Why Gen X Parents Are Afraid of the Wrong Types of Crime

If you are a Gen Xer, born between 1965 and 1980, you may immediately be able to recall several safety campaigns that you were taught as a child, like McGruff the Crime Dog telling you to avoid strangers. Or the image of white kidnapper vans. Do you remember when the faces of missing children were on milk cartons? Or remember those after-school specials about drug use? Finally, how many of you identify with the term “latchkey” kids?

Gen Xers were taught many safety lessons during childhood, subtly influencing how Gen X adults perceive crime and safety today. While easy to recall, parents from this generation rarely realize the impact these early safety lessons have on their parenting.

Crime continues to be a serious concern for Americans, with 40 percent of Americans saying they are afraid of crime happening to them. Criminologists who study safety lessons have found these concerns for crime, or fear of crime, manifest in myths rather than facts. While parents worry about their children being kidnapped by a stranger, statistics about missing children show that children have less than a 1 percent chance of being kidnapped. In most cases, this rare crime is perpetrated by someone in the family or known to the family. As another example, women are told by family members, friends, and the media to worry about sexual assault by a stranger when, in fact, most girls and women who are sexually assaulted are attacked by a known person, a boyfriend, a date, or a friend. While kidnapping and sexual violence against women are horrific and tragic, most people (Gen Xers included) fear these crimes because of crime myths learned during childhood rather than crime facts.

Gen Xer parents with Gen Z children (born between 1997 and 2012) or Gen Alpha children (2010 to present) face unique challenges in raising a generation whose world looks quite different than it did during the 1980s and 1990s. Studies show that Gen Xers use less “latchkey” and more “helicopter” approaches when parenting. These parents overly supervise children's structured and unstructured activities. The rapidly changing world and Gen X parents’ hypervigilance in supervision has changed how parents teach their Gen Z or Gen Alpha children.

My research has shown that Gen X parents still worry about the crimes learned during their childhood happening to their children, fearing crimes with stranger danger and kidnapping elements, but additionally, they also fear new generationally specific crimes happening to their children. For example, parents today must consider online crimes and school shootings, two crime types new to Gen Xers.

The melding of old fears with new ones has had some unintended consequences for Gen Xers. Gen X parents believe that they must helicopter and bubble wrap children, which requires a different level of surveillance and supervision standards for parents to live up to. Such unattainable standards force parents to think about safety through risk-colored glasses, always assessing risks for their children at the cost of opportunities to build self-sufficiency. Further, due to a newly constructed view of stranger danger (the guy in the park and the guy online posing as a child), Gen X parents have taught their Gen Z or Gen Alpha children a generalized distrust of all strangers. The idea that all strangers are meant to be feared, rather than the idea that there are safe and dangerous strangers, makes it difficult for children to make decisions and trust their instincts when they meet strangers. For example, think about how essential firefighters, teachers, and adults can be if trying to help a child during a crisis (all of whom may be strangers to a child).

In a world that looks and feels much different than when Gen Xers grew up, the best thing parents can do is know the facts about violent crime happening to their children. It is rare, and if it happens, it probably won't be perpetrated by a stranger. With more accurate information, parents can “teach fear better” by occasionally setting down the risk-colored glasses, removing one or two layers of bubble wrap on their children, and encouraging children to trust their instincts when strangers make them uncomfortable.