I really don't think this is rare. People do crappy things all the time, especially when they imagine they know what is best for someone else. This is the default assumption of most adults in how they relate to any children in their lives.
So a lot of problem parent behavior is ... a problem. The main way something like this "Children's Rights Education" tries to resemble the other situation is teaching kids that there are few circumstances of abuse where they legally refuse/resist. Of course, there are lot of abusive situations that the child can't legally resist and of course being a child navigating such an overall situation presents many minefields. Which is to say this approach has to subscribe to the fiction (derived from the law) that there is a fixed line between abuse and non-abuse where in fact the line is fuzzy indeed.
https://theconversation.com/the-us-is-stingier-with-child-ca...
The US is on a short list of countries that don't provide maternity leave. All the others are dirt poor. We have no such excuses.
We have terrible healthcare policies. At one time, it was somewhat common for dad to be the primary breadwinner and have a decent job with benefits, including healthcare for the wife and kids. Mom worked part time or was a homemaker.
Now, even if both parents work, the kids may not be automatically covered on either parent's healthcare policy from work. They may have to pay extra for that. (Though I'm not clear how much Obamacere changed that.)
In much of Europe, it is still somewhat common for the extended family to help raise the kids, daycare is generally more readily available, maternity leave is the norm, etc.
You don't have to try hard at all to find countries with better family-friendly policies than the US, even without having sophisticated, well-thought-out ideas about what that should mean.
Also known as: it doesn't take money out of my pocket to pay for your kids.
This is a penny wise, pound foolish attitude. If you want to be a "stingy bastard," the "stingy bastard" option is to take care of the kids so they don't become bigger problems down the line.
(Not intended to name call. Just intended to characterize a certain position.)
They read about a child friendly policy and think about "other people". Somehow their mind doesn't click in such a way that they can generalise and understand that such measures might be universal and benefit every future person[1]. And that they would have helped them too.
[1] At least, those lucky enough to have families.
Obviously I know everyone was a kid. But we agree as a society that parents are responsible for the financial burdens of their offspring. It isn't fair to make people who choose not to have kids to pay for those who do.
And maternity leave isn't really a benefit for the child--it's a benefit to the parent. No one will ever remember their first 8 weeks of life.
Just like it isn't fair to make people who don't take vacations to pay for those who do.
I don't believe one has a right to have children in the same sense that one has a right to fair trial or healthcare. If you cannot afford to skip work for 8 weeks, then save money or don't have a kid.
My perspective is that universal worker's rights (like the 40hr week, paid maternity leave, minimum yearly vacation weeks) help prevent the "trap of moloch" (context: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/). The kind of system traps that ends up screwing human beings. The purpose of work, money, capitalism, government is to benefit human beings. When the pursuit of system goals ends up getting in the way of human needs then the system is broken and needs to be fixed. When we define good baselines there is no competitive penalty for organisations that provide sane benefits.
Taking vacations as an example, we need laws to define some vacation minimum because it seems self evident that all human beings need some level of downtime in their life. If we don't define a minimum then competitive pressure will squeeze this out such that only the well off ever get time off.
Our systems need human-shaped holes carved out in them to prevent the things that make life good from being optimized away.
My perspective is slightly different than yours; I suppose I believe that every child has the right to enjoy their first few weeks of life in as peaceful an environment as can practically be arranged and that all parents deserve time to physically and mentally recover from childbirth and have time to adjust to the reality of a new child.
I think this is absolutely beneficial to the child and I still maintain that in the steady state it is not actually redistributive because everyone receives the benefit and everyone pays for every other person to get it.
You can't make an employer pay for your leave. Market competition is already ensuring that all the money he could give you, he is giving you through competition. Making a 'paid leave' law does not reduce his profit margin.
Basically, I don't think it's a given that there will be huge dividends down the line if you just provide free child care to people.
While always a risk the fact remains many parents who would like to do better for their kids cannot. Finances are a huge part of that. Taking off some of that pressure means the would-be-better parents can be better.
And for those who would game the system or prove unfit there is CPS. Obviously CPS cannot be perfect itself. Still we should try our best to get as close as we can; individually, as institutions, and as a society.
It is also whether you are so overworked and tired that you cant think of kids problems vs you had time to think through kids behavior and figure out there is an issue. It is whether you are isolated in bubble of own head or whether you get to meet variety of people to understand how society works and have experience with it.
It is whether you are high confidence and mentally ok to discuss issues with kids friends parents, or whether you are low confidence on end of rope generally so you cant (or botches it).
It's especially the following part that I'm curious about as that has not been my experience but if you have statistics then I would be happy too look at them.
"In much of Europe, it is still somewhat common for the extended family to help raise the kids...."
In the United States, 24% of children under five have been cared for by grandparents in the previous month (Laughlin, 2013), and a study of 11 European countries showed that 58% of grandmothers and 49% of grandfathers looked after at least one of their grandchildren aged under 16 in the preceding year in the absence of parents
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4681534/
I've read extensively on such topics over the years. Sometimes, my stats are a little out of date because I did a lot more such reading in my twenties and I'm now 54.
But, overall, my understanding is that what I read about differences between women's rights and family-friendly policies between the US and Europe when I was a homemaker in my twenties trying to figure out why the hell I didn't magically end up with the two career couple family I had imagined would happen has not really changed all that much. The gap in some things is less wide, but it's mostly a matter of degree, not kind.
Having lived in several countries including the US, the UK, and Switzerland, there doesn’t seem to be much difference. It’s pretty common for older kids to visit grandparents everywhere, and somewhat less common for grandparents to look out for younger kids while the parents go do something.
Obviously that should include letting the young person stretch, learn and exercise their own judgement, but within bounds set by the parent and with the parent there to help with any consequences.
An event that helped cement my commitment to respecting their boundaries as much as possible is where I made my son eat lunch because he wasn't eating and he tended to be skinny and I worried that I would end up charged with neglect for not feeding him enough. About thirty minutes later, he threw up all over my jacket which I actively encouraged to keep it off the cloth truck seat.
After that, I doubled down on trying to make sure there was food available that he liked and that I felt was sufficiently healthy, but I left it up to him to decide to eat.
He likely has two conditions that can each lead to requiring hospitalization to treat aversion to eating by mouth. He's never developed any such issues.
So, unbeknownst to me, I had some serious challenges to deal with. Respecting his boundaries paid off.
Kids like mine frequently end up seriously abused because the parents just keep increasing their attempts to control the kid and force the kid to do as they are told rather than coming at the issue from another angle as I chose to do.
I am on my third parenting blog, still trying to figure out how to talk at folks about such things in a way that is helpful and doesn't sound too accusatory. The intent is to offer options, not criticism per se, for people dealing with challenging children.
You would stop them running into the road, as an extreme example. Good parents know well enough to communicate with their child, and provide an environment in which they can learn and grow, and also when to intervene because there is danger.
It's overly simplistic to say that parents don't have "know better" as part of the job description.
I mostly agree with you. But I also know there is a blurry line there. For example, I did some stupid stuff as a kid and it is a good things parents were there to intervene. I would not call their concern for my risk taking in that instance to be arrogant today.
But that is my perception of my individual upbringing. I have no real knowledge how parenting looks 'on average'. I know I was lucky in some ways; unlucky in others.
This is where it gets complicated, because the advice we get for parenting is a generic advice for a typically specific issue.
I am writing this as an expecting parent so take my musings as just that.
Yes, it is part of it, absolutely. But in the early years there's more to it that that.
When a four year old wants to eat ice cream all day and nothing else, are you asserting that they know better?
> I don't see the evidence that most parents know what's best for their child
That's not my assertion, my assertion is that it's their job, not that they're always good at it.
Like a kid will come and say "I need a stick", and the parent is "what, you'll just hit someone", and refuse it. And the kid will cry.
Later you discover the kid needs to make a school project, with a stick, and without the stick they simply did not do the project, and failed.
And they were just not able to explain this to you.
(This isn't a real story, but it's similar to the kind of thing that happens.)
You also get "I need a dollar", and you give it to them, and later discover they had some kind of bet going with another kid (which you would have never approved of), and needed the dollar to pay the other kid.
Upshot: You have to ask the kid what's up, there is a lot of knowledge they have that you don't.
Odds of an adult knowing what's best for another adult: Low to Medium
Odds of an adult knowing what's best for a child: Medium to High
You don't have to boss the kid around and treat them like a puppet you control to help them make better decisions.
Obviously (and it should go without saying, but I will say it anyway): Emergency situations are an exception. You can and should stop a child from sticking their hand in the fire without trying to nicely and at length talk them out of it while they are in the midst of doing so anyway.
You will also de facto be making a fair number of decisions on their behalf when they are below a certain age. Infants can cry to let you know something is wrong, but they can't tell you they need to be fed, etc. Adults have to do their best to figure out what the issue is and address it.
Good parents typically don't have a policy of "Oh, just let them cry it out." They typically feel that a crying child requires parental intervention to solve whatever their problem is.
(Exception: It's okay for them to just cry for emotional reasons. I never tried to convince my kids to stop crying about being told "no" or whatever. If you know they are crying because small kids have big feels, let them cry. No big deal.
But babies don't typically cry for emotional reasons. They cry because they have a problem that needs to be addressed.)
Odds of knowing better than the adult/child in question though, sure, those ranges sound right.
Odds of an adult knowing what's best for a child: Medium
First born boys routinely got little "extras." They got their favorite food just because it was their favorite. The got taken to the doctor a bit quicker, like tonight instead waiting until morning to see how they felt. That sort of thing.
This was not article document horrifying abuse of little girls. It just documented boys, especially first-born boys, getting a little extra care and attention.
The difference could be measured in mortality. Boys, especially first-born boys, had lower death rates than girls.
I don't think there is a deep line at all between the two things. I think if there is a line between them at all, it's pretty darn fuzzy.
Back to the original topic, yours also serves as an example of how easily damage can be delivered through being systemic. I'm confident it's not hard to produce many cases that qualify as systemic traumatic abuse, but it's an exercise I'd rather not do today.