I'm disappointed in HN's voting here. You're tragically incorrect in your interpretation of the grandparent comment, and you shouldn't have been praised for it, nor should I have been downvoted for pointing this out. "There's no other way of reading it" would be laughably wrong if you weren't so seriously deluded by your focus on turning everything into an Men's Rights gender battle.

> I'd argue that most non-developmentally delayed adults are fully equipped to assist a lost or scared child.

No one said a fucking thing about being "fully equipped to assist." Those are your words: not mine, not the grandparent's, but yours. We're talking about a bias here, and biases express preferences. Even among a population of adults "fully equipped to assist" it's reasonable to have a preference for women. Most doctors are "fully equipped to assist" you when you get sick, but some are better than others, and if there were a statistically sound way to pick the better ones, you'd use that. It's the same exact thing here.

> [M]en are fathers, grandpas, brothers, and uncles to little kids. They know how to interact with them.

I know how to interact with them. I've got four children myself as well as a niece and a nephew. As far as I can tell, you're making things up as you go along; I'm actually one of those "fully equipped to assist" men who can and will happily help a lost or scared child. I'm friends with many other "fully equipped to assist" men and women who likewise would help a lost or scared child. As a parent who has to teach my four kids what to do if they're lost or scared, I not just reasoning in the abstract about this problem: I'm looking at the sum total of the people I've seen and making a sound, statistically based decision what to teach my kids.

Like you said, if a lost or scared kid approaches me and needs help, I'm going to make sure they're safely handed off to customer service or store security, then I'm going to go about my business. It's not complicated or hard, and I'm not going to let it impact my day too much: I'll hand off to an authority and move on. I've got things to do, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to spend more time than I must with someone's random lost kid.

Contrast that with what my wife would do if approached by a lost or scared kid. She'd probably first get the kid to calm down with hugs and tear-wiping. She'd introduce him to our kids, find out his name, find out the names of his mommy or daddy, and start tracking down his parents. She'd look far and wide to try to track his parents down before even going to the store employee, and if she couldn't find them, when she went to the store employee, she'd probably stay there and comfort the kid until his parents arrived to pick them up. She'd move heaven and earth to make sure that kid was reunited with his parents before she left.

And you know what? That difference would manifest in every single father/mother pair I know. In every case, I know that even though the father would be fully equipped to assist a lost or scared kid, the mom would be better at comforting the kid and would work harder at helping the kid than the dad would. Heck, one of my friends is a baby/kid/family photographer. His job is to entertain kids. Kids love him. But when I asked him, "Who would do more to help a lost, scared kid in a department store?" he answered without reservation, "My wife. I'd just drop the kid off at security."

> But ultimately that is completely besides the point as we're talking about someone who has to take a little kid's hand and bring them to customer services/store security, we aren't asking them to adopt the child.

That attitude is exactly why I tell my kids to prefer seeking help from women. Because statistically speaking they'll work harder to help the kid and do a better job of making the kid feel better. I don't care if you or anyone else thinks it's a "trope": it's reality, and reality is what I teach my kids.