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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 26, 2026

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Teens babysitting is now illegal in Florida. Well, not technically, but practically so. A mother has been charged for leaving her 14 year old to watch her other kids (9, 11, 12) for a few days while she was on a work trip. She hired an adult babysitter to check on them twice a day too.

The youngest accidentally dropped a weight while working out, the type of accudent that can easily occur under adult supervision, they called 911 to get him medical help, and the cops proceeded to arrest the mom upon arriving back home. For the children's safety, they have now been placed with the father who is facing domestic abuse charges and has a restraining order against him, a very safe place indeed.

Here's another summary real quick of the important parts https://x.com/niah_x03/status/2115452369043652617

For those who refuse to read the articles about this case. She had a babysitter coming in the mornings to check in, make lunches, get them off to school, and prep dinner for them. All the 14 year old had to do was help them get inside after school. Microwave dinner. Get kids in bed and text mom updates. This was a work trip and they threatened to fire her if she did not go. The father has abuse charges and the police handed him their kids on top of arresting her.

I've talked about this topic before here on themotte, how children and teens are now treated as completely incapable babies and this will be enforced not just socially but through the law. If it's not immediately clear I think this is ridiculous. When I was a teen, my older sister (15) was babysitting other people's kids. There's even a popular book story from the 80s about young teens and tweens (yes, some were 12!) in middle school babysitting children as part of the babysitters club. And it's not just fiction, people did that in real life. For the younger folk here, this hysteria about leaving a teenager to watch over younger children as neglect is very new and very modern.

I've talked before about how my parents and grandparents would play all around the neighborhood in their own childhood, and yet now even walking in a gated community is deemed too dangerous. At this point I can't even let my own children have independence even if I wanted to (which I do), they literally are not allowed to grow as normal human beings used to because the cops might show up cause they're out on the front yard!

It is just another part of the helicopter parent hysteria as I've talked about before as well. There are young adults now in college who need their parents to walk them through basic life, come visit to do the laundry, and clean for them! We need less "parenting" and more freedom so kids can actually be mature instead of still crying for their mommies in college! Tweens now aren't even allowed to go to another aisle in the grocery store

I once had a great 25-26 year old intern recent graduate who still had her mother trying to butt in once when something happened at my work. She's lucky I'm very forgiving and understanding of her situation and I know that she was embarrassed about it too (I even helped her find a better living situation) but it's another example of how a lot of parents are so crazy nowadays like that!

And again, it's legally enforced now. It's so legally enforced that they'll take your kids away and give them to an abuser with a restraining order! Is this really the society we're stuck with now, where our children are increasingly coddled in their teens, sometimes into their 20s and 30s, never expected to grow up or learn responsibility?

I've talked about this topic before here on themotte, how children and teens are now treated as completely incapable babies

Yes, there was hysteria in the 1980s about children getting randomly kidnapped and raped to death or whatever. The problem here is the same problem as it is for mass shootings, in that the perpetrators were white and suburban- it's one of the only crimes that can actually challenge the Real Housewives of Whereverthefuck.

The people complaining about "diversity" or "lack of social cohesion" are missing the point; it is precisely because these crimes are white-on-white that the hysteria is generated. Even progressives blame [destructive outgroup doing destructive outgroup things] for drugs and random murder (the rate goes up when they're in charge, therefore their claims they care are lies).

You can't blame the outgroup for this. Now, you could just set your outgroup to "men", which has been the definition of progressivism for the last 40 years as a consequence (and... arguably the root cause of it in large degree: "men will come abduct your toddler, set them on fire, and rape the corpse because they are men" is something even the more liberal women won't directly defend). In fact, there's such a demand for "men raping flaming toddlers" that there are arguably more fabrications of this than there are actual cases (when we abduct children ourselves, we do so with the justification explicitly being "we're saving you from raping flaming toddler men- they could have got to you first, you know", even if we literally deliver them to a man who is more likely than baseline to be the kind of man who rapes flaming toddlers, as happened in this case!)

But the sacrifice that outgrouping cost- hundreds of millions of child life-years- has not only failed to reduce the base rate of these crimes, it has only made them worse. Hysteria is at an all-time high, the cost of hysteria is at an all-time high, and yet, flaming toddler rape continues.

Every day, a new case- usually a mass shooting (abduction is more a serial thing and the targets know better; and humorously, "every tweenaged boy is issued a gun" is something I'd honestly consider, and not actually that radical given this was basically normal even in urban areas 40 years ago... started to become less normal coincident with the Abduction Panic, interestingly enough).


It's actually shocking to me how similar the two are; abductors tend to admit to themselves they're 'really bad people', just like mass shooters do, and follow a very stereotypical script because that is how they think it looks like. Mass shooters obsess over how they're going to be Just Like Columbine, and would-be abductors obsess over how they're going to be Just Like the Pedophile Stereotype, complete with 'lost dog'/'want some candy'/'want a ride', even though every human being (once they're old enough to understand the meme, so 6-7) will never let that happen to them for the same reason no passenger aircraft will ever be hijacked from the cabin again.

Which is all you actually needed to deal with the problem. Men and women together, if they were in any condition to co-operate, should have co-ordinated that; and in areas where child protection laws prioritize children over hysterical Karens, they do. There's something uniquely wrong with New World Western white men, and it has to be an HBD thing. Their drive when it gets tough is to just leave, but they can't leave any more, and they must evolve.

I strongly suspect a common cause. The same was true of Satanists more generally, which flaming toddler rapists in the '80s tended to be really into for... some reason (which is why it was such a big joke in the '90s/early '00s); mass shootings are now more common simply because that's the standard "my mind tells me that I am bad, and so now I must do a bad thing" script. Serial killers in the '70s and before were like that too, if you recall- psychologists were absolutely obsessed with why they work that way, they were standard stock antagonists for cop movies (as an extension of the western, itself a symbol of the quest for capital-j Justice- might have prolonged the trend for a while until CSI killed it dead), it was a whole thing.


but it's another example of how a lot of parents are so crazy nowadays like that!

Something's wrong with the kids, too. No child should tolerate that, and yet, something they should have grown out of in their teens persists into their twenties and beyond.

Part of that is that, being completely dominated by women, they naturally inherit that hysteria (even the men) and take some time in the real world to grow out of that, but conveniently, the real world has become less real and more out of reach for anyone under 40 or so (partially as a result of that outlook- you cannot develop as a human being if you're stuck hiding under the bed fearing flaming toddler rape). Depression is a valid response to this lack of stimulus; where stimulus doesn't exist, it must be manufactured or the attention dial turned up so hard that you need stimulants to calm you the fuck down. (I believe widespread nicotine use in the 20th century eased this transition; replaced by dextroamphetamine- smoking is a symbol of being cool, calm, and collected, and considering what stimulants do to an ADHD sufferer...)


At this point I can't even let my own children have independence even if I wanted to (which I do), they literally are not allowed to grow as normal human beings used to because the cops might show up cause they're out on the front yard!

You can run, but you can't hide. Your wife needs to fight that law (and if she isn't, she's in the wrong), and you need to back her up (and if you don't, you're in the wrong). That's it.

And yes, one of the ways that you can fight is to run to a place where protections are stronger, but if the war comes to them you're going to have to help them fight it, or you're just freeloading. But you already know that.

The people complaining about "diversity" or "lack of social cohesion" are missing the point; it is precisely because these crimes are white-on-white that the hysteria is generated.

Yeah as I pointed out in another comment race and immigration are irrational explanations for one simple reason, almost every crime against a child is by someone the child is related to or already knows well and therefore is almost always someone of the same race.

There are just not hordes of minority men prowling the streets kidnapping children. Mostly it's the parents! 60% of amber alerts are for a parent. And that's not counting other family members like siblings/aunts/uncles or things like a pastor/family friend/etc.

If we want to be paranoid of someone, we need to be paranoid of ourselves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Abduction_Is_Not_Funny

Something's wrong with the kids, too. No child should tolerate that, and yet, something they should have grown out of in their teens persists into their twenties and beyond.

I agree, but we've socially set this up for them to think they are and act like they are children. We even have people trying to claim the age of 25 now as maturity! It's insane, and children raised into this society with empowered helicopter parents never get the chance to learn it can be different.

You can run, but you can't hide. Your wife needs to fight that law (and if she isn't, she's in the wrong), and you need to back her up (and if you don't, you're in the wrong). That's it.

No, the worst thing we could do to our kids is to be in jail trying to fight stupid laws. We find ways to help teach them accountability and such, we can tell by the fact that our eldest is way more mature than most of the other kids at their daycare as is. We set our standards high but fair and we get results. I just wish we could give our kids more freedom too, like playing outside in the yard without parents watching like I used to growing up.

Yeah as I pointed out in another comment race and immigration are irrational explanations for one simple reason, almost every crime against a child is by someone the child is related to or already knows well and therefore is almost always someone of the same race.

Not quite. Random abductions (and mass shootings, to a point- same class of crime) are, in popular consciousness, always same-race strangers. And as I described, that has some unique consequences that wouldn't apply if it was strangers of a different race (and the solution to that is generally increased segregationism in some form).

White women can't get away from white men, though, would that they could. They want a divorce they can't get.


If we want to be paranoid of someone, we need to be paranoid of ourselves

No. This one is 100% on the female parent, and it's actively destructive for men to think they could have seen it coming. That's not their job.

And that's something women do not want to talk about. Because sure, you can blame men for the existence of child abduction. But what you can't fully erase is that blaming men for intentionally letting them molest your kid as the price of sticking around is, at the end of the day, the ultimate fault of women (though they have tried very hard to confuse the issue- men are largely too stupid to figure that out, and I blame men for that).

The same is true of mass shooters, to a degree, for reasons women again do not want to talk about. I wouldn't want to take accountability for failing to perform my gender role because I was a selfish piece of garbage either. But outside of "someone kills my ass because I deserved it", there's really no way to force them to account for that misbehavior in any current legal system (much as there is no way to force them to account for the above).

We find ways to help teach them accountability

And yet "being even-handed when it was exclusively the responsibility of one side" teaches them the opposite.

There are just not hordes of minority men prowling the streets kidnapping children.

Perhaps not as true for many Western countries. UK comes to mind.
Strangely, modern progressive/feminist norms of behaviors have adapted to that situation, in a parallel way that the American gun control advocates have managed to navigate the nuances of gun crime. American media loves talking about mass shooting, to blame on young white men, and close its eyes to uh, 'gang-related gun crime?'.
British media will address the obvious street or school sexual harassment problem by using white actors as stand-in for the perpetrators.

British media will address the obvious street or school sexual harassment problem by using white actors as stand-in for the perpetrators.

No, this is wrong. Progressive women cast white male perpetrators because they mean white male perpetrators.

They aren't trying to solve the foreigner street or school harassment problem- they don't give a damn about it, and you can tell because they intentionally make it worse! They're trying to solve the existential problem they have with white men.

Progressives are constantly telling you this, and yet you don't listen. Why?
Progressives are constantly telling you they hate you, specifically, and you think they're still trying to solve the street crime they themselves created. Why?

Strangely, modern progressive/feminist norms of behaviors have adapted to that situation

What grounds do you have to believe this is an adaptation and not just how they naturally function?