Every now and then, you read a story that makes you wonder if you’ve been living in a cave. If this piece in Teusday’s Baltimore Sun is any indication, selling devices to parents afraid of getting separated from their children has become a big business.
GPS tracking devices with wander alerts emit beeps or vibrations when a child strays too far. Digital watches and apparel have high-decibel alarms. And there’s the SafetyTat, a waterproof tattoo created by a Baltimore-area mom who wanted to attach her phone number to her child; a half-million have been sold.
Half a million??!? How did I manage to miss all the tatted-up tykes wandering the streets? The takeaway: Sex sells. Paranoia sells more. Two predictions: 1. Somewhere a school or district will pass a rule requiring students get tattoed before they go on field trips. 2. Someone will post a comment telling me it’s already been happening.
The paranoia business has been in overdrive for a while–as I’ve discovered since the birth of my daughter. When I was in second grade, my parents let me walk to my elementary school, which was about 9 extensive blocks from home. What I did was not at all extraordinary.
A friend of mind who lives in a well-heeled section of Arlington County, Virginia allowed her fourth-grader to walk three blocks to school, and other parents practically reported her to social services. According to data I’ve seen, child abductions have not risen substantially in the last 40 years. The coverage of such abductions in the 24-hour news cycle certainly has increased, however.
Comment by Claus — June 24, 2009 @ 4:35 pm
Haven’t heard of it happening yet, but a few year ago I taught in a residential summer enrichment program for high school kids, and the folks in charge were really hyper about the kids not being left unsupervised (I think perhaps parents had been assured that their kids would be within site of an adult at all times). When we read about some of the early versions of these tracking devices, the teaching staff decided it would be nice to have them so as not to have to be the tracking devices ourselves…
Comment by Rachel — June 24, 2009 @ 4:52 pm
Actually, child kidnappings by strangers are actually 1/3 of what they were in the early 1980’s even though there are a greater number of children today. There used to be roughly 300 cases per year and now there are roughly 100. Of course, even a single child abduction is one too many but the risk of it happening to any individual child is much lower now than two decades ago.
That said, I do not allow my 6 year old to walk down to the neighborhood convenience store unsupervised the way I did at the same age? The reason is that unlike when I was a kid when almost every house had a mom home in the afternoons (if not full-time), my neighborhood is a ghost town between 8 A.M. and 5 P.M. The only folks I see around during the day are a handful of nannies, and I don’t trust them to watch out for my child the way my mom could rely on her neighbors/fellow mothers to do with me.
Comment by Crimson Wife — June 24, 2009 @ 11:20 pm
Have you discovered Free Range Kids? Lenore Skenazy is speaking your language at http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/
Lots of great comments from around the world.
Comment by SwitchedOnMom — June 25, 2009 @ 7:14 am