[HN Gopher] We are sending more foster kids to prison than to co...
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We are sending more foster kids to prison than to college
Author : aminozuur
Score : 396 points
Date : 2021-01-18 13:39 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.kansascity.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.kansascity.com)
| williesleg wrote:
| Some go to Hillary and Joe to suck their blood so there's that.
| BGthaOG wrote:
| I highly recommend watching the video interview (5 min.) embedded
| in the article, titled "Taken into foster care, through the eyes
| of a child".
|
| It is not far from the beginning of the article. Here is the
| written caption:
|
| "Before she was an inmate, Michelle Voorhees was a kid in foster
| care. Painting a vivid picture, Voorhees asks you to imagine the
| harrowing, disconcerting experience of being removed from your
| own home."
|
| Search-in-page any part of the caption and it should be easy to
| spot.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I did youth work with a family who fostered then adopted 4 half
| brothers from the same mother. She was a heroin addict. Every
| other year she'd have a baby, malnourished, underweight, in
| withdrawal, neglected taken away. 4 kids: 2 had adhd, 1 was
| developmentally delayed, 1 autistic, 1 had ADD, plus all were
| smaller and weaker than their comparative age peers.
|
| After taking the forth one, they were too over stretched to take
| anymore. Lovely kids. It was amazing watching them socialise
| gradually. So sad what happened to them really.
| eplanit wrote:
| "I did youth work with a family who fostered then adopted 4
| half brothers from the same mother. She was a heroin addict.
| Every other year she'd have a baby, malnourished, underweight,
| in withdrawal, neglected taken away."
|
| That's truly tragic. You've been a blessing to those children,
| and that's beautiful.
|
| Given the harshness of this reality, I understand why past
| generations looked to forced sterilization. There's really no
| winning with that, but after _4_ kids (to date) with that fate,
| it 's a legitimate moral debate (not an easy one, nor should it
| be) as to the relative good. I guess it's a sibling to the
| abortion debate.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I'm a brit, around the same time a US based charity set up
| here that paid drug using women to get (temporary but long
| term) Birth Control. I thought it was a good idea but it was
| (is) very controversial. They started after a similar
| experience.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prevention
|
| The kids I worked with were so lucky to get a nice loving
| family, a very strong community to support them, lots of
| opportunities for socialisation and education etc.
|
| God knows what happens if you're not that lucky.
|
| Edit: I have to be honest, I enjoyed the work. I wouldn't
| have done it otherwise. :) the kids had their moments but
| mostly they were really excited to do anything and getting
| male attention was a big draw for them (one they got over the
| fear of men they all arrived with).
| eplanit wrote:
| "Edit: I have to be honest, I enjoyed the work."
|
| And that makes it _perfect_ -- too rare in actual life.
| Wonderful. Buy yourself a pint! :-)
| jriley wrote:
| I know volunteers for CASA. It is both uplifting and
| heartbreaking work.
|
| https://nationalcasagal.org/
| hamolton wrote:
| It's obscene how we have this foster system that pays these
| parents for kid's hit-or-miss experiences rotating between
| families, when adoption, a generally better solution, costs over
| $10k in fees after proving via background checks that you're an
| angel. The system is so broken.
| ketzo wrote:
| Not to be obtuse, but some would say you're reversing cause and
| effect -- that the $10k and exhaustive background checks are
| the _reasons_ that adoption has better success rates. I couldn
| 't be less of an expert, but it's hard for me to imagine that
| the solution is as simple as "adoption is always better."
|
| It does _absolutely_ seem like there are many wonderful homes
| out there who aren 't able to adopt because they aren't quite
| well-off enough, or the couple is gay, or some other factor
| that a reasonable person could look at and say "this shouldn't
| disqualify you from adopting."
| hamolton wrote:
| Agreed that success rates are irrelevant to this conversation
| and it's certainly not true that adoption is always better. I
| think that most people would agree that the relative
| stability of having permanent parents would be, on average,
| better than being in the awkward foster system for ages. The
| foster system is meant to be temporary until a child can be
| placed in a permanent home [1] but 29% of children placed in
| the foster care system are stuck for at least 3 years [2].
|
| [1] https://pathwayfs.org/foster-care-vs-adoption-
| differences-an...
|
| [2] https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a35860/ad
| opt....
| DanielBMarkham wrote:
| My SO works with foster kids. Her job is to find foster families,
| work with the kids, and try (if possible) to heal the family and
| put them back together. She loves and is good at her job.
|
| Most folks have no concept of the types of trauma many of these
| children go through. Sadly, by the time the state has to step in,
| it's no easy journey forward. People watch movies and TV dramas
| about these kinds of things. It does not prepare anybody involved
| for the reality of the problems. I've heard second-hand stories I
| wish I could forget.
| heckerhut wrote:
| More generally, prisons all over the world serve much more often
| as a place to put people that society has failed than vice versa.
| It's a sad truth that gets very little recognition since these
| people have no lobby. The American prison situation is certainly
| particularly awful due to privatization. But it doesn't stop
| there. We're doing terrible things in Europe as well.
| remh wrote:
| Not to downplay the issue in Europe but there are 111 inmates
| per 100,000 people in the EU. In the US it's 698.
|
| That shows the amplitude and the spread of the carceral problem
| in the US.
| tyingq wrote:
| The conditions once you're in are also starkly worse in the
| US. More people, for longer periods, in worse living
| conditions.
| slumdev wrote:
| The "nonviolent drug user" inmate is as much a myth as
| Reagan's welfare queen.
|
| We have a crime problem, not a "carceral problem".
| watwut wrote:
| Afaik, Americans do not commit 6 times more crime then
| Europeans.
| krspykrm wrote:
| Did you bother actually looking up the data? Because
| intentional homicide in the US is indeed more than 6x
| greater than it is in places like Austria and
| Switzerland.
|
| There is no country in western Europe with anywhere near
| the violent crime rate as the US.
| watwut wrote:
| Yes I did. US has 3 times more murder then average EU.
| That is not the same as 6 times more. And some of surplus
| is one person killing more people, so you then have one
| person being in prison instead of multiple.
|
| And murder clearance rates are low anyway, so that on
| itself can't be reason for disparity.
|
| Switzerland has super low murders.
| slumdev wrote:
| I am inclined to believe that criminal inclination is a
| human universal. I am also inclined to believe that the
| American system catches and punishes more criminals (as a
| percentage) than the European systems. But some disparity
| does seem to exist.
| the_jeremy wrote:
| Only 2% of the incarcerated population has had a trial[0].
| How can we even prove that there is a crime problem with
| that type of statistic?
|
| 0: https://github.com/MKorostoff/incarceration-in-real-
| numbers/...
| croissants wrote:
| It's true that most American prisoners are not "nonviolent
| drug user" inmates. However, around 250,000 of them are
| [1]. That's still a huge chunk of human life.
|
| As a side note, I think HN readers may get a lot out of
| reading [1], which is a pretty concise look at the American
| prison system and some of the facts and myths around it.
|
| [1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
| asphaltycode wrote:
| People seem to forget how devastating drugs are to
| communities. We see it right now with meth and poor
| whites. It was (is?) true about African Americans and
| crack cocaine. There is no "legalize it" solution with
| these drugs. If you want to rehab low level offenders,
| fine. But high level offenders, the people running the
| operations, deserve their sentences.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Is there a drug that could be legalized and/or prescribed
| in a safe setting that would be less harmful than these?
|
| Or, what is the social need that the drug pretends to
| fill, and can that need be met in a better way before
| addictions get out of hand?
| asphaltycode wrote:
| Is there evidence people do drugs to fill a social need?
| Falling3 wrote:
| > There is no "legalize it" solution with these drugs
|
| That's why keeping in mind the difference between
| legalization and decriminalization is important.
| [deleted]
| asphaltycode wrote:
| You still need criminalization as a "stick" to either get
| people into rehab or not take these drugs at all.
| Clubber wrote:
| 1/5 or 20% of people currently incarcerated are for non-
| violent drug use. This article tries to downplay it by
| reversing the statistic saying 4/5's aren't non-violent
| drug offenders. So about ~450k are incarcerated for non-
| violent drug possession in any given day.
|
| https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
|
| Our prison inhabitants really started spiking in the 1980s,
| so anyone born after that doesn't know a different world
| other than what we have now.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_S
| t...
| LatteLazy wrote:
| One of the few unchecked powers of the US president is the
| pardon. I never understood why Obama (now Trump) didnt just
| pardon all federal non violent drug offenders on the last
| day of his 2nd term...
| jl6 wrote:
| "Non violent drug offenders" is probably really hard to
| specify at the next level of detail.
| edbob wrote:
| Similar categories are already specified in the penal
| code. Take a look at federal sentencing guidelines.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Yeah, but he doesn't need to. He can leave that to the
| courts.
| monetus wrote:
| I doubt he prioritized that over the political baggage it
| would create for his successors or his personal life. I
| wish he had been inspired by carter, but politically I
| think this must seem riskier than those pardons. The
| rhetoric around why prisoners shouldn't vote seem to
| underly a lot of the same thinking, but I wish we knew
| their rationale.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| People spend their lives scrambling for power. Then when
| they get it, they're out of ideas after "Tax Cuts!". Zero
| vision, just self interest...
| halfnormalform wrote:
| We have a carceral problem despite your scare quotes and
| your unsupported assertions.
| slumdev wrote:
| It's not a scare quote. It's how reasonable people
| approach novel turns of phrase so that they don't become
| part of our culturally accepted common knowledge without
| any basis in fact.
| np_tedious wrote:
| Private prisons are a problem, but they are also sort of an
| overemphasized canard. They house under 10% of the prison
| population, and for several of the larger states it's none at
| all.
|
| American state run prisons and their surrounding ecosystem of
| courts, municipal govts, vendors, etc have much of the perverse
| incentives and a far larger overall footprint
| hntrader wrote:
| > American state run prisons and their surrounding ecosystem
| of courts, municipal govts, vendors, etc have much of the
| perverse incentives
|
| Why do these institutions have perverse incentives? Is it
| because the voters reward high imprisonment rates because it
| creates the impression of safety?
| coredog64 wrote:
| Just to pick on one player, California prison workers'
| union have immense political power. They have many members,
| and their self-interest is more prisons and more prisoners.
|
| To go further, when you warehouse a bunch of people who
| can't vote in a geographical area, you create a situation
| where few voters get to wield disproportionate power at all
| levels.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It is. The history as most voters perceive it is: crime was
| high and rising fast in the 70s and 80s, until we got
| "tough on crime" in the late 80s and early 90s, and crime
| finally started declining once all the criminals knew we'd
| be tough. So they conclude that the modern American justice
| system is what's causing crime to decline, and are
| concerned that being "soft on crime" would make crime start
| spiking again.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of mass incarceration,
| but you can see where the skepticism of reform comes from.
| It's impossible to overstate how bad things were perceived
| to be in the 90s.
| np_tedious wrote:
| Other commenter has good points too, but I primarily meant
| that there are still many many people (and entire rural
| towns!) making and dependent on the money involved. Even if
| the running of the prisons is "public".
| Turbots wrote:
| US is sending more foster kids to prison than to college*
| dcolkitt wrote:
| This is a good time to remind people that there's a huge backlog
| of stable, middle-class Americans desperate to adopt. This
| persists primarily because of huge regulatory and legal burdens
| placed on the adoption process.
|
| The most despicable of which is a constellation of bigoted state-
| by-state policies on "racial matching". The end result is that
| black foster kids on average spend twice as long in the system as
| their white counterparts.[1]
|
| [1] https://ij.org/press-release/institute-for-justice-
| challenge...
| [deleted]
| nelson_muntz69 wrote:
| It seems like official US policy to make things "cruel and
| usual", effectively skirting the prohibition on punishments that
| are cruel and unusual.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Does it surprise anyone that more foster kids go to jail than
| attend college?
|
| What is the inevitable outcome of how our society is structured?
|
| Our values come from television, which exists to serve
| advertising.
|
| Advertising works by appealing to selfishness, hedonism, and
| self-doubt.
|
| Who is going provide the time, thought, care, attention and
| funding to give these unfortunate kids, alone in this world, the
| confidence, skills, endurance, and self-belief to navigate the
| education system and a society that's based on connection for
| advancement?
|
| The government? We're told that's a "swamp" that can't do
| anything as efficiently as private enterprise.
|
| Private enterprise? There's no profit in running foster homes.
|
| The prison system? There's profit in that!
| aminozuur wrote:
| "Of the inmates who took the survey, 1 in 4 said they were the
| product of foster care."
|
| I really wish people understood the long term effects of
| childhood trauma, and I hope parents can be considarate,
| prepared, loving and financially stable before having children.
| caeril wrote:
| Social technologies like monogamy, marriage, church, community,
| family, and even things we think of as "negative", like shame,
| were developed to combat much of this.
|
| Now we're running around tearing down Chesterton's fence every
| time we see it, without bothering to ask why it was erected in
| the first place.
|
| As an atheist, it's becoming increasingly evident that atheism
| has done great damage to society at large. We're foolish to
| think that social technology that has worked for thousands of
| years was only built (and replicated independently across
| hundreds of disparate societies) because we were too
| stupid/evil/backward to see real enlightenment.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Is it this or would these kids simply have been sent off to
| child labor sweatshops, coal mines or the streets in the
| past? Early death would mean they'd never see prison. Same
| with many other social issues that in the past would have
| simply been solved by letting someone die.
| hntrader wrote:
| > developed to combat much of this.
|
| Or some of these customs, traditions and institutions evolved
| to combat it through unconscious group selection. The
| tribes/towns/cities/countries/groups that had superior civic
| norms (superior defined as those norms which promote harmony,
| prosperity, in-group cooperation, etc) tended to attract
| immigrants, be capable of dominating geo-politically, etc,
| and thus those cultural values become dominant through this
| process of selection.
|
| Also, while I think that explains things to a certain extent,
| it's just part of the picture. Culture also come from (i)
| self-interest, (ii) power asymmetries, and (iii) an
| unintended by-product of our evolutionary
| psychology/emotions/personalty traits such as
| jealousy/disgust sensitivity among others. For example
| jealousy mediating a desire for taxation (this has been
| studied by psychologists, it is one of the three common
| motives), or disgust sensitivity mediating a desire for
| borders and authoritarian leaders.
| DanBC wrote:
| > Social technologies like monogamy, marriage, church,
| community, and even things we think of as "negative", like
| shame, were developed to combat much of this.
|
| You may want to look at the long history of _severe_ abuse
| perpetrated by the Church in their pursuit to "combat this".
|
| We've just seen the Irish Laundry report released and it's
| fucking horrific.
|
| https://www.history.com/news/magdalene-laundry-ireland-
| asylu...
|
| https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/women-on-
| seco...
|
| https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/treatment-
| of-...
| rayiner wrote:
| I don't want to minimize those abuses, but we have to be
| cognizant of the destructive effects of hyper-focusing on
| negative impacts on a small minority. Our outrage at the
| mistreatment of the few drives us to tear down institutions
| and social structures that might be serving critical
| functions for the many.
| marcinzm wrote:
| 20% of kids ages 10-15 in 1900 were working. Many in
| horrible conditions and many probably died young as a
| result. That's a lot more than the foster system
| nowadays. Sending societies marginal people to an early
| death after extracting some productivity out of them was
| the historical solution to these problems as I see it.
|
| Looking at the past with rose colored glasses is
| dangerous.
| watwut wrote:
| Plus, violence rates and juvenile deliquency rates at the
| time were not all that great. These debates always assume
| that kids now are somehow bad generation, but they
| actually statistically behave very well.
|
| It can and should be improved, but that does not mean we
| have to pretend that part was all that better.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Not to mention the large portion of young men from each
| generation who, from the beginning of human society up
| until ~1950 in the developed world, were killed in wars.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Do you have evidence that the foster care system was less
| fucked up when religious institutions were stronger? Or
| alternatively could you point to studies comparing religious
| foster care vs nonreligious foster care?
|
| Genuinely asking, because it never struck me that the foster
| care system was ever not horrible in America.
| yters wrote:
| Also good to keep in mind that as bad as things are in the
| US, things are much worse elsewhere. For example the
| massive orphanages in the old soviet countries where
| children are confined to little cribs all day, or in India
| where many orphans roam the streets.
| watwut wrote:
| UK system after war was heavily reliant on nuns and monks
| for running orphanages and work schools and such.
|
| It was horrible match and there was huge amount of abuse
| going on.
| bluGill wrote:
| Not religious, but a friend of mine was in an award winning
| state orphanage in the 1930s. (I haven't heard,but i
| suppose he is dead now) They would beat kids with a wire
| chineny brush if they slept with their heads in the pillow,
| which is how they won those awards for how neat the beds
| were.
|
| There isn't a good answer to the problem of kids when the
| parents don't care for them.
| rayiner wrote:
| I've come around to the conclusion that the "cognitive elite"
| (for want of a better term) underestimate the degree of
| social support and collective reinforcement normal people
| need to make good life decisions. They themselves continue to
| raise their kids in two-person households, etc. See:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2015/12/04/education-a.... But they've helped chip away
| at the culture around monogamy, marriage, churchgoing, etc.,
| because they themselves don't need those things to help them
| make good decisions.
|
| It's like being overweight. Everyone knows what they _should
| do_. Most people can 't do it, however, and there isn't much
| social support for it. In Asian culture, we have all of this
| social reinforcement about our weight and eating habits.
| (Though south asians differ quite dramatically from east
| asians with respect to what they consider fat.) In the U.S.,
| you're left to fend for yourself. Some people go to the gym
| regularly and eat healthy despite all of the cultural forces
| working against those good decisions. But most people don't.
| They just get fat.
| slothtrop wrote:
| All of those "social technologies" except one have nothing to
| do with atheism. And the Church does not exactly have a
| squeaky clean track record when it comes to orphans.
|
| Add to the fact, often the most impoverished countries tend
| to be more religious. You're not finding a strong correlation
| to your point.
|
| Poverty and education is a foremost problem.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Add to the fact, often the most impoverished countries
| tend to be more religious.
|
| Which way does that correlation run? Maybe impoverished
| countries are especially in need of the social organization
| provided by religion because, unlike rich countries, they
| can't afford to "f--k around?" They can't just spend
| government funds to deal with the negative social
| consequences of out-of-wedlock births, divorces, etc.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| All the stable millennial are past the age where they can
| produce children. Its a madhouse.
| throwaway2a02 wrote:
| > I hope parents can be considerate, prepared, loving and
| financially stable before having children.
|
| That's neither ethical, nor is it possible since reproduction
| is such a strong biological drive. However, what is possible,
| is having the government rethink social support, making sure
| that each member of society has a safety net, and doesnt need
| to worry about getting his basic needs met (food, water,
| shelter etc). Basic income seems to be the best fit here.
|
| This won't completely solve the problem, because food, shelter
| will not heal the attachment problems of some people (people
| also need companionship), but it will provide a stable base,
| that is a radical improvement on today's status quo.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > That's neither ethical, nor is it possible since
| reproduction is such a strong biological drive
|
| What about this sentiment isn't _ethical_?
| [deleted]
| LocalH wrote:
| I also really wish people understood that it's time society
| stops shrugging its collective shoulders and saying "not my
| problem" when it comes to stuff like that. I don't have any
| solutions, but there is a dire need for more institutional
| compassion.
| [deleted]
| throwawayz8182z wrote:
| Life isn't really that nice and tidy. It would be nice if it
| were, but generally people are mostly good and sometimes
| unplanned things happen. Intact families need to be a societal
| goal.
|
| My parents were definitely not financially stable. I grew up in
| the equivalent of what the US would call "the projects" but a
| key difference was that it was a community. There was a rec
| center, a school, groceries, health care all within a couple of
| enclosed city blocks. Average income was poverty level. All of
| the services reduced burdens on the parents who often worked
| two jobs. My mom had two jobs, my dad had two jobs.
|
| If you use an iPhone, you are using my code. If you played a
| Wii game in the last decade, you're using my code. Many more
| examples. That's how far I came and most of my friends went as
| far if not farther. One of us manages a global tech
| organization now.
|
| Most kids I know who didn't do well or treaded water were the
| product of contentious divorces as this was the time when "rah
| rah women's liberation" was at its height and many men were
| kicked out of their family. I still remember my friend
| lamenting to me that the only time he can see is father is
| during school lunches. That friend did better than he would
| have because he basically lived at my house as a result of his
| family situation.
|
| Surprisingly, in this area, there were fewer such divorces than
| the general population. I have looked up the stats.
|
| Raising kids is not hard but somehow we went from village to
| complete independence. We need to go back to a village mindset.
| We are all in it together or we will all feel the pain one day.
| geofft wrote:
| The historic reason many religions/societies looked down on
| divorce is that it left the woman worse off - the man would
| be able to work and fend for himself but the woman would have
| few options.
|
| The fact that in out modern world many women (in heterosexual
| relationships) are the ones who _desire_ to leave, and can
| reasonably fend for themselves, is pretty novel, and we haven
| 't figured out how to adjust the rest of our social
| structures to account for it. It is a good thing that women
| can leave relationships where they're being mistreated and be
| better off on their own, but it means we need to rethink
| designs elsewhere in society that were based on the
| assumption that they wouldn't.
|
| I agree with you about the village mindset, and it's kind of
| the most robust option. Even ignoring divorce, a parent can
| be emotionally incompetent at caring for children, and
| certainly can be called to work (or fight) elsewhere, can get
| sick and/or die, etc. We should be ensuring children have
| multiple backup options if their own parents are unavailable
| for whatever reason.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Most, not all, Kids with single moms I know have turned
| into horrible people.
|
| Giving them everything they want, making excuses, and Lack
| of discipline were primary reasons.
|
| The friend I know who did well had a strict non nonsense
| mom.
| [deleted]
| loopz wrote:
| Many of the laws and rules of societies in the past and
| most in the present, have always been about domination and
| control of women. Even women would join in on this, in
| order to subjugate younger females to societal order. It
| can be explained to survive hard times and trials, but is
| also mostly about injustice and inequality for different
| traits.
|
| Though the females are regarded as assets, they're not
| allowed agency, freedom and inherent value. This is the
| history and hurt that is behind most of feminism of today,
| and there are still remnants in Western societies. Not
| because the laws and rules today are inherently
| discriminatory, but the cultural expression still inhibits
| life for half the population in many cases.
|
| I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader what this may
| mean for BLM.
| loopz wrote:
| _I_ can of course back it up past the HN filter:
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=laws+against+women&ia=web
| bsanr2 wrote:
| I think the important thing to take out of this situation
| isn't so much, "Every family needs to have a father," as it
| is, "Every community needs to be able to respond to the
| realities of its constituent family situations." Women's
| liberation ends with a net positive for a modern economy, but
| whenever norms are roiled, you have people caught in the
| confusion who fall through the cracks. I was a victim of a
| similar situation, where the leadership and curriculum of my
| major at my alma mater was in "transition" while I was
| attending; this meant spending entire courses on outdated
| technology or learning current standards from older
| professors who barey understood them themselves. There was
| nothing wrong with the new paradigms, but getting caught
| between the old and new was what squandered the potential of
| a lot of us.
|
| Ideally, you forecast these shifts and make preparations,
| rather than being dragged into the future, as seems to be
| what happens with institutions responding to these civil
| rights social movements.
|
| But I agree that support systems, rather than "grit" or
| "personal agency", are almost always the most important
| aspect of healthy development, in pretty much any arena.
| Teaching, job training, child rearing, legislation
| development, entrepreneurship, on an on, the failures happen
| when people decide or are expected to go it alone.
| watwut wrote:
| Kids who grew in foster care don't have dad nor mom. They are
| not product of divorce as much as lack of any parent at all.
| batch12 wrote:
| The hard part usually is that you do have a Dad or Mom, but
| for whatever reason can't be with them.
| chasd00 wrote:
| "Raising kids is not hard.."
|
| non-parent typing detected. :)
| seneca wrote:
| > Raising kids is not hard but somehow we went from village
| to complete independence. We need to go back to a village
| mindset.
|
| Raising kids IS hard in modern America. Agreed that it
| doesn't have to be, and that the disintegration of societal
| structures is a huge part of why. Unfortunately, all signs
| point to it getting worse, not better.
|
| I bring up his research a lot it seems, but Robert Putnam
| published Bowling Alone, which is about the utter collapse of
| American Civil Society and social ties, in 2000. The
| statistics were daunting then, and I doubt many people would
| disagree that we're worse off today than we were 20 years
| ago.
|
| I'm old enough that I remember living in a US that still had
| plentiful communities. I worry about the children being
| raised in our modern transactional society. I take comfort in
| knowing old men have worried about these things since the
| dawn of civilization though.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Breakdown of family and community seems to be the big trend
| of the past few decades. I'm saddened to say that I don't see
| a real solution, and I expect some kind of cultural collapse
| to occur as a result. We're already seeing some of the
| effects of this today.
| rayiner wrote:
| It was a deliberate choice Americans made as a society. In
| Bangladesh, we have strong norms in favor of marriage and
| strong taboos against divorce. There is a whole social
| infrastructure for helping people enter marriage with
| realistic notions and expectations, and counseling couples
| through rough patches. It's not perfect by any means, but
| strong family and community bonds make life tolerable in a
| desperately poor country. And of course, unlike the United
| States, we can't afford to just throw government money at
| the problems created by out-of-wedlock births, marriages
| dissolving over solvable problems, etc.
|
| It's truly not clear to me that the choice we made in
| America is the correct one. My wife's family is full of
| wonderful and loving people, they are suffering from our
| country's social dissolution (which has hit non-college
| educated people outside major metro areas especially hard).
| _Nearly everyone_ is divorced, often several times over.
| Grandparents raise their grandchildren. Fathers are in some
| cases are absent entirely. Children grow up without
| stability. And now folks are getting close to retirement
| age with divorces having devastated their finances.
| watwut wrote:
| Are you sure that Bangladesh juvenile deliquency rates
| are all that much better then the ones in USA? Because
| looking at Bangladesh, they have pretty serious social
| problems in that area.
|
| Strong norms in favor of marriage and strong taboos
| against divorce also however go with larger rates of
| domestic violence rates and no way out. That the
| perpetrators of those don't end up in jail does not make
| such society better behaved or less criminal/violent.
| Just tolerant of violence toward some people.
| astura wrote:
| This makes no sense. "Strong norms in favor of marriage
| and strong taboos against divorce" do not fix these
| issues.
|
| I grew up with my parents married. They were married
| before I was born and are still married now. That didn't
| and doesn't stop the abuse, the mistreatment, the violent
| rages, the substance abuse, the mental illness, or the
| cruelty. I wished every day State authorities would come
| take us away because the alternative couldn't possibly be
| worse than this. They never came and I never had the
| courage to tell anyone. I just had to suffer.
|
| The system failed me badly, but it would have failed me
| worse if the authorities did come and said "well your
| parents are married and you have food to eat and a bed to
| sleep in. Looks good."
| rayiner wrote:
| > This makes no sense. "Strong norms in favor of marriage
| and strong taboos against divorce" do not fix these
| issues.
|
| Kids end up in foster care for many reasons, and its not
| necessarily because their parents are violent and
| abusive. The ubiquity of single parenthood, for example,
| dramatically increases the risk that a child will end up
| in foster care if anything happens to the remaining
| parent. Likewise, in a society where divorce and single
| parenthood are ubiquitous, other members of the family
| are much less likely to be in a position to take in a
| child when something happens to his or her parents.
|
| I'm not suggesting we do away with social workers who can
| check in on kids in abusive situations. To the contrary,
| if social workers weren't overwhelmed taking care of a
| large number of kids who are in challenging circumstances
| simply because their dad doesn't feel like being a dad,
| or for other mundane, solvable reasons, they would have
| far more attention and resources to devote to kids
| suffering from alcoholism, physical and sexual abuse,
| etc., in their families.
| retrac wrote:
| Eh, I sort of disagree. Like, I am fully convinced many
| marriages are not healthy and the appropriate thing for
| the partners is to end it. But I've seen people end
| marriages that were probably perfectly salvageable,
| without even trying to really save it. One bump in the
| road and they're calling for a separation.
|
| We've entered a transactional phase where your partner is
| supposed to show up perfect, well-adjusted and no work on
| your part for a healthy relationship is required. Not
| working? Ditch 'em and try again. That's the other
| extreme, sort of the exact opposite of staying due to
| social pressure with someone you hate and makes you
| unhappy, and it's also unhealthy.
| danbolt wrote:
| I've never usually been able to tell if a relationship
| was salvageable or not, from both being in one and
| observing someone else's. It's almost always come down to
| some "to be, or not to be" moment where someone has to
| make a fuzzy decision.
|
| Do you feel like there's a good way of measuring whether
| a relationship is worth saving or not?
| deathgrips wrote:
| Step one is understanding what the problem is. Most
| people in a relationship have been arguing about the same
| inane shit for years that they can't take a step back and
| look at the big-picture perspective of the problem in
| their relationship. They might see it as "My wife doesn't
| want to move to another city I got a fantastic job offer
| in" but the real problem might be something like "my wife
| values her social connections in this city" or "my wife
| doesn't want to interrupt her own career because that
| provides her a sense of security". Some of these
| underlying issues can be resolved or negotiated, some
| can't. If you're dealing with a meta-problem like "my
| husband is unwilling to compromise on anything" or "my
| wife has contempt for me", it's quite unlikely that you
| can fix that and impossible that you can just come to an
| agreement on that.
| leetcrew wrote:
| > Do you feel like there's a good way of measuring
| whether a relationship is worth saving or not?
|
| kinda depends on what you're looking for in a
| relationship. all relationships take some level of effort
| and compromise to maintain. however you measure the
| "value" of a relationship, it has to at least be better
| than being single to be worth the trouble. I'd say a
| relationship is worth saving if a) both partners agree it
| is better than being single and b) both are willing to
| take on a roughly symmetrical share of the effort and
| compromise.
| watwut wrote:
| > Not working? Ditch 'em and try again
|
| There used to be pro-familly policies in USA that
| basically assumed that is male is in the house, the male
| is responsible to be breadwinner. That meant that if
| there was make, woman would not get social support money
| on her nor on kid.
|
| They were even quicker to kick unemployed male out due to
| that - his presence meant they risk support. It sucked,
| imo.
| pjc50 wrote:
| In Ireland, there were strong norms in favor of marriage
| and strong taboos against divorce, and all those other
| things.
|
| There was also a semi-hidden system of forced labour for
| those women that _did_ have children out of wedlock. The
| "mother and baby" homes. The amount of abuse involved was
| horrific and the country is still untangling and
| confronting it decades later.
|
| Be wary of changing a system where the abuse is borne
| silently because there is no way out for one that makes
| it visible and thinking that is worse because just now
| you can see it.
|
| Divorce rates are on their way down in the West. The
| transition period is definitely rough, but eventually the
| cultural norms adapt.
|
| I would be interested to see if you canvas the views of
| Bangladeshi women on the comparative systems.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Divorce rates are on their way down in the West. The
| transition period is definitely rough, but eventually the
| cultural norms adapt.
|
| Divorce rates are down, but so are marriage and birth
| rates. The "cultural norms" are "adapting," but don't
| appear to be adapting in a direction that combines
| modernity with population stability in a steady state.
|
| Much of "the west" is now dependent on people from more
| traditional cultures (in Europe, Muslims, in the United
| States, Latinos). That's not an anti-immigration rant
| (I'm a Bangladeshi immigrant to the United States). My
| point is that anything we call a "successful culture"
| should probably be self-sustaining in the steady state.
| If divorce rates in the west are declining mainly because
| nobody is getting married (and nobody is having kids)
| then you don't actually have a successful culture. It
| might be great for all the freedoms it provides, but on
| its own it will cease to exist eventually.
|
| In a way it's a sort of arbitrage. If everyone in the
| world acted like Germans, it would be nice for a while,
| but humanity would cease to exist. There is an illusion
| of sustainability that is being provided by people from
| traditional cultures--with their traditional views on
| marriage and child-rearing, etc.
| sct202 wrote:
| Birth rates in Bangladesh are also down below replacement
| level despite the traditional culture you keep
| mentioning.
| rayiner wrote:
| There has been a sustained, multi-decade governmental,
| social, and cultural effort to reduce birth rates to deal
| with overpopulation. It's a very strong foot on the
| brake. (My dad was closely involved in this effort in
| Bangladesh as a public health expert.)
| fulafel wrote:
| Population stability at current level would be bad, it's
| higly unsustainable.
|
| To make matters worse, we now have instability in the
| wrong direction: population is predicted to grow for
| 50-100 years still, peaking at 11 billion.
|
| The other variable is resource consumption per capita,
| both will need to go down after the current spurt to
| counter severe overpopulation problems globally.
| rayiner wrote:
| There are local overpopulation problems, but globally
| overpopulation isn't a problem. https://www.vox.com/the-
| big-idea/2017/12/12/16766872/overpop...
| fulafel wrote:
| Yeah, thats an opinion piece from an AEI (neocon think
| tank) pundit.
| rayiner wrote:
| He's qualified to offer an opinion on the issue
|
| > I also approach this problem as a regional economist
| specializing in migration, so I also think of the
| American population issue through the lens of population
| density comparisons.
|
| Here's the same view from Matt Yglesias, solidly left-
| wing journalist:
| https://wdet.org/posts/2020/09/24/90064-vox-matthew-
| yglesias...
|
| Also Scientific American:
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-malthus-
| is-st...
| dashundchen wrote:
| > It was a deliberate choice Americans made as a society.
| In Bangladesh, we have strong norms in favor of marriage
| and strong taboos against divorce
|
| The argument about shame based "norms" keeping people
| together aside, it was in many places, quite literally
| the law that forced women to stay with their husbands.
|
| Up until the 70s and later, in many US states it was:
|
| * Legal to rape your spouse
|
| * Legal to restrict a woman's access to contraceptives
|
| * Illegal for a woman to abort an unwanted pregnancy,
| even due to rape or incest (the previous two combined
| with the first essentially stripping a women's autonomy
| to decide when and how many children to have)
|
| * Illegal for women to work in certain careers/legal to
| discriminate on whether a woman was pregnant or had
| children
|
| * Legal to prevent a woman from opening a bank account or
| line of credit without their husband's consent
|
| This was more the case in some places vs others, but talk
| to an older women in the US what the culture was like for
| women then. The women's liberation movement happened in
| reaction to severe oppression and we absolutely should
| not consider reverting to a society before then.
|
| EDIT: Yikes. I was curious about the norms in Bangladesh.
| I don't think Bangladesh should be held as an example for
| anything related to marriage.
|
| https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/child-marriage/bangladesh/
|
| > 59% of girls in Bangladesh are married before their
| 18th birthday and 22% are married before the age of 15.
|
| > Bangladesh has the third highest prevalence of child
| marriage in the world, and the second highest absolute
| number of women married or in a union before the age of
| 18 globally - 4,382,000.
|
| > 4% of boys are married before the age of 18.
| rayiner wrote:
| > The argument about shame based "norms" keeping people
| together aside, it was in many places, quite literally
| the law that forced women to stay with their husbands.
|
| So you wave aside my actual argument, about norms, then
| proceed to refute a straw man? Let's posit that laws
| against spousal rape and gender discrimination are good
| things. Are those the only things that have changed in
| our culture and in the laws? Can we have laws allowing
| people to escape abusive marriages, while discouraging
| the vastly larger number of divorces that don't involve
| those things?
|
| More than half of Americans, including over 40% of
| _Democrats_ , disagree with the proposition that
| "changing gender roles have made it easier for women to
| live satisfying lives."
| https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/10/18/wide-partisan-
| gap.... By contrast, just 10% think that contraceptives
| should be banned. There is clearly a significant number
| of people who think the changes you list are good things,
| while disagreeing that all of the social changes that
| have happened are good.
|
| There is in fact widespread discontentment about the
| status quo among women. Women report wanting more kids
| than they end up having. Women report wanting to get
| married but being unable to do so. Many women aren't
| super thrilled about a culture where people call them
| "crazy" for wanting normal things like a marriage and
| kids at the biologically normal ages (20s) for having
| those things. (This is completely unsurprising, because
| women disproportionately bear the burdens of our social
| changes that have freed men from the responsibilities of
| fatherhood.)
|
| As to Bangladesh--it's a poor agrarian society that
| suffers from the problems endemic to poor agrarian
| societies. In particular, strong economic incentives to
| marry off girls. My dad, in fact, works on public health
| programs to discourage child marriage in Bangladesh. But
| there's a pretty big gap between child marriage
| (something most Bangladeshis agree we should eradicate)
| on one hand, and normalizing and enabling pervasive
| divorce and out of wedlock childbirth on the other.
|
| But on the flip side of all that, Bangladeshi society is
| at least somewhat functional despite crushing poverty.
| What would Bangladeshi villages be like if men could
| decide, like in America, that they don't want the
| responsibilities of fatherhood and it was socially
| acceptable for them to abandon their families? The
| society would break down completely. Death and calamity
| would result, because unlike in America the government
| can't afford to throw money at the social ills that would
| result.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| _What would Bangladeshi villages be like if men could
| decide, like in America, that they don't want the
| responsibilities of fatherhood and it was socially
| acceptable for them to abandon their families? The
| society would break down completely. Death and calamity
| would result, because unlike in America the government
| can't afford to throw money at the social ills that would
| result._
|
| And that's exactly what we see in places like Chicago,
| but nobody who is allowed to speak can put 2 and 2
| together. Except when Barack Obama mentioned it that one
| time, which was promptly forgotten.
| watwut wrote:
| Another thing that changed is that American women are
| less likely to be murdered by their partners - as in
| proportion of those murders went down. That is while
| murders went down. Ability to leave verbally abusive
| partner that is like that in private without being
| reduced to powerty is a big thing. It is possible to
| prove violence, but super hard to prove verbal abuse. And
| verbal abuse can be even worse.
|
| As of Bangladeshi, look up their domestic violence
| reports and juvenile deliquency reports. The domestic
| violence is basically normal and accepted part of life.
| And we are taking about pretty severe stuff - murders,
| acid attacks, serious beatings. Juvenile deliquency is
| huge problem.
|
| Death and calamity are Bangladeshi life pretty often, in
| particular if you are woman. And kids get to watch all
| that and are affected by all of that, creating cycle of
| trauma and violence.
|
| It is not better for children to be with violent parent
| nor is ot good for them to see one parent attack the
| other. Yes, out of wedlock or divorce is better for them
| then domestic violence situation.
| rayiner wrote:
| The homicide rate in Bangladesh is half of what it is in
| the US, and not far off from wealthy countries with gun
| control, like Canada or Belgium. Yes, there are a lot of
| bad things that happen in Bangladesh--it's a very poor
| country, with limited law and order, political unrest,
| and significant problems with organized crime and gangs.
| One wonders what things would be like if--on top of all
| of that--more than a quarter of kids were growing up
| fatherless like in the US.
| watwut wrote:
| The impact of single parenthood is much lower then you
| assume.
|
| American crime rates went down considerably. So did
| juvenile violence rates, drug taking and alcoholism. And
| teenage pregnancies went down too. All the while divorces
| went up. Stop demonizing kids of single parents and for
| that matter Americans.
|
| Also, American domestic violence rates went down. While
| the reporting of it went up as women can get actual help
| nowdays, so there is a point in doing it. These would not
| even count as crimes in many of "harmonious" families
| with taboo around divorce.
|
| Also, in Americans crime statistics, murders are higher
| relative to other crimes, because of prevalence of guns.
| America is not perfect, but it's youth is way better then
| you make them be due to your strong bias against kids who
| had divorced parents.
| rayiner wrote:
| I'm not "demonizing" anyone. But it's important to look
| at social changes not only with an eye to how they affect
| individuals, but how they affect everyone. We can't just
| sympathize with the kids of single parents, but must find
| the sympathy and kindness to ask whether there are more
| such kids than there should be and whether there is
| anything we can do about that.
|
| The U.S. leads the world in the percentage of children
| raised in single parent families:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/12/u-s-
| childre.... Over 30% of kids don't live with both
| parents. There are a raft of statistically established
| negative consequences arising from the absence of both
| parents, ranging from trouble at school to criminal
| conduct, to obesity and depression: https://www.mnpsych.o
| rg/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_dailyplanet....
|
| (As to "bias against Americans." On the issues of
| marriage and family, a lot of the things that are
| "normal" in America are deemed at best highly regrettable
| where I'm from. Now I'm as much of a flag waver as the
| next immigrant. But in this particular area I'm not
| convinced that Americans are on the right track.)
| xref wrote:
| > So you wave aside my actual argument, about norms, then
| proceed to refute a straw man?
|
| He eviscerated your actual argument that Bangladeshi
| marriage norms are something to aspire, considering how
| they treat 60% of their under age 18 girls (but 4% of
| their boys).
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Try being an Ahmedi in Bangladesh and get back to me.
| yters wrote:
| It seems there could be a middle way where marriage is
| strongly supported by society with provisions to protect
| against abuse. Our current extreme is no better as it
| destroys the lives of many children.
| jandrese wrote:
| The War on Drugs is a big factor on this. Basically an
| attempt to reinstate slavery via the criminal justice
| system created a whole generation of absent fathers.
| rtx wrote:
| Solution is sacrifice, some marketing genius can bring it
| back in fashion.
| moocowtruck wrote:
| I've adopted two special needs orphans from another country..
| and the childhood trauma is by and far the worst thing for a
| child. I could ramble on for a long time about this!
|
| What we need are more caring people to adopt, and put their
| words to action, and give these kids good home. The problem is
| everyone says it's a problem but not enough people want to do
| it because it would be an inconvenience to their daily lives or
| some other excuse.
|
| It is easily doable for all the worlds orphans to be adopted by
| good families, if only we could get people to see the good they
| could be doing
|
| Money does not help, people help!
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| > What we need are more caring people to adopt, and put their
| words to action, and give these kids good home.
|
| We do need this, but we also need loving, caring people to
| foster. We've been fostering for over 6 years and every one
| of our kids have gone home to family. That should be the
| goal. People like to think, "oh I'd be able to provide for
| this kid much better than their family." Maybe that's true
| financially. But family is family and if there's ANY way to
| reunite the family, that should be the way forward.
| moocowtruck wrote:
| Sure if they can get back to family that is fine, but that
| is a small fraction of the issue, most of my work is in
| international adoption with special needs kids that rot
| tied to a crib with the occasional porridge in a bottle
| shoved down their throat.. honestly leaving them like this
| is for sure a human atrocity, I have to ask myself quite
| often if most are better off dying than sitting for years
| slowly dying. Those are the types of kids I'm advocating
| for that people pick up the ball and do what you can,
| obviously i support any sort of adoption or fostering! The
| reality is, any ounce of love anyone can give is better
| than what they get, bring them home, feed them 3 times a
| day clean them! that's like heaven for these kids
| kaitai wrote:
| We need reform in the system, though. I know two heterosexual
| couples in different states with decent jobs, good finances,
| deep desire to adopt, commitment. (I mention heterosexual
| only because there has long been stigma against same-sex
| couples adopting, and this is a stigma these folks don't
| face.) They've gone through the foster training, the adoption
| training, the social worker meetings, the enormous legal
| fees. They've both been working to adopt for over four years.
| One couple, I think matches have fallen through three times?
| They were trying to adopt an older kid through the foster
| system and were willing to take siblings, so you think they'd
| be home free. But no. Match, courts change their mind; match,
| courts change their mind, etc. The other has had only one
| match fall through -- it was a baby and they got the clothes,
| got the crib ready, and mom changed her mind.
|
| Something is wrong with the system in America when I've got a
| child who can now write their name and that took less time
| from beginning to present than getting a single adoption from
| the foster system accomplished. Those matches that failed?
| Those kids are still in foster care.
| croissants wrote:
| My personal response is that it seems like raising your own
| biological offspring, even with all of the lizard-brain this-
| will-eventually-pass-on-my-genes bonus, is already hard for a
| lot of people --- look at all of the internet threads asking
| if people regret having kids --- so subtracting off the
| biological offspring bonus and adopting seems like it would
| be very difficult. Add in the trauma already experienced by
| children in the foster system, and it gets even harder. Then
| I wonder if I'm the kind of person who can love a difficult
| child, and I wonder how good it is for a child to grow up
| with a parent who deep-down sees them as an object of
| responsibility rather than love. Of course, strong bonds
| between adopted parents and children are certainly possible,
| but it is in the end harder, right?
|
| I admire your pragmatic embrace of working on this problem; I
| also think chalking up the cost of adoption as "an
| inconvenience to...daily lives" is...underselling it?
| moocowtruck wrote:
| loving a difficult child is hard! but there are varying
| degree's of difficult, violent difficult i can understand
| that is an immense challenge and i definitely don't
| recommend people to take that on unless they are prepared
| and sometimes you don't know, yes this situation really
| sucks!
|
| I don't know what there is to regret about having kids, yep
| its difficult but everything worth doing is difficult!
| Adoption is definitely very difficult, especially the kind
| I did, international adoption of special needs children. My
| family didn't understand, many people in the public don't
| understand, and if they somewhat do they ask why I didn't
| adopt an american child, to me a child is a child.
|
| I will say any ounce of love you can give these kids is
| better than what they have, seriously, the things I've
| seen.. picture your life from age 1 - 16, tied to a crib,
| malnourished, not educated, treated like a feral animal
| weighing under 100 lbs now, and all kinds of spine issues
| because you were not ever allowed to walk! Or if you are
| lucky enough to be in a place you can develop a bit, but
| then you are molested and abused but still have the
| intellect of a feral animal.
|
| Many of these kids don't know what bonds of love are, but
| they can still form even tiny bits of it, and there will be
| times you think ..why the hell did i do this, but there are
| times when you think i am so happy i did this, you push
| through those hard times, get support from friends etc and
| the life of that kid will be a million times better than
| the life they would have had.
|
| I think people don't give themselves enough credit, and
| somewhere inside i know they could do it, I never thought I
| could do it. One thing I do know is, if we all sit around
| questioning what we can't do we never will know what we
| could do and in the meantime children are suffering. I'm
| actually internally battling the want to adopt a third
| child vs being at limit!
|
| Oh also adopting is an expensive venture, i went into debts
| to do this so i recommend to anyone get familiar with the
| community of adoptive parents and let them help fund raise.
|
| But yes overall I think it's a huge problem that gets
| little attention, and once and awhile you will see a super
| sad advertisement on TV and hear everyone whine about how
| bad it made them feel and how they shouldn't show those
| kinds of ads. Big disappointment to me when i hear that, I
| feel like its more rug sweeping under
|
| ah well
| krona wrote:
| Having the father present in the raising of a boy basically
| solves the problem. Having a job helps.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| This is survivorship bias. Is it better to have no father or
| criminal, drug addicted, violently abusive fathers?
| krspykrm wrote:
| Do you want the actual answer or are you trying to make a
| point with a rhetorical question you assume you know the
| answer to?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I have an idea of answer but I can't know for sure.
| DanBC wrote:
| Not if the father is violent, or dependent on alcohol or
| drugs, or sexually abusive.
| trentnix wrote:
| Yep.
|
| In all the talk about _privilege_ assigned to race or wealth,
| the reality is that the most beneficial _privilege_ one can
| enjoy is the love, guidance, and support that comes from a
| two-parent home.
| chasd00 wrote:
| it's depressing how your comment feels so insightful
| instead of just plainly obvious.
| aminozuur wrote:
| Well said. Having a good father can be key. Just google
| "fatherlessness statistics" to see the data.
|
| I grew up fatherlesness myself and it left me feeling weak
| growing up. As a child, I had to figure everything out by
| myself.
| loopz wrote:
| If it's any comfort, you can have a father and still become
| "fatherless", or better off without one.
| astura wrote:
| Yep, grew up with a father physically present, the only
| thing I learned from him is how unlovable I am.
|
| I had to figure everything out myself too.
| bigfudge wrote:
| The problem here is confounding. Do we think there are no
| causes of fatherlessness that are also causes of poorer
| life outcomes (hint: there are plenty). Given this it's
| very hard to see clearly how much impact this makes, all
| the personal anecdotes here notwithstanding.
| worker767424 wrote:
| Except I don't think a single parent has enough time to
| properly raise a kid.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I think you might be mistaking correlation with causation.
| Are men raised by lesbians entering the prison system at the
| same rate as men raised by single mothers? I doubt it.
| NDizzle wrote:
| Not enough data yet, as that's a recent thing.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| bsanr2 wrote:
| My understanding, from a long-ago report which I cannot
| find, was that the children of lesbian couples do better
| than average: higher college admission rates, lower prison
| rates. It was thought that the relative difficulty of
| having children as a lesbian couple (including, in the case
| of adoption, which is understandably more prevalent among
| such couples, state approval) means that they're better
| prepared for child-rearing.
| draugadrotten wrote:
| > Are men raised by lesbians entering the prison system at
| the same rate as men raised by single mothers?
|
| Now that is a question that researchers won't ask nor tell.
| danbolt wrote:
| Why do you feel that's the case?
| samoa42 wrote:
| as a parent i can tell you that _NOONE_ is prepared before
| having children and that there will be times when your
| consideration and love leave you alone and you gonna fuck up.
|
| but dont read this too negative, kids are the best there is!
|
| and while a lot of the hn audience may think like:
|
| > I hope parents can be considarate, prepared, loving and
| financially stable before having children.
|
| if you wait til everyting is "perfect", you loose to the
| despicable retards that dont care.
| bigfudge wrote:
| While I agree with the core of your argument, we don't need
| terms like "despicable retards" here. It cheapens the debate
| and makes it harder for people to agree with you.
| knuthsat wrote:
| Problem is that children suck up all the time. So I would
| pretty much wait until I want to spend time on children and
| not on my stuff or my partners stuff.
|
| I'd probably have children when I'm retired, whatever age
| that be.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Somehow rings hollow to me.
|
| There's never time unless we prioritize. Plenty of people
| are great parents despite being busy.
|
| My rabbi has ten kids. Ten. And he is still able to run the
| congregation which is probably not less demanding than
| whatever you do (statistically speaking). This kind of
| thing is common in certain communities.
|
| So it's possible just a question of what's important to
| you. If kids fall behind brunch and posting on HN then yes
| we are too busy :)
| watwut wrote:
| Families with many kids do less well tho statistically -
| boys have more behavioral problems and girls do less good
| in school. There is simply less time for parents to be
| able to give the kids individual attention. It is
| possible that rabbis congregation leaves enough time to
| give individual attention to kids.
|
| But I bet his wife is the one who does overwhelming
| majority of leading kids and care. Because with standard
| 40 hours and 6 kids he would already be impossibly
| stretched.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > if you wait til everyting is "perfect", you loose to the
| despicable retards that dont care.
|
| I've never viewed having a child as a competition. What am I
| losing?
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| My SO and I are foster parents. I, too, wish more people were
| trauma informed. We live in a "just suck it up" society, but
| kiddos in care, because of the trauma they've experienced, have
| brains that have developed physically different to kiddos
| who've grown up in a nurturing and caring environment. They
| can't "just suck it up".
|
| I think we have to be careful when we say "be financially
| stable before having kids" though. Not that we shouldn't be,
| but we can't just let certain classes of people have kids.
| Also, those who are stable now are one accident or emergency or
| job loss, etc. away from being unstable.
|
| Edit: I think what I said might be unclear. IOW, having kids
| should NOT be dependent on your financial state.
| geofft wrote:
| (I assume you mean "we can't just _not_ let certain classes
| of people have kids "?)
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| I mean, having a kid should not depend on one's financial
| state.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Almost everyone is just one job loss away from being
| unstable. If you have kids then it's 10x more likely. What
| you're suggesting is just impractical.
|
| Even the professional classes have instability issues. E.g.
| just look at how stable a high flying banking executive was
| in 2008. Or tech workers in the 2000s.
|
| We should make it cheaper to have kids, rather than expecting
| people to wait until they're millionaires.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| I edited my comment, I think it may clear up what I mean.
| bigfudge wrote:
| Agree wholeheartedly. In addition, young parents have lots
| of advantages over older ones which we miss if we wait
| until career 100% sorted. The sleep deprivation alone would
| have been much easier in my 20s!
| nitrogen wrote:
| _having kids should NOT be dependent on your financial
| state._
|
| Why not? Choosing to have kids one can't feed and making
| decisions that will require taking resources from others by
| force is the definition of neglect.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >making decisions that will require taking resources from
| others by force is the definition of neglect
|
| I'm gona walk right past the 'taxation is theft' dog
| whistle.
|
| You can talk about 'personal responsibility' all you want,
| but at the end of the day, the urge to have kids is
| probably our second strongest drive as a species. Babies
| are gona happen. When they do, they should be fully
| supported as much as necessary to make sure parents and
| children get what they need at a base level. I don't mind
| my taxes paying for baby formula and diapers. We should
| probably fund daycare too. This is that 'equality of
| opportunity' conservatives are so fond of in place of
| 'equality of outcomes'. Well, if that's true, at the very
| least we need to make sure that everyone gets the bare
| essentials to properly raise a child.
| bluGill wrote:
| It isn't nearly as expensive to have kids as you might
| think. Food when you cook is cheap. Clothing from goodwill
| is cheap.
| aminozuur wrote:
| Well spoken. I agree with your assesment about what I said
| regarding having 'finances in order'. Love and care is much
| more important than money. Parents need enough money to not
| have stress (which can affect children).
| geofft wrote:
| There will always be parents who aren't, for whatever reason.
| Apart from all the usual reasons you'd think of - you can get a
| sudden illness and die. You can be a victim of a major crime. A
| novel coronavirus combined with incompetent government response
| can wreck your job prospects (unlikely as that may be). Your
| employer can go bankrupt, or the markets can crash and take
| your savings with it. A natural disaster can destroy your house
| and everything in it. You could be drafted. "Financially
| stable" is a pretty temporary state for the vast majority of
| the world.
|
| The realistic question is - what is the considerate, prepared,
| and loving response of a financially stable _society_ when
| these things inevitably happen?
| nixass wrote:
| Need to fill the pockets of private prison owners + local
| government who allowed them
| Sevii wrote:
| My Dad fosters what seems like an unending stream of kids. The
| parents have a drug problem and end up losing their kids. Once
| the parents get their shit together again they get the kids back.
|
| Form the kids perspective they are either dealing with temporary
| guardians or with a parent that provides next to no super vision.
|
| The state can't parent children, but foster care is in a real way
| keeping children off the street.
| admiralspoo wrote:
| The title is totally vacuous and makes no logical connection for
| why college is a standard. Replace "foster kids" and "prison"
| with whatever you wish, e.g. "chess grandmasters" and "ice cream
| shop".
| fuhry wrote:
| Wife and I are hopefully less than 2 months away from being
| licensed. If we can do it in our tiny 2 bedroom house, you can
| too!
| bluGill wrote:
| Good luck. My parents did it when I was little. They remember
| showing real love to kids and being hated for it.
| hvasilev wrote:
| What does this have to do with technology?
| sound1 wrote:
| Kids who can potentially become Steve Jobs are unfairly ending
| up in jail?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I have a friend who has tried to foster parent during COVID but
| the shifting goalposts, school openings and closings demanding
| childcare availability instantly (both parents work) and lack of
| timely reimbursements from the state combine to make it a nearly
| impossible endeavor. Last I heard the child had made some
| unfortunate choices after going back to the birth family and
| might be headed to institutionalization
| nr2x wrote:
| My basic understanding is the U.S. replaced mental health asylums
| and orphanages with homelessness and prisons. What do other
| countries do? Does it work?
| bluGill wrote:
| Those old systems were full of abuse. There are bad foster
| parents, but overall it is better. Until someone thinks up
| something better the current system is what we have.
| retrac wrote:
| It's not so fundamentally different up here in Canada. It's
| just different scope and scale. Our foster kids are also in a
| pipeline to poverty and criminality, and it's rife with abuse.
| Our poverty and criminality are just a bit milder on average,
| perhaps? The broken families at the core of it all are just as
| painful.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Private prisons create a perverse incentive to lock people up.
| Follow the money.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| https://imgc.artprintimages.com/img/print/remember-we-re-
| not...
|
| new yorker cartoon - remember, we're not just making money,
| we're building prisons.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Follow the money but it's not just private corporations. In
| California the prison guard union is one of the stronger
| lobbies and have pushed to pass some pretty bad bills over
| the decades.
| Clubber wrote:
| High conviction numbers also allows an ambitious prosecutor
| to look good once they have aspirations for higher
| political office as well.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >My basic understanding is the U.S. replaced mental health
| asylums and orphanages with homelessness and prisons.
|
| To be clear, that was not the motivation. There were lots of
| reasons why things changed and institutionalization fell out of
| favor (and not just in the US, but across the West). For
| example, right now, in most states, you couldn't forcibly
| institutionalize, say, a schizophrenic homeless individual
| legally, even if the request came from the individual's family.
| And if you try, municipal and state governments, bolstered by
| activists and rights organizations will fight you.
| seebetter wrote:
| I worked on this issue in 2008. My best friend had directed a
| film called Where the Day Takes You about homeless kids in
| Hollywood.
|
| A Harvard lawyer I knew added me to her non profit and asked me
| to produce a documentary about homeless teenagers in Colorado.
|
| I wanted to call it STATE OF NEGLECT and push for an efficient
| form of social programs ran by the state. My infinitely educated
| friend, she was a project attorney, had no concept of filmmaking
| or project management. She tried to put a bad director with no
| technical production in charge with me.
|
| Harvard lawyer was scared Comcast wouldn't give us $25 million so
| she asked me to sanitize the criticism towards state foster
| programs. Months later, her foundation closed.
|
| In Where the Day Takes You, it was Will Smith's movie. Tom
| Cruise's partner Paula was my best friend's agent at the time.
| This and the CIA is how I know about the UFO scientology religion
| by Kit and Hal.
|
| Of course, Hacker News shadowbanned me for this comment on my
| other account. Even though I work with the Office of Director of
| National Intelligence and JASON Group. My friend is currently the
| Chair of the Defense Policy Group.
|
| Today President Trump is going to free Ross and Drew.
|
| Hackers aren't marketers who made SaSS and rattle on about series
| A. There are no hackers here. There are no painters here.
|
| Come to EFNet where real hackers are, not corporate grifters like
| Y Combinator. I know everyone important in Atherton and SV and
| the IC.
|
| We don't need your corporations startup bros and CIA In-Q-Tel
| fronts. Overthrow everything government, religion and
| corporations.
|
| Just like the Bavarian Illuminati planned for their sinister
| conspiracy to enact the Futuristic Past.
| rtx wrote:
| Child care and elderly care one of the harder problems to solve.
| I hope some smart people decide to tackle it. Lots of potential
| for abuse and neglect. At one point I used to plan about
| combining an old age home and orphanage together. It could help
| with some emotional needs.
| klyrs wrote:
| These problems do appear inextricably linked. Individualism in
| american culture is, IMO, the root. In many other cultures,
| family is huge -- folks are connected to their parents,
| grandparents, siblings, cousins... grandparents help out with
| the kids until they can't, and the skills of parenting are
| naturally passed from generation to generation. Funny to see a
| comment on another that "no one" is prepared to raise a kid...
| that's because individualism is bad at retaining wisdom.
|
| The problem with your mixed old folks' home / orphanage is that
| individualistic old people don't wanna live there until they're
| too old to help out.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Texas lawmakers recognized the existence of a possible foster-
| care-to-prison pipeline several years ago.
|
| The 'foster-care-to-prison pipeline' metaphor is such a misnomer
| and completely unfair. Nobody is moving these kids into the
| prison system. Traditional parenting can provide personalized
| rearing and still have that child end-up in prison. We also know
| that a single-parent household, even with a dedicated loving
| parent, will have challenges rearing children. How is the state
| supposed to do it? Worse, the kids who end up in foster-care,
| more often than not, will already have significant trauma and
| behaviour or mental issues.
|
| So to summarize, you have the State dealing with two major issues
| that individually create an immense challenge, but together make
| it even harder:
|
| 1) The state can never scale resources to match typical parental
| rearing.
|
| 2) The state has to deal with a population of kids who are
| already suffering from behavioral or mental issues, drugs, or
| trauma. An affluent two-parent household with dedicated support
| workers would have trouble raising kids like that. How is the
| State supposed to do this?
|
| I'm not sure what the right approach is here but it's clear as
| day that there is no easy answer here.
| Helloworldboy wrote:
| No idea why you're being downvoted.
| stevespang wrote:
| Thanks for posting this.
| elmo2you wrote:
| "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest
| members." ~ Mahatma Ghandi
|
| I think that says it all. Despite all the propaganda/cultural
| brainwashing, convincing many Americans that their
| country/culture is somehow better than others.
| batch12 wrote:
| I was a foster kid for 11 years. My social worker and foster
| parents were likely the only reason I am still here. My social
| worker would visit his children weekly-- even on weekends and did
| whatever it took for us. Still, he was just one man. I still talk
| to him regularly. During one discussion, I asked him about the
| other kids that I remembered. There were only two of us left. I
| think people forget about the trauma foster kids deal with.
| First, the reason kids went into care. Second, the separation of
| the kid from their families. My experiences showed me that this
| trauma, combined with an institutional care system does not equip
| most kids to function in society.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah the trauma is really hard to quantify. My mom was a 3rd
| grade teacher for years. One of the kids was a foster child. He
| was a good kids, a good heart, but had self control realated
| issues.
|
| On the last day of the school they were drawing pictures of
| what they'd do that summer. His photo was of him being sad. He
| told her.
|
| "Some of us are sad because of summer vacation because we don't
| want to be at home every day."
|
| Just brutal to hear.... some kids have the deck stacked so far
| against them....
| chasd00 wrote:
| my wife is school teacher, when the pandemic hit and schools
| closed some of her kids were taken into CPS and some just
| flat out vanished. Elementary schools are basically social
| safety nets for some kids. I think that's why many governors
| were quick to re-open and very slow to close them down again.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Some of the amateur research we've done points to the idea that
| it takes a surprisingly small number of emotionally stable
| adults to help kids get through chaotic circumstances. If you
| read the testimonies from children from the foster system like
| you, or from children with mentally unwell parents, the ones
| that made it out ok always have some sort of story about how
| one adult in their life took an interest and helped them get
| through it. From what I've seen, teachers and coaches are the
| most common adult to help. Not peer reviewed stuff obviously,
| but the pattern is striking.
|
| Anyways, glad you made it out of such a tough spot doing ok.
| robocat wrote:
| > the ones that made it out ok always have some sort of story
| about how one adult in their life took an interest and helped
| them get through it.
|
| How much time does that take of the person who is helping?
|
| Also, from article, "Most of the $30 billion spent on child
| welfare annually is funneled into foster care or adoption
| services", "Roughly 23,000 kids across the country are
| churned out of the system every year".
|
| That averages $100000 per child per year, assuming 300000
| kids in care and all $30G spent on them.
| the-dude wrote:
| That is literal survivorship bias there. I know multiple
| stories of deeply unhappy/unstable foster children, no matter
| how much stability, love & care they were given ( I knew some
| of those foster parents ).
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Every successful foster child has a stable adult in their
| life != every foster child with a stable adult in their
| life is successful.
|
| The first sentence is saying that a stable adult is one
| necessary component. The second sentence is saying that the
| stable adult is the only necessary component. They are
| totally different claims with very similar wording.
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| I knew two kids adopted as infants who were born addicted
| to drugs.
|
| The family that adopted them was wealthy. They poured
| enormous amounts of time and resources into raising those
| kids. One turned it all around and works for Google, the
| other ram away and hasn't been heard from in 20 years.
|
| Same birth mother, born two years apart, she was an addict.
| worker767424 wrote:
| A family friend is single and infertile. She's spent a
| lot of money on some sort of adopt-a-chinese scheme.
| Someone in her family did the same, and the kid had
| various medical issues. I honestly think she'd have been
| better off with a surrogate and a sperm donor.
|
| I definitely respect people who adopt, but they risk of
| just adopting someone else's problem is too high for me.
| impartial-word wrote:
| A relative adopted a child and the social worker advised
| against international adoptions for this problem.
|
| Eventually they adopted a 100% healthy local child after
| 5-6 years of legal nightmare as it's pretty complex
| navigate through all requirements plus wait your turn.
| bluGill wrote:
| If you adopt a health foreign baby it is because the baby
| was kidnapped from his loving parents and then a corrupt
| judge signed off on it.
|
| The above isn't always true, but if you didn't
| investigate the agency deeply you should assume it is.
| This is why international adoptions are so hard, many
| counties have caught on and given up on giving the few
| kids who do need real homes help.
| jtbayly wrote:
| > the few kids who do need real homes
|
| You have to be kidding me. Do you know how many kids are
| literal orphans in sub-saharan Africa?
| bluGill wrote:
| No. I know that most counties won't let you adopt those
| orphans though because of how hard it is to be sure they
| really are.
| crusty wrote:
| You should start a side hustle as a medical power of
| attorney for marginally suicidal geriatrics who are
| worried they're loved ones won't have the stones to honor
| their DNR wishes. Something tells me you'd be ready to
| pull the plug, no questions asked.
| baldfat wrote:
| I adopted three kids from the same biological mother. Two
| of them are making more then me at Amazon and for the
| Department of Defense. Sadly my younger son passed from
| Bone Cancer.
|
| They were drug impacted, but its weird how research goes
| in cycles. Crack babies were going to ruin America's
| capacity for caring for all these children. Then it was
| said that Alcohol is the only drug that effects babies in
| the womb. It was called the "Crack Baby Myth" but now
| things are changing again.
| ketzo wrote:
| Just wanna say I'm sorry for your loss. It's wonderful
| you were able to give your kids a chance at a better
| life.
| kevincox wrote:
| I think it is a fairly safe assumption that raising
| children has aspects of a chaotic system. Small changes
| to upbringing can cause large impact on the result. Of
| course not all "inputs" have this chaotic nature, and
| there are lots of inputs that aren't under direct control
| of the parents. There are just so many variables that it
| is hard to tease out patterns.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Fair, but as far as controlled experiments are possible
| in this kind of thing, it doesn't get much better than
| two kids with a shared birth parent and the same adoptive
| parents/environment.
|
| Anyway, you're not wrong about the chaotic environment
| that is child rearing-- the other side of this coin is
| sets of identical twins with differing sexualities, eg:
| https://kinseyinstitute.org/news-
| events/news/2019-07-26-twin...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Fair, but as far as controlled experiments are possible
| in this kind of thing, it doesn't get much better than
| two kids
|
| Actually, controlled experiments on this could be a lot
| better than _N_ = 2, and the small- _N_ problem dwarfs
| the positive features of the experiment here.
| kevincox wrote:
| No, it doesn't get much better than that scenario. But
| something as simple as which other kids are sat next to
| them in school can completely change their childhood.
| Observations like these are the best we have, and should
| not be ignored, but there are just so many variables that
| can never bet (ethically) controlled.
| erik_landerholm wrote:
| 100% agree. I think because it's hard enough to discern
| between what I would call first order (dna caused
| personality traits) and second order (immediate family
| and early childhood experiences) contributions to
| personality and what experiences a child had, that most
| people ignore third order, friends, bad luck, basically
| everything else. Then, you throw in luck ...I mean who
| knows why anyone does anything bad or good.
|
| I'm not religious, but the saying often attributed to
| Christ saying, "forgive them, they know not what they
| do," is probably totally, 100% accurate. I would add we
| don't really know why they do what they do either.
| Christians want that to mean specifically about the
| crucifixion, but I believe whoever wrote that down was
| trying to say something more general about human
| experience.
|
| I know from personal experience, just how much which kids
| you sit next to from 1st-5th grade, as they are often the
| same in the US, can influence your life in extreme ways.
|
| All this says to me, we should probably go easier on
| everyone, even the "worst" of us...
| adolph wrote:
| Even within organisms starting with identical "first
| order" characteristics the opportunity for variation is
| fascinating. Here is a podcast on the topic I found
| illuminating, it is with the author of a recent book _The
| Hidden Half_
|
| http://www.econtalk.org/michael-blastland-on-the-hidden-
| half...
| jariel wrote:
| This is actually incorrect reasoning.
|
| The amount of variation in the human condition would
| completely negate any conclusions from a sample size of
| two, however close the conditions.
|
| It's also really easy to explain how one kid does well
| and the other doesn't, look at any life situation. One
| kid falls in with bad friends, one does not, one has a
| hobby that takes them somewhere, one does not, one gets a
| DUI the other does not, one has an amazing Hockey coach,
| the other does not, one takes a risk and wants to be a
| rock start, the other does not etc. etc..
| birdsbirdsbirds wrote:
| 1. The other could still be successful.
|
| 2. Same mother doesn't mean same fathers. Success comes
| down to IQ. One kid could have been lucky while the other
| drew the short stick.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| > Success comes down to IQ
|
| I think it arguably more likely that acceptance into the
| education system comes down to IQ due to antiquated
| practices in attempting to derive intelligence. Being
| within the education system is the sunny uplands to
| networking and generally better opportunities.
|
| Its possible that almost every child has the potential of
| a "good enough" IQ and that nurture reigns supreme over
| the supporting cast of genetics. To separate the two
| within nurture there remains environmental factors such
| as an interpreted narrative of favouritism which can lead
| to downward spirals.
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| Success comes down to a hell of a lot more than IQ.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| While success and IQ are almost certainly correlated, it
| is not possible to make a statement like that.
|
| You can just as well say that success comes down to
| height, or country of birth, or combined wealth of
| uncles. There are so many other factors at play.
| batch12 wrote:
| I was far from stable and far from happy. It wasn't until
| later that I realized the benefits that the people around
| me provided. With that said-- with some exceptions of
| course-- none of the kids want to be foster children.
| Especially those that understand that they are disposable.
| Kids are smart and know when they will just be shuffled
| around or placed in a group home. When I was fortunate
| enough to placed with my brother, we would act out --
| looking back it was almost as a way to confirm that nobody
| really cared. It's easier to shit on everyone around you
| when you think everything is a temporary situation.
| treeman79 wrote:
| That's what my adopted daughter and her older sibling
| would do. They were taken young. But older sibling
| started crap every place they got sent. Not the sort of
| stuff that can be ignored.
|
| Finally they were separated in the system.
|
| At first we were like "that's horrible"
|
| Now. We just wish it had been done a lot sooner.
|
| Some people are hell bent on self destruction, and will
| take everyone down with them.
|
| It took 7 years for our adopted daughter to finally
| realize and know we actually do love her.
| jariel wrote:
| Just because you have an anecdote that illustrates
| something doesn't negate the broader conclusion.
|
| Frankly, the original statement that 'it only takes one or
| two' should be rather obvious, it's called 'parenting' and
| it usually implies a couple of people who have a bond with
| a child.
|
| That said, we all know every kind of person from every walk
| of life who ended up being in every kind of scenario.
|
| There's a lot of randomness in humans.
|
| That doesn't take away from the fact that a couple of 'good
| parents' and a decent community + school is almost
| assuredly the best path.
| Supermancho wrote:
| I'm not sure that's survivorship bias, since you can
| measure when dependents (or emancipated dependents) drop
| off from their support systems. The measure isn't just
| those that report back "I'm doing fine" but those that are
| tracked. There are a number of organizations that track
| these statistics, although I feel like the nordic countries
| seem to follow the strictest rigour. It's a null hypothesis
| to show that foster children (who are more likely to have
| mental disorders -
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3922948/, et
| al) do better with caring parental figures. They can only
| degenerate without stability.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Yes...but he's not making the claim that "100% of foster
| kids who get (some small number of adults caring about
| them) will be successful", he's saying that "the minimum
| I've observed for foster kids to be successful is (some
| small number of adults caring about them)".
|
| The latter claim is perfectly valid to make when 100% of
| survivors have trait X; you are correct in implying that it
| would be invalid to say having trait X will guarantee a
| survivor.
| the-dude wrote:
| > points to the idea that it takes a surprisingly small
| number of emotionally stable adults to help kids get
| through chaotic circumstances.
|
| I am not a native speaker, but to me he clearly suggests
| with _takes_ that it should be possible for every case.
| samatman wrote:
| That doesn't follow.
|
| Consider the idiom _it takes two to tango_. Now, one of
| the two could be a quadriplegic, or a dog, or maybe they
| both come from a severe religious cult which has
| forbidden dancing and just can 't bring themselves to do
| it.
|
| That's fine; the meaning is that two are necessary, not
| that two are sufficient.
| tgb wrote:
| Saying "It takes surprisingly little time to do!" isn't
| trying to give a _lower_ bound on how much time it takes.
| Obviously not completely unambiguous, but the
| "sufficient" reading is completely natural English.
| lostcolony wrote:
| It's not setting a bound at all. It -is- saying that the
| amount of time is "surprisingly little".
|
| But to the topic at hand, the logical implication is that
| "to do it" => "takes surprisingly little time" (that is,
| doing it implies you took surprisingly little time)
|
| Not "taking surprisingly little time" => "to do it" (that
| is, having taken surprisingly little time implies you do
| it).
|
| Same as the above; the implication is that "success"
| implies "(at least) a surprisingly small number of adults
| were involved", not that "(at least) a surprisingly small
| number of adults were involved" implies "success".
|
| I find it helpful to use formal logic to explain stuff
| like this. If I make a statement that p => q (that is, p
| implies q), and that statement is true, it does NOT
| necessarily follow that q => p (that is, q implies p) is
| true (it may or may not be; it is independent from a
| formal logic perspective). It is necessary to evaluate q
| => p separately, in which case we may find it to be true,
| OR we may find q =/> p to be true (that is, q does not
| imply p).
|
| As an example, "My shoes are wet because it is raining",
| p = it is raining, and q = my shoes are wet. p => q means
| if it is raining, my shoes are wet. But it does not also
| follow from that that q => p; that is, just because my
| shoes are wet it does not mean it must be raining (I
| might have, after all, been out watering the lawn). Thus,
| q =/> p.
|
| For the tango example, p = a tango is possible, q = there
| are two people. p => q, but q =/> q (that is, does not
| imply).
|
| In this case, p = foster child is successful, and q = a
| number of adults (sometimes a surprisingly small number)
| were involved with them. p => q, but q =/> p.
| the-dude wrote:
| Again, not a native speaker, but this sounds far out.
|
| _It takes two to tango_ is about the tango going to
| happen, not the _minimal required circumstances for it to
| happen if all other stars align_.
| talentedcoin wrote:
| No, parent is correct.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_takes_two_to_tango
|
| The meaning of this expression has been extended to
| include any situation in which the two partners are by
| definition understood to be essential (...).
| diN0bot wrote:
| since you keep saying that you are not a native speaker,
| consider believing the interpretations native speakers
| share. stuff simply means what it means. you can believe
| it or not.
|
| more generally, when someone says something you find
| incredulous, consider processing that internally, and
| then decide if saying "huh, now i know" is not a better
| reaction to "no way, maybe you're wrong."
| the-dude wrote:
| This is preposterous.
|
| I thought we were here to satisfy our curiosity.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > it takes a surprisingly small number of emotionally
| stable adults to help kids get through chaotic
| circumstances
|
| The "surprising" modifier here makes the object something
| that needs extra context, what's surprising here is that
| the number is small and not large. If bio mom and bio dad
| and foster mom and foster dad and all the extended family
| and most of their teachers are distant, but their track
| coach is emotionally invested (thanks, Buzz), that's,
| surprisingly, sometimes all that it takes.
|
| Yes, if no one's invested, that's not enough, as you'd
| expect. It does leave the possibility that everyone is
| invested and it's still not enough.
| slothtrop wrote:
| I believe this is very understated, and collectively we tend to
| throw up our hands at the issue as though nothing could be
| improved. Even children growing up without a father figure or
| having divorced parents can have some developmental issues, I
| can't imagine how being separated from family must be.
| omginternets wrote:
| >My experiences showed me that this trauma, combined with an
| institutional care system does not equip most kids to function
| in society.
|
| Can you elaborate on this? It abstractly makes sense, but what
| does this look like in practice? What kinds of situations come
| up whereupon a foster-kid-turned-adult wouldn't be "equipped"?
| What is it they wouldn't know to do? Or, what would they
| mistakenly think was an appropriate response?
| aminozuur wrote:
| Thank you for sharing your experience. May I ask, how are you
| doing now? Did you find any ways to address or even overcome
| those past experiences?
| batch12 wrote:
| I am doing well for myself now. How I got here is pretty
| complicated. I can only attribute my ability to overcome
| these experiences to those who genuinely cared. These are the
| people who cared enough to help me succeed but also let me
| fail and deal with the consequences. In high school, I was a
| low C to D student. I slept in class. I refused to do
| homework. I thought the schools were only temporary, so
| therefore they did not matter. I only passed classes because
| I excelled at test taking and understood the material. I felt
| like it was all a game-- people, school, relationships. None
| of it mattered and all I had to do was find the right way to
| play. After foster care, I had a free ride (I was still in
| care), but failed out of college because I didn't see a
| point. I joined the military. This forced structure and
| discipline actually helped me. I understood this game and
| excelled. I used my experience in the military to get an
| entry level job in IT and continue to grow. There are
| residual effects that I will always deal with. I have huge
| gaps in memory from when I was a kid- I don't remember much
| before age 11. I compartmentalize things too easily. I can be
| impatient with people. I dislike and distrust bureaucracies.
| I don't have enough patience for incompetence. I could go on,
| but I'm sure that's not why you're here :)
| aminozuur wrote:
| Thanks again for sharing. I find your story very relatable,
| from the gaps in memory (which is common after trauma) to
| rebelling and failing in the school system.
|
| I wish there was a community just for people in tech who've
| overcome messy childhoods.
| minitoar wrote:
| In my book, disliking and distrusting bureaucracy is a
| hallmark of an intelligent and well-adjusted being.
| temporaryacc1 wrote:
| Genetics are a stubborn force.
| paulmendoza wrote:
| My wife and I adopted two older boys (10 and 12). Most of the
| families trying to adopt are looking for babies but we were
| looking for older kids. It still took almost 2 years to get our
| first kid placed with us because I think the social workers
| weren't sure if my wife and I really knew what we were getting
| into. But once we got the first kid I think they realized we were
| good. Then a year later they called us out of the blue about a
| second kid.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| I always find this a bit ridiculous - do folks that want babies
| really know what they are getting into? Heck, do folks that
| have babies?
|
| Probably not. The difference is that we can do things to
| prepare foster parents or adoptive parents for it - more so
| than natural birth.
| bluGill wrote:
| Babies are easier because they don't start off bad. Teens
| have had years of abuse behind them. Read the reports of
| others here and you will see it is rare and hard to fix the
| kids after that trauma.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Sure, babies don't start out with years of trauma. So what?
| People are willing to take classes and things and learn,
| are they not? It just isn't the _same_ as babies.
|
| And to be fair, you aren't "fixing" a baby: You are doing
| the same thing - providing a loving home, trying to give
| another person the things they need. You just have a head
| start on some of the problems you'll be facing with a
| teenager - the sort of thing that blindsides parents of
| babies if it happens.
|
| I'm not sure why it is an issue that "things are hard".
| watwut wrote:
| > Sure, babies don't start out with years of trauma. So
| what?
|
| I think that you should look up what trauma and
| dysfunctional early setup does with kids. Because it can
| be very hard on caregiver and test all their abilities
| including self control. The adoption agencies themselves
| are quite open about these issues - they do not want
| people to adopt and then be unable to handle things.
|
| Which are all euphemisms mind you. Basically, there are
| issues with violence, inability to create relationship or
| even inability that relationship can be "true". Which
| causes whole other bunch of behavioral problems. Like,
| the eagerness to "test" caregiver by really going out of
| way to create trouble. And if caregiver fails, result is
| basically abuse. And the kid can't help itself, but
| adults should.
|
| And adults when they see they don't have time and
| resources and patience to deal with above, do better to
| adopt baby.
|
| > People are willing to take classes and things and
| learn, are they not? It just isn't the same as babies.
|
| What did that even means?
| watwut wrote:
| Adopting baby is significantly easier then older kids,
| because older kids are affected by their previous
| experiences, abandonment, massively dysfunctional familly,
| death of parents and so on.
| jfrankamp wrote:
| Folks attempting to adopt older kids have a higher 'return'
| rate than when adopting babies. E.g. If an older kid decides
| to physically fight you for control, many parents will
| quickly run out of options, emotional reserves etc. It is
| undesirable to rush through an adoption in that case, years
| are warranted. (first hand experience w/ multiple
| foster/adopted teenagers + failed adoptions).
| LockAndLol wrote:
| Instead we see how people go onto Facebook to get inseminated by
| strangers. People would literally rather be injected with
| somebody else's semen, go through 9 months of crazy hormones and
| multiple hours of the worst pain in their lives, than take care
| of an existing child.
|
| If people did something to actually help children instead of
| voting for pro-surveillance laws or "against those people I don't
| like", maybe kids would get some help.
|
| I think that says a lot about our society.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >I think that says a lot about our society.
|
| No it doesn't. People have children because having a genetic
| connection is important to them. That's not a 'society-thing'.
| That's just humanity. There are exception to this, and that's
| why foster parents should be applauded because fostering and
| adopting is great moral act. But I wouldn't impugn the rest of
| society because most people don't adopt, but instead choose to
| have biological children.
| gadders wrote:
| I've been reading the Burke series of novels [1] written by
| Andrew Vachss [2]. As he says in the novels, we make our own
| monsters: http://www.vachss.com/av_dispatches/disp_9006_a.html
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_(series)
|
| [2] http://www.vachss.com/vachss/credentials.html
| pinipedman wrote:
| Is this really a surprise to anyone? The US is second only to the
| USSR in incarceration rate. The disenfranchised, e.g. foster
| children, will certainly suffer disproportionately under such a
| system. The lack of social safety nets, mental health services,
| etc. certainly play a role, but the larger issue is the
| authoritarian nature of the US regime.
| brink wrote:
| While we do incarcerate too much, I don't think the solution is
| necessarily "incarcerate less" as much as it is "Nurture
| families more and create stable environments for children to
| grow up in so that they feel wanted."
| pinipedman wrote:
| I don't think anyone would disagree that a better home
| environment is fundamental. But do you think that, in
| general, the longer sentences and higher rates of
| incarceration (especially for non-violent crime) in the US
| compared with other developed nations are beneficial?
|
| Publishing names and mugshots of arrestees prior to
| convictions, the existence of the sex offender registry,
| rampant human rights abuses in prisons, loss of voting rights
| for felons, and the explicit allowance of slavery as
| punishment do not make it seem like the US "justice system"
| even approximates the humanist notion of justice that other
| developed nations apparently aim for.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Adopted a teenager out of foster care.
|
| None of the others she knew from foster care did well in life.
| All on drugs, homeless, many in prison, spent time there. Many
| are having kids that will soon be take away by the state, for
| good reasons.
|
| Our own has done better, but was years of insane drama.
|
| Knowing that bio family was out there hurt her immensely.
|
| She finally had to spend time with them. Literally Pulling her
| drunk biological dad out of a ditch, to realize that they were
| dragging her down.
|
| She does aight these days.
|
| Foster kids can be helped, but you really need multiple strong
| families or support groups dedicated to the task. For a couple of
| decades, at least.
| tooltower wrote:
| Sorry about the completely noob question, but in your mind, do
| you think it actually helps these kids to separate them from
| their bio families in the first place?
|
| What are the most common situations that require a kid to be
| placed in foster care?
| rossmohax wrote:
| Sometime all it takes is a mistep of a parent and kids are
| taken from them. There was a story in the UK, where single
| mom had to go to the job interview and agreed with a friend
| to come and babysit. On a day of the interview babysitter
| couldn't come in time, but promised to come a bit later, so
| mom decided to go for the job interview. Kid stood next to
| window, banged on a glass and cried as mom was leaving.
| Police was called and kid was taken from her and very quickly
| adopted by another family.
| bluGill wrote:
| Kids are only separated from their families when things are
| really bad.
| jfrankamp wrote:
| I can answer this, also fostered then adopted a teenager. It
| actually does not help the kid, its the worst thing that
| could happen to them except all of the alternatives. Being
| placed in a foster home is trauma. Getting separated from
| their bio family is trauma. Continuing to be physically
| abused (in their bio fam) is unacceptable trauma. Extended
| family was also a bust and resulted in more physical abuse.
| tooltower wrote:
| Thanks for answering this.
|
| To sort of hammer the point home in my brain, does the
| following summarize what you are saying?
|
| In spite of all the trauma, you still think foster care is
| better than leaving kids with their family? E.g. the
| article says "more kids are removed for neglect than abuse"
| and only 35 percent of them finished high school. So,
| between the two evils (abusive family and foster care), do
| kids really fare better in the foster care system?
|
| As someone who grew up outside of USA, but now live here,
| this is all rather shocking to me.
| batch12 wrote:
| My brother had a tooth chipped and a broken arm. I have
| had an adult stand on my head and kick me around a room.
| I still had it much better than some of my peers. It
| isn't the best situation, but sometimes it is the only
| real option to protect the child.
| ip26 wrote:
| Separating from their families is never a great option. But
| sometimes it is the least-bad option. Enter, foster care.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Personal opinion. I think a lot of kids are separated that
| should not be.
|
| From what I saw of Foster care. The only thing they really
| care about is your alive until you age out.
| worik wrote:
| The best thing to do, to help a child, is to help the family.
|
| But the family is often very unattractive. Adults can be such
| reprobates: Drug addicted, "lazy", wasteful....
|
| So the state tends to remove the child and inject them into
| what they know is at best a failing system and at worst a
| fertile training ground for child abusers.
|
| Better to help the families, never mind that they will have
| lifestyles you disapprove of. It costs a lot of money. A huge
| amount.
|
| But it is cheaper in the long run to put aside the moral
| panic about the behaviour of the grown us....
| sitkack wrote:
| We should be helping all of society so that families have a
| low probability of getting into this state in the first
| place. I have seen communities with strong programs for
| kids, breakfast served at school, extended evening
| activities, free organized sports. All of this stuff helps
| shore up a problematic home life and gives points of
| contact for well functioning adults and kids to intersect
| with these kids lives.
|
| Can you imagine being a child in a shitty home life, all
| you had before the pandemic was your school for being
| around people who didn't hate or at best were indifferent
| to you.
|
| America needs new social structures.
| Geminidog wrote:
| >Foster kids can be helped, but you really need multiple strong
| families or support groups dedicated to the task. For a couple
| of decades, at least.
|
| It's sad but I don't think that this is sustainable.
| bigfudge wrote:
| It would be cheaper than prison. We do so little to support
| foster families that I don't know how we know that it's not
| sustainable... we just haven't tried. It's a cliche but if we
| spent 10% of of what we spend on Nukes or drug enforcement on
| this it would be a game changer.
|
| This is a question of priorities.
| creato wrote:
| > It's a cliche but if we spent 10% of of what we spend on
| Nukes or drug enforcement on this it would be a game
| changer.
|
| I think people that say things like this overestimate how
| much we spend on things like this and underestimate social
| spending. About 50% of US government spending is health and
| social services. So even cutting _everything else to zero_
| is only a doubling of health and social services. A
| doubling isn 't nothing, but a game changer? And not all
| (or even most) of that other 50% will be spending you feel
| is frivolous, so it would be much less than doubling.
| carbonguy wrote:
| > It's a cliche but if we spent 10% of of what we spend
| on Nukes or drug enforcement on this it would be a game
| changer.
|
| > > I think people that say things like this overestimate
| how much we spend on things like this and underestimate
| social spending.
|
| These caught my attention because they both made claims
| for which the quantitative basis can somewhat easily be
| established, partly because the parent was making a
| relatively specific claim as these things go.
|
| Here's what I was able to find with ~20min of searching
| for federal spending in these three categories:
|
| Foster care: $22 billion (2017) [1]
|
| Drug control: $25 billion (2015) [2]
|
| Nuclear arms: $35 billion (2019) [3]
|
| I was surprised that these three areas received roughly
| equivalent amounts of money - support for your statement
| that people tend to underestimate social spending.
|
| As to the parent comment: while it does seem likely that
| taking 10% of the budget from nuclear arms or drug
| enforcement would indeed make a qualitative difference to
| foster service provision, my hunch is that the 10-20%
| increase that implies wouldn't be a "game changer" as the
| parent asserted even if the claims in [1] that the
| program needs to be entirely reconfigured are warranted.
|
| EDIT: The parent comment also asserts that a better-
| funded foster care system would be "cheaper than prison"
| - another question which could probably be answered with
| some quantitative basis. Anyone else want to take a shot
| at it?
|
| [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/FosterCare/story?id=
| 2017991...
|
| [2] https://drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/DPA_Fact_s
| heet_Dr...
|
| [3] https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/14/us/nuclear-weapons-
| spending-t...
| treeman79 wrote:
| She went into foster care, because bio parents just sat
| around getting stoned constantly.
|
| Often forgetting to pick up kids from school.
|
| I get that many techies are pro-drugs. But a lot of
| people waste away on them.
| frenchy wrote:
| For what it's worth, there's a difference between pro-
| drugs and pro-legalization. I personally think that
| legalization is our best hope for reducing drug use.
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| Almost 60% of projected spending is not on all health and
| social services, but only 3 specific programs, 2 of which
| primarily benefit the elderly.
|
| It can still be true that if a program to support the
| success of foster children increased by 10% of the budget
| from somewhere else, the program would be significantly
| more successful in helping children.
| corin_ wrote:
| Yes of course doubling would be a game changer! Think of
| the huge amount of good stuff already covered in
| healthcare and social services, even a 10% increase in
| budget could do a massive amount of good.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Prices would double.
|
| Some people can spend an unlimited amount of money and
| accomplish little.
| jacobion wrote:
| But doesn't a large majority of 'social services'
| spending go to retirement incomes? Obviously that is
| important, but discretionary spending on, for example,
| taking care of children, is much smaller.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Of course it is. Just not within the parameters of how we've
| defined family and parenthood.
|
| There's a reason societies used collective parenting for
| centuries and only recently with the push towards
| individualism that has stopped. There's still collective
| parenting in places of the world that don't have that same
| desire of individualism.
|
| We've built our society and economy around the idea of 2
| parents and some children. This is an arbitrary decision
| we've made and it wasn't how we came to this point. A push
| for accepting multi-node families would help nudge us in the
| right direction. Just changing the tax law to support and
| provide the same benefits to a union of multiple parents
| would be extremely useful.
|
| We've codefied a single way of living. Maybe we should change
| that and allow for more dynamic family structures.
| jariel wrote:
| I think this is possibly misleading.
|
| 'We' never did 'collective' parenting in the broader sense.
|
| Both Asian and Western families were essentially nuclear,
| but multigenerational, and closer ties to extended family.
|
| 70 years ago, this was generally normative - and frankly
| often today - in that families were 2 parents + kids, but
| grandparents, uncles/aunts /cousins were part of the mix.
|
| Obviously, more so in some places than others (particularly
| with parents living-in i.e. Asia, Italy)
|
| Even today: 100% of my buddies who are married live within
| 2km of their mother-in-laws.
|
| I think the term 'collective' is just a little bit too
| broad, and Romanticizes these quasi-aboriginal notions of
| truly more collective parenting, which frankly hasn't been
| part of the mix for a very long time (i.e. millennia) in
| most places.
|
| The basic, communitarian concepts which we are mostly all
| familiar, which is to say 'quasi nuclear with strong
| extended family ties' will work just fine.
|
| I think both neoliberalism and certain kinds of progressive
| social ideologies, without necessarily intending to move
| away from this, are effectively doing this, and pushing us
| into the 'hyper nuclear' (i.e. 1 or 2 parents only)
| scnenarios, which I think is less than ideal.
|
| Having grown up in a single parent situation, and then two
| parents later on, it took me 30 years of reflection to
| realize how much single parenting is a massive
| disadvantage. Surprisingly, there is reluctance among many
| progressive circles to recognize this, whereupon the notion
| of 'single motherhood' is contemplated on equal footing
| with 2 parent families. (Though I think this is usually
| derived from concerns over the fact that single parent
| households are often the result of abuse etc.)
|
| This odd paradox can be seen within the African American
| community whereupon well over 50% of kids grow up without
| having much of a relationship with their fathers. To some,
| this is an abomination, and a 'root cause of malaise' (and
| I'm not pointing fingers here, there are lot of men in jail
| that don't need to be), but surprisingly among many, they
| just don't see it as a problem for a variety of triggering
| reasons.
|
| The nuclear+extended and obviously - community
| participation (i.e. teachers, role models) I think will
| work just fine so long as we recognize it.
|
| And any parents who adopt foster children are straight up
| heroes, of that there is no doubt.
| smartbit wrote:
| > _Even today: 100% of my buddies who are married live
| within 2km of their mother-in-laws._
|
| Assuming your _buddies_ are male, you make an interesting
| observation: mothers support their daughters in raising
| kids more than they support theirs sons with it.
| fakedang wrote:
| Coming to think of it, that's an interesting observation
| I noticed in my family too.
| pelasaco wrote:
| > collective parenting for centuries
|
| Could you provide more data here? The only information that
| I found was traditional families, where the grandparents
| and relatives take the responsibility for the education
| too.
|
| I lived some years in South American, and I was impressed
| how many middle class families have their Nanny taking care
| of their kids (bringing to the school, cooking, controlling
| home work, taking care while they were sick, etc).. could
| be that be seem as "collective parenting" too?
|
| > There's still collective parenting in places of the world
| that don't have that same desire of individualism.
|
| Would provide more data here? I'm interested to see how
| they are doing.
| smartbit wrote:
| I couldn't agree with you more including _tax law_ as part
| of the problem.
|
| > _There 's a reason societies used collective parenting
| for centuries and only recently with the push towards
| individualism that has stopped._
|
| Do you have reference to literature or research confirming
| your statement?
| Geminidog wrote:
| I don't think this is an idea, I think the 2 parent system
| is biology and collective parenting is the "idea" built on
| top of it.
|
| Here's why:
|
| https://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby/forming-a-bond-with-
| you...
|
| Biological bonding with baby is recorded to happen after
| 80% of births at first sight. The bonding is so strong that
| parents will literally lay down their lives to protect a
| child.
|
| I highly doubt that this type of bonding forms for people
| who aren't the biological parent of the baby. When choosing
| their own lives or the baby's life, most unrelated people
| will choose their own life. Therefore under "collective
| parenting" it is likely that the other "parents" function
| more as "caretakers" and are tertiary to the parents that
| formed the biological bond.
|
| Foster care is largely comprised of tertiary care that is
| missing the primary care of the nuclear biological mother
| and father. So foster care is essentially the same as
| collective parenting just without the actual biological
| parents. This is the causative factor and the essential
| missing link:
|
| Foster care doesn't have enough people who are willing to
| invest the same amount of blood, sweat and tears as actual
| biological parents.
|
| That is why I said such support services are unsustainable.
| People don't have enough energy, resources or will-power to
| spare for a stranger that is not their own biological
| progeny.
|
| You also need to consider the evolutionary logic behind
| this type of behavior. Does it make sense for a biological
| entity to maximize Darwinian fitness by caring for children
| that have less genetic relation to them? No. Obviously
| there will be an evolutionary imperative for parents to
| spend the most resources on the child that is most
| genetically related to them.
|
| The 2 parent system exists as a primary biological
| component rather than some "idea" because a child can only
| have 2 biological parents.
| dudul wrote:
| > There's still collective parenting in places of the world
| that don't have that same desire of individualism.
|
| > societies used collective parenting for centuries
|
| I see these claims made regularly in discussions about
| kids, families, etc, but I never see a clear example. Which
| parts of the world have collective parenting? How do you
| even define that? During which periods did we have
| collective parenting? What forms did it take? I would be
| really interested in seeing real examples I can look into
| to understand better how they could potentially be used as
| inspiration.
| iak8god wrote:
| There are three different sibling comments here asking for
| "data", "reseach", and "examples" supporting aaomidi's
| point about collective parenting.
|
| This article has a lot of information about the development
| of the nuclear family and what preceded it, so might be a
| good jumping off point for those who are interested:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-
| nuc...
| watwut wrote:
| That is not collective parenting at all. That is extended
| familly. And as bonus, Brooks idealize past to fit point
| he wants to make.
| rayiner wrote:
| Collective parenting in nearly every society that practices
| it is still built around the biological parents as the
| basic unit.
| mistermann wrote:
| Look on the bright side: it is speculative, and doesn't
| consider counterfactuals, etc.
|
| Luckily, fine folks like aaomidi walk among us. Not many of
| them, but some.
| froh wrote:
| > aight
|
| allright (US english, colloquial)
|
| As I had to look it up
| stuaxo wrote:
| Thanks, this confused me, I assumed it was aught/zero and
| couldn't parse it.
| nwsm wrote:
| People do use "aight" as slang, but I think this way probably
| a typo.
| oehtXRwMkIs wrote:
| Weird, that's the first time I've ever seen it spelled with 2
| L's. But it does make more sense than one L.
| froh wrote:
| Uh oh, all right, alright, so I learned two things here
| today :-)
|
| Thanks!
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/all-right-
| or-a...
| dfilppi wrote:
| The state doesn't make good parents. Shocking.
| tyingq wrote:
| _" The state, however, has since returned to high-level
| dysfunction, including a recent case in which foster kids were
| being transported in handcuffs and leg shackles -- a practice
| that has now been prohibited"_
|
| I wonder what the sequence of events was where nobody said
| anything about putting shackles on kids that aren't prisoners or
| being arrested.
| tokai wrote:
| Guess anyone with a shred of empathy was long gone before
| shackling kids came up.
| tyingq wrote:
| I'm surprised that nobody balked just for self-preservation
| reasons. I'd certainly be concerned about the legalities of
| shackling someone. Sounds like kidnapping to me.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| Don't underestimate how unruly, disobedient, and oftentimes
| violent these children are.
|
| In the best case, these children have been traumatized by their
| removal from a family, however dysfunctional. In the worst
| cases, they've suffered abuses that make people support the
| death penalty. While none of those scars is written on a
| person, they do manifest in sudden outbursts of screaming,
| hitting, stealing, and scores more destructive behaviors. For a
| neglected child, negative attention is preferable to not
| existing, and if acting out is the only way to make your
| existence register to the outside world, so be it.
|
| Many of those people who placed said children in shackles
| aren't practiced in methods to manage traumatized children or
| understanding of their past, and identify them as
| 'problematic', not 'traumatized'.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Has anyone checked the skin colour of those kids?
| macspoofing wrote:
| Let me rephrase that, but without the inflammatory
| assumptions: Given that social workers are good people who do
| very hard (thankless and low-paid) work - has anyone checked
| what the reasons were for instituting this policy.
|
| We're all in agreement that the agency needs to explain why
| this policy was put in place (which has since been
| prohibited), because it isn't normal to shackle kids and
| potentially someone needs to be held accountable. But maybe
| we can do that without impugning social workers as bigots -
| don't you think?
| macspoofing wrote:
| >I wonder what the sequence of events was where nobody said
| anything about putting shackles on kids that aren't prisoners
| or being arrested.
|
| I also wonder, because the default position is to not shackle
| kids obviously. Social workers really are good people who try
| their best in real hard situations (and dealing with 'at-risk'
| foster kids is one of the hardest areas of social work). It may
| be the case that this bad solution came out of solving
| something, like kids running away, or physically hurting
| themselves, other kids, or social workers - during transport.
| It's not totally fair to impugn motives, as others in this
| thread are, without at least understanding what it is they were
| trying to solve.
|
| Again .. I'm not justifying or excusing this policy, but I do
| want to understand why this policy exists in context with
| realities on the ground encountered by good people doing really
| hard social work.
| throwawaypali wrote:
| Can we just go ahead and admit that the foster program is not
| superior to the orphanages that it replaced?
| yarcob wrote:
| I think that in general foster families are better than group
| homes. The problem is that most children shouldn't be taken
| away in the first place.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >The problem is that most children shouldn't be taken away in
| the first place.
|
| Sure. To be clear though, the state doesn't really take
| children away for no reason. I'm sure there are isolated
| incidences, but in general, the kids who end up in the foster
| care, did not land there because they came from loving stable
| environments.
| chopin24 wrote:
| How do you run A/B to prove this hypothesis?
| bluGill wrote:
| Most kids are not taken away from their homes. The exceptions
| horrible cases.
| bluGill wrote:
| No. You seem unaware of how bad the old orphanage system was.
| everdrive wrote:
| Do we know if these kids would have been better off in their own
| homes? I don't have any statistics here, but one wonders if we
| can measure the outcomes here. ie, is abusive stability better
| than what the foster system produces?
| jfrankamp wrote:
| Recent research has swung the state child welfare policy
| pendulum back toward this thesis in my state (Oregon) and a few
| others I'm aware of., e.g. if the situation isn't totally
| irredeemable, bio fam is the best in terms of average outcome.
| mindvirus wrote:
| As a relatively new parent, this is particularly heartbreaking.
| It just seems so hopeless - why can't we as a society solve this,
| whether through better resources for kids or for their parents?
|
| There was another story following two homeless kids - think of
| how much worse off they'll be with COVID and remote learning
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/19/nyregion/stud...
| bluGill wrote:
| Easy to say, but when you learn about the problem it is hard to
| suggest an answer that might help.
| balls187 wrote:
| I felt the same heartbreak.
|
| > why can't we as a society solve this
|
| We can. We (collectively as a society) have chosen not to.
|
| Foster kids don't vote, don't pay taxes, and their advocates
| aren't nearly as well funded as those for many other special
| interest groups.
| balls187 wrote:
| Also, fwiw--74 million Americans voted to reelect Donald
| Trump, despite his policy that forcibly separated children
| from their parents at the US Border...
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