This topic has been broached before, but I haven’t seen a full discussion on it. Put simply, here is the question I’d like discussed: at what point does the non-physical rearing of a child become abusive and, thus, is it legitimate for the state to step in and remove the child?
Allow me to clarifiy. In this instance, I am not talking about things like constantly demeaning children and yelling at them and such. I am talking about raising them in such a way that it will almost certainly impact their future chances for happiness. At sufficiently young ages, children internalize everything that adults–particularly their parents–say, in such a way that it is not inaccurate to say the children are “forced” to think about certain things in certain ways. I’m sure you see where I’m going with this: religion and political ideology.
I don’t think parents should be prevented from raising their children according to a certain religion. But I do think there are certain methods of religious indoctrination that should be considered criminal child abuse. In particular, I am thinking of the method of telling children they will spend eternity in burning, agonizing torment if they do not become “saved.” As someone who was subjected to that sort of indoctrination, I can say that I am still not completely over it. The idea of Hell was ingrained in my head well enough that I still sometimes get a little nervous, wondering if I might be wrong. Do I wish I had been taken away from my parents? Well, no…most of that sort of treatment took place at church anyway. I love my parents and, despite their flaws, I think they did a pretty good job with me. While that tactic was used on me, I know for a fact that it was very mild by comparison to what many other children go through.
Let’s take another example, though this is not necessarily religious in nature. There was a case in the past several weeks where 2 children were removed from their parents (in Pennsylvania, maybe?). People had speculated that they were taken away because of the names that were given to the children: Adolf Hitler and Aryan Nations. Obviously, the parents were white supremacists and, as a result, the children almost certainly would have grown up with similar beliefs. Growing up with beliefs like this (not to mention the names), their future prospects for happiness and a normal life will be severely limited.
It’s easy to use reductio ad absurdums against the idea that the state should step in in cases like this. If you start down this road, it is a very slippery slope…similar reasoning can be used to outlaw teaching your children to support particular centrist political ideologies. I wouldn’t want to make it against the law for parents to teach their children to support the Democratic Party’s platform, however much I might disagree with it.
But…is there a line to be drawn? I don’t know if I think there should be a line or not…if there is one, I’d leave it to child psychologists to decide where it should be. Does there come a point where the state should step in and say “No. You have crossed the line and are using what amounts to psychological coercion against your child in a way that will severely limit his/her future prospects for psychological health and happiness.”