Do you have any opinions that aren’t terrible?
That doesn’t work: if they’re paranoid they’re not really reasonable. So going by that, no, there are none. If they refuse to discipline their children for fear of CPS then they are either not reasonable, not well meaning, not thoughtful or not intelligent. But among a population of 300 million there must be plenty of people who lack one of those characteristics, and many more if we can count all the world.
Reminds me of a recent L&O:SVU when the detectives investigate kids’ allegations against their teacher. It turns out to be a hoax so the teacher says how he told them he was innocent and they pursued it anyway and now his life is ruined. The detectives actually stand around looking ashamed of themselves. As if they could have just taken his word for it?!
The problem there is that someone’s life can be ruined by allegations, before they are proven true.
Yo tambien.
I’d assume they weren’t looking ashamed of themselves, they were looking disturbed by the fact that their job has moral complexities with real-world implications: of course you have to investigate allegations, but you do run the risk of ruining someone’s life. Doing the right thing doesn’t mean there are never wrong consequences, and that’s a deeply disturbing thing to face.
Someone’s life can be ruined even if the accusations are later conclusively shown to be false. Think of the McMartin Preschool case or (non child related) Richard Jewell.
That’s what makes things hard. CPS is clearly needed, but there’s no way to run such a service without risking a mistake which harms innocent caregivers.
I meant, I am skeptical that middle-class parents are less prone to abuse their kids as working-class parents. Hide it better, maybe.
The worst part is that the kids have learned that they can call the cops or CPS and get their parents in a shitload of trouble if mom or dad disciplines them.
Sad thing is, there are some parents who NEED to get into a shitload of trouble.
As if it would do any good. She DID take a couple of parenting classes - voluntarily - because she thought it would make us into perfectly behaved children, i.e. silent and motionless.