Quote:
Originally Posted by 33girl
There have always been SOME children with allergies, even if they grow up in a very outdoorsy situation, but what we're seeing now is different. It's SO many kids with the same allergy. And call me crazy or knee-jerking, but the schools I hear about that institute peanut bans are usually in middle to upper class neighborhoods.
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I think you're right, I also think that there are a few factors behind that that might apply to kids today in general and that we hear about these things happening in more affluent areas because that's what's covered in the media.
One is that kids go to the doctor more often. My parents were always insured; they just never took us to the doctor outside of symptom-specific information. It wasn't until I was an adult with my own insurance that I had a full allergy panel, even though I had been diagnosed with asthma at like 7. My parents aren't uneducated or poor; they just didn't see the need in our going to the doctor when it wasn't necessary. My sister, on the other hand, has her kids take an annual physical above and beyond the one they need as athletes. As a result, they have a lot more diagnoses than we had. None of them are serious or life-threatening, but my sister is a lot more aware of their health challenges. I'm going to chalk that one up to being generational.
For better or worse, there's just a heck of a lot more information out there about allergies, and there's always good old Dr. Google to make people even more neurotic. I remember when I was diagnosed with asthma, my pediatrician told my parents to take it seriously because childhood asthma is often perceived as being faked or not that serious in some black communities; as a result, the death rate among black kids with asthma is much higher than among white kids. I'm not sure if a pediatrician would tell a mother that today, for obvious reasons; that same mother today, however, would probably go to WebMD or Google to supplement whatever the doctor told her.
Also, like I mentioned upthread, you can test for sensitivities for allergens without ever having presented symptoms; as a result, the diagnosis can shock people into action that may be unnecessary. Not only do wealthier families take their kids to doctors more regularly, they'll be more apt to visit specialists who, with insurance co-pays, can cost twice as much as a PCP.
Finally, there's just straight up fear of litigation. I suspect this fear is more common in affluent areas and schools/parents will make a bigger deal about it. I think that a lot of private schools did this first because it's easier to make a decision like this at the single-school level.