I actually am inclined to think the parents are not right and they're spinning it to cover something actually bad going on because they know the state can't break privacy laws to respond, but that's me being cynical too. Thanks for letting me rant!!
it's basically saying the state should only be able to make sure THOSE people lose their children or something and argh.
No. It's saying the state should only take children away from parents in cases of actual neglect or abuse.
2: No. (In an ideal world) every parent is at risk of having the state take away their kids, if the parent is abusive or dangerously neglectful.
Why on earth should the state have any right to put them in that predicament
implies that this couple should somehow be free from the possibility of suspicion, which is wrong.
2: if that's really all they meant, then what's the problem? In the end, their kids weren't taken, so no worries.
In the end, their kids weren't taken, so no worries.
No worries? They let their children walk home from the park, and they now have a CPS file with a charge of child neglect. That's pretty worrisome.
Are we complaining about the tone of this particular article (which, Slate article takes controversial, annoying tone, news at 11:00) or the facts of this particular case? Because it does seem to me that people should be quite a bit more free to give their kids more freedom without worrying about CPS knocking on their door.
(I haven't actually read the link, of course.)
because they know the state can't break privacy laws to respond
This seems to happen a lot, not just with state cases, but with claims against hospitals.
Parent: "CHOP said they won't give my daughter a new kidney because she is too ugly!!!!!"
Internet: "OUTRAGE!"
Hospital: "We aren't allowed to comment."
Parents and Internet: "LIARS!"
To maybe make this more topical, I have not yet had a chance to look at whether there's been any data released on child protective services involvement in Ferguson, MO, but I'd be shocked if there weren't a lot of stories of racist, classist outrages there. If nothing else, when you're throwing a lot of people in jail for not particularly good reasons, you're going to leave a lot of children parentless for at least a while. I know that abuses go on in other areas closer to me with publicized racist police activity. But because this isn't all public data, it's hard to really know.
make sure THOSE people.
This is a real stretch. Read the statement in context.
The Meitivs, as it happens, are "free-range parents" who have a very coherent philosophy about giving children more independence. They had let their children walk home alone that day only after practicing and felt the kids were ready.
In other words, the kids weren't just out wandering because mom and dad were passed out drunk, but because they had practiced for it and were explicitly given permission by their parents. As much as it's clear that the authorities are far more willing to hit poor and minority parents with child neglect charges, it seems like the news coverage is pretty consistently Outraged! (appropriately, by my lights) when this stuff happens.
There's certainly some lack of awareness in how the article is written, but it seems to me that CPS's behavior here is much more outrageous than the parents comments or the Slate article.
it seems like the news coverage is pretty consistently Outraged! (appropriately, by my lights) when this stuff happens
Right. Remember the (low-income, minority) mother who was in the news (last summer?) for leaving her child at the park so she could go to her job at McDonalds? Most of the reactions I saw were Outraged! because what else was she supposed to do and the kid was happy at the park, etc., not Outraged! because what's wrong with her for neglecting her kid like that.
OTOH, I do suspect there's a lot of 7 going on in many of these stories, mostly because I can hardly believe that case workers in an overworked, understaffed and underfunded CPS system would regularly take it upon themselves to be a nosy nuisance to people who aren't legitimately abusing, neglecting or endangering their kids. And due to privacy laws, we're almost always hearing only one side of the story. BUT, to the extent the side we're hearing is an accurate representation of what's actually going on, which is a GIANT caveat, the behavior of CPS is totally unreasonable.
Let me join the pile-on. I agree that there's a real, and maddening, issue that it's easier to get people OUTRAGED about unjust CPS behavior toward nice white well-educated people than it is to get people outraged about unjust CPS behavior toward Those People. But I do think it's a fundamental mistake to think that the problem is too much outrage (If poor minority parents are expected to tolerate being abused by CPS, then I don't want to hear affluent white people complaining), rather than too little outrage (If you're going to get upset about these nice white free-range parents getting hassled by CPS, I'm going to expect you to come through with just as much attention when I tell you about about poor minority parents getting the same treatment). This article isn't so much the problem, it's the missing articles about what happens to other parents.
I should ask my mother for a comment on this story; I can't remember if I ever mentioned here (under regular pseud) that she was a social worker at CPS for decades (she now does more of a consulting thing, because the environment at CPS became unbearable after a couple of crises). It's funny that I have this lifelong quasi-insider perspective and not much insight into this particular situation. I do know that it seems genuinely hard to portray CPS sympathetically in the media: they're either getting hammered for going after people who don't deserve it or for not going after people who do. I could easily see a scenario where there is some internal conflict between hardliners and reasonable people (oops, hello bias) in the local department, with managers trying to do damage control. In her last assignment with the county my mother had a colleague who boasted that in her whole career, she had only had one child who truly deserved to stay with his/her family. My mom's attitude was more or less "well, I can't change her mind, and I can't just shoot her."
I can't change her mind, and I can't just shoot her.
This really sums up all human interaction, doesn't it? Except in Florida, where you can just shoot her.
my mother had a colleague who boasted that in her whole career, she had only had one child who truly deserved to stay with his/her family
She was saying the rest of the children were rotten and deserved to be sent to a dungeon? That sounds reasonable.
15: But you still can't do it at work.
16: No, sorry. There was only one client family who "deserved" (whatever this means, not an actual quotation) not to have their child put in foster care. There's no judgment on the children as such. I took this to be clear from context but perhaps I should read my comments over more carefully in the future. I am also sorry for seemingly derailing this thread.
Are we complaining about the tone of this particular article (which, Slate article takes controversial, annoying tone, news at 11:00) or the facts of this particular case?
The former.
The article ran in the WaPo, the whole editorial position is glorification of the well-meaning and clearly superior middle class and also of their betters.
18: You're cool, the unsigned comment was deliberately misreading you. And don't worry about derailing, you were more on point than most comments are.
I'm pretty sure 16 was a joke, and a funny one at that.
That's what I thought. I assumed it was Smearcase.
16 was a joke?? Why was there no emoticon??
Also, just to be annoying let me point out that the blockquote in 9 is the same quote as in the OP.
Right, but the interpretation was different.
Given that you're annoyed by the article, what do you think about what I said in 13 -- would you be okay with it if you believed that there was enough indignation about CPS injustice toward poor and minority parents, or is there something internal to the article that you're objecting to?
I think internal to the article - it feels like these parents should be immune from suspicion specifically because they have a coherent, well-thought out philosophy. That CPS should be restricted to stupid parents who don't think about what they're doing. But hypothetically, a free-range parent could cross lines that I'm not comfortable with - sending their 10 year old back-packing across Europe, say - and so I don't think it's crazy that CPS is at least paying attention to free range parenting.
Obviously I think the pendulum has swung too far towards hyper-vigilant-parenting and outrage is due, but the tone of this outrage feels like "What! We're off-limits from suspicion because we're thinking types!"
29 sounds to me like looking for offense. The kids aren't in distress. (Thus, I say anyone who called the police or CPS should be charged.) The fact they they are thinking types isn't irrelevant here: that these kids aren't in distress isn't some sort of lucky fluke. They are not alone because they are being neglected.
I agree that 'thinking' isn't a get out of jail free card, but I don't think that was intended.
The point of the journalism business is to sell soap. Tell stories that your actual readership wants to hear, and you're selling soap. Lamenting that stories the publishers don't think are going to sell well with their readership aren't getting published doesn't even have the 11 o'clock news value of Slate's annoying contrarianism.
I do get that: no one should be exempt from law-enforcement or suspicion because of their status as nice thoughtful people, and a claim that they should be is bullshit. But there is a substantive difference, neglect-wise, between "Yes, the kids were walking home together without an adult. I knew where they were, we planned it out, and I decided they were competent to handle it," and "Huh. They went to the store together? I was kind of wondering where they'd gone to," don't you think? I think children of the former parents are probably safer than children of the latter, in general; not that thoughtfulness is a total defense to a charge that you're putting your child at risk, but that demonstrated thoughtlessness makes it seem likelier that something unacceptably risky might happen.
could cross lines that I'm not comfortable with - sending their 10 year old back-packing across Europe
Hold on--you think "crossing lines you're not comfortable with" should be grounds for CPS investigations? Or that sending a 10 year old back-packing across Europe should be grounds for CPS investigations? I mean, I agree that doesn't sound like a good idea, but there really ought to be a lot more room between "not a good idea" and "potentially criminal parental abuse or neglect".
Or that sending a 10 year old back-packing across Europe should be grounds for CPS investigations?
Without an adult? Yeah, I'm good with that.
33 -- I still think distress on the part of the kid is and has to be the essential triggering element. The whole scenario is ridiculous, but if we're going to propose parents who send their 10 year old backpacking across Europe, then I can as well propose a child who is perfectly fine doing so.
18: Sorry, Chelsea! 16 was mine, and I was just trying to be funny.
Headline: Why is CPS spending thousands gallivanting around Europe? Slate investgates.
That is, I think where some bystanders "lines" are should be completely irrelevant, and the sole question for busybodies has to be the actual condition of the child. And if they don't want to or can't make enough of an investigation to know that a child is in actual distress, they should go on with their lives.
They went to the store together?
And didn't ask if I wanted them to bring me back cigarettes?
I can't go all the way with Charley. Children are presumed to not have mature judgment: I can think of situations where a kid might not perceive themselves to be in distress, but where I thought they were being endangered, abused, or neglected.
I have a genuine question--at what age am I allowed to let my kids walk to the neighborhood park on their own? Trying to google the question brings up no clear answer, I think because there is no bright line. Which is absolutely ridiculous. Would I personally trust them to do it now? Yes. I did at their age, they know the way, it's not far, no major street crossings, etc. But I would never actually let them do it now, because I'm certain they would be perceived as "too young". So at what age can I let them, without fearing that someone will call the police (and not have the police simply laugh at the caller)? If no one can give a clear answer to that question, doesn't that seem like a problem? (Unless you think ever letting kids do anything on their own is just completely unimportant, in which case we have a bigger disagreement.)
I can think of situations where a kid might not perceive themselves to be in distress, but where I thought they were being endangered, abused, or neglected.
Such as?
If no one can give a clear answer to that question, doesn't that seem like a problem?
Yes, and I bitched about exactly that issue here when my kids were younger. (Idiotically, I can't remember exactly when we started letting them out of the house alone. Eightish? But very nervously until tennish?)
It's a nonlinear function of age, traffic, and percentage of the local fauna that is wolves and bears.
12: Eight year old driving a car on the highway with parental permission might be having a grand old time, but I'd think they were being endangered. Same age kid, preparing dinner (knives, fire) without supervision with the only adult in the house passed out drunk? Kid might be coping fine and seem perfectly contented, but the parent is doing something wrong. That kind of thing.
It seems to me that the age at which that's safe increases pretty dramatically the higher all the parents around you think it is. My parents pretty much gave me a bike when I was six or seven and started accepting "to play with so-and-so" as an answer to "where are you going?". That was probably safe enough, given that every other parent in the neighborhood had attitudes equivalent to that or even less restrictive. I'm not sure it would be even remotely safe in your average American suburb these days though.
I was fretting about wanting to let Sally outside unsupervised at seven, but wasn't doing it yet. But I think not long after that.
And, I mean, not just because of getting worried about ridiculous busybodies calling the police or something. The general social expectations of where kids will be/what will happen if something goes wrong/etc. have shifted enough that I'm not sure it would be anywhere near as safe for a kid to just be wandering around outside. At the very least they'd be a lot less likely to be surrounded by five or six other loud kids.
Doesn't the "driving a car" one fall afoul of actual laws, whereas "free range parenting" doesn't? It only falls afoul of rather nebulous conceptions by bystanders of what child endangerment is, and (I suspect) fear on the part of the police/CPS that if something is reported and they don't react they will be sued.
Even if there's only one other kid outside with them, I bet that one kid is more likely to have a gun than the five or six loud kids out playing in the 70s.
49: Sure, but try the other example. It's not illegal to pass out drunk, or to let an eight-year-old cook. But.
Kids won't want to go out to the park and play if their friends aren't outside too, in any case. They'd rather come home and chat to them on Skype while playing games together online.
46 & 48. I'm not sure what your conception of "not safe" means. Do you really think kids are less objectively safe today playing on their own than they were X years ago (usually when the person writing was a kid)? If so, in what way?
51. In the cooking while parent is passed out drunk hypothetical there is no bystander to report it. It's certainly dangerous, though. My kids used to fix us breakfast (special occasions) while we were ostensibly asleep. Knives were involved but not cooking, as their idea of breakfast was cut up fruit, yogurt, and granola. I forget how young they were the first time they did it, but definitely under ten.
54: There could be a bystander -- the kid might have answered the door. But I'm losing track of what you're arguing about: my position is that you can think of circumstances where a kid is abused or neglected but not at that moment perceiving themselves as in distress. I'm not sure exactly what part of that you disagree with.
Then there's the carefree happy kid whose parents don't insist that she bathe.
41 et al: Parents, just don't worry so much about a policeman knocking on your door. It happened to me when I let my son run around outside at 7 or 8, and it's not a big deal. Even being "investigated" by CPS, which also happened, isn't such a big deal. They come in and ask a few questions, and possibly look around the downstairs of the home to make sure there aren't guns lying around in plain sight. Even if you are found to have committed an act of substantiated neglect (didn't happen to us but we looked into it), the only consequence seemed to be that it would be difficult to obtain employment in the daycare industry. They don't take away your children for a first offense.
I really have no sympathy for these parents. There was a credible complaint which teh government investigated. In the investigation they were asked some questions, and a determination was made that there was no evidence they committed any child neglect. Sure, an annoying afternoon, but the only way to protect children is to investigate complaints.
I agree that a child might not perceive distress. That means you need to investigate -- you the busybody -- before you start talking about what you're comfortable with and where your lines are. If you don't understand the actual situation, your feelings and lines should not mean anything to anyone.
I'm sure there are plenty of CPS calls from neighbors family members who've witnessed distress. Calls from people who want to punish the mom running into the convenience store with a kid sleeping in a car seat in a locked car (in non extreme weather conditions) because they want to punish the mom for doing it wrong are bullshit. Can you imagine some sort of edge cases where busybodying isn't bullshit? I suppose so, but that doesn't mean that most of it isn't crap.
41: Which one is your neighborhood park?
I don't want to disagree with 57, really I don't. But 'I saw a kid walking down the street' isn't a 'credible complaint.'
and a determination was made that there was no evidence they committed any child neglect.
This bit confuses me. The indignant article seems to assume that 'unsubstantiated' is a finding that has some potential negative effect going forward. What it sounds like to me is what you said -- no problem here. If that's right, I agree that I don't know what they're complaining about at all. But maybe there's some sense where having a finding of 'unsubstantiated' neglect on your record is going to be a problem for them?
The WAPO article explains:
Danielle and Alexander Meitiv hoped the nationally debated case -- which has lit up social media and brought a dozen television film crews to their Silver Spring home -- would be dismissed after a two-month investigation by Montgomery County Child Protective Services.
But the finding of unsubstantiated child neglect means CPS will keep a file on the family for at least five years and leaves open the question of what would happen if the Meitiv children get reported again for walking without adult supervision.
Tolson said as a general practice, CPS officials in Maryland reach one of three possible findings after neglect investigations: ruled out, unsubstantiated or indicated.
An unsubstantiated finding is typically made when CPS has some information supporting a conclusion of child neglect, or when seemingly credible reports are at odds with each other, or when there is insufficient information for a more definitive conclusion, she said.
and leaves open the question of what would happen if the Meitiv children get reported again for walking without adult supervision.
Is there any reason to think anything different would happen? I mean, they don't seem to have gotten a "Don't let this happen again" warning, they got a finding that "Yes, we let our kids walk without adult supervision" isn't evidence of neglect.
they got a finding that "Yes, we let our kids walk without adult supervision" isn't evidence of neglect.
I admit I'm not totally clear on this, but I'm not sure that's the right interpretation. Neglect wasn't "ruled out".
64 seems to me to be exactly backwards. They didn't get dismissal or "ruled out.' They got "Strike 1!"
53 - Yeah I'd be willing to say that, more or less.* General social norms make a lot of difference in small and large ways. For example, a generally accepted idea that a bunch of small kids with about as much natural caution and sober responsibility as a bunch of small kids have will be running around unsupervised in a neighborhood almost certainly does impact the way most people drive in that neighborhood. I mean, there are always going to be loonies, but at the same time it's a pretty standard point that drivers see what drivers expect to see and don't see what they think of as abnormal nearly as much. There will likely be a gang of kids (or a couple different ones more likely) running around so if something does happen there are people who can go for help. You're more likely to be recognized as 'so and so's kid' by neighbors so if something happens people will know roughly who you are or at least who is with you, and there's a reasonable expectation that you can go bang on doors and adults will address the problem if one occurs. That sort of thing seems to me to make at least some difference, and that's leaving aside any general stuff about infrastructure (e.g., sidewalks) which is also a big deal.
*My experiences are less "back when I was a kid compared to now" and more "back when I was living in this one place where that was accepted than the next place we lived where it wasn't", also.
60: Of course, we really don't know what the complaint was. When it was my kid, it also involved crossing a fairly busy street away from a crosswalk. Not really earthshaking but enough to prompt a house call by a non-busy suburban police department.
61: Rules may differ in states but I would be extremely surprised if there can be any official consequences to a finding of "unsubstantiated." It's sort of like complaining that the jury found you "not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt," but didn't say you were innocent. I think what they're complaining about is that the CPS system keeps a record , so it they get an additional complaint on the same family, CPS knows it happened before. this seems reasonable. Live with it guys.
65, 66: As I said, I'm genuinely confused by this. But as far as I can tell, the evidence CPS considered was the presence of the kids outside unsupervised, and statements by the parents that the lack of supervision was knowing and intentional on their part. So that's the evidence, and on the basis of that evidence, neglect was 'unsubstantiated'. If that means 'strike one, don't do it again or we'll take action next time', I'm opposed to that. But it really doesn't sound to me as if that's what it means.
But there is a substantive difference, neglect-wise, between "Yes, the kids were walking home together without an adult. I knew where they were, we planned it out, and I decided they were competent to handle it," and "Huh. They went to the store together? I was kind of wondering where they'd gone to," don't you think? I think children of the former parents are probably safer than children of the latter, in general; not that thoughtfulness is a total defense to a charge that you're putting your child at risk, but that demonstrated thoughtlessness makes it seem likelier that something unacceptably risky might happen.
Oh definitely. And I think that the Meitivs were being safe, reasonable parents. I'm just saying the tone of the article is my problem.
The thing that makes 'unsubstantiated' sound a bit disturbing is that it's not clear (and I'm not sure if CPS is even allowed to make it clear to anyone else, or has any intention of making it clear to anyone) whether it means "Ok but if it happens again we'll know it's your second offense" or "Now that we have you on file we'll know that your kid isn't being neglected if we see him wandering around". The parents are reacting as if it's the first, clearly, but who knows.
Didn't Patience Gray send her kids home from Italy to England with next to zilch money via hitchhiking when they were rather young? She was a notorious thinker, that Patience!
I've been impressed thus far by the coordination, tact and perseverance of school and social work staff here in SF working with kids and their families, seen via my mock trial coaching. We generally have at least one team member each year who is couch surfing, is / becomes homeless or some other calamitous situation develops, and often in "intact" families parents cannot come to watch the competitions because of work schedules. I did manage to suppress my overwhelming desire to assault the coach for one of the competitive entry high schools who a few years ago remarked it was curious how our kids' families didn't show up much to support the team. Asshole.
I guess I don't know what it means for neglect to be "ruled out". If they only issue that finding when CPS has determined beyond a reasonable doubt that no neglect could be occurring, then sure, it might be inappropriate here. But that can't be what it means, or they wouldn't even have it as one of the three standard findings. So I suspect in practice it must mean: "we didn't find any evidence of neglect". Which means "unsubstantiated" means... something more than that. And unless there are more facts than we're aware of (which again per 12 I do think is a possibility), anything other than a finding that "we didn't find any evidence of neglect" seems inappropriate.
72: When I say I'm confused, it's that from the reporting of what CPS did, it wouldn't have ever occurred to me to interpret it as "this is a first strike" or as anything but "the evidence we looked at says that what you did isn't neglect." The only thing that's confusing me is that reasonable people are reacting as if it were a warning.
Is it kind of like the weird Scottish "not proved" verdict? Based on a recent watching of the movie Madeline there is a definite whiff o suspicion left.
Even being "investigated" by CPS, which also happened, isn't such a big deal.
My sister had this happen. She thought it was a pretty damn big deal, and I was sympathetic.
I dunno. When I was a youngster - 14 or so - I got stopped by the cops walking home from school. They frisked me and asked a lot of nasty questions, and went on their way. When my mom found out, she was pissed, which surprised me because not only was she generally a placid person, she was a big believer in obeying authority. When I told her about it, my assumption was that she would ask me what I had done wrong.
Now, though, I get the whole thing about being protective of one's children around bureaucrats.
74: That is puzzling, I admit.
Maybe 'ruled out' is for complaints where whatever the complained-about facts were never happened at all? "We thought you were letting your kids walk to the store unsupervised, but it turns out it wasn't your kids, it was two unusually short and babyfaced adults who kind of look like them."
The only thing that's confusing me is that reasonable people are reacting as if it were a warning.
I think what people are reacting to is the fact that the parents didn't get the maximum degree of exoneration.
Well, I agree that they should have gotten the maximum available degree of exoneration, I just can't figure out if there's a meaningful sense in which they didn't.
I cannot believe how much things have changed in the last 20 years. AIMHMHB, aged 13 I rode the train, unaccompanied, from my town in California to Cleveland, with train changes in LA's Union Station and Chicago, and then again from Massachusetts to Georgia, train change in DC. My mother did think there would be an Amtrak official around to usher me from train to train, which did not happen (thankfully I'm good at divining who's going the same place as me and surreptitiously following). I'm sure we were on the edge of normative behaviour, but that was only 1994! Not a single person called the cops, or really even seemed vaguely concerned about me beyond the normal solicitude you get in public.
"We thought you were letting your kids walk to the store unsupervised, but it turns out it wasn't your kids, it was two unusually short and babyfaced adults who kind of look like them."
"What? Shit, you're right! So where are my kids?!"
Yes, hard to tell if "unsubstantiated" is used more to indicate "this accusation seemed to be baseless" or to indicate "not enough evidence to say for sure... YET."
Maybe 'ruled out' is for complaints where whatever the complained-about facts were never happened at all?
"Ruled out" is for cases where the parents were found to have not engaged in behavior that was harmful. "Unsubstantiated" is saying "insufficient evidence." From the published narrative, it seems as though there was plenty of evidence of what took place.
If there's something else going on that isn't in the public domain, then the parents are morons for raising a stink about it.
to indicate "not enough evidence to say for sure... YET."
If that's what's going on here (assuming we have a reasonably full story), that really is a scandal and an outrage. There's no missing evidence about what happened. A finding that "Letting your kids walk outside unsupervised is neglect, this is your first strike, if we catch you doing it again we may take action," I would disagree with, but it's at least a clear statement. A finding that "We're not going to tell you if what you did was neglect, despite having all the relevant facts. All we're going to tell you is that we're not taking action this time," is really screwy and awful. I think it's unlikely that's what 'unsubstantiated' means, but I've been wrong before.
Maybe I am wrong. But if that is what 'unsubstantiated' means, shouldn't an 'unsubstantiated' finding have to be roughly of the form "There is some reason to think X happened. X constitutes neglect or abuse. After investigation, however, there is insufficient evidence to establish that X actually did happen, and therefore the allegation of X is officially 'unsubstantiated'."
If this is a situation where 'unsubstantiated' means 'we refuse to tell you whether or not we regard X as neglect," that's awful.
An unsubstantiated finding is typically made when CPS has some information supporting a conclusion of child neglect, or when seemingly credible reports are at odds with each other, or when there is insufficient information for a more definitive conclusion, she said.
But that seems completely inapplicable to this situation (again, assuming we're getting a full story). So either it's been misapplied, or there are other meanings.
Well, according to the parents, it seems to have been misapplied, and that's why they are upset.
when there is insufficient information for a more definitive conclusion
They won't be able to reach a more definitive conclusion until they are sure that nothing bad happens to the kids while they are out walking by themselves. They'll be able to reach a more definitive conclusion once either - 1) something bad happens or 2)the kids are adults.
Or at least they think it seems to have been misapplied, but really they are as confused as we are.
I'm not sure if 91 is a joke, but I think that's actually the correct interpretation of the ruling.
90: That seems like a genuine thing to be legitimately upset about: not that CPS is keeping a file open, but that they issued an incomprehensible finding.
One finding means they close the file and send it to the archives. Another finding means they keep the file open for 5 years in case you get reported again. And, the letter telling you about the second finding says you can appeal it.
I think calling this exoneration is pretty unreasonable.
Let's see, maybe I can make this worse by having everyone play the fact/opinion game again.
I personally know people in Maryland, though I don't think in that county, who've gotten "ruled out" findings to investigations into the neglect of children in their care.
I can think of situations where a kid might not perceive themselves to be in distress, but where I thought they were being endangered, abused, or neglected. From personal knowledge, this is often absent in cases of incest. We could certainly argue about whether a baby who's left alone for hours or days and responds by just not crying or doing anything at all is showing distress, but we'd probably agree that this is neglect.
I appreciate Chelsea Clinton's additions to the thread, and I hadn't known we had anyone whose mother was a CPS caseworker. I'd been planning to say I'm probably more reluctant to see children go into foster care than most of the people here, but I actually don't have any reason to believe that's true. I think I just have clearer lines because I've thought about it so much, and so I have at least theories about when the trauma of removal is still better than the trauma of staying in a suboptimal situation.
The largest reason children come into foster care in the US is neglect. That's partly because neglect can be easier to prove than abuse, so it's medical neglect if you're given enough chances and help to get your child to the doctor and you don't or it's educational neglect if you are told by a judge that you have to get your child to school regularly and you still don't or it's neglect if your child is wandering from house to house looking for you after dark. All of those are a lot easier to substantiate than getting a 6-year-old to talk about being beaten or molested on the witness stand, and so sometimes it's a stand-in allegation to get a case going. But sometimes neglect is just actual neglect, and (in my experience and opinion) the impact of that on a child can be worse and more pervasive than abuse.
At my most generous, I think this family was trolling and looking to draw attention to their cause. Maybe I'm wrong and this was a genuine misunderstanding, but I think they want to be poster children for the movement, and that has little to no connection to whether they actually abuse or neglect their children and I'm not saying for sure that they do.
But I've also never met a parent who's been investigated by CPS or had a CPS removal who's thought it was fair and justified. Even the parent I talked to who admitted that parenting was on heroin was not actually as safe and effective as it felt at the time still thought CPS was overreacting to it and displaying bias. (In that case, the CPS worker was open with me about her bias, so none of this is mutually exclusive either.)
Really, I do still think there was an us/them implicit in the Slate and WaPo articles and I'm troubled and annoyed by that, but there are a lot of other issues too and I've tried to stay out of the discussion to let it develop but may start arguing more now.
Oh, and we really did talk about this before. The articles the first time around said that the family had already been warned about what constituted appropriate supervision and the parents had chosen to disregard that even knowing that it could mean a CPS investigation and then went to the media about the CPS investigation.
When you're fostering, they teach you that the rule is not IF you'll be investigated but WHEN. We somehow got through give years with kids in our home without ever being reported for anything, though I lived in fear of having something go drastically wrong for a long time. Now that the girls are all adopted there would be a much higher bar for removal and I have no worries about that. (I'm not ruling out that there might be an investigation, but I don't think removal would ever be the outcome.) So I really do understand how stressful and anxiety-producing living like that is. But!
At my most generous, I think this family was trolling and looking to draw attention to their cause. Maybe I'm wrong and this was a genuine misunderstanding, but I think they want to be poster children for the movement, and that has little to no connection to whether they actually abuse or neglect their children and I'm not saying for sure that they do.
Looking to draw attention to their cause, sure, but is that a problem? I mean, it seems very possible to me that they're simply lying about the nature of the complaint, and there was more going on than the kids being unsupervised outside. But if that really was the whole thing, then why wouldn't they be making a fuss? Just because no one thinks CPS was right to investigate them doesn't mean that these parents aren't right about that.
98's a very fair point. Something about this particular story has rubbed me the wrong way the whole time, but that's not really a good enough reason to disbelieve them!
I could see it being irritating just as a case of middle-class people complaining loudly about fairly minor injustices. Even if it's a real injustice (which it looks like it might be), it also looks really unlikely that anything significantly bad is going to happen as a result, at which point it's tempting to roll one's eyes at them.
As would-be celebrity spokespeople for the movement, they have to walk a careful line between "complaining about mistreatment" and "inspiring others to do the same".
Sorry peep. I knew you were joking but took it as justified criticism.
As with law enforcement, and perhaps even more so, CPS's lack of omniscience is a real problem. They have the capacity to do significant harm by being too lenient, too harsh, *and* doing nothing at all. It's hard even to envision an idealized perfect outcome where they do only good. "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" is more or less what everyone is used to in the field, as far as I can see. It's at least novel that this narrative is "fire everyone for intervening" rather than "fire everyone for not intervening," which is the standard when something bad happens to a kid. The common thread is that the margin for error is extremely small, and also that they're expected to use consistent protocols except when they're not. I don't know what outcome people are looking for here, but the only way to chip away at the omniscience problem is to get more knowledge by having more contact with families, not less. Within the limitations of funding and resources, even that is hard.
(Thorn, I totally shared your blog with my mom a year or so ago. She enjoyed it.)
102: Yes, there are clear ways to be a bad CPS caseworker, but very few to be a truly good one, if that makes any sense, plus the good ones are the ones who worry and feel guilty.
And thank you! I took the blog offline when I was afraid Nia's mom might have found this site and thus my blog when her real name was briefly googleable. At some point I should put at least partial archives back up, especially now that the adoptions are done. Just then stuff with Rowan happened (oh, which reminds me I have about 15 voicemails to delete from the last few days because it leaves a message every time I reject a jail call) and I really didn't feel like delving into a lot of the old stuff yet. I am glad that I wrote it and definitely glad that we fostered, even if still conflicted about what to do from here.
91 wins the thread.
It's hard even to envision an idealized perfect outcome where they do only good. "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" is more or less what everyone is used to in the field, as far as I can see. It's at least novel that this narrative is "fire everyone for intervening" rather than "fire everyone for not intervening," which is the standard when something bad happens to a kid.
This is a slightly different issue than the usual impossible pressures placed on CPS, no? I mean, on some vastly oversimplified level, there's a big list of behaviors/events that constitute neglect or abuse. And the impossible problem CPS is faced with is (a) figuring out what's actually happening within a family in time to intervene if necessary, and (b) linedrawing between what's actually abuse/neglect and what's not quite yet abuse/neglect.
This kerfuffle, no one's asking CPS to do anything hard. They're asking them to take 'unaccompanied eight-year old and six-year old, not in any visible distress' off the list of events that can, without more, constitute neglect or abuse. You could make the call one way or the other -- I'm with the parents on this one (again assuming the facts are as simple as they sound), but it's a policy change, not something that requires much from the ground-level CPS worker.
I could see it being irritating just as a case of middle-class people complaining loudly about fairly minor injustices. Even if it's a real injustice (which it looks like it might be), it also looks really unlikely that anything significantly bad is going to happen as a result, at which point it's tempting to roll one's eyes at them.
OK, as someone who is second to none in hating busybodies, but also shares some of Heebie's/Thorn's concerns, let me try to explain what I think is going on here with the reactions. There's a certain strain of thinking by UMC or rich parents that equals demanding that their kids get special exemptions and unique freedom from the rules, just because they are so smart/gifted/competent/well-parented. That in and of itself isn't really a problem. But the problem is that these people do not want the same exemptions/freedom for everyone's children -- they want the ability to make freedom-enhancing lifestyle choices for themselves while either wanting the non-elite's kids to be subject to the old rules, or, at a minimum, not caring very much about whether or not other people are subject to the rules or not. For people interested in either social solidarity or equality, this is a problem, and it's not a problem that can really be solved by just extending the privileges the UMC elite claim to everyone, because the solutions don't scale.
Some examples: Private schools. Parents who want their kids not to have to participate in the standard school curriculum, or testing, because they are so good in most areas already and the tests are irrelevant to them. Parents who don't want their kids to use good manners with adults, because they know that their kids will be more or less accepted by everyone without them. And, in this specific context, parents who are confident that their kids, because of who they are or where they live, should be able to wander completely freely without even the a whiff of suspicion that their kids could be neglected -- and that they certainly should not have to answer to the government about that issue, at all.
It's not that the parents are wrong to want those things (they're not) it's that they want solutions that are specific to them and that can't possibly scale. If we're going to educate kids, we need public schools that function. If we're going to have CPS at all, it's going to need to look into some cases of apparent neglect and sometimes do investigations where there's not neglect. If we're going to have functioning schools for everyone we need some kind of standard curriculum and testing. But you can't even get mad at the parents, since basically everything in our society is set up towards valorizing people who squeeze maximum individual advantage out of every situation, and are successful enough to not have to play by ordinary rules. It's all just symptomatic of a breakdown in social solidarity.
In fact, in my view, even the busybodies (who, let's be clear, are horrible) are symptomatic of the same problem; if you had an actually cohesive society you wouldn't have intruding busybodies (or, at least, they'd be shunned), you'd just have people looking out for each other without being strangers calling state authorities or whatever. E.g. Japan where 5 year olds walk a mile to school alone. That doesn't happen because a bunch of individual parents have decided on "free range parenting" as a lifestyle choice. It happens because there's a cohesive society that protects children sufficiently for parents to in general allow their kids to walk to school alone.
I assumed it was Smearcase.
Wha? No I'm just reading the thread now.
I was the opinionated dance club sound system in the other thread though.
My apologies. You're sort of not big on children, so I guessed you.
this is a problem, and it's not a problem that can really be solved by just extending the privileges the UMC elite claim to everyone, because the solutions don't scale.
I agree with you generally (that is, most of what you say seems very sensible), but on the specifics of this case, I think the solution (a policy decision that it's not per se neglect to let kids that age be outdoors unaccompanied) scales just fine. (And that solution would be perfectly compatible with the police being concerned and CPS checking up; what I'm holding onto as a problem is the idea that after CPS looked into it, and all they found was 'unaccompanied kids outside', that it doesn't seem to have been enough to totally resolve the investigation.)
When I was 14 and my sister was 16 my folks were fine with my uncle putting us on a plane in Milan to fly to Chicago. Actually it stopped in Philadelphia where my grandfather met us to make sure we got to the plane to Chicago. I have no idea if this is all strange or normal.
It seems very strange to me. When I was 14, my sister was 12 or 9, depending on which sister.
a policy decision that it's not per se neglect to let kids that age be outdoors unaccompanied
Definitely agree with that as a policy for everyone.
I mean there wasn't anywhere we could wander off to once we were on the plane, but it sounds like these days parents would not do such a thing? I mostly mention it to sound more cosmopolitan. Milan, yes, I saw it last at 14.
Unaccompanied minors flying alone is still a thing. They have that much younger than 14.
Smearcase flying at all is not normal, though!
And T"R"O's 106 is indeed a lot of what I was going for.
I was underwhelmed by Milan but I didn't see The Last Supper so I guess I have to go back sometime.
I was in Milan, but I don't think I left the train.
Things like this put families in an impossible bind. Parents try to give a kid a little freedom, trusting that they'll be safe, and they're investigated by CPS. Parents instead try to keep their kid safe, and teach him a lesson about "stranger danger", and they get arrested. It's damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Yes. It's very difficult to find the middle ground between being overly permissive and pulling a gun on your child.
One assumes 119 is a joke but can't be sure because urple.
It's funny realizing that I haven't traveled much as an adult at all. We went to Milan all the time when I was a teenager, because it was a flight Mom liked, and if we were free she'd take us along. Traveling with Mom did involve a depressing amount of shoeshopping, though.
I have two half-takes on the odd tone in the article. One is that they don't specify what the `coherent world-view' is coherent *with*. If they mean `internally consistent', then it does sound like a bad case of us vs them. But if they mean `consistent with the real risks in the world', then ... oho, it's a facts vs opinions vs consensus argument.
Also, I thought the picture of the broad, good-visibility, good-traffic-separation street was meant as a cue that it was a pretty safe walk. And I could have read this as a `don't hassle rich people' cue, but what I got was `it doesn't matter how much you've spent on the good neighborhood, nowhere counts as safe'. Slightly different.
74 & 41 together look like a nasty ratchet to me. Nothing is officially safe, everyone should expect to be under suspicion at all times, if you ever get into the system you're surveilled from then on. This is the list of people who have asked who's on the no-fly list. This is the list of...
But also, 102.2.
I like this essay from the most conservative friend I can actually discourse with.
Ripford, if you're drawing any sort of race or class lines from my comments, you are reading wrong. Tell me a story of people calling the cops when a minority child is doing something completely innocuous and is not in distress, and I'll deplore it. Indeed, as pointed out above, this was exactly the situation with the kid in the park while the mom was at work at McDonalds, and I defy you to find a comment from me that is in any way inconsistent with my comments here.
Or, indeed, from the people in the article. The only us/them you can draw from their article is between (a) parents who carefully train children to be independent and (b) parents passed out drunk on the couch. That's neither race nor class, and I don't see why anyone should assume it's meant to be some kind of dogwhistle.
parents who are confident that their kids, because of who they are or where they live, should be able to wander completely freely without even the a whiff of suspicion that their kids could be neglected -- and that they certainly should not have to answer to the government about that issue, at all. It's not that the parents are wrong to want those things (they're not) it's that they want solutions that are specific to them and that can't possibly scale.
In the first place, this is making a worst-possible assumption in `completely freely'. (If it's about the OP case.) Choosing a park, a time of day, a route home, etc. is not `completely freely'.
I also disagree that walkable-by-eight-year-olds-residential-neighborhoods is not a scalable solution, because the US *used* to have them almost all places and a lot of Europe seems to still.
125: I think 113 indicates that TRO is roughly on the same page with you about this.
(a) parents who carefully train children to be independent and (b) parents passed out drunk on the couch
I'm having some WASP ethnic indignation here. First you learn to bring Grandma her G&T, then you get to amuse yourself. It's not a dichotomy.
Self-respecting WASPs put away mass quantities of gin without passing out. It's a point of pride.
126: There's this whole in-theory-kids-should-practice-independence but in-practice-nowhere-is-perfectly-safe-so-not-yet two-step, and I think 106-113 is doing it. But also I got crossed while writing.
128: I assume she was pretending so I could practice independence. Also so she could get back to her crossword.
I've been trying to remember when my parents let me use the radial arm saw. Middle school. Without supervision. Later they agreed that that was mayyyybe a little early, but I have all of my fingers.
I don't think I'd do that, but now they have a new safety feature that stops the blade if it cuts flesh. Maybe that's only on table saws?
Sally's engineering class had them using power tools in middle school, but the same teacher seems to be allowing Newt's class less access -- I think maybe someone talked to him about it.
I know I say this whenever it comes up, but kids walk in small groups all over our city. Plenty of Mara's and Nia's classmates walk to school, though most (second grade and under) with a parent or older sibling. There is never a day that I drive or walk home when I don't see unaccompanied children out playing or walking to the grocery or playing football in an empty lot or basketball on one of the school playgrounds. The police would laugh if anyone called that in, but I also know children in our community who've come into foster care for actual neglect and children who've had police and/or CPS involvement for doing things like throwing bricks that did prompt concerned adults to call the police. This is not something that only happens via time machine and it is about community norms and city planning, among other things, which I know we've also discussed 12 billion times.
I've been trying to remember when my parents let me use the radial arm saw. Middle school. Without supervision.
When the kid's in middle school, "without supervision" is a given no matter what the activity is, because it you try to supervise something they are going to want to do something else. So they were probably just glad you were using the radial arm saw instead of doing drugs.
It really would depend on the specific tool. A jig saw or a drill is a great deal less of a potential problem than a radial arm saw or any kind of circular saw.
Actually, I'll go a step further: tell me a story of some white grandma looking out the window and seeing black elementary schoolers on the way home and calling it in, and I'll deplore it all the more.
The valuable social work with kids and families I've seen has only been possible through the exercise of a great deal of discretion and tact. In my ideal world all the resources would flow to those engaged in that struggle in support of folks who are not as privileged as my family. But alas we are so screwed up that as described in 106 some/many? privileged families see part of competent parenting as an endless task of special pleading for their kids. I find this hard to swallow on its own, and repellent when combined with assumptions that less privileged families should extra-conform. I don't think anyone here has that combo of attitudes but I am pretty confident we all know people who do hold them. Perhaps this family sought the limelight or not, perhaps they did so in broad solidarity with all kinds of families or perhaps only for their "own kind". If in broad solidarity it isn't clear to me this is the best fight to pick, but I'm not in that trench.
Wait, we used power tools in shop class in middle school, that's considered dangerous? That included a band saw which is pretty dangerous but we were given a stern warning about how dangerous it was.
Masturbating while using a radial saw does seem like it would be pretty dangerous. Middle schoolers are generally at high risk of masturbation.
Unsupervised middle schoolers, that is.
All I can say to 139 is fucksaw, grape.
123: I assumed the 'coherent world-view' bit was supposed to convey that it wasn't an accident that their kids were wandering around like that. In some sense I guess that absolves them of the charge of neglect since clearly they weren't accidentally failing to supervise their kids at all times out of laziness or forgetfulness or something. I'm not sure that's the sense CPS was thinking about, though.
Thinking about it some more I wonder if the best solution at this point
The importance of having CPS combined with the uneven use of it, the various dangers attached to misusing it, and so on is starting to make me think that it might be a good idea to just make (I dunno maybe)yearly CPS inspections mandatory for all parents. Once something is universal it's a lot less oppressive seeming, if only because it means that people can't be subjected to it for seemingly random (but usually reflecting some other race/class problem) reasons. I mean, on the one hand yes it's kind of intrusive. But we do this sort of thing for all sorts of other normal human stuff (like requiring drivers' licenses in order to drive) and that doesn't seem that unreasonable. And parenting has a pretty massive impact on the lives and well being of people whom the government exists to protect (they are, after all, citizens and a general protection-and-general-welfare is usually considered to be, well, the entire point of having a government in the first place) so it's certainly justifiable. If it's a universal thing it would mostly remove any sense of shame attached to it as well.
Does anyone else remember it being a thing in the 80s to have a sitcom or YA book who's premise was "That kid can't possibly be being beat up at home, because they're rich!" and then the shocker was that rich kids can be abused, too? I feel like there was a big movement to educate everyone that rich kids can get beat up at home, to the point of overcompensation where I sort of missed that getting beat up was associated with poor homes, until I became maybe a teenager or so.
MHPH that's a recruiting tool for libertarians, if ever there was one.
Yeah, people say "You have to get a license to drive but not to breed!" all the time, but I've never known anyone to mean that they want to have to pass a parenting test themselves, just that other people should be barred from parenting.
144 is the Logan Echols phenomenon, sort of.
147: Once Keanu Reeves has said it in a movie, I can't take it seriously any more.
yearly CPS inspections mandatory for all parents
Good idea. Let's fund this through a repeal of all child tax credits.
We could save money by having Homeowners' Associations do the actual inspecting and enforcing!
149: That's why Moby decided not to become a Buddhist.
Clarification on my 137 - by my own family's privilege I did not mean just class privilege, although clearly that smoothes the way for us tremendously. I know similarly situated families, from a class perspective, that are highly dysfunctional and would likely benefit from intervention by skilled and well resourced professionals backed, where children are concerned, with legal discretion to enforce changes in family practices. I've rarely seen interventions in those circumstances. I could easily be convinced we are underinvesting there and overinvesting in families less privileged, to the point we are having a destructive impact.
Huh. I'm generally all for the supportive nanny-state. Specifically on intrafamily dynamics, I have a knee-jerk belief that compulsory outside intervention is really likely to be counterproductive, to the point that I want it reserved for actual danger, as opposed to just dysfunction. I could be talked out of this, maybe, but it's a powerful initial bias.
145 kind of makes me think better of the idea, though. Almost all libertarian recruiting tools* I've seen mostly look like "but this would inconvenience well off/more powerful elements of society to the benefit of less well off/less powerful people." It tends to work on people to the extent that they either identify with the first group or at least kind of aspire to it/assume they'll be in it at some point.
*Two different readings available here, both accurate.
"Think better of" in context, is perfectly ambiguous to me -- it could mean either that the idea looks more attractive to you, or less.
I think you are making a big distinction between dysfunctional and danger that I'm not, as in my dysfunctional is quite likely your danger.
To the extent that what you meant is that class privilege allows families to avoid intervention where there's serious abuse or neglect going on, and that's a problem, I completely agree.
What are they supposed to do if they find something that's a problem? As far as I know, and I'm not an expert, the established interventions are for situations where the child is in danger (e.g. remove the child) or where the parents have voluntarily sought help (e.g. family therapy on people who wanted therapy). Applying either one of those models to a general population would be useless as a best case scenario.
I think there are also "do this or else" steps before removal: your current practices are neglectful, if the neglect isn't remedied by some time, the child will be removed.
Presumably you wouldn't frame it as "and now we're going TO INVESTIGATE YOU FOR CHILD ABUSE" - you'd frame it as "as part of our Hugs For Kids programme, a Hugs For Kids facilitator's going to come visit you to see how your special snowflake is succeeding as much as possible! Hugs!"
. . . as part of our Hugs For Kids programme, a Hugs For Kids facilitator's going to come visit you . . .
You mean, visiting nurses?
Right. There are programs that aren't that different that do seem to me to be a good idea -- visiting nurses for newborns, to provide advice and support. That kind of thing seems as if it could be both primarily helpful and identify neglect where it was happening.
161: Then you're either using ridiculous Orwellian language, or you're describing something very different than a CPS visit, which is probably going to require even more money than just a repeal of all child tax credits. We may need a new child tax.
159: Kids can be removed if there is imminent danger, for instance almost always in the abusive/neglectful death of a child in the home, but just sometimes if there's active sexual or physical abuse by a parent/guardian going on, or if the parent/guardian is unwilling to agree to some sort of safety plan. (A safety plan is usually something like that grandma will come stay for the weekend so there's an extra adult to keep an eye on things and you go to court Monday or that the mom will agree to start therapy or the older sibling who's been abusing a younger one will move to a separate bedroom and be on line-of-sight supervision, that sort of thing. Then being out of compliance with the safety plan can be grounds for removal or further intervention.) In theory and almost always in practice, there will be interventions put in place to prevent removal and give the family time to remedy whatever is going wrong. In practice, a lot of parents are hostile to this kind of intervention and do counterproductive things rather than going along with it, which is understandable but counterproductive.
156 - in the sense of thinking more highly of it, though not that much more.
What made me think of it in the first place is that it looks like the problems that show up with CPS is that it's expected to live up to two very important criteria: (1) err on the side of caution when it comes to potential harms to children (or in other words, if a kid is harmed and they misread the situation and allowed it all hell breaks loose), and (2) err on the side of caution when it comes to invading parent privacy/autonomy (don't investigate unless you absolutely have to). This is the sort of thing that is bound to end up leaving CPS workers half crazy trying to balance the two against each other, probably encourages misjudgments as much as good ones, and seems to me like the scariest part of having one show up because there's no way to know ahead of time which way they're going to swing trying to do both at once. (This is basically the same dilemma that makes HAL 9000 go crazy and start killing astronauts, right?)
At the very least if you made it a routine thing you'd make it a bit less scary since everyone would know what they were supposed to be living up to (even if they didn't want to or were anxious about how well they were doing at it), rather than having someone with unpredictable inclinations (because of the inconsistent criteria) show up unexpectedly one day with the ability to take your children away. And making it reasonably frequent would give parents some prior record to appeal to if they think the person happened to show up on the worst possible day when everything was collapsing and making things look chaotic.
Also taking a bunch of kids away would create the impetus for the creation of state run communal creche's for the raising and educating of children free of counter-revolutionary parental influences so there's that benefit as well.
Well yes of course it would be Orwellian - we're planning a massive state bureaucracy to surveil child rearing...
To the extent that I have a point, I think my point is that more constructive community engagement by CPS is in fact the key, even if it's only slightly more practical than omniscience. More horizontal links with schools and other community support organizations (churches and that kind of thing?), less "you'll only see these people if something is really wrong." The whole organizational structure of county-level organizations probably needs to be overhauled. I don't think global annual inspections are the answer because it's the same alienated low-cost model generalized to massively higher costs. I'm at work but might be able to provide links later to some information about innovations (and I'm giving all my comments here way less thought than the matter probably deserves).
And while I understand the "lots of ways to be a bad social worker" point -- I'm sure it's true, and here Thorn would know a lot more than I do firsthand -- ISTM the problem is that screw-ups are just so costly even if you mostly do well. Burnout is really high.
The collective could hire a dedicated full time professional to hassle the schools for extra special treatment for all their kids, and impoverished phds to do their homework for them. Collectivized UMC parenting!
See also the "Named Person" thing in Scotland, where the aim is to provide a universal point of contact.
I'm actually not entirely sure that global annual visits would have to be alienated - there's no reason they couldn't be targeted and localised based on the kid's ongoing needs, and tied into school etc progress - although yeah I don't think the White Lady Comes To Tell You How To Parent thing is a good idea at all.
I think one of the currently faddish things is folding this (i.e social work, health care etc) all into schooling - nurses in schools, social workers etc, so that the school becomes the one point of state contact, & not just for kids but also for parents/community.
Folding all that into schools seems like it might be kind of worrying given the extent to which (1) there is a pretty big home-schooling contingent with pretty easy state laws allowing that to happen and (2) a pretty good chunk of that group are exactly the people who could use some close watching when it comes to parenting decisions. (2) is probably the explanation for (1), I mean, but I'd worry that folding everything into the schools just makes things easier for them.
In the US, this would be very very bad.
Yeah, that's definitely a weakness - and it's not just home schooling, it's also transient kids, kids who skip class a lot etc, because once kids loose contact with school that model means you've put a lot more eggs in that basket (although I think in principle the idea is that it's an added investment in the kid, so there's still the existing backup mechanisms there.)
170: monetizing Unfogged.
Doesn't have to be a Visiting White Lady, can be a neighborhood auntie with extra training and duty. Which is subject to different kinds of capture, so, aunty exchange programs.
To the extent that I have a point, I think my point is that more constructive community engagement by CPS is in fact the key, even if it's only slightly more practical than omniscience. More horizontal links with schools and other community support organizations (churches and that kind of thing?), less "you'll only see these people if something is really wrong." The whole organizational structure of county-level organizations probably needs to be overhauled.
I can mostly only speak to the situation in Massachusetts, (and a bit to what I've heard from consultants about other states,) but there's a big disconnect between the models of best practices that a lot of social services are moving toward, and the structures of payments and performance measures that are being implemented. No one wants to pay for non-client based outreach and development.
That doesn't happen because a bunch of individual parents have decided on "free range parenting" as a lifestyle choice. It happens because there's a cohesive society that protects children sufficiently for parents to in general allow their kids to walk to school alone.
I'm pretty sure the "free range parenting" people don't see this as an individual lifestyle choice. They are trying to change societal norms, to return to some version of the norms that prevailed when they themselves were children and nobody thought of calling the police on a couple of kids walking home from the park.
And the exaggerated sense of menace, the idea that children are at enormous risk whenever and wherever they are not under direct adult supervision, is not, imo (and I suspect you'll agree with me), socially innocent and politically neutral. It is a symptom of, but also further contributes to, a culture of fear that leads to all sorts of unfortunate distortions in politics and social policy.
I'm sympathetic to the point that Thorn and Heebie make about race- and class-based inequities in family services and child protection. And Thorn, I agree that there's a certain UMC attitude, a demand for the presumption of innocence, that is obnoxious and irksome. But the solution cannot, or should not, be presumptive suspicion and hostility toward all parents, as if treating everyone equally badly is the only way to achieve equality.
But the solution cannot, or should not, be presumptive suspicion and hostility toward all parents, as if treating everyone equally badly is the only way to achieve equality.
Good thing no one's suggesting this, then.
Good thing no one's suggesting this, then.
Yes, it's a good thing no one has suggested, say, mandatory yearly CPS visits to all parents.
But some might suggest that "mandatory yearly CPS visits" is not a form of "treating everyone badly".
It's hard to distinguish it from 'presumptive suspiction', though.
Shit, it looks like my (in this moment not so) better half got rid of the birthday candles and he & birthday child just arrived home from dance studio.
Granted I'd been reusing the for hmmm 14 years but still.
Rather OT, but can I ATM?
At Wolf Cub U, I'm known as being a particularly useful resource for faculty who are being propositioned for sex or funtimez by students. We're all really close to our students, and it can feel awkward when a student tests (as they will) those boundaries. I have a whole speech on this, which I share with colleagues when they say, "How do I deal with Nice Smart Cute Youngster when s/he says 'I like you, let's go out'?" The speech is all about how I mentor all my students equally until graduation, and then we can see if we want to negotiate a personal relationship, but they should be prepared that I demand a lot from my friends. Right now, I say, take advantage of the fact that I'm just here to think about you and your needs, and I am not expecting you to be my intellectual or emotional support. If we choose to be Real Friends, it will be on the basis of the possibility of mutual camaraderie.
Tonight a student who has never and will never be in my class, but who runs a group I'm involved with, said he wanted to get a drink with me and talk about grad school, since he's considering schools where I know faculty and something about the programs. This student has actually provided real emotional, professional, and personal support for me and the kind of work I do, and I guess I've come to think of him more as a colleague than a student. (We've attended research talks by one another, and have co-hosted events about community issues.) We're also, conveniently, publicly known not to be of sexually compatible orientations, so there's no datey aspect about it.
What bothers me is that it puts the lie to my other refusals. We live in a tiny town, and people I've said no to are likely to see us out together. Should I reschedule this as a meeting in my office, or, fuck it, accept that this person is way more like a friend because of the total lack of supervisory relationship between us? Am I a hypocrite for seeing this as fine? Maybe it's not fine, according to my own standards? I certainly don't want it to seem like Prof. Bear goes out for drinks with someone she definitely isn't fucking, so that means she does want to fuck everyone she said no to.
The supervisory relationship seems to be key to your standard argument, so the lack of it in this case seems like an important difference to me, and it gives you an easy response if anyone does object.
I think you're right to be bothered about the other-refusals issue. Reschedule it as a meeting in your office or at least day/cafe, and go out as friends after he's graduated.
(Basically, what do you really lose by being scrupulous? Little. As tiny towns are tiny, why invite weirdness? People aren't going to object to you and give you a chance for an easy response, they're just going to feel weird or not.)
I might even be able to explain all this to him really clearly in a way that won't seem shitty; he works on issues related to consent and will know why it might be weird for other people. But I'm also asking myself whether I'm being puritanical.
I agree with rfts. If meeting the office seems too formal, I think lunch would be fine.
I mean (hi, I like serial commenting) I think you would be completely in the clear to embrace being friends with this dude in terms of your own ethical compunctions. It's just the possibility of interpersonal weird feelings that are at play, and if you are feeling little tingles of concern there, I think they are plausibly well founded.
That strikes me as fine: drinks aren't a date, and grownups having friendly professional conversations do it over a drink sometimes. And the mismatched orientations means that there's no risk that he's confused about any possible romantic overtones. I guess the question, in terms of hypocrisy, is what you've been saying no to with other students -- only ambiguously romantic overtures, or any social/professional contact outside your office? If it's the former, this seems really distinguishable.
On the other hand, if it's bothering you, and you're worried about appearance of impropriety, there's no harm to having the conversation in your office instead.
Plus I don't think there's really much risk that rescheduling need seem shitty -- "on second thought, can we meet in my office instead" or "for lunch instead" is not so very fraught, is it? It wouldn't be to me.
Everyone else is more scrupulous than I am. I'm probably wrong.
I don't think of it as avoiding hypocrisy so much as maintaining a clean line.
You could split the difference by meeting in your office but bringing a sixpack.
A boozy, Bloody Mary-fueled brunch?
195: I did just finish sexual harassment training.
Or the two of you could stand nervously at the edge of a parking lot, passing a flask back and forth.
Yeah, and, that said, I'm going to be seeing two of my current students in different faraway big cities over the break, and will probably end up doing something social with them, but, again, I feel really good about these particular relationships and my ability to maintain boundaries in a social setting. But those two situations probably also put the lie to my very lovely airtight policy, which is already difficult to maintain, given all the times that, e.g., students invite me to participate in the campus bar events (to which faculty are invited specially). Boundaries are not my bag, but I've found it really helpful to make clear ones that I can articulate and have taken seriously, and I fear that either those boundaries are a bit uptight or that violating them in the cases where I feel safe make it obvious that I don't in others. BOUNDARIES. Weird.
Everyone else is more scrupulous than I am.
Nah, some of the other FPPs delete duplicate comments too.
I mean, I have definitely been drinking in front of or even with students in the campus bar context. Tonight, one of my dearest students was the bartender at a dinner where I got mildly hammered, and the waiter was another student of mine. Hiiiiiii.
It is my most cherished perk of being an FPP. I fix my own typos sometimes too.
Most assistant deans will clearly serve as a chaperone for $12/hour.
My impression is that in Wolf Cub Town, anything that can become weird and awkward does become weird and awkward, so err on the side of caution.
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There is a Thai restaurant in Greenland.
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I met a guy from Greenland recently. He didn't say anything about the restaurants there.
Be careful. One of the students might try to give you a watch.
How did the watch thing turn out, anyway?
Looks like there are actually two Thai restaurants in Greenland, one in Nuuk and one in Qaqortoq*.
*is there another city with three Qs in one word?
There are a whole bunch of restaurants in Nuuk. It's pretty cosmopolitan. Qaqortoq is another story.
I'm just watching some show about Greenland. I might give up on it and do something else or at least watch something else. I googled the language and it is ergative-absolutive. Also of course it has two words for snow: qanik and aput. As we all know.
Nuuk is the capital and largest city (by far). Greenlanders: not weird like Americans, at least in one particular way.
There is a place in Greenland whose name at least sounds like Disco Bay.
...which is on Disko island, to connect to 216 as well.
Why yes, I am just looking up all this stuff on Wikipedia. I don't actually know much about Greenland.
I did know that the language was ergative-absolutive, though. It's the same language they speak in northern Alaska, although the dialects are of course very different.
I don't actually know much about Greenland.
I only know that Greenland (well, Denmark, actually) has an ongoing property dispute with Canada over a tiny, uninhabited and uninhabitable, island. Because John Emerson told me so.
Lots of places havs a Discovery Bay. I assume Anglophone sailors dubbed them everywhere past Scilly.
I maligned the better half and a birthday candle was found. Also the same exact cake the kid wants every single year was once again delicious so he's confirmed in his stick in the mud ways.
Do not forget cocktails in cans AWB!
I once got a reference to them through several turns of a brief before they fell to the knife. Lasted much longer than I thought they would. Respect to the canned cocktail.
AWB, tell your student exactly what you said in 186 last; they ought to understand and sympathise with that. If you have a shared staff/student canteen, suggest coffee there, otherwise reschedule for your office and make coffee or bring vodka.
Prof. Bear, not-your-student is asking for informal mentorship with a professor who can give him advice and help him get into grad school. I think rtfs is exactly right. Sorry that he's lovely friend material in other ways, but I think your gut is right.
If you eat yogurt with the right probiotics, your gut's bacteria can get really smart.
Are things off topic enough that I can ask those familiar with the Northeast a question? Yes? Good! Our spring break plans have been ruined by the latest winter storm, so we're considering taking the kids skiing for a few days. Where should we go? If it matters, one kid is seven; the other is twelve. Neither has much experience skiing, but both are keen. We'd like to find someplace that's family-friendly and has lots of fun activities. If you have ideas, please let me know. If not, we'll just move back to California, where this sort of thing was never a problem.
People around here go to Seven Springs and Hidden Valley. I've never been to either, but my friends go with kids that age all the time. It would be helpful if I could remember which one they went to, but I don't. I gather that both are owned by the same guy who owns the Pirates and that the wait staff at the second are sick of jokes about ranch dressing.
We were thinking about Seven Springs. I didn't know about Hidden Valley. The internet tells me that Seven Springs is a bit nicer and a bit bigger. We could also go to Vermont, I suppose, where the mountains are more mountainous.
If you're willing to travel, you could go to Sugarloaf in Maine.
Or Vermont. (I love Vermont.)
The internet would know where Vermont is. I myself can never remember if it's the one on the left or the right.
I have almost always been disappointed skiing in PA, and particularly late enough that warm weather is a risk: slush is no fun. If travel is too much of a hassle, staying local's your only option, but if you can travel I'd head north to VT or ME -- not so much for the latitude as the altitude. The skiing's going to be way more fun. (I remember seeing Smuggler's Notch advertised as kid-activity friendly; I can't recommend it personally other than for their infant day care, because I haven't been since Sally was that small.)
Vermont and New Hampshire are like two shims wedged into place to keep Canada level.
233: Conveniently, it's the one shaped like a "V".
New Hampshire is the one closer to Boston, luckily for suburbanites who don't like taxes.
235: you've identified our main concern. For what it's worth, the weather forecast indicates that both Killington and Seven Springs will have equally iffy weather: temperatures reaching into the high 30s by Monday and Tuesday. I don't know enough to know if that means the skiing will be awful, or, because both have had a ton of snow this year, still reasonably good (and warm). Regardless, moments like these are when I most hate my personality. Less of a controlling dipshit would just make a choice a stick with it. I, by contrast, turn the question over and over, refreshing the weather report endlessly, and expanding the search of possible place to ski to include British Columbia and Austria.
No guarantees, I've run into slush on Killington, but you've got more altitude there -- days that are too warm at the base lodges, you can get better snow by staying high. (Most of the skiing I've ever done in my life has been at Killington, and I like it a great deal, but I've never done much there but ski. Other activities locally seem largely geared to drunk twentysomethings.)
Exactly when is your spring break? Around here they are the first full week in April. (Beginning after Easter.)
Do you have a Sunday class or can you leave today after work?
We're going to Smugglers Notch. It's far, but at least it's name sounds kind of dirty.
227: I'd really recommend Holiday Valley in western new York (Ellicottville). Fairly convenient to you and for a number of reasons we found it superior for that kind of thing for kids over Hidden Valley or Seven Springs. Drop me an email if you wish.
244: I really think Holiday Valley would work very well for your kids' level; but sure go with LB and the ski snobs of the internet. It is clearly consistent with your educational strategy.
OT: Traditionally, it's it kind of a big deal when an ambassador gets attacked and the leader of another state has both a plausible connection to the attacker and a willingness to publicly gloat, isn't it?
247: for whatever reason, it's considerably more expensive than Smugglers Notch, which, I'll have you know, isn't a very high-end resort, but which does seem to be very committed to kid-friendliness.
It's so long ago, but I remember the skiing being great for a lousy beginner/intermediate, and the infant day care was awesome (Sally's first non-parent-care experience: she hated the first day with a passion, was reconciled by the second, and was completely unenthusiastic about leaving with us by the third.) Which isn't directly relevant, but suggests good things about their kid-friendliness generally.
250: it's inexpensive compared to other places -- mostly, I think, because it doesn't jack up the price of accommodations for a Saturday night -- and has a package that works well for our family. It's far away, which I'm not thrilled about for limp-related reasons, but it seems like the kids are going to have a great time. Thanks for the recommendation.
Killington is where Tri-Staters go to ski when they are feeling more motivated than going to Hunter (not LB's high school). Bear Mountain is nice and has nice restaurants too. Smuggler's Notch gets namechecked in Groundhog Day.
If only it were possible to live a few short hours from Tahoe or (especially for spring skiing) Mammoth. I'm sure this Pennsylvania ski resorts will be awesome, though.