The problem we have in the US is we tend to placate to the vocal minority, rather than realizing that they are in fact just a vocal minority.

Say you have 10 parents that let their kids play outside. No one has a problem with this until an 11th parent shows up and it mortified, think the kids will all get hurt if they are allowed to be outside like this.

That parent makes a stink, take it to the city council, and a rule is put in place that you can't let your kids go outside without supervision. The folks making the rules think to themselves "well we had to act, there was such an outcry". Meanwhile the outcry is really just the outsized screams of one parent, and you've just screwed the other 10 parents.

> The problem we have in the US is we tend to placate to the vocal minority, rather than realizing that they are in fact just a vocal minority.

I think it's related to trauma fetishization combined with child worship.

Trauma fetishization: The person who is most traumatized by a thing should be the one who dictates policy about that thing. People who have lost children qualify, and we literally name the laws after their dead children.

Child worship: Children are without trauma, and therefore without neurosis. When you traumatize them or through inaction allow them to be traumatized, you have created neurosis, which is the source of all problems in society.

There was a post about an abortion rights rally, with the poster saying "Keep our women safe". Someone came in and said, essentially, "I appreciate the message and the support, but can we drop the possessive 'our'"? It was called out that the "our" was itself supportive and indicative of community. The person replied "I came from a small town where men used 'our women' as a signal of ownership and I shudder when I hear it".

My internal response: Okay? You're asking everyone to change a good-faith saying because it triggered a bad memory for you? Get over it.

I think the media is the worst. They love any controversy so they will pump up whatever side is more dramatic.

Then of course once the rules change they will pump up how ridiculous they are.

People think they can win, but they are really just fueling the media.

It’s so true - even for little, unimportant things. A group of friends and myself made a parody video that went a bit viral about 11 years ago (only like 400K views but this was a different time) got on some shows (state-wide) - breakfast, current affairs etc.

It was a comedy music video about council workers (I wish it was still on YouTube, unfortunately I didn’t log into the account for a few years, and the channel seems to have been automatically terminated and I couldn’t find any way to restore it). The current affairs show had obviously tried to create some controversy that workers might be offended, and they interviewed a bunch, literally asking multiple questions to try and get them to say something negative, but they all loved it and thought it was funny. They even got an interview with the mayor and he liked it.

But they were still pushing the line. The piece ended with “but at least this time, no one was offended”. It was hilarious just the extent they were trying to manufacture controversy and drama from literally nothing, and how much they failed but still tried to push it! It was so bizarre, absolutely nothing about our song was mean spirited!

I think it's more subtle than that. If you are the city council member, doing something about it is a lot easier than not. Saying "I don't think we should make our children safer" is politically difficult. So the rules slowly ratchet up.

It started in the 80s, related to the Satanic Panic, particularly the McMartin preschool trials. Before that, it was expected that even very young children could be outside alone even in urban settings.

This too was a media driven hysteria. You can see how the news amplifying a few rare kidnapping and molestation cases, if it bleeds it leads style, is directly correlated to the public intrigue. A lot of movies and tv shows took on these themes as well. Much like the red scare and more recent mass hysterias driven by an unscrupulous news industry political complex.

The kids who were raised in that era grew up, had kids, and passed the generational trauma down the line. We'll grow past it eventually, but it takes time for people to heal and the trauma to filter out of the population.

> We'll grow past it eventually,

Don't take this for granted. I suspect this behavior is actually caused by an inherent anxiety in some subset of the population. When they don't have real (and likely) dangers to worry about, they will find some kind of tiny risk and overamplify it as something to focus their anxiety on.

Removing all things dangerous from the environment will only serve to amplify their tendency to do so. A mum in a high risk high crime neighbourhood is probably more likely to let her kids roam free (and less worried) than mums in upper-middle-class neighbourhoods where there is virtually zero crime.

My hypothesis is that the solution is to let children experience activities that are moderately dangerous (ideally through risk of pain, minor injury or some social stress, with risk of death or permanent injury kept minimal). This helps (I think) callibrate their ability to estimate risk as they grow up.

This would allow them to ignore imaginary risks like the one discussed here, and may help them identify situations that come with real danger.

The people who were the driving force behind all the "Satanic Panic" stuff are still around, too. And some of them still pose as experts on "recovered memories" and other stuff like that.

Because people got super freaked over the risk of pedophiles, though they should worry more about their family members perpetuating sexual abuse than a random stranger.

To some degree perhaps aggravated by people having less kids, therefore the kids they do have are extremely valuable to them, driving demands that the world be nerfed up.

I'm not sure it works that way. It's not like you care less about your first child after having a second. They're all the most loved thing you have in life.

It's all anecdote, but I believe I've witnessed it many times - families with four kids don't love them any less, but they are less attentive to any one, less photos are taken, by kids 3 & 4 things aren't really "new" and scary like they are with kid 1. Couples with a single kid, particularly after trying for a while, have come across as highly protective and hyper-focused. I'm just speculating here - I recognize I don't know nuffin about it, ultimately.

I've had four... five? I lose track.

You're right, in that it's not that you care any less about your later kids, but you tend to be more pragmatic about child rearing. Better at recognizing the important events and problems, while shrugging off and ignoring the trivial stuff. You learn that you don't need to worry about a kid eating a crayon, and you recognize that certain pain cries mean "I'm not really hurt." You realize that sometimes the best thing you can do for a kid is ignore them and let them figure stuff out themselves.

I'm an oldest child, 3 siblings. My experiences and observations would agree with you.

Sometimes it even gets just a little annoying - how come my youngest sibling gets to do things at a much younger age then I was allowed to? :)

Perception of crime has gotten worse as people consume more fear driven media.

Conversely - it'd be interesting to investigate whether other statistics have improved over the past decade with parents being increasingly responsible for their kids after school - reduced shoplifting, reduced graffiti, reduced smoking/drug use, reduced teen pregnancy, etc.

Its quite possible that increased organized sports and after school activities (particularly robotics, math, computer science) could actually improve the capabilities of society as compared to just leaving the kids unattended after school.

I'd suspect quite the opposite; kids who have their time filled with organised activities and have no time to come up with their own may be less likely to develop important skills like creativity, self-reliance, and be more reliant on structure and authority.

Watch the local news or get on your nextdoor group and it is all packed full of crime stories. A lot of people are addicted to feeling scared all the time, and the media is feeding them.