Parenting in an Age of Bad Samaritans

[roo_ster]

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/parenting-in-an-age-of-bad-samaritans/

A mother lets her daughter play in the park unaccompanied. A mother leaves her son in the car for a few moments, while she runs into a store to buy headphones. Many parents would consider these actions to be unwise—but are they criminal? According to three recent stories in the news, yes.

A couple of themes we explore here at The Watch are the increasing criminalization of just about everything and the use of the criminal justice system to address problems that were once (and better) handled by families, friends, communities and other institutions. A few examples from recent headlines show those themes intersecting with parenthood.

This latter point hearkens back to Robert Nisbet’s excellent book The Quest for Community: Nisbet predicted that, in a society without strong private associations, the State would take their place—assuming the role of the church, the schoolroom, and the family, asserting a “primacy of claim” upon our children. “It is hard to overlook the fact,” he wrote, “that the State and politics have become suffused by qualities formerly inherent only in the family or the church.” In this world, the term “nanny state” takes on a very literal meaning.

In each case, the citizen jumped first to the State to care for the situation, rather than exercising any sort of personal involvement. This hardly seems to fit the definition “good samaritan”—these actions reveal a more passive, isolated attitude. But here, again, we see the result of breakdown in modern American community—without a sense of communal closeness or responsibility, we act as bystanders rather than as stewards.

Having had the cops called when I let my then 6/7YO children ride their bikes as a buddy team 100 yards to the playground to play within my line of sight, I have some skin in this game.

I will suggest a proximate cause of this phenomenon: diversity.  Pretty much the more diverse the community, the less social capital and trust the community has.

But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

Now that they are 8/9YO, we are letting them ride their bikes as a buddy team to the nearby swimming pools (1mi and 1.5mi away).  We are doing our very best to give the prevailing social currents the big middle finger every chance we get.  In this instance, as in the others(1), the opposition responds by calling out gov't agents to arrest folk and shoot them in the face if they resist enough.
 


(1) http://ideas.theatlantic.com/2009/06/interview_with_james_poulos_part_iii.php

So citizens of a Pink Police State (I should say subjects) are apt to surrender more and more political liberty in exchange for more and more cultural or 'personal' license. And the government of a Pink Police State tends to monopolize and totalize administrative control while carving out a permissive playpen for the people.

[brimic]

I will suggest a proximate cause of this phenomenon: diversity.  Pretty much the more diverse the community, the less social capital and trust the community has.

Pretty much.
In small towns, there are a 1000 sets of eyes watching for anything out of the ordinary. If married Joan's truck is parked in single guy John's driveway at night several nights a week, people are going to talk about it.... OTOH, its usually safe to let your kids hop on their bikes and roam the town with their friends or take trips into town alone.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

Who called the cops?
I have one neighbor like that

[roo_ster]

Who called the cops?
I have one neighbor like that

Some anonyneighbor.  "Bad Samaritan" indeed.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

I can see my neighbors house and she almost stroked out that I let my kid walk there. Escorted her home. Next time I had the kid drive the 4 wheeler. It was even better


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[Hawkmoon]

My brother and I used to ride our bikes to grammar school when I was maybe 10 or 11 and he was two years younger. Distance was probably five or six miles. Nobody called the cops. But Mom had her spies -- we usually stopped at the house at the end of the road (still 2 miles from home) to get a drink from their garden hose. The husband was my Sunday school teacher one year, and the middle daughter was a classmate.

Some aspects of "the good ole days" apparently really were gooder.

[charby]

Kids should be allowed to roam as free as their parents allow them too.

I'd hate to be a kiddo these days.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

I knew it was bad when they took out swings for being too dangerous.



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[Perd Hapley]

"Bad Samaritans." Nice coinage.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPnK0NCn_MQ#t=1m35.4s

[AJ Dual]

"Bad Samaritans." Nice coinage.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPnK0NCn_MQ#t=1m35.4s

Yep. I'm going to repeat that one as far and wide as I can.

[mtnbkr]

I knew it was bad when they took out swings for being too dangerous.


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Maybe they just don't trust kids down your way.  Every playground in this area, including the schools, have swings, slides, and in the case of Bull Run Regional Park, a rather sphincter-tightening (when your 4yo repeatedly jumps over the gap between platforms) skywalk that would make a good leg breaker for kids.

Chris

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

They are sneaky. They upgrade with the fancy plastic and sneak off with the swings. Parks still have some but schools are gone.


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[mtnbkr]

They are sneaky. They upgrade with the fancy plastic and sneak off with the swings. Parks still have some but schools are gone.


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They added a bunch of new plastic playground equipment to my youngest kid's school.  Swings are still there.  

That school has an outdoor, 2-sided climbing wall.  It's only 7'-8' tall, but it's there.  No safety harnesses and barely any mulch around it.

Edit to add: My oldest broke her arm at that playground when she was a student there.  Not only did they NOT remove the offending monkeybars, she made it her goal to master them.

Chris

[charby]

They added a bunch of new plastic playground equipment to my youngest kid's school.  Swings are still there.  

That school has an outdoor, 2-sided climbing wall.  It's only 7'-8' tall, but it's there.  No safety harnesses and barely any mulch around it.

Edit to add: My oldest broke her arm at that playground when she was a student there.  Not only did they NOT remove the offending monkeybars, she made it her goal to master them.

Chris

Kids don't get to play on these anymore

[MillCreek]

When I was killing time between speaking gigs at risk management conventions, I went to a couple of playground risk management lectures.  There is a real art to it now, with the design of equipment, use of rubber mats or shredded rubber mulch rather than sawdust, trying to keep little fingers away from sharp edges or finger-crushing mechanical areas, etc.  Playground injuries are one of the more expensive risk areas in the public schools.

[Perd Hapley]

When I was killing time between speaking gigs at risk management conventions, I went to a couple of playground risk management lectures.  There is a real art to it now, with the design of equipment, use of rubber mats or shredded rubber mulch rather than sawdust, trying to keep little fingers away from sharp edges or finger-crushing mechanical areas, etc.  Playground injuries are one of the more expensive risk areas in the public schools.

Fascist. 

[Regolith]

Kids don't get to play on these anymore

When I was in highschool, an elementary school teacher was screwing around on teeter-totter and broke his arm. He sued the district, and *poof* went the teeter-totters. 

The teacher used to be our neighbor. He once tried to jump our front fence for some reason, thinking he could clear it in one bound. He was wrong. Dude was a klutz. Luckily he didn't try to sue that time; I guess he didn't think he had a snowball's chance in hell on that one.

[French G.]

I freely roamed both the woods and the nearby small city from about age 10 on. Couldn't let my kid do that now sadly. I believe that it is quite important to let children explore their boundaries with some sense of free interaction. So I let the kid go ahead of me to run interference, make pleasantries with strangers, pay bills for me, and explore the world. Someone took issue that my then 3 year old was about 50ft ahead of me. I explained that she comes when I call(or else) and that I stay comfortably within pistol range of anyone she is near. That made 'em a little  .

[mtnbkr]

Kids don't get to play on these anymore

Except for the monkeybar cube and merry-go-round, the stuff at the playgrounds around here is much cooler.  Tunnels, huge spiral slides, triplet slides with bumps and waves, skywalks without handrails and 10" platforms, etc...

Chris

[roo_ster]

All gone: rocket ship, submarine, flying saucer, dinosaur, and kid-flinger.

Replaced with plastic & wood & rubber-coated stuff with large radiuses.

http://girlfromtexas.blogspot.com/2008/07/rocket-space-ship-park.html

Today's Dallas Morning News reports that a beloved park located in Richardson , Texas and known technically as "Heights Park", but colloquially to children all around the north Dallas and Richardson areas as "Rocket Spaceship Park" , was to be closed today and the old space age jungle gyms town down. This is such a momentous local event that the actual demolition made the six o'clock evening news. Various tearful moms with tots were interviewed, and news footage showed a few aging baby boomers with video camcorders, taking a last little bit of footage of the small neighborhood park as the bulldozers did their work. The roving news reporter explained that this park, built in the early 60's, chose the space-themed jungle gyms in honor of Texas Instruments, a local employer famous for computers and technology, and also also to tie in with the "Let's Put A Man on the Moon" NASA space missions of that era. The roving reporter went on to explain that the park did not meet current safety standards, and had to be torn down. City officials promised to save the rocket ship and turn it into art, "some day".

TI, telecom, aerospace, & such all are big around here since the 1960s. 

The Heights Park equipment is by far the oldest in Richardson; the city's emotional and historical attachment kept it in use for more than 40 years, an official said. Much of the equipment presents serious dangers, including head entrapment, impalement and entanglement hazards. In addition, the equipment doesn't meet Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.
"The detailed audit really explained the depth and breadth of the problem," Mr. Massey said.

Uh-huh. 

Behind all this official blathering, the question I ask myself is, If they plan to return the rocket spaceship to the park, someday, as art- why not just close up the opening, leave it where it is, and call it " art" - NOW ? When the park official said they were taking it to storage, I couldn't help but think of that final scene in the first "Indiana Jones " movie, where the Ark of the Covenant is taken to a giant government warehouse , lost in the stacks, never to be seen again.

Yep, they have had TOP MEN working on restoring the equipment since 2008.  TOP.  MEN.

[zxcvbob]

My city built a park specifically to be ADA-welcoming a few years ago.  It's about a half a mile from my house.  Very impressive (expensive) equipment.  Nobody plays there, but it makes the liberals feel good about themselves.

[Jamisjockey]

Natural conclusion of the zero-tolerance state.  When a state has to rule on spankings not being child abuse, because someone couldn't understand the difference between a spanking and putting a child in a closet with no food or water or beating them with a belt until they can't walk.
Bleating idiots can't understand that a 9 or 10 year in a car for a few minutes with the AC is somehow as dangerous as a baby being left in a car all day.
Zero-tolerance comes full circle.

[Strings]

Was recently reading a piece about playgrounds and safety. Will see if I can find it.

Sis in law pointed out the humor in America: the universal symbol for "playground" is a teeter-totter... which we can't find on ANY playgrounds up here

As for kids left alone: there have been a number of times I've seen kids left in the car at stop 'n' robs, while mom or dad runs in. I sit on the bike and keep an eye on 'em, until parent comes back out. Never felt the need to call the po po

[zxcvbob]

Was recently reading a piece about playgrounds and safety. Will see if I can find it.

Sis in law pointed out the humor in America: the universal symbol for "playground" is a teeter-totter... which we can't find on ANY playgrounds up here

As for kids left alone: there have been a number of times I've seen kids left in the car at stop 'n' robs, while mom or dad runs in. I sit on the bike and keep an eye on 'em, until parent comes back out. Never felt the need to call the po po

Not even break the window out (even tho' the door is unlocked) so you can be the "hero"?