From: slarsen@titian.helios.nd.edu (susan larsen)
Newsgroups: alt.parents-teens,misc.kids,soc.men,soc.women,alt.dads-rights
Subject: Re: Response to Deluge About Hillary Clinton
Date: 23 Jul 92 16:04:45 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.1992Jul23.160445.14058
Organization: University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame

In article <Brt9qs.2nC@comp.vuw.ac.nz> Gavin.Flower@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Gavin Flower) writes:
>In article <1992Jul22.144714.10646@news.nd.edu> slarsen@verdi.helios.nd.edu (susan larsen) writes:
>[...]
>>to her guardians?  And, for the *I* story, what mechanism protected my
>>cousin, whose parents did not want to pay for heart surgery, from dying 
>>at the age of 16 when his heart literally exploded?
>
>That is a problem for society as a whole, surely.  Could your cousin's
>parents really afford for such surgery? 

Yes, railroad benefits.

>It would be better if
>sufficient medical care was provided, without killing parents
>financially.  Parents are already under too much pressure without
>additional legal threats.  It would be far better if parents were
>given more effective support.  Additional confrontational avenues are
>NOT needed.  How do you expect parents to seek help, or to admit to
>problems, when such could well be used as evidence against them?

The unfortunate thing about my cousin's situation is that his 
parents were simply turned off by the concept of surgery.  There 
were no religious prohibitions and finances were not a major 
consideration.  In fact, when another member of the family was 
faced with an emergency surgical situation, this contingent of 
the family cast their vote against surgery at that time, also. 
To be generous, their decision vis-a-vis my cousin may have been 
a judgment call, but my cousin who was most affected by the call 
had no voice in the matter.  Family dynamics were such that 
this was all handled outside of my cousin's knowledge!  I found 
out about it after his death, because the adult contingent of my 
family would discuss how his death was an avoidable tragedy.   
Since I suffer from the same condition which caused my cousin's 
death, as do every one of my siblings, I do have a lot of medical
knowledge acquired on my own which tends to back up my impression 
that a better decision was to go ahead with the surgery.  

Hindsight, as always, is 20/20, though.

>Confrontational situations increase
>stress level and make it more difficult for people to cope.  Financial
>problems cause a lot of mental illness in their own right, without
>adding litigation.

Very true.

>Would children really gain from an increase in the number of parents
>who simply give up, and either have nervous breakdowns, or simply walk
>away from their children?  I think not.

Again, true.

>It is much, much easier to criticize parents, rather than help them
>avoid the problem in the first place.
>
>My eldest son would benefit from a pair of glasses.  With a pair his
>vision would be excelent, and above average.  Without them his vision
>is adequate, and sufficient for him to get a driving licence, if he
>was old enough.  I judge that I can't afford them.  Say he took me
>court over this, the legal fees would cost more.  So what if I bought
>him those glasses, but this meant I couldn't pay for his sisters
>Martial Arts sessions.  Would paying for my son's glasses be a
>sufficient defence to the court, for denying his sister the right to
>learn how to defend herself?  Ok, to avoid that legal problem I borrow
>some money... After I while I run up a huge debt, and I'm behind in
>repayments.  Will keeping my children happy, stop people selling of my
>assets to pay off the debt?  If my children now go to court to force
>me to look after them better, will this restore my ability to do so?
>Hopefully you can see the answer is obviously not. 

It is just my fervent hope that a balance can be struck between 
preserving the rights of parents to make necessary decisions and 
the rights of children.  I can certainly see that if your son 
needed glasses to see the blackboard at school, he would have them.

What about the child who is almost legally blind and a parent refuses to 
buy him glasses as punishment against some infraction?  What is 
the child's recourse?  Or the child whose leg got clawed up by 
a cat but the parents were too busy to take the child to get 
stitched up?  Or the child with rotten teeth whose mother is 
waiting until the child turns 18, praying that the teeth stay 
in so that she doesn't have to bother her second husband, who 
doesn't like the kid hanging around anyway?  Should these 
children have recourse, or is this just the price that they 
have to pay for being born into the "wrong" family?  To make 
it less hypothetical, I know these children.  The blind boy 
missed out of so much in school, that he never caught up with 
his peers and finds it hard to work to pay for his own eye care. 
The girl with the cat grew up with hideous scars on her legs 
and she can't bring herself to wear skirts.  The girl with the 
teeth had to have all of them pulled before her 30th birthday, 
but she is very happy with the look of her full set of dentures.


>When will people learn that litigation is not the answer to
>everything?
>
>When will people learn that prevention is better than cure?
>
>When will people learn that effective support is better than threats?

I will grant you that litigation may not be the answer, but it is 
an answer.  The question is an important one that probably does not 
have one single answer.  But I think that part of the answer could 
be to recognize that children do have certain rights with regard 
to the quality of their care.  I also think that another part of the 
answer is to recognize that our society is capable of guaranteeing 
a certain level of subsistence, which includes medical care and 
family support.  I think that another part of the answer lies in 
changing our perceptions of family away from the rosy, can-do-no-
wrong sort of 1950s ideal toward a more realistic assessment of 
what family life is, how it affects the various members, when it 
should be preserved and when it should be dissolved. Another part 
of the answer is to offer families assistance when in crisis, to 
recognize that, for instance, the mother and father of triplets 
needs extra help; or that the alcoholic father, is a good man with 
a treatable problem; or that the abusive mother is a good woman 
who desparately needs stress management.

And finally, to realize that asserting rights for children does 
not necessarily have to translate into a loss for parents.
By recognizing that children have needs that can and should be met, 
on not only a family level but a societal level, we would, I think, 
be practicing good preventive medicine.


Sue Larsen
slarsen@berlin.nd.edu
Newsgroups: alt.parents-teens,alt.child-support