It's really unfortunate that child "protection" has come to the state that it now is in. There are some much more extreme cases where a child does need help from someone to be protected from a horribly abusive parent. That said, there are now too many triggers for child services interventions. Where I live (Ontario, Canada), for example, there are legal regulations that require certain care givers and other professionals to engage protective services at a very low threshold. Without going into great detail, I have seen examples in my work where a new mother will be reported to the protective services before she has even left the hospital. Now if she is a homeless crackhead, this maybe makes sense but if she is struggling with PPD and perhaps is just in need of greater support in her initial experience with motherhood or if her spouse appears to be prone to aggressive behaviour, these should not be triggers to report her but the practitioners are scared NOT to make a report because they fear reprisal if anything were to happen to the child. Consequently, people members of the public are scared to even take their children for medical services because of fear for being accused of neglect.
It's wonderful to do everything we can to protect children but a lot of them do not need protection. I agree with the author, we all grew up in eras where a certain degree of humanity and imperfection was permitted for parents and we all survived and even thrived in many cases. Now the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.
There is so much overreach by the CPS all over the world but, there is also so much lack of commonsense and responsibility creeping in from parents too. When it comes to children, err on the side of caution but, what does that really mean? Perhaps one day an AI will be able to assess cases with much more sensitivity than a government agency. Where does that lead us though?
Thanks for taking the time to comment well.
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Children and youth are better off than ever in developed countries. There is a clear tendency of decreasing substance abuse and delinquency on part of the youth. Yes, they seem to be glued to their screens but if you look at the big picture, their well-being seems to be at a higher level than before. Based on what I've read, a small minority have more serious problems than before.
Being under the watchful eye of an all-knowing AI judging every minute your parenting performance sounds like an Orwellian nightmare sucking all joy out of parenting. Who in their right mind would have children under such conditions? Would you really trust some crappy algorithms to judge whether or not you are an adequate parent to your child?
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Good point but I also do think that there is now more of a need to be able to validate one's claim of being a good parent because of the government overreach that already exists. For example, I think I am a good parent but if something happened that even accidentally called my parenting into question, what records would I have to prove that I was indeed a good parent? This article was great and got us all talking, which is encouraging because these topics do not even seem to make a ripple in political campaigns.
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That's a good point. But the problem still remains that the existence of records like that and interpretation thereof are two entirely separate issues. From what I've heard, one issue Finland is plagued by is the fact that in case a parent or a child at least 12 years of age is against a care order, the case will be handled by an administrative court. The standards of evidence in an administrative court and the process are different from a district court.
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No, I would not but, people do it every day when they sit their kids down to watch from youtube, it is just one or two more steps along the path. We are getting dumber and raising kids to be slaves to whatever is offered for them to eat.
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