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Comment by x1798DE | Hacker News Reader

Social pressure is fine, the problem is that right now people leverage the law to force their culture of helicopter parenting on people not complying.

Frankly, I think it should go even further, it should be a civil offense to frivolously report child endangerment based only on the fact that children are unsupervised. Even with a protection bill, people will still report parents if there are no consequences, and not everyone on the enforcement side will get the message. Best to level the playing field so helicopter reporters will have some skin in the game.

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> it should be a civil offense to frivolously report child endangerment based only on the fact that children are unsupervised.

So when I see children alone and think they might be lost, what do I do? Trust the runaways who tell me that all is good? Creepily follow them until they reach their destination? What you call "frivolous reporting" in one area would be "criminal neglect" in another.

That's the whole idea of child protection services: Give them slightly more power to investigate than an ordinary citizen, so they can make an informed decision according to the law. After all, the reporting is not the problem, lack of standards/consensus what good parenting means en detail is.

> not everyone on the enforcement side will get the message

Lack of ongoing training in law enforcement should, IMHO, never be a reason not to change things for the better.

> So when I see children alone and think they might be lost, what do I do?

do they appear to be in distress? are they in some strange location away from civilization? quite possibly "nothing" is the correct answer, because "alone" doesn't mean much.

if you really have reason to think they're "lost", you could ask whether they are and if they need an assist in finding their way.

Maybe leave the kids alone?

Maybe mind your own business? Especially if you ask them and they tell you they are fine and to stop bothering them.

What one parent considers reasonable is not necessarily so. For example a neighbor in our town house community considers it reasonable to allow his 5-year old and 3-year old to play outside unsupervised, including "free-ranging" across busy streets and such.

On the parenting quality scale, there ought to be a huge gap between "good parenting" and "illegal parenting". Lots of crummy stuff should be in that gap.

3 is a little young but I was definitely playing outside and crossing streets by myself by the time I was 5.

So was I, but the streets weren't busy and there was plenty of grass and other open areas to play in. Hell, I used to bike and walk to school a couple miles away by myself starting in first grade.

This is a community that is basically all pavement next to the only major road into or out of the town that is always busy.

There are gradients in circumstances and what is reasonable, is my point. We ought not be too rigid nor naively permissive.

I agree with the concept of free-range parenting, and I see where you're coming from re. civil offenses for frivolous reports, but that carries the burden with it that perhaps some things that should be reported will go unreported. Isn't the reverse better?

It's not the reporting that's the problem, it's the overzealous prosecution of families that end up in government's crosshairs. I expect the rate of reporting won't change, but the abuses by local agencies will be abated somewhat.

> Isn't the reverse better?

No. Being a kid is comically safe these days, there is room to move in the other direction. It's also a matter of setting cultural norms. When CPS issues a civil citation for reporting someone for having stuffed animals in the crib, that tells people that worrying about such frivolities is not okay.

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