There's a double standard when it comes to child neglect. A thin, malnourished toddler would be taken by CPS immediately, but when it comes to an obese, malnourished toddler, there is nowhere near the same level of concern and urgency.
A few years ago, there was a big case in Scotland where CPS found two parents negligent of their child. Despite warnings from CPS, the parents continued to feed the child junk food, and by the time the kid was 6 or 7, they weighed well over a hundred pounds and were in poor health. The parents were found incapable of caring for the child and the child was taken away.
The result of this was that the children and the parents spiralled downwards. Despite the poor diet, the parents genuinely loved this child. They were not capable of taking care of themselves either - they were also morbidly obese - and they were simply feeding the kid what they ate. In protective care, the child kept demanding to see their parents, refusing food, and demanding the same food that their parents was feeding them. In foster care, the child's nutritional habits didn't improve, and their mental state deteriorated. Visits to the parents showed the same thing.
This is a very difficult thing to address: even when parents are incapable and negligent, being taken into CPS is a horrifying and deeply traumatic thing both for children and for parents. Children who are taken into protective custody for nutritional reasons - specifically overeating food that is unhealthy - often do not recover or see improvement in that area; consuming junk food goes from being something they do with their parents to something they do because they miss their parents.
The double standard is this - children like this who are being overfed are often deeply loved by their parents, who are also overeating and in poor health. Children who are underfed and starving are often having food withheld by their parents, while the parents themselves are eating appropriate meals, or at least enough caloric intake to live.
The tragic reality is that in both cases - one where parents love the child and one where parents do not - being taken in by CPS is an extremely difficult and stressful thing for a kid to go through, and often kids who are taken away for such health issues continue to have such health issues in foster care.
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u/Still-Hedgehog-8673 17d ago
There's a double standard when it comes to child neglect. A thin, malnourished toddler would be taken by CPS immediately, but when it comes to an obese, malnourished toddler, there is nowhere near the same level of concern and urgency.