Perceptions on risk

[jewel441]

www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/08/22/490847797/why-do-we-judge-parents-for-putting-kids-at-perceived-but-unreal-risk

Did anyone else see this? Really interesting.... I find that it perceived wrong to leave a 12 year old alone totally bizarre. At 12 I was babysitting.

[SheilaTheTank]

I was home alone on the regular at 10

I do believe that there is a lot of pearl clutching around things that aren't really that big of a deal. You should have scene how much the olds were freaking out over the weekend when i gave K a piece of seedless watermelon. "SHE COULD CHOKE"


In regards to leaving a 2 yo to play pokemon go, I'm side eyeing the parents. This was a not a necessity. They did not need to leave their child alone. They could have taken the child with them or gone one at a time.

[jewel441]

Aug 24, 2016 9:49:23 GMT -5 SheilaTheTank said:

I was home alone on the regular at 10

I do believe that there is a lot of pearl clutching around things that aren't really that big of a deal. You should have scene how much the olds were freaking out over the weekend when i gave K a piece of seedless watermelon. "SHE COULD CHOKE"


In regards to leaving a 2 yo to play pokemon go, I'm side eyeing the parents. This was a not a necessity. They did not need to leave their child alone. They could have taken the child with them or gone one at a time.

Oh ya. I mean definitely there is some leaving that is wrong.... Take your 2 yr old with you to play Pokemon go. But also side eying a 16 yr old boy not being able to pee by himself.

Also how do you choke on watermelon. It dissolves.

[SheilaTheTank]

Aug 24, 2016 9:58:07 GMT -5 jewel441 said:

Aug 24, 2016 9:49:23 GMT -5 SheilaTheTank said:

I was home alone on the regular at 10

I do believe that there is a lot of pearl clutching around things that aren't really that big of a deal. You should have scene how much the olds were freaking out over the weekend when i gave K a piece of seedless watermelon. "SHE COULD CHOKE"


In regards to leaving a 2 yo to play pokemon go, I'm side eyeing the parents. This was a not a necessity. They did not need to leave their child alone. They could have taken the child with them or gone one at a time.

Oh ya. I mean definitely there is some leaving that is wrong.... Take your 2 yr old with you to play Pokemon go. But also side eying a 16 yr old boy not being able to pee by himself.

Also how do you choke on watermelon. It dissolves.

JFC This was my argument about the entire thing. Nothing I gave her was going to lodge in her throat. The pieces I gave her were not big enough to shove completely into her mouth so she had to gnaw on them. It's not like I was shoving hot dogs and chicken bones down her throat. 

[peachesncream]

Ummm, my fear with leaving my 2 year old unattended is not that she will be abducted. How much risk of harm was there while the parents left the 2 year old unattended? Clearly the author doesn't know much about 2 year olds. My daughter would be right out the front door and into the street. Which that child also was. We are also very in to climbing at my house. Maybe those speak more to my lack of childproofing but isn't not childproofing a form of free-range parenting as well?

[roseinbloom]

It's interesting. Thanks for sharing. I do like the concept for the study.

Two thoughts:

1. The researchers seem a bit biased. Any researcher is going to be biased in the beginning, but as someone who studies people, I prefer human research to reflect a more open question. Noticing inconsistency in thought is a great way to find a topic for research, but I felt like they were a bit too liberal/personal/anecdotal in their explanations of "why" without doing the research to back up the participants' explanation of the emotional "why."

May not have said that well, so would reiterate if necessary.

2. Anecdotal, but I think there is a good justification for why the risk seems higher when the parents are apparently neglectful. They don't talk about how someone perceived as a neglectful patent relates to the long term perceived risk of the child, right? A parent who gets hit by a car in a freak accident but whom otherwise is a model parent is less likely to continuously and needlessly put the child at risk, as the example of the Pokemon Go fanatical parents might. So while the actual risk may be the same in that particular incident (assuming hypothetically same exact environment, age of the child, etc.) the anticipated recurrence of the scenario and extrapolated but possible real risk is unequal.

[roseinbloom]

But yeah, if we want to talk about the general trend of helicopter parenting and parent shaming, there is a lot nowadays which is just bogus and unnecessary.