Sarah Winter Blog #1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/fashion/13kids.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Why%20she%20can't%20walk%20to%20school&st=cse



This article addresses the topic of “Risk” as discussed in our Innes text. This article discusses the issue of child abduction. Until recently it was very common for most school children to walk by themselves to the bus stop on the daily bases. But in the past few decades there have been a number of children that have been abducted while walking to the bus stop. Because of this recent moral panic of parents afraid to let their children walk to the bus, parents more and more do not let their children engage in walking to the bus stop on their own. “In 1969, 41 percent of children either walked or biked to school; by 2001, only 13 percent still did. “Parents in this article discussed how even if they lived less then two blocks from a school they feel the urge to drive their children to school.
Across middle class society it has become a standard norm not to let your children walk to the bus because of this fear. What this has to do with social control is that people live in fear of the outside world so badly that they take minimum risks throughout their lives to reduce danger. Though in most middle class societies it is probably much
Safer to walk to the bus in some urban areas where kids are forced to walk to the bus because some parents maybe work or are gone by the time they have to walk to the bus. It just shows how people can react to moral panics.