Does a Bad Economy Cause Child Abuse?

As many of you know, I represent parents against allegations of abuse, neglect, and dependency.  These cases arise when the Department of Social Services seeks to take children from their parents.

Some of the most heart-breaking cases that I get are "shaken baby" cases.  This vivid term is something of a misnomer.  It actually involves any physical injury to a child, especially a child too young to communicate.  Sometimes these injuries result in death, and sometimes they result in permanent disfigurement.

Yet, these cases are disturbing to me for a number of other reasons.

First, health care providers and police now seem predisposed to see any injury as evidence of a criminal act.  A child is injured, therefore someone must have intentionally caused the injury.  There is a medical definition for non-accidental injury, but it is ambiguous enough to fit whatever conclusion the doctor is predisposed to reach.  For instance, I used to think that a "cluster of injuries" meant two or more injuries, of the same kind, in different places or in different different stages of healing.  Now it seems that doctors can describe any two injuries as a cluster.  Sometimes it seems to me as if there is no such thing as an accident any more.

Second, investigators use what seem to me to be questionable methods to build their criminal case.  Often, they will sidestep their legal duties and get the social worker to ask their questions for them.  They will try to get the parent to state that no one else has been with the child for a certain period of time.  That makes the investigator's job easier because it narrows down the possible suspects, hopefully to only one.  Then no further investigation or evidence is required:  The police have a hurt baby, a doctor who says it is abuse, and only one person who had custody of the child.

Third, these cases generally move on two tracks with conflicting goals.  In criminal court, the police and district attorney try to punish the perpetrator.  In civil court, the Department of Social Services tries to take custody of the child away from the parents.  In every case in which I have been involved, this two-track phenomenon has caused a mess.  The civil case drags on because we want to see what happens in the criminal case.  The parents cannot make progress on their case plan because their attorneys have warned them not to make incriminating statements.  If the goal of civil court is to reunite children with their families when that can be done safely, then the intervention of criminal authorities is unhelpful, to say the least.

This article from the Winston-Salem Journal suggests that there may be an increase in child abuse, and that increase may be tied to the stress of a bad economy.  I am not inclined to agree.  I think that an increase in child abuse cases being reported comes largely from doctors being more vigilant and reporting more cases to the authorities.  Also, my experience is that child abuse comes not from economic status but from ignorance.  Inexperienced parents do not know what to do with a crying baby, and then they get frustrated, and then they do the unthinkable.  Rather than blaming the economy and shrugging the problem off, we could be teaching young people how to be good parents and preventing the problem in the first place.

http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2011/sep/19/wsnat02-new-look-at-child-abuse-ar-1406178/

JAMA Proposes Taking Obese Children from Parents

According to David Ludwig in the Journal of the American Medical Association, states should take obese children from their parents and put the children in foster care.

After all, obesity can increase the risk of many diseases.  Obese children may develop life-threatening conditions later in life.  Therefore, allowing a child to be overweight is a kind of child abuse, and the state must step in to protect the child.

However, it is impossible to single parents out when a child is overweight.  Many factors contribute to a child's weight.  As University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Art Caplan notes, "obese children are victims of advertising, marketing, peer pressure and bullying, things a parent can't control."  Yanking children out of their homes does not address those other factors.

States are already struggling to provide basic services.  Child abuse cases can go on for a year or more, and every case will require bailiffs, clerks, judges, attorneys, and social workers.  Every child will require a state-subsidized foster home, which are already in short supply.  If the state gets its hands on the two million overweight children in America, the entire system will collapse under the added case load.

This proposal is an unprecedented expansion of the state's intrusion into parenting.  Foster care should be a last resort when it is truly necessary to safe a child from imminent harm.  If letting a child gain weight is to be considered child abuse, then there is no end in sight.  Not brushing, not flossing, staying up too late at night?  Here comes the state, which knows better and has to protect your children from you.

States can and should step in when a parent's actions directly endanger a child.  However, states can not and should not interfere with parenting on the tenuous basis that a parent maybe is not doing enough to prevent a condition that may increase the risk of health problems years in the future.  As with most well-intentioned but poorly-thought-out proposals, the consequences are worse than the supposed cure.

North Carolina's statute on child abuse is here:  http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySection/Chapter_7B/GS_7B-101.html

The Winston-Salem Journal article on David Ludwig's proposal is here:  http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2011/jul/13/wsnat01-obesity-triggers-custody-debate-ar-1202197/