That Girl has been ruminating on maintaining her peace of mind in contemporary culture.
At the risk of sounding dismissive, I will venture to say that -- very generally speaking -- the horrific things that happen today to kids aren't all that different than the horrific things that have always been happening. But because we react so strongly to it, the horrifying stuff gets the highest play. Over the past five years the media has seemed to teach us us that kids are kidnapped all the time. They aren't. It's rare. And the majority of kidnappings are actually done by non-custodial parents. Not that the genuine kidnappings are any less horrific, but they aren't as prevalent as the almighty media would have us believe.
I agree with her points. Kids' lives are generally safer than they were 50 years ago.
Seatbelts, anybody? I don't think I used a seatbelt until I was in my late teens. On car trips, we fought over who would get to be "in the wayback" -- lying on top of the suitcases. I preferred the wayback.
In fact, I think the overprotectiveness has gone too far. Children need necessary risks. (That doesn't mean that playgrounds should be actively dangerous.) Banning monkey bars does nothing, really to increase child safety.
But an increased risk of kidnapping? I don't think so. We just hear about more stories, because of the magic of the internet. I would never have heard of most of the cases I write about in discussions of poor parenting without the internet -- too far away, to hard to chase down.
I've stopped writing about the horrible parents, pretty much anyway. I want to focus on the over-involved parent, and how hard it makes life on the kids, how hard it makes it to grow up.
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