Originally Posted by twahl
As a parent of a beautiful blonde haired, blue eyed, dimpled 10 year old girl, I wouldn't say that fears of abduction or traffic are unfounded. Sadly abduction happens everywhere, and far too often.
Abduction is rare. "a comprehensive study by the
Justice Department" which showed "'stereotypical kidnappings' ... in which
children were taken by strangers who intended to keep them, held at least
overnight, or transported 50 miles are more -- numbered between 200 and 300 a
year. Of those, somewhere between 43 and 147 children were killed....
children taken by other family members, usually in the course of custody
disputes, accounted for about 350,000 cases a year...(but) in only 1% of the
cases was a child permanently spirited away..."
Source: Margaret Talbot, The New Republic, March 15, 1999 p 34.
Another reference to the 200-300 number is here, even though the site itself is clearly oriented toward abduction alarm:
http://www.dragon4kids.com/special_r...ds%20Safe.html
I'm the parent of a blonde haired, blue-eyed girl also (she's now 17). Certainly there is considerable information to impart to daughters and sons about the various evils that can befall them and how they should react, but statistically there are a lot of things to be more worried about than abduction. (Friends with substance abuse problems are very high on my personal horror list.)
Just to put some scale around it, consider that there are over 40,000 people killed in the US in traffic accidents each year. Over 2,000 of these are children under 14 [
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/drving.htm ]