Frank Furedi: Panic over child abduction is the wrong response

Paranoia is prompting a crisis of confidence in parents. It leaves children without anyone to look up to

Throughout this summer, domestic news in the US has been dominated by lurid stories of child snatching. The media frenzy began with the abduction of five-year-old Samantha Runnion, lured from her Californian home on 15 July by a man claiming to be looking for a lost puppy. Her body, showing signs of sexual assault and asphyxiation, was found on a lonely road near a mountain lake. Then Erica Platt, seven, of Philadel- phia, was snatched from the street outside her house, escaping from her abductors only when she gnawed through masking tape binding her wrists and ankles. At the end of last month, six-year-old Casey Williamson was snatched in St Louis, to be found dead in a glass factory.

CNN took the decision to show Samantha's funeral live and in its entirety. And high-profile television shows such as Larry King Live return to the topic of abduction night after night and transmit the message: "Parents beware!"

American politicians cannot resist the temptation to embrace such an emotive and poignant issue. For President Bush, this is one more war to fight. Last Tuesday he informed Americans that they were not only under threat from terrorists but also faced "a wave of horrible violence from twisted criminals in our own communities". Flanked by his attorney general, John Ashcroft, and his Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, Mr Bush told the press that he would convene a special Conference on Missing, Exploited and Runaway Children next month. He also announced the release of a new guidebook, Personal Safety for Children: a Guide for Parents.

Anyone travelling in the US is constantly reminded that the nation's children are in peril from vicious predators. Yet the US is not experiencing an epidemic of child abduction. Figures released by the FBI indicate that the number of children kidnapped by strangers has been declining. The number of such abductions averaged 200-300 per year in the 1980s; last year they were down to 93.

Despite this good news, anxieties about "stranger-danger" continue to thrive. It is no wonder: the cumulative effect of the ceaseless exploitation of the issue of child snatching by the US media is poisoning the relationship between adults and children. As far as US culture goes, adults and children need to be kept apart. This estrangement of the world of adults from that of children was brought home to me while I was out walking in San Francisco. As I passed a playground and stopped to look at what the children were up to, an officious-looking guard pointed to a notice informing me that "Unaccompanied Adults" were not allowed entry. I was told that unaccompanied adults could not "loiter" outside the playground. The age-old idea that adults can derive a simple, harmless pleasure from watching children play has given way to the conviction that such instincts are likely to be those of a predator.

A few days after I returned to Britain, I was forcefully reminded that child abduction can dominate the public's imagination on this side of the Atlantic too. For many, the haunting faces of the distraught parents of the missing schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman symbolise our worst fears. In comparison with its US counterpart, the British media have so far been restrained. There has not been the intrusive, almost pornographic exploitation, of grief-stricken parents; and to his credit, Tony Blair has not taken it upon himself to extend the war against terrorism to the kidnappers of children. But there is little room for smugness. Britain is no less susceptible than the US to epidemics of hysteria about children.

Sadly, parental anxiety about stranger-danger ensures that panics about abduction are always waiting to happen. Over the past 15 years, fear of strangers has significantly altered the life of children. Research has found that more parents give stranger-danger as a reason for using cars for school journeys than any other. Parents no longer regard other adults as potential allies, who can be relied upon to secure the safety of their children. Suspicion and mistrust are even extended to adults who work with children. As the recent publicity surrounding the two witch-hunted nursery workers from Newcastle shows, our culture readily incites parents and the public to outbursts of panic.

Just as it does in the US, the culture of fear surrounding children has little to do with a growing threat of abduction. The number of children who are abducted and killed by strangers has remained fairly constant, at around five per year. What has increased is not the harm done to children by strangers but the media coverage devoted to these rare events. Yet it is far too simplistic to blame the media. Uncertainties about our identities as adults have fostered deep anxieties about how grown-ups should relate to children.

At a time when adult relationships have become unstable and appear to lack permanence, children have become the focus of an unprecedented degree of emotional investment. For the widespread perception of transient relations between men and women stands in contrast to the durable bonds that bind a parent to a child. Our short-term perspective on relationships does not extend to children. Marriage partners and lovers can come and go, but our relationship to children endures. That is why in an uncertain adult world there is a formidable incentive to expand emotional investment in children. And we make sense of this investment via exalting childhood, endowing it with sentimental or religious meaning.

Excessive, even obsessive, concern for children results from an outlook that regards them as one of the few permanent facts in people's life. Children provide a sense of permanence in an otherwise fluid world. That is why we increasingly celebrate childlike, even childish, qualities. The child has become the personification of moral virtue and innocence. All the things that adults are not can be rediscovered in the world of children.

The idealisation of childhood tells us little about what makes children tick. It represents a statement about our disenchantment with adulthood. But the more we exalt childhood, the more we demean the meaning of adulthood. It is worth noting that the idealisation of childhood coincides with the depreciation of adulthood. The flip-side of the orientation towards the celebration of childhood is the implicit renunciation of adult identity. Is it any surprise that grown-ups find it difficult to distance themselves emotionally from their childhood?

The growing market for adult toys, the popularity of School Disco and the website Friends Reunited represents an ambivalence about growing up. However, the significance attached to childhood not only demeans adulthood but also posits it as morally inferior. In a secular variant of the religious theme of humanity's fall from grace, innocent children are ruined by toxic adults. The sensationalising of stranger-danger reminds us that the stranger – that is, almost every adult on this planet – is not worthy of a child's trust. It encourages us to regard other grown-ups as potential threats to children. That is why it matters little that the kidnapping of children is a rare tragedy. Our instincts tell us a different message. It warns us not to trust other adults.

Panics about abduction represent a form of collective displacement activity by adult society. Our ambivalence about our identities as adults is rendered tangible via our concern with stranger-danger. Unfortunately, the systematic breeding of mistrust makes the world a far less safe and certainly a far less pleasant place for children. Such panics disorient children and distract grown-ups from gaining an understanding of childhood. It makes the exercise of adult responsibility towards children a troublesome, at times impossible task. The raising and socialisation of children require the collaboration of adults. The erosion of adult solidarity threatens to deprive children of one of the most important ingredients of a secure world.

Professor Frank Furedi is a sociologist at the University of Kent and author of 'Paranoid Parenting', published by Penguin