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Comment by mdorazio | Hacker News Reader

If you want to argue against anecdote, it's best to provide actual facts instead of your own questions. For example, only 1 in 5 drowning deaths are children, and there's no reason to assume a significant portion of those are unsupervised [1]. Should we be helicopter-observing adults instead, or do their lives matter less? Traffic accidents are the largest cumulative killer of children [2]. If you want to go the route of "how many aren't here to tell us about it" you should really be arguing that parents should avoid putting kids in or near cars as much as possible.

Children die, and that sucks a lot, but if you start making emotional appeals based on preventing all possible child deaths you're going to end up espousing that we keep all kids in padded rooms until they're adults.

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/water-safety/wa...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_inj...

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"Drowning was the leading cause injury death for those 1 to 4 years of age." via http://www.cdc.gov/safechild/child_injury_data.html

Unfortunately they don't separate out whether the drowning happened in a swimming pool or a bathtub.

Comparing drowning deaths between adults and children is pointless. It is obvious that more adults die of any cause (except maybe SIDS). What would be more relevant is of all the dead children, how many die because of the lack of supervision.

I think the factual counter-argument is that child mortality has declined both from accidental drowning[1] and all causes[2]. I still think it is open to interpretation if helicopter parenting is causative or justified.

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/figures%5Cm6115a5f....

[2] http://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/63_fig...

Yes... and then the adults are the ones that will die because weren't exposed to small dangers nor did learn how to deal with it.

Being an adult isn't just completing 18 years (or any other arbitrary number). There's even discussion about when you really leave your childhood (teenagehood ?) behind. And I think it's when you acquire enough knowledge to avoid most risky situations while still enjoying life. And when you know that nobody will looking after you, because it came the time that you're the one that should be looking after others (children, elderly, spouse, you choose it).

>>For example, only 1 in 5 drowning deaths are children, and there's no reason to assume a significant portion of those are unsupervised

That's probably because people spend 5+ times as much time in adulthood than they do being children.

Go ahead and helicopter-observe adults if that is how you interpret that data. I will surely be vigilantly watching my young children when they are near water.

You could, you know, teach them how to swim? The reason so many children die of drowning is that so many don't know how to swim. MIT literally has a swim test requirement to graduate college for exactly this reason.

Absolutely, all kids should be taught to swim. But until they are able to, parents need to be extra mindful.

This. Seriously. It's completely different from letting older kids play unsupervised in the backyard. Toddlers easily drown in a garden pond, let alone a swimming pool. Leaving a toddler alone near a body of water, even for five minutes is asking for a catastrophe.

MIT has a swim test requirement for to 21-year-old students to graduate in order to prevent children from drowning? Am I parsing your sentence correctly?

It was originally instituted because a student drowned in the Charles river because he didn't know how to swim. Age might be different, but the majority of people who drown don't know how to swim. Teach your kids to swim, they are WAY less likely to drown.

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