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I think we would all agree that parents have a right to raise their children as they see fit. I think we would all agree also that at some point the welfare of the child would supersede those rights of the parent. To use one example, if one or both of the parents are molesting a young child, the state can and should take that child away from the parent for the good of the child. However, many/most situations are not so clear cut. This poll will list out several scenarios and ask if the state should take away the child in that scenario. Assume for the purposes of this poll that in each case the state has investigated in depth, a judge has been consulted and the feeling is that the parent is not going to change whatever it is they are doing. Since some of these scenarios require a bit of explanation I will list them all here with the full explanation. Please vote for any scenario where you feel the state should take the child away from the parents potentially permanently.
1: The child is beaten frequently to the point of needing at times medical attention. That is broken bones, lost teeth, etc.
2: The child is beaten, but not severely enough to warrant medical attention. That is, hard enough to leave bruises and similar, but not broken bones etc.
3: The parents deal drugs out of the house the children live in and while the child is there.
4: The parents do drugs frequently(every day at least) and while their children are in their care.
5: The child has a life threatening medical condition and the parent will not let a doctor treat it for religious reasons. Maybe they prefer faith healing, or do not believe in doctors, or whatever.
6: The child has a medical condition which degrades their quality of life significantly that the parent will not let a doctor treat for the same reasons as 5. Examples: significant pain, illness with the potential to cause blindness or crippling.
7: The child has a medical condition which degrades their quality of life somewhat, for reasons the same as 5. Examples would be treating near/far sightedness, dental work, etc.
8: The parent frequently leaves very young(say under 7) children home alone for hours at a time.
9: The parents do not feed the child enough to the point of being very undernourished.
10: None of those situations.
Again, please vote for each of those you feel would warrant the state taking the children from the parents potentially permanently. Also please be patient while I type out all the poll options. It will take a couple minutes at least.
Option 6 was a pain to get down to the character limit...
I did not vote for #2 because the term "beaten" is too ambiguous, and could be taken to mean a child whose buttocks were bruised because of a spanking. Personally, I'm against routine corporal punishment for children; however, I have seen families where corporal punishment was used, but the children were well-cared for, happy and psychologically fit. Having the state leap in and snatch children from parents because the child was bruised during a spanking seems over-reaching and onerous to me.
I think we would all agree that parents have a right to raise their children as they see fit. I think we would all agree also that at some point the welfare of the child would supersede those rights of the parent. To use one example, if one or both of the parents are molesting a young child, the state can and should take that child away from the parent for the good of the child. However, many/most situations are not so clear cut. This poll will list out several scenarios and ask if the state should take away the child in that scenario. Assume for the purposes of this poll that in each case the state has investigated in depth, a judge has been consulted and the feeling is that the parent is not going to change whatever it is they are doing. Since some of these scenarios require a bit of explanation I will list them all here with the full explanation. Please vote for any scenario where you feel the state should take the child away from the parents potentially permanently.
1: The child is beaten frequently to the point of needing at times medical attention. That is broken bones, lost teeth, etc.
2: The child is beaten, but not severely enough to warrant medical attention. That is, hard enough to leave bruises and similar, but not broken bones etc.
3: The parents deal drugs out of the house the children live in and while the child is there.
4: The parents do drugs frequently(every day at least) and while their children are in their care.
5: The child has a life threatening medical condition and the parent will not let a doctor treat it for religious reasons. Maybe they prefer faith healing, or do not believe in doctors, or whatever.
6: The child has a medical condition which degrades their quality of life significantly that the parent will not let a doctor treat for the same reasons as 5. Examples: significant pain, illness with the potential to cause blindness or crippling.
7: The child has a medical condition which degrades their quality of life somewhat, for reasons the same as 5. Examples would be treating near/far sightedness, dental work, etc.
8: The parent frequently leaves very young(say under 7) children home alone for hours at a time.
9: The parents do not feed the child enough to the point of being very undernourished.
10: None of those situations.
Again, please vote for each of those you feel would warrant the state taking the children from the parents potentially permanently. Also please be patient while I type out all the poll options. It will take a couple minutes at least.
Option 6 was a pain to get down to the character limit...
I think we would all agree that parents have a right to raise their children as they see fit. I think we would all agree also that at some point the welfare of the child would supersede those rights of the parent. To use one example, if one or both of the parents are molesting a young child, the state can and should take that child away from the parent for the good of the child. However, many/most situations are not so clear cut. This poll will list out several scenarios and ask if the state should take away the child in that scenario. Assume for the purposes of this poll that in each case the state has investigated in depth, a judge has been consulted and the feeling is that the parent is not going to change whatever it is they are doing. Since some of these scenarios require a bit of explanation I will list them all here with the full explanation. Please vote for any scenario where you feel the state should take the child away from the parents potentially permanently.
1: The child is beaten frequently to the point of needing at times medical attention. That is broken bones, lost teeth, etc.
2: The child is beaten, but not severely enough to warrant medical attention. That is, hard enough to leave bruises and similar, but not broken bones etc.
3: The parents deal drugs out of the house the children live in and while the child is there.
4: The parents do drugs frequently(every day at least) and while their children are in their care.
5: The child has a life threatening medical condition and the parent will not let a doctor treat it for religious reasons. Maybe they prefer faith healing, or do not believe in doctors, or whatever.
6: The child has a medical condition which degrades their quality of life significantly that the parent will not let a doctor treat for the same reasons as 5. Examples: significant pain, illness with the potential to cause blindness or crippling.
7: The child has a medical condition which degrades their quality of life somewhat, for reasons the same as 5. Examples would be treating near/far sightedness, dental work, etc.
8: The parent frequently leaves very young(say under 7) children home alone for hours at a time.
9: The parents do not feed the child enough to the point of being very undernourished.
10: None of those situations.
Again, please vote for each of those you feel would warrant the state taking the children from the parents potentially permanently. Also please be patient while I type out all the poll options. It will take a couple minutes at least.
Option 6 was a pain to get down to the character limit...
For those who are generally supportive of removing children from their family, I'd be interested in their reflections on what awaits children who enter the foster-care system and how they imagine the children will deal with being ripped out of the only family they've ever known and being sent off to live with strangers. Specifically, how much "cost" are you attaching to that experience and how do you balance that against the "benefit" of removing them from their family?
While certainly an interesting and worthy topic for discussion, it is also outside the realm of what I am asking. What I am interested in is where the line between individual rights and state control are drawn.
I used to work in CPS and the poll oversimplifies what exactly CPS does. For instance, there are many children who receive an adequate number of calories each day, but their food is not nutrient dense so they would still be considered starving/malnourished. If we visited a home where the children were otherwise okay, but all they were being fed was pasta with sauce and poptarts in the morning, we would intervene... usually when a teacher or community member speaks to the child and finds out they are not being fed well. However, such parents are not intentionally abusing or neglecting their children, so in those cases some parenting classes might be ordered to straighten things out.
In every one of the poll choices we would have to determine if it's intentional abuse or neglect, or just total ignorance that is the problem. Things like selling drugs in the home, doing drugs around children (which drug? state laws vary), beating them maliciously, letting them live in filthy environments unattended to... those are emergent situations and we would show up to the house with police to take the kids out and ask questions later.
As for medicine, that also depends. State laws vary, and people do have Federal protections. For instance, in most states it's not legal to treat a child's leukemia with anything other than chemo, radiation, or surgery. If you try to do that, you could be charged with child neglect. On the other hand, vaccinations, treating infections (even serious ones) have more leeway because there is evidence that many alternative approaches to disease have positive impacts. In a nutshell, if your child's condition is so bad that they need the ER (or might need it if action is not taken soon) and you don't take the necessary steps to ensure that it does not become dire, you could be charged with neglect.
Re: beatings and various kinds of abuse. Sometimes it is only one individual in the household committing these actions. That person can be charged and removed while the child remains in the custody of whoever is left, or placed with another family member outside the household. If there is evidence that other members in the household were knowingly complicit while a child was being abused in the home, then the child could be removed altogether.
I remember one case where a school called us to say that they noticed one of their students was losing weight rapidly and also had strange bruises on his body. When we contacted the family they said they were in the process of moving to a new home and couldn't accommodate a home visit, so we called the parents to our office for an interview. They were nice as pie, dressed really affluently, and spoke similarly. They said that recently their child had been clumsy while he had the flu and was falling all over the place, which explained the weight loss and bruising. You just know that when they have the perfect excuse that it's too perfect... so I was sent to their current house for a surprise visit during the day. There were no parents home, and a 5 year old who wasn't at school because he was taking care of a 14 month old infant. There were garbage bags everywhere, and on the counter top were rotting plates and dishes heaped high, with used diapers that had maggots in them and flies. The floors had obviously not been cleaned in ages, and the back door of the house was wide open because the door handle was broken. We took those kids then and there, and those parents went to jail.
It's always case by case. There is no formula of "yes" or "no", like the poll implies. Libertarians hate CPS because they only follow the controversial media stories, but every day there is real child abuse and neglect happening and if CPS didn't exist those children would be maimed or killed, either from willful violence or total stupidity.
Well, I answered your questions within a model where costs/benefits are weighed. I couldn't ignore what awaited the child on the other side of the removal from their home. All of the examples you cited are bad or not ideal and it would be great if we could, as a society, fix them, but I didn't really see child extraction, by itself, as a total remedy.
If you get two types of people responding to your poll, those who weigh the costs and those who don't, then we're all not judging the same scenario. Just something to be aware of.
You left off that parents are unable to pay the medical bills of a child but take the child to ER and receive medical care anyway. That now is a reason to terminate parental rights and put the child in a government institution. You left off that the parents can not afford medical care but obtain it anyway at government expense. Why did you leave that one off?
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