I am sorry, the rest of what you said resonates, but I must point out how funny it is that nobody goes to the beach anymore, it's too crowded. :-)

lol, this so true and it keeps from visiting certain places. You just know it's going to be either circling around for 20 minutes or more trying to find parking, or parking really far away and then having to carry everything to the beach which may not even be possible to do on a single trip.

TBH though some of their other examples like sporting events and concerts are similarly tied to this. It's too expensive so nobody goes. Except the tickets still sell very well, and the stadiums are still largely full despite the higher concession and ticket prices.

Restaurants are too expensive, so everyone eats at home. And yet it's still hard to get reservations at many places and drive through lines circle the buildings.

Its stupid expensive to go to a Disney park these days. Think those places are empty?

When my parents wanted to go out they did, and if I didn't want to I went down the creek, biked to the store, ran around the neighborhood with friends or whatever.

Now that earns a call from CPS and the parents are arrested and the kid may end up in a foster home which are common sources of abuse. So the family just stays home if the kids won't/can't be taken.

I've seen the narrative before and I agree that parenting attitudes have changed, but are there any stats/studies to show that kind of severe outcome has really become more common over the decades? (As opposed to simply more-feared.)

Most of the stats come from media outlets reporting on singular cases, and most of the articles on the subject are op-eds rather than scientific studies. It does seem to be more common, but overall data is unfortunately very hard to come by.

The plural of op-ed anecdotes is not objective data, but I can give you some jumping-off points:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2018/09/05/mom...

https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/living/feat-maryland-free-ran...

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arreste...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-mom-accused-of-leaving-ki...

https://www.businessinsider.com/teen-bans-curfews-malls-them...

https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...

https://le.utah.gov/~2018/bills/static/sb0065.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/well/family/utah-passes-f...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-coddling-of-the-american-p...

Most the cases are sealed and depend on self reporting to the media by parents who do so at great threat of it impacting their secret proceedings, where you cannot even face the accuser.

By design they've made such studies effectively impossible from the outside. You don't even get a jury. So we're left with the odd anecdotes (as exemplified below in sister comment)from those who weren't successfully intimidated.

And that's the beauty. They can knowingly and willingly intimidate parents while screeching "but muh data, you can't prove it" laughing all along by design they've hidden the data in the shadows from inspection.

Yet surely the number of cases and broad outcomes are at least countable, even if identities and specifics are not available, right? For example, like in this piece [0]:

> That study was based on an analysis of [...] the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, which provides information on removals of children from home, terminations of parental rights and adoptions.

From there with a little searching I find this graph [1] showing various metrics from 2013-2022, which don't appear to show any freakish growth over that decade.

[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/how-we-analyzed-child-wel...

[1] https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/report/trends-foster-care-adoptio...

The flip side is you are claiming CPS is over-reaching but conveniently can’t provide any evidence of it.

Anyone can call CPS as many times as they want and they will investigate, but no one is putting kids in foster care for biking to the store unless there are other things going on.

The annoyance of being investigated is enough to make parents so no to biking.

Are you saying this from personal experience? Because it sounds like you’re spreading an urban legend. Parents aren’t being investigated for kids biking around. CPS is way too busy for that.

I have relatives who work for CPS and if anything they are extremely lenient. And even if they take kids (when both parents can’t take care of the kid for example if they’re both heroin addicts) CPS will try to place with a relative, even out of state.

I've been investigated. They did the mandatory interview and closed it, but still annoying.

What you are describing is essentially an urban legend. Parents are not being investigated for letting kids bike around.

Also, the most common source of child abuse is a family member, which unfortunately is a common reason for CPS to get involved.

Sure if you ignore all the examples of it happening, after you so rudely lied about in your other reply where you claimed I cited no evidence despite citing sister comment that included articles such as children being taken into cps custody for walking home alone from the park.

Of course the genius is the kidnappers seal most these cases so their relatives can gaslight you about what happened, which is the icing on the cake.

Did you click through them? Only 1 sounds like a simple case of a parent letting kids out to play and CPS taking any action, and cites several people in that community claiming the CPS response as irresponsible. A few of those links are about a law specifically protecting parents rights to allow children to go play at a park unsupervised.

The rumours about some great number of foreigners pooping on the beach are generated to create resentment against a certain part of the population. They come from the same place as the "litter boxes in school washrooms" rumour from last summer. It isn't something that is actually happening.

That recent Wasaga Beach controversy didn't come as a surprise to me, since what was described there corresponded well enough with what I've heard from a number of other people in various places in Ontario, BC, and even other regions over the past eight to ten years.

What was described there is also not far off from the other unsanitary practices and obnoxious behaviour I've personally seen arise over that period of time.

Considering what I've heard and seen over the years, I don't have any reason to doubt those latest claims. They sound quite plausible.

Options have also expanded.

The options are also not cooking at home vs going to a restaurant. There is now food delivery. It used to be that the only way to get ribs was to make them yourself or go to a restaurant and order them. But now a majority of my rib consumption is via Uber Eats.

Movies used to be either in a theatre or a grainy home screen. The home screen is no longer grainy. Same with sports. You have to want the atmosphere to go to a game now.

Beaches being crowded indicates use, so I wouldn't put it into the category of restaurant visits, movies, and sports, which are all declining categories overall.

We have a lot more people but the same amount of beach — even if people spend more total time at the beach, on average every person goes less often.

>Movies used to be either in a theatre or a grainy home screen. The home screen is no longer grainy.

Yes, and it's actually better than going to a theater in most ways:

1) You can pause and go to the bathroom when you need to, instead of holding it and being miserable and then rushing to the crowded bathroom when the credits roll, or going during the movie and missing important plot points.

2) You can rewind it if you missed some important dialog.

3) You can turn on subtitling so you can understand all the dialog, in case your hearing isn't great, or the actors are mumbling as is common these days.

4) You can eat/drink whatever you want, and it costs only whatever your grocery store charges.

5) You can pause the movie and talk to your friend/SO about it.

6) You can put your feet all the way up with your recliner.

7) You can adjust the volume to whatever you like, so you don't have to listen to it deafeningly-loud as is common in theaters now.

8) You don't have to deal with some stupid stranger using their phone or talking loudly to their friends, or having their head block your view.

9) You don't have to worry about a retired cop shooting you.

It’s also way cleaner at home.

Movie theaters are probably going the way of the dodo. That doesn’t mean all outside activities are doomed. There’s just a higher bar. Entrepreneurs will have to focus on experiences people can’t get at home and make them accessible and affordable.

It's not even just about the cost though. I understand there's inflation and I like to help out the mom/pop restaurants survive. I'm willing to pay extra as long at the food is good, but what I notice (at some places) the turnover is very high leading to inconsistent food quality. Sometimes the food is great, then I go back 2 weeks later and the food is awful. There are some places I visit every month and I don't recognize anyone from the last time I was there and it's like that frequently. Can't keep paying high prices and then rolling the dice on whether the food is going to be good.

On the flip side, I've noticed that restaurants with great quality almost invariably have low turnover and those are the one I keep coming back to.