This article in the NYTimes really resonated with me, as I well remember the intensive coverage of Etan Patz disappearance, and the Amber alerts, and for years and years, repeatedly seeing children’s faces on the side of milk cartons with the haunting question “have you seen me?” in grocery stores.
It’s no wonder so many baby boomers turned into helicopter parents. With all the media coverage of these terrible, but rare events, we were subconsciously trained, over a long period of time, to be on continual alert for danger to children, regardless of the likelihood of something actually happening to any one of us.
“He was not famous when he vanished, his family not a wealthy target of kidnappers seeking ransom. And that made the case all the more haunting in its randomness. An early police theory, that a lonely woman had snatched up the boy to raise as her own, in hindsight seems startlingly naïve, quaint. The disappearance of Etan Patz changed what parents feared.”
“In some ways, it is the most important case, culturally,” said Paula S. Fass, a historian and author of the book “Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America,” published in 1997. “This case served as a wellspring of the idea that when little boys and little girls — but especially boys — were taken, that it was almost certainly by a pedophile.”
