Following yet another tragic story of abuse, neglect and finally murder of a young child, there are calls for more State powers to become involved in families. The public is being told that if social services had more authority, these terrible cases would be avoided. This is simply not true. Arthur Labinjo-Hughes was seen by social workers who decided they had no cause for concern! Sadly there will always be cases that slip through the net, but the persecution of ordinary families who are using “old fashioned” parenting is not the answer. What has happened to traditional values such as respect, responsibility and hard work? Parents are scared of social services and of the consequences if a child discloses he or she has been punished or has to help around the house.
Social workers are one of the most powerful groups in the country and if they turn up unannounced demanding to come into your home and see your children – or interview them privately – it is advised that you agree, or they may turn up later with a court order to remove your children. There are reasonable social workers who will understand that a child falling off a swing and going to school with minor bruising happens from time to time. Or that having to go to bed before they feel like it is appropriate parenting.
Sadly, modern training for social workers is politically correct Marxist nonsense; so their definition of the “risk of neglect” can cover any situation where a child’s wishes have been overruled. You don’t need to go far in public to come across children who have never been told “no” in their lives; and while this can be mildly irritating (tantrums in supermarkets etc), children who are not taught to respect authority become a public nuisance as young people.
As the case of Arthur has shown, wicked, abusive parents are very good at hiding their behaviour, while many law abiding parents are being frightened out of disciplining their children or teaching them the value of hard work, or that bad decisions have consequences. These values should not be seen as old fashioned or “harmful”; instead we are seeing the consequences of politically correct parenting, and they are disastrous. Not only for the child, who has been trained or parented to have his own way and grows up with a sense of entitlement; but also for society.

Some social workers do a great job in harrowing circumstances; but while their training and agenda is so anti-family, many social workers are positively dangerous bullies. Or at best, ineffective, which is where cases like Arthur’s hit the headlines. We need a return to a society where parents are trusted to do their best for their children and supported in that, rather than one where parents are scared to impose any discipline, especially in public.
State intervention in private family life should be limited – freeing up resources so that the truly shocking parents are caught. Time and again children who have been murdered in their own families have been “known” to social services and seen regularly by teachers, yet nothing is done. But a child who tells their school friends they only believe in two genders (male and female) may well be reported to the authorities for “re-education”.
There are no perfect parents, and I’m sure none of us had perfect upbringings, but it is certain the vast majority of law abiding parents are the best people to bring up and influence their own children. The less interference from authorities, the better. Children belong to their families (I don’t mean belong as in property or slaves!) but they most certainly do not belong to the State.
I’d like to add that patent’s sole guardianship over their children ended in the 19th. century.
Parents need to understand that those they may, or indeed may not, create in love, are never wholly their own. Any parent who chooses to have nothing to do with the impudent state, does not want their child to be ‘educated’ in its perversions, soon has to confront the truth that their co-operation is only sought for as long as it takes to reveal to them that lip-service, social nicities and encouragements to conform are only the precursors to threats of physical coercion and, finally, what amounts to abduction of the child should any parent simply ask the state to leave them alone.
All children are only wanted by the State to pay income tax. Education acts are not passed through love. They are passed to create an opportunity that each generation of children just might have the chance of employment. After what shall soon be the age of 70, the hope is that they’ll die before any state pension is due for the thousands of pounds of National Insurance that those who were able to keep in employment payed.
Neither does the State care from which former nation someone now within its (hotel) borders pays it, as long as the nourishment of money is received.
We have been a nation that practices killing children in the womb, and keeping alive murderers in cells for decades, and a great deal of income tax is needed to pay for it all.