Avoiding Kids: How Men Cope

[AngryAmish]

<http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB118903209653018615-lMyQjAxMDE3ODA5NjAwMzYyWj.html>

"These days, if Rian Romoli accidentally bumps into a child, he quickly raises his hands above his shoulders. "I don't want to give even the slightest indication that any inadvertent touching occurred," says Mr. Romoli, an economist in La Cañada Flintridge, Calif.

Ted Wallis, a doctor in Austin, Texas, recently came upon a lost child in tears in a mall. His first instinct was to help, but he feared people might consider him a predator. He walked away. "Being male," he explains, "I am guilty until proven innocent."

In San Diego, retiree Ralph Castro says he won't allow himself to be alone with a child -- even in an elevator.

Last month, I wrote about how our culture teaches children to fear men. Hundreds of men responded, many lamenting that they've now become fearful of children. They said they avert their eyes when kids are around, or think twice before holding even their own children's hands in public."

read the whole thing

[alarimer]

1. It's really sad

The abuse hysteria has completely run amok.

I personally think it's not nearly as prevalent as the media would have us think. But crime generally is not as bad as the media would have us think either.

[donsu]

3. it's MORE prevalent then the media would have us think!

more not less

child abuse is a crime that keeps on going to the next generation

[TheWraith]

9. Not exactly.

The media perpetuates a stereotype of child molesters as being these random men off the street, the scary sex offenders. In reality, children are most at risk from their own family members. And yes, the way the media presents it does give rise to the idea that it's everywhere, all the time, which isn't accurate.

[supernova]

2. I find that incredibly sad

99% of the grown men I knew when I was a kid were great to me. Hugged me, picked me up when I fell down, showed me not to be scared of things that made me nervous, gave me ice cream, told me stories, took me fishing, told me how to use a hammer and a nail, how to start and drive the tractor, and sometimes just let me sit there in a comfortable silence with them and think.


edit: I can relate though to the guy who said he felt like crying because nobody stopped by at halloween after he got divorced. IMO, that's really part of the married/single divide. There are lots of things that separate (artificially IMO) marrieds and singles and activities with kids are one of them. He'd be better off having or finding his own halloween party.

[Dr.Phool]

4. I know the feeling.

Where we used to live, neighborhood kids liked to come by and play with our 2 dogs. I wouldn't allow them in the yard if my wife wasn't there. Or a parent.

[LeftyMom]

5. This isn't new. My Dad was as single father, and a lot of kids couldn't come to my house.

Not because of any real concern, but a suspicion (often stated in front of myself and my sister) that a man raising girls alone must be up to no good somehow.

As a teen, I lived with my mother and late stepfather for a few years. When my mother was out of town caring for my dying grandmother, my stepfather would to stay with his father and leave me to run the house and get to school alone. Why? Because a grown man and a teenage girl couldn't possibly be in the house alone, the neighbors would talk, or worse.

[SoCalDem]

6. No one addresses the REAL problem.. Children roaming ALONE

Decades' worth of kids have pretty much raised themselves.. Gone are the neighborhoods full of Moms who all watched out for each other's kids.. those Moms are all toiling away at jobs that most of them hate.. why? so they can help pay for a house that only the dog & cat spend time in.. The little ones are in daycare and the older ones are latchkeyed kids who probably don;t want to hang aound an empty house for more time than it takes to drop their stuff off, and then go off on their own..

I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT THE WOMEN WHO ENJOY WORKING AND DO IT BECAUSE THEY LOVE IT.. THIS IS NOT AN INVITIATION TO START UP THE EVER-PRESENT FEUD BETWEEN "STAY-HOMES VS WORKS OUTSIDERS"..

It is only a comment about how many kids spend more and more time unsupervised, so they must be constantly warned about all the bad people (yes there ARE some really bad people out there), so many kids are fearful of adult contact of any kind..

Even police tell kids to look for a woman if the are ever lost...

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. Isn't the real problem just paranoia?

Both paranoia that your kids are going to get molested, and paranoia that people are going to think you're a sex offender?

Are kids really spending less time unsupervised then they were, say, forty years ago?

[donsu]

11. if you and they aren't viligent they WILL be abused

nt

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. Oh horseshit.

[LeftyMom]

20. Nonsense.

I ran around unsupervised all the damn time and was home alone overnights on a regular basis from an early age, and I was never molested or anything like that. OTOH, I know kids who had two hovering, attentive parents with jobs and incomes that allowed them to be around, who were abused by trusted relatives.

Lack of parental vigilance isn't the cause of child molestation. Kiddie diddling freaks cause child molestation.

[JCMach1]

22. sMOTHERing is just as bad for kids...

[SoCalDem]

12. The media has elevated paranoia to an artform..

and yes..I think there are more solo kids these days.. Many have cell phones and text each other, but I sure see a lot of solo kids roaming around..Mostly in the 10 & up age group..

Kids have a lot of "scheduled" activities, but neighborhood groups seem to be vanishing.. I guess it's just a sign of the times:(

[treestar]

33. My nephews are lucky - they've got a huge neighborhood group

They are always outside playing. They hate to come in.

The men in this to me are overstating the case, though. False accusations do no doubt occur, but those are not so common that they can't help a little kid.

[Jacobin]

7. Yep.

It has come to that.

[wakemeupwhenitsover]

8. Interesting article.

Child-welfare groups say these precautions minimize risks. But men's rights activists argue that our societal focus on "bad guys" has led to an overconfidence in women. (Children who die of physical abuse are more often victims of female perpetrators, usually mothers, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.)

Though groups that cater to the young are working harder to identify predators, they also ask that risks be kept in perspective. Big Brothers Big Sisters of America does criminal background checks on each of its 250,000 volunteers, and has social workers assess them. Since 1990, the group says, it has had fewer than 10 abuse allegations per year. More than 98% of the alleged abusers were male.

[Pithlet]

15. I think the focus on the bad guys has lead to disproportionate fear

It's another way our media has manufactured a fear. I think it's very sad that some men feel this way. Though I don't agree with overconfidence in women bit. I don't think the answer is to drag women down to the same level of suspicion, which is why I hope more people outside of the men's rights groups get involved. This is a problem that needs awareness and change. I think people need to be made aware of how much their assessment of risk is distorted by the coverage of events they see on the news. It's why more critical thinking skills need to be emphasized with our kids. I don't think all men feel this way, though. I do see more men taking on more roles that were traditional for women in child care. The assistant who works on my son's special needs bus is a man this year, for example. But, it is a very real problem.

[slampoet]

17. Thank you for posting that part.

Four things the media doesn't want you to know, because it doesn't sell newspapers.



1. Children who die of physical abuse are more often victims of female perpetrators. (proximity issue more than a moral one)

2. The VAST majority of of abusers are NOT strangers. (again proximity and access)

3. Missing children cases are at the same level as 50 years ago.

4. 1 of 3 rape victims is male.

[gollygee]

18. Where did you get that number from?

According to the US DOJ:

Female
victims accounted for 94% of all
completed rapes, 91% of all attempted
rapes, and 89% of all completed and
attempted sexual assaults, 1992-2000.

[slampoet]

26. Prison Rapes are not recorded by the DOJ.

The stat is something prisoner rights groups have been using for over a decade.

As for the child abduction stat, that is from a recent study "The Anthropology of Children" and was heard on a recent edition of the NPR show On Point.

[slampoet]

34. Yup. exactly what i thought. Everybody gets silent when you figure prison rape into it.

[Quantess]

19. Do you have anything to back up your assertions?

[bemildred]

13. What a pantload. nt

[zonkers]

16. This is sad.

[slackmaster]

21. I have several friends who are schoolteachers - They agree with Ralph Castro

They all have the same policy: Never allow yourself to be alone with any minor, ever, even for a moment.

[LibertyLover]

23. My husband is a stay-at-home dad to our daughter

and I have seen some of this first hand. Two years ago we were food shopping one Saturday morning. Kidlet, who was 3 at the time, had made it through the store, but when we got to the checkout line, she had had it. She was crying, trying to climb out of the cart seat to be held and just generally unhappy, so my husband picked her up and took her out to the car so that I could pay in peace. A few minutes later when I got to the car, I found him fuming. Apparently a couple had immediately assumed that since the child was crying and being carried by a male that she was being abducted (I should note that our daughter was adopted from China and does not look like her father or I). He put her in the back of the car so that she could lay down until I came and sat on the tailgate - of course being a kid she stopped crying and started to play peek-a-boo with her dad. But this couple who had seen her crying came up to the car and demanded that my husband prove that he was not abducting her. As he put it - I told them that people who are abducting children rarely walk with them in their arms or put them in the backdeck areas of cars to play while waiting for their mothers to come out of the store - they grab and dash and get the hell out of area quickly. The man still wasn't satisfied and said that he was calling the police. My husband told him to go right ahead and that when the police came and he produced a copy of her birth certificate (each of us carry a copy with us just in case) for the police to look at, he would ask them what charges he could press. The couple walked off in a huff. I came in just at the tail end of this. I saw them looking backwards as they walked off and give a start when the kidlet spotted me and yelled "mommy". They picked up their pace and stopped looking backwards.

[wakemeupwhenitsover]

31. Here's a bit describing your situation.

Sheesh. What have we become?

At Houston Intercontinental Airport, businessman Mitch Reifel was having a meal with his 5-year-old daughter when a policeman showed up to question him. A passerby had reported his interactions with the child seemed "suspicious."

[Missy Vixen]

24. We don't have kids

We love them, but I have told my husband that it's best if we both stay away. We were VERY unhappy with Oprah Winfrey's opinions re: "beware" of men without children who want to work with kids. Wasn't she abused by a relative?

DH used to volunteer at the local youth center; one of the parents was unhappy about a "childless" male being around their kids, so he stopped doing it. The most ironic thing to me? Those same parents can't be bothered to help themselves.

Julie

[porphyrian]

25. It's an overreaction, but a real one.

I'm always thinking about the possibility of being hit by lightening in an electrical storm, too. Sure, the chances are small as long as I'm not golfing or cleaning a pool, but there is a real danger. The same goes for this behavior. The severity of consequence for simply an accusation of guilt can ruin someone. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be vigilant in protecting our children or that we shouldn't punish offenders harshly - as with murder, you cannot undo this type of crime. I'm simply saying that I understand this reaction.

[mondo joe]

27. True. It's one reason I would never become a teacher. It's too high risk.

[LanternWaste]

28. Heck, I cross to the other side of the street...

Heck, I cross to the other side of the street if I see anyone that looks to be a teenager or younger. I've also taken a pass on hospital elevators when I see only kids. There's simply too many minefields to walk through these days, and if I have to go out of my way to avoid one, I will.

I used to be the world's best babysitter-- read to them, played kids-games that the parents brought over, etc., but these days I'll politely say, "No thanks..."

Sad? Absolutely. But not as sad as getting branded with the Scarlet Letter for the rest of my life. This is the world I live in, so this is the world I must adjust to.

[Arkansas Granny]

29. This is really sad. You have to find a way to strike a balance of

teaching children how to be safe without making them fear every man they come in contact with. It does seem that there are more reports of abuse today than when my children were young, but I think it's in the reporting and not a big increase in the incidents themselves. This was something that I was aware of and cautioned my kids about, but it wasn't a large determining factor in their activities or the people that they/we associated with.

[Cronus Protagonist]

30. I did that avoidance for 20 years but changed my mind recently

Two years ago I saw a mentor PSA on TV and responded to it. I joined a mentoring org and went through the background checks and all that. I've been a mentor for almost two years and I have to say the rewards outweigh the costs.

One of the costs I had to take on was that I might be wrongly accused of abuse, and I deal with that every time I'm with my mentee. I've noticed a pattern, however, that when I'm in a place for kids like Chuck-E-Cheeze or an arcade or an aquarium, etc., there is no suspicion. I'm just another guy there with his kid, even although I'm white as a candle and he's of Latin American descent.

When I'm anywhere that's not specifically for kids, like the theater or a concert or just in the car, sitting in the park or whatever, that's when people start to look funny at you. I think people who have and are around children are less easily freaked out than those who don't have any contact with children, possibly due to fear of them like I used to be. From my experience, I think they (non-kid-people) extrapolate their own fears onto you in some Jungian way. . . casting their shadow onto you.

For example, I was teaching my mentee to fix computers and had him bring his over to my place. When the building manager saw me with him and his computer he talked with my neighbors about his suspicions because "computers" and "kids" = molesting in his mind. He also knows that I'm divorced.

Now this is a super smart (alcoholic) man with a high IQ, but in his mind, I was surely an abuser. It took a lot of talk to put him straight but he's still suspicious, of computers AND me, apparently. There's little I can do about it and I'm not abandoning my mentee for an idiot with suspicions. I finally told the manager to "hurry and call 911 right away, before it's too late. Tell them everything you know".... I don't know if he did it, but I haven't heard from the cops, so I expect he's just spying on me right now to look for more suspicious activity like, say, maybe, the sound of an X-Box being used in my unit or something like that.

I try to keep a sense of humor about it because I know if anything happens, I'll be exonerated, but just the suspicions themselves can cause harm if not nipped in the bud. I look at it as the price I have to pay to have the privilege of being an important part of someone's life and it's so important and valuable to me that even with this price it's still way worth the effort.

I've had several mentors through my life and I loved them and appreciate them more and more as I get older, and there's something very appropriate in giving back and seeing how it is from the other side of the relationship.

If I haven't scared you off, if anyone here wants to be a mentor, go here http://mentoring.org and find something that suits you. It's worth the effort and you can make such a huge difference in one person's life.

[ulysses]

32. as a male teacher,

I'll say that it pays to be cautious (I don't drive kids home from school and don't test kids alone in a windowless or locked room), but putting your hands up like you're about to be frisked is a little overmuch.