This has actually been confirmed by researchers. Barbara W. Sarnecka, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, Irvine, and her colleagues presented subjects with vignettes in which a parent left a child unattended, and participants estimated how much danger the child was in. … “It’s not about safety,” Dr. Sarnecka told me. “It’s about enforcing a social norm.”

For the full story, please visit https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/opinion/sunday/motherhood-in-the-age-of-fear.html.