Other than the cost of raising children that’s how it worked until the 90’s. I don’t know what happened I still remember I was in shocked when the school called social services on my sister when they found her 8 year old was alone with her 13 year old in the early to mid 2000’s at home after school.

I don’t know what happened but we’ve started treating children like they are made out of glass and it doesn’t feel really like the threat landscape is any different.

I used to walk from school and play outside until dark every day and everyone else was exactly the same.

> I don’t know what happened but we’ve started treating children like they are made out of glass and it doesn’t feel really like the threat landscape is any different.

These reactions make perfect sense when you consider youth services is looking out for ... themselves. That means grabbing easy, well raised children, catching cooperative parents in a technicality, who will support their children even when youth services in involved (which means costs can be diverted to those parents). Maximum money, minimum problems. This actually damages those children rather than help them, but it really helps youth services as an institution. It's also what foster parents want.

By contrast, if they want to maximize the good they do, they need to work to get children in real problems. In many cases they'd literally have everyone, parents, children, ... fight back (which will result in damage, of course. Fighting back may not even be intentional), and spend big on those children instead of themselves (because the problems are medical costs, insufficient housing, ...) and be unable to let those children go (because the parents don't take care of them). Obviously, any foster parents that see such children will quit basically immediately. The only parts of the system that actually sometimes do this are the judicial parts.

(did you know that as a child the "civil" parts of the youth services have the right to deny education to a child, and for example foster parents often do that, but the criminal parts, often called "juvie", do not? To give one very famous example, John Carmack learned advanced math, or at least the most advanced math he learned at school before developing doom, at his original school, while locked up in juvie?)

there are youth services in many other countries than america and it's not like that.

Oh wait is this the old argument? "We're foster parents, and we believe saving children from parents who had great, stable, well-educated kids with excellent grades in school, but who refuse to obey a family judge's order after a divorce is REALLY helping children ... despite that we've never successfully helped a kid get a secondary education and we're not even discussing grades with schools for our other foster children, we're discussing how to get them to come to school 1 day a week". After which you try to find stats for that country, and lo and behold! Only 30% or less kids "helped" by foster parents actually get a secondary degree ever, in their entire lives ... After which they start arguing that education isn't everything. Doesn't define a person. Oh, and the stats for group homes are worse. Much worse.

That is THE big effort, by the way, that youth services engages in in the US. "Saving" kids from parents refusing (mostly out of necessity or lack of resources, or, indeed, outright refusal to put kids into a legal but destructive situation, like 2 schools) a family court judge's orders, for example to do week here-week there (and 2 different schools. Hell, plenty of schools refuse kids who need that, because governments can't agree who pays, which family court just doesn't care about)

US services lie about that, of course. If you hear them talk they're only ever saving children from parents who violently beat them, give toddlers drugs, then feed them to the cats. Or sell them into prostitution. Of course! Which is SO infuriating for three reasons.

First, it's a lie. Those are exceptional to the point that they happen maybe once per year per state, probably less.

Second, it's implication is a lie. Youth services LOVES to imply that in those cases they intervene and save those children. Then you find an example of that and ... This is not what happens in practice. After an incident youth services kicked them to the curb. Btw: parents ARE NOT allowed to kick children to the curb. Do that, and you go to prison. But youth services does that regularly.

(and btw, if you delve into actual research, you will find parents using drugs actually counteracts drug use in children. I guess the kids see what happens and mostly decide what any sane person would decide)

Third, youth services protects children against violence, drugs and prostitution like the sea protects fish from water. Their whole organizations are infested with constant violence, theft, and indeed drugs and prostitution. And, perhaps they're right, that this is not their fault. It's those damn savings, gangs, parents, boyfriends, whatever. But that doesn't change a thing, because their institutions are still infested with it, and that means they DO NOT HAVE THE ABILITY to protect children from it, and therefore their actions are not justified.

Oh and you will get ZERO response from a judge about the reputation and statistics of a youth services organization. Anything youth services does, denying education, drug, prostitution IN youth services institutions, beating children, locking children up, kicking minors to the curb, the fact that plenty of children get abused at school BECAUSE they are foster children, ... that is perfectly A-okay, not worthy of discussion even. No problems there, and CERTAINLY no consequences (either in not being allowed to interfere or restitution). In fact the opposite is true: mentioning any practical concern as a child or parent means you're not cooperative and that justifies ... Likewise a family judge is 100% okay with schools refusing to follow their orders, obviously only parents are to blame for that. And then they make the kid's situation 100x worse than it is.

And, frankly, a fourth reason that these organizations are so infuriating is that the vast majority of problems in families are resource problems. Housing, money, the need to have multiple jobs (and so leave kids home alone), plus how critical it is to have kids perform at school. These problems can easily be fixed for those families, IN those families, but youth services will never do that.

> it used to be the case that child allowance for 3 kids was better paid than a supermarket job.

For what time period in what country?

> it used to be the case that child allowance for 3 kids was better paid than a supermarket job.

Which says a lot more about the pay of low-end "female" jobs in the past than it does about child allowance, which has always been pretty niggardly.

It's always a risk using "niggardly" in a comment given that you're likely to be downvoted by someone who doesn't understand the word. But it's a good word.

>And for families. 3 kids? Stay-at-home wife (and in one of twenty cases, dad-at-home)

Women are strong and as good a-, no, better, superior, to men. We will outperform you in the workplace, men need to be shown this because all they want is a barefooted pregnant wife. Women are crushing men in the workplace, not because they don't want kids, but because this is a more vital and greater goal. Once it's estalblished woman superiority, then we can talk repopulation