In Teaching Fear: How We Learn to Fear Crime and Why It Matters, Dr. Nicole Rader accomplishes what the best academic books do: it is jam-packed with historical and current research findings while being incredibly readable. Rader's book focuses on social learning processes and how racialized and gendered patterns in our environment(s) and experiences impact how, why, and what we fear about crime. In each chapter, she carefully situates research findings in social context and draws on appropriate literature in multiple disciplines: sociology, psychology, law and society, and gender studies, to name a few. Finally, Rader consistently delineates the limits of data she engages with, priming her readers to always be careful about overgeneralization and to be excited about future and other research on the subject.
For example, in Chapter 2, “Learning Myths,” Rader explores how popular concepts such as “helicopter” or “free-range” parenting connect to existing research on how and why children pick up fear of crime or manage to avoid it. She presents a fascinating discussion of how “fear work,” or the social, mental, and emotional labor people put in to protect family members, can be almost unconsciously transferred to men in heterosexual marriages because gendered logics frame protection from crime as a masculine endeavor. This work is very visible to divorced women, however, because there is no one else to bear responsibility for it. She includes an extended discussion of how racial socialization puts pressure on Black men to learn how to “assuage the fears of people around them” (31) and leads Black families to experience fear of police. Rader discusses fear of school shootings as well, exploring how it is embedded into institutions via drills and safety measures that distract us from addressing other, more common forms of violence in school settings.
In each chapter of Teaching Fear, Rader consistently uses an intersectional analytical approach, presenting data from a wide variety of studies and viewpoints. This makes the text both rich and deeply informative. In Chapter 3, “Living Out Crime Myths,” she discusses how men are more likely to have guns and to feel safer because of it, but also presents an overarching argument about actions and avoidance. She argues that while many people can engage in protective actions, fewer can engage in avoidance patterns, such as staying away from certain places or changing their routine behaviors on a semi-regular basis to avoid victimization because they have fewer resources to do so, such as schedule flexibility, time, or financial resources needed to engage in avoidance. In Chapter 4, “Raising Gen Z Children with Gen X Safety Values,” Rader explains how parents transmit fear of crime to children through both expressed worries and nonverbal actions. She presents research on how race, gender, age of children, and a family's socioeconomic status influence the fear(s) parents have and pass to their children as well. Rader straightforwardly presents the new reality of apps like Life360 that allow parents to track their children, and young people to track one another, and how they impact people's lives. Stranger danger and fear of the (unlikely) event of kidnapping, too, make an appearance in this chapter on Gen X parents of Gen Z children.
In Chapter 5, “What Kids Hear and What Kids Fear” Rader makes a unique move. She examines parenting, fear, and socially constructed ideas about victimization from the perspective of children themselves. True to her engaging writing style, she opens with reference to the game of “telephone,” where people repeat things to one another, gradually twisting the message until the end, where it may or may not come across as intended. Rader links this to how children pretty clearly pick up on common “stranger danger” messages from their parents but also pick up on a wide array of more subtle cues about how to read their environments. Children's complex cue-reading patterns illustrate the great ingenuity they use when interpreting nonverbal signals sent by parents and other social actors and overt messaging about safety in their lifetimes, wrapping the two together in their behavioral choices.
Rader's final chapter, “How to Teach Fear Better,” stands out the most. It is bold and necessary. She does not shy away from making very clear recommendations about how to enhance quality of life for people in the U.S. by addressing the fear of crime. She advocates for the criminal justice system to take all crime victims seriously, not just those who meet an “ideal victim” type and/or who are victimized by strangers. She encourages people to recognize that media outlets work on a business model and will continue to misrepresent the reality of safety if it sells. She presents creative ideas for how schools can move away from focusing disproportionately on less-likely dangers such as school shootings and more on kids' commonplace experiences and worries instead. Finally, her recommendation that we dig in on myths about white women's victimhood, talk accurately to children about crime even when it is difficult, focus less on strangers, and loosen parental grip on daughters are all logical extensions of existing literature. But given the social context and historical moment this book was published in, which includes open resistance to critical analysis of social inequalities that face people because of race and/or gender; they are brave and important conclusions. I, personally, am glad Rader makes them for her readers.
In addition to its readability and thorough engagement with existing literatures, the primary contribution Teaching Fear makes to sociolegal scholarship is its engagement with a broad array of research studies in one coherent argument. Rader's ability to seek out and amplify the work of a broad set of scholars in a way that reads smoothly is stellar. I would highly recommend this book for courses on crime; criminology; gender, race, and crime; family; and many other topics in the social sciences. In fact, I'd even recommend it to my non-sociologist friends and friends outside academia, which speaks volumes about Nicole Rader's ability to engage an audience. I look forward to future research Rader's book encourages, on whether, how, and which efforts to resist distorted logics around fear of crime are effective.
