"Free Range" parenting, and pothead parents...CPS in a bind.

Liberal/progressives v. liberals/progressives....it's creating some very interesting quandaries for "Child Protective" "Services" (CPS) right now. The impact on the nation's CPS milieu from whichever side of these "internal squabbles" emerges victorious in their arguments bears watching. This is what happens when crazy meets crazier, and when those people have power over children and families.

Consider the following link:

https://www.thenation.com/article/has-child-protective-services-gone-too-far/

The statists at "The Nation" purportedly wrote the article to ask the question (obvious to sensible people) "Has CPS gone too far," but while that question is never fully addressed, the more interesting thing about this article is a glimpse into the debate between policymakers over which direction to take the behemoth system in the future on issues of interest to liberals.

There are several sad vignettes here regarding CPS--per usual--over-reacting and take kids without any just basis for doing so. One of these cases involved the laughable new "Free Range" parenting movement, which literally means what it sounds like, and so comes into direct confrontation with liberals at CPS who are becoming ever stricter on their definition of what constitutes "proper parental supervision." I have to actually side, to a degree, with CPS on this one. It is clear that children left to wander at whatever age in whatever neighborhood at whatever time is a recipe for disaster, no matter your political beliefs. But, this is a growing "thing" with many powerful liberals/progressives adopting this "parenting philosophy," so it is bound to create more interesting CPS run-ins and legal dustups.

Then, we have a professor at NYU admitting that he is a criminal, and bemoaning the fact that he could have his children taken away for abusing drugs. Check out this brief excerpt:

"Child-neglect statutes, says Martin Guggenheim, a New York University law professor and codirector of the school’s Family Defense Clinic, tend to be extremely vague, giving enormous discretion to social workers. 'The reason we’ve tolerated the level of impreciseness in these laws for decades,' he notes, 'is that they tend to be employed almost exclusively in poor communities—communities that are already highly regulated and overseen by low-level bureaucrats like the police. For somebody like me, the ‘free-range’ cases that are hitting the paper today are a dream come true, because finally people who otherwise don’t care about this problem are now calling out and saying, ‘Aren’t we going too far here?’...

'My daughter broke her collarbone twice when she was a young child,' says Guggenheim. 'I took her to the same hospital, and the second time I brought her they treated me with great dignity and respect. If I were in Bed-Stuy and a single parent, [CPS] might have come to my door, they might have found some joints on my nightstand and taken my child, and I would be lucky if, 12 months later, I got her back in my custody. That’s how I live my white privilege every day. And they would have found joints on my night table, let’s be clear about that'.”

There is a lot more in the article about the use of intoxicants by parents, and the default position of CPS, nationally, at this point, which basically says that if you are poor and unable to defend yourself, the use of intoxicants can lead to child seizures, all by itself. Whereas, if you are wealthy, and/or knowledgeable of the law, then chances are you'd have to have been convicted in a court of serious hard-drug crimes in order to get that same "seizure treatment."

Much of the rest of the article centers around the laughably duplicitous position that many liberals and progressives find themselves in--supporting BLATANT profiling in the case of CPS and their decision-making, versus their activism in complaining about law enforcement doing the same things. The article is at least honest in admitting that this is all about the fact that CPS is/was a liberal/progressive construct to begin with...i.e. "their baby," ...and being asked to throw out their baby in order to not gore another one of their sacred cows is a pretty tough pill for most of them to swallow.

The changing laws in many states surrounding marijuana usage is definitely going to be a huge issue going forward when it comes to the way CPS make decisions (in the 70-90% of cases) where intoxicants are an issue in the seizure decisions. Some liberals/progressives side with the children, and even go so far as to insist that every child born in a hospital should be drug tested immediately, and that seizures for "positives" should be automatic--and even prescribed by new law.

On the flip side, you have some liberals/progressives (mostly pot smokers, or so it would seem) who are suddenly decrying certain elements of CPS power and oversight v.v. parents and adults. (LOL). Many CPS supporters want to keep clinging to their belief that tweaking the "program" to suit their own particular lifestyle is somehow just/fair and beneficial for the broader society, even in the face of PROOF that this is not true.

Let's hope that this split in the liberal/progressive ranks becomes a chasm that lets the whole rotten CPS structure crash down into the dust bin of history between them!