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Comment by graemep | Hacker News Reader

I agree the child should be fed, but we also need to think about the other wide of this.

It sounds as though the dad in this case was able to pay but refused to pay. What sort of person puts their own child through this to make a point? It is neglectful or abusive.

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You know there are countless parents that abuse their kids, physically, emotionally, sexually. They rape their kids and strangle them until they pass out. They hit them in places where bruises aren't visible. They break bones and threaten the kids with death if they dare tell anyone or show their injury or pain.

Why do we suddenly need to especially think about the other side of this because tax money is involved? Now we need to care?

No, we should care in all cases.

The point is that the problem is not necessarily fixed by providing lunch. What else is going on if someone is deliberately not feeding a child?

Why would providing food preclude support for victims of or intervention in other types of abuse?

Yeah, it is abuse. But feed the child if the parents won’t or can’t.

All the more reason for using schools to feed children who may be abused and starved at home.

Yes, but is that all you do? One meal a day does not solve the problems of an abused child.

You know, we say “don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good” a lot for technical problems but it’s far more critical here. A child from a failing home has a lot of problems and it often takes a long time to solve them, but we can for a trivial amount of money ensure that child isn’t malnourished because they get breakfast, lunch, and in many Title 1 schools, dinner. Many of the other problems of poverty, neglect, or abuse are much harder to solve – e.g. sending a child to foster care might be the solution for abuse but it’s slow and has plenty of risks of its own – but this one is easy and cheap to fix while we work on the hard problems.

Of course that is not all, how on earth did you get that impression?

Doing something to address a problem doesn't imply that nothing else will be done and that this one thing is expected to solve the problem entirely. I didn't think this needed explaining.

That really is someone else's problem. The best the school can do is feed and support the child and report the abuse to the relevant authorities.

> What sort of person puts their own child through this to make a point? It is neglectful or abusive.

So... your point is that not feeding the child is neglectful or abusive?

That's basically the position that proponents of free school meals have.

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