"The most likely reason why Western social workers err predominantly in one direction, is that the public can't stand that children fare badly in the homes of their birth parents, while the public can stand that children fare badly in foster homes. At least it can stand it much better.
Why is that? Because, I think, parenting enrages peop…
"The most likely reason why Western social workers err predominantly in one direction, is that the public can't stand that children fare badly in the homes of their birth parents, while the public can stand that children fare badly in foster homes. At least it can stand it much better.
Why is that? Because, I think, parenting enrages people."
I think there is a second factor: people tend to count intentions as mattering more than unintended effects. For example, Nazism and communism both killed lots of people, but most people see Nazism as worse because Nazis killed people on purpose, while communism's mass famines were, mostly, unintended. (We can debate about whether they were actually unintended or the philosophy of morality here, but I think most people see the famines as unintentional, which is my point.)
If the intention is good but the execution is lacking, the logic goes, then we just need to get better at doing the thing. If CPS is bad at saving kids, then CPS needs more funding/training/guidelines/whatever to make CPS good at its job. By contrast, if the intention was bad in the first place, then getting better at doing it doesn't fix the problem! No one wants more efficient Nazis (except maybe Nazis.)
I think this is a very fundamental flaw in people's logic that makes it very difficult for them to abandon bad ideas with terrible results simply because the ideas were dreamed up with good intentions.
Yes. But most parents who lose their children to the system are accused of exactly that - incompetence. I don't have all the numbers straight for America, but in Sweden neglect is by far the most common accusation against parents of removed children.
"The most likely reason why Western social workers err predominantly in one direction, is that the public can't stand that children fare badly in the homes of their birth parents, while the public can stand that children fare badly in foster homes. At least it can stand it much better.
Why is that? Because, I think, parenting enrages people."
I think there is a second factor: people tend to count intentions as mattering more than unintended effects. For example, Nazism and communism both killed lots of people, but most people see Nazism as worse because Nazis killed people on purpose, while communism's mass famines were, mostly, unintended. (We can debate about whether they were actually unintended or the philosophy of morality here, but I think most people see the famines as unintentional, which is my point.)
If the intention is good but the execution is lacking, the logic goes, then we just need to get better at doing the thing. If CPS is bad at saving kids, then CPS needs more funding/training/guidelines/whatever to make CPS good at its job. By contrast, if the intention was bad in the first place, then getting better at doing it doesn't fix the problem! No one wants more efficient Nazis (except maybe Nazis.)
I think this is a very fundamental flaw in people's logic that makes it very difficult for them to abandon bad ideas with terrible results simply because the ideas were dreamed up with good intentions.
Yes. But most parents who lose their children to the system are accused of exactly that - incompetence. I don't have all the numbers straight for America, but in Sweden neglect is by far the most common accusation against parents of removed children.