> The categories of emotional abuse within the the NSPCC's report range from
> 'psychological controls', which include factors like 'mother
> unpredictable', through to 'proxy attacks', which include 'parent got rid
> of your pet'. Other categories include 'psycho/physical control and
> domination'; 'humiliation', for example 'shouted or screamed at regularly
> over the years'; 'withdrawal', for example 'given too little attention as
> a child'; 'antipathy', for example 'father disliked you'; and finally
> 'terrorising', for example 'sometimes really afraid of father/mother'.
>
> None of those are things that parents would be proud of, but most I know
> have done something like it from time to time. I guess that makes us all
> abusers.
You're talking about the study by Cawson et al from 2000 (or rather, you're talking about Sp!ked article which calmunies that study). But a) these are not unreasonable factors to take into account, provided they are properly weighted; and b) these were differentially weighted in the survey. There were three categories devised to rank such cases by seriousness, the least important simply described as 'cause for concern' - and this covered 3% of instances. So, it's just not true that the disposal of a pet was treated as seriously as being hit with a hard instrument or having one's nose rubbed in urine. All you are doing here is trivialising serious research.
You add:
I think the families of the late Sally Clark, Trupti Patel and Angela Canning might all have good reason to disagree with you, as might those children taken into care against their will in the Orkneys and in Nottingham, at the say so of ideologically fixated social workers.
Are you being deliberately obtuse? The false imprisonment of Clark, Patel or Canning was a failure of the criminal justice system, caused in part by bad evidence submitted by health professionals, and specifically Professor Sir Roy Meadows in all three cases. It has nothing to do with the state trying to break up families, and it certainly doesn't impugn the social services. And the 'ritual abuse' cases, which everyone acknowledges were a catastrophic failure, do not point to a general attitude of wanting to break up the family or 'ideological fixation': the cases resulted from poor training and guidelines concerning the detection of such abuse.
One could, by the way, equally cite various instances where social workers have failed in their duty to free children from abusive parents, the most notorious recent example involving a child, 'Baby P', whose broken back managed to escape the detection of health and social workers. There was a family that was ripe for being broken up.
It is intersting first, that having started talking about the abuse in childrens' homes, you sleep effortlessly into criminalising the family - when the evidence is that children are a lot safer if they are not taken into care. The NSPCC's 2000 report, despite its very loose definition of abuse found that ninety per cent of families were not abusive. On the other hand a report into Birmingham Children's homes found that more than half of teenage girls in them were being prostituted.
Oh dear. I think you're the one who's 'sleeping' here. 1) I did not start by talking about the abuse in childrens' homes. 2) The family ought to be problematised, but I didn't "criminalise it", whatever that means. 3) The 2000 report by Cawson et al found that 7% of the sample suffered 'serious' abuse, and 14% 'intermediate' abuse. This is pretty rough. 4) The point about the Birmingham childrens' homes doesn't follow from anything I have said. I am quite aware of the number of scandals concerning childrens' homes, and patriarchical violence is just as apt to occur in the privacy of a state institution as in the privacy of family life. Moreover, the invocation of this particular example seems to rest on some unsound assumptions. For example, you appear to assume that this would be the only alternative to an abusive family, which is not true (more on this in a minute). In addition, it doesn't exactly excel as a comparison. After all, you're comparing a nationwide survey with a regional report, and you're talking about two different kinds of problem. Further, there might well be reasons for this problem without the control of the institution itself. Childrens' homes are densely populated with vulnerable, damaged kids, who are all too often easy prey for local pimps. That vulnerable situation would not necessarily have been improved, and might even have been worse, had those children remained in the obviously difficult homes that they were in.
Second, you so readily assume the perspective of the state, thinking that the solution to domestic abuse (which you acknowledge is widely exagggerated) is to put people into the care of the Christian Brothers, or their British counterparts.
You're shadow-boxing with your own imagination now. I didn't say anything like this. The solution to domestic abuse varies, but what I said was that family was not sacrosanct, and that it was not always appropriate to keep families together. As to alternatives, group homes are one possibility (and most are nothing like the Christian Brothers), but so is adoption and foster care. But I don't automatically assume that the solution to domestic abuse is either of these options.
Parenthetically, I have been in a group home, and I've been in foster care: on my limited experience, they are quite amenable to a decent life. The one disadvantage of group homes run by the state which is unique to them is the extent of bureaucratic surveillance, but little comes of it.
Anyway. I have once more breached the posting limit. Is it likely, James, that if I were to continue to engage with you I would eventually get something other than a selection of evasions, red herrings and half-truths? Probably not, so I shall leave it here.