[swalling]

One important thing that the NPR story completely glosses over is the component of race and class that permeates this issue. It’s not an accident that the prototypical mom of the “free range kid” movement is white and lives in a relatively wealthy neighborhood like the one mentioned in the story.

Poor black and brown women are disproportionately targeted by child welfare authorities starting literally from birth. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7372952/ This makes it particularly important that we actually change the laws around what constitutes neglect or endangerment, not just create a culture shift.

[Eumenes]

This happens everywhere, it doesn't have to do with race. I have a family member who has children in very posh and upscale neighborhood in a suburban area of NoVa. She has had neighbors call child welfare several times for her 10 year old skateboarding around town, or playing at a playground unattended with friends (literally a block away from their home). I get the vibe that alot of older residents don't want children running around because they value peace and quiet, so they call the cops/DCF when they see kids hanging w/o adults.

[peanutcrisis]

Sociology departments in America are captured by the current moral fashion (identity politics). If it were me, I'd think twice before believing the research that you linked to.

[swalling]

If it is moral fashion to acknowledge and measure the obvious racial and economic discrimination in America then that’s a fashion which is morally good.

[peanutcrisis]

That is assuming that the moral fashion is actually doing that. Unfortunately, the moral fashion is more about starting with a predefined set of conclusions, then working backwards to justify those conclusions. I don't think we need to sell out our integrity to achieve a better society, or make false equivalence between liberal social justice and critical social justice, of which the latter is the current moral fashion.

[93po]

It is actively harmful if they're measuring the wrong things and in the wrong way to come to an exact predefined conclusion instead of the one that is actually maximally good for children.

[cyanydeez]

Hard not to when antisocial policies are intentionally used to disadvantage minorities after the 60s.

We might agree they're focused on a symptom, not a disease, but conservative policy objectives are definitely causing disparities that now even poor white people are finally feeling.

Conservatives shut down public pools in reaction to integration and then proceeded to shut down socialism.

[michael1999]

There’s no conflict here. Laws don’t usually change until after the culture shift. They often lag the culture by years or decades.

[swalling]

All too frequently laws in the US are completely out of step with the culture. For instance despite broad support for many reforms (abortion rights, term limits in Congress, marijuana legalization) nothing happens just because the culture has evolved.

[cyanydeez]

In a real socialist society, neglect would need to be explicitly determined by parents.