If you think that these moms should be punished, then what standards would you apply?
We live in a society where only crimes are punished, and crimes are defined by statutes. Those statutes include child abuse and neglect. What objective criteria are being applied?
I disapprove of the parenting practices of about 90% of parents. However, I do not think that those 90% should be punished. Only those who are causing harm by some objective criteria.
Update: A comment asks what standards I would apply. To give an example statute, here is the Calif WI 300 code defining actionable child abuse and neglect:
(a) The child has suffered, or there is a substantial risk that the child will suffer, serious physical harm inflicted nonaccidentally upon the child by the child's parent or guardian. ...I have omitted some qualifications. There are also court cases defining the matter further.
(b) The child has suffered, or there is a substantial risk that the child will suffer, serious physical harm or illness, as a result of the failure or inability of his or her parent or guardian to adequately supervise or protect the child, or the willful or negligent failure of the child's parent or guardian to adequately supervise or protect the child from the conduct of the custodian with whom the child has been left, or by the willful or negligent failure of the parent or guardian to provide the child with adequate food, clothing, shelter, or medical treatment, or by the inability of the parent or guardian to provide regular care for the child due to the parent's or guardian's mental illness, developmental disability, or substance abuse. ...
I just don't see cold showers as being "serious physical harm". If you really think that a parent should be criminally punished for cold showers, then how do you think that this statute should read? Much as I disagree with certain parenting tactics, regulating shower temperature would be a vast invasion of civil liberties and privacy.
1 comment:
that's a very good question: what standards would you apply? The answer appears to be that lawyers and judges, being intellectually lazy, morally challenged and pathologic in their need to cover their behinds look to the "experts" for guidance and don't really question the rationale behind the conclusions of said experts. And who are the experts? That's the shrinks who "research" and publish their findings. And then there's the social workers are the foot soldiers out in the field doing "social justice" and seeing "how it really is". A really toxic brew of very screwed up people at a number of different levels. Throw that motley crew at a family breaking apart with all the attendant emotional turmoil (and occasional physical mayhem) along with the zero-sum game approach, hypermaterialism, and narcissism in our culture(American, anyway) and you see why divorce here is such a disaster. Also, we as a culture have abdicated self reliance in solving private matters between individuals to "experts", putting blind faith in who are more blind than they are. Yes, sometimes a party does need someone outside them to mediate, but unfortunately things have degenerated where that's no longer possible, where there's a buck to be made and people exploited, you can expect this culture to create a means to do so. Don't believe me? Read your American history, that's what we're founded on. Just my 0.02, YMMV, etc.
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