Men have to deal with a lot of suspicion regarding child molestation and kidnapping. I saw this in action one day working at a retail store in a mall. The store had a second floor, and an escalator which could take you up it. One day, a dad bravely escorting his three children decided to take the escalator with all of them at once. The oldest child was probably 7, the middle probably 5, and the youngest just a little toddler who had just gotten the hang of walking. He had the toddler by the hand and helped him step onto the escalator, and the kid made it on just fine.
But escalator steps shift backward a bit when they settle into place. The toddler had stepped to the very front of the step, so when the one above shifted back, it scraped his knee. The boy starts screaming about halfway up the escalator, and another coworker and I watched them proceed to the top to make sure none of them were really hurt or fell down amid the bedlam.
They got to the top just fine, and as we started walking away, an older woman stopped us and urgently whispered "Are you sure those were his children?!" Apparently, to this woman, a man without a woman escorting children--one of which is crying--is more likely to be a kidnapper than a single father shopping with his kids, or a father keeping the kids busy while the mother is shopping. Never mind that he was going UP the escalator, to the upper floor of the store which was a dead end with no way out that doesn't require you to go back down to the first level again. And never mind that the upper floor was where the children's section was located, a perfectly reasonable direction for a father to take his children.
