More widely I wish people (like you) would not generalise their reasonably happy childhoods onto others. I'm glad you had what others do not, but don't assume it's a universal.
Only in extreme cases does one bad (taking a child away from parent figures) justify removing them and putting them in a state run system (another bad). There’s certainly a place for that, but it’s at the extremes.
Many would like to claim that the state should raise kids. That’s a stance that does great harm to parents and children alike.
"Many"? Justify that. I've never heard anyone make such a broad and foolish generalisation.
> ...There’s certainly a place for that, but it’s at the extremes.
That's exactly what I'm saying, that those extremes do exist and need to be considered. I never suggested it generally. I was careful not to.
It says that in the case of Romania, warehousing children was a disaster on the scale of Dachau in WW2.
Psychology textbooks had to be rewritten afterwards as this level of child neglect was never contemplated - no biological or custodial parents to pattern their behavior.
One observation I'll make is that although adoption is considered a noble act in the US, many other countries consider it be throwing your baby away to be exploited.
People that I've talked to in the Philippines and Indonesia visibly recoiled when I mentioned the word "adoption", so there must be an unfortunate history there.
But that is not proof it can't work, just like how one bad parent isn't proof all parents are bad.
But a skilled government can gather more data and insights than any one individual, so it stands too reason they could produce a program that's better than what many or most parents can come up with on their own. In fact, that is precisely how modern day education ages 4-16 started out. Near universal literacy is one of its fruits. Why not more?
Primary schooling is fine, as long as everyone comes out literate and numerate.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201003...
I would say schools in general are more about warehousing kids than learning, although some kids do end up learning things they wouldn't have otherwise (while others end up not being able to learn things they would have learned otherwise).
Related to this discussion, several secular intentional communities in the US have attempted communal child raising and as far as I am aware all stopped after finding it to be worse than having parents be primary caregivers. Twin Oaks is the one I remember by name if anyone wants to go looking for info; I know their experience has been written about in books, I don't know if there is anything online. I am sure there were at least two other such attempts but I can't remember the communities right now. It seems kids really need at least one and not too many primary caregivers.
Foster care in the few states I know about in the US has serious problems. The interests of governments are not usually aligned with the interests of humans.
Parents do learn from the experiences of other parents and people everywhere are always looking for ways to do that better, but there are enough things that just don't work well that being too organized about it is likely to be counterproductive.
Adoption is considered a noble act in Romania
After the scandals, international adoptions were banned until recently.
There's some kind of disconnect here where it seems like Romanians are brigading on my post without actually reading the article.
There were just so many abandoned children that there were too few people willing to adopt them. Most people prefer to conceive their own children rather than adopting. Eve of those that want to adopt, they will often conceive a child before feeling ready to go through the adoption process, and few people can afford more than one child.
The products of autocratic governments are depressingly predictable.
Ostensibly, atrocities like this are done for the people - and yet, they are completely devoid of humanity.