<HTML>Ummmmmm Female circumcision is a nice imflammatory example, but careful: --Usually that is a cultural norm that WOMEN enforce, Removing a kid will do NOTHING about her culture's expectation that the measure will make her more marriageable for instance. --Around here, there are fairly large populations of East African immigrants. It is known that a small number of doctors deal with the cultural demand by doing VERY minimal symbolic cutting with sterile equipment and local anesthetic. And child abuse authorities know to ask, when a kid shows up with black and blue stripes all along his limbs, do his parents practic "coining," running a coin along the skin really hard for medicinal purposes? One person I know who had this done to her as a child says it actually feels REALLY good even though the results look awful to outsiders. But just so you don't worry that this is a land of total cultural relativism, people are still pretty uneasy about a different immigrant population that is into arranged marriages involving young teenages and much older men. DoreneC In a message dated 6/3/2003 12:40:50 AM Pacific Daylight Time, lweiger@umich.edu writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">There are, however, certain situations in which bad cultural norms lead to situations where the children _ought_ to be taken away.  If an African immigrant father wishes to remove his dauther's clitoris, I think we should consider removing the daughter from her father's care. -- Luke </BLOCKQUOTE> </HTML>