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Comment by torben-friis | Hacker News Reader

I can imagine an argument for checking basic abilities of a parent for extreme cases, where the kid's life might be in danger (extreme psychiatric problems, drug addiction, sex offenders, etc).

This is completely different and fully dystopic, though. looking at Rorschach tests? cultural trivia like asking about mother Teresa? What is happenning in denmark that allows this process to exist?

I feel this part is also particularly damning:

>Like Zammi, her son was meant to have been taken away immediately after birth.

>But because he was born prematurely on Boxing Day and social workers were on holiday, she and her husband Ulrik got to keep him for 17 days.

So the state decides that the child is in enough danger to justify removal from their family. Let's say they truly, honestly believe this is a dangerous enough situation to justify the measure. It is then fine to leave the newborn with those parents for weeks due to scheduling conflicts?

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Exactly my thoughts coming into the article.

Reading what was being tested, playing with dolls, trivia, and math problems. That's just insane. You need none of that to be a good parent.

The closest I could see to doing a test like that is if you wanted to administer a dementia test. You know, something that could actually get the kid seriously harmed.

There are cases when a state should take away a kid. But it should be because the kid is in danger, not because the parents can't pass a trivia game.

> There are cases when a state should take away a kid. But it should be because the kid is in danger, not because the parents can't pass a trivia game.

Really? Such as? Because if what you care about is the child, the child's future, even in absurdly extreme cases birth parents turn out to be better:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/05/980505092617.h...

And the closer the family bond, the better children fare. Which means "state care" is always the worst option. Unrelated foster care is the second worst option.

Study after study shows bad situations ... and always state intervention is the worst option. Take the child away when the parents are arrested? Or put the kid in jail too? Best option turns out to be ... let the kid stay in jail too.

Drug addicts refuse treatment? Best option for the kid? State care or just leave them? Best option turns out to leave them.

And even truly extreme: actual, bona fide abuse. Which in 99% of cases is the kid just being left home alone for too long btw. What is best? State intervention or leaving the kid there? Best is leaving the kid there.

Violence at home? Whether it's witnessing violence or actual victimization: best option is to leave the kid at home (and of course, often it's the state's fault, for example failing to protect a mother from an ex-husband)

Parents want to get rid of a child? Best option is to refuse to help.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that "the state should take away the child" should never be used as long as the parents or any family willing to help are even alive.

Because, study the system and you will quickly see how it really works. You will find foster care is only forced on the parents and the children. Foster parents want to get rid of a kid? Easy. A care home wants to get rid of a child? Even if the kid ends up on the street that's easy. Of course, nobody suggests changing that. In those cases, of course, the parents get punished, not "professionals" *. And, of course, child protection cannot be forced to care for a child through studies (but parents can). And so on.

* this, despite the fact that punishing the parents is often not possible. If the parents have nothing, what are you going to do. Of course, even if child protection or social workers are very much involved in the problems of the parents (e.g. the parents were foster kids themselves), they cannot be forced to deal with the consequences.

I generally agree.

I'm not saying that removing a child is something that should be done lightly or often. And preferentially, if it is done it's not permanent.

I'm saying there are extreme cases, such as a child being in actual danger of death, in which that's the only option.

> I'm saying there are extreme cases, such as a child being in actual danger of death, in which that's the only option.

And that is just not what child protection does for the reason explained.

On the other hand, this study was done in Florida, not Denmark.

What about child sexual abuse? Unfortunately many Greenlandic children are victims of sexual abuse.

The first problem is that nobody will ever do anything about sex and sexual abuse in youth institutions. The foster care system effectively has the same approach to protecting children against abuse, physical and sexual, as the sea has when it protects fish from water.

And the same appears to be true in Denmark/Greenland:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godhavn_inquiry

Which brings the question: are you protecting children from child sexual abuse if you take them into the system? No, you're not.

It gets much worse: in fact you are causing child sexual abuse. When the UN researched it worldwide you see: child abuse (violent or sexual) happens most at schools, over half of the total. That is the big source of child sexual abuse (~half by other children, ~half by staff). Obviously youth institutions do nothing to protect children against this. In second place ... are youth institutions themselves. Additionally: it is exceedingly rare for children to be abused by their birth parents. If abuse happens at home, the biggest share is at home, but not by family members, then "reconstituted" families (2nd or 3rd marriage with kids from multiple marriages, and usually between non-siblings, not the parents), then reconstituted families the parents with not-their own children, and then the last 0.3% or so of child sexual abuse is by the parents.

(and so, yes, "most" sexual abuse does not start with a predator going after kids, it happens because someone who works a lot with children gets the opportunity and cannot say "no" when it is really easy, and this is the vast majority. In other words, while obviously keeping predators away from kids is important, don't expect it to lower the numbers much. And ... where do people work a lot with children? Schools, school-related sports, and youth services)

You want to prevent child sexual abuse? NEVER place kids in a position where they are continuously dependent on a stranger. Just never do that. Of course, I realize, no form of youth services can work without doing that.

The problem with this is "medical statistics". You take a lot of kids, almost never for sexual abuse, out of the home situation, where the odds of sexual abuse by parents are something like 3/100000 or so, and "protect them", by placing them into an institution where something like 10% of girls get abused, and 5% or so of boys. Obviously this massively increases the number of child sexual abuse victims, it does not decrease them.

> Really? Such as? Because if what you care about is the child, the child's future, even in absurdly extreme cases birth parents turn out to be better

Yeah, I’m sure people I know who were raped as children, abused and prostituded by drug addict parents and watched their siblings die from said drugs would have been immensely worse off away from pedophiles and drug addicts.

Although, at the very least, perhaps we can accept forced sterilization for such people. At the least keep it from expanding.

> What is happenning in denmark that allows this process to exist?

Surprised at your reaction. It is well known that several of the Nordics have historically have fairly questionable processes when it came to the indigenous people. Eugenics sounding processes given the euphemism word "assimilation process". The Sami people are still suffering from the legacy of these processes in Norway and Finland. This is no different than the Canadian whitening policy via cultural assimilation via one way adoption, one way intermarry, residential schools, etc. Australia had the same thing. Virtually, every colonised country where the colonised population wasn't wiped out right had similar processes on them.

I think people on here often have an overly rosy views of the Nordics due to the surveys ranking them as the happiest people in the world.

Let us remember that this is the same country that has guetto laws defined as places with less than 50% western people. And yes, the Danish word for "guetto" was in the official documents and it actually only got removed 4 years ago

Referring to the Sami as "Indigenous" in contrast to the Scandinavian and Finnish peoples seems pretty tendentious. All three of these groups have been in Northern Europe for thousands of years.

Despite the dictionary definition of the word, "indigenous" is more often a statement about the relationship with the state than a statement on cultural or geographic continuity. The Sami have a very different relationship to the Nordic governments than other Fennoscandian groups.

Yeah, that's precisely what I'm objecting to-- smuggling in assumptions about the relationship between Sami and other Northern-European populations by using a term that implies that Scandinavians aren't native to Scandinavia, at least as much as any human population is native to anywhere.

In particular it obscures what is fundamental to the conflict, which is state/settled vs non-state/tribal, not one group being native to the land and the other being some sort of outside occupying force.

Don't leave Sweden out of this. They only recognized Sami languages in '09.

> What is happenning in denmark that allows this process to exist?

I would first ask what happened such that Denmark owns Greenland in the first place, because it's all part of the same process, same as this:

> Thousands of Inuit women and girls were fitted with an intrauterine device (IUD), commonly known as a coil, during the 1960s and 70s... it is unclear how many cases lacked consent or proper explanation.

> Among those affected were girls as young as 12, and several have stated publicly that they were not properly informed.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63049387

> I would first ask what happened such that Denmark owns Greenland in the first place

I think there is some misunderstanding of the issue here. While Greenland isn’t fully independent, many domains, including social services and child protective services in Greenland are managed by Greenland itself, not by Denmark.

But the controversial tests described in the article did not happen in Greenland - They happened in Denmark, but they were considered unfairly biased aginst Greenlandic parents living in Denmark.

These tests aren't specific to Greenland though. They affect more people there because they tend to assume a certain culture, and that part stems directly from Denmark's past colonial policies. But it would still be dystopian if confined to Denmark proper.

The article is about tests administered in Denmark by the Danish authorities. Greenland has its own child protective services ran by Greenlanders, presumably with a better cultural understanding of their own citizens (although cultural differences and different languages does also exist inside of Greenland).

> cultural trivia like asking about mother Teresa? What is happenning in denmark that allows this process to exist?

I believe this is called "colonialism".

> cultural trivia like asking about mother Teresa?

In 2024. For most parents the correct answer would be "someone who died before I was born", but in the case of this particular mother it is "someone who died before I was a teenager".

I'm not sure it's ever been relevant cultural trivia for Denmark and is irrelevant to modern culture anywhere.

> looking at Rorschach tests? cultural trivia like asking about mother Teresa?

Is that a part of their evaluation process? Good Lord.

Another one: in the US, mothers suspected of drug use can have their baby's urine screened and then have the child taken away. Johnson's head-to-toe baby wash cross-reacted with the THC urine test and could cause false positives. Picking out which mothers to suspect and screen was probably full of racial and economic bias.

Yup, it was in the article.

Some real eugenicsy vibes.

Wellllll.... Eugenics wasn't exactly unpopular in Denmark for a good chunk of the 20th century. So that kinda tracks.

Well as I see it, it's a hell of a "road to hell paved with good intentions" type nasty slippery slope.

"Let's have the next generation be the best possible, as they are innocent and never chose life, let them thusly get the best life"

"Let us assess the parents Nurture ability, and if not to our standards, we most assuredly will for sure provide a high quality Nurture environment, super promise it will always work"

"Oh, that worked so well, let us assess Nature in the whole Nature vs Nurture topic, let us assess the genetic health of parents and ensure the next generation is genetically superior"

It's playing with damn fire you ask me

Slippery slopes do exist. It’s not fallacious. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.

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