This is going to be a polemical comment, but I feel compelled to share it:
It's my opinion that a great deal of the blame (if not the outright majority) for this state of affairs can be levied against suburban culture (and, by extension, car culture).
The communities that hand-wring the most about predators and risks to children tend to be middle class, suburban, and white. They drive their children everywhere, and thereby are (somewhat) alienated from the idea of a "local community" beyond the immediate neighborhood (which can only be entered or exited by car.) Things like childcare are purchasable services, not kindnesses that you or your neighbor do for each other when the other's in a pinch. When this is your bubble (or, for the rest of us, the dominant cultural metaphor for responsible parenting), it's hard not to see the world as a foreign and scary place, with unknown levels of unknown danger.
It's my opinion that a great deal of the blame (if not the outright majority) for this state of affairs can be levied against suburban culture (and, by extension, car culture).
The communities that hand-wring the most about predators and risks to children tend to be middle class, suburban, and white. They drive their children everywhere, and thereby are (somewhat) alienated from the idea of a "local community" beyond the immediate neighborhood (which can only be entered or exited by car.) Things like childcare are purchasable services, not kindnesses that you or your neighbor do for each other when the other's in a pinch. When this is your bubble (or, for the rest of us, the dominant cultural metaphor for responsible parenting), it's hard not to see the world as a foreign and scary place, with unknown levels of unknown danger.