i also got this feeling you are probably male. and that unlike you AND my older brothers, i was the victim of sex discrimination AKA daddy's pweshuus baby grrrrl spoilt rotten

yeah, that definitely had to be a factor. i wonder what i'll do. my lady and i are living in jakarta, indonesia which is actually safe crime-wise and you don't hear stuff about rapes and awful sex crimes. we actually live in the neighborhood (menteng) where barry obama lived as a child. he apparently roamed the streets here, made a little trouble (i guess he was a little hyper is the story here), so if we do stay here i could see letting my kids (at the right age) roam around a lot. ironically, if we move back to nyc, then i do wonder if i'll play the role of overprotective pops. my instinct would be to say yes, i would, especially if i had a girl. this world is sick. men can be evil.

you aren't allowed to like just let your kid go outside without you staring at them. or some other adult staring at them. i guess there are just a lot more child molesters/rapists/kidnappers than there used to be. i guess this started right around the time i was born but i was not ever left alone. i was always with my brother or cousins or auntie if i wasn't in skool. i am absolutely positive i never went outside all by myself

I was born and spent my first six and a half years on West 110th St in New York, across from Morningside Park in a neighborhood that at the time was mostly white "ethnic" working and lower middle class. I can't recall ever having my parents watching me after school, and we always figured there was safety in numbers. Of course we never ventured over to 109th St.; that wouldn't have been wise.

And Lisa, I don't there that there are any more child molesters today than there were 40 or 60 years ago. There are just a lot more local TV news shows that find it profitable to scare the living hell out of people. There was a Little League (Walter Johnson League) umpire in Washington who was caught putting a move on some kid when I was in 6th or 7th grade, and he (meaning the umpire) was never heard from again. No publicity, though, and we still went around completely unchaperoned with no fear.

funny, i spent my childhood roaming the streets of washington heights with my brothers. the eye on the street was shopowners, parents of kids we knew, police, the ice cream man, etc. often our parents were at work, too busy to keep an eye on us. this was the 80's. jane jacobs would have been proud of that neighborhood.

That's by far the best protection any neighborhood can have, but everyone has to be with the program for it to work.

I agree, there is something fishy about the obesity epidemic. It just doesn't wash for me that it's all about "fast food, soft drinks, and TV+video games"

Isn't it obvious that there are a lot more overweight people today than in 1971? Does anyone who was around in the 1970s doubt that society has a much larger percentage of overweight and obese people?

I'm in my late 40s. When I was 8 or so the father of a friend of mine referred to himself as "the fattest man on Elm Ave." He weighed no more than 210, was around 6 feet tall, and was, easily, the fattest man on Elm Ave.

In 2010 he'd be smaller than average sized. I'm blown away by the size of people nowadays. At 6'-0" and 160 lbs. I feel comparatively like a toothpick when I'm out and around.

And Lisa, I don't [think] there that there are any more child molesters today than there were 40 or 60 years ago. There are just a lot more local TV news shows that find it profitable to scare the living hell out of people.

This is my understanding as well. Too, I've seen studies that indicate stranger abduction is no worse a problem than it was fifty years ago. It gets dramatically more publicity, of course, but is no more of a threat.

Purely anecdotal of course, but I've noticed no change in the past 20+ years or so (I'm 36), and I certainly don't see that some 15% of kids are obese. Of course, my observations are worth precisely nothing.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

At 6'-0" and 160 lbs. I feel comparatively like a toothpick when I'm out and around.

That's exactly my height and weight, and I get the exact same feeling whenever I'm out in a crowd, even though according to most charts I'd be right about "normal" weight for my height.

I can't stand to be inside most of the time to this day. I was outside as much as possible, and my friend and I roamed all over..one time we did have a pervert riding around in his car with no pants on ask us for pseudo-directions, but that was more funny than scary.

I will let my daughters be at the park or in a store relatively unattended, if they are together, but I'm never far away..somehow, we've become convinced that we are bad parents if we leave our children to their own devices..and I think andys right, it's no more dangerous now than it was back in the day.

Lisa as a guy I think my experience was a lot different than yours (add in the extra decade of birth) but I would leave my best friends house at 9 at night, and walk home by myself for a half mile(mind you I'm a suburb kid) and had no supervision.... I did this probably 3+ times a week from the time I was 8 years old. No parents, no friends watching or any of that...in todays world that would be cause for removing a kid from a parent custody.


I agree with Andy, that the knowledge is heightened, whether the threat is actually increased or not.

and it's funny about obesity, a year ago I was considered in shape, add 30 pounds and now I'm officially obese. BMI is a massive joke to be honest, but it's a tool akin to batting average I guess.

I will let my daughters be at the park or in a store relatively unattended, if they are together, but I'm never far away..somehow, we've become convinced that we are bad parents if we leave our children to their own devices..and I think andys right, it's no more dangerous now than it was back in the day.

Absolutely. And if we did try to raise free-range kids like we were, where the hell would they go? No one else is allowing their kids to roam the neighborhoods, so it's not like they'd find anyone to play with.

We live on a dead-end subdivision, so the kids have ample room to play. And thankfully, they're all pretty good about it, in large part because none is really interested in video games (again, thankfully). I think the combination of overprotective parents and more inside options (Nick and Disney broadcasting kids show all day, video games, etc.) is likely more responsible for any additional cases of childhood obesity.

I think the combination of overprotective parents and more inside options (Nick and Disney broadcasting kids show all day, video games, etc.) is likely more responsible for any additional cases of childhood obesity.

bingo....agreed nearly 100%,only thing I would add is the ready availabilty of junk food....things like lunchables, easy soda(when I was a kid, only my dad was allowed a drink out of the soda bottle) and other types of junk food, heck.... McDonalds was a once a month thing, for most kids nowadays it's easily once a week or multiple times a week. Add in the lost of a family meal (studies show that the family meal where you spend time talking, even though they add time to the meal, actually reduce calorie intake as conversation replaces stuffing your face are more healthy)

it's a changing world, and the kids (heck the adults too) haven't adjusted to it in the best way, stuff like the Wii is actually an improvement over the previous decade, but it's just a start.

Regarding the stereotyping going round, I've just been to a software developers meeting. Plenty of obese, intelligent people there.

I never feel comfortable criticizing people for being fat, cos you could of tied me to a chair and stuffed my face with junk all day as a kid and I still would have been skinny. it did catch up to me as I aged, stress and too much fast food had me up to 200 lbs at 6 feet, but I changed my diet and exercise - mainly just ate less while exercising 3-5x week - and I am now 175.

no cable as a kid and a soda was a 10 oz glass bottle or a 12 oz can. maybe you can blame the advent of lightweight plastic for a lot of problems, including bottled water.

Well, I'm literally twice the weight I was in high school. It's easy for it to creep up on you when you put on about .5 pounds a month for 30 years.

OK, OK, it's a fat epidemic!

Right, BMI is a terrible tool for diagnosing an individual health problem, but a reasonably good one for diagnosing a population-wide health problem.

Way late to the game so I am sure no one will read this.

While working on a clinical trial that was studying heart disease I asked the MD and Statistician why BMI is so important when it does not take things in like frame size or muscle mass. They responded that when it comes to heart disease the data was showing them that 40 pounds "over weight" because of eating poorly, being extremely muscular or because you have a large frame does not seem to matter.

I am 6 foot even and when I saw that I was supposed to be at 150-180 pounds I told them that I weighed 190 when I was in high school and was at 8% body fat. They said that I was still a greater risk for heart disease than someone who was 6'0 160, even if they were not in great shape.