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Sep. 4th, 2011 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI know nothing about parenting.
A friend "Just confronted a woman in the grocery store who pulled her crying son up by the ear. She told me it was none of my business." The friend, who is a concerned and responsible parent, was worried for the welfare of the child. The woman being confronted apparently felt she had the right to raise her child as she saw fit, without input from random strangers.
I'm torn on the issue -- it's very easy for people on the internet, hearing things third-hand, to say "That's Child Abuse! Child Abuse Is Wrong!!" Child abuse is wrong. Of course it is. The question, though, is what constitutes child abuse? Does dragging a crying five year old up by his earlobe constitute child abuse?
The friend was like, "I should have just taken her plate number and called CPS". Maybe. Maybe not. CPS (Child Protective Services), which is actually CYS (Children and Youth Services, called "Children and Youth" by those who deal with such things) in Pennsylvania, has rather a lot on its plate already. CYS deals with stuff like...
"Daddy (or Mommy's Boyfriend) is fucking the nine year old"
"Toddler beaten so badly that he may die"
"Twelve year old is pregnant to her brother"
"Mom is renting thirteen year old daughter out for money to buy heroin"
"Children abandoned alone in home for three days, ages 5, 7, and 2"
"Ten year old boy being starved to death in closet"
This is the fodder of CYS. (Suddenly a little earlobe-dragging seems reasonable, doesn't it?) CYS operates under the following mission statement: In all cases, the mission of CYS is to provide for the immediate safety and protection of children, to keep children with their own families whenever possible, to provide temporary, substitute care for children when necessary and to reunite children with their families as quickly as possible after placement. They are only supposed to take kids in the face of real, imminent danger to the children. They're supposed to keep kids with their parents as much as possible. They're supposed to work to get kids BACK WITH their parents as soon as possible if the kids have had to be removed for some reason. This is the mission of CYS and the people who work there deal with some seriously fucked-up shit.
Let's look at a real life example of parenting: One of our tenants, L, had two children and was pregnant with a third. She and her boyfriend rented a two-bedroom apartment from us. They were not ideal tenants, but this was a marginal two-bedroom apartment. The agency that looked after L promised to pay her rent, every month, on time. So, we rented to her. On a midsummer day, I visited L's apartment (I am her landlord) to fix something.
I noticed that the apartment was filthy. In the living room, there was a path about two feet wide from the door to the couch to the television to the kitchen entryway. The rest of the room was filled with old newspapers, old magazines, dirty clothes, fast food bags (McD's, BK, etc), pizza boxes (and solidified slices of pizza inside), empty liquor bottles, juicy-juice drink boxes (a WIC item), balled-up (using the adhesive straps to secure them) dirty diapers. The television (old, cabinet-style) was blaring Dora the Explorer cartoons. Dora's skin was green because the tv's colors were going bad. Cigarette smoke left a visible haze in the air and there were overflowing ashtrays everywhere.
L, the parent, was watching the cartoons. The children (ages maybe 4? and maybe 2?) were elsewhere in the apartment, not visible to L. The older child, capable of speech though not very intelligibly, was wearing a pair of underwear and a soiled t-shirt. It (the child) had visibly rotted front teeth. The younger child was wearing only a saggy, obviously-soiled diaper and did not appear capable of speech but was a very good walker. Younger child was carrying around a nipple bottle filled with what appeared to be Mountain Dew. Might have been Gatorade. It was that unnatural shade of chartreuse, anyway. Both children were filthy and in need of a bath and a change of clothing. For the duration of my forty-minute visit (fixing bathtub faucet, repairing broken window and cleaning up glass in back bedroom), L did not interact with (speak to, look at, touch, strike, feed, change, wash) either child and did not move from the couch and the episodes of Dora that she was watching.
The apartment contained an illegal (violation of the lease) dog. The illegal dog was not walked very frequently because the floor had dog feces on it in multiple locations. The dog's kibble was in a pile on the floor of the back bedroom, which I presume was where it was kept. There was a baby gate on the door there. The entire apartment smelled of urine, though whether that was from humans or the dog is beyond my ken.
There was a pan of spaghetti and sauce in the kitchen sink. Flies were everywhere. The spaghetti and sauce were spoiled and smelled bad. There were cans of staple food from the food bank in cardboard boxes under the kitchen table. They were dusty. There were bags of dried beans (a WIC food item) broken open and scattered on the kitchen floor. The stove was covered with grease to the point where I was surprised that it did not catch fire.
L was not on drugs (besides liquor and cigarettes). She was a client of MHMR (Mental Health, Mental Retardation, a state program administered on the county level) and had a caseworker. MHMR's caseworker helped her allocate her government check to pay her bills. The caseworker also did home visits (and had seen firsthand and in person how L lived) and worked with L on what are called "life skills". However, L was judged by the state to be allowed to have some autonomy in how she runs her life. The caseworker coached, but L made the final decisions. L chose to buy liquor and cigarettes instead of fruits and vegetables. She chose to keep her apartment a shithole. She chose to ignore her children. The caseworker advised, but the final decisions belonged to L because the state felt she was not insane or incompetent and had the right to some degree of autonomy regarding her personal life.
L's boyfriend was a drunk but not a terribly violent one. He didn't beat L much and she seemed to like him well enough. He was not much smarter than L but he held a job, off and on, despite being a drunk.
Now, L, who was operating under the direct supervision of an agent of the state (her caseworker at MHMR), kept her two children for the duration of her tenancy with us. Eventually she and T and the kiddos moved to "Two trailers that T bought out in the country. One of them even has a roof!" (her words, not mine). The caseworker from MHMR allowed as how L was attempting to heat said roofed trailer with electric through the winter even though two of the windows were out of it. Caseworker sounded exhausted over trying to reason with L.
We were just supposed to deal with L even though MHMR paid her rent, but since L could not read the letters we mailed, we sent copies of them to her caseworker c/o the local office for MHMR. The caseworker could neither confirm nor deny over the phone or in person that she was L's caseworker or that she even knew L. We told the caseworker that L had disclosed the caseworker's name to us, which was true, and that since the checks for the rent came from MHMR, we were aware that she was a client of some caseworker there, presumably the one whose name she had given. After that, the caseworker grudgingly agreed that if we wanted to send copies of our letters to L to her, she would accept delivery of them. She never did admit that L received services from her, but L's understanding of the letters got a lot better after that. It was a bizarre situation. The caseworker was the one who convinced L that she needed to pay for the extensive damages to the apartment rented from us. And L did, over the course of three years, twenty dollars here and twenty dollars there, until it was all paid off.
L still, to the best of my knowledge, has her children. Why didn't the state DO something about her? I know for certain that they were AWARE of how she lived and how she parented. She had a damn caseworker, for fuck's sake, who had repeatedly visited the apartment in all its fetid glory.
Should L have been allowed to have children in the first place, given her lack of ability to care for them?
Having had the children in the first place, should she have been allowed to keep them once it became obvious to all how they would be cared for? (She didn't beat them. She didn't starve them. Dirt, it turns out, is not actually fatal to children. Neither is filth.)
And, finally, is L a "better" or "worse" parent than the mom who pulled her kid up by the ear at the outset of this LJ entry?
Discuss.
A friend "Just confronted a woman in the grocery store who pulled her crying son up by the ear. She told me it was none of my business." The friend, who is a concerned and responsible parent, was worried for the welfare of the child. The woman being confronted apparently felt she had the right to raise her child as she saw fit, without input from random strangers.
I'm torn on the issue -- it's very easy for people on the internet, hearing things third-hand, to say "That's Child Abuse! Child Abuse Is Wrong!!" Child abuse is wrong. Of course it is. The question, though, is what constitutes child abuse? Does dragging a crying five year old up by his earlobe constitute child abuse?
The friend was like, "I should have just taken her plate number and called CPS". Maybe. Maybe not. CPS (Child Protective Services), which is actually CYS (Children and Youth Services, called "Children and Youth" by those who deal with such things) in Pennsylvania, has rather a lot on its plate already. CYS deals with stuff like...
"Daddy (or Mommy's Boyfriend) is fucking the nine year old"
"Toddler beaten so badly that he may die"
"Twelve year old is pregnant to her brother"
"Mom is renting thirteen year old daughter out for money to buy heroin"
"Children abandoned alone in home for three days, ages 5, 7, and 2"
"Ten year old boy being starved to death in closet"
This is the fodder of CYS. (Suddenly a little earlobe-dragging seems reasonable, doesn't it?) CYS operates under the following mission statement: In all cases, the mission of CYS is to provide for the immediate safety and protection of children, to keep children with their own families whenever possible, to provide temporary, substitute care for children when necessary and to reunite children with their families as quickly as possible after placement. They are only supposed to take kids in the face of real, imminent danger to the children. They're supposed to keep kids with their parents as much as possible. They're supposed to work to get kids BACK WITH their parents as soon as possible if the kids have had to be removed for some reason. This is the mission of CYS and the people who work there deal with some seriously fucked-up shit.
Let's look at a real life example of parenting: One of our tenants, L, had two children and was pregnant with a third. She and her boyfriend rented a two-bedroom apartment from us. They were not ideal tenants, but this was a marginal two-bedroom apartment. The agency that looked after L promised to pay her rent, every month, on time. So, we rented to her. On a midsummer day, I visited L's apartment (I am her landlord) to fix something.
I noticed that the apartment was filthy. In the living room, there was a path about two feet wide from the door to the couch to the television to the kitchen entryway. The rest of the room was filled with old newspapers, old magazines, dirty clothes, fast food bags (McD's, BK, etc), pizza boxes (and solidified slices of pizza inside), empty liquor bottles, juicy-juice drink boxes (a WIC item), balled-up (using the adhesive straps to secure them) dirty diapers. The television (old, cabinet-style) was blaring Dora the Explorer cartoons. Dora's skin was green because the tv's colors were going bad. Cigarette smoke left a visible haze in the air and there were overflowing ashtrays everywhere.
L, the parent, was watching the cartoons. The children (ages maybe 4? and maybe 2?) were elsewhere in the apartment, not visible to L. The older child, capable of speech though not very intelligibly, was wearing a pair of underwear and a soiled t-shirt. It (the child) had visibly rotted front teeth. The younger child was wearing only a saggy, obviously-soiled diaper and did not appear capable of speech but was a very good walker. Younger child was carrying around a nipple bottle filled with what appeared to be Mountain Dew. Might have been Gatorade. It was that unnatural shade of chartreuse, anyway. Both children were filthy and in need of a bath and a change of clothing. For the duration of my forty-minute visit (fixing bathtub faucet, repairing broken window and cleaning up glass in back bedroom), L did not interact with (speak to, look at, touch, strike, feed, change, wash) either child and did not move from the couch and the episodes of Dora that she was watching.
The apartment contained an illegal (violation of the lease) dog. The illegal dog was not walked very frequently because the floor had dog feces on it in multiple locations. The dog's kibble was in a pile on the floor of the back bedroom, which I presume was where it was kept. There was a baby gate on the door there. The entire apartment smelled of urine, though whether that was from humans or the dog is beyond my ken.
There was a pan of spaghetti and sauce in the kitchen sink. Flies were everywhere. The spaghetti and sauce were spoiled and smelled bad. There were cans of staple food from the food bank in cardboard boxes under the kitchen table. They were dusty. There were bags of dried beans (a WIC food item) broken open and scattered on the kitchen floor. The stove was covered with grease to the point where I was surprised that it did not catch fire.
L was not on drugs (besides liquor and cigarettes). She was a client of MHMR (Mental Health, Mental Retardation, a state program administered on the county level) and had a caseworker. MHMR's caseworker helped her allocate her government check to pay her bills. The caseworker also did home visits (and had seen firsthand and in person how L lived) and worked with L on what are called "life skills". However, L was judged by the state to be allowed to have some autonomy in how she runs her life. The caseworker coached, but L made the final decisions. L chose to buy liquor and cigarettes instead of fruits and vegetables. She chose to keep her apartment a shithole. She chose to ignore her children. The caseworker advised, but the final decisions belonged to L because the state felt she was not insane or incompetent and had the right to some degree of autonomy regarding her personal life.
L's boyfriend was a drunk but not a terribly violent one. He didn't beat L much and she seemed to like him well enough. He was not much smarter than L but he held a job, off and on, despite being a drunk.
Now, L, who was operating under the direct supervision of an agent of the state (her caseworker at MHMR), kept her two children for the duration of her tenancy with us. Eventually she and T and the kiddos moved to "Two trailers that T bought out in the country. One of them even has a roof!" (her words, not mine). The caseworker from MHMR allowed as how L was attempting to heat said roofed trailer with electric through the winter even though two of the windows were out of it. Caseworker sounded exhausted over trying to reason with L.
We were just supposed to deal with L even though MHMR paid her rent, but since L could not read the letters we mailed, we sent copies of them to her caseworker c/o the local office for MHMR. The caseworker could neither confirm nor deny over the phone or in person that she was L's caseworker or that she even knew L. We told the caseworker that L had disclosed the caseworker's name to us, which was true, and that since the checks for the rent came from MHMR, we were aware that she was a client of some caseworker there, presumably the one whose name she had given. After that, the caseworker grudgingly agreed that if we wanted to send copies of our letters to L to her, she would accept delivery of them. She never did admit that L received services from her, but L's understanding of the letters got a lot better after that. It was a bizarre situation. The caseworker was the one who convinced L that she needed to pay for the extensive damages to the apartment rented from us. And L did, over the course of three years, twenty dollars here and twenty dollars there, until it was all paid off.
L still, to the best of my knowledge, has her children. Why didn't the state DO something about her? I know for certain that they were AWARE of how she lived and how she parented. She had a damn caseworker, for fuck's sake, who had repeatedly visited the apartment in all its fetid glory.
Should L have been allowed to have children in the first place, given her lack of ability to care for them?
Having had the children in the first place, should she have been allowed to keep them once it became obvious to all how they would be cared for? (She didn't beat them. She didn't starve them. Dirt, it turns out, is not actually fatal to children. Neither is filth.)
And, finally, is L a "better" or "worse" parent than the mom who pulled her kid up by the ear at the outset of this LJ entry?
Discuss.
