TBD on Ning
Fear, are you consumed by it?
What if you wanted your child to be kidnapped by a stranger and held overnight? How long would you have to leave him or her outside and unattended for that to actually happen? When journalist and author Lenore Skenazy asked people to take a guess, the answers showed a country increasingly, and irrationally, consumed by fear.
“I’m not saying there is no danger in the world, but we live in really safe times, and statistically they are as safe as they were in 1970,” she says. Noting that crime rates climbed in the 70s and 80s before falling in the 1990s, she points out that “if you were outside as a kid anytime in the 70s and 80s, your kids are safer – not just safe, but safer - than you were.” The chance of any child being abducted and killed by a stranger is roughly one in 1.5 million (the odds vary slightly depending on the number of abductions per year relative to the number of children).
And yet, whenever she points this out she is constantly reminded “but what if that one is yours?” It’s as if people cannot imagine being part of the 1,499,999,” she says. “They only see the one – they only see the one on the milk carton, they see one on TV, and they see the one sitting in front of themselves with the cutesy eyes, and they don’t want it to be them.”
It was odd; instead of real numbers rescuing parents from the false sense risk, they actually worked against rational thinking. No matter how big the denominator, people still focused on the number one – which, naturally, stood for their child.
Perhaps the problem needed to be approached from a different angle, she thought. What if you actually wanted your child to be kidnapped by a stranger and held overnight? How long would you have to leave him outside, and unattended for that to be likely to happen? When she asked people to take a guess, the most she ever heard was three months. Some people ventured a day, an hour, and even - implausibly - ten minutes.
Skenazy turned to Warwick Cairns, the British author of “About the Size of It: The Common Sense Approach to Measuring Things” and “How to Live Dangerously” (“a prolonged, statistically-based plea to stop living in our beige world of risk-minimalization,” as the Times of London put it).
Cairns, who did graduate work in English literature at Yale with legendary critic Harold Bloom and, among a series of diverting segues to becoming a champion of numerical thinking, dug wells on a Sioux reservation in South Dakota, had calculated these very odds for British children. It would be easy to run the numbers for American kids.
The answer to Skenazy’s question was… 750,000 years. By reframing the way the risk was framed, she took the focus away from one, and placed it on what the chance was in real time – and 750,000 years is a far more arresting and reassuring number than one in 1.5 million.
http://stats.org/stories/2009/land_free_home_scared_sept2_09.html
“I’m not saying there is no danger in the world, but we live in really safe times, and statistically they are as safe as they were in 1970,” she says. Noting that crime rates climbed in the 70s and 80s before falling in the 1990s, she points out that “if you were outside as a kid anytime in the 70s and 80s, your kids are safer – not just safe, but safer - than you were.” The chance of any child being abducted and killed by a stranger is roughly one in 1.5 million (the odds vary slightly depending on the number of abductions per year relative to the number of children).
And yet, whenever she points this out she is constantly reminded “but what if that one is yours?” It’s as if people cannot imagine being part of the 1,499,999,” she says. “They only see the one – they only see the one on the milk carton, they see one on TV, and they see the one sitting in front of themselves with the cutesy eyes, and they don’t want it to be them.”
It was odd; instead of real numbers rescuing parents from the false sense risk, they actually worked against rational thinking. No matter how big the denominator, people still focused on the number one – which, naturally, stood for their child.
Perhaps the problem needed to be approached from a different angle, she thought. What if you actually wanted your child to be kidnapped by a stranger and held overnight? How long would you have to leave him outside, and unattended for that to be likely to happen? When she asked people to take a guess, the most she ever heard was three months. Some people ventured a day, an hour, and even - implausibly - ten minutes.
Skenazy turned to Warwick Cairns, the British author of “About the Size of It: The Common Sense Approach to Measuring Things” and “How to Live Dangerously” (“a prolonged, statistically-based plea to stop living in our beige world of risk-minimalization,” as the Times of London put it).
Cairns, who did graduate work in English literature at Yale with legendary critic Harold Bloom and, among a series of diverting segues to becoming a champion of numerical thinking, dug wells on a Sioux reservation in South Dakota, had calculated these very odds for British children. It would be easy to run the numbers for American kids.
The answer to Skenazy’s question was… 750,000 years. By reframing the way the risk was framed, she took the focus away from one, and placed it on what the chance was in real time – and 750,000 years is a far more arresting and reassuring number than one in 1.5 million.
http://stats.org/stories/2009/land_free_home_scared_sept2_09.html
Views: 23
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jack Z on
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Damn it Orianb, you just dashed my hopes. I can't wait 750,000 years to get rid of my 26 year old stepson. How long would it take if I paid someone to kidnap him ? ...........
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Permalink Reply by Whiny Old Bastard on
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I think that it would take a big stack of Franklins to get rid of something like that.
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I also see a lot of irrational fear. Although I think when it comes to parenting the fear and over protection is instinct kicking in. "Maybe" more so with women, being hardwired to nurture and protect their babies. While men traditionally are protective of their little girls, but push their sons, sometimes even in to harms way as a passage to masculine maturity......... The media has probably helped promote fear, by continually presenting the horriffic things in life, even building up the one in a million scenario to seem as if it is waiting on our doorsteps.......
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Permalink Reply by darroll on
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If I put one of my kids outside,
The neighbors would return him/her to me.
Not a good area to live in.
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750,000 years? that sounded crazy to me so I began to scour the internet for anyone who has disputed that number.
So far I've come up empty handed. There is a ton of stuff reporting on Skenazy and her book and website, but not a single person who says the statistic is wrong.
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Permalink Reply by Slayer Dug on
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Orian, upon reading this, I couldn't help but want to share this email from a friend of mine in Nova Scotia.
It's a tad bit wordy but it's very well worth the read.
Enjoy.
Douglas
To Those of You Born
1930 - 1979,
At the end of this email is a quote of the month by Jay Leno. If you don't read anything else, please
Read what he said.
Very well stated, Mr. Leno.
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE
1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's!!
F irst, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can and didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-base paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps not helmets on our heads.
As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes
Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one actually died from this.
We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And, we weren't overweight. WHY?
Because we were always outside playing...that's why!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And, we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times,we learned to solve the problem.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's and X-boxes. There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no person al computers, no Internet and no chat rooms
WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.
Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
These Generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever.
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
If YOU are one of them? CONGRATULATIONS!
You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the gov ernment regulated so much of our lives for our own good.
While you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave and lucky their parents were.
Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it ?
~
The quote of the month is by Jay Leno:
'With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?'
For those that prefer to think that God is not watching over us...go ahead and delete this.
For the rest of us...pass this on
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It's a miracle that I ever made it to to adulthood. My parents never knew where I was or what I was doing.
By todays gauge for raising children, I should never have made it to third grade.
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Blattenbauer on
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It appears to me that there is a lot of fear in our country right now, probably due to the downturn in the economy with high unemployment numbers, foreclosures, loss of health care. Of course the Right Wing Fringe are responsible for spreading a lot of the fear with their talk of death panels, revolution, Hitler, Communist, Socialist, Fascist, Medicare cuts, etc. I believe they are purposely spreading fear thinking that will help change the makeup of the 2010 Congressional numbers for their political party.
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Permalink Reply by blondie 11 on
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We did not have street lights to come on----it got dark in the country. We were raised with respect for ourselves and for our elders. Respect a forgotton word today. Mom and Dad knew we were OK and would be home in time for supper. A meal we all sal down and ate together. kidnap, no way, not where I grew up.
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