In North America any adult that is not the parent is a potential kidnapping rapist, doubly so if they're male.

In Canada, child services were called on a mother of three for letting her children play outside in their fenced backyard while watching from the window.[1]

Humans aren't equipped to really comprehend a 24-hour global news cycle. Things that are common and deadly are deemphasized and things that are rare are raised to panic inducing levels of fear. Dangers to children get extra attention.

[1]: https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/manitoba-cfs-will-not-e...

>In North America any adult that is not the parent is a potential kidnapping rapist

But the adults at the sleepover are the same as the adults that watch the kids during daytime :/

>In Canada, child services were called on a mother of three for letting her children play outside in their fenced backyard while watching from the window.

When I played in the sandbox my father could not see me from the house. Just our dog, and the dog would watch me :) So if he saw the dog he know I was ok.

We don't deserve dogs.

> In Canada, child services were called on a mother of three for letting her children play outside in their fenced backyard while watching from the window.

If I did not know any better, I would be tempted to read that as satire. Ensuring a child's safety is obviously one of the most important duties of a parent, but there is such a thing as common sense.

When I was a child (German, in case it matters, born in 1980), we were given a lot of freedom to go where we wanted (within reasonable limits, of course), as long as we followed a few simple rules. Mostly, don't go alone, tell the parents where you go and when you will be back. So there was always a certain degree of parental oversight/control, but it did not really feel that way. In hindsight, I think it was important that these rules were applied fairly. Breaking them usually meant we got grounded, but as long as we kept our part of the bargain, we enjoyed a lot of freedom. At least after we learned about safety in traffic, which both my parents and the elementary school spent a lot of time on.

> In North America any adult that is not the parent is a potential kidnapping rapist

That suspicion is there against many single dads too.

This is true elsewhere too though. There have been a number of cases in NL, one involving a day care employee having raped over 80 children (some infants); after that a huge amount of male day care employees were fired. Similar story with a swimming instructor.

Here is a list of common parenting fears in the US, pretty much a collection of unlikely scenarios:

https://www.today.com/news/12-tips-easing-your-parent-noia-w...

But what about the real stuff, like I'm afraid my child will grow up without the ability to make good choices? I'm afraid my child will inherit my own fears? I'm afraid my child will not come to me when they need help? But these fears don't sell advertising on TV shows about abduction or pricy childcare centres and schools. The US is so deregulated and underfunded that it's a system of businesses doing anything they can to slowly tug at your wallet, which seems to have lead to the current day environment of fear.

It’s not weird. Kids in the US do this too. The article is written by an author who doesn’t seem to get out much: she’s extrapolating her experience to stereotype the entire American experience, when really she only knows about her experiences in San Francisco. “Europeans are better” is a genre of writing that’s usually done by a generally frustrated left wing, upper-middle class white woman lamenting how “bad” their lives are in the United States after about 10 minutes of experience with something foreign and sufficiently “socialist.” It’s classic confirmation bias: the person’s preexisting beliefs (that America is “worse”) are validated by some experience with a non-American system.

I’ve lived extensively in both Europe and the US and it’s interesting how preexisting assumptions get confirmed when you first start living in a new place, but given enough time, you quickly realize that what you thought was “better” really isn’t. It’s just different — with different advantages and disadvantages.