[fpig]

This is a fallacy inherent to the modern mentality of obsessing over your child's safety that is likely counterproductive on average.

Children of school age DO NOT need babysitting. When I was a kid, everyone's mom worked and we kids just stayed at home or played together and were perfectly fine. There were zero kids who had a babysitter when they were 7 years old. Zero. Never heard of it. This was the late 80s / early 90s during the breakup of socialism. There was even a war going on for a few of those years.

I can't even imagine the level of ridicule a child would have endured if their friends had found out they had a babysitter.

Children don't just randomly burst into flames if they're left alone.

And I seriously doubt 30:1 is a significant part of the problem. Look at countries with successful school systems. Ours also used to be, but slowly got worse with time as we adopted western attitudes towards children and parenting. The schools themselves didn't change significantly, yet the outcomes became worse.

[Kluny]

True, but you were still in school for most of the day, right? You were probably alone for a couple hours in the evening and busy doing stuff with friends on the weekends, but don't you think it would have gone all Lord of the Flies if you were alone all the time? I remember staying home alone from age 10 or so and I was fine, but I also remember that bullying seemed to be a much more serious problem then than it is now.

[fpig]

Parents would be away for 4-5 hours at most while I was at home I guess, but we'd be without parents for more than that because we'd go out and do stuff with friends even when parents were home. Parents were kind of there to fulfill your basic needs, not your social needs. I think my parents would have probably loved to spend more time with me but kids prefer to be with other kids.

To be fair, it did go a bit lord of the flies on occasion, in the sense that we engaged in "wars" with kids from different streets and so on, sometimes someone would get a thrown rock to their head or get a beating, but nothing too serious. Also we were constantly getting injured while playing from falling, stepping on sharp shit, etc but kids are incredibly resilient, they recover from anything and quickly. The important thing is to teach the kid not to fuck around in traffic, that's where the real danger is. And if there is a war not to pick shit up that might be explosive.