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Parents, in some cases, should lose custody of their severely obese children, argued Dr. David Ludwig, an obesity expert at Children's Hospital Boston, in an opinion piece that ran in the Journal of the American Medical Association Wednesday.
"State intervention may serve the best interests of many children with life-threatening obesity, comprising the only realistic way to control harmful behaviors," Ludwig said in the editorial, which he co-wrote with Lindsey Murtagh, a lawyer and researcher at Harvard's School of Public Health.
If their life is at risk and the parents reject advice to resolve the problem, then they are violating the law and the children are victims of neglect/abuse. Just being obese, doesn't make them a victim of a crime; it makes them victims of a mistake. When the parents refuse to correct the mistake, THEN the child is a victim of a crime.
So my opinion is yes, if it is determined that the children are victims of abuse/neglect by way of the parents' refusal to correct their mistake, then the children should be taken into a more protective environment. Parents MUST be made accountable for what they do to/with their children, while the children are unable to do for themselves.
Touchy subject. Obviously the long term health implications of severe obesity are just as bad as many other forms of abuse. Arguably in some cases worse as while emotional and physical abuse can leave long term mental trauma, severe obesity essentially results in a death sentence.
I think the better approach overall is to extend help to the entire family to correct the behavior as I believe in most cases severe obesity is not just limited to the child, but the entire family as well. If the family spurns the help and intervention in correcting the problem, then they should be subject to losing custody until they complete needed counseling and the child has achieved a healthier weight.
The tricky portion comes in when you are defining "severely obese". In a way it's kind of like porn, you know it when you see it. I guess some of that would come down to the discretion of schools and doctors to report it. Little Suzy being 10 pounds overweight isn't necessarily an issue, but Little Suzy being 75 pounds overweight is. I really don't know where you would draw the line and I guess that is my only objection to it.
I don't agree with this at all. I'm sure some cases of childhood obesity are caused by parental neglect, but I don't believe all are. I believe there is too much we don't know about what is causing the increase in obesity - we don't know enough about causes that are out of the parents control such as environmental toxins which could have impacted the increase in obesity, medical conditions, both known and unknown, etc. It makes me think of my childhood best friend. She came from a family of 3 girls, she was always a skinny little girl, as was the youngest sister. The middle sister however, always had a weight problem. Their mother was very concience of what she fed her daughters because she was concerned about her middle daughter's weight. She fed them lots of fresh fruit and veggies and avoided junk. I spent a lot of time at their house growing up and the chubby daughter did not over eat, but yet she always had a weight problem. Now should this mother have lost custody of her daughter because of her weight problem? By the way, that girl grew up and had gastric bypass surgery and she is no longer over weight. Its a VERY slippery slope when we start blaming the parents in all cases of childhood obesity and ripping kids from their homes.
I don't agree with this at all. I'm sure some cases of childhood obesity are caused by parental neglect, but I don't believe all are. I believe there is too much we don't know about what is causing the increase in obesity - we don't know enough about causes that are out of the parents control such as environmental toxins which could have impacted the increase in obesity, medical conditions, both known and unknown, etc. It makes me think of my childhood best friend. She came from a family of 3 girls, she was always a skinny little girl, as was the youngest sister. The middle sister however, always had a weight problem. Their mother was very concience of what she fed her daughters because she was concerned about her middle daughter's weight. She fed them lots of fresh fruit and veggies and avoided junk. I spent a lot of time at their house growing up and the chubby daughter did not over eat, but yet she always had a weight problem. Now should this mother have lost custody of her daughter because of her weight problem? By the way, that girl grew up and had gastric bypass surgery and she is no longer over weight. Its a VERY slippery slope when we start blaming the parents in all cases of childhood obesity and ripping kids from their homes.
That's part of the problem I was getting at, what's the definition.
There is obese:
Then there is severe/morbidly obese:
The first picture isn't healthy, but not so much of an issue. The second picture, that kid is killing himself with every french fry and his parents are allowing him to do it.
I feel like government already infringes on the family and parental rights and the idea of them using obesity as another reason to remove children from their families homes is pretty scary. I believe the government already does a much worse job than the private sector and shudder to think we're really talking about government literally assuming responsibility for raising our children. Just look at the current foster care system for an example of how efficient the government is at raising our children for us.
This would also turn in to an industry providing a financial incentive to remove children from their homes to participate in state run "health" programs. Why dont they deregulate schools, delegate responsibility back to local communities and let us pool resources to reinstitute physical education and extracirricular sports rather than be sucked in to some kind of Orwellian government youth pogrom.
Another concern is how inefficiently beauracray imposes such programs. I can see the healthy kid from a good home who happens to be heavy being removed from a good home while dozens who could actually benefit languishing in homes where they literally do suffer from malnutrition and obesity.
Just a really bad idea.
Governments constantly create the impression of a crisis to justify expansion of federal powers. It's is always easy to judge the other guy but then how about when that other guy somehow becomes us?
I have my thoughts on how kids should be raised. They should be kept skinny on restrictive diets, skimpy clothes, physical punishment and lots of outdoor physical exercise etc etc etc.
I do not think that the government should get too involved.
We obviously have some government involvement in our lives and every time some kid dies we ask where were the authorities.
The problem is where should the balance be?
Personally I lean away from too much government involvement and so even though I dispair at the fat kids I see, I also do not see that we should be doing any more than encouraging and educating and if some of them die early of a heart attack then so be it.
Location: Currently I physically reside on the 3rd planet from the sun
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aidxen
Ah. No.
I have my thoughts on how kids should be raised. They should be kept skinny on restrictive diets, skimpy clothes, physical punishment and lots of outdoor physical exercise etc etc etc.
You made me laugh out loud!
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