> The fear of God had been put into them by nightly news and the understanding that an unsupervised child could invite a call from CPS. But walking alone to school or playing outside alone is not neglect. Giving your kid an iPad and letting them rot their brains with Cocomelon is neglect.
But I don't at all agree that the logical conclusion to this is that we should encourage corporal punishment. I would estimate that fewer than a fifth of the well-adjusted people I know were beaten or had their mouths washed out or such similar things. I would say that as a proportion, many more of the badly-adjusted people I know in adulthood experienced corporal punishment or similar.
We can give children rights, agency and protections from abusive behaviour without locking them in a padded room and melting their brains with iPads.
I really think that overexposure to technology is a huge part of this. It's doing something negative developmentally, stripping away children's agency and curiosity. I often feel addicted to tech, but I grew up in a world without nearly as much of it.
It is probably not a popular opinion, but I think it is fairly absurd that people consider "spanking" and "beating" to be the same thing
To me it's like saying that telling a kid to go to their room is the same as putting them in jail
Austria - "corporal punishment of children became explicitly banned through a new law stating that "using violence and inflicting physical or mental suffering is unlawful"
Colombia - On 23 March 2021, the Senate of Colombia unanimously voted to approve a bill that prohibits physical punishment, cruel, humiliating, or degrading acts, and violence as forms of correctional approaches for the upbringing of children and adolescents in Colombia
Nepal - "Children have right to a non-violent upbringing. Corporal punishment, psychological violence and other degrading educational measures are inadmissible."
South Africa - "In 2017 a decision by the Gauteng High Court held that corporal punishment in the home was unlawful,[68] and that decision was confirmed for the whole country by the Constitutional Court"
If you were like me, you were taught that your father spanked you because he loved you and wanted you to learn right from wrong.
How is that different from other abusive situations? If I using spanking as punishment on my wife because she messed up cooking the dinner, and said I did that because I loved her and wanted her to do better .. sure sounds abusive to me.
As for your "go to their room" example, perhaps you are not aware of alternative viewpoints? https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/6855333... was discussed on HN last year at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39250304 :
> "Shouting, 'Think about what you just did. Go to your room!' " Jaw says. "I disagree with that. That's not how we teach our children. Instead you are just teaching children to run away."
> And you are teaching them to be angry, says clinical psychologist and author Laura Markham. "When we yell at a child — or even threaten with something like 'I'm starting to get angry,' we're training the child to yell," says Markham. "We're training them to yell when they get upset and that yelling solves problems."
> In contrast, parents who control their own anger are helping their children learn to do the same, Markham says. "Kids learn emotional regulation from us."
Children should have neither, and few countries lets 2 year olds drink alcohol, with or without a temperance movement.
I was spanked more than once. Was it my fault for not learning as quickly as you did? Was it my parent's fault for not spanking me the right way? Or, hey, let's skip the entire conversation of how to spank the right way and simply ban corporal punishment, since other child-raising methods demonstrably work.
A violent dad (or mom) can be a far better parent than someone who never touches their children. It is simply not what matters (except in absurdly extreme cases, things that do permanent damage)
Source: personal experience. I was only physically punished a single time, but the continued emotional abuse sustained over a decade (which they learned from a guy who preached a "spare the rod"-type mentality) left me with scars that are unlikely to ever fully heal.
And in my case, I was lucky enough to remain capable of being a good student. That kind of baggage, and the expectations on top, only makes the effort to succeed in school/work an order of magnitude harder to sustain for years and years. I can only imagine how many people in my situation weren't able to accomplish what I was able to.
If for example I hadn't finished college instead, I wouldn't be surprised if certain people just blanket labeled me "lazy" like so many others, without taking into account my upbringing.
With all respect to your parents, given you were 3, I don't think it was justified. You said yourself you were imitating Looney Tunes. Who lets a 3 year old watch Looney Tunes?
About the only thing I learned from corporal punishment at the hands of my parents was that I’d never visit such violence on my children, each of whom today are successful in their diverse fields, law abiding, and in stable relationships, despite keeping my promise to never touch my children in anger. Whatever the causes of intellectual laziness, behavioural disturbances, or disinterest in fully engaging with the world, lack of physical violence directed at children would not appear on my own list of suggested causes. Instead I’d look at the world we adults have created and start fixing that. The opposite of coddling and overprotection isn’t corporal punishment. Likely that’s not your stance either; but when physical harm to children enters the conversation, I think we need to look elsewhere for solutions.
Unfortunately, that's a correct assessment.
Of course CPS goes after such children IF AND ONLY IF they have been raised well. Why? They are paid per child and that's the only way for them to get access to a child that doesn't destroy the place, or worse, the people. Leaving an obviously well-behaved child unsupervised gives them an excuse to use in court, and an easy child to whose life gets destroyed ... but they get money and jobs (and parents that they can "prove" aren't good)
> We can be good parents again
Nope. The state would never let us. You can mitigate this problem by having a lot of kids (minimum 3), in rapid succession, at which point there's a bit of a society at home. But you cannot fix society.
Is there any evidence of a systematic problem - nation wide no less - that its happening like this?
Because I know social workers, many of whom who work for child protective services (or their equivalent depending on state / county / city) and the constant story I hear is they are so understaffed they are overwhelmed with cases. They don't get enough funding as it is, and I have yet to hear a story that wouldn't make any decent person's skin crawl.
Well adjusted kids in good situations are not on their radar
But there are plenty of studies that point out that foster care, any form, is on average worse than facing abuse at home. Group homes are FAR worse than abuse at home. A huge one is here:
https://nccpr.org/the-evidence-is-in-foster-care-vs-keeping-...
The implication of this is, of course, doing nothing about abuse at all is superior to the current CPS system. This should NOT be understood as "child abuse doesn't matter". No. It has strong negative effects on children. However, CPS has strongER negative effects on children.
With that, I agree.
What I specifically posit however, is that CPS workers generally are not targeting well adjusted children in good homes. Even this organization you link to doesn't posit this.
What I do see here, and perhaps the NCCPR has a point, is that there should be better definitions of when a child should be taken from their home vs other types of interventions, because the foster care system in this country is truly terrible. Namely, they seem to be advocating for intervention policies on direct harm vs indirect harm, where indirect harm is defined as things like insufficient food, clothing, shelter or supervision. By shifting this definition the NCCPR argues that kids in real danger would get the attention they deserve and it would ease the burden on the child welfare system because less children would end up in the system, and stem the tide of reports and therefore resources used per investigation etc.
The tl;dr I get from the NCCPR's website as well as this interview about its work[0] (and the director) is the legal standard is too loose to be useful and should be better defined to significantly reduce the rate of false positives
Given the realistic chances of significant reform in the US around child welfare, I think maybe the NCCPR has a point, I'll explore that further, but its not that CPS workers are snatching well adjusted children from good homes. I see no evidence of that
[0]: https://www.npr.org/2023/11/30/1211781955/deluged-child-welf...
I'm over 45 now. "realistic chances of significant reform", in 35 or so years it got worse and worse, and worse, aside from very temporary upticks with a new building or something like a particularly bad worker leaving, and HUGE sudden negative effects (policies from above, suicide, "incidents"). What the study says is: it has long passed the point that if the system didn't exist at all, that would have been better for abused children, not worse. That point was already passed 35 years ago.
(which does imply that CPS workers are snatching children, btw, since they are not improving those children's lives. And CPS workers know that better than anyone)
> but its not that CPS workers are snatching well adjusted children from good homes. I see no evidence of that
They always have some excuse (usually divorce + fights between ex-partners, or school issues that are 100% the school's fault. Not something a child can do anything about, which is incredibly bad for their psyche, see attachment theory), so I guess you could say not perfectly well adjusted.
And these are "unintended consequences". Maladjusted children "fight themselves home". Either literally, through self harm or even through medical costs (that can mean actual cost, or something like epilepsy that necessitates 24/7/365 presence of an adult or the child WILL die. It's just a matter of time. People forget the frustration of that. An epilepsy patient takes one step forward, slowly, with INCREDIBLE effort, then falls 10 steps back. There is nothing whatsoever that can be done about that. Nothing you do will ever make any difference for more than a few days. Oh, and when the "mal" happens, odds are pretty good at least once that kid will hit you SO hard THEIR OWN bones break, in addition to yours. Best of luck holding on to those "good intentions")
(I put "good intentions" in scare quotes because if you can't keep doing it for at least a year or so, you're not helping)
Even when parents fight, physically, CPS. CPS workers hide their name (even judges now), but of course it's easy to find who they are. If a parent fights ... literally, their children are returned. If you press one of those therapists they'll say something like "it's not worth it", and send the child home.
Why? The state's failure in the child welfare system is not just failing to provide for the children. The state fails everyone and everything. Including protecting CPS workers or the workers in CPS group homes. Including also failing to protect those children against each other or outsiders (theft), but that, absolutely nobody cares about that, ever.
Who remains? Well adjusted children that regularly get extreme damage done to them by being in CPS. Most of all by never being allowed to stay in one place, even to finish a school semester.
Why do you believe this?
Also, I have actually seen care homes from the inside. You will not find violent children there, despite the fact that they should obviously be the main group. You will also not find real problem children, because they get removed when they commit a crime or self-harm. Not because they don't need help (obviously). To protect the place from liability and costs. Obviously eventually kids DO, out of desperation, commit crimes or self-harm. Because behaving will guarantee that you stay there, destroying the place or the people and, suddenly, "you're OK now".
Individuals who work for such an agency may care about kids. They are human after all, humans often care (though not always). But an agency is a different beast, and is at best apathetic. They can be certainly be cruel, but never really kind. They can be hateful, but never loving. Agencies would cease to exist if they could express virtue, but they often thrive when expressing vice. This is not cynicism, just an understanding of the dynamics of groups of people. Virtue is maladaptive at those scales, it does not provide survival advantage.
A fundamental property of any agency is that better or worse circumstances depend on availability ONLY. Availability of everything. Budget most of all, of course, but availability of "in-network" foster families, availability of foster parents determines if you get stuck in a group home or not. Whether you stay near your school. Group home availability determines if you get stuck in a short term group home or elsewhere (and thus have to move every 2 weeks for years). Occasionally foster kids are held literally in prison.
The reasons can be as valid or idiotic as you want, if they're not predictable AND under the influence of the child it will have disastrous effects on the psyche of the child.
And, frankly, this is rational: why should a foster child care about a society where an agency rips it out of it's family but doesn't provide a better alternative? What exactly do you expect to happen when that is done?
The only way CPS could theoretically function well is with 20%, 30% spare capacity that deliberately goes unused (which is the normal situation in families I might add. Parents aren't down to their last dollar. Parents aren't overloaded with kids. Even a drunkard dad is predictable, and if you can avoid them at the correct times ... Even an addict mom is predictable)
And doesn't get counted as physical abuse. Then authority figures will go "doesn't sound like abuse to me, just ordinary discipline" and be left convinced nothing's wrong.
The fear of God has been put into parents. I once walked up to my father and punched him in the groin when I was too young (ca. 3) to understand pain and hadn't yet ever felt it. I was imitating Looney Tunes. He responded by spanking me, hard. I understood, and never did it again. My grandmother would occasionally wash my mouth out with soap when I cursed. That's not abuse. Starving your kid is abuse.
On the flipside, later (ca. 10) they wouldn't let me walk the half-mile to school alone through my extremely safe suburban neighborhood. The fear of God had been put into them by nightly news and the understanding that an unsupervised child could invite a call from CPS. But walking alone to school or playing outside alone is not neglect. Giving your kid an iPad and letting them rot their brains with Cocomelon is neglect.
When I acted up in school, about half the time they sided with me and about half the time they sided with the school. If I got into a fight with another kid my dad was the kind of person to come to my vigorous defense in public but then privately ask me, "No, really, what did you do to provoke that kid?" He was right to.
What makes my blood run cold is that when I consider what I'd do as a father, I'm not sure I would have the strength to do the right thing either. I know we don't actually have to have this weird culture that all but demands parents let their kids run buck wild but only in the padded cell of the home if not the public panopticon -- but I can't imagine being the first to defect. I do know we have placed much too much emphasis on making sure they never have a negative emotion, and we're reaping the rewards of that mistake now. We can be good parents again.