I just found out my 5th grade teacher is a convicted child molester

No, child abuse and child sexual abuse have declined over the past 20 years.

 

And awareness has skyrocketed. That can be both good and bad.

When my son was playing football, I sat and watched every minute of every practice. When I played football, if my parents saw a second of my practices, it was from sitting in their car waiting for it to be over. They would drop me off, as would all the other parents, go do their thing for two hours and then come back when practice was over.

Almost every parent was there for every practice. There was one kid whose dad would drop him off and leave and would come back about 15 minutes before practice was done. One of the mothers remarked to another parent, "They let him walk to school too..."

I just thought it was funny. I walked or rode my bike to school every day from third grade through sixth grade and nobody thought anything of it. These days if you give your kids a similar level of independence as we had 30 years ago, parents whisper about you at football practice...

It's certainly interesting...