To think a law against emotional cruetly to children is too vague and unenforcable

[ReallyTired]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26814427

Certainly many children do suffer an unreasonable level of emotional cruetly, but how would a "cinderella" law work in practice? Most cases of emotional abuse are not as clear cut as cinderella. Those who emotionally abuse children are rather more subtle and shrewd than cinderella's step mother.

Surely social workers have enough of a case load managing neglect, physical abuse and sexual abuse cases. What standard of parenting is good enough? Most parents need support rather than criminalisation.A child whose mother has the occassional mood swing, but is loved 99% of time is probably better off with a loving but imperfect parent than going into the care system.

Does it mean that schools will call in social services when there is a difference of opinon of parenting style or child complains when the parent does something the kid doesn't like. (ie. A parent remarries? Punishing appauling behaviour?) Sometimes children make malicious accusations, so how would you sort out the real emotional abuse from tall stories. Emotional abuse is next to impossible to prove in court.

How do we protect children against toxic parents without making it impossible to discpline our children or for parents to have some say how they lead their lives? (Ie. commiting the "emotional abuse" of putting a young baby in full time nursery so that everyone can have a roof over their heads or controlled crying.)

Who's to say an abusive parent won't be sentenced to probation and ordered to do a parenting course? We do similar with driving crimes, partner abuse and petty thieves. I don't feel the Court system is particularly stupid, as a rule.

It will make people afraid of being with their children, and of their children (we read on a recent thread about pretty scary things that children make up, and that wasn't talking about exaggeration and misinterpretation). It will give malicious people more opportunity to cause trouble.

I'mn ot tryuing to make it hard and I accept that it is very common in cases of awful abuse that one child only is picked on. I presume the current law says that as long as that child is fed, clothed, properly , washed, housed, not beaten then nothing can be done which is why people want the change. Surely every family which picks on one child in a really awful way would also tend to "neglect" it too and thus be caught by current law? If not then yes it might be needed but if it criminalises many normal parents just because of an arbitrary view of what is serious mistreatment then that is where we might find we catch a very few Cinderella syndrome children and in the process risk criminalising a lot of innocent parents whose ways simply fall outside the norm.

I think any child could claim "emotional abuse" when being disciplined, made to do their homework or not allowed something for the sake of having a better future.

They might try Nat but I don't think they'll get very far with it, do you?

Indeed. That is what troubles many of us. Thank goodness my children are almost grown and safe from being snatched.

Erm, there's no evidence against Fulford, is there?

Please check out my post on www.reprobatemum.com: Cinderella retold: the perpetrators of emotional abuse are victims too, about the more subtle forms emotional abuse can take and the reasons behind it... reprobatemum.com/2014/04/04/cinderella-retold-emotional-cruelty-law-must-not-forgets-that-perpetrators-are-victims-too/

It's tricky. And I suspect this law in practise will fuel headlines like ' jailed for saying no to chips' and that sort of thing. In the courts of justice (vs the court of media), I really can't envision how this will pan out.

It's a ridiculous idea. More or less anyone who's ever parented a teen will be at risk of criminalisation - eg my dd is in a huge huff because I dared insist she do 1 hour per day during the school holidays of revision (she's had a bad year and is seriously behind in lots of subjects, so can't afford to just leave it till the night before). To hear her speak, you'd think I was a mass-murderer.

I hope when she's older, she'll appreciate I wanted her to achieve what she was capable of. Maybe she won't. Maybe to someone parenting from a different mindset, I am a monster or abuser because I push her to study against her will.

The point is that the definition of both good and bad parenting are entirely subjective. One person's 'abuse' might be another person's 'trying to keep dc on the straight and narrow'.

Where do you draw the line between high expectations and being too pushy? One is positive, one is controlling and potentially abusive.

Laws need to be clear to be enforceable - otherwise the wrong people will get punished and huge amounts of police time will be wasted.