Rub Their Noses in It

Child welfare can either be designed to provide for the common good, or for the individual child's good. Rarely can it do both. One might get away with arguing that the very need for a Child Protective Services proves that parents are unable to manage their families one hundred percent of the time without intervention by the state, but who gets to hold the state accountable when a kid is abused in foster care, or aged out of the system? Indeed, some parents are abusive either because of their emotional temperament, their frustration due to lack of experience, or stress due to circumstance, but what is often forgotten is that the same is also true about state care.

The very need for there to be such a thing as a family proves that the invisible "state" is unable to manage its wards one hundred percent of the time without intervention by families. The state needs families to provide the actual parenting. So while everyone is expected to be clamoring toward the state to be the arbiters of good parenting on behalf of inexperienced mothers and fathers--as the common citizen under investigation is expected to bend over backwards to appease what the state has considered to be a breech of parenting duties--the state on its own is the least capable parent of all. It is nothing more than a set of decrees, lawbooks, and assorted professionals disassociated from the child. It can not do the direct work of parenting a child, but it believes itself to be morally and systematically superior to all those who would try.

It would dictate terms that it itself could not follow to the letter. If you dropped a child off at the doorstep of this invisible authority, "the state," do you think those pretty columnated buildings, stacks of forms, and hives of representatives in large varnished courts could even be able to hold the child's spoon, much less teach her right from wrong? Of course not, and for this reason, the state has decided that human beings are necessary to at least do the direct care work for the child on behalf of the state, to be the arms and legs of the state--to be there to hold the spoon and teach right from wrong. And seeing as human beings generally see the value of consistency in a child's development, the state prefers the child's biological parents over just anyone to do the work it can't do. When it determines that the parents are ill-equipped or unable to do this work, it will find what it determines to be suitable replacements--in this day in age, another family.

The state therefore relies on the family to do the essential work of raising children, and families rely on the state to provide their children with education and securities, for instance. One may be tempted to believe this is a holy symbiosis, but is it truly a viable social contract? The state grants itself powers to judge parent and child relationships according to its internal calculus, but what mechanism allows the family to judge the state when it fails to meet its obligations to the children in the realm of education and securities? While parents face court removal of their children when they are deemed incapable, what does the state face when it could be deemed incapable of holding up its end of this so-called social contract?

Do we get revolution when that happens? Do we get people suing the state? Do the people rise up and take their children out of the public school for a year's time while the state is forced to work out its issues and show its constituents mandatory improvements? The rush to place children in private and charter schools may be indicative of what we could term a slow "termination of state custodial right" if the same charge were being leveled at a family. Do non-abusive parents effectively get to assume custody of foster children when the state fails to protect them? Of course not, the state retains its wards even when it fails to be a proper parent to them--and it's the equivalent of allowing abusive parents to retain custody of their children.

Maybe it's in unknowingly ignoring a child who is being abused in their foster home; maybe it's in aging a child out of a foster home without nurturing them into adulthood; or maybe it's in over-medicating a child who acts out because he misses home--however the abuse and neglect manifests itself, the state is able to get away with retaining custody over wards it has failed to adequately parent because it is working under the pretense of the common good. So long as cases of maltreatment within the system are in the minority, the idea of serving the common good is preserved, and therefore, it becomes easier to overlook the individual cases. Serving the interests of the common good does little to suit the needs of individual children, but serving the dignity and needs of individual children is always in the interests of the common good.

To this end, we should incite the charge that one case of maltreatment while a child is in the custody of the state is one case too many. No majority is large enough that we should ignore the injustice served to the minority.

Just as parents though, the state can not be expected to have a clean record when it comes to its own duties over the education and protection of children it has been entrusted with. This is understandable, seeing as it takes adequate care of the majority of its wards, but though understandable, we can't be lulled to sympathy for it. It expresses no sympathy toward parents who fumble the responsibility, even as the majority of them are also capable. What we should expect from the state is accountability and honesty for when it fails in its task of raising children in its custody, just as it expects from families. They may have the power to be dishonest, and paint a rosy image with the broad strokes of "common good," using statistics to show how much good they are doing, but nothing ought to allow them to hide away each and every case where they have been the ones to drop the ball.

Glory only their successes, but hold their feet to the fire for their failures. It's our duty to rub their noses in it.