Monday, September 14, 2009

Yet More On Walking To School

Amanda Marcotte observes that while the chances of a child being assaulted is quite low, the chance of pretty much anyone with two X chromosomes being subject to catcalls is absurdly high. The standard prescription is to make sure kids walk around in groups of mixed gender wherever possible, but obviously that's not practical all of the time, nor does it always work. Nonetheless, as she also points out, mothers do the lion's share of child-rearing in the overwhelming majority of two-parent American households. Therefore social norms that tend to increase the amount of child-rearing will tend to eat more into womens's free time than men's.

All these things are true, and I'm not really big on moralizing over other people's parenting decisions. People can draw their own conclusions from the data.

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