Halloween: The Day We Test-Market New Parental Fears

Hi Readers! Here’s my Wall Street Journal column from last year, slightly edited, about today’s holiday. Boo! — L

STRANGER-DANGER AND THE DECLINE OF HALLOWEEN, by Me!

Halloween is the day when America market-tests parental paranoia. If a new fear flies on Halloween, it’s probably going to catch on the rest of the year, too.

Take “stranger danger,” the classic Halloween horror. Even when I was a kid, back in the “Bewitched” era, parents were already worried about neighbors poisoning candy. Sure, the folks down the street might smile and wave the rest of the year, but apparently they were just biding their time before stuffing us silly with strychnine-laced Smarties.

That was a wacky idea, but we bought it. We still buy it, even though Joel Best, a sociologist at the University of Delaware, has researched the topic and spends every October telling the press that there has never been a single case of any child being killed by a stranger’s Halloween candy. (Oh, yes, he concedes, there was once a Texas boy poisoned by a Pixie Stix. But his dad did it for the insurance money. He was executed.)

Anyway, you’d think that word would get out: Poisoned candy? Not happening. But instead, most Halloween articles to this day tell parents to feed children a big meal before they go trick-or-treating, so they won’t be tempted to eat any candy before bringing it home for inspection.

As if being full has ever stopped any kid from eating free candy!

So stranger danger is still going strong, and it’s even spread beyond Halloween to the rest of the year. Now parents consider their neighbors potential killers all year round. That’s why they don’t let their kids play on the lawn, or wait alone for the school bus: “You never know!” The psycho-next-door fear went viral.

MINTING FEARS AND PATRONIZING PARENTS

Then along came new fears. Parents are warned annually not to let their children wear costumes that are too tight –those could seriously restrict breathing! But not too loose either — kids could trip! Fall! Die!

Treating parents like idiots who couldn’t possibly notice that their kid is turning blue or falling on his face might seem like a losing proposition, but it caught on too.

Halloween taught marketers that parents are willing to be warned about anything, no matter how preposterous, and then they’re willing to be sold whatever solutions the market can come up with: Face paint so no mask will obscure a child’s vision. Purell, so no child touches a germ. And the biggest boondoggle of all, the adult-supervised party, so no child encounters anything exciting. Er, “dangerous.”

Think of how Halloween used to be the one day of the year when gaggles of kids took to the streets by themselves — at night even. Big fun! Low cost! But once the party moved inside (to keep kids safe from the nonexistent poisoners), in came all the nonsense. The battery-operated caskets. The hired witch. The plastic everything else. Halloween went from hobo holiday to $6 billion extravaganza, even as it blazed the way for adult-supervised everything else.  Once Halloween got outsourced to adults, no kids-only activity was safe. Goodbye sandlot, hello batting coach!

MOLESTER’S FAVORITE HOLIDAY?

And now comes the latest Halloween terror: Across the country, cities and states are passing waves of laws preventing registered sex offenders from leaving their homes — or sometimes even turning on their lights — on Halloween.

The reason? Same old same old — safety. As a panel of “experts” on the “Today” show warned viewers recently: Don’t let your children trick-or-treat without you “any earlier than [age] 13, because people put on masks, they put on disguises, and there are still people who do bad things.”

Perhaps there are. But Elizabeth Letourneau, an associate professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, studied crime statistics from 30 states and found, “There is zero evidence to support the idea that Halloween is a dangerous date for children in terms of child molestation.”

In fact, she says, “We almost called this paper, ‘Halloween: The Safest Day of the Year,’ because it was just so incredibly rare to see anything happen on that day.”

Why is it so safe? Because despite our mounting fears and apoplectic media, it is still the day that many of us, of all ages, go outside. We knock on doors. We meet each other. And all that giving and taking and trick-or-treating is building the very thing that keeps us safe: community.

We can kill off Halloween, or we can accept that it isn’t dangerous and give it back to the kids. Then maybe we can start giving them back the rest of their childhoods, too. — L.S.

Free-Range Kids Outrage of the Week! (Hint: Mom not allowed at school party)

Hi Readers –

I’m thinking of starting a new feature, Free-Range Kids Outrage of the Month (Or Maybe Even Week). Like that idea? Let me know. And send outrages!

Meantime, here is Outrage #1, sent by a reader in suburban Texas. This is a note from the local public grammar school about a holiday party:

“Our Winter Holiday parties will be Friday, December 19, with K-2 celebrating from 1:00-1:45 and grades 3-5 will celebrate from 2:00-2:45 … Please remember that each adult attending the party must have a volunteer background check completed and reported. If you have not completed this process please do this immediately. “

 That’s right – you need a background check to ATTEND YOUR CHILD’S CLASS PARTY.  One woman apologized on the neighborhood’s message board for not being able to help out at her daughter’s kindergarten shindig. And why was that?

 “By the time I decided to go, there was not enough time for the school to do a background check on me. And their policy is if you want to be a volunteer, you have to go through the background check, it usually takes two weeks. The teacher told me I could still go to the party, but I cannot help or interact with any children except my own. I was supposed to just stand back and watch.”

 Clearly, even if you are the mother of a child in the class, you are out to molest all the other students (in public) and cannot so much as hand them a cupcake, you disgusting perv.

Great message to send kindergarteners: Most adults are out to get you! There isn’t just ONE boogey man. There are about 27 per classroom! Or actually, about 54, since moms and dads are BOTH suspect!

Now kids, no long faces! Throw out your paper plates and go make a maximum security prison with your blocks. That’s where most mommies and daddies belong.  

— Lenore

A School Devises A Drastic Solution

We’ve already heard about teachers no longer being able to comfort their students for fear of being accused of child molesting. Even pre-school teachers are not immune: A hug is a grope until proven otherwise. But here is a new level of hyper-worry: After a child got injured, a school in Connecticut has banned ALL touching between ALL students.

http://wcbstv.com/local/school.bans.hugs.2.969949.html

No more backslaps. No more high fives. Fist bumps, be gone.

You can understand the administration’s frustration. A kid was seriously hurt by a kick to the groin – that’s just awful. But why is the response to criminalize all physical contact? Why not criminalize, say, kicks to the groin?

What happened here seems to be the knee-jerk response to any problem these days: Overkill, just like when schools ban tag because a kid could trip, or cupcakes, because a kid could get fat. (And let’s not talk about the fact that my own son’s own grammar school has banned the word “dice,” lest simply hearing that word encourage kids to take up a life of gambling. The term they have to use now is “number cube.” Ugh! But that’s another story. I think. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s all part of this weird, “Protect children from everything, at any cost, no matter how small the threat and no matter how ridiculous the imposition” society we’re in.)

Anyway, if your children are not at this particular Connecticut school, they can probably still do what kids do best, which seems to be bumping into each other and cracking up.

But who knows for how long?

— Lenore