ecoTrain Question Of The Week: Lawful kidnapping by the State (Child Protection, Social Services) is a symptom of a modern day crisis. What are the issues that lie behind the increasing trend of State taking children away from their parents...

ecoTrain Question Of The Week: Lawful kidnapping by the State (Child Protection, Social Services) is a symptom of a modern day crisis. What are the issues that lie behind the increasing trend of State taking children away from their parents, and what can be done to prevent abhorrent injustice?

Well, this topic comes at a really poignant time for me. We've gone through some incredibly intense experiences in our family in the last couple weeks. Through our own trauma I have come to realize what an utter and complete failure our systems are for actually protecting or helping anyone. Of course intellectually I already knew that, but to feel yourself being failed is another matter.

Where are the systems to help me protect my children?

I really don't want to dig back into what happened very much, but suffice it to say that we had an incident with another child and one of our children. Through this process it came to my attention that this other child has a younger sibling who is almost certainly being abused. So, my child has been hurt. The one who hurt her has probably also been hurt, and there is at least one other child who is in danger.

Current Systems

Now. What are our systems to handle these problems? Shall I call the police? Then this boy or possibly his mother can suffer more, learn absolutely nothing and emerge from whatever tiny sentence only to actually be in worse shape and more likely to abuse than before. Seems like a shitty option. Shall I call CPS? I've considered it. At least they could keep the younger sibling out of danger. But would either of them be in a better situation? Will they provide any counseling for any of this family? Will they proceed to get up in my grill? We unschool, which is equivalent to coming from an alternate universe in your space ship in Belize. I'm not so sure I want to invite them into my life.

Beyond my anger and powerful desire for blood, I found that what I really want is for this child to understand that what he did was wrong, and if someone did it to him, that was wrong too. I want to set him on a different path. I want to find services to help him see a better way for himself. And I want to help this mother because he's clearly out of control, and she's on her own. Mostly I want to protect the little sister and any other children that come into contact with him. I don't want anyone else to go through what we have gone through. I want it to stop. Foster care or a boys' home isn't going to stop it. Jail sure as shit isn't going to stop it. Serious counseling and one on one mentorship may help in this one case, but of course to stop it all together we are talking about big, radical cultural shifts. I wrote a post about it.

So since our system has failed so miserably at even beginning to address this issue, who does it fall on? Well, me of course. And the boy's mother. Well who would've thought it would fall on the women? We are required to be the ones to protect and help our children and others' children. In my horrific grief when I should be healing my own child, I have to take on a major societal cluster funk.

The Root Causes

And so we come by the long way to my answer to the question. Obviously our situation is rather different than the CPS horrors we are talking about for this question. However, I believe their failure as a governmental entity shows both in their gross over involvement as well as their pathetic failure to protect children who are really in danger. The roots of their failures are the same. I've really appreciated the answers I've read so far, and I believe that poverty/capitalism is a major root cause of this sick epidemic of CPS horrors. Several other members of the ecoTrain, including @eco-Alex and @likedeeler have covered this corner quite nicely. It goes beyond that, though, I think. A little hint comes in the theory that part of the problem is that we are giving our power away.

Let's look at what often goes on in these situations. On a small scale there are individual caseworkers who sometimes get their panties in a twist about a certain issue. Maybe they hate people of a certain skin color. Maybe they hate people who homeschool. Maybe they grew up in a dirty home and were traumatized by the teasing of other children. Who freaking knows? The deal is that they have an insane amount of power over someone else's life. That is intoxicating. And that, friends, is how they keep the whole crew in line. So, on a larger scale, the government gives these little pockets of power to people to give them the impression that "at least I'm not one of those people." Now two tiers of people are in line. And it just goes on up the chain.

To be sure there is a war on the poor, and they are essentially threatening the most hateful thing you can threaten for a problem people have little control over. Poverty is criminalized. However, they are coming after us not just for crimes of poverty (leaving kids unsupervised, inadequate food, inadequate shelter, untidy living conditions) but also for bucking the system. It is easy to see this trend. I had a friend years ago who was investigated for over a year because her 7 year old unschooled child wasn't reading yet. She just wasn't ready. CPS got involved and forced the mother to force the girl to learn to read. That's just dumb in every way. I have friends who've been investigated for allowing a 2 year old to play outside naked in the summer in the back yard. In several countries in Europe homeschooling - and even alternative schooling - have been either outlawed or fought tooth and nail. They are starting to come after parents who don't vaccinate. Even though this is protected by law in the US, there have been several incidents of CPS medical kidnapping and forced vaccinations. Those of us who choose to parent in a different way - a way we believe is the best way - are being bullied into backing down. This is key. They're coming after those of us who dare to question the dominant paradigm. It's not just about money. It's about power and their ability to maintain their death grip. Money is just a piece of that power. In order to maintain control the vast majority of people must be following all the rules, and those who don't must be shamed and made an example of.

Same as the Root of Most Other Problems

It's the damn patriarchy. It's responsible for everything else. And it's responsible for this too. That masculine drive to be right about everything and insist that everyone follows the path that father knows is best. There can be no deviation or questioning, only obedience. And that power structure will do whatever it takes to maintain that. They recruit caseworkers to CPS in the same way they recruit soldiers. "You're fighting to protect America and freedom and bald eagles" is essentially the same bs story as "we need you to protect the poor children who are being abused by their drunk, lazy, trashy parents (or dirty, freedom-hating hippies)." Same shit, different department. They must maintain control, and they will happily lie, cheat, steal (including children), and murder to keep that power. Clearly they don't care about children any more than they care about democracy or human rights. Money and power. That's it. That's the story.

Now What

So what can we do? Well, I'm super fond of the phrase "smash the patriarchy" right now. I think it covers a lot. Practically speaking it's hard to say what that means. @likedeeler pointed out the women of Rojava who have whipped some people into shape in one of the most war torn, God forsaken regions of the planet. I need to look more into it, but it sounds like they have made incredible progress. I know in the right now we must educate our children on these issues and raise them to be fair, kind, thoughtful, and questioning. My last post had a lot of ideas about how to raise our boys in a good way. I'm wanting to write one for girls too. We need to set up real support for poor parents to get the help they need, for victims and perpetrators of abuse to get real and meaningful, desperately needed counseling. We need people to volunteer to mentor young kids, especially those at risk. And we need to totally dismantle all the structures of society and start from ground zero. No biggie.

For sure I know this. Our culture failed my family this week. The burden of finding solutions should not have been put at my feet. As many have suggested, stronger communities would definitely make a difference. I'll big up and handle it, but at the very least we must protect the marginalized and the violated.

Let me know what you think. I look forward to discussing this with the brilliant minds of Steemit.

This post is a response to the ecoTrain question of the week. Keep an eye out this week to see what other #ecotrain passengers have to say on this important topic. We hope to inspire and encourage positive change to help make this world a better place.

All pictures mine or Pixabay