Social Service Department Policies Are Wrong Solution to Child Abuse

The Baltimore Sun's editorial Commentary of January 31 doesn't address the root cause of most of these cases of child abuse: drug impaired and mentally disturbed parents who have no business having children that they will abuse. Worse, they continue the "behavior"-parenting, that only makes more problems. Maybe a drug-addicted mother would use free birth control surgery and an incentive payment to buy more drugs, but so what?

At least we wouldn't be faced with the ever increasing social costs of parental abusers having more children, children who are then abused and grow up to become abusers, starting the cycle all over again.

The Baltimore Sun does address the failure of oversight in DSS, the lack of supervision and training, unqualified, and maybe worse, uncaring case workers.

When a multiple-event single mother, particularly one with abuse history, comes to DSS, shouldn't part of the counseling include a birth control incentive package? That's much cheaper than the remedial actions we undertake with DSS later in the cycle, after another child is born.

Shouldn't political, community, and religious leaders be adding more productive outreach to their duties as shepherds; seeking out and counseling these obvious cases? Drug addicts and mentally challenged people avoid the peer judgement that they know they attract, so seeking them out creates an opportunity for guidance.

Waiting at shelters and counseling programs for them to show is perhaps pointless; they are otherwise occupied.

All the talk about helping symptom mitigation will not help nearly as much as addressing the difficult root problem of unqualified, problem-afflicted mothers having more children that they can't and won't deal with.

Society has an obligation to offer correct and well-researched solutions; managing the problems that occur after the manifestation of bad behavior is way too late.

Preventing them just seems to be a better solution, with much more benefit for society.

Here's the hard part. Who says that society has the right to influence, even prevent people from having children?

Most people would agree with the answer," We do, when we have to pay for it as a society."