that's being discussed with some fervour on an adoption list I'm on. One interesting part for me - IMO - is that it's not, I don't think absurd. A kid born to a very young or very old mother, a child born to parents with drug problems is much more likely to need intervention to get a chance. I mean, that's pretty much what I'm doing at riverkids - identifying families at high risk and intervening before they sell their kids. The state bears a huge cost in support, and it kind of boils down to - at what point do you intervene? Before or after the damage? When do you take kids away, when do you define my right to fuck up my life, and to some extent my kids, and the cost on society?
Because this is where libertarianism has always fallen for me - any society has to allow parental autonomy to raise kids as they want to, but total autonomy over children means that some kids will be trapped under dreadful parents. Adults, you can step back and say, well until it harms others, but adults can live independently, kids can't. So you get abuse ignored or you get valid-but-kooky parenting treated as abuse, and it's just brutally difficult. I hate having the state intervene with my family, but I would hate to live somewhere where children are not protected by the state. And this is really a question of what counts as abuse? Who decides?
Compulsary parenting classes and checks on children - how is this cutting into civil liberties of the parents versus protecting the rights of their children?
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Date: 2006-09-08 05:54 am (UTC)Because this is where libertarianism has always fallen for me - any society has to allow parental autonomy to raise kids as they want to, but total autonomy over children means that some kids will be trapped under dreadful parents. Adults, you can step back and say, well until it harms others, but adults can live independently, kids can't. So you get abuse ignored or you get valid-but-kooky parenting treated as abuse, and it's just brutally difficult. I hate having the state intervene with my family, but I would hate to live somewhere where children are not protected by the state. And this is really a question of what counts as abuse? Who decides?
Compulsary parenting classes and checks on children - how is this cutting into civil liberties of the parents versus protecting the rights of their children?