I shut down comments last week on a discussion on polygamy and child abuse, because I was having trouble keeping my cool. But if you all want to keep chatting, I’m offering an open thread on the topic. The question: what grounds are sufficient for terminating parental rights of a child?
34 thoughts on “The Termination of Parental Rights”
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Apt. 11d 
Physical neglect or harm would seem to be good reasons, but even those can be pretty fuzzy. In my mid-teens, I fell off a horse. My left ankle rapidly swelled up and I was unable to walk for most of 3 days. I spent those days reading on the sofa, joyously ducking the hated dish duty, and had to literally crawl up the stairs at bedtime. My dad (with perhaps some input from his WWII medic father) had pronounced the injury a “hair-line fracture” and said that there was nothing much a doctor could do. My parents didn’t have insurance (still don’t), and didn’t want to fork out hundreds of dollars for an office visit and an x-ray, just to be told to put ice on it. Theoretically, they could have tapped my grandparents or more prosperous aunties and uncles for financial help, but I can’t remember it ever happening. (I should mention that at some point around then, my dad fell off a truck, cracked his ribs, and the only treatment he thought necessary was going over to my grandfather to have them wrapped up. So it wasn’t just me. My parents are now much more prosperous, and even my dad sees doctors quite regularly.) So, was that neglect? If I were to do the same today with my children (prosperous and insured as we are), it would be neglectful, but I’m not so sure in my own case.
For the record, I think that “terminating parental rights” is the wrong end to begin with. I’d suggest that “what is good cause to involve a social worker” would be a more helpful place to start. Also, the probable conditions the child will face in foster care needs to be the baseline for judging parental care.
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Its a two stage judgement.
The first part of the judgement concerns whether the parents have harmed the child sufficiently to think that they can no longer be trusted to fulfill their parental duty of care. Me, I think the parental duty of care is pretty stringent and demanding — so, this bar is not a high one, lots of people probably fall below it.
The second stage is to ask whether terminating parental rights will, given the real institutional order you face, be better for the kids than not doing so. This bar, frankly, is very high,because it takes pretty serious abuse and neglect to make a child worse off than they would be in the foster care system. I would be very surprised, frankly, if the FLDS kids would be better off in the foster care system than with their own parents, even though I think their parents long ago showed themselves to be below the threshold we should expect of everyone.
My sense was that these two stages were being conflated in a lot of comments in the previous thread (including, if you don’t mind me saying so Amy, by Amy P, whose comments might have seemed less incendiar if she had distinguished these stages of judgment).
If anyone cares, Adam Swift and I wrote a paper defending an account of parents’ rights that generates roughly the above comment, “Parents’ Rights and the Value of the Family” in Ethics 2006, which, after reading the previosu thread, I thought might be a rare case of analytical philosophy actually being helpful in making practical judgments.
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PS, wrote all that without bothering to read Amy P’s final sentence. Sorry, Amy.
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harry b,
As long as you are bringing up the issue of foster care conditions, carry on.
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I was abused in a religious context (convoluted to get into, but basically that a family member convinced me as a child that it was a religious duty to please him in whatever way).
For me, whatever the means of control, it’s the acts that count in the end. I think that parental rights should be terminated for acts.
I realize (trust me… I realize) that damaging the spirit is in many ways worse. But it is just too problematic for me to remove children due to beliefs and even words (although the last is a hard one). I just worry that then my freedom to teach my son that, for example, it’s fine to support same-sex marriage, could be removed.
What I’ve often wished is that there were a mandatory week of school a year for everyone where the learning would be focused on learning about everyone else. For kids who are getting a warped view it might be at least a glimpse of something else.
I think mandatory attendence at school used to help this, but I wouldn’t want to take homeschooling away overall.
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I thought that parents’ rights weren’t terminated until some time after children were placed in foster care, so I’m not sure how closely I think your question is connected to the first debate about the FLDS situation. Maybe I’m being too pedantic about language, but there should be a difference between suspending parental access and terminating parental rights in the law — sure Texas hasn’t terminated parental rights merely by assigning the children to state care?
My parents were foster parents when my siblings and I were young, and the children living with us, while currently in the custody of the state, were expected to return to their parents when the imminent danger posed by a neglectful/dangerous household had passed. They saw their parents in supervised settings until the families were reunited.
Historically, the concepts of child neglect and endangerment have been defined to discriminate against “outsiders” — poor people and NotWhite people in particular. That historical reality doesn’t shake my support for the child-welfare system, however — it just makes me want the system to be excruciatingly careful about its actions.
Thanks to rampant underfunding and political neglect, the child-welfare systems in most states typically can’t act until a particular situation becomes dire. The legal standard for removing children has been and remains quite high, or so I have believed up until now (and nothing that’s happening in Texas changes my impression so far).
I believe that most states remove all children from a potentially neglectful/dangerous home until a final determination is made, even if the neglect/danger has only been alleged in the case of certain of those children. I have ZERO problem with that policy, in general and in this particular case.
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“I realize (trust me… I realize) that damaging the spirit is in many ways worse. But it is just too problematic for me to remove children due to beliefs and even words (although the last is a hard one). I just worry that then my freedom to teach my son that, for example, it’s fine to support same-sex marriage, could be removed.”
That brings up a bunch of good points. I agree with Shandra that the focus needs to be on clearly abusive acts, but I’d add that that needs to be clearly distinguished from unusual or borderline cultural practices. There’s literally no end to the number of even wide-spread middle class activities that could be deemed abusive: premature (often injury-causing) athleticism for tots, ADD drugs, Asian-style academic focus, multi-hour daily music practice, using aftercare and beforecare, etc.
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AmyP,
From my admittedly minimal knowledge of fostering parenting, it would take a heck of a lot more than an unattended broken bone to get you removed from your household. There would have to be a pattern of abuse or neglect, substantiated by multiple reports, to get the system involved in such a serious way as child removal.
As bad as the foster-care system is, the social welfare agencies themselves are often in worse straits. They have neither the funding nor the staff to carry out their missions.
I would be dismayed if people walked away from the FLDS situation thinking the problem was that the state intervened TOO often in cases of potential abuse/neglect.
[To address the FLDS situation head-on: the state of Texas has a legal set of guidelines defining actionable abuse and neglect in that state. It appears that the children on the FLDS ranch were removed in accordance with those laws, and that their status is being reviewed under those laws. I have reasonable confidence in the system to proceed according to the law, and trust in the power of public action to redress any problems in the law revealed during the current action.]
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I just got a phone call from my local relative, and we’re headed off for a day trip to visit a commune in the next day or so. It’s called Homestead Heritage (there’s a website with photos at http://www.homesteadheritage.com), the group is apparently theologically Oneness Pentecostal, they offer woodworking and homesteading classes, and I believe the group started in NYC before eventually moving to Texas. They get called a cult, but their woodwork is fantastic.
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I am no expert on the foster care system in this country, but I’m not sure that it’s always bad. My cousin and his wife have been foster parents to countless children and have adopted five of them. At least a couple of their children were born addicted to crack and have terrible emotional problems now. My cousin and his wife are a little eccentric, but are loving, wonderful people. I think they deserve sainthood for the work that they’ve done with their kids.
Like I’ve said previously, the problem with this group isn’t their odd religious beliefs or their unique outfits. The Hasidic and Amish communities are very accepted by mainstream society. It is the practice of underage marriage, of tossing out the teenage boys, of forcing young girls to marry that has caused all the problems. Theses problems have been fairly well documented by eye witnesses and according to interviews with former members, there’s a host of other abuses going on there, too.
If those kids are put into foster care, it’s going to cost TX something like $50 million dollars (I don’t remember the exact amount). Why the hell would TX take on such a burden, if there wasn’t some real problems going on?
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If you make the argument that these particular kids shouldn’t go into foster case, because foster parents are evil and drug up the kids, then why should any kids go into foster care? If foster care is that bad, then the practice should be ended and every kid of a crackhead or a drunk, should remain at home, because even if he/she gets knocked around sometime, it’s better than foster care. That just seems like an extreme statement to me.
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harry b?
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Laura,
The case of the Amish is much more problematic and more closely tied to the FLDS case than you might think. I was cruising through the Wikipedia article on the Amish. There was a recent huge controversy over the treatment of sex abuse in Amish communities (they weren’t dealing with it, so it was continuing). Further back (back in the 70s, apparently), the Amish had a Supreme Court case that finally gave them the right to pull children out of school after 8th grade. The Wikipedia article mentioned issues with child labor, and mentioned that the Amish have a high rate of genetic birth defects. It seems to me that there are a lot of similarities between the problems of the two communities (bracketing welfare fraud, polygamy, and child brides).
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In my mind, this has always been about children’s rights to their parents, not about parents rights to their children. First, children are almost always better off with their parents, than if they are forcibly removed from them. Second, they have a right and need to their parents life and culture. So, the threshold is a high one. But, one of the results we have to assume is that a high threshold increases the probability of false negatives; some children will be harmed who could have been saved.
Incidentally, “a child’s right to their parents” is also why I opposed closed adoptions and anonymous gamete donations.
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Here’s what I would like to see in the FLDS case:
1. The book getting thrown at actual law-breakers, rather than blanket guilt by association
2. A lot more social service supervision when/if children are returned to their parents
3. Less hysteria over poorly supported claims
4. A huge welfare fraud investigation
5. A discriminating approach to the legal procedures, rather than a big cattle call.
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since the other comment thread was closed, this is off topic, but i want to say thank you to russel for answering my question in the other thread. i don’t necessarily agree with your conclusions, but i understand better where you are coming from, and i appreciate your good faith answering of the question in the spirit it was intended.
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Yeah, thanks russell. Sorry for losing my cool!
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Trishka, Laura, you’re both too generous. Thank you, Laura, for creating this space where these contentious topics can be thought about and argued out, whether or not it ends in agreement. I appreciate sites like this more and more all the time.
And Harry B., where the hell were you all week? I kept expecting you to pop in and share your point of view. Anyway, thanks for the reference to that parental rights paper. I haven’t read it, but if it’s as good as some of the other stuff you and Adam have done (here’s a link to their “Legitimate Parental Partiality” paper; everyone, check it out), then it’s bound to be good.
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Hi again — well, I was (still am) distinctly unwell, and struggling to get through workdays and looking after kids… And also wanted to get more of the details on the FLDS than I had. Thanks for the plug Russell — the other thing is I am trying to revise the paper you link to for the Xth time (I’ll send it when I’m done, and will also send you a copy of “parents rights” soon).
Foster parents are often excellent. But the foster care system isn’t. Three big reasons. 1) It is very disruptive to the development of children above the age of 1-2 to put them into foster care against the wishes of their parents. So even if the kid would have done brilliantly with the foster parent if they’d adopted him when very young she may do very badly because of that disruption, even though the foster parents are great. 2) Original parents have all sorts of protections that makes it difficult for authorities just to sever ties between them and the child. So children commonly spend a long time going back and forth between foster and original parents before being adopted by foster parents. Again, said foster parents may be excellent but it might still be the case that the kid would be better off without that back and forth. 3) Some foster parents are pretty bad.
Now, in response to 2) you (Laura) might say — well, that’s a reason for reforming the law so that children can easily and quickly be fostered-then-adopted, and original parents have little say. I agree with that, but i) there is no prospect of law being reformed in that way and ii) even I, a hardline big government socialist, am uneasy about giving State governments that sort of power given the history of the use of state power against despised groups of parents in the US. So, I am very cautious about terminating parental rights in general.
Now, Laura closed the other thread, but she re-raised the actual case in a comment above, so I feel I can say something about the case. I agree with Amy P about the blanket way the law has intervened in this case. But I also think that we should see what the courts do decide — I basically trust them not to put the children into care without pretty good reason — at least I want to wait for the reasoning before commenting. I think what troubles me about the actual case is the form and suddenness of the intervention. The State has had inside informants, as I understand it, and these people were not about to go anywhere. I find it hard to believe that there wasn’t a stealthier, less shocking, way of intervening, which would have been less fear-inducing (in the children, and those of the women, which is, presumably, a good number of them, who are themselves victims of crimes). That’s short of a criticism of the way the State has handled it — it may really be that there was no better way. I just find that hard to believe.
Finally, what about requiring that parents be licensed? If you don’t start a threa don this, Laura, I will….
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I think that the blanket decision to take all the kids came from the fear of another Waco. I think they wanted to get the kids before the guys had the chance to pick up their guns. Opportunity? I’m not sure. Maybe it was because the group was not like a typical community; it was more like a family. Again, I’m not sure what the rationale was.
The reason for taking all of the children and not just the teenage girls is that there is evidence that abuse is happening to both genders at all ages. One of the escaped women is saying that her babies were held under water to teach them to be submissive. They waterboard babies. If this is a widespread habit, then that’s certainly grounds for taking all the children.
The guys were interviewed on NBC this morning. (I can get the link to the video if anyone is interested.) One of the guys said he had no idea that it was illegal for 15 year olds to get married. He seems truly shocked about it, and for the first time, I felt really sorry for the guys on the ranch. Maybe they are just as clueless as the women. This group of people needs a ton of intensive help. And the people responsible for this nonsense need serious prison time.
Harry b, TAG! Take this conversation to CT.
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Just a small point of clarification regarding the Amish. They do not use ‘welfare’. They take care of their own and try to have very little to do with our world and way of life.
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Thanks for the plug Russell — the other thing is I am trying to revise the paper you link to for the Xth time (I’ll send it when I’m done, and will also send you a copy of “parents rights” soon).
You’re welcome Harry. And I’d love to get a copy of either paper, at whatever stage of development (my library doesn’t have a subscription to Ethics).
Excellent summary of the problems with foster care, even excellent foster care. The greatest problem is simply the disruption, the confusion, the lack of stability. Outright abuse and violence cannot be excused (waterboarding babies, Laura…yikes!), but anything up to that admittedly sometimes rather grey line has to take into consideration these inevitable costs…which, at least some of data seem to suggest, is worse for many children then many other sorts of deprivations.
I also think that we should see what the courts do decide–I basically trust them not to put the children into care without pretty good reason–at least I want to wait for the reasoning before commenting. I think what troubles me about the actual case is the form and suddenness of the intervention. The State has had inside informants, as I understand it, and these people were not about to go anywhere. I find it hard to believe that there wasn’t a stealthier, less shocking, way of intervening, which would have been less fear-inducing (in the children, and those of the women, which is, presumably, a good number of them, who are themselves victims of crimes).
Like you, Harry, I really want to believe in the courts, and hope they have good information (better information than an affadavit-producing phone call that appears to probably have been bogus!) about what’s been going on inside the YFZ ranch. And I’m very grateful that, as “fear-inducing” as this raid was, that there was no outright violence–it wasn’t a replay of the Branch Davidians, in other words. But yes, for your other concerns I completely agree.
Harry b, TAG! Take this conversation to CT.
Absolutely! And link to all of us while you’re at it.
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Yes, I’ll accept the tag-challenge, but won’t get time to do it till Wednesday. I notice, though, that our parents rights paper is in the free online issue of ethics — this link should work for anyone interested:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/508034
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Laura,
The foster parents themselves could be living saints, and there could still be huge issues, namely the other kids at the same placement. Imagine, for instance, if one of those kids who bullied your son were in foster care and was a bit meaner, a bit older, and a bit more sexually sophisticated. The foster parents can’t be everywhere at once, and the kids are going to be alone at least some of the time. Even in the best of families, parents can’t know what is going on with every child all of the time.
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This just in from my email:
What’s the punishment for bigamy?
Two mothers-in-law.
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Jody and Laura, I urge you both to look over the court transcripts available. It simply is not the case that all 437 children (they had miscounted earlier—oops!) were removed pro forma according to a blanket protocol. On the contrary, CPS must show in each case that the child is in imminent danger of neglect and abuse. Because no signs of physical abuse or neglect were detected, the explicit argument (again, don’t trust me—look at the transcripts yourselves) being made is that exposure to religious indoctrination at the YFZ ranch constitutes the imminent threat; specifically, CPS alleges that the FLDS teach that coerced underage sexual activity and childbirth is acceptable. As evidence for this allegation, they produce five teenage girls who are pregnant or have have children. These girls testify that they have not been coerced, and expert witnesses corroborate this account, so CPS now must argue that although the girls don’t perceive themselves to have been coerced, their indoctrination from a young age constitutes de facto coercion.
Perhaps you still conclude that the state’s actions have been appropriate, but please base that conclusion on the actual facts of the case. (The latest: the judge denied a motion to allow breastfeeding mothers to stay with their infants; as soon as DNA testing is complete, all children, including infants, will be removed from their mothers, except for the children whose mothers are younger than 18.)
Yesterday the ACLU finally broke its silence, rather tepidly, but nevertheless voicing serious concerns about the events of the raid and investigation.
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cates, I’ve listened to hours of interviews with women who have escaped from the compound. They are very believable people with no motive to lie.
They have reported stories of waterboarding infants, coerced underage marriage, abandonment of teenage boys with no education, the restraint of women who wish to leave, reassignments of wives, the beating of children to coerce stubborn wives, and more. That’s serious stuff. I would like to see how this trial plays out, but in the meantime, I understand why the state has stepped in. I do find the moral relativism by supporters of this cult surprising.
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According to the NYT, “the new numbers of State officials revised the number of children in custody to 437 from 418, apparently as a result of a less-confusing housing situation and the reclassification of some adults as children.” Apparently, some of the teenage girls were not entirely truthful about their ages.
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I am a mother who has lost her parental rights to my now 5 year old son. It is very hard. I feel that the DHS stole my son from me. I did not get a fair enough deal for my son. I love him and I care about him very much. My husband and I are of course heartbroken. All because we lost our home and moved in with a neighbor and my son wandered away while we were asleep in the morning. My husband also was recovering from a head on car collision. It is a terrible ordeal. THe caseworker we had was very unfair she tried to say we were not incompliance with the case plan and that is one of the reasons we did not get James back. James wanted to come home. He packed up his bag and said he’s coming home. He also did some bad things he kicked a foster mom in the leg and said your not my mother.
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Departments of Social service do a fairly good job, but are often hamstrung by having to follow by-the-numbers checklists on ruling parents unfit. For example in one case I was involved with, chronic puppy doo-doo in the home gave a rating requiring parental rights termination. Tragically, this young womman loved her children and was devoted to them. More tragically, 6 months afer the termination she committed suicide as a direct result of losing her children. Of course the system has not support to offer those parents so tragically wounded. I would not recount this were it not that this kind of outcome is not uncommon
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Departments of Social service do a fairly good job, but are often hamstrung by having to follow by-the-numbers checklists on ruling parents unfit. For example in one case I was involved with, chronic puppy doo-doo in the home gave a rating requiring parental rights termination. Tragically, this young womman loved her children and was devoted to them. More tragically, 6 months afer the termination she committed suicide as a direct result of losing her children. Of course the system has not support to offer those parents so tragically wounded. I would not recount this were it not that this kind of outcome is not uncommon
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i am 26 years old and i believe i was screwed in the court room and i need some help any body please i have not seen my kids in 3 years and they are with my sister
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Did anybody see the story of the archeology professor who inadvertantly purchased some hard lemonade for his son at a ball game?
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080428/COL04/804280375/1081
The boy was taken away for three days and the father was made to stay away from home for a week.
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ok heres one for all to read.
I lost custody to my kid because he made more money that i did .I have to support them ,andi dont mind but my x make over 58k a year and his newwife make 4k a year and they have one kid together and i have 3 with him .I have rhuematiod artheritis bad .after loosing my job due to an accident ,because of my Ra
took three months to get another job ,my pay s 8.50 hour
and now I make 1100 month b4 cs taken out and taxes
I take home 600.00 a month.. time grocerys and ,that and my rent i am short about 280 to go to get my medication and my food evey month. nevada dont cae i cant afford a lawyer.If I cant get my meds I have flare ups in my joints and cant go to work.I have seriously thaought about sighning my rights over to my x .I cant survive on 600.00 a month .
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