Are parents ethically responsible for the weight of their children? As the obesity rate in the United Sates rises a new from of child abuse may also be on the rise. Recently in Cleveland Ohio a third graded was taken from his family and put into a foster home because of neglect. However, this situation is unusual because unlike most cases where the child is taken from his or her family for malnourishment, this boy was taken for being over nourished. As a third grader this boy weighs over 200 pounds and is already at risk for type two diabetes and has sleep apnea. The state has accused his mother of neglect and has placed the boy in foster care.
Is this the ethically responsible thing to do? My personal opinion is yes. The negative effects of obesity are under estimated by Jack and Jill. A recent study reported that the effects of childhood obesity have long term negative effects that are serious enough to cause parents great worry. In conclusion one doctor said to imagine a group of children on the playground with cigarettes in their hands, and then to imagine them with bellies. He said the medical risks in both situations are the same.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/11/28/200-pound-child-removed-from-home-because-of-weight/UPI-20971322494181/
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2 comments:
Wait a minute!
This post suggests that the state should have the power to remove a child from his parents simply because he is obese. The implications are unfathomable.
I am not sure which I dislike more – the society depicted in Huxley’s Brave New World or that of Orwell’s 1984 – but one thing is clear: the state should not control the individual or supersede family structure. In fact, one of the most stirring arguments against Soviet communism was that the state began to supplant the family. What a tragedy!
And this case with the obese child is a step down a slippery slope. While I do not dispute the facts – obesity is a serious health problem – I do disagree with two aspects of what happened and with this post’s assessment of the situation.
First, is obesity really a sufficient criterion to prove negligence on the parents’ end? After all, childhood obesity is not all that uncommon in America – just go out to your closest McDonalds or Burger King and start counting. I argue that the solution cannot be to remove a child from his parents, since that implies that the parents were the reason for the obesity. And while the parents’ lifestyle may be a source of the child’s obesity, that is difficult to prove conclusively and, regardless, cannot be good enough reason for removing the child from his parents.
Second, is removing the child from his parents appropriate in this case, assuming the child’s obesity is a direct result of the parents’ lifestyle? I argue that it is not, for two reasons. My immediate reaction is: doesn’t the court system have something better to be doing – catching criminals or druggies or something? But this avoids the issue. The real reason is that if the intent of removing the child from the parents was to rehab the child (and not the parents), the same results (if not better) might be achieved by keeping the child with his parents (preventing significant trauma) and supplying an athletic trainer or other means to enhance the health of the child. Basically, I think that removing a child from his parents should be a last resort, only used in cases of abuse. Negligence can be fixed by oversight, but abuse is not so easily corrected.
Something is wrong when a 3rd grader is over 200 pounds. It is the responsibility of parents to look after the health of their children. Unfortunately it is often the case that parents of obese children are obese themselves. They cannot provide their children with healthy lifestyle choices because they themselves do not have a healthy lifestyle.
That being said, removing an obese child from his or her family is not the answer. In general, it is rarely the case that parents are maliciously and consciously attempting to harm the health of their children by neglecting their son or daughter’s diet. More often, it is simply that case that parents are sharing their bad habits with their children.
We must get to the root of the problem here. The pandemic of childhood obesity sweeping North-America is not the results of a trend of parents neglecting their children, childhood obesity is a societal disease. Healthy, natural and unprocessed foods are playing second fiddle to much cheaper and much more readily accessible processed foods: foods void of nutrients essential to good health. When we see a dangerous obese child, instead of immediately pointing fingers at the parents, we should remind ourselves that we live in a society that fosters unhealthy habits.
There is no easy solution to the widespread malnourishment of North-Americans. The first step is to recognize that there is a problem with our current food industry. The next step is to educate people of the value of good nutrition and the dangers of refined and processed foods. We cannot stop people from eating unhealthily if that’s what they desire. We must present them with the facts, and hopefully with that in hand, people will being to demand better nutrition.
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