Actually, research is showing that upbringing has little to do with it (cf Pinker’s The Blank Slate). If anything, it is genetics itself - abusers are abusive because they have the genes that predispose someone towards abusiveness. It’s not an excuse at the individual level, it’s an explanation at the population level.
Sure, I’m fine with that. What I’m talking about is a matter of principle… that is, what should be the presumption of the law? The law should presume that relatedness correlates positively with bona fide interestedness in the child’s welfare.
Also, I think the tendendy for “whole families” to be abusive is likely exaggerated. There is a sick dynamic within society for those who are more affluent to pretend they care more for the children of the poor than the parents themselves on the evidence that their own children are so much better cared for (and they truly are). All this shows is that wealth positively correlates with the parents’ ability to care for their own children; it says nothing about the relative interestedness of wealthier people in the welfare of children not their own over the interestedness of the parents in their own children’s welfare. Wealth can be an enabler of child abuse as much as it can of greater child care, look at that Texas judge.
The law should not cater to such emotive biases. The poor parent with a messy home, few toys for the child to play with, etc. is still just as interested in his or her child’s welfare as the upper middle-class parent with the expansive, suburban home and full-size SUV. It just doesn’t look as neat and tidy on film. I think it’s the duty of the law to look past that and get to the heart of the matter.
Once the child attains majority, I think you’re right. In a freer society, I think that majority would not be linked to a specific age and would be attainable at a very young age by the standards of modern law.
I think the State is also interested in children to the extent that it wants to engender a new generation of “productive citizens”.
From what I understand, the State’s protection agencies aren’t entirely disconnected from the social network(s) in which a child exists. However, the people working for those agencies tend to be concerned first and foremost with their own job performance, which is evaluated by wholly bureaucratic metrics - i.e. how well did they follow the rules (whatever they are). Oftentimes those rules implicitly require the cooperation of outside people in order to be followed. For example, if there’s a rule stating that someone from Child Services has to see the child(ren) listed in an incident report within a certain time period, that would require whoever the child(ren) is/are staying with to let someone from Child Services see them. If whoever the child(ren) is/are staying with doesn’t “voluntarily” comply, then a State court order can be issued allowing State agents to coerce them into complying. But this is all apparently phrased in terms of State agents having to follow their own rules. My point here is that divide et impera also goes on between State agents and outsiders.
I’ll simply note here that peer shame/exposure and family ostracism aren’t necessarily short-run actions.
True. My point is that some guy smacking his kid over the head who is met with a verbal expression of peer-disapproval by a family relative or a neighbor is getting more timely, more relevant feedback on his behavior than someone who is told “if you hit your kid, and the State catches you, you will go to jail for many years.” The brain assigns more weight to immediate consequences than to long-run consequences, even if the long-run consequences are much more odious than the immediate consequences. Our society believes there is no social problem that can’t be solved with Tasers and a jail cell.