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Comment by mseebach | Hacker News Reader

Taking a child away from a family is one of the worst violations a government can subject someone to, all the way up there with imprisonment. The argument isn't a binary choice between trusting the mother or not, it's to raise the bar for evidence significantly - which is what I take don't automatically discount the mother" to mean.

This should be treated like a criminal matter, with the same standards of evidence. If we're comfortable letting a criminal go free of prison because guilt can't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt (and we should, for the record), we should be comfortable letting a child stay with its parents until the parents inability to care is established beyond a reasonable doubt. Or at the very least, the parents in question should have a court appointed defence lawyer.

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>The argument isn't a binary choice between trusting the mother or not, it's to raise the bar for evidence significantly - which is what I take don't automatically discount the mother" to mean.

We could start by adding Fathers back into the equation, and not automatically assuming that a child is in danger if they're not in their Mothers' sphere.

I think this is the worst thing that governments have done for families: the idea that a single-parent (Primarily the Mother) family is anything less than ideal for the children needs to attain mainstream acceptance. Dads need to stay, and Mothers need to move over and make way for it.

This is up to the Fathers to step in: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/cathy-meyer/dispelling-the-my...

>According to the report, a married father spends on average 6.5 hours a week taking part in primary child care activities with his children. The married mother spends on average 12.9 hours. Since two-income households are now the norm, not the exception, the above information indicates that not only are mothers working, but they are also doing twice as much child care as fathers.

Society has to make it okay for Fathers to play this role. Right now, it is "expected" that Mothers are the primary caregivers - this is entirely cultural, and must change.

Fathers stepping in is one way it'll change. Mothers stepping out is another. To find the balance we have to make room for it.

It is certainly not "entirely cultural". We are still part of the animal kingdom. There is actual biology and evolution at play. Ignoring that is pseudoscience.

Why do Mothers need to step out? Do you think they're refusing requests from Fathers about helping out with care-giving?

I think there is definitely a proclivity towards staying at home, as a cultural norm, while sending ones partner off to work - and I don't think this is really balanced, no. The idea that there is one parent that is more 'ideal at the home' than the other is what needs to change.

Hours of daily parental exposure is not how anyone assigns "broken family" status. Psychologically it's about where both parents sleep at night.

I was with you until this:

If we're comfortable letting a criminal go free of prison because guilt can't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt (and we should, for the record), we should be comfortable letting a child stay with its parents until the parents inability to care is established beyond a reasonable doubt.

The difference is that in one scenario it’s about punishing something that happened and is done and in the other it’s to prevent ongoing/future harm. If you’ve seen some of the things parents are willing to do to their own kids, you would see why it’s not that simple.

> The difference is that in one scenario it’s about punishing something that happened and is done and in the other it’s to prevent ongoing/future harm.

Letting a criminal go free (think serial-murderer, rapist) is just as valid an argument for future harm.

I don't see why you treat these 2 cases differently.

The legal requirements to restraining an individual to prevent some future violence with a known specific potential victim (eg. restraining order, arrest) are lower than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard.

The rights of a child to be abused and the rights of a parent to not have their child be taken away are both very important. It’s my subjective impression that the “child abused” case is much more common than the “child taken away where no abuse occurred” case. I see no reason that our laws should be biased in favor of letting that case occur.

There already exists mechanisms to remove people from opportunity to do harm without due process if there is overwhelming, immediate risk. It's very tightly controlled and very temporary. The same could be applied here.

If a child has been living with a mother that (apparently) has 18 drinks a day (getting to 18 drinks a day while still being a functional human is not something you get to overnight, it's a long process) without obviously suffering, this is cause for grave concern, it is a significant risk, but it's not an immediate risk. In this context it's also important to keep in mind that removing a child is possibly the correct answer in many cases, but it hurts the child 100% of the time. That hurt must be less, by a very significant margin, than the hurt of staying put.

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