Came across this article discussing a recent interesting study on a topic relevant here.
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/20...for-putting-kids-at-perceived-but-unreal-risk
Even though violent crimes have decreased since the 1970's, our society is much stricter, and judgmental, about leaving children unsupervised and allowing them to play independently. The public today tends to judge parents harshly, so a study was conducted to see if the basis for this judgment is moral, not risk based.
The researchers then manipulated the circumstances under which the children in the vignettes were left alone. Those included the parent being injured in a tragic accident, something work related, to do some volunteering, relaxing, or to meet a lover.
The surprising result was that people's perception of the danger to the child varied according to the circumstances under which the child was left unattended. People felt the child was at greater risk of harm if the child was left unattended to meet a lover than if they were unattended unintentionally.
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/20...for-putting-kids-at-perceived-but-unreal-risk
Even though violent crimes have decreased since the 1970's, our society is much stricter, and judgmental, about leaving children unsupervised and allowing them to play independently. The public today tends to judge parents harshly, so a study was conducted to see if the basis for this judgment is moral, not risk based.
To get at this question experimentally, Thomas and her collaborators created a series of vignettes in which a parent left a child unattended for some period of time, and participants indicated the risk of harm to the child during that period. For example, in one vignette, a 10-month-old was left alone for 15 minutes, asleep in the car in a cool, underground parking garage. In another vignette, an 8-year-old was left for an hour at a Starbucks, one block away from her parent's location.
The researchers then manipulated the circumstances under which the children in the vignettes were left alone. Those included the parent being injured in a tragic accident, something work related, to do some volunteering, relaxing, or to meet a lover.
The surprising result was that people's perception of the danger to the child varied according to the circumstances under which the child was left unattended. People felt the child was at greater risk of harm if the child was left unattended to meet a lover than if they were unattended unintentionally.
Additional analyses suggested that it was indeed participants' judgment of the parent's immorality that drove up their assessments of risk. The authors sum up their findings like this: "People don't only think that leaving children alone is dangerous and therefore immoral. They also think it is immoral and therefore dangerous."