I think thats terrible that that would happen to a child... its exactly what Hitler did with the Jews and I don't think there's any right for either of the parents to have custody of that poor girl.

They fuck you up, your mom and dad. No way to legislate against that.

I heard this statistic once. It put a number on how many kids get killed by their parents every day. If we can't even stop that, how are we going to stop their parents screwing with their brains ?

These two girls spring to mind : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR76l9mWVow

To end on a happy note, there are signs that the twins in that documentary are getting a little bored and fed-up with the whole nazi thing. Good oldfashioned teenage rebellion will put them right in the end.

But what, a part from what is currently proscribed constitutes abuse?  Should teaching a child to be a Nazi be included?  Should preventing that child from a blood transfusion be included?  And what about medical treatment?  It seems when it comes to medical issues, parents' rights to children largely end (in Canada, the US and other countries) based on recent court rulings.  The line is being drawn presently and in some ways it exists quite clearly.  So, where does it end or should it end?

I agree with you Marcus. That last line especially is important to remember. Some people, even some people on these boards, have been raised by very fundementalist parents, and yet have gone on to be almost the antithesis to their parents in adulthood. The complex workings of human psychology is so much more than simply: bad input from parents = bad output from the child in adulthood. So I believe it is too dangerous to view it as an open and shut cause-effect thing.

...and of course this is a possibility too, and anyone with a basic understanding of human psychology knows that, complex as it may be, human psychology is a cause-effect thing, just not an open and shut one

What I mean to say is, people don't usually go on a bigotted killing spree in Harlem on a whim. There are reasons for stuff like that, and those reasons will usually, at least partly, be found in the person's upbringing.

But should it be a legislative matter then, to look into wether a particular child needs intervention in their upbringing, or should it simply be society as a whole that takes on that responsibility?

Most civilized countries already have alot of legal tools at their disposal for interveening in disfunctional parent-children relationships, and I would hesitate to expand those tools, for much the same reasons Marcus does.

But I work with children, and I see it as my right to try and effect all of these children with my beliefs and world-view, even if it appears to be counter to what their parents are teaching them. I don't have the power to indoctrinate any of the children I work with, because I don't have the legal rights to isolate these children from influences from other people, so since I am not indoctrinating or brain-washing them, nobody can take away my rights to have a conversation with any child I meet about any subject I see fit.

If society generally fosters a culture of conversation and socialising, maybe people will get over the old-fashioned, and frankly abhorant idea that parents own their children, and that they therefore have the right to isolate their children from other people's opinions.

No you don't, and nor should you have, but in a healthy society you should have the right to voice your opinion about the child's upbringing: to the parents, to the child, and to the community at large.

Think of it this way: if you neighbour is indoctrinating their child in a way that leads you to conclude that "it is safe to say that the child would be better off *not* being taught these insane messages" then as you voice this concern to the rest of the neighbourhood, and they agree with you, all of a sudden the child is now surrounded by a community that is aware of their situation, and hopefully feels a moral obligation to do their best to influence the child in a direction where they would be better off.

Their teachers, babysittters, parents of the kids friends, and the neighbours will work to expose the kid to healthier world views, and if the parents of the kid doesn't like this, well then their only option left is to pull the kids out of school, and confine them to house-arrest, which would then constitute legal childabuse.

And even if the parents might legally get away with that, through home-schooling for example, they would still be social parias, and that is alot more of a punishment to the social animal that is homo sapiens than most people care to admit, so very few people would choose that option.

Of course, I realize that such a scenerio as I am proposing requires your local community to be a civilized, decent community.

In the Bibel Belt of the U.S. trying to raise your child with healthy, decent, humanist ideals is what's going to make you a social paria, unfortunately, but legaslation would help even less there.

I think we all know how bad it would be if, in trying to aleeviate the broken, immoral, disfunction of fundementalist culture in America, Obama came out tomorrow and declared religious indoctrination illegal.

That would obviously only exacabate the problem, and probably cause a civil war.

Social change is the only cure, and unfortunately, it is a slow, and chaotic process.

But it starts by making people realize that they have the right to talk to other people's children about anything they want.

The saying: "It takes a village" (That is: it takes a village to raise a child) is often abused as a neat catchphrase, espically by wide-eyed hippie-feminists, to naively espouse there love for some ill-considered romanticism of primitivism, but the deaper meaning of that saying is none the less true.

And not only is it true, it is also manifestly the case that this is what happens with almost all children, around the world. That is, it is almost impossible to shelter your children from the "village". Even the most fundementalist brain-washing parents let their kids be exposed to other brain-washing fundementalists, like aunts and uncles, the priest from the church, and the fundies next door.

And the more decent humanist ideals become proliferant around the world (and they will, because they are decent and good), the more isolationistic fundemantalism will slip through the fingers of the bigoted parents of the world.

Because in the end, children don't belong to their parents, and they never have done. They have always belonged to the village, and, thankfully, in today's global village, the village is humanity itself.

...That sounded a bit too lofty, and much too naive. I'll rephrase:

I hope, and believe that the expression: "Global Village" will become less and less a fancy catchphrase, and more and more a reality.

There shouldn't be laws written about it, because it is counter to a free society, but there are allready laws as to who has "dominion over what is taught to a child".

The laws of nature prescribe that everyone has the ability to teach a child. Children are observers of the world, and they take in and consider everything they are exposed to. That's natural fact. So every child you meet you have a potential influence on. And through freedom of speech you are entitled to use that influence any way you see fit.

As a citizen of a global village I feel entitled to teach anything I want to any child I meet, and I don't give a damn what their parents think.

I only care what the child thinks.

To avoid quoting myself there is another side to this coin. In the good old days if a family was screwing up their children the relatives of the parents who lived in the same village, town, or neighborhood of a city would have words with them. If a man insisting upon beating his wife the wife's relatives would be joined by the husband's relatives who would tell him to stop and beat the crap out of him if he did it again. The same for child abuse. There were norms for behavior which were enforced by extended family members. When that started to break down from urbanization neighbors did the same thing. When that broke down police, who were always assigned to the neighborhood where they lived and grew up took over.

Finally we got to modern and "community norms" became court issues not local issues because there was no local community to agree.

So, yes, the state does serve a social function which once did exist and which did prevent gross abuses. We can debate whether or not it is a desirable function but it is one which has always existed as best we can tell. Whether we might be better or worse without it has yet to be tested.

The main problem with social workers is they learn in school. They are book-learning kids. In many cases they are dealing with issues where the police could simply enforce existing laws. No gripe there. It is better to try to solve a problem out of court than with jail time.

In the interesting cases it is a case of kids judging adults. Unmarried kids judging the behavior of parents without the least personal knowledge of a situation.

Worst, which I found once, was a "who the fuck to you think you are to ask me that?" attitude is considered an admission of guilt to their worst imaginings and seeded by future ex-wives and such. (For the record, the court awarded me custody and I was able to testify to sunday school attendence. He survived it.)

First we kill all the lawyers and then the social workers. Our system is not up to the old system it tries to imitate. They do not and can not and are not really interested in gaining and using the detailed knowledge of the people which family and neighbors once supplied.

There isnt a country in the world where the ultimate care of a child isnt with the state. In most cases the state leaves the parents to get on with it but if they abuse the child as defined by society via  the courts the state will intervene.

Even the US doesnt allow parents to kill or allow to kill their kids in the name of their religion. Of course the state/social workers get it wrong but I sure wouldnt want to live in a country where that option didnt exist.

Discussion in the UK at the moment on whether MMR vaccines should be compulsory for any kid going to school. It's a difficult one (not on science grounds) but on who is ultimately in charge of the health care of kids, the parents or doctors.

Me I believe in most cases specialist decisions need to be made by specialists, ie parents don't become doctors merely due to reproducing