From: shedevil@vix.com (Anne P. Mitchell JD)
Newsgroups: alt.parents-teens,misc.kids,soc.men,soc.women,alt.dads-rights
Subject: Response to Deluge About Hillary Clinton
Date: 22 Jul 1992 00:45:19 -0700
Organization: Fathers' Rights & Equality Exchange
NNTP-Posting-Host: gw.home.vix.com


This post, which will have to by necessity be shorter than it ought,
is to respond to the multitude of replies to my post about Hillary
Clinton.

I, as much as anyone else I think, believe in the rights of children,
*and* the ability for them to get themselves out of a bad situation.
Heck, I myself was emancipated as a minor.  In fact, I was out on my
own at the age of 11.

But we are not talking about a mechanism which will necessarily, if at
all, help abused kids!  [I might note that almost without exception,
all the responses in vehement favour of this proposal have included
such language as "*I* was abused, if only *I* had had such a remedy
available..." - please realize that those of us who had less than
ideal childhoods sometimes interpret things through a filter based on
those experiences, and react from feelings.  Nowhere, in fact, does
this proposal actually address abused and neglected kids.]  And, in
fact, the mechanism for getting kids out of truly abusive homes through 
the court system has *always* been there, at least in the lifetime 
of anyone reading these postings.

Hillary Clinton's proposal will not help abused children.  Abused
children, and children from highly dysfunctional families, are just
about the *last* kids who will go to a court, of *all* places, and ask
to get out from under their parents.  And, again, these legal
mechanism are *already* in place anyway, in many, if not all, states.  

What such a proposal *would* do would be to allow your adolescent son
or daughter to drag you into court because you have said "No, you
cannot have a full-time job while you are flunking all of your
classes."  It will allow your teenaged daughter to sue you because you
won't let her get liposuction [not to mention pay for it].

What else it would do would be to create a whole new industry of legal
professionals.  Wow...what a deal..I can cull clients from the junior
high school, and heck, if I win get their parents to pay their legal
expenses, on *top* of that plastic surgery.

If I truly believed that this idea would help neglected or abused
children, then I wouldn't have even posted it.  Geez, I'm not
unreasonable, or unfeeling even.  I happen to believe though, that it
will not only not help the kids who need it, but it will *harm* those
kids who are *not* mature enough to make such decisions, but drag
their parents to court anyway..because they can.  So what if they end
up losing their case...the harm done to the family at that point could
be irreparable.

This is NOT to say that there aren't real problems with the system.  I
just don't think that this is the answer, and in fact I think it could
be very harmful, in the long run, to the kids themselves, as well as
to society as a whole.

-- 
   LOOKING FOR:  Stewart Woodward, Hobson Woodward, Lorna Taylor & JJ Lancey
I am: Anne Mitchell, mom, & founder of the Fathers' Rights & Equality Exchange
Ask me about FREE!  FREE files available via anonymous ftp 128.45.1.1; dir /pub
	        	   CAPUT TUUM IN ANO EST
Newsgroups: alt.parents-teens