Would a court have decided a 24-year-old single mother was ‘too stupid’ to care for her three-year-old daughter if this wasn’t so? According to a weekend news report, ‘Rachel’ – her full name withdrawn for legal reasons – has had this happen to her.
We’re indignant if the rights of mothers are asserted and children die as a result. We’re indignant if social work professionals and courts assert what they see as the rights of children. There are no reliable general rules here. It’s particular circumstances. So I’m reluctant to get carried away about this case. Of course, it’s offensive to say someone’s too stupid to look after children, but it doesn’t mean this is always wrong. So let’s stop pretending to be shocked about it. (Peter McKay, Daily Mail, 1 June 2009).
"We’re indignant if the rights of mothers are asserted and children die as a result."
Perhaps some people have been brainwashed into believing that if a child dies because of parental neglect, this is because ‘the rights of parents have been asserted’, and the implication is that we should oppose the ‘rights’ of parents. But this is obviously a highly tendentious way of putting it.
"Of course, it’s offensive to say someone’s too stupid to look after children, but it doesn’t mean this is always wrong."
It is curious that McKay thinks what is objectionable about the concept ‘too stupid for the normal restrictions on state removal of children to apply’ is merely the part about calling someone stupid. It is strange that this view of the situation, ignoring the moral principle involved, is being expressed by a journalist in a supposedly conservative newspaper.
There have always been plenty of parents who, depending on the criteria applied, would have been deemed ‘too stupid’ to bring up children. It is a long way from there to the position that children should be taken under the supervision of strangers, whenever agents of the state judge parents to be inadequate.
"Let’s stop pretending to be shocked about it," suggests McKay. If pretending to be shocked is all the resistance we have left to this appalling system, we had better keep pretence rather than nothing. When even the pretence is gone, what will be left to prevent the continuation of this process to its horrific but logical extreme: that children are the responsibility first and foremost of the state, and parents will only be allowed to interact with them if they first get permission?