I tend not to like other people's children, and perhaps that leads me to be a bit unsympathetic towards the difficulties of parenting. But, I also work at a place where I deal with a lot of parents and I often see morbidly obese kids munching on a bag of Doritos or clearly asthmatic kids whose parents reek of cigarette smoke. These parents, whether through ignorance or indifference, are [hyperbole]just as negligent as the sorts of parents who lost their kids to CSB.[/hyperbole]
While I'm a bit hesitant to demand federal parental regulations, both asthma and childhood obesity A) usually have preventable environmental causes and
lead to lifelong health problems. Given that, and some studies that point to
childhood obesity lowering IQ scores, wouldn't the government be obligated to step in and protect these kids? Perhaps mandatory dietary and smoking cessation classes and, as a last resort, home inspections of parents who can't or won't comply with rules designed to prevent them from fucking up their children's lives.
Obviously asthma and obesity can have causes other than environmental, but, (I'm not sure about asthma) aside from diet and lack of excersize, other causes of obesity are pretty rare.
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Because that would be socialism. [irony]Think of the children![/irony]
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
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Plus what everyone else said. :P
Dude if the parents smoke, they're obviously bad parents. I mean every time I see someone with a kid and the parent smells like smoke, I think to myself: we should have government agents follow these guys into their homes to check up on them ASAP. THAT GUY COULD BE DOING ANYTHING TO THAT KID. If you're caring whether or not asthma is preventable, I suggest you must not be spending enough time thinking of the children.
If you really think that CPS being told to walk in to a persons home and enforce how to raise their children as a 'last resort' isn't the same thing as them being able to walk out of a home with the children therein because the parents don't 'comply with rules', you're an idiot.
Or did you just want to create a program where we make rules we can't enforce? Because that's also an idiotic thing to do.
OP never said anything about taking kids away from their parents.
You could enforce with fines that can be rescinded upon completion of a parenting class.
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Hey, fining parents already demonstrating bad parenting skills because they don't care for their kids properly is a great idea. That way they can not save that money to in some way enrich their kids lives. Maybe the $500 fine will mean they can't afford milk and fresh bread this month, so they'll go with the Dr. K 2-liter bottle and dorito bag this week instead!
OP actually did in the last sentence of his first paragraph, or implied it, I simply didn't quote that because he left himself a cop-out excuse in the form of his [hyperbole] tags.
And he said the government is obligated to step in and protect these kids. You don't do that with fines, do you?
1. If they need the money that bad, they can make it back by completing the class. If you need to, incentivize it further by making the tax credit bigger than the fine. And of course, the class needs to be accessible for people with full-time jobs and little in the way of free time. Maybe make it so that it can be completed online.
2. Do you seriously think people who are parents to unhealthy kids aren't already spending all their grocery money on unhealthy foods? Fuck, water's cheaper than soda, but nine times out of ten you'll see the whole family drinking the latter regardless of their financial situation.
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Actually, for families in rural Alaska, for instance, soda is the cheapest available beverage made available to the populace. (Fresh water is harder to come by due to a lack of the water purification and delivery infrastructure we're used to.) Additionally, a parent knows that non-water beverages are often needed to get those little kids hydrating.
A parent who is already making bad decisions while rearing their children isn't necessarily going to suddenly start being smarter/making better decisions just because the government has stepped in and slapped a fine on them.
Well gee. We all know there are no poor people with no time and no computers. I concede your point. I mean all they have to do is abase themselves and promise to be good and do a little test showing they paid attention to what we told them, and we'll give them the money we took from them back? Sounds like a sweet deal for these poor people!
Oh, so this program will be going into the houses of 9 out of 10 families to ensure that no one's letting kids drink soda? Great plan!
I missed the part where we were talking about Alaskan parents!
Also, I think I've been pretty clear on the fact that I'd like to see the government encouraging parents to learn how to be better parents through incentivized classes. The fines are just a way of pushing them to the classes when they make mistakes that need correction.
And of course, I wouldn't expect a fine to be issued except in those cases that truly warrant it, like when a school nurse or pediatrician feels a child's health is truly in jeopardy. Anything short of that should perhaps just warrant a letter advertising the classes and the tax credit that comes with completion.
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Nearly every public library in America has internet access now, and I'm sure you could work something out with high school and college computer labs as well.
If a community literally has no public internet access available to members who can't afford it themselves, then that's something that needs addressing as well. The internet is a tremendous resource for education and job searches and it needs to be available to everyone in some fashion.
It was an example to highlight a greater issue, namely that unhealthy foods are generally preferred in American families. You only need to look at the overall sales figures of these to prove that to yourself.
That said, I hardly think that anyone should be fined should be fined just because a kid is drinking soda. If that kid is experiencing health problems and the parents aren't making the changes necessary to rectify that, however, then it's child abuse and I think a fine that encourages them to take a class after they've declined to take the class simply for the tax credit is one of the better solutions we have.
What else is there?
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No, you haven't been very clear that what you're suggesting is some sort of classes=money program from the federal government. Mostly because you were the one suggesting a fine instead of removing children from houses. So we all pretty much assumed you were talking about fines since that's what you were talking about.
But I'm all for that idea. Some free online test parents can fill out and get a bunch of money? Why not, I see zero potential for abuse.
edit: I think teaching better parenting is a great idea. I'm just pointing out how many problems there are with it.
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The only reasonable thing the government can do in the American political climate is to provide opportunity through education. By my line of reasoning this will boil down to education reform and that's a topic for a different thread.
I think you overlooked my first post in this thread which mentioned classes.
Also, the way I see an online version of the class working would entail multiple versions to discourage cheating. You'd have the learning material and questions immediately after each section. Finally, at the end, you'd have an overall test. Wrong answers would redirect you back to the information you got wrong, at which point you could retest.
Actually taking the class in person would be preferable, of course, but online is probably the most accessible format available to people with multiple jobs or other suffocating responsibilities.
And finally, you don't get cash, you get a tax credit and/or the negation of the fine. I don't know how to incentivize it for people who don't pay taxes, but I'm sure the government could figure something out.
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Sometimes letting your child's weight become out of control is neglect. Presently there's no mechanism for addressing that.
And yes, the government does employ experts in parenting.
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You're right, I did, my apologies.
edit: my point about 'abuse' of the test was that there are countless parents who aren't going to need one, who are going to take one every time they're eligible for free money. Even wealthy people will take a free $500 off their taxes or whatever. That's an awful lot of money to be shelling out for something that should be taught much earlier in life. How much are you figuring on this online test costing? Because to me it looks really, really expensive for something that should just be integrated with education as a whole under a subject something like 'career and life management'.
Rigorous Scholarship
I do believe that raising morbidly obese children or kids with second-hand smoke induced health problems, perhaps while not as immediate a problem as physical or mental abuse, is neglect.
God, your point of view is terrible.
And I'm not even going to get into the electoral ramifications of such a move.
If a child was so unhealthy as to be considered at risk, would you support intervention on the part of CPS?
If so, then you agree with the OP's overall idea. From there, it's just a matter of establishing how bad a kid's health needs to be to warrant government intervention. Some of us would draw that line at morbid obesity, others would put it somewhere else, but if we all agree in principle that there is a point where poor health is tantamount to abuse, then we're at least on the same page.
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For what it's worth, I do too. But so is getting your 14 year old to watch over your 12 and 10 year old when you run out to the store --unless it's teaching the 14 year old responsibility. Then the parent is building character, right? But how do you tell which it is? How do you decide what to enforce or what you should be watching for?
I doubt any of us have had parents that didn't do something that other parents wouldn't have considered neglect. The government, when it looks at us, takes a look at such a narrow slice of us that I don't think it's in a position to judge how qualified parents are. Not on the basis of something like the parent smoking or the child being chubby, at least.
Rigorous Scholarship
To me, you're effectively saying that a kid can never get unhealthy enough for his parents to be deemed neglectful and worthy of some form of government intervention. This includes cases where the kid's long-term quality of life is severely at risk. Hell, it even includes cases where a kid might have a fucking heart attack.
Am I misrepresenting your point of view now? If so, then there is common ground between us and we do agree that, sometimes, the government should be able to step in and do something to help a kid whose poor health has reached a certain level. From there, it's just a matter of determining where the point is.
If you're still with me, then we can switch the debate to how bad a kid's health needs to be to warrant intervention.
If you aren't still with me, however, then you need to come out and say that you place a parent's right to raise their kid as they see fit above the kid's actual wellbeing, even in the most extreme of cases.
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I don't know how much you should get for completing the test. I don't have the knowledge to even make an informed guess.
But anyway, if a tax credit is untenable, then perhaps there's some other way of incentivizing it.
The OP did specifically cite cases of morbid obesity, which I feel is a good starting point.
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It's possible for a kid's health to deteriorate so badly that a visit from CPS is needed. But the kid would have to be morbidly obese, and of a young age, for me to support that.
As for the OP, totally disagree with the idea of making parents take classes. I'd support the class idea if the only government action is giving them a tax credit for participating.
Besides that, you'd best be focusing on the macro level and staying out of families if you want to combat childhood obesity. Things like eliminating corn subsidies, improving the quality of school lunches, and promoting exercise/play.
And there is a difference between obese due to junk food and obese due to medical condition. Lets add some doctor bills into this now, or do we just blanket fat as being simply fat?
It's a horrible idea brough on by someone who wants to not deal with other people's fatty kids. And I would love to see an "expert" in parenting. I don't care how many degrees you have, or how many kids you have; no one will ever be an expert when it comes to raising anyone.
Least of all someone appointed by the govt.
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It's kind of a cheap trick to imbue the word "expert" with unattainable qualities even though that's not the definition that's conventionally used.
In any case, it would still remain that government experts on parenting know more than the average parent does. It makes no sense to say otherwise unless you just have some kind of prejudice against education or truly believe that simply having kids imbues you with special knowledge.
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When second-hand smoke causes breathing problems in a child, why shouldn't the government step in and ensure the parents are providing a healthy environment? I ask the same question about a child who is so obese as to risk developing diabeties. This country can already punish parents who neglect their children in ways that can or do cause harm to the child, whether that's from leaving them alone in the house or letting them drink while underage.
There are, of course, a lot of other issues involved then purposeful neglect. As someone said earlier, tax credits for parenting classes is a great idea, perhaps even going to far as to have mandatory classes as a requirement to get on welfare. Also, perhaps the government and grocery stores could work together to ensure that needy families can afford fresh fruits, vegetables, juice and whole grain as opposed to cheap foods saturated in fat.
I'd mentioned that in the OP. Obesity caused by medical conditions is fairly rare.
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Based on what? Title, degree, experience? This is the same gov that puts people in charge of things they have no experience in.
As for the use of expert; I have a hard believing there is someone who is so insanely qualified as to know more about your own child than you do. There are so many circumstances surrounding why kids are the way they are, that I have a hard time putting my faith in some government appointed employee to know anything close to what is truly best for every child that some "concerned individual" takes issue with.
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