The subject of child abuse has been in the news and on this blog quite often lately. Just today on the morning news I heard about a freak in Austria who imprisoned his daughter in his basement, that 31 of the teenage girls from FLDS were either pregnant or had already had a baby, and that Mylie Cyrus went topless in Vanity Fair with her parents watching (way to kill the golden goose, folks).

So, last week, I asked what grounds were sufficient to terminate a parent’s rights over a kid.

Harry B. at Crooked Timber fleshes out an argument he made in my comment section about parental rights.  He says that parents should have a great deal of latitude to raise a kid as they see fit, however those rights end when a child is abused or neglected. He says that a child’s interest is probably more involved that just getting a decent breakfast and avoiding a beating, but he doesn’t elaborate in this blog post.

The problem, according to Harry B., is that the remedy for the situation may be worse than status quo. The disruption of families, even bad ones, can lead to other serious problems for the kids. The foster care system in our country has an uneven track record.

Harry throws out a final, and excellent question.

What kinds of public policy will make it more likely that more
parents will meet the (in my view quite stringent) conditions on
retaining a fundamental right to raise their child. How, in other
words, can we arrange policies so that events like this one with the FLDS don’t arise in the first place?

In the interest of not confusing the conversation, respond to Harry at CT. All other random and less serious comments can be left here, as always.