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Fiat justitia ruat caelum

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 01:56:25 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Fuentes is funny because he’s just a funny guy.




What is that saying about taste?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I still don't really get what a groyper is other than a Fuentes fan.  And Fuentes is a Mexican who hates Jewish people and women but claims he is not gay despite finding women disgusting.  And people think he's funny because he says stupid gross things confidently and without shame.  Like a low-production-value Nazi Colbert Report.


Are many of his fans trans?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is that a... Trans Groyper?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"That's so weird that you would ask that.  Why do we have a secret ballot if we're just supposed to tell everyone who we voted for?"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Unfortunately, you can take a video and clip out the part where you acted deranged. Then make the cops punching back go viral to your bubble.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Elsewhere in the thread I wrote:




If you are agreeable and follow along with the inane suggestions, it's unlikely your kids will be taken away. You may waste time and money on it, but the worst will likely not happen.




I think we probably agree on more than you think, in the sense that most parents just get a warning, deal with it, and move on.


My issue is more that we have to follow the inane suggestions in the first place.  Because if you stand your ground and say, "No, my six year old can play in my fenced backyard on his own while I stay in the house, I will not follow along with your weird brand new rule that you just made up that this is somehow neglect," then you do face more and more push back in the form of lawyer fees, repeated visits, and eventually your kids being taken away.


In the case of a black person being stopped for shoplifting by a jerk cop, you can look at that and say, "yeah, shoplifting is bad.  I hate having to ask an attendant to unlock the deodorant."  The person who is shoplifting should stop.  If they complain about it I have little sympathy.


In the case where a parent is just treating their kid normally, I can't look at that as a reasonable request to stop.  Just asking that the parents change their behavior here is wrong.  Even if most parents will cow under the pressure, and most kids wont get taken away, it's wrong.


And this is especially relevant in the discussion of whether it is harder to have kids these days.  While we have made everything else more convenient, we have made having kids less convenient.  That hurts society as a whole.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you are agreeable and follow along with the inane suggestions, it's unlikely your kids will be taken away.  You may waste time and money on it, but the worst will likely not happen.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But why do we as society punish parents for letting their kid walk to the grocery store? Why does something that benign require a visit from CPS in the first place?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My husband was a latchkey kid. By the time he was 6 he was talking care of his baby sisters while his parents worked. Everyone knew that this was happening. His teachers knew he was home alone with three younger kids after school got out.  No one raised an eyebrow at it. It was normal. Having a cell phone wouldn't have changed it as long as everyone agreed that this was just part of life.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What came first, the chicken or the egg?  Were structured activities a way to occupy a child who could no longer legally be left to his own devices?


We assume it's college-track related, but college admissions don't ask about elementary-age activities and most reasonably healthy kids can start a sport in the sixth grade and make Varsity in High School, there's not much advantage to most sports to start at age 4.  Music lessons and certain sports on the edges are the outlier here (ballet and gymnastics for example.)  But then again, my brother started band as a teenager, taught himself the piano, and away he went.  Not every pianist needs to start at the age of 2.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Long Arm of the State and Parenting


@ControlsFreak challenged me on my assumption that society has changed to the extent that the average parent faced real consequences if they treated their children the way every child was treated even 40 years ago, in the dark days of the 1980s.


Immediately I fell into personal anecdote, “I’ve been pressured by other women to supervise my children doing tasks I was able to do alone at the same age.”  “All the parks have signs that children under 12 need to be supervised.”  I even gave a personal anecdote about an Amtrak train that made it seem like I am disturbingly misremembering things or a short-lived policy was walked back.   This gave me pause.
So I did the more rational thing and asked, what kind of data can I find on this?


Looking around, I found a study that analyzed how many kids had parental rights terminated in the year 2000 compared to now. Their data only goes to 2016, but it does present a trend:




The cumulative prevalence of having parental rights terminated for both parents was 0.7% in 2000. It then increased to just under 1.0% in 2007 before decreasing between 2007 and 2012, ultimately falling to 0.9%. Starting in around 2012, the rate of the termination of parental rights started to accelerate, reaching a high of around 1.1% by the end of the study period in 2016. This 0.4% increase is equivalent to a 60% increase from 2010 to 2016.




There is a trend of more children being taken away from their parents, which is what I expect.


For every parent that has a child removed, there will be more that are investigated.  What does that number look like?




Now, the claim in the title: Does CPS investigate one out of every three American children? The answer to this one is not available directly in the primary source reports and the underlying data is only available after an application for research use, so we’ll have to trust a group of researchers at the Washington University school of public health. They download and de-duplicate the master data files from 2003-2014 and confirm that 37% of American children are the subject of at least one screened-in referral to CPS from ages 0-18. We can sanity check this against the numbers we saw above: Around 2.5% of children are the subject of a screened-in referral each year. If about 2 percentage points of those are first-time subjects each year, then in 18 years you’ve investigated 36% of American children. There are extra complications when considering the children entering and leaving the cohort each year, but the 37% number estimated by these researchers makes sense given what we know from the CPS reports.




1/3 of American children are investigated by the time they are 18.  That sounds like a ridiculous number.  Are American parents just becoming disturbingly vicious and attacking their kids more than in the past?




Additionally, the most common type of maltreatment found by CPS is neglect. 64% of substantiated victims are victims of neglect only and most of these neglect cases are specifically about lack of sufficient supervision rather than lack of access to food or clothing.




No.  Basically my intuition - the intuition of most parents - is correct.  Insufficiently supervising your child will get you a visit from CPS and your child potentially removed.  The data bears that out.


Now I am curious.   Denizens of the Motte: How many of you see children between the ages of 8-12 out and about without a parent in your day-to-day life?  How does that compare with the freedom you or your parents had when they were children (if they were born before 1990?)


How many of you were allowed to do simple things, like run to grab an item at the grocery store by yourself, before you were 10?  How old were you when you first got to buddy up with a similar age child and split off from your family at an county fair or water park?  If you are a parent now, what age would you consider this safe to allow your child to do?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am not in a Blue State. I am not in an urban core.  I live in a red town with a population of 10,000 people.


Also, you seem to be talking about 13 year olds.  I'm talking about 8 year olds.  What are 8 year olds allowed to do where you live?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Piecing together what I can find:


Apparently the Department of War has been testing GPS jamming and directed energy systems in a base near El Paso.  The FAA got spooked about how it is impacting instruments for aircraft and after a test (which involved hitting a birthday balloon with a laser) they pushed on the DOW to stop it.  DOW would not stop it and the FAA shut down airspace to show how serious they were.  When Trump woke up in the morning and learned about it, he told them to knock it off and airspace restrictions are lifted now.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I guess you will not believe me, but in 2023 it was the case that I was kept from buying Amtrak tickets without as many adults as there are kids. Maybe it was a COVID rule. You have to admit, it would be weirdly specific for me to just make it up.


Where do you live that you see kids unattended all the time? I have never seen that since 2010 or so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah.  I moved from Washington State to Indiana with four young kids.  While contemplating the move, I considered that it might be easier for me and the kids to get a room on a train, instead of a 5 day car ride with a nursing baby.  I ended up having to do the 5 day drive, mapping out every playground with a public restroom along the highway and stopping every 2 hours to nurse the baby.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The threat is there.  Even if only 1% of parents who leaves a kid unattended they get CPS called on them, it creates a chilling effect.


All parks have signs saying something like, "Kids under 12 need adult supervision."  Amtrak will not let you buy train tickets for kids unless you have one adult per kid.  I have four kids, so I can't take my family on an Amtrak trip until they are teenagers.


The culture is different.  The rules and expectations are different.  You have to admit that much.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I homeschool one of my daughters who still receives speech services from the Public School.  She is 8 years old.


On the days where my daughter has speech therapy, my husband drops off the boys at their preschool and I drive my daughter to speech therapy.  One day, my husband had to take a car to be maintained, and I figured I would drop off my daughter at speech and then take the boys to school, then come back to pick up my daughter.


I watched my daughter go into the school building, made sure she made it to the office where two secretaries are, then I started driving my boys to their school.


I hadn't left the parking lot before the school office ladies called.  They were freaked out.  "Where are you, why is your daughter here alone?  You need to be here now, she cannot be in the waiting room without you."  I told them it was snowing and I had trouble finding parking (both true).  They told me, "OK, I will watch her to make sure she is SUPERVISED but I need you here right now."


By 8 years old I was left home alone for a few hours at a time.  Waiting in the school office where there is a waiting room with couches, books, and a fish tank, two secretaries and a nurse wouldn't have been something to think twice over.   My mom waited in the car to nurse my baby brother and had me walk into McDonalds to purchase a cheeseburger by the time I was five.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Does anyone have any theories with the US shutting down airspace with no warning over El Paso, Texas?  And similarly over the southern New Mexico border?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is true, but unless you are younger than me, your grandparents had some luxuries that would cost us our left arms to get.  They were able to send their kids ages 5 and up out to play with other kids.  If they were townies, these children were welcome or at least tolerated on public grounds, had safe parks to play in, and did not require adult supervision. If they lived in the country, there might not be so many neighbor kids, but the natural world made up for it - kids could make forts out of logs and spend all day observing nature.


If you tried that today, you would have CPS called on you.  Or you'd be violating some nature preservation statutes. You could be criminally charged with child endangerment.  If you can afford it, you can hire a nanny who can take your kids to be supervised at a park. Otherwise, there is a huge time cost that was transferred out of thin air onto the average parent sometime in the past forty years.  I don't know what caused the change in attitude.  Stranger danger, white flight, vaccines made the possibility of losing even a single kid unthinkable whereas before it was unavoidable?  I don't know. But working parents spend twice as much time with their kids than stay-at-home parents did fifty years ago.


We made everything else faster and more convenient while simultaneously we made kids more laborious.