Missing the obvious

Parental Fears vs. Realities.

From NPR:

Based on surveys Barnes collected, the top five worries of parents are, in order:

1. Kidnapping
2. School snipers
3. Terrorists
4. Dangerous strangers
5. Drugs

But how do children really get hurt or killed?

1. Car accidents
2. Homicide (usually committed by a person who knows the child, not a stranger)
3. Abuse
4. Suicide
5. Drowning

Why such a big discrepancy between worries and reality? Barnes says parents fixate on rare events because they internalize horrific stories they hear on the news or from a friend without stopping to think about the odds the same thing could happen to their children.

No surprise to any regular reader of this blog.

[Schneier on Security]

I think Barnes has missed something which is rather obvious to me. The things in the second list are all either things done by the parents, or something which most people would think that the parents could have or should have prevented. We can hardly expect parents to acknowledge that parents are a greater danger to children than the various boogeymen in the first list.