The same number of kids were probably abused in a variety of ways 50 years ago. Maybe more than today, even. But what most people knew about the news was what was in the local paper and maybe they watched 30 minutes of national news on TV.
They didn't have a device in their pocket alerting them in real-time about a kidnapping story in another state.
People are not good at assessing probability of risk. If they hear about something, they think it's likely. So they get more and more afraid.
And the greatest risk isn't the stranger, it's people you know and trust. The vast, vast majority of people aren't going to harm a kid--you teach kids that if they need help they should go up to an adult and ask. That reduces the risk much further.
2021 missing-person stats:
- 94.5% (231k) runaway
- 1% (2,555) abducted by non-custodial parent
- 0.1% (331) abducted by stranger
- 4.3% (10k) adult
https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/kidnappings/etan-p...
What I worry about is CPS and police officers claiming child endangerment. In my state you can be charged with child endangerment just for leaving the kid strapped into the seat on a moderate day while you walk in to pay the gas station attendant. You could potentially be arrested and charged for letting a 7 year old play alone at the park for a bit.
The kidnappers are real. But they're the CPS and police, and they can't wait to put your kids into a brutal kids-for-cash foster care system. They draw their salary under the guise of "safety" while victimizing children and sapping their independence. And busybodies everywhere have a device at the ready in their pocket, that allows them to invite months of scrutiny into your life based on 30 seconds of effort on their own part, after which the law prevents you from finding their identity or facing your accuser.
There were definite benefits to the Boomer outlook at the time: smog was curtailed, health-conscious diet and regular exercise became a popular idea(albeit heavily fad-driven). But it also created a more litigious, low-trust climate, which has only driven in the alienation further. Today's political climate is a sort of crescendo on all those concerns, and I see in the current working-age generations much greater willingness to change the deal.
Our era is just different.
Your time investment is even greater value (to you) since you have less out-of-work time overall.
Why, and is this important and or a problem? BTW, I don't claim to have an answer.
I feel like the investment into individual children is much much higher than it used to be (time/resources/emotions). When you have 5 kids it's not that you don't care, but you literally can't be as protective about them as you can when you're only raising one or two. And then as people have less children the norms gradually change.