PeonForHer
Posts: 19612
Joined: 9/27/2008 Status: offline
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FR In the UK we've had the same growth of 'child-protection-anxiety': increased traffic on the roads and child molestors, basically, just as in the USA. The Moors Murderers marked the beginning of the fear of the latter, from what I can make out: we'd never had child-attackers so ghastly before, nor since. Nonetheless, as a kid I roamed free in a way that kids these days don't. I was perhaps a bit of an exception, though: I have three brothers close in age and we always went out as a 'gang'. Two thoughts: 1.) I don't, as it happens, automatically assume that parents have *absolute* responsibility over their children. Too many parents are crap and don't deserve their kids. This comes up way, way more frequently in the news than do stories of paedos outside of the family, from what I've seen. However, when people talk about who really has responsibility for children, the debate's become polarised, I think, between a) loving parents and b) some kind of Stalinist or Hitlerite all-controlling, cold and exploitative State. But in times not even all that past, it was assumed that while parents had prime responsibility, the local community - of neighbours, extended family and village or town - had secondary responsibility. It's this latter that's missing, now, to my mind: the entity that once existed somewhere between the parents and the State. In times past, I imagine that you'd see a kid from your town and think, 'Ah yes, that's Jim's lad. What's he up to? Is he ok?' - but now, it's just one boy in a giant crowd, in a city, who may have come from anywhere. Hence, more of a feeling of 'Nothing to do with me....' 2.) Despite all the above: tech helps now in a way it didn't even twenty years ago. Your kid can go out armed with a mobile phone with speed dial settings to you, your partner and the police. There are tracking devices, too. And they're getting cheaper by the week. Communications technologies have made things easier for the molestors; but they've also made things easier for the people who look after children. It's not all bad.
< Message edited by PeonForHer -- 4/16/2015 2:22:46 PM >
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