[kyoob]

I think it's smart to frame this as an anti-poverty issue. People often imagine "suburban" families falling victim to overreaching child neglect laws and enforcement. In fact poor children are separated from their families for reasons of child welfare far more often than non-poor kids. (Of course, this ends up affecting black families disproportionately.) Families are being broken up in the US for the crime of being poor.

Editing to add a link to a study detailing "Drivers of Inequalities among Families Involved with Child Welfare Services: A General Overview" for folks who find the Bar Association's article to be limited in scope.

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/committees/chi...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9265799/

[ZainRiz]

> Over 50 percent of Black children in the U.S. will experience a child welfare investigation before their eighteenth birthday (nearly double the rate of white children). Nearly 10 percent of Black children will be removed from their parents and placed into foster care (double the rate of white children)

While the numbers above sound horrendous (and they really are!) I wish they normalized the data to only consider poor households. That would give a much better picture of how much of the existing system is biased against a given race vs being biased against poor people in general.

[kwhitefoot]

>> Over 50 percent of Black children in the U.S. will experience a child welfare investigation before their eighteenth birthday (nearly double the rate of white children).

So more than 25% of all children experience a child welfare investigation?

That's mind boggling.

[dragonwriter]

>> Over 50 percent of Black children in the U.S. will experience a child welfare investigation before their eighteenth birthday (nearly double the rate of white children).

> So more than 25% of all children experience a child welfare investigation?

Yes, 37.4%.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227926/#:~:tex....

[TheRealDunkirk]

This is precisely like the situations which are present in every large company, where people fight to protect stupid, manual processes and digital paperwork in the name of justifying their existence at the company.

After cities fund these departments, people work very hard at justifying their employment, and trying to increase their metrics, to make it look like they're having an impact.

"We" recently ran afoul of the police because my son was caught having been handed an illegal substance in the high school bathroom. The investigator threatened us with prosecution for possession, then admitted it probably didn't rise to this action, and then ran down a litany of programs and counselors she could get our son involved with. I could tell she was salivating at the thought of getting our son put into these programs, just to be able to say something like, "We 'helped' 17% more kids this year; we need more funding!"

The investigator seemed to be on the hunt for names; we declined to have our son give a statement at all.

My wife is a counselor herself; we're dealing with that side of it.

[PeterisP]

This number seems crazy. I would have expected something like ten times less, I wonder how that compares to other countries.

[baryphonic]

My wife's parents had a child welfare investigation because my sister-in-law was somewhat clumsy in middle and high school and had some "odd" bruises. Of course, my in-laws hasn't done anything abusive, and the investigator concluded as much, but I'm sure it counts as one of those >25%.

[crazygringo]

EDIT: dang fixed it, thanks! Orig comment below

----

What/who are you replying to?

Your quoted text isn't in the article and also isn't in any of the comments on this page.

[Jtsummers]

They're responding to the article kyoob linked in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34916150

[dang]

Ok, we've moved the GP to be a child of that one now. Thanks!

[joe_the_user]

Your quote isn't from the article but a link in a post by kyoob (currently below this) that you aren't even replying to (were you so eager to beat hn's post throttling you put this on the main thread?). Kyoob's post already acknowledges this is also a poverty issue so your complaint seems a bit off the topic at hand.

[Robotbeat]

It doesn’t sound like complaining. I think it could be a good faith point (and not someone just trying to find a way to downplay modern racism), although kyoob acknowledged it.

Obvious confounding factors should also be controlled for (or at least controlled in a side note).

[hosh]

The Let Grow organization that wrote this article and help advance legislation protecting parents, advocates for a parenting style that lets kids grow into resilient, independently-thinking adults. This is more than just protecting parents or preventing unnecessary breakup of families.

From that lens, the question I have is, how does this kind of parenting style help poor families?

[kyoob]

Advocating for laws that promote reasonable childhood independence benefits families where all the adults have to work more hours to get by, leaving their kids in safe but unsupervised situations more often.

[hosh]

This parenting style doesn’t necessarily save parents time.

For example, to implement this: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288...

It means involving toddlers into helping in small ways (and having to pay attention to the toddler’s capacity), even if that help initially involves many mistakes.

People who are barely treading water may not have the resources to do something like that, being too exhausted.

Further, you are mistaking safety for well-being. There are situations where overall mental and emotional well-being comes from the confidence built on taking calculated risks. You can only do that when the family and community has a solid social safety net.

To think that protecting poor people’s ability to parent grossly misses the point of this.

[kyoob]

I think you’re finding arguments in what I’m saying that I’m not actually putting in there. That’s fine! I respect your point of view.

[hosh]

You are right. Thank you for respecting it. I was trying to convey that the frame in which we are approaching this is off, so the arguments I brought up falls outside of what you are saying. I have a bad habit of not indicating that I am changing the frame, so that can lead to confusion, and often to the experience that I'm talking past other people.

[em-bee]

poor families have less resources/time to provide for continuous supervision for their children. so they use this parenting style by default. what helps them is that this style gets legal protection, so they are not targeted for letting their kids run unsupervised.

[hosh]

This parenting style isn’t exactly the same as unsupervised parenting. It is still very mindful, and can still require a lot of thought and effort on the part of the parent, something that poorer families might not have the time, energy, or resources to execute on.

How is this differentiated from neglect due to just simply being too exhausted to parent?

[em-bee]

what is the point that you are trying to make? that this law won't help children of poor families because they are most likely going to be neglected anyways?

that would be a bold claim to make. sure, being poor means less resources, but it does not automatically lead to neglect. even a very busy parent can be mindful about their children in what little time they get to spend together. what matters here is quality, not quantity.

letting children run around alone is not and should not be an indicator of neglect. therefore such a law does help poor families as it reduces the chances that they will be harassed for letting their children play unsupervised.

there are enough other ways for eg. teachers in school to observe and notice when children are actually being neglected.

the primary problem is that we are applying our middle class standards to what should be proper parenting, and that is wrong. parenting in poor families is naturally different, but that does not mean that poor parents can't make the effort or be mindful about their childrens upbringing.

[yamtaddle]

> a parenting style that lets kids grow into resilient, independently-thinking adults

> how does this kind of parenting style help poor families?

I am not sure what you mean.

[hosh]

People here seem to think that this parenting style means to let kids roam around unsupervised, and that is all there is too it. But it is not exactly the same. It still requires time, thought, and energy on the part of the parents.

Example: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288...

Poor families may not have those resources.

What differentiates this parenting style and neglect due to being too exhausted working multiple jobs just to make ends meet?

[emodendroket]

Yes, but it can happen to well-to-do families too -- if someone thinks your medical routine seems suspicious, for instance, even if it has been recommended by a doctor. Casting it as a poor people's issue or a black issue runs the risk of complacency because others decide it couldn't happen to them.

[cryptonector]

Poor families don't have the resources to fight this crap. No surprise then that CPS goes after them more than after the wealthy.