Dreaded problems that are unlikely to kill your child

A thing that helps me deal with anxiety is working out which problems aren’t likely to seriously affect my kids. If that helps you, maybe you’d also like to know that your kid is unlikely to lose an eye. Obviously this doesn’t mean you should take careless risks:

Some of the problems I see parents most distressed about are not ones that their own children are likely to experience. Media coverage and people’s worries are a poor match for reality.

Gun violence

One-fifth of high schoolers and parents, especially liberal parents, say they’re “very worried” about gun violence. The news has made much of the fact that guns are now the leading cause of death among children and teens.

You could easily think from this media coverage that it’s common for young children to be shot. But that’s not at all what the data points to: these deaths are nearly all in 15- to 19-year-olds, as the beginning of the adult risk curve. Gun deaths of young people are 86% boys, and very disproportionately among Black teenaged boys and young men.

This is a national tragedy, and one that deserves policy attention. But many parents’ fears are misplaced.

“When American parents are surveyed about their concerns, everyone is worried about school shootings,” wrote the senior author of a Stanford study on child victims of mass shootings. “The message from our data is really simple: Our fears are incorrectly placed.” The media covers a rise in “mass shootings” (often but not always defined as the killing of 4+ people other than the perpetrator). But most mass shootings involving children are by a family member, most commonly a middle-aged man shooting his family. 

99% of shootings are not mass shootings. And most gun deaths are suicide, typically by older men.

Reasons I would be more worried about my family’s risk from guns:

• If we had a gun in the house. (E.g. I have a friend whose husband owns a gun; she made him lock the gun where she can’t get it because her mental health history puts her at higher risk for suicide.)
• If any of us had a disgruntled family member or ex-partner who owns a gun.
• If I had a teenaged son, especially if he were Black, Latino, or Native American, and especially if he owned a gun or hung out with other young people who own guns. 

But for parents and children who worry about a massacre at a school or grocery store, the risk is very low.

Climate change

The brunt of climate change, also tragically, will be borne by the most disadvantaged people. If you live in Chad or Bangladesh or a small island, you should definitely worry about climate change being physically dangerous to you. But Americans are less likely to die from weather than we were 100 years ago, because we’re less likely to be farm workers and we have better weather forecasts.

I definitely expect climate change to affect high-income countries. I expect food and energy prices may rise. You should think about flooding and heat when deciding where to live long-term. There may be more air pollution from fires and such; one estimate for 2100 is 13 air pollution deaths per year per million US residents, similar to current rates of dying from motorcycle crashes. But overall US deaths related to extreme temperatures are may decrease, because there will be more heat-related deaths but fewer cold-related deaths. 

Rich countries are able to handle climate change much better than poorer ones. If you’re reading this, your children are likely to grow up to be indoor workers who can afford air conditioning. For more, see Hannah Ritche’s “I thought most of us would die in the climate crisis. I was wrong,” excerpted from Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet.

Putting our attention in the right places

None of this means the fortunate should just abandon the unfortunate to their lot. The new reality resembles the existing reality: some people face much more risk than others. If you’re lucky enough to be in a safer demographic, you can still help! 

I think we should all be asking ourselves, “How can I help people who are at risk?” even when it’s not our own family who’s most affected. And then we see that some problems are easier to make progress on than others. For example, air pollution in South Asia is one of the worst public health crises, and easier to make progress on than pollution in rich countries. Half the children in low- and middle-income countries are still exposed to lead, and policy work can change that. The most cost-effective ways to save a life, at least that we have firm evidence on, are typically in protecting children from illnesses like malaria. 

I’d love it if more parents turned their attention to the most solvable risks rather than what the media emphasizes. Then more families, in both low-risk and high-risk situations, could sleep easier at night.