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Comment by reificator | Hacker News Reader

In North America any adult that is not the parent is a potential kidnapping rapist, doubly so if they're male.

In Canada, child services were called on a mother of three for letting her children play outside in their fenced backyard while watching from the window.[1]

Humans aren't equipped to really comprehend a 24-hour global news cycle. Things that are common and deadly are deemphasized and things that are rare are raised to panic inducing levels of fear. Dangers to children get extra attention.

[1]: https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/manitoba-cfs-will-not-e...

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>In North America any adult that is not the parent is a potential kidnapping rapist

But the adults at the sleepover are the same as the adults that watch the kids during daytime :/

>In Canada, child services were called on a mother of three for letting her children play outside in their fenced backyard while watching from the window.

When I played in the sandbox my father could not see me from the house. Just our dog, and the dog would watch me :) So if he saw the dog he know I was ok.

We don't deserve dogs.

> In Canada, child services were called on a mother of three for letting her children play outside in their fenced backyard while watching from the window.

If I did not know any better, I would be tempted to read that as satire. Ensuring a child's safety is obviously one of the most important duties of a parent, but there is such a thing as common sense.

When I was a child (German, in case it matters, born in 1980), we were given a lot of freedom to go where we wanted (within reasonable limits, of course), as long as we followed a few simple rules. Mostly, don't go alone, tell the parents where you go and when you will be back. So there was always a certain degree of parental oversight/control, but it did not really feel that way. In hindsight, I think it was important that these rules were applied fairly. Breaking them usually meant we got grounded, but as long as we kept our part of the bargain, we enjoyed a lot of freedom. At least after we learned about safety in traffic, which both my parents and the elementary school spent a lot of time on.

> In North America any adult that is not the parent is a potential kidnapping rapist

That suspicion is there against many single dads too.

This is true elsewhere too though. There have been a number of cases in NL, one involving a day care employee having raped over 80 children (some infants); after that a huge amount of male day care employees were fired. Similar story with a swimming instructor.

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