Here is a frightening statistic I dug up about Canada. On average, since the mid 70’s, approximately 50 children per year die in Canada due to parental abuse or neglect. 50 children per year! Count 'em folks. How many low life scum parents does that add up to over time? Too many, that’s for sure.
Conversely, the same study shows that between 1976 and 1990, not one single child in Sweden died due to parental neglect or abuse. Not one.
You gotta hand it to the Swedes. Not only do they make great cars (Saab, Volvo) and put together an exceptional bikini team, but they sure know how to care for their children.
Now, if this statistic was a comparisson between the US and Sweden I would not be so shocked (my appologies to all you Americans but some of you are really effed up! - don’t ask me to cite examples… Columbine, Waco, Michigan Militia, public servants going postal…). We Canadian have out share of miscreants as well (Paul Bernardo, Preston Manning, etc…) but not nearly as many as in the US. But I digress…
The question in my mind is this; Is Sweden, with it’s highly socialized infrastructure and heavy tax burden, a kindler, gentler place to live and raise a family? Are Swedes more socially concious than us North Americans?
I do not believe that satistic for a minute. I am not disputing Sweden may have better numbers than Canada but to say they have zero of anything does not make sense. In every society there are black apples. If you tell me there aren’t any my conclusion is it is not true.
Remember when communist countries had ZERO crime, ZERO unemployment etc? What do you make of it?
Well, I can’t guaranty that the statistic I quoted is 100% accurate. I did not crunch the numbers myself. Suffice it to say (for the purpose of this discussion) that as “nice” as Canada seems to be, Sweden seems to have it beat hands down in the area of child (non)abuse (and cars!).
I note that whereas Sweden has a population of 8,911,296, Canada has a population of 31,006,347. Even so, the statistic about our child neglect is disgraceful. I suppose that it arises from the poverty that occurs when the right hand of the government doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, and keeps raising interest rates and throwing people out of work while trying to fight poverty.
I’m not disagreeing with the numbers, but I wonder if the same definitions of the terms “abuse, neglect,” and “child” are used in both instances? How were these statisitics gathered?
To keep things fair, the Government of Alberta did the same thing for a while. The victims were just recently compensated. And let’s not even get into the Duplessis orphans.
You must note however, that though Sweden has perhaps learned it’s lesson and stopped that practice (not entirely made clear by article), some states in the US still practice sterilization of the mentally handicapped.
I’m not saying Sweden is an idealic country but one can’t, with a clear concience, single it out for abuses still practiced locally.
As for the number of children’s deaths caused by neglect of abuse of the parents - I say again, I cannot guarantee the voracity of the numbers nor their collection methodes. Perhaps the statistic is unfounded. I don’t know. What I do know (because my wife is a childcare research expert by training and practice) is that Sweden has a far more developed infrastructure than either Canada or the US when it comes to supporting parents and caring for kids. The Swedish society has made childcare the responsibility of the entire country and not just the parents. That kind of infrastructure sure does go a long way in helping parents raise their kids.
What does poverty have to do with neglect? In the state neglect is a willful action on the part of the parent. Being poor doesn't cause people to neglect their kids.
The time period of the study (1976-1990) was the golden age of the swedish socioeconomic system. The economy was doing great and unemployment was very low. Less poverty, less abuse.
We have a fairly low level of alcohol consumption due to high alcohol taxes and low accessibility.
Sweden has many public services financed by taxes, especially when it comes to children. When you have “free” day-care / health-care / education, you have a good chance of catching physical abuse at an early stage.
Article:
That 60,000 figure was the TOTAL amount of sterilizations in Sweden during that time. The number of forced sterilization is estimated at around 10,000.
Even though the article gives a different impression, the sterilizations for race/social-standing reasons were done prior to WW2.
oldscratch:
That seems unnecesarily harsh considering this was hardly limited to Sweden. I’d be surprised if you could find a single country in the western world that did not have some form of forced sterilization program, including the US and Canada. Hell, even Winston Churchill was a proponent of human eugenics.
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You are correct. There is no ideal government. In fact here’s a great article that talks about eugenics in the USA. Absolutely disgusting. Sorry about the crack on Sweden, perhaps I was being a tad too flippent.