Don't interact with strangers' children.

The way current law is set up, being a Good Samaritan and trying to rescue someone else's kid can only get you in trouble.

Browsing the Internet, I've found a few anecdotes which support this view. I don't have any verification that they're true, so you'll just have to take my (and their) word for it.

First story: a young woman is waiting at a street corner. She sees a mother, who is not paying attention, whose child wanders out into the street in front of an oncoming bus. The young woman jumps out and pulls the child back onto the sidewalk. Her reward? The mother yelling "how dare you touch my kid!!" and our would-be hero is treated as a villain, and forced to flee the scene.

Second story: a young man is on the beach. He observes a small male child falling off his surf board a long distance from land. The young man swims out and rescues the child from drowning. On returning to shore, he's greeted by an irate mother who calls the police and wants to press charges for child molestation. Luckily, witnesses confirm the man's story and the cops let him go.

Following this second anecdote a (self-proclaimed) lawyer comments, describing how this situation could have led directly to the young man being registered as a sex offender. By the time police would have questioned the child, his head would be full of misinformation from the angry mom, causing him to tell the police what they "want to hear", possibly putting the Samaritan behind bars or at least requiring a costly and life-disruptive legal defense.

Now, I'm not blaming either the moms in this situation (they are probably freaked out and will naturally accuse the first person they see who might be responsible for their child's endangerment) or the harsh treatment of sex offenders (children should obviously be protected from predators). But it's worth noting the incentive effects that these sort of stories have on potential Good Samaritans.

My personal stance is to never interact with a stranger's child no matter what the circumstances are. I won't engage in conversation, nod, smile, or hold a door open. I was about to say that the most proactive thing I'd do if I saw a child in danger would be to record the incident on video to give to YouTube the authorities later, but even taking pictures of kids can get a guy in trouble... So I probably wouldn't even do that.

Being a Good Samaritan is really a lose-lose proposition. If I succeeded in saving the child, best-case scenario I get a pat on the back, worst-case is a sex-crimes trial that will haunt me for the rest of my life. If I fail to save the child (it still falls under the bus) then maybe I get accused of murder or assault because the angry parent saw me "push" the kid instead of trying to rescue it!

There is absolutely no upside to helping or interacting with a stranger's kid. Perversely, this fact makes being a Good Samaritan far worse: because rational people know it's a bad idea to help a kid, the people who do try to help are even more likely to be creeps or labeled as such (the selection effect).

In its efforts to prevent strangers from harming vulnerable children, society has also unintentionally deterred strangers from assisting vulnerable children. It's hard to say which impact is more important, but given the relative magnitudes (there are lots more healthy, well-intentioned people out there than sex offenders) it's very possible the overall effect has been negative for child safety.

Female Infanticide Isn't a Women's Issue. It's a Human Issue.

A news article today, Female Heads of State Discuss How 'Climate Change'--But Not Sex-Selective Abortions--Hurt Women, highlights how female leaders are declining to discuss the issue of female infanticide in a current summit. When asked for a comment on the issue by CNS News, they were told

“I think the council is unlikely to take that kind of a stand,” Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and president of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, responded.” It’s not that kind of a body.”

‘Women who have joined the council because they qualify as a former president, prime minister, or the ministerial level that Margot (Wallstrom, special representative to the United Nations Secretary General on sexual violence) chairs to empower, to support, to make visible and to listen to the voices of women.”

“And so that issue [abortion of female babies] would be more appropriate to some other kind of activist group,” Robinson said.

Robinson also said “the nearest I can come to it” is her work to combat child marriage, including the fact that “religion and tradition are often distorted to subjugate women.”

According to an Oct. 4, 2011 report by CQ Global Researcher, an estimated 160 million female babies have been killed by abortion or were killed or left to die after they were born in India, China and other Asian countries in the past 30 years.

Some feminists are probably outraged by this omission, but I am actually sympathetic to Mrs. Robinson's view here. While sex-selective abortion is targeted at young girls in China and India, it may be the men of those societies who are losing the most, not the women.

Putting aside the ethical issues surrounding abortion (I don't plan to open that can of worms) an undeniable effect is that the fetus never experiences life outside the womb. The "victims" of female infanticide never see the male-dominated world which they would be born into, so they really can't be said to suffer as a result of it. The group who really loses out are young men, many of whom by sheer arithmetic certainty will never be able to marry or start a family of their own.

In fact, sex-selective abortion may even increase the bargaining power available to women living now or born in the future. When single women become a scarce commodity, their bargaining position relative to men improves. Women can demand better conditions and treatment under marriage, because if the wife leaves her (ex-)husband will have less chance at remarriage. Paradoxically, the female infanticide which occurs under a male-dominated system may actually become that system's undoing!

Some would say that sex-selective abortion causes an increase in prostitution, which may be true. However, one would still expect prostitutes to benefit from increased bargaining power as well, when demand for their services increases. While this is probably less desirable than a world in which no women turn to the sex trade, it is also probably better than sex workers living in desperate poverty.

If CNS News had worked through the economic implications of female infanticide more thoroughly, they might have been less outraged by its omission in favor of discussing climate change. Sex-selective abortion has many negative social effects, but from a purely selfish standpoint it should really be the men who are most concerned about it - not women.