Overall, the whole article is so surreal - is this actual reality in US? Where I live, and lived, which means some parts of Europe, kids are much more self-sufficient, its expected from them and they are happy to deliver. I recall the joy and pride I felt when I begged my parents into letting me go alone for the first time on public transport from aunt home, and they let me and it was at the end simple ride with bunch of stops. The idea anybody can protect their kids 100% is completely ridiculous, just let it go. Teach them to be smart when interacting with strangers, not fearful. Are you also afraid by default when stranger approaches you ie with a question? (that would explain a lot).

Whatever inner problem you have, it can be worked on by specialists, just don't close yourself since you drag your closest family down that hole and young ones have no good defenses for messed up parents.

Within my bubble, I would say yes. Most parents I know seems to not let their kids go unsupervised (by them or some other parent) until around 13-16. I also grew up in this kind of dynamic, but I also didn't ever feel the need/want to be in unsupervised scenarios, so I didn't notice the oddity of it until later in life.

I don't know the underlying cause, but part of it seems to be that people misunderstand and overestimate the the likelyhood of certain bad events happening, while simultaneously ignoring all of the daily risks they take and are completely fine with.

One example I hear within family is the worry about child abductions, and how there are such terrible people out there that would do such things. The misunderstanding that seems to be in play when these things come up is that 90% of child abductions are by a family member, not some random joe/jane on the street. Another non-zero amount are by care-takers, so people that parents trust enough to supervise their children. Finally there is the last few percent that people have some more valid reason to worry about. This seems like an awfully small chance event to spent a lot of time worrying about.

You think that we should hide the world from children? You are mistaken. Danger is real, the only safe way to live within it is with due caution, not fear but caution.

If you jump from a cliff you will die. If you fall over backwards on that climbing frame you could well hurt yourself seriously. It is not a parents job to shield children from the world but to teach them the skills to navigate it. In the first years of life we nurture and protect, as they become more capable we release them little by little into the world.

As with almost everything, it depends on where you are in the US, but there has been a general trend towards overprotection of kids. The GP is an extreme example, but I've definitely met parents with that same attitude.

You're right. I think one significant difference between my parents generation and those of us who came later, is that they lived through the depression and WWII. They knew this fact if not consciously then subconsciously for the very reason that from an early age they were often confronted with things and circumstances well outside their control. War for instance, being conscripted into the military was just a fact of life and that one had to accept it, everyone was well aware that it was essentially futile to do otherwise.

To a large extent their attitude of resignation and acceptance of fate passed onto way they treated us, their children. Like other aspects of their lives, they accepted the fact that they couldn't control everything we did, even if we were just kids.

That was a great blessing for my generation, the babyboomers. We had almost none of the major restrictions that governed our parents' lives, and it's largely the reason for why we had so much freedom and autonomy as kids.

Nevertheless, we became a bratish generation, we did what we wanted and we got what we wanted. Compared with our parents we were undisciplined and from there we eventually developed into the 'control freak' generation. As babyboomers, we were now getting just about everything denied to our parents, but when something was denied to us we became overly pushy and overbearing until we'd gotten what we wanted. After all, for us, it was a logical extension of what was already happening.

Same with the kids, babyboomers felt the need to control their lives and had no compunction or regret in doing so. Later, that fact was not lost on more recent generations and they've since honed the practice into a fine art.

Clearly, this is a grossly simplified explanation of what is a long and rich set of facts but you'll get the gist.

Nevertheless, we babyboomers should not blame our parents for seemingly the sins they endowed us with, for after the bad times and wars they'd experienced they wanted us kids to have a better life and they only did what they thought best for us.

Bless them.

Care to explain?

Is the plan to kidnap the child and... raise them as a member of one's own family? Try to blackmail the parents? Something worse?

This whole situation is hard for me to understand, your confidence about white vans in particular.