Time to Play "Spot the Fallacies" - Parenting Edition

Steven Horwitz

Here's a fine example of the sort of nonsense that parents who don't think like economists will spew.  This contains at least one empirical fallacy and one example of bad reasoning.  Feel free to spot more.  It was a comment left on a blog post of Free Range Kids author Leonore Skenazy's at ParentDish.com.

“WHEN ARE PARENTS GOING TO LEARN THAT LEAVING YOUR CHILD WITH ANYONE OTHER THAN YOUR HUSBAND OR TRUSTED FAMILY MEMBER OR FRIEND, FOR EVEN ONE MINUTE IS PUTTING YOUR CHILD AT RISK. WAKE UP PARENTS!!! YOU CAN NEVER BE TOO PARANOID WHEN IT COMES TO THE SAFETY OF YOUR CHILDREN.”

My choices below the fold.  And you can hear my podcast on Skenazy's work here.

1.  Yes, you can be too paranoid when it comes to the safety of your children.  If your fear for their safety prevents them from learning the benefits of self-reliance, you are being "too paranoid" and engaging in "Corner Solution Parenting."

2. Your children are in FAR more danger of being kidnapped or sexually abused at the hands of husbands and "trusted" friends and relatives than they are from strangers, especially in public like the example Skenazy discusses.  It is the same point made hilariously by South Park in "Child Abduction Is Not Funny."

Comments

[mobile]

LOL. I am the husband and I can only get inside the circle of trust about half the time.

[BucketofFried]

I agree.

However, I think most folks are able to identify falacy #1 much better than falacy #2. This is how we get zoning laws whereby convicted sex offenders are zoned out of a city.

Meanwhile, no one is watching Uncle Chuck. If someone does not already have your trust, they cannot break your trust.

[Steve Horwitz]

Or, for us Who fans, Uncle Ernie.

[Michelle Vachris]

Or who can forget -- Uncle Buck?

[Richard Ebeling]

Since I've been considered "old fashioned" before, I mind as well give another example of it. That is, there were things that were far better in the "good old days."

When I was a kid, my friends and I would go out and "disappear" playing for hours -- in other surrounding neighborhoods, in neighboring construction sites (which, yes, drove my mother crazy when she found out about it -- "What do you mean you were crawling in a water drain? Don't you know the earth could cave in, and you'd die and never be found?")

We were told not to ""talk to strangers" and don't get into an car when you don't know the driver.

But things were pretty "laissez-faire," when I think back on it.

Now, parents seem to suffocate children with this type of paranoia.

For example, my grandchildren seem never to play with other children except on "play dates." What the hell is a "play date"?

Don't go out by yourself, don't play unless supervised with a parent watching, etc., etc.

Now, I'm not a "nut." Of course, the age of the child and the "maturity" that the parent thinks that the child has developed to act and be on their own matters.

And, yes, there are "bad" people out there. And it is every parent's nightmare to have their child abducted and abused (or killed.)

But there seems, often, to be an unwillingness to allow the child to grow into responsibility, and self-judgment in their actions.

It brings to mind a footnote in Hayek's "Constitution of Liberty," in which he mentions John Stuart Mill's statement that primitive peoples must only hope to have a benevolent dictator to watch over them until they are ready for self-rule. And Hayek, then, quotes Thomas Macaulay who replied that Mill's view was like the man in the old story who said he would not go into the water until he knew how to swim. How do you learn to swim if you do not start going into the water?

I wonder if part of this paranoia is not due to the fact that many parents have chosen not to have children until later in their life, and often, then, only one child.

This means that "marginal" value of the supply is equal to the entire stock of the "good." Thus, losing the "marginal" unit is to forgo the whole quantity of the kid "commodity." This comes closer to that Adam Smith trade-off between diamonds and water.

You can't live without water if the marginal unit is the whole supply of water, and to lose your one child is too dear a price to not be paranoid.

I know that these type of comparisons (of children being "like" a commodity) is shocking to many. But I wonder if there would be the same degree of paranoia over a kids "safety" if most couples had three or four children instead of one (or two), which was more common in the past.

This is not an appeal for government subsidies to have more children, on average, per family.

I am merely suggesting that our society has evolved in such a way that couples have been choosing to have smaller families and often later in life, and this may be one of the unintended consequences.

Richard Ebeling

[Current]

As I said before Agnostic is good on this.

Read his post on the demise of the babysitter...
http://akinokure.blogspot.com/

[liam]

nice comment Richard. I grew up in the 70's as an only child but to be fair I had a similar upbringing to yourself with much freedom. And indeed with my 5 year old its all "play dates"

[Susan WB]

@Richard

You need to check out the Free Range Kids movement. There are lots more of us "old fashioned" types hanging around... we're out numbered, but we're struggling to reassert the value of being a "kid out there." Join us at: http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/.

[Coach Outlet]

It is our common wish to seek sustained world peace and global economic prosperity.

[topills.com review]

Now, I'm not a "nut." Of course, the age of the child and the "maturity" that the parent thinks that the child has developed to act and be on their own matters.