an 8 year old boy is so obese, he is almost unable to walk. social services are trying to decide whether or not to remove him from his family.

advocates have argued that if a child were starved instead of overfed, there would be no question the child should be removed, for his own safety and health.

but think about it for more than a nanosecond and the difference becomes blindingly obvious.

parents everywhere make all kind of ill-informed dangerous decisions on their child’s behalf every day, some with all the best of intentions. refusing blood transfusions, omitting seat belts, smoking in the home, opting out of innoculations. these are all potentially just as lethal, but no one proposes to remove children from their parents’ care because they’re not immunized against chicken pox, or mum is a human chimney.

But all that aside, what it boils down to is this: Ignorance and unwillingness to change is fundamentally different to *actively attempting to inflict pain on a child*. Starving a child is an active attempt to harm. Beating a child is an active attempt to harm. Laziness is very BAD parenting – but it’s not abuse.

There are plenty of children who desperately need to be protected by the state from horrific parents who are trying to hurt and maim them. But this isn’t one of them. Send the ignorant parents to counselling – save precious resources for the kids who really need to be saved.

song of the day: the band -the weight

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obesity, child abuse