To what extent should the state protect children from their parents?

Great Debates
1

Lets poke this hornets nest.

>>I am not talking about actual active physical/psychological harm.<<

I am thinking about the state protecting the children from their parents’ mistakes. Say that parents want to put their child in hard-line religious school, that only teaches what’s in the Bible. Most people would agree that such education is next to useless in today’s world, and the child will have very hard time making living in the future. Another example would be not vaccinating their child against something quite serious. And there are other non-religious examples, like smoking in the same room as their toddler.

What you do think? Where should the line be drawn.

2

The line should be drawn at active harm – abuse, and passive harm, like neglect. Wanna teach your kid weird stuff? Go right ahead. Wanna keep them from the doctor if they get sick? No, not allowed.

3

Teaching them weird stuff is harm. You’re instilling in them the ideas that will stop them from going to the doctor when they’re sick as an adult.

4

Enforceability is an issue for me. People who have read my posts on smoking threads know I’m a pretty hard-line non-smoker, who likes restrictive non-smoking laws. However, a law was proposed in the last town where I lived to prevent adults from smoking with children in the car. It failed on the definition of a child, because the people proposing it wanted “under 13,” and “primary enforcement.” (Primary enforcement means you can be stopped for violating this, as opposed for being ticket for this as a secondary violation when you are stopped for something else.)

Clearly, there is no was to tell if a person sitting in a car is 11 or 13. Children are supposed to be in the backseat up to 12, but they can be in the front seat at 12, and if the car doesn’t have passenger airbags, and the child is over eight, and over a certain weight, they can sit in the front if there isn’t a seatbelt available for them in the back. Also, children are supposed to be in carseats up to 8, unless they hit a certain height or weight before that, so that they are less safe in a carseat (my son hit them right around 7, so I know).

If the statute had called for secondary enforcement only, or if it had specified infants in rear-facing carseats, which would mean pretty much, babies under one, or over one, but either preemies, or very small babies who are more vulnerable to smoke, I probably could have supported it, because it had fewer enforceability problems. That doesn’t mean I would have-- it just didn’t have the glaring problems of the original.

When we pass unenforceable legislation, we make people lose faith in the system, because we make it a joke.

A lot of “protect the children” laws have enforceability problems, and it’s mainly because they have loopholes. You must vaccinate your child-- unless you have a religious or philosophical objection. You must teach them certain things-- unless you have a religious or philosophical objection. I’d love to see the objections to vaccines and teaching evolution removed. Somehow, though, things like that backfire. If I teach my son everything the state wants, can I still send him to Hebrew school, or is someone going to decide that interferes with his homework time, and is “outdated”? Can he take ballet, or is someone going to say that he is hopelessly klutzy, let’s face it, he could be doing something more productive?

Then, social workers are terribly overburdened with the kids with broken bones and parents who molest them, or leave them by themselves for days. If the social workers were sitting around twiddling their thumbs, I might say something different, but right now, the social work system is barely scraping by. Let’s not add more things for social workers to keep track of. It can’t be done under the current system.

5

In theory? They should go through the same kind of scrutinity adoptive parents go through. If you think 5 minutes about it, extremely vulnerable people should never be entrusted to random guys. The fact that you produced the crawler should in no way allow you to even come close to it after birth if there’s the slighest chance it could be harmful to it. The feeling of entitlement and ownership (because that’s that) of the parents should be of essentially no relevance when weighted against the only thing that matters, the best interest of the child. We don’t hand orphaned kids to whoever happens to have put his name on a “I want a kid” list. There’s zero objective reason to allow the same for newborns.

In practice : I’d have zero problem with testing the value of the education provided or with mandating vaccination whether the parents like it or not.

6

Alternatively, you could fund better the CPS and pay better the social workers. But for some reason, despite all the “think of the children”, that never seems to be a priority anywhere.

7

Who decides what “weird stuff” is?

8

Even if we wanted to this, how on earth would this be enforced?

9

Reason magazine has a whole thing on this.

Lenore Skenazy, the “worst mom in the world”, has been writing articles, and has a site free-range-kids. Reason has been posting these articles.

I tend to side more with her and reason magazine. Indeed, the stories she finds are appaling, and the level of power the authorities have is infuriating.

Damn, I even remember an article years ago about some powerful couple in Alexandria, VA (outside of Washington DC) wanting a baby, and using CPS to just pick out a kid. The plot was discovered, and from what I remember they didn’t get to follow through. But damn

The problem is there are very perverse incentives, i.e. the CPS gets more money when they “have to” “protect” more children.

10

You just drew my line right there. Even at that I can be uncomfortable with too many of the systemic issues in actually providing the protection. The systems we have can be onerous and intrusive in reality.

11

I agree that this sounds like the line, but there’s still the problem of definitions and who gets to decide. What about feeding them too much/the wrong kinds of food and restricting their physical activity so that they get obese? Is that active enough harm to warrant intervention? There’s a fairly terrifying laundry list of physical and psychological repercussions of childhood obesity.

What about when schools do it by cutting recess and PE and allowing or even serving terrible food in the cafeteria?

12

Probably only mega-extreme obesity – the kind that can cause immediate health problems, not long-term ones. That kind of sucks, but if it’s just run-of-the-mill obesity, then it would be impossible logistically.

13

Wait, what?

14

My aunt and her husband are nuts. They have three girls and home school them so they won’t be exposed to people who don’t believe in Jesus. They refuse to vaccinate them and get most of their medical care from wooish doctors who prescribe crystal healing and the like, although they do use regular doctors and hospitals as well. When they came over for Thanksgiving a few years ago the middle kid was playing the piano but could only play hymns because that is the only music they are allowed to listen to or play in their house. The girls have been told that they are NOT allowed to go to college and that if they try they will be kicked out of their family. By my personal standards they are destroying their daughters and it makes me sick to think of the lives those girls are going to be condemned to because of their parents stupidity.

But, on the other hand, my husband is Jewish and I am Pagan. We are messy people and have to force ourselves to clean. We are obese (though we are good about food with our daughter who is the textbook definition of tall and skinny.) I’m sure my aunt and her husband have spent a few nights talking about how sad they are that our daughter is growing up in a house without Jesus and about how our very lifestyle is obviously abusive.

When you look at my daughter and my little cousins each as individuals they are shining stars. Happy, healthy, emotionally stable with parents and extended family who love them beyond their wildest imaginings. Though I disagree with the choices my aunt makes I cannot look at the outcome of her decisions and say that anything she has done appears to be causing harm to her kids. Though she disagrees with my choices she would be lying to herself if she said my daughter was damaged or harmed in any way because of my lifestyle. Looking at someone else’s choices and saying that they are abusive when they aren’t causing any physical or mental harm would cause much more damage in the long run than allowing people to make the choices that work for them as parents.

15

I assume you’re wondering why vaccinating kids doesn’t fall under physical harm, by your “wait, what?” (Though without any details I can’t be sure).

I think the OP means immediate physical harm like beating your kid, not making decisions that could (undeniably) lead to physical harm. However, if that’s not what you meant, perhaps you could explain your comment.

16

Re-education camps. * Duh!!!*

17

The only things that parents should not be allowed to legally do are:

Physical abuse. Punching, kicking, beating, and the like, which causes serious physical pain or damage.

Sexual abuse. Rape or molestation.

Neglect. Not providing food, clothing, medical care, shelter, or other necessities.
It is justifiable for the government to outlaw these things, because these things are human rights. Everyone is entitled to life and physical well being–that’s the basis of the American system of government and way of life.

But everything else? None of the government’s business. The government neither has a moral justification for forcing people to be educated in a certain way, nor is capable of doing so. That’s also the basis for the American system of government and way of life.

Every morning we can read about bad things that the government has done: killing people, raping people, lying to us, confusing bananas and guns, forcing five-year-olds to write about suicide, arresting people for writing about dinosaurs, strip-searching children, and so forth. Why on earth would a government that does these things be trusted to decide what is too “weird” or “harmful” to teach to a child? Obviously the government has no clue what’s weird and harmful and what isn’t. Obviously many innocent children and adults are subjected to weird or harmful things because of the government on a daily basis. The idea that we could use government power to reduce the amount of weirdness and harm children (or adults) are exposed to is obviously ludicrous.

18

Your issues with this are purely aesthetic. You don’t like their lifestyle, and you have an itch to make them change by force, under the assumption that your lifestyle is better and so it would be for their own good (of course, you at least realize this isn’t right.) Unfortunately, this is the problem with this issue and a lot of our politics nowadays. Everyone is a closet fascist, and really is quite willing to use brute force to stop other people from doing stuff they don’t like.

Though, of course, failing to use real doctors could cause some real harm. But on that note I don’t understand what you mean; very strong Christian type people are NOT the kind of people who follow that new-age hippy crystal healing stuff. Are you using that as a literary sort of exaguration for hiring crappy doctors, or do you mean it literally?

19

Mostly agreed, but I would suggest some mandatory informing sessions to concede to general public opinion, where everyone is afraid that some parents may not educate their kids properly or teach them sex ed or whatever. That is, at various lifetime points, a government liaison comes in and makes sure the kid knows a few things here and there, so even if he’s being taught screwy things he knows that the outside world doesn’t believe them. Later on in life the information would be that you can live on your own and don’t have to live with your parents or do what they say, if any weird religious sects pressures the kids into their traditional marriages. Stuff like that. Frankly it could be done by affidavit.

In the rare case (and if we calm down and think rationally, we will realize that it will be rare) that a parent does mess up a kid’s future severely with really weird beliefs/ideas, or no education at all, that could be handled by tort to get the parent to pay for the gaps in education.

20

Purely aesthetic? The women in this family are being committed to subservience. Children in that family are being raised to be closed-minded and anti-intellectual. They’re being taught, whether explicitly or through inference, that other cultural ideas are unacceptable. That’s aesthetic?

I’d argue that that’s not only not a purely aesthetic problem, but it’s also not a problem that’s reserved to that family. It’s a problem that affects the society around them. Indeed, this type of anti-intellectualism has essentially been a long-standing plague on every aspect of American society. How the hell is that purely subjective or aesthetic?

Stuff we don’t like? That family is raising their daughter to be oppressed and used. I’m *pretty sure *it’s possible to say some negative things about that beyond “we don’t approve”.

The overlap between people who believe in insane things (A) and people who believe in crystal healing (B) is basically a venn diagram where B is a subset of A. The type of irrationality that leads to anti-intellectualism and treating women like property can easily lead to believing that crystals have magic powers. I don’t know why this surprises you.