, you end up with a society where kids can’t go out and play, teachers carry guns to school, Muslims are thrown off planes for praying, the TSA declares water a potential weapon, and a worryingly growing number of cops and security guards are convinced that photography in public places is an act of terrorism.

And who wants their kids to grow up in a world like that?

No fear,

This is dF

Comments

[brujah.livejournal.com]

I'm here via popfiend. Hi. :D

The best I could do for my daughter was make sure she was aware. Aware of her surroundings, aware that sometimes people are just no damned good, aware that bad things happen to good people, aware of herself and how she relates to other people. Aware of her limitations and vulnerabilities.

Aware of local laws, my preferences, her school's rules and regulations.

Just aware.

Just like she's aware that she can do anything to which she sets her mind. And also aware that she is sometimes left at home, alone, because she's proved herself to be both mature and trustworthy. She often times comes home from school and lets herself into the house, makes herself a meal on occasion, and asserts her independence from me.

I don't believe in coddling a child any more than I believe in abandoning one. I get fed up with parents not allowing kids to play outside because they might get kidnapped. I understand that because of the media, the general public is more aware of kidnappings, rapes, victimization, and other brutalities, but that doesn't mean the crap wasn't happening before mainstream media. It always has happened, and it always will. We just get it shoved down our throats every ten seconds via the television, radio, and Internet.

I've let my kid be a kid. She's fallen out of a swing, gotten grimy playing in the dirt, caught lizards, chased wild things, and run barefoot all day. She's grown into a complete shit quite the individual as a teen and I'm glad I made the decisions I made.

I guess my ideas about the entire thing can be summed up in the sentence: The word parent is a verb.

Be a presence, know where they are and who they're with. But for the love of everything holy, let them be KIDS. Life becomes serious too soon as it is, let them play without wondering if every sound around them is the frigging boogie man.

[def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com]

Hi yrself. Thanks for the comment. I think you've summed it up perfectly: let kids be kids.

Oddly, after I posted this I remembered seeing an interview with the director of Finding Nemo, which in a way is about how overprotection can get in the way of childhood. He recalled taking his six year old kid to a zoo and constantly saying, "Watch out, no don't do that," until he realized that the one thing he wasn't doing was enjoying time with his son at the zoo, and that they were both losing out on something as a result.