Another thing that I think plays a big role, and is probably related to the smartphone/social media age, is the decreasing amount of interaction with 'others', which increases the fear you describe.
I grew up in various multi-ethnic environments, sometimes even as a white minority. It's fascinating (and saddening) to notice to what degree people around me immediately distrust non-whites (other than the ones that for various reasons are non-threatening subgroups).
Most of these people try their best not to be racist, and probably think they have little to no prejudice, but it's apparent in all sorts of ways, however small.
It's all over, local news, national news, newspapers, news websites, political speeches. Step back and observe this stuff as a scientist analyzing propaganda and you'll be shocked at how many news stories are ultimately trying to scare the reader.
And it's not just news. I have a strong suspicion that the 'weaponization'/professionalization of marketing/PR/propaganda is at the root of a lot of our problems, whether social self-marketing leading to depression and anxiety, spin-doctors in politics, 'organic' corporate marketing, and the massive amount of self-expression directly linked to the latter.
I am uncomfortable with these kinds of statements, because they feel too vague and a bit too Adam Curtis/Gladwellian, and it's extremely frustrating to feel that there's some 'root cause' that I can't quite put my finger on, but I truly believe that David Foster Wallace managed to get closest to the root of the issue, as I see it, in his essay on television (E Unibus Pluram[1]).
Despite my discomfort at being able to properly argue for a 'root cause', and my discomfort with the idea of root causes, I can't help but feel we've just gotten too far up our own collective asses when it comes to how we look at the world and interpret it. We have the Petersons of the world blaming 'cultural marxism', the Wallaces blaming irony, and large swathes of otherwise intelligent people wasting their time and creativity on reddit memes that mostly just refer other memes. Maybe this has been what young people have done throughout the ages, and I'm just getting old, but I strongly doubt that.
[1]: https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf
EDIT: mostly I find myself often surprised at how irony, or perhaps some kind of 'recursive perspective' has infused so much of my surroundings. Everyone is skeptical of everything, and yet seems so susceptible to the media-induced panic of the moment. I really don't mean to sound arrogant, but I expect a certain degree of referential humor/perspective from my more academic or pretentious friends, but nowadays it's a central part of even the 'working class' in a way that I feel it wasn't before, or in a way that it isn't in many other cultures I've experienced. Apologies for being a bit ranty. It's been a long day, and recent personal developments have made me yearn for a kind of directness and honesty and non-irony I just don't seem to find in my surroundings.
Of course politicians make their living selling fear too, and we have extra long campaign seasons, so that's a good year out of every four of constant fear mongering, over and over.
I'm amazed we aren't all nervous wrecks.
So no, fear is absolutely not what's causing this. It is a very conscious choice on the part of the state/people to cause this problem to happen.
Fear is when an accident might lead to serious harm. The accident part is absolutely not the case.
This is a police state. If you expose yourself to the state, even accidentally, the state will brutally rip your family apart, with zero explanation or recourse, never to be reunited. So no, this is not fear. This is a deliberate policy imposed by the "grow our organization or face the blame" pressure on our politicians by state child services departments.
Calling this fear is like calling not stealing policemen's firearms "fear". It's absurd.
And why ? Because if children are "neglected" clearly that's bad for children. By the way, what outcomes for children do child services give ? [1]. Torn apart (it is general policy in child services to tear up families because leaving them together makes "integration in their new life more difficult"). Absuse, beatings, sometimes outright rape, total and complete uncertainty of the future (ie. when your future is uncertain to the point of you don't know if you'll be sleeping in a cell NEXT WEEK due to lack of capacity, I assure you, it will affect everything you think about). Few finish any education at all (high school). VERY few finish even a bachelor degree. The problem is that this organization is part of the state.
Needless to say, if you look at outcomes for children that were abused at home, the picture looks very different. In order to truly create an outcome as bad as the child services outcome one has to look at VERY serious cases of abuse indeed before they become as bad as the standard child services outcomes. People who are beat regularly by their parents, as cruel as it sounds, generally finish their education, and do in fact become independent adults (but one might say that's because everybody in that abuse relationship, the child and the parent, is incentivized to produce that outcome. In the child services case however, they only get subsidies as long as the patient is not an independent adult)
These organizations are horrible for the children in all but the very worst of cases, but the way they justify their existence is by doing more, in other words by throwing the maximum number of children into this treatment, which is of course not something accomplished by being slow and deliberate. Nor is it something that is accomplished by only intervening in extreme cases.
The issue is the incentives these organizations exist under. But once they've grown for a few decades (ie. at this point), one can say with certainty that less harm would be created by just destroying them entirely than by letting them continue.
And of course I'm ignoring the real conspiracy theories, where these services and rules are just another way to use the state power to inflict terrible suffering on the poor and immigrants and undesirables or opponents in general (thanks, by the way, Obama and Trump, for introducing a "families get separated" rule on immigrants. You guys should both get shot just for that alone. You deserve it. The misery imposed on these people is incredible, and for no reason other than punishing innocent people. Obama for introducing it, and Trump for not expanding it).
I agree with everything you said, but it was fear of children being abused by heroin addicted parents, or sold into child prostitution (for example) that gave this the support that it needed to happen from the populace.
Allowing the state (any state) to just take people's children away doesn't just happen on it's own. You need to roll out a pretty serious fear campaign to get people to actually support something like this. Fear campaigns can be observed by watching the local or national news or reading any paper, or listening to a politician's platform; it's pervasive and constant.
I think this and what the article discusses are symptoms of the same thing: constant fear of everything. I'm not sure if it's that Americans scare easily, or they are constantly barraged by hyperbolic worst case scenarios everyday by the news (current business model), or a mixture of both.
When FDR said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," he was keenly aware of this fear. Americans are easy to manipulate through this, there are many examples both current and historic.
I'm not a big worrier about the boogieman; I realize chicken little when I hear him. The main thing I'm scared of with the kids is internet weirdos, so I tell kids never to put their real information online other than an email.