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One of the most frustrating things about the helicopter-parenting phenomenon is that hardly anyone seems to support it on principle. I don’t think I’ve met anyone, parent or not, who disagrees that today’s kids have overly structured lives. And to the extent this new lifestyle evolved to manage risk, everyone seems to recognize it did so incoherently.

In no rational sense was it “risky” for 10-year-old me to travel alone to school, from an affluent part of Toronto to an even more affluent part. It is certainly less risky now: the murder rate for children is considerably lower today than in the 1980s; the rates of accidental injury and death have plummeted.

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And I think the media are getting better, too, at keeping risk in perspective. If you’re 28 per cent more likely to die of X if you do Y, but your existing chances of dying of X are one in a bajillion, then you ought to be informed of that.

Wednesday’s Toronto Star failed spectacularly in this regard. “Child abduction data paint chilling portrait,” it reported on the front page. “Study sheds light on violence against our most vulnerable.”