Is their fear really so unreasonable? Although the odds may be strongly against their child ever being kidnapped, the odds are also against most children being hit by a car while riding a bike, yet responsible parents still make their children wear bike helmets. It is part of the inherent role of parenting, genetically programmed and reinforced by emotional ties, to do whatever is necessary to see that the next generation successfully survives childhood. Just because there is only a slight chance of my children getting struck by lightning doesn't mean that I let them shelter under oaks during thunderstorms.
If you have ever lived in a town where there has been a unsolved child abduction, the worst part is in the waiting and the hope. The more time that goes by the less chance there is of finding the child alive, but the parents still don't know, won't ever know until the body is found.
In my town there were two paperboy abductions in the seventies that were never solved. The parents are still investigating leads in these cases, paying money to probable con artists who claim to know or even be the long lost sons, painting lurid stories of child sex rings and worse. The risk may be minimal, but the damage lasts forever, not only for the family, but the entire community.
Although the odds are against it, these things do happen, they are not fictional or imaginary events springing solely from the fearful minds of the parents. The proper parental thought process is that a terrible thing has happened to other people's children: how can I prevent it from happening to mine?
Are these parents going overboard? I don't feel like I'm in a position to judge them, being a parent myself, sharing their concerns, and being a product of a community where children have been abducted and never, ever found. It would be my worst nightmare as a parent, even worse than having my children killed, to have them abducted and never know their fate, never know if somewhere they were alive, praying for rescue, crying for their parents. Every parent who reads the newspaper is trying to stave off this horror in some way or another.
As for those who believe the risk of abduction is so minimal that precautions such as an imbedded tracer chip border on the ridiculous, I wonder if they also stand under tall trees during lightning storms because the risk of lightning strike is so small....
If you have ever lived in a town where there has been a unsolved child abduction, the worst part is in the waiting and the hope. The more time that goes by the less chance there is of finding the child alive, but the parents still don't know, won't ever know until the body is found.
In my town there were two paperboy abductions in the seventies that were never solved. The parents are still investigating leads in these cases, paying money to probable con artists who claim to know or even be the long lost sons, painting lurid stories of child sex rings and worse. The risk may be minimal, but the damage lasts forever, not only for the family, but the entire community.
Although the odds are against it, these things do happen, they are not fictional or imaginary events springing solely from the fearful minds of the parents. The proper parental thought process is that a terrible thing has happened to other people's children: how can I prevent it from happening to mine?
Are these parents going overboard? I don't feel like I'm in a position to judge them, being a parent myself, sharing their concerns, and being a product of a community where children have been abducted and never, ever found. It would be my worst nightmare as a parent, even worse than having my children killed, to have them abducted and never know their fate, never know if somewhere they were alive, praying for rescue, crying for their parents. Every parent who reads the newspaper is trying to stave off this horror in some way or another.
As for those who believe the risk of abduction is so minimal that precautions such as an imbedded tracer chip border on the ridiculous, I wonder if they also stand under tall trees during lightning storms because the risk of lightning strike is so small....