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Comment by cryptonector | Hacker News Reader

The U.S. federal government gives the States' child protection service agencies money grants that are conditional on those agencies actually taking children from their homes. You get what you subsidize, and if you subsidize petty tyranny, you'll get petty tyranny.

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I had friends who should have been taken away from their neglecting parents, but never were. Turns out, if the child is not being literally beaten, all the parent has to do is not open the door when child services comes by.

So if the child's teeth literally rot out of their mouth, they wear filthy clothes to school, they live in a house full of cat shit everywhere, and a rotted away caved in roof, all the parent has to do is continue smoking, drinking and browsing the internet. No one could do anything about it. Those kids' lives were ruined.

There are sadly some places where the courts/CPS will avoid removing them even in such a situation because their temporary care situation available from the state is so fucked that they're better off in literally any situation where they aren't beat/molested. Some parts of the US have truly dire situation with not enough quality foster car parents and basically a lord-of-the-flies temporary home available chock-full of kids with various unique and difficult to live with issues.

You wouldn't remove a kid from a cat shit/dirty clothes/rotten teeth situation to toss them into lord of the flies with 9 kids who have violent tendencies as a result of being treated even worse.

That makes sense. But what's bad is they had extended family who would have taken them in, there was just nothing the state could do. The mother brainwashed the younger kids to think their grandmother and aunt were terrible people, so they couldn't even lobby for themselves.

My friend was the oldest of 3 sisters and she didn't even realize how bad her home life was until middle school. Eventually she started dating another of my friends and ended up just living with his family for years to avoid going home. After she turned 18 and was independent, she tried to get her siblings out, but the state said their hands were tied.

Yeah, the subculture of people who get incandescently angry about CPS aren't the kinds of people I'd want anywhere near children.

for those of us who ticked off at CPS, that's kind of the point. who you want "anywhere near children" should have nothing to do with my relationship with my kids.

> who you want "anywhere near children" should have nothing to do with my relationship with my kids.

The laws against child abuse argue against this kind of absolutism.

Do you have something against those, too?

I thought that was obvious.

Yes, they want to beat their kid in peace: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34918902

Why? It seems like those things are directly related. If I see somebody treating their child poorly then I wouldn't want them caring for my children.

Guess I’d better quit as a paramedic since I’m apparently not fit to be around kids, let alone treat them in medical emergencies.

All well and good until you're on the reverse end of the stick. It cuts both ways. Sometimes CPS is direly necessary. Sometimes it's just harassment.

You imply that people who get "incandescent" about CPS abuse children, or believe that government should not have the right to stop parents who abuse children. I do neither of those things, yet I remain "incandescent" about CPS. So that you can understand why, I'll share a personal anecdote.

When I was in elementary school, CPS received an anonymous allegation of child abuse regarding my parent. That was false—there was no abuse. CPS investigated by sending a social worker to my school, who interviewed my sibling and me individually. My teacher insisted on being present so we would not be alone with the interviewer, something I've appreciated ever since I was old enough to understand the implication. In the end, the conclusion was: no abuse.

Later, CPS received another false, anonymous allegation. Our family went to a CPS facility, and my sibling and I were interviewed individually. A (non-parental) relative was allowed to be present. Conclusion: no abuse.

Later, CPS received yet another false, anonymous allegation. A cop showed up at our door, and threatened my parent with arrest if my sibling and I were not willingly given up to the cop. The cop drove us to another city in another county over 50 miles away, where we were taken to a safe house and interviewed individually by CPS, with nobody in the building except two social workers, us two children, and the police officer who had taken us from our home indefinitely. Conclusion: no abuse. At the end of the day, our parent picked us up.

I have had a deep mistrust of and visceral aversion to police and CPS ever since. Being taken from a safe, stable, loving home and not knowing if you will ever come back is deeply traumatic. It doesn't matter that we weren't taken for long—the damage was already done. My sibling and I knew that it could have easily gone the other way, and that it could easily happen again.

Thanks to that incident, I fully believe the parent in this story: https://reason.com/2019/04/25/adam-lowther-child-services-po...

It is very similar to what I experienced, except in magnitude. But... after the third incident, we sued CPS, and received a favorable outcome. If we had not known or had the resources to do so, perhaps the situation would have continued to escalate.

Cases where children are left with abuse parents are horrifying and sad. But I know the solution is not to give CPS free rein, low oversight, and the power to ignore due process. Doing so irreparably harms a different set of children.

I applaud your parents for staying level-headed. There is a 100% chance I would have gotten into a firefight with the government in the same scenario. And of course that would have been objectionally successful for the government as the children would have been removed from the home.

Works that way with lots of things. My kid gets a pretty generous existence off ~10% of our post-tax salaries. Not because we are rich, we just don't waste money.

In a divorce, the state says I would need to pay 20% pre-tax (like 30% post-tax) or go to fucking jail. There's no rational reason why the kid is always going to need 3x the money in a divorce, and that reason be so dire it's worth throwing someone in jail for not paying it. The reason turns out the state gets benefits based on both the small administrative cut and based on the amount of child support outlays.

Benefits how? If your kid doesn't waste money, why does it matter whether the money is your account or theirs?

You are forced to give it. If you lose your job or somehow cannot manage your cashflow for a moment, you go to jail.

Or if you just get hijacked by terrorists while ironically working the job to come up with money for the child support [0].

[0] https://greensboro.com/ex-hostage-jailed-in-child-support-ca...

Anyone who wants to spank their children is rather perverted, of course: We all know what it means when an adult spanks an adult.

Link?

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