- Posted by MASTER VIKRANT ROHIN
Norway’s government imposes harsh rules on children and parents.
In Norway, the government took away the two children. One is three years old, and another is a year old, just because their parents (an Indian couple) feed them with their hands. The government of Norway in this regard says that you will forcefully feed your child, which is why you feed them with your hands.
In Norway, it is the rule that children are fed with spoons and sleep in separate rooms. Parents will not be permitted to sleep with their children.
What do you think about this rule? Is it so small that children do not require parental care at night, or is it such a huge mistake that we feed our children with our hands?
What do Norwegians think about Barnevernet (Norwegian Child Protective Services)?
The CPS in Norway is frequently and loudly critiqued, but frankly, the way the system is set up, is unavoidable and should be taken with a solid amount of salt.
There are basically two situations they are criticized for:
First, there are situations where they do intervene, and someone (typically the parents) claims that the intervention was unreasonable and amounts to a “kidnapping” of the children. There are a couple of problems with these cases, the primary one being that the CPS is required by law to not publicly disclose the information that led to the decision; this is done both to protect the parents and to protect the children from having intimate details about their domestic situation spread publicly.
As a result, the parents are free to say whatever they want about the CPS’s actions and their lack of justification for them, and the CPS is required by law to respond by saying, “We can’t comment on individual cases.” As a result, you only get to hear one side of the story, and even when the CPS had EXTREMELY good reasons for acting in a certain way, you won’t get to hear those reasons.
However, the courts, who make the final decisions in cases where parents and CPS disagree, are given access to all the evidence, and it is not uncommon for the parents to assert that there was no neglect or abuse at all and that the CPS is acting irrationally. However, the court, on being fully informed, will often reject the parents’ claims.
Second, there are instances where CPS did not take action even though it is now obvious that they should have. Or where they took action but realised afterward that they ought to have acted much sooner.
The issue is that uncertainty will frequently arise in situations like this. And it’s a case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” proportions: if the CPS acts aggressively and launches heavy intervention (up to and including removing the children from the parents’ care), even when only confronted with hazy, unsupported suspicions, they will unavoidably end up acting when they shouldn’t have – and be criticised for it. On the other side, it is also an issue if they do not act when they ought to. It is an equilibrium that is virtually impossible to achieve perfectly. You’ll notice that depending on where you set the bar, you occasionally overreact and occasionally underreact.
Meanwhile, you do not (typically) hear at all about the large majority of cases where it’s clear that abuse or neglect DID take place and the CPS intervened; in these cases, the parents will of course tend to keep their mouths shut about it, and the cps will also keep their mouths shut about it, and the sum total of this is that it’s not mentioned in the media at all.
If you were to only believe the media, you could believe that the CPS only intervenes by taking the kids away from their parents. This is untrue; in more than 80% of cases where the CPS determines that some sort of intervention is required, what they actually do is offer the parents different forms of aid, advice, or direction. In 2014, over 43000 families received assistance, support, or advice, while 9611 kids were taken from their parents’ custody (temporarily or permanently).
Occasionally, outrageous tales about the CPS “kidnapping” children away from their parents due to insignificant cultural differences that cannot be called neglect or abuse appear in foreign media. These claims are typically based simply on what the parents have said, and they fall apart when put under closer scrutiny, for as by attending the court case to hear the actual evidence.
The most recent high-profile case was probably this one: Nightmare in Norway: Indian couple fights to get children back — here, an Indian couple claimed that the CPS had removed two of their children because they ate with their hands and co-slept, both examples of harmless cultural differences that amount to neither neglect nor abuse. Reality looked quite a bit different: reality was that the parents themselves were the ones to contact CPS because they felt overwhelmed with the responsibility of caring for the children, and the father later confirmed in court that the mother suffers from severe psychological problems; the children were placed with an Indian family living in Norway as foster parents for a while during the investigation and are now in the care of their uncle, hardly a case of Norwegian CPS “kidnapping” Indian children for the crime of not adhering to Norwegian cultural norms Yet comparatively few people have heard of how the case ended, and so the earlier one-sided impression remains with many.
CULTURE DIFFERENCES It is accurate that some “cultural differences” are viewed as abuse in Norway, though.
For instance, intentionally inflicting pain on children as a form of punishment is prohibited in Norway (and is regarded as abusive).
This is regarded as a more or less typical aspect of parenting a child in certain other countries where it is both legal and common;
Yet, this isn’t just a Norwegian thing; it’s slowly but surely becoming the norm for all of Europe; all the green countries on this map outlaw corporal punishment.
The ones with a blue outline forbid it in schools but permit it at home
Imagine someone coming to the United States from a place where striking your wife is normal and commonly accepted if she disobeys you. (For instance, 81% of Ethiopian women between the ages of 15 and 49 think that a husband can slap his wife in specific situations.
This is radical since parents should be present to care for their little children at such an early age. No youngster is able to think about his needs or provide for themselves at that extremely young age.
It is the worst regulation enacted by the Norwegian government, and I don’t believe any other nation (even India) supports it.
India has a high moral standard and high attachment in parent-child relationships because parents are very concerned about their children and will go to great lengths to ensure their children’s well-being. As a result, the family bond here is stronger than in any other country on the planet.
Because Indian parents are very protective of their children and make numerous sacrifices for their welfare, the country has a high moral standard and a high level of attachment in parent-child interactions. As a result, our country has the world’s strongest sense of family.
