What Makes a Parent Negligent?

If we had universal health care in this country, at least one of these cases would not be a case at all. First, her son's doctor would have been able to spend enough time with her to educate her on the causes and dangers of severe obesity, and, second, she would have been able to afford the care available. It is appalling that many of our neglect cases are actually "neglect by poverty" - parents love and even may know how to care for their children (or would with some help), but simply can't afford it. What should the state do in this instance, given our current system? Leave a child to live in a vermin-infested building in disrepair (all the parent can afford to pay for), on bad quality food, with no health care, with an overwhelmed parent who wants to do right by their child but simply can't - or take the child, traumatizing it by tearing it away from a loving parent, place it in a foster home that may be abusive or neglectful (and the drastically overloaded agency barely squeaking by on a slashed budget has no resources to inspect and/or correct problems), with no way to fix the situation so the child can go home?

On the other hand, there are many parents who are truly dysfunctional and aren't going to be able to provide a healthy environment for their kids regardless of their income. Just because two human beings mated and produced offspring doesn't mean the offspring should not be protected by their community from abuse or neglect; just because two people made a baby doesn't mean they should be able to do anything they want to it, even if what they want is to deprive it of an education, of proper food and medical care and a healthy emotional life - for religious reasons or other. A person doesn't develop rights only when he or she reaches adulthood; whatever rights a parent has, a child has the same or corresponding rights. We should not value the parents' "rights" over those of the children; nor should we forget that the community has a strong and vested interest in seeing children grow to be healthy, happy and productive members of that community.

Sure, there are tough questions when it comes to what the standards should be for state intervention in child care - but the horror stories of medical care people have described are actually the exception rather than the rule, and most treatment decisions are not that controversial. That a child's parents may have powerful religious ideas or delusions should not mean the child should be deprived of a chance to live a healthy life - why should a parent's first amendment right to freedom of religion outweigh a child's due process rights, or its first amendment right to choose its own religious beliefs, if any?

Universal health care. Universal good quality education. It's less expensive in the long run.

The situation is negligence if one does not exercise the degree of care determined necessary and therefore may cause risk or harm to another. The situation is also negligence if one obligated to another does ot protect and assist another fails to do so, which may also cause risk or harm. But negligence is based on measurement against a 'reasonable person'. This is rather vague, as one has to determine what is reasonable, and what is not. So if parents are going to be accused of neglect, there should be studies that illustrate what will actually happen if they deny medical treatment for their children to analyze the risk/benefit ratio. Otherwise, the accusation of negligence is simply anecdotal at best..

I just want readers to consider one aspect that seems to be missing from this debate -- sometimes the medical doctors do not no what is best and, in fact, attempt to force harmful treatments onto patients, including children, when other options exist. I am not saying this is in the case of the boy with cancer, but it does happen. My infant son was forceable admitted to the hopital two days after returning home from a perfect delivery and perfect full-term pregnancy. The attending physician claimed he saw signs of neonatal herpes -- though neither parent had the condition and, as stated above, the pregnancy was perfect. What proceeded from there was a spinal tap and a week of anit-viral treatments against our wishes. Had we felt there was any compelling evidence to suggest our son could have this disease then yes, we would have gladly welcomed treatment. However, as intelligent and informed parents we saw no signs of this disease and knew there was no real way our son could have contacted it. As such, we felt the hospital should hold off at least 24 hours until the first of the tests came back before subjecting a healthy newborn to such invasive measures. As it was, the hospital still refused to release our son when the stomach swap test came back negative. We waited and were forced to continue treatment until about one week later when the result of the spinal tap came back negative, as we knew it would. What makes it all the worse is that we were never given the choice on anything in our son's treatment and were lied to about the risks, especially after having received a negative on the stomach swab. While we will never know if the treatment did have any long term effects, our son does seem to have gone from the very chubby healthy newborn -- like his brother was as well -- to a very sickly toddler one year later.

I might be able to agree that it is appropriate for the state to step in and help a child that is being abused by their parent(s), but the concept of "child neglect" is mostly an attempt to let the state insert itself into the private matters of a family. Family medical decision are NO business of the state. Our problem as a nation is that too many people have too much time to concern themselves with what other people think, and how other people want to live their lives.

It is naïve to assume that, because child welfare agencies are short on resources, they only act in the most severe cases. That assumes a system that behaves rationally. But child welfare systems are arbitrary, capricious and cruel. They routinely confuse poverty with neglect and needlessly destroy families ??? even as they also ignore children in real danger who really should be taken from their homes.

Indeed, the problems are related. The more a system is overwhelmed with false allegations, trivial cases and situations in which poverty is confused with neglect the less time workers have to investigate *any* case carefully. And it is this waste of time, effort ??? and money ??? on on needless substitute care that often causes the agency to be short on resources.

But there are options in between doing nothing and destroying a family ??? a very few model child welfare systems offer those families real concrete help. But child welfare agencies often choose not to help in this way, even though foster care is not only usually worse for the child, it also costs more than these better alternatives.

Richard Wexler
Executive Director
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
www.nccpr.org

It's a toss up, the parent may be doing more harm than good, then again, maybe not.. However, giving the gov't control over someone's sick child could be more devastating than the illness - considering someone's kid could just turn into another 'case'..no real love, or empathy for the child's well being would be involved..

Maybe Althea and her son need to be educated on food choices and what a healthy lifestyle involves. We sit in our homes with access to internet and healthcare and many resources that help educate us, but she may not have those things available. It is not fair to just say "stop eating junk". I am a 3rd grade teacher and this year on the first day of school I was shocked to see a 3rd grade girl who is at least 200 lbs in my class. She cannot bend over, she is out of breath all the time, and other children treat her cruelly. I made it my personal business to know as much as I could about her life and I soon found out that she lives in a highrise apartment building with her mother and 2 siblings. Our school is in a truly high crime area which is run rampant with gang activity. Her mother works 2 jobs and she is home with her siblings alone quite a bit. When I found out this information, I knew immediately that she cannot get any exercise because she is not allowed outside (due to crime and her young age) and she is most likely eating whatever quick, easy things her siblings can make for her. They do not have access to healthcare and probably the only time she has ever seen a doctor is in the emergency room. It is not the same for her mother and family as it is for ours. Honestly, I used to think the way many posters on here do, but I have learned to rethink all of my biases through my experiences with poverty stricken families.

The reason these programs exist is because there is such a thing as a rotten parent. How many parents beat their kids because they love them? How many parents neglect their kids because they lack the emotions to care for a child?

Jehovah Witnesses and Christian Scientists do neglect their kids when it comes to medical issues, but they are protected by the Constitution. To not accept donated blood is ridiculous, but so called informed adults have that right. To deny a child a life saving procedure should be criminal. What if a religion decided that denying a child food and water or forcing a child to take heroin as part a religious ceremony was God's will? No one would allow those religions to exist. For some reason everyone thinks the Constitution lets religion get away with murder.

Jehonah Witnesses do NOT accept donated blood under any circumstances, it is their religious belief and right! If all these "neglected" children needed was donated blood to save their life, would their parents be under charges of neglect if they refused because of their religious belief? I as a parent am completely responsible for anything that has to do with my children. Why should I not have the right to make any and all medical decision regarding them? Although I do not agree with either of these mothers, I do not feel it is the governments job to micro-manage my world either. Resources are stretched thin,, they should be used to protect and or investigate the millions of children who are abused and truelly neglected. There are a whole lot of things the government SHOULD be doing that they arn't. This is a waste of time, energy, effort, and financial resources.

How many people who think that being overweight is neglect, are willing to target $'s on research, prevention programs, and support for individuals and families who are struggling with these issues?

Being overweight, some severely overweight, is not a simple matter to correct. For some people, controlling weight is extremely very difficult; for some it comes naturally. To the judgemental, point-your-finger and blame the victim folks in the audience, learn more about issue and you'll find it's a lot more difficult then "eat less; exercise more".

I think a more obviously correct solution to some of the problems brought up in the article is for CPS to provide transportation to these children for their doctor's appointments, and allow the parents to call in to talk with the doctor from their job site during the appointment. Provide nutritionists to work with severely overweight children, and the psychological counseling they probably need. As someone who is somewhat overweight (working on losing 30 pounds right now), I understand how much of the struggle to maintain a reasonable weight is psychological. And also, the government, in the cases of low-income families - should provide the healthy foods, at least initially. My diet consists entirely of fresh vegetables and fruit, lean meats and low-fat dairy products. It's expensive, and I'm a single, white-collar professional. But it still probably would not be as expensive for the government as putting a kid into foster care.

All of this said, my mother was a guidance counselor, and she was continually shocked by the indifference she met with a couple decades ago when she urged parents of overweight children to help them lose weight. She spoke with one mother to ask her to ensure that her daughter (age 7, over 200 pounds and already facing severe health problems) stuck to a healthy diet. She said the best way was to get rid of all the junk food in the house. The woman's response was that the rest of the family was not fat, and it wasn't fair for them to suffer because their sister/daughter was on a diet.

In the case of the kid with cancer, just because one guy survived without chemo 15 years ago does not mean it will work for him. Yeah, chemo sucks, but so does being dead. They're playing Russian roulette with their kid's life, and yeah, I believe that is neglect.

I guess I would be considered a negligent parent by many here, since my son weighed close to 400 lbs. when he graduated from high school. A single mother, I worked many hours to support him and my daughter and wasn't able to give them the supervision they should've had. There's a lot of things I did wrong, but I never felt I was abusive because I wasn't physically, mentally or verbally abusive towards them. My kids are both adults now and able to make their own decisions, but I still feel guilty.

I understand social services interfering in clear cases where the child is in danger of immediate harm or death, but what of the cases where the parent's are simply raising their children the best they can and are poor through circumstances beyond their control?

I know a woman who lost her home because the landlord didn't pay the mortgage and she was evicted. She moved in with a family member into a too small house. A neighbor called social services, and the children of both families were removed because of evironmental neglect. I knew another woman that during Martin Luther King day, the child told the teacher that mommy spanked him. The teacher called social services and during the interview with the parents, the mother admited that several months before, she had swatted her child on his clothed hind end with her open hand, the child even said mommy hadn't spanked him in a long time and only did it a few times. Open case, because according to the investigator the child was at risk of physical abuse.

We hear all the time about the failed cases where the child dies, or when the parents go to jail, but we don't hear about the cases where social services goes way overboard and destroys families. There was a recent study done by Joseph Doyle, an economics professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management who studies social policy, that shows that in most cases the children would do better in their own home with additional support services instead of being jerked from their families. Another study by Mark Courtney while at the University of Chicago's Chapin Hall Center for Children, show that the 500,000 children in U.S. foster care are more likely than other kids to drop out of school, commit crimes, abuse drugs and become teen parents.

Our social service agencies have been given too much power by judges and court systems that routinely rubber stamp any decisions the social workers make. We need to remove the financial incentives to remove children from their parents and rush to terminate parental rights. Forcing social services to do first focus on in home support services designed to keep families together is not only cheaper for the states, it's proven more effective to produce successful children.