Trauma by the CPS

There are two kinds of people who have the gall to forcefully take a child out of their home: kidnappers, and CPS workers. In order to do the job, the caseworker has to harness the same guiltless energy that a kidnapper does in order to enter a home and tear a child off their parents. The only difference for the adults is the rationale. The only difference for the child is that the kidnapper does it behind the the parents' back, while the CPS worker does it right in front of their faces.

Kidnappers remove children for personal, selfish reasons, for the worse, while CPS workers remove children in an attempt to provide for their welfare and well-being in ways that aren't properly being served--for better or worse. We shouldn't forget that the primary motivating factor for the kidnapper is kidnapper-focused, while it is child-focused for the CPS worker, but our attention to the "motivations" and "intentions" for the perpetrator or the public servant ought to be secondary to our concern for the child's actual welfare. However, in justifying the knee-jerk removal of a child from an otherwise loving home, for ill-defined reasons, often the caseworker's "motivation" to remove takes precedence in our minds over the child's actual well-being.

When a small child is ripped from their parent's arms by a stranger, does the child care what the "intentions" of the person doing the ripping are? Of course not. It is a traumatic event for a child to be removed from a loving home. This is not to say that such interventions don't have their place--in cases involving extreme abuse and neglect--but perhaps worse than good people failing to do the right thing is good people thinking they are doing the right thing as they do the wrong thing. This happens when children are removed from homes where no abuse or neglect is happening.

The state is slow to reverse their mistakes because admitting to a mistake jeopardizes their public legitimacy. The agency tasked to judge the legitimacy of parents, does not not like to be judged itself. Legitimacy is always more important to the state than the child's welfare. Any parent who has caused the amount of trauma that even the most "well-meaning" caseworker and court is capable of inflicting on children in a single night, wouldn't be allowed to keep the child, even by the state's own standards.

The issue is, are we more concerned about the trauma children in that situation are facing, or are we more concerned for the ill-conceived "good intentions" of the person who has caused that trauma? If we were child-focused, whether they are removed by a kidnapper or removed by a well-meaning but equally traumatic CPS worker, we'd recognize the trauma for the child either way. Instead though, we put the "well-meaning" part ahead of the trauma in the case of the CPS removal, because the caseworker carries with her the cold calculation of unquestionable authority, and the kidnapper carries the absolute opposite. We then regard what the child is feeling there, no matter how traumatic, to be a "necessary" part of their well-being. Trauma is  never necessary though, regardless of who is inflicting it.

The CPS ought to remain in operation, only so long as it can admit to its screw ups in a timely manner.

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.

Aphorisms for Hypocrisy

Those who fear the child predator ignore the child marketer. Those who fear the child predator ignore the army recruiter. Those who fear the child predator on the news, the sex offender living down the street, or their child's freedom online...ignore police arrests of 8 year olds, corrupt CPS child removals, and the ethnic, racial, and gender disenfranchisement in many public schools.

Those who feel an innate sense of disgust at one form of child destruction, do not bat an eyelash at the "socially acceptable" forms of it. It doesn't matter if the 8 year old arrest was simply a kid guilty of the crime of walking to school in a predator-panicked district, or if the never-liable CPS worker had no evidence of abuse or neglect in their decision to abduct children for funding, and it certainly doesn't cause anyone to lash out with such displays of righteous indignation (at least not to the "lynch mob" status given to solitary perverts) over what happens to the African American boy in an under-performing school. Where are the bands of concerned citizens gathering to defend him, and why are they rallying to kill the television pervert instead?

Those who believe they have done the children of the world a service by hating on the one teacher caught with child pornography, do not even shutter at the fact that the common airport terminal has been turned into the largest creator of child pornography in the world, and its operators into the biggest collection of child groomers. These same people certainly don't mind sending their children through the chambers to be pictured naked for a trained onlooker, patted down by strangers, or strip searched in public, in order to board a plane--after all, the parents already paid for the ticket.

What is sanctioned by culture is never illegal, no matter how wrong, but what is illegal is sanctioned rarely, no matter how just. Illusion becomes real, and reality becomes ignored. What is true is obliterated, no matter how right, and what is sensational is preserved, no matter how evil. The innocence of children must be preserved as long as it is profitable.

"All this righteous indignation about predators... This whole country is trying to get into your kid's pants, because that's where he keeps his wallet."
--Bill Maher

Taking Responsibility

It is better to take responsibility than to have responsibility. This is to say, it's better to act for the best interests of others than it is to simply have the authority to do it. Having the authority to work with children in particular should be of little consequence to the person who dedicates himself to doing it. Having the authority that comes along with being a social worker, a teacher, a parent, or any person elected or hired into a credential based system should be considered secondary to how the person chooses to utilize their authority. Far too often, the kids and mainstream society in general are at the mercy of people who have the authority or the credentials and choose not to take responsibility for their clients, citizens, or offspring, or exercise their authority for beneficial purposes.

Social workers who last in the field are those who are capable of trading in their empathy for human life for the ability to routinely do the job and bring in the results at any cost. They have to become desensitized to the harm in order to function as they are required. Their duties to the state overwhelm their gut feeling as an individual, and they can become just as cold in their private life as the bureaucratic body they are the fists and fingers of in their public dealings. They have responsibilities to perform but can not be held responsible, and for that reason alone, agents of the state in particular fail to properly serve their clients and constituents.

As an independent volunteer, a independent agent, a CL has no public-appointed responsibility over children, but are (and should) be held completely responsible for their mistakes (because mistakes do happen in life). It is for that reason alone that the CL is more trustworthy. When a stranger kidnaps a child, the stranger is brought to justice. When the state kidnaps a child for spurious or ill-formed reasons, the state is beyond reproach even if they loose their case against the family. If a private entity were to behave as the state, they would no doubt loose customers, but the state behaving as the state, is in no danger of loosing citizens. That's the difference between having responsibility and taking it. When you take responsibility, you have to put your neck on the line. CLs do it out of love. When you have responsibility, it's a showy accolade--it will help you win an election.

Those who have to be accountable--the teachers, parents, independent agents, CLs, and private entities in general--are in better standing to adequately serve those they care about. Those who don't have to be accountable, those who will reap federal funding regardless, those who pretend to be the moral arbiters and intrude on family life in attempt to realign responsibility within it, naturally invite criticism from the masses it has imposed on as to its own failings and inadequacies. One can not stand on a hill and ridicule one standing in a valley that he is too low and not expect the low man to accuse him of being too high. There are no moral arbiters except those who are blameless--there are none blameless, true, but there are those who take responsibility for what they can be blamed with, and those who don't. The CPS takes no blame, and therefore, is no moral arbiter for family life and ought to be distrusted.

No agency that is granted authority over human life, such as the Child Protective Services in this case, has an interest in properly serving its constituency in order to maintain its longevity. They just have to appear to be doing such.

The Problem with Care

"A care setting is about procedure, it's no place for caring."

The fundamental philosophy governing the treatment of children residing in state care is also it's fundamental problem. The Child Protective Services provide services on behalf of the child that have nothing to do with the child.

Parent State

This is going to be the beginning of a multi-part post regarding the disintegration of the power of parents in society, what I term "passive" dealings with children, and how they do more harm than good.

There are two societies we are forced to consider. The one that governs its interactions with children passively and the one that governs its interactions with children actively. The passive society governs with a divestment of personal responsibility but not the point of inflicting physical neglect. The basic needs of the child are met but not by the primary caregiver, rather, the community of experts and society at large step in to fill that role. This practice of Parens Patriae was preached, infamously, by sociologist Arthur W. Calhoun in A Social History of the American Family--a critical corpus that students have been drawing lessons from for the last century:

"The new view is that the higher and more obligatory relation is to society rather than to the family; the family goes back to the age of savagery while the state belongs to the age of civilization. The modern individual is a world citizen, served by the world, and home interests can no longer be supreme."

The society he praised is also that advanced by Engels and Marx in the Communist Manifesto, where the family is abolished and the state assumes its essential functions. It is one that could be considered passive because of its shared divested interest, in that it remains a collectively active in caring for children, but on an individual level--the level for which a child is going to be aware and relating with--is a more passive and uninvolved authority. In this way, individuals for which the child is in developmental proximity with can neglect them but still maintain that the child's care is satisfactory provided for on a social level. The society assumes responsibility for the parenting, for which the child can't relate or feel obligated or responsible to, and the parents and other individuals for which the child can naturally relate to divest their personal responsibility to some other invisible entity or device.

Children can not feel responsible to a ghost, a non-physical entity--an idea or conception--whether they be a network of professionals, experts, or state employees working in unison for their support, any more than an idea can be responsible for a child, which IS an entity, a dynamic being. No child under the custody of a state, or sitting in a doctor's office, relates themselves as socialized and attached to this abstract notion of the "State," as such a thing is a non-entity, a conception. It is made up of networked social structures and organizations that have no contact with the child directly but can assume the very direct task of parenthood.

This is the essence of the passive society. A child under the custody of the state, for instance, or in the supervision of an expert, relates themselves socially to their immediate caregivers--who only serve as a representative face for the abstract notion of the state, the corporation, or the daycare, and it is these individuals--the direct caregivers---that the child is natively wired to model, to learn and socialize themselves. This is that natural instinct of childhood, and yet these caregivers don't assume this direct role. They do not participate or feel obligated to take a participatory role in modeling behavior, because that responsibility belongs to the invisible organization or the state.

Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that since the direct caregivers, for which children are wired to respond to, can not have personal responsibility on an individual level for the children they are assigned to, that neither should the child feel responsible for him or herself and for society to which they are assigned. This is what makes the passive society passive, and ultimately ineffective in nurturing positive development in children. Thus the individual children it raises can not be effective in nurturing the positive development of a responsible society in return.

Obviously our society is not a completely passive one, as Engels and Marx may have desired, and the demonstration of this extreme was only intended to provoke the reader's imagination as to why we shouldn't be allowing passivity to overtake action when it comes to raising children. It is true though, that our society has many passive institutions within it--the Medical Industrial Complex, for example, whereby parental regard and discretion is disengaged by the push to diagnose and intervene in the behavior of children only so far as the transgressions can be medicated, not reinforced. Parents surrender their right to parent by dropping their children a pill.

Other passive institutions are the existence of youth curfews, where society relegates the behavior of children to bedroom confinement for their own protection or the supposed good of society. The existence of child leashes, satellite locating devices, and any device that promises to regulate children's behavior by relieving the parent of their often difficult parental duties are all passive practices that are in common use. A child who dangles on the end of a leash is being forcefully controlled, and the parent has no part in enforcing the control other than the light action of holding the strap. In this, behaviors are not being reinforced by the parent, rather, they are being reinforced by the parent surrogate--the harness! And as such, the parent takes a passive role in the raising of their child.