Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Are we trying to keep kids safe from the wrong things?

My darling soon-to-be-a-father husband sent me a link to this NYTimes article recently.

Here were the quotes he wanted to make sure I read:

"The five things most likely to cause injury to children up to age 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are: car accidents, homicide (usually at the hands of someone they know), child abuse, suicide or drowning. And what are the five things that parents are most worried about (according to surveys by the Mayo Clinic)? Kidnapping, school snipers, terrorists, dangerous strangers and drugs."

"“The least safe thing you can do with your child, statistically, is drive them somewhere,” said Lenore Skenazy, author of “Free-Range Kids,”"
 

2 comments:

SFSairy said...

Thanks for sharing...makes me think. : )

Dave said...

Actually I'm not so sure about that second quote -- driving is least safe in terms of total number of injuries, but if you use a different metric such as injuries per unit of time then there must be more dangerous things. If kids spent as much time in the pool as they do in the car, drowning would probably be higher on the list.