What is child abuse
Ed Brayton wrote an open letter to Richard Dawkins after the, er, discussion at Pharyngula and Panda’s Thumb. Long story. There was a petition about religious indoctrination; Dawkins signed it; people had issues with the petition; P Z emailed Dawkins to raise the issues and ask if he really endorsed what the petition said; Dawkins said no, he didn’t, he hadn’t read the whole thing and it was a mistake to sign it, and he’d withdrawn his signature; Dawkins also posted on Ed Brayton’s post on the subject (but you have to scroll through some four million posts to find those from Dawkins). So Ed wrote this follow-up post, and a comment by Orac snagged my attention:
I keep asking myself the question: Why would Dawkins settle for such a tepid response to such an evil if he really, truly believes that religious indoctrination and labeling of children is often as harmful as child abuse?
My guess would be that it’s because it’s complicated: it is quite possible that religious indoctrination (at least in some cases) really is as harmful as child abuse, but also that it is harmful in a much subtler, more unobvious, long-term, invisible and intangible, difficult to demonstrate way than other kinds of child abuse are, and that that fact makes it pretty much impossible to interfere with the practice in general without being monstrously coercive and doing more harm than good. This also ties up with that ‘often’ – ‘that religious indoctrination and labeling of children is often as harmful as child abuse’ [emphasis added]. Often but not always. In short what we have is an opinion that religious indoctrination and labeling of children is often but not always as harmful as child abuse, and that religious indoctrination and labeling of children is often as harmful as child abuse but is not identical with child abuse; along with the fact that religious indoctrination and labeling of children, if and when harmful, will be harmful in much less self-evident ways than, say, beating. That constellation presents a problem. It’s an existing problem, and a real one – there are kinds of child abuse that are terribly harmful but are much much harder to detect, and thus do anything about, than physical abuse is. It’s a problem that is of its nature pretty much impossible to correct without massive totaliatrian intervention and/or surveillance – without some kind of social work system that would employ half the population, and be unworkable. In other words we all sort of know, though we don’t confront it or think about it much, that in fact there are huge numbers of children who are indeed abused but can’t be helped, because there is simply no workable way for anyone to know they are abused. There are parents who, accidentally or on purpose, mangle their children emotionally. It seems safe to guess that that’s not even rare. But how is anyone going to know that? And the same applies to religious indoctrination. I would say that certain kinds of abusive religious indoctrination – repeatedly telling a child she was going to hell to be tortured for eternity, for example – should be a reason for social workers to come calling. But it never will be, for the same reason that repeatedly telling a child she is stupid and ugly won’t be.
In other words, there’s a real problem, not a pseudo-problem. I think it’s wrong to think that Dawkins is just daft to say that religious indoctrination of children is often as harmful as child abuse, or that he’s mistaken in saying that and still saying that government intervention in the matter would be a horrible idea. He’s not being inconsistent, in my view, he’s simply recognizing that there are two evils and government surveillance of all families would be by far the worse of them. But that does not entail that the lesser evil is not an evil. It damn well is an evil. Every despised child who is fed and clothed enough and sent to school but is constantly told she is a worthless nuisance is an evil. Many problems of life can’t be fixed, but that doesn’t mean they’re not problems. It’s as well to be aware of that. Especially since some of them can be at least alleviated by education, by as Dawkins says consciousness raising, by changes in the culture, by altering the climate of opinion. There is growing awareness that emotional abuse is harmful; it seems probable that more people make an effort not to abuse their children that way than would have without that awareness; so the same could in principle be true of religion.
Yes. Nicholas Humphrey as also written about this, in his Amnesty Lecture at Oxford in 1997, available here: http://www.humphrey.org.uk/papers/1998WhatShallWeTell.pdf
Whether or not that is, in fact, Dawkins’ view of it, it’s certainly a reasonable one, and it’s certainly mine.
I do feel very strongly that pigeonholing a child as belonging to one religion or another and then engaging in pedagogical practices that effectively seek to hobble their very ability to reason–in protection of that same religion–and teaching them, perhaps, at the same time, that children of other religions are of effectively another tribe that they may freely* denigrate and abuse–is tantamount to child abuse. There are perhaps worse things in the world, and there are certainly those who pass through such pedagogy intact enough despite those efforts, but still, were it practical, it certainly would be nice if it could be stopped entirely…
Were it practical. Which, generally, it isn’t. Sadly.
(*Or merely with certain restrictions approved by the local deity, for that matter.)
You are exactly right that it is a complicated problem with no simple answers. The problem here is that some people don’t even want the problem mentioned, because they immediately leap to simplistic answers…apparently, those are the only kind of answers they can think of. So when Dawkins says that indoctrination of children into religion is a serious issue, they immediately assume that he’s planning to snatch everyone’s kids away and put them behind barbed wire with no bibles.
This gets carried to ridiculous degrees. I was dazzled by this brilliant summary from a creationist:
That’s news to me, really it is.
Happy New Year. 1st off, I haven’t gotten thru the Dawkins book, letters, or the rest of the controversy, but I like what you just had to say about it.
My own experience is an example. I got only mildly infected when young–no threats of hell, etc., it was all sort of in the background, just hearing Mom tell me that the god made stuff, having to say stupid little verses at dinner and bedtime–but still it was not what I needed. At 12 I felt real guilty for being so different from the rest [as I sensed] and prayed for forgiveness. Then I read a soppy story about an atheist who reconverted and something let go inside–I up and announced to parents that I didn’t believe in that god any more and they didn’t even seem to care. No more was said. When I grew older I realized that they in fact had been wallowing in atheistic bliss all along. I nailed Mom about it, why she fed me crap she didn’t herself believe, and all she could say was that she didn’t know it would be so unsuited to me (Hello???) and that it was for my “socialization problems” [karate would have been a better choice] and Dad said it was just because Spock didn’t say how to raise atheist kids. Now, hearing what other folks went thru when young, I realize I got off lucky, but it still rankles that I ever swallowed stuff so unsuited for me. And fell for a lie to boot. And I just don’t think parents should lie to their kids. Not even about Santa Claus, that one didn’t end happily either; I was a rebel without a Claus. Anyway, you got it, a lesser evil is still evil. But can nothing really be done? First off, seems to me that atheists, agnostics, free-thinkers should just stick together, like a super support group or something. And write more books about how to raise god-free kids. How to retool the school system to help, that I daren’t even guess. But the 2 things I just suggested ought to help push along the climate-alteration of opinion. I am still pushing my library to get more stuff like Dawkins to counterbalance the diarrhea of religious influx that I see every time I check what’s new.
Hrmph. Correction:
Unless religious education (…) is a somewhat unitary phenomenon (…) it simply makes no sense to talk about the harmful effects of religious education and religious labelling in a general sense.
It seems … risky to sign petitions that one hasn’t read through fully. There could be all sorts of things lurking in the small print.
“The problem here is that some people don’t even want the problem mentioned, because they immediately leap to simplistic answers”
Don’t they though. There is this weird habit of conflating criticism with a demand for new laws, as if the two were identical.
“Because it is quite true that one of the first things that come to our mind with child abuse is that authorities ought to do something about it.”
Well, but if we have any sense then one of the second things that come to our mind with child abuse is that authorities can’t do something about it, because they’re not going to know about it, and there’s simply no way to arrange that they will know about it without an unacceptable amount and kind of surveillance.
Doesn’t everyone know this, as well as mostly denying it for the sake of a quiet life? Doesn’t everyone know that there is no necessary connection between reproducing and being good at raising children? Don’t we all often wish, under our breaths or aloud, that people had to get a license to have children?
“Don’t we all often wish, under our breaths or aloud, that people had to get a license to have children?”
If we did, I think we’d pretty soon be extinct. ;-)
No, we’d have fewer but better people!
Haw.
Not necessarily better people, but people better at raising kids. Haven’t we reached a stage where excellence in any field is incompatible with ideal parenting?
PZ Myers writes:
So when Dawkins says that indoctrination of children into religion is a serious issue, they immediately assume that he’s planning to snatch everyone’s kids away and put them behind barbed wire with no bibles.
PZ Myers hasn’t done his homework very carefully. For it would certainly appear that Dawkins’ secularist buddy Professor Nicholas Humphrey has indeed considered snatching kids away, whatever about putting them behind barbed wire. In his Oxford Amnesty Lecture 1997 (‘What Shall We Tell The Children”) Humphrey argues that “we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible, or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out or lock them in a dungeon.”
Since parents who knock their children’s teeth out do tend to have their children snatched away, it would appear that Humphrey wishes to mete out a similar treatment to 100% of all fundamental Christian families, and (by extension to Torah and Quran) to 100% of all Orthodox Jewish families, and to 100% of all devout Muslim families.
This is not ‘guilt by association’. In The God Delusion Dawkins approvingly quotes this extract from Humphrey’s Amnesty lecture (See here at ‘Telic Thoughts’). ‘Telic Thoughts’ is the site PZ himself refers to, but he appears not have read the discussion there very carefully. For while Dawkins may not be planning to snatch kids away at this writing, he would certainly seem to have considered doing so and agonised about the pros and cons at the time he wrote TGD, i.e. some months ago. He has remorsefully retracted in the meantime but people are perfectly right in suspecting a quasi-totalitarian streak. If Dawkins has been misunderstood, he only has himself to blame.
(P.S.: thanks to Jeff Chamberlain for jogging my memory on the Amnesty lecture).
Oh, please, Cathal. Have some sense. What do you mean Dawkins would seem to have considered snatching children away? Using what – his bicycle? And how would Humphrey go about “meting out” this snatching away? Rhetoric is one thing and planning or acting is another.
Do you seriously think Dawkins “agonised” about the pros and cons of snatching children away?
I wouldn’t object if you simply said both Dawkins and Humphrey have talked loosely about not allowing children to be indoctrinated, without actually thinking through what that would entail, but I do object if you seriously mean they seriously meant any plan of mass judicial arrest. That’s too damn silly. You do have this habit of oscillating between the sensible and the annoyingly silly. That comment is 90% silly.
Ophelia writes:
There is growing awareness that emotional [child] abuse is harmful ..
But what is the definition of child abuse? It appears that there’s a fair amount of social constructivism doing the rounds in this area — i.e. the awareness may be creating the abuse as much as the abuse is creating the awareness.
Does child abuse not include the abuse resulting from children being reared in ‘patchwork families’ (the chattering classes’ euphemism for ‘broken homes’)? Stepmother and stepfather-driven neglect and violence are notoriously widespread — ask any Darwinian.
Include physical abuse, religious-indoctrination abuse, general emotional abuse, stepparent abuse and single-momma abuse and we eventually end up with banner headlines:
99.9% OF ALL CHILDREN ARE VICTIMS OF CHILD ABUSE, SCIENTISTS CLAIM ..
Ophelia,
Read what Humphrey wrote. Maybe it’s hyperbole, maybe it’s rhetoric — but it sounds as if he were pretty serious about outlawing religious education in the family. If he had added a ‘smiley face’ after that contested paragraph or written ‘- oops, only joking’ it would have been different. But people at the receiving end of hyperbole and rhetorical flourish have a natural tendency to take a writer by his words.
Humphrey put his foot in it and so did Dawkins. The extract I quoted is a sitting duck for all true believers — and I don’t blame them for being apprehensive.
Well obviously part of my point is that there is no clear-cut definition.
Actually there was a recent study that found no evidence for the greater abuse from step-parents idea.
Don’t say ‘Darwinian’ and don’t tell us to ask one for corroboration of your home-made ev psych.
But okay – I’m not fond of the word ‘abuse’ myself; I agree that it’s overused. There is growing awareness that psychological cruelty is harmful; will that do? I stand by that. I think there was a lot of stupidity and denseness about psychological cruelty in the relatively recent past, and that people have learned better now. Some unfortunately toppling over onto the other side and raising horrors who think the universe revolves around them…but still.
Yeah, I agree about the foot part. But not about the way you phrased your objection. Watch your own feet!
Another banner headline:
Humphrey puts foot in sitting duck! RSPCA expresses shock
I agree with Dawkins that religious indoctrination can be child abuse. The problem for most governments/social services is where to draw the line. How do you decide where religious freedom becomes abuse?
In Australia right now, one religion is making the news for this sort of thing. I agree that someone should step in – but who, and how? The situation of the child in this story is similar to what happened to me (same sect, but I was 15 and it was both parents, not one) – and the problem there was that my parents accepted the religion’s judgement of them (that my parents were evil). It is not only children who are indoctrinated, or who are hurt. But I cannot imagine what could have helped, at that time. The idea of an outsider intervening would have horrified me – because I was indoctrinated. I suspect it would have sent me screaming back into the sect. (I can’t be sure of that, though. My decision not to go back came shockingly out of the blue for me at the time.)
It will be interesting to see what happens in Australia, with the series the Age is running exposing what is going on. That sect has got away with far too much for far too long, under the protective banner of ‘religious freedom.’ But I suspect the actual, physical child abuse that is also being exposed will be what is acted upon, not the psychological abuse. I think psychological abuse will end up in the ‘too hard’ basket.
Add a smiley face? Append an “oops — I was only joking”? Some days I just weep for the English language, especially for those impoverished readers who want to insert cartoon pictoglyphs in place of comprehending what they’re reading.
There are lots of parental “shouldn’ts”. They shouldn’t be allowed to avoid vaccinations. They shouldn’t be allowed to let kids live on junk food diets. They shouldn’t use the TV as a babysitter. They shouldn’t be dressing them up like little streetwalkers and entering them in beauty pageants. They shouldn’t be filling their plastic little minds with garbage. We can talk about these things, I hope, without kneejerk fools damning people for wanting to establish a police state. What’s the alternative? We shouldn’t point out that there is such a thing as good nutrition and daily doses of grease and salt from McDonalds are not a good thing, lest we be mistaken for an arm of fascism?
My humble opinion is that it doesn’t really matter what Dawkins or Humphrey, or any other such famous folk, think about the “religious indoctrination is child abuse” issue. Did they die and become sources of divine revelation, that we must all either bow down to or curse?
I think we common citizens are all perfectly capable of making our own minds up about this little teapot squall. What most of us think, I would venture to say, is that parents are free to tell their kids whatever stories about the universe they want, since soon enough the kids will grow up and be able to decide what to think for themselves. (Many of them will in fact revolt against their parents’ pronouncements just out of healthy adolescent yearnings for independence, if nothing else.)
Whatever Dawkins and Humphrey may or may not think, I think most of us would agree that telling your kids stories about the Tooth Fairy or Yahweh is nothing on the order of sexually abusing them, burning them with irons, or taking a paddle to their behinds. So what is the argument really about?
The question of school instruction is another question. I take it that there is a legitimate worry in the UK about state-sponsored religious instruction in public (in the American sense of the term) schools. In the States, there is very little (though some) reason to be concerned about this.
Even in the bad old days: I recall as a kid, in the Indianapolis public schools of the late ’40s and early ’50s, being led each morning in a recitation of the 23rd Psalm (if I remember correctly), right after the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. But that certainly didn’t permanently warp my mind, or any of my classmates’ minds, I think. Children’s minds can be surprisingly resilient.
OB
“My guess would be that it’s because it’s complicated… without being monstrously coercive and doing more harm than good.”
Yes, because what would be required would be a systemic change. Cathal has a good point, this stuff is pretty OTT. As you imply, the desire for that level of social engineering ought not belong in the ambition of any self-respecting atheist or humanist.
PZ Myers writes:
I just weep for the English language, especially for those impoverished readers who want to insert cartoon pictoglyphs in place of comprehending what they’re reading.
PZ Myers, the Great Intimidator. :-) If you can’t get your adversaries on the substance of their arguments, go for their writing style and their inability to find the mot juste.. :-)
The ‘smiley face’ may not be Shakespearean but it has prevented many an online controversy from degenerating into total war and many a hyperbole from being taken all too literally. :-)
PZ didn’t even address the issue I raised, which was not how parents should treat their children but whether or in fact Dawkins/Humphrey had recommended (or considered or agonized over) criminalizing parents who teach their children old-time religion (e.g. Christianity, Judaism, Islam) rather than new-time religion (=it’s all a load of bollox) :-)
Here is what Humphrey should have written, I suppose:
“I’m gonna make a joke now folks we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe in the literal truth of the Bible smiley face or that the planets rule their lives smiley face than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out smiley face that’s real funny or lock them in a dungeon smiley face that’s even funnier what a witty guy I am and by the way don’t quote me out of context because I don’t really mean it and if you read my ten volumes of collected works in their entirety and apply a good dollop of charitable hermeneutics you’ll see what a tolerant chap I really am with a heart of gold behind the gruff exterior … .”
:-)
The full text (pdf) of Humphrey’s lecture made it clear, I think, that he was not joking. The remedy he offered was not, however, forcibly removing children from their parents. He proposed ensuring that they also hear Enlightened views. He even imagined, rather implausibly I think, giving an Aztec girl a choice between joyfully going to be sacrificed, as her parents were (presumably) urging, and rejecting their gods.
In other words, you can home-school, but (in the UK, don’t know the US equivalent) you must follow the national curriculum, including, for example, evolution. It would also, I think, mean making Why Truth Matters a set text.
“Why does everything Dawkins says have to be defended, no matter how he expresses it?”
It doesn’t. At all. I agree about the crassness sometimes. I’ve read some of The God Delusion now, thanks to dear Paul Power who sent it to me for Xmas or New Year’s – I’ve read some of it, and as I expected I find parts of it excessively vehement and parts rather crude. But Cathal’s way of putting it was crude too. He may have had a reasonable point, but he put it badly – he said:
“For while Dawkins may not be planning to snatch kids away at this writing, he would certainly seem to have considered doing so and agonised about the pros and cons”
That’s ridiculous. It says Dawkins was considering snatching ‘kids’ away – himself, personally.
My reaction was to Cathal rather than to Dawkins-criticism. Cathal gets on my nerves sometimes – especially right now, in the wake of his ill-founded and ill-mannered suspicion of Marie-Therese.
“making Why Truth Matters a set text.”
Heh! Wot a good idea.
“you can home-school, but (in the UK, don’t know the US equivalent) you must follow the national curriculum, including, for example, evolution.”
It’s scary how not the case that is in the US. In theory, I think, there is an imperative to meet certain standards, but in practice there is apparently nothing. Parents can do any old damn thing, including nothing. Some teach all bible all the time, some let their kids watch tv all day. It’s an unbelievable mess.
‘Stepmother and stepfather-driven neglect and violence are notoriously widespread — ask any Darwinian.’
This is simply absurd. The neglect you mention is no more common among step parents than among parents. Many, many children owe their lives and upbringing to people who parent better than their biological parents.
GH writes:
Many, many children owe their lives and upbringing to people who parent better than their biological parents.
GH, I’m talking about statistics and probabilities, not exceptional cases. Don’t be innumerate. Step-parents are MORE LIKELY to be indifferent or hostile to their children than biological parents. That’s all.
Do some reading and use your common sense. If you find technical material too demanding, try some fairy-tales.
Such as:
Cinderella and her Patchwork Family;
Snow White and her Patchwork Family;
Hansel and Gretel and their Patchwork Family.
etc.
Cathal, you do some reading. Have you seen the recent research that disputes those findings?
Fairy tales aren’t statistical studies, and in any case, scholars of fairy tales suggest that step-parents in fairy tales are often disguised parents – cruel parents rendered more acceptable and less scandalous by being turned into step-parents. They represent a cover-up, in short. Read your Marina Warner or Jack Zipes; and don’t be so rude.
Have you seen the recent research that disputes those findings?
No, but I would be delighted to read it (at least if it’s available online) — provided it is peer-reviewed material. Can you give me a tip (e.g. title, name of author, scientific journal ..)?
The only treatise I have read myself on the subject is ‘The Truth about Cinderella — a Darwinian View of Parental Love’, by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson (Yale Univ. Press, 1998).
Research that refutes the Darwinian ‘conventional wisdom’ certainly sounds like sensational news.
No, sorry…I wish I could, but…it’s just something I saw some time ago while trawling for news. I’m pretty sure about it, because I was surprised, so frowned over it in slow-witted puzzlement for awhile; it seems so counter-intuitive. I think it was a meta-study. I may well have seen a news report of a journal article, rather than the article itself.
Drat. No, can’t find, either by search here or via google. Found Pinker citing the Daly and Wilson study, which doesn’t help. So since I don’t even remember much about it, I can’t be sure it wasn’t interested research by an advocacy group of some sort. My impression is that the researchers weren’t expecting to find what they found, but my impression is worth precisely nothing. Never mind. Beg pardon for peremptory tone.
Ophelia,
Thanks for your effort — I’ll have a bash myself. Actually (I’ve just checked) D&W do cite quite a number of researchers who dispute the standard Darwinian theory. D&W challenge their adversaries’ methodology and claim that they chiefly consist of family therapists who are keen to avoid self-fulfilling prophesies and hence tend to ‘down-play’ the negative aspects of step-parenthood .. (on the lines “things are bad enough for reconstituted families without our making the situtation worse by rubbing it in”)
And a somewhat belated happy new year to you.
Re Ophelia’s citing Daly and Wilson, who have done a lot of work on step-parents and child abuse:
Daly M, Wilson M (1999) An evolutionary psychological perspective on homicide. In D. Smith & M. Zahn, eds. Homicide Studies: A Sourcebook of Social Research, p. 58-71
CHAPTER 5
An Evolutionary Psychological Perspective On Homicide
Martin Daly & Margo Wilson
http://psych.mcmaster.ca/dalywilson/chapter5.pdf
The first published study addressing it was Wilson, Daly, and Weghorst’s (1980) demonstration that step-children constituted an enormously higher proportion of child abuse victims in the United States than their numbers in the population-at-large would warrant. Subsequent research by many workers has shown that this excess risk is crossnationally and cross-culturally ubiquitous and is most extreme with respect to the most severe outcomes, namely, child homicide (Daly & Wilson, 1996).
Again: “Some Differential Attributes of Lethal Assaults on Small Children by Stepfathers versus Genetic Fathers”
Martin Daly and Margo I. Wilson
http://psych.mcmaster.ca/dalywilson/e&s207.pdf
The rates at which stepparents abuse and kill their stepchildren are much greater than the corresponding rates in genetic parent-child relationships (for references, see Daly and Wilson 1991).
David J. Buller has contested the results claimed from these, and like, studies:
Elliott Smith and I [16] analyzed cases of physical abuse of children by an adult in loco parentis, as reported in the Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-3). We found a relative risk to children living with a step-parent that is significantly lower than the elevated risk of maltreatment found by Daly and Wilson (Table 2). For example, children under the age of 5 who lived with a step-parent were around 8 times more likely to be physically abused than same-aged children living with both genetic parents. (David J. Buller [2005]: “Evolutionary psychology: the emperor’s new paradigm”
http://www.eko.uj.edu.pl/radwan/Buller2005.pdf
Even if we take Buller’s results uncritically, this is still statistically highly significant. However, Buller goes on to try to show that the figures he found in his own study are too high. But Buller gives the impression of being just too determined to find a way (any way) to disprove results that seemingly confirm evolutionary psychology hypotheses. See review of Buller’s book, *Adapting Minds*:
http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep03392401.html
Evolutionary Psychology 3: 392-401
Ah, thanks, Allen – I bet I saw something about Buller. 2005 sounds right.
How useful it is to have research demons as readers!
‘I’m talking about statistics and probabilities, not exceptional cases. Don’t be innumerate. Step-parents are MORE LIKELY to be indifferent or hostile to their children than biological parents. That’s all.’
Then for the most part statistics show their is little difference. Yes there may be greater probablity a child may be murdered by a step parent than a parent but the difference is not so great as to refer to it as the societal evil you are presenting.
‘Do some reading and use your common sense. If you find technical material too demanding, try some fairy-tales.’
Thats pretty insulting coming from someone I didn’t insult. Is this the way you react in all conversation? In any event from the research:
‘However, the authors found some compelling data in the Chicago police department’s homicide records: from 1965 through 1990, 115 children under the age of 5 were killed by their genetic fathers, while 63 were killed by stepfathers or mothers’ boyfriends’
Which means correlation does not always equal causation.
and then:
‘Lastly, it is important to note that obviously most stepparents care for their stepchildren as they ought to, and it is only a very small percentage that would intentionally harm a child under their care. Statements by Daly and Wilson such as “Evolutionary thinking suggests that stepparental affection will tend to be restrained” and “it must rarely [be] the case that a stepchild’s welfare was as valuable…as one’s own child’s welfare” (1996, p.80) are awfully generalized, and would be extremely difficult to establish empirically.’
Which is all I was saying the vast majority of stepparents do a fine job of raising their children. The crummy ones are crummy with often tragic circumstances.
I have seen many, many happy and productive ‘reconstituted’ families. It seems to me there are things more important than genetics in making a family productive. It’s insulting to humans to think a family less because all members may not share a genetic heritage.
Gemma H writes:
It’s insulting to humans to think a family less because all members may not share a genetic heritage.
That’s one of the best examples of wishful idealisation I’ve come across for some time, and it explains a lot. It’s the same logic as that behind opposition to streaming in the education system — that it’s ‘insulting’ to consider some schoolchildren less intelligent than others, and that what should not be therefore cannot be. Ditto in respect of race and gender differentials.
It’s something akin to a reversal of the naturalistic fallacy, which involves a slippage from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ (e.g. it’s ‘natural’ for humans to kill, so humans SHOULD kill).
Gemma H’s thinking reveals a slippage from ‘ought’ to ‘is’ (i.e. it would be a ‘good thing’ if stepparents were as loving as biological families, THEREFORE stepparents ARE as loving ..)
What a sad thing it is, the facticity of the world ….
Gemma H., I agree with you that one mustn’t generalise from the behaviour of a small minority of step-parents to step-parenting as a whole. But your argument here has gone a bit astray:
>In any event from the research:
“However, the authors found some compelling data in the Chicago police department’s homicide records: from 1965 through 1990, 115 children under the age of 5 were killed by their genetic fathers, while 63 were killed by stepfathers or mothers’ boyfriends’.”
>Which means correlation does not always equal causation.< Correlation *never* “means” causation, but that is not the point here. You can’t (or shouldn’t!) quote raw figures without also citing the relative frequency of genetic fathers to step-fathers plus mother’s boyfriends in the population in question.
What’s with the ‘Gemma’?! Cathal, god damn it, will you kindly stop using female names as an insult!
Ophelia,
‘Gemma’ is not an insult. However, GH is no more likely to be male than G. Tingley is likely to be female.
Radar
Gaydar
Boydar
Girldar
etc.
But if you like I’ll call GH ‘Gustav’ the next time round. I don’t like treating fellow bloggers as ciphers, that’s all.
Ooops! I called GH “Gemma H.” following Cathal, presuming he/she had so idenified his/herself earlier in the thread. Just shows one should always go to the original sources.
Cathal, that’s bullshit.
Don’t call anyone anything other than supplied name or pseudonym. Stop the playground stuff. As I’ve had to tell you more than once, don’t be so rude.
Not to worry, Allen, I knew that was why you did.
That’s another reason, Cathal. But the pretence that it’s not an insult, and a stupid playground Schwarzeneggerish one at that, is a bad joke.
Honestly I’m not sure how to respond to someone so juvenile in their responses.
I’m also somewhat baffled by what your saying. No one seems to disagree with you premise that stepparents may harm their children at a greater rate than biological parents just that it isn’t the norm.
‘e. it would be a ‘good thing’ if stepparents were as loving as biological families, THEREFORE stepparents ARE as loving ‘
I do think it would be a good thing. Don’t you? But I don’t think they are because it would be a positive. I think humans learn to love other humans and miniscule statistics aside the VAST majority of step families for very positive relationships.
So again I’m not even sure we’re talking about the same thing. I know more than a few children raised with much more benefit by step parents than by what their ‘natural’ parents seemed capable of doing.
But insult away. It seems to make you happy.
‘You can’t (or shouldn’t!) quote raw figures without also citing the relative frequency of genetic fathers to step-fathers plus mother’s boyfriends in the population in question.’
It is in the study being discussed. I was simply pointing out some of what the study stated. It wasn’t a condemnation of step parenting.
But insult away. It seems to make you happy..
I wonder what I would have to do NOT to insult you. Do I have to agree with you, or what?
The problem with ‘insults’ is that there isn’t much of a gap between saying “you are an idiot” on the one hand and “your beliefs are idiotic” or “your assertion is absurd” or “the belief you hold is nonsense” on the other.
So let’s ask the big question: what would Jesus do? Perhaps he would say “there is little evidential basis for your assertions” or “I’m not sure you’re right about that” or something on similar lines.
Would that be OK for you?
Cathal, look back at the beginning of your exchange with GH. You were very rude, and for no apparent reason – you said step-parent violence was ‘notoriously widespread,’ GH said no it isn’t, you shouted back that you were talking about statistics, not exceptions. That’s not a good start; and you got much worse.
You are often rude. Stop that, please.
Like I said statistics show the step parent abuse is NOT widespread but that the incidence of abuse is perhaps higher than in non step families. Abuse is not rampantin either case.