[netrus]

It's one of the large pains in our European system (or at least in Germany), that indeed we have no good process to give children from abusive families a better life. Still, corporal punishment is frowned upon in Germany (and illegal) and I see no negative effects. In my parents' generation, it was normal behavior for boys to beat each other up from time to time. That is no longer the case, we live in a society that is mostly free of violence. I like that.

[electromagnetic]

The UK system was similar. It alternated between being ineffective and overzealous. Either kids were left with abusers until something horrendous happened, or kids were too willingly taken from homes and put into the foster system where inevitably worse things happened.

My friend had been put into foster care because of "suspicions of abuse", she'd had frequent broken bones, etc, but most had occurred outside of her fathers care (one was from falling out a tree), so when he slapped her in public she got taken away, because they alleged her record was all him without actually asking anyone else about it.

When in foster care she was frequently beaten bloody. She went to hospital once and got told she was being sent back to the foster carers while they looked into transferring her - she didn't want to be transferred she wanted to go home where she was safe.

Ultimately she ran away and started living with friends, and when social services caught wind everyone started covering her.

At 15 she intentionally got pregnant, because she knew she could get given a council apartment at 16 and be freed from the system. She considered herself lucky because no one tried to rape her.

It's anecdotal, but the abuse rates in foster care is insanely high. The risk has to be weighed heavily against the reward.

From everything I've heard Sweden's model is the most overzealous in europe, the governments had to compensate many of the kids taken by the system. I'm also curious of the rates of abuse in Sweden's system, because if its on par with other western countries the sexual abuse rates on females will be around 30%. I honestly think every woman would prefer to be spanked by their parent rather than be put at an unacceptable high risk of rape. And again, I've heard nothing on Sweden's foster system being an improvement over any other European country.