The Safety Cult

Oh, my friends, some days a person needs a duct tape helmet for prophylactic containment of her oft-exploded head. Every single time there's something on the internet about public breastfeeding, the comments are going to say, "Well, we don't POOP in public, do we?" And every single time there's something on the internet about free-range kids, the comments are going to say, "But BAD THINGS happen all the time." I hear you saying, "Why, Jamie? Why are you still reading the comments?"

Because, you guys, someone is WRONG on the internet.

Fallacy #1 is the most pernicious, I think, and I encountered it again in that Facebook conversation I was griping about in my last post. It's the idea that the world is swarming with wannabe perpetrators of stranger abduction. (Paging Bearing: you have an awesome quote in your archives somewhere (pulled from another blog, in one of your posts on this topic) about people living as if each child is assigned a would-be molester at birth. Can you help me track it down?) The person on Facebook said the Meitiv kids were doomed to be targets for child molesters now, because the perverts knew where to find them. Attention, world: it is exceedingly rare for childhood sexual abuse to work like that. The person to dread is almost certainly someone whom you have granted access, someone whom you have allowed to build trust with your child. Almost all of the time, childhood sexual abuse happens in the context of an existing relationship. It is easier to assume that nobody you know would harm a child. That assumption, unfortunately, is unwarranted.

Fallacy #2 is closely related: Because crime exists, your child is at risk of stranger abduction. I got this from the police officer who responded to my neighbor's call, as he pointed out sites of recent property crimes in the neighborhood. One of the things I appreciated about him was that when I said, "Property crime is in a completely different league from kidnapping," he said, "Yeah, that's true." This misperception is common, and I argue that it is poisonous. Wherever you go, there will be theft. Wherever you go, there will be vandalism and bad language. It's a fallen world. But it is simply not true that wherever you go there will be stranger abductions. Someone tossing an unsecured lawnmower in his trunk is a whole lot more probable than someone tossing an unsecured child in his trunk. The existence of A does not determine the odds that B will occur.

Fallacy #3: Kids will inevitably be scarred by adverse events. In that same Facebook discussion, a woman described a scary thing that happened to her and her siblings when they were left unattended. They started a fire...and then they put it out. You can tell that story as "so no one should ever leave kids unattended because they get in trouble" or you can tell that story as "kids can address problems swiftly and sensibly." Our current cultural narrative prefers the former option, as did the woman on Facebook. This is a really problematic preference. I cannot overstate the importance of teaching kids that they are capable of solving problems. If we say instead "But you might run into...A PROBLEM" in the same horrified tones we would use to say "But you might get...BUBONIC PLAGUE!" we teach them to doubt their own resourcefulness. And knowing that you are a resourceful person is one of the golden keys to living contentedly in a complex and difficult world.

Yesterday I followed a totally unrelated link and ran across this quote:

...Groups that are highly controlling, teach fear about the world, and keep members sheltered and ill-equipped to function in society are harder to leave easily. The difficulty seems to be greater if the person was born and raised in the religion rather than joining as an adult convert. This is because they have no frame of reference – no other “self” or way of “being in the world.”

In most other arenas, when people spout harmful fallacies and call them facts, and discourage independence and independent thinking, and insist that Really Bad Things will happen to dissenters (and that the dissenters will deserve them, hahaHA), we call it a cult. And yet somehow when it comes to 21st-century parenting, we call it normal.

P.S. to my more cautious readers (hi, Gina!): I wrote this last night and didn't hit publish because it is more inflammatory than my usual offerings. My point here is not that anyone ought to give her particular child more of a particular kind of freedom: you know your child better than anyone else, and you know your corner of the world better than I do. What I find objectionable is the assumption that I can't see my child clearly, that a stranger looking in from the outside can determine, based on faulty premises, whether I should be turned over to the state for neglectful parenting. Live and let live, that's all I'm asking.

Comments

[bearing]

The quote was from a FB comment by Thomas L. McDonald. I doubt I could link to it, but it is accurately quoted on my blog here:
http://arlinghaus.typepad.com/blog/2014/07/looking-for-the-magic-words-to-push-back-with.html

[Jamie]

Thanks!

[gina]

Hi Jamie :)

As you know, I am a live and let live person, completely and totally...
and I am all for "free range parenting", although I don't always practice it myself (I cringe at the free range label though...children are not chickens).

I'm not sure why the Meitiv's case makes me uncomfortable. A colleague who I so respect calls the mom a "civil rights leader" (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201504/meet-danielle-meitiv-fighting-her-kids-rights). In my heart, I know that may be the case. I just personally would make a different choice if it were me...

I think my other issue with this debate is this:
The Meitiv's seem like highly educated individuals of high SES. Therefore, people are more prone to listen to their side and accept their choice.

What about those of lower SES? (Like the mom who left her child in a park blocks from her place of employment because she couldn't yet pay child care costs? The child was fine and mature enough to stay at the park, but she was still arrested and no one seemed to be taking her side on social media...or like one of my students, who left her child in a cab with a paid fare because her babysitter backed out and she needed to go to class to take a final exam....the child was perfectly fine and happy in that cab, but the police were called and she was charged with neglect).

I think that's actually what bothers me most about this whole debate...it becomes a social class issue for me.

Sorry for the book, everybody! Back to work I go! (Now I understand why no one reads the comments section re: this issue :)

[Jamie]

No, no, this is exactly the kind of comment I like to read! I'd be happy as a clam if comments sections raised questions like yours.