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| A bill in New Hampshire effectively equates strong emotion with abuse. The sponsors seem to have been inspired by the wrong Spock. |
After decades of expanding the child welfare surveillance state to the point that more than one in three children – and a majority of Black children – will be forced to endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation by the time they turn 18, some states have noticed: They’ve been doing the same thing over and over and getting the same lousy results.
A few places have realized that prevention and policing are incompatible. No matter how often you say you only want vast police power so you can be kindly helpers, you just want to prevent small problems from becoming big problems, blah, blah, blah – that doesn’t work. It fails because even when you really mean it, under this system, the prerequisite for “prevention” is inflicting trauma on children and families by interrogating and stripsearching children in the middle of the night, at best, and hauling them off to the chaos of foster care at worst.
Realizing that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity, some states are trying something different. Texas dialed back the power of its family police agency (a more accurate term than child welfare agency). So did Washington State. Kansas lawmakers are considering doing the same. Other states are revising the training for mandatory reporters and even considering reducing the number of professionals who must report. (It’s not nearly enough, but until recently the only thing lawmakers did with mandatory reporting requirements was to expand them.)
And then there are the states that still haven’t gotten the message – most notably, at the moment, New Hampshire. This is a state that already tears apart families at a rate nearly double the national average. It is a state that uses the worst form of care – institutionalization – at a shockingly high rate. More than one-quarter of New Hampshire foster children are institutionalized – triple the national average. Clearly, the New Hampshire family police have all the power they need to intervene when they need to and already are intervening on a massive scale when they don’t.
But some lawmakers think that power should be expanded even further. They’ve introduced a bill, drenched in trendy psychobabble, that could, at some point, define every child in New Hampshire as abused or neglected.
The sponsors don’t even seem to understand their own psychobabble. They’re in love with that ever-popular buzzphrase “trauma-informed.” But it’s hard to imagine a piece of legislation that is less informed about trauma and more likely to inflict it. Because this bill proposes to fight trauma with trauma. It should be obvious that the results will be -- traumatic.
Even if one assumes everything this bill labels as child abuse really is child abuse – and that’s a real stretch since the bill seems to encompass everything from genuine, serious abuse all the way to the normal vicissitudes of life – this bill will only make everything worse.
That’s because few experiences in life are more traumatic for a child than a child abuse investigation. Imagine you’re a small child. In the middle of the night a stranger, perhaps more than one, pounds on the door and demands entry. Your mother, knowing what could happen if she says no, lets them in. They demand that your mother awaken you and bring you to the living room. The strangers open every drawer, every cabinet, the refrigerator and the cupboards. You’re scared because you can’t understand why these strangers are in your house rifling your possessions. Then they pull you aside and interrogate you about every aspect of your family life. And finally, they stripsearch you looking for bruises.
This is the norm – and this trauma is the minimum. The trauma is of course compounded if it leads to one of the worst “adverse childhood experiences” of all: being taken into the night, sometimes literally kicking and screaming, by the strangers and consigned to the chaos of foster care either in a home or, especially in New Hampshire, an institution. Under this bill, all this trauma could be inflicted anytime a caseworker concludes that a child’s “physical, emotional or psychological welfare” is “at risk.”
There are times when inflicting all this trauma is
necessary: when, for example, there is a credible allegation that a child is
being beaten, tortured, raped or locked in a closet and starved. That is, of course, a tiny fraction of the
cases workers see.
did not involve even an allegation of sexual abuse or any form of physical abuse. Eighty-six percent did not involve even an allegation of any form of drug abuse. Far more common are cases in which family poverty is confused with “neglect.”
But the process I described applies in every case -- even if
you say all you want to do is provide help.
Few things put a child’s “emotional or
psychological welfare” more “at risk” than being the subject of a child abuse
investigation. Almost nothing puts it
more at risk than foster care. No, you
can’t fight trauma with trauma.
Invasion of the well-being police
This bill is a classic example of the terrible consequences that have cascaded down upon children ever since the family policing establishment took it upon itself to do exactly what this bill explicitly demands: expand its mandate from safety and permanence to include policing children’s “well-being.”
I am a tax-and-spend liberal and proud of it. There are an enormous number of things government can and should do to improve children’s well-being. Project Head Start improves children’s well-being. Free school meals improve children’s well-being. So does affordable health care, and access to decent housing, and good child care. Yes, these are aimed at children’s and families' material well-being – but that often does wonders for their emotional well-being.
Where more targeted help is needed, government absolutely should make available quality mental health care – on a voluntary basis, from practitioners who families don’t have to fear will turn them in to agencies like New Hampshire’s Division for Children and Youth Services. Mandatory reporting already scares families away from seeking help – this bill only will drive families further away.
But this bill provides not one iota of additional help. It simply turns DCYF into the well-being police.
DCYF is not a benevolent helping agency – it is a police force; indeed it has more power than the police in blue uniforms. That’s why we call these agencies the family police. There is a legitimate role for government in improving children’s well-being, but not for police.
The trauma of family policing compromises the very well-being that the sponsors of this bill say they want to improve. That’s why my last presentation at a Kempe Center conference was called “Attn: Family Police: Children’s Well-being is None of Your Damn Business!”
Every coercive government intervention into family life should have to pass a “balance of harms” test. That is, the harm you will inflict through coercive intervention must be less than the harm that prompts you to intervene. This bill massively flunks that test.
Consider the specifics
If this bill becomes law, any child in New Hampshire could, at some point, be deemed abused or neglected if a DCYF caseworker so chooses. And if by some chance there is a child who would never be included in these definitions of abuse and neglect then that is a child smothered in so much emotional bubble wrap that s/he is likely to emerge as an adult incapable of dealing with the world – a true example of emotional harm.
What is striking about this bill is the fear of emotion that pervades it. It’s as if the sponsors, instead of being guided by the wisdom of Doctor Spock, the famous pediatrician, looked instead for guidance to Mister Spock, the Star Trek character who seeks to suppress all his emotions.
At first one might be reassured that the expanded definition of neglect only includes things that cause “serious impairment.” But “serious impairment” then is defined as any “adverse impact” on a child’s “psychological … well-being” resulting even from a “single event [that] …may be currently observed or predicted.” In other words: Someone thinks you might at some point say or do something that at some point will have an “adverse impact” on a child’s psyche. Among the circumstances to be considered in determining if there has been such impact: “Any single incident or occurrence of serious injury or illness.”
The definition of psychological maltreatment includes “coercing, which shall include … compelling to action using threat or force.” In other words, under this bill, it would be child abuse to say to a child: “Clean up your room or you won’t get any TV tonight.”
And it’s not just what parents themselves do that can get them labeled abusive. This also is neglect:
Entrustment of the care of a child by a parent, guardian, or custodian to an individual who presents a risk of inability to provide safe care, and as a result of such entrustment, the child's physical, mental, emotional, or psychological wellbeing has suffered, or is likely to suffer serious physical or psychological impairment.
The bill provides examples of those “presumed to present such risk” but you’re not off the hook if you entrust the child to someone not on the list. You’re just going to have to be psychic.
As for the specific categories, some make sense. But others include “individuals convicted of violent crime,…” Yes, that makes sense too -- if it’s Cousin Fred who was just paroled after serving 20 years for murder. But this definition would also include 70-year-old Grandpa Sam, who was convicted of punching a man 50 years ago. It also includes “individuals with recent instances [that’s instances, not convictions] of substance abuse…” in a state where recreational marijuana is still illegal.
Conditions that would create a rebuttable presumption that a
child's “emotional, physical, psychological, or mental well-being has suffered
or is likely to suffer serious impairment” include
“exposure of a child to verbal abuse, or psychological maltreatment directed at the child, a sibling, the other parent or significant other or another person living in the home.”
So for starters, if mom and dad ever lose their temper with each other, that creates a rebuttable presumption the child has suffered harm to their “emotional, physical, psychological, or mental well-being.”
stated. So given how gym coaches have been known to behave, if this becomes law it clearly will be irresponsible for any New Hampshire parent to let their child attend phys ed class. Come to think of it, the bill doesn’t say the verbal abuse has to come from an adult, so it might be child abuse to send the child to school at all.
But it’s striking that it isn’t just negative emotions that can be off-limits:
Still another factor to be considered in determining “serious impairment” is
Parentification of a child, which occurs when a child is regularly expected to take on parental responsibilities, including but not limited to providing emotional or practical support for a parent or another individual, beyond what would be reasonably expected for the child’s age and circumstances, instead of receiving that care and support themselves.
Yes, it’s possible for parents to demand too much of their children. But how does one define “reasonably expected” – and what are the qualifications and biases of those who would be empowered to decide?
But also, I’m struck by the notion that emotional support is portrayed as an either/or proposition. Right now across America, families of those who died in two recent plane crashes almost certainly are coming together to grieve. Parents are comforting their children and yes, children also are comforting parents and grandparents. Emotional support is not a zero-sum game, it’s a way we all gain strength from each other. No doubt, Mr. Spock would disapprove. And speaking of fictional characters, if this bill passes, anyone like the Gilmore Girls probably should stay out of New Hampshire.*
Class and cultural bias
Biases pervade this bill. Let’s return to the “entrustment” clause. Remember that long list of people to whom, if you entrust them with watching your child it’s a rebuttable presumption of abuse or neglect? Who has the fewest options when it comes to entrusting their child if there’s an emergency? And who is more likely to encounter an emergency?
And then there’s that “parentification” clause.
As Lenore Skenazy writes in Reason, what the bill defines as “parentification”
happens in incredibly dysfunctional families as well as in incredibly functional ones—say, when a child of immigrants proudly translates for their parents at the doctor's office or the auto repair shop.And there are, of course, any number of chores a poor child might have to do that a rich child won’t. So this clause is one more way to target poor families. The solution to this kind of “parentification” is, of course, the material support I suggested earlier.
There also is cultural bias at play. In some cultures everything is loud: The laughter, the tears, the joy and also the anger. So those parents may yell. They might even say things for which they later have to apologize. (The children might say things for which they feel a need to apologize, too, but the sponsors of this bill might consider that “parentification.”) This bill implies that the yelling in anger causes emotional harm. Other cultures might express anger through stony silence. But, for some reason, on that the bill is - silent.
With that much bias built into the bill on top of the racial and class bias we know permeates family policing already, what happens if this bill becomes law and caseworkers get to decide what is usual, or reasonable, or whatever other vague term is in the legislation?
Two other dangerous clauses
● The drive pregnant women away from prenatal care and hospitals clause: While other states move to narrow the grounds for intervention when substance abuse is alleged – because of the growing realization that any and all substance abuse does not, in fact, always endanger a child, the New Hampshire bill proposes to move in the opposite direction.
Section after section of this bill ratchets up suspicion of anyone using drugs – but of course, it’s not really anyone. It isn’t going to be applied to parents like the New Hampshire counterparts of the cannamoms next door in Massachusetts who were celebrated in Boston Magazine as they smoked pot during their kids’ play dates. Nor is it targeting the drug of choice for affluent “wine moms” – street name “mommy juice” -- who do the same.
Sometimes parental drug abuse really does put children at risk of serious harm – and sometimes it doesn’t. Any clause concerning child abuse and drug use should require that the particular drug use in question by the particular user in question is a genuine threat to their children. Because the greater danger is things like pregnant women being too scared to get prenatal care or too scared to tell their doctor they’re using drugs – for fear of being investigated and having their children taken away.
● The full employment for child abuse pediatricians clause: That’s the clause in the bill about how if your child is injured and you can’t explain why, it must be child abuse. The stunning amount of harm that can cause to innocent families has been documented over and over.
Skenazy also points out that the bill isn’t all bad. There are a couple of provisions that attempt to expedite reunification for example.
So the bill is only 95% bad. That’s more than enough reason for New Hampshire lawmakers to take a truly “trauma-informed” approach and vote the bill down.
*-When I first wrote that, I thought it was a joke, but it turns out pop psychology blogs are full of condemnation of Lorelai.
