[taylorlb]

My relatives keep mentioning the possibility of my son being stolen, which seems absurd to me. I was very curious what the real odds of your child being stolen by a stranger in the US are.

EDIT: The post motivated me to do some quick Googling... one article I found said there are roughly 40 children abducted by strangers or slight acquaintances in the US annually which would make your child "700 times more likely to get into Harvard than to be the victim of such an abduction".

[avar]

Here are some statistics about it: http://www.ncmec.org/en_US/documents/InfantAbductionStats.pd...

The kid is probably more likely to be struck by lightning while you're walking around in the park on an overcast day than being abducted by strangers.

But parents of newborns are rarely sensible about their risk assessment, and obsess over amazingly unlikely scenarios while forgetting about the plausible and common ones.

[rayiner]

Risk analysis isn't just about probability. It's about the cost of prevention relative to the probability of a bad outcome multiplied by the cost of a bad outcome. Parents worry about children because the cost of losing a child is ruinously high to a parent. Meanwhile, little preventative measures like not leaving them outside are cheaper than putting them in little baby Faraday cages on cloudy days. Hence why parents worry about child abduction and not lightning strikes.

[wisty]

Yes, but they aren't so careful about things like drowning or road safety. I'm not certain about the actual risks (digging through the data is kind of depressing), but in general people tend to over or under estimate risks based on a few factors: malice, familiarity, how dramatic it seems. A crazed gunman is scary. Not looking in your mirror when backing out of the driveway isn't.

[lostlogin]

Not that long ago some friends were mid argument when we turned up. She was saying that, hypothetically, if she ended up in a river with her baby she would hold it up, save it, and drown if it required that to save it. Her husband was saying save yourself first, you're no good dead and if you drown, the baby drowns too. And they wouldn't shut up. I hadn't seen anything like it before, but now we have a child, and strange crap happens.

[scotty79]

Cost of being afraid about possible abduction of your child is extremely underestimated as this fear twists your world view, possibly world view of your child and prevents your child from some things that could be beneficial for him/her.

Conversely cost of not having a pool or a gun is much lower and does more for the actual safety of your child.

[bjornsing]

Baby Faraday cages, that's the best thing since sliced bread! :)

[munificent]

As a parent of two small children, I can assure you I obsess over the plausible and common scenarios as well.

If you look at it rationally, having kids is utterly terrifying. We have logically evolved to care very deeply for our offspring. So you have this tiny living organism whose health is critically important for your own happiness. And this organism is physically separate from you, mobile, frail, loud enough to draw attention to itself, unable to protect itself, inquisitive, and completely unaware of danger.

[gbog]

I shared these worries but we parents really need to get over it. It is actually dangerous for kids to have worrying parents. Kids need to build self-confidence, mostly copying yours.

So here are some tips that helped me and my wife to hide or diminish our worries.

kids, even newborns, are actually more resilient and solid than their parents in many respects. If I got half the knocks on the head my boy got this week at school, I'd be in hospital.

Worries and fear are contagious, don't spread it. If your wife is a bit sensitive to the sight of blood, ask her to go in another room when your kid has a little nosebleed. Seeing worries on her face well not help in any way.

Trash immediately all those culpabilizing books on parenting: the best gift you can do to kids is culpability free parents.

[rayiner]

As the father of a three-month old girl, you've captured my feelings on the subject beautifully.

[tokenadult]

Best wishes to her. Fatherhood of a daughter is an awesome responsibility, which I have found often turns into sheer delight. (My daughter was born after we had three sons beforehand. We like them all, but there is definitely something different for the dad about having a girl in the house.) Did you know that the current projection of cohort life expectancy is that a girl born in the developed world since the turn of the century has a better than even chance of living to age 100?

[rayiner]

>Did you know that the current projection of cohort life expectancy is that a girl born in the developed world since the turn of the century has a better than even chance of living to age 100?

If I don't drop her on her head. That's the "awesome responsibility" part!

[lsaferite]

Having a newborn that just came off of 9 days on life-support, I can say without a doubt that having children is the most terrifying thing you'll ever do in your life.

Watching our 3 year old discover his physical limitations is an amazingly ulcer-inducing activity and I find myself constantly expecting the worst.

After witnessing the many falls, bruises, scrapes, and assorted damage that kids endure, I'm constantly amazed they survive into adulthood.

[taylorlb]

I've really enjoyed talking to my family and strangers about their irrational fears that exist around children. It's incredibly fascinating to me. That said, I have been totally terrified to board an airplane for the last 3 years (use to fly once a month) so I don't have much of a leg to stand on.

[delinka]

Keep in mind the general state of fear in the US. If a danger even exists, it's cause for concern. Unless it involves an automobile.

--d, US Citizen

[lostlogin]

There are few others besides the car that American citizens seem (italics would be ideal here) blinkered to. It seems obvious to an outsider - who is possibly indoctrinated the polar opposite way. however the topics are all so inflammatory that even HN can get uncivil.

[yakiv]

(I'm an American.) I'd be interested to hear what dangers Americans seem to be oblivious of.

[dalke]

No matter the topic, some Americans will be worried about it. Still, the list might include:

Many western countries have a state television service, funded by a TV fee or a special billing system. The goal is to have a news source which is (nominally) independent of the government and which is not beholden to advertisers. The US was once worried about this, but the FCC eliminated the Fairness Doctrine in 1987.

Most of the citizens of the other western countries are agog at the US for insisting on privatized medical care. (As lostlogin also pointed out.)

My experience in visiting Europe is that nationality and ethnicity are much more closely tied. A second generation Arab in France or Turk in Germany may still be considered a foreigner. Apparently we are more oblivious to the need to regard the grandchildren of immigrants as still untrustworthy. (At the very least, xenophobia in Europe feels different than in the US.)

GMO restrictions are much, much higher in Europe than the US. Apparently Europeans believe in this concept of "freedom of choice to the farmers and consumers", and insist that GMO foods be labeled as such, while the US does not require that labeling.

Privacy laws are higher in Europe, in part because of strong memories of how "World War II-era fascist governments and post-War Communist regimes" used that information.

Someone from Bhutan might say that the US and most other countries are too interested in their country's Gross Domestic Product and not in Gross Domestic Happiness.

[fennecfoxen]

The main problem with the Fairness Doctrine is it's a limitation on freedom of speech. This is something that Americans can be quite sensitive to, more than Europeans, if we'd like to talk about people having blinkers on. :)

The Fairness Doctrine was designed in 1949 to "provide adequate coverage of public issues", and when challenged in court it was judged constitutional specifically because the radio and television airwaves were limited. With expanding sources of media, including cable television and the Internet, the availability of broadcast airwaves no longer presents a substantial limitation on Americans being able to access any given point of view.

Modern attempts to revive the fairness doctrine are led more or less exclusively by partisans who favor the Democratic Party and preferred the content of political speech under the old system. (For example, Bill Clinton stated that he supported it "because essentially there's always been a lot of big money to support the right wing talk shows.") Many of these partisans would like to apply the doctrine to cable television and other non-public-airwave broadcast media. However, court rulings made it quite explicit that if they ever found that the doctrine was limiting political speech, it would be found unconstitutional, so it is likely all of these attempts will fail even if legislated or regulated.

Neutrality and "fairness" is, of course, impossible to judge objectively. Just ask any Wikipedia administrators dealing with edit wars. ;) Government regulation of "fairness" and government domination of the media have the potential to present significant limitations on political freedom - look at various South American dictators' and their forays into controlling the media and bullying opposing points of view. It is the fox guarding the henhouse. Of course, sometimes you may have relatively benevolent foxes (I hear the BBC's okay!) or you may just have suicidal hens who fawn over the latest bit of personality-cult politician voluntarily (no further comment on this topic, this post is enough of a digression).

[dalke]

I remember reading Pipi Longstocking, where she's asked why she's walking backwards. She replied 'Why not? It's a free country.' It was rather a surprise to me since I used to think of that as being an American reaction, not a foreign one. But Sweden (where I now live) is rather proud of its free speech heritage, and you can see its history in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Sweden . The Press Freedom Index rates it much higher than the US for its freedom of the press.

This does not apply to all of Europe. I do not like several ways in which Germany restricts speech, including its 'blasphemy against religion' laws.

In any case, it's true that I did mix up two different points to make a comparison. The BBC model, used also in the Nordic countries, does not have a monopoly on television broadcast. Other broadcasters, including commercial ones, can and do exist. The Fairness Doctrine does not apply, no, if others can and do broadcast? (Though on the other hand, radio here is not that diverse. I miss listening to odd-ball student radio.)

The Swedish view is that an independent news source, independent even of the advertisers, makes for a more informed public. Notice please that I'm saying "independent" here and neither neutral nor fair. Italian public television is part of the government, and not run by a (mostly) independent organization.

This also different than the US model, where public television is sponsored by its own viewers and by various grants. In the BBC model, the funding comes from the TV license fee, and the rates are under review by the legislature and subject to a charter. (I actually don't know how the Swedish equivalent works here.)

So, in the US we think that the news should be funded only by the people who watch it, either through voluntary membership payments or indirectly through its advertisers. In the Nordic countries (and others), they think that leads to a less informed public.

[lostlogin]

Great comment. Your comment on GMO. I had always thought that Monsanto had huge sway in American political circles, although I have no idea where I got this from. Unfortunately the big stick seems to be used to get other countries to accept Monsanto friendly labeling - American backs its businesses in a way not all other countries do. This doesn't have to be a bad thing though.

[lostlogin]

Touchy ground! The two I had in mind were the lack of effective gun control and the problems associated with a lack of socialised healthcare. I would characterize these as both being partly due to an us/them 2 party government system, which encourages exclusion. I should add that New Zealand isn't free of gun issues, healthcare system problems or political parties playing BS games, its just they seem to pale compared to US paper headlines. I should note that prevailing views here on HN, are vastly different to those I notice in US papers and TV.

[youngerdryas]

You can italicize a word by adding an asterisk directly before and after the word without spaces.

[lostlogin]

Thanks.

[AutoCorrect]

If a gun exists, it's only for killing. <== another irrational (on some people) fear

[lotsofcows]

Yeah, they make really good hammers. And I once saw someone open a beer with one. They have sooooo many uses other than killing things.

[scotty79]

I think it has something to do with wide spread circumcision.

Once in you life you've felt like a god and then one of your subordinates came and cut off part of your penis. You can never feel safe after such event.

[antiterra]

That kind of statistical hand waving is irritating. First, it's 40 abductions where parents are characterized as being paranoid about their child being kidnapped. The statistic says nothing about how leaving your kid on a sidewalk might affect the chances of abduction. Your chances of getting hit by lightning aren't as slim if you're a golfer.

Also, 700x more likely to get into Harvard as an applicant or just a US born child? Does that include post-graduate Harvard institutions? How is 'getting into Harvard' a useful benchmark for acceptable risk?

[rz2k]

Clearly leaving a child unattended is going to have an effect, and so are many other factors going to have an effect on admission to Harvard.

Furthermore, the hand waving statistics are off by an order of magnitude as far as I can tell. 40 * 700 = 28,000, but the cohort of births in a given year result in a student body closer to 2,800 than 28,000.

[antiterra]

It probably came from comparing accept percentage of Harvard (6% now but 7% a couple years ago) with a kidnap chance calculated for the whole of children born in the US. Of course applicants are already a selected subset and not representative of all candidates born in the same year. It's a pretty useless comparison.

e.g. 40 kidnaps per year for 10 years = 400. 400 * 700 'times more likely' = 280,000. Divide that by 4mil children born in a year to get 7%.

[speeder]

Depends on the country and how much the population is mixed.

Yes, it may sound evil or anti-immigrant, but it does not matter where, if the location has people of uniform ethnic identity, they tend to treat everyone around them as distant cousins (and there are biological reasons for that) and some negative actions people don't feel like doing it.

In places with lots of random ethinic identities mixed, leaving your baby outside is BAAAAAAD idea.

[PavlovsCat]

Nordic countries are just as diverse as the US.

[speeder]

I do not mean specifically the US.

And Sweden is NOT diverse as US, Sweden has as the "biggest minority" the Finnish (that are not that different from Swedes), any other population is very small except on some specific cities.

US has a great population of people from several backgrounds.

Also the same is in my country (Brazil).

Here, I see people being much more lax with their security when everyone near them are of the same ethnic background, be it white, black, native american, whatever.

It is just that everyone is born to not trust strangers, foreigners, etc... And "race" is a very quick way to assess that.

Not that I think we should go hating each other or anything like that, but it is how it works, and it is very visible, the more mixed a place is, the less people trust each other, with some specific exceptions (ie: places that are truly cosmopolitan like Universities or some workplace cities).

[guylhem]

As shocking as it may sound, I noticed the same thing in the caribbean where population is very mixed. It's not about racism - it's more as if a shared group identity encouraged cooperative behaviour.

Even weirder - there seems to be a trigger effect : until the non visible minority reaches 5% the cooperative behaviour keeps working.

Funny thing - it seems to works even if you account your own ethnicity - i.e. when you are in the <5% you will get more cooperation by people with a different ethnicity than you !!

Cross the 5% mark and it won't work as well - apparently even with people of the same ethnicity as you. Weird.

Some may call that parochialism. I find that interesting.

I've been quite puzzled by this (it contradicts all the mainstream thoughts about diversity) and I would love to know more about such issues (scientific research - can anyone with a sociology background give more details about that?)

[vinkelhake]

The Finnish minority is followed closely by immigrants from former Yugoslavia (166k vs 155k). Sweden has accepted a large number of refugees from Iraq & Iran, together they outnumber the Fins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden

[PavlovsCat]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

Here. Why shouldn't something like education, and generally doing a great job at not being completely depraved by consumerism, lead to less stupidity, and therefore also less stupidity in the form of racism? Why assume instead they're just as racist, but it's just they're all the same, so they trust each other? You can't just latch on to the first random thing that comes to mind, to me there is zero indication that any of this has to do with racial diversity, and pointing out differences in said diversity, even if I accepted them, would still be a non-sequitur, correlation ain't causation.

Maybe these people have simply realized there isn't any point whatsover in stealing random babies, which is not rocket surgery. Kidnapping? Sure. But stealing babies because you care less about people because they have a different skin colour? WTF. That's such a brainfart if you ask me.

[nacker]

Heck, in Brazil your baby isn't safe even if you are keeping it in your womb !

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mother-reunited-with-ba...

[mrgoldenbrown]

Do you have some stats to back that up? What is the non white population in Norway? The cia worldbook seems to say it is over 94%: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

[PavlovsCat]

It's called World Factbook, not worldbook, "white vs. non-white" has nothing do with it as far as I'm concerned (skin color is related to sunlight, not culture), and last, but surely not least.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_State...

"nearly 15% of Americans were foreign-born in 1910, while in 1999, only about 10% were foreign-born."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Sweden

As of 2010 however, 1.33 million people or 14.3% of the inhabitants in Sweden were foreign-born. Of these, 859,000 (9.2%) were born outside the European Union and 477,000 (5.1%) were born in another EU member state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Norway

At the beginning of 1992, immigrants and Norwegian-born to immigrant parents totalled 183,000 persons, or 4.3 per cent of Norway’s population. Twenty years later, at the beginning of 2012, these groups had risen to 655,000 persons or 13.1 per cent of the population.

So, my bad; at least these two nordic countries are even MORE diverse than the US. Which is hilarious because I was totally gambling with my initial post, thanks for making me look for confirmation. Of course you might say the real problem is that many US-born citizens have dark skin, while many immigrants to nordic countries have white skin, but that's the point where I leave the discussion.

At any rate, there are differences between the US and those countries, but immigration does not seem to be especially prominent. So no, that can't be it.

[BashiBazouk]

20 years? Try going back 400. 99.1% of the US population are descended from immigrants. Ignoring genetic differences and only going with cultural, you are really talking about how quickly immigrant groups homogenize to a standard culture of the country (or region when talking about America). The answer is it varies. A lot. Take any major Scandinavian city. How big and old is the china town? Japan town? Little Italy? German town? Irish population? Puerto Rician population? All the many flavors of Hispanic populations? Asian populations? Slavic populations? African populations? Many American cities have long standing examples of most of these. China town in San Francisco, for example, started shortly after the gold rush. There are many Chinese there who are multi-generational Americans but have not homogenized to the standard culture (if such a thing exists in SF). I have known families in the central coast just south of the silicon valley who can trace their Spanish descendents to pre-gold rush and even have some Ohlone descendents in their past, the people who originally inhabited this part of California. They are very Hispanic culturally.

I read an article a while ago about problems teaching immigrant kids English in the Alum Rock school district. This is just a single school district out of many in San Jose. If you are unfamiliar with San Jose, think south Silicon Valley. They typically have to deal with students who speak 40 different languages. Now that is diversity. Anything similar in Scandinavia?

As I have never been to the Nordic countries, I think it's possible but highly unlikely they are anywhere close to the diversity of the US. I would need to see a lot more than 20 years of immigration statistics to believe it though...

[youngerdryas]

>"white vs. non-white" has nothing do with it

Yes they have an amazing diversity of Nordic people.

[PavlovsCat]

That has nothing to do with anything I said, try to respond in context. However, they have an amazing diversity of people in Nordic countries, and there is also amazing diversity among "whites", as well as similarites to "non-whites".

[speeder]

Cia Factbook on norway:

Norwegians + Sami 94.4%

Other europeans: 3.6%

Sweden according to wikipedia (and CIA factbook) has most of the population being Swede + Sami

Cia factbook on United States:

79.96% are white, but this include some hispanics.

Brazil the most recent census (I will find the link to IBGE site later) is about 45% of the population being white. almost 50% being mixed race (usually between black and white) 5% black (and some below 1% minorities).

[bjornsing]

As irrefutable proof I give you Fox News: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2qTdFX6thg&t=0m13s. ;)

I live in Malmö and IMHO FN didn't quite live up to it's "fair and balanced" motto here. :)

On a more serious note I'd say the nordic countries are much more homogeneous than the US, ethnically and politically.

[dalke]

Politically? I moved to Göteborg a few years back. The day after I arrived was May Day. The Socialists, Marxists, Marxist-Leninists, Social Democrats, Leftists, and Red Front political parties each had their own march. Then of course the Christian Democrats, the Moderates, Center Party, and the Green Party are 5 of the 8 parties with representation in Parliament. (The Pirate Party has 2 people representing Sweden in the European Parliament.)

In the US there's the two major parties, and Bernie Sanders as the only self-described socialist in Congress. In non-national offices there is a handful of Greens and Libertarians. When was the last time you saw people who were self-described as something other than Republican, Democrat, or independent as a regular commentator on a political discussion show in the US?

That seems like a lack of political diversity in the US, compared to Sweden.

[ptaipale]

parties each had their own march

Sure, but they were all Protestant Social Democrats, nevertheless. I mean, they may call themselves Marxists or Sweden Democrats or Red Front or whatever, but still they'll fundamentally believe in a society where everything's lagom.

But of course there's been political diversity in the Nordics; however e.g. the likes of Arvo Kustaa Halberg were a bit too politically diverse to live in Finland so moved to the U.S.

[greenert]

I did a very basic search for racial demographics of Sweden, the US and Brazil (since someone else mentioned it), then calculated the Shannon diversity index (lower essentially meaning less diversity) and the Pielou evenness (a number between 0 and 1 - higher means less size variation among groups). I didn't find great numbers to work with in the few minutes that I looked. I used these:

US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat...

Brazil: http://www.indexmundi.com/brazil/demographics_profile.html

Sweden: http://www.populstat.info/Europe/swedeng.htm

And got:

US:

With Hispanic/non-hispanic breakdown

Shannon: 1.258355 Pielou: 0.5064

Without breakdown

Shannon: 0.9705 Pielou: 0.4987

Sweden:

Shannon: 0.4498 Pielou: 0.2795

Brazil:

Shannon: 0.9509 Pielou: 0.5908

So in terms of diversity, US >= Brazil > Sweden.

[abraininavat]

Do you have any evidence or other basis for this belief? Or is it just a hunch that you share as if it was fact?

[barry-cotter]

Robert Putnam's research confirms that ethnic diversity reduces trust levels and civic engagement, even when the ethnic diversity is as risible as Norwegian vs Swedish Americans in, say, Minnesota. If I recall correctly he's a Harvard faculty member in either sociology or political science. He wrote Boewling Alone and he sat on those results for like, three years because his political preferences are typical for his position. The explanation the grandparent offered may be wrong but the phenomenom is real.