The author's father worked for the state department of education and his mother was a substitute teacher. What evidence do you have that they are rich as you claim?
> I shouldn't be so sarcastic about child abuse
Child abuse is a serious accusation. Please state the evidence you have that there is child abuse and the steps you have taken to report your personal knowledge of the situation to the state authorities.
It's true that these parents are likely sick and need mental health treatment. Maybe I should have more sympathy for them, but I think about the poor kids and about how lucky I was to have parents who cared more about their children than some crazy ideology.
I can almost guarantee that these kids will turn out better with their parents than if they are raised in state custody. Outcomes are far far worse for foster kids than for unschooled kids.
Where do you draw the line. What about parents who don't pay attention to their kids, sit them in front of the tv and provide no education or emotional support other than putting them on the bus in the morning?
These kids can read and write, there are many kids in public school who can't. There are way more kids living in bad school districts with uninvolved parents who spend less than the 2 hours a month studying that these kids do.
The question is: How much freedom do parents have to influence their children's upbringing. This is clearly a political issue, and seems to have been settled in the US in a way that gives parents a lot of choice. To label somebody who actually uses these liberties as mentally ill is absolutely disgusting.
Coupled with the power of CPS, it's actually something that gives me some serious concerns about having children in the first place. Imagine, some nut and his insistence on conformity is enough to, at the very least, make my life a living hell.
That's a fantastically stigmatising view of mental illness.