I don't think you understand the problem here. Kids neglect effectively means that if your kids get "caught" unsupervised by the police/state/child services N times (N is not big, but hopefully still > 1) they will be taken from their parents and inserted into child services, with zero recourse and zero contact allowed.

So no, fear is absolutely not what's causing this. It is a very conscious choice on the part of the state/people to cause this problem to happen.

Fear is when an accident might lead to serious harm. The accident part is absolutely not the case.

This is a police state. If you expose yourself to the state, even accidentally, the state will brutally rip your family apart, with zero explanation or recourse, never to be reunited. So no, this is not fear. This is a deliberate policy imposed by the "grow our organization or face the blame" pressure on our politicians by state child services departments.

Calling this fear is like calling not stealing policemen's firearms "fear". It's absurd.

And why ? Because if children are "neglected" clearly that's bad for children. By the way, what outcomes for children do child services give ? [1]. Torn apart (it is general policy in child services to tear up families because leaving them together makes "integration in their new life more difficult"). Absuse, beatings, sometimes outright rape, total and complete uncertainty of the future (ie. when your future is uncertain to the point of you don't know if you'll be sleeping in a cell NEXT WEEK due to lack of capacity, I assure you, it will affect everything you think about). Few finish any education at all (high school). VERY few finish even a bachelor degree. The problem is that this organization is part of the state.

Needless to say, if you look at outcomes for children that were abused at home, the picture looks very different. In order to truly create an outcome as bad as the child services outcome one has to look at VERY serious cases of abuse indeed before they become as bad as the standard child services outcomes. People who are beat regularly by their parents, as cruel as it sounds, generally finish their education, and do in fact become independent adults (but one might say that's because everybody in that abuse relationship, the child and the parent, is incentivized to produce that outcome. In the child services case however, they only get subsidies as long as the patient is not an independent adult)

These organizations are horrible for the children in all but the very worst of cases, but the way they justify their existence is by doing more, in other words by throwing the maximum number of children into this treatment, which is of course not something accomplished by being slow and deliberate. Nor is it something that is accomplished by only intervening in extreme cases.

The issue is the incentives these organizations exist under. But once they've grown for a few decades (ie. at this point), one can say with certainty that less harm would be created by just destroying them entirely than by letting them continue.

And of course I'm ignoring the real conspiracy theories, where these services and rules are just another way to use the state power to inflict terrible suffering on the poor and immigrants and undesirables or opponents in general (thanks, by the way, Obama and Trump, for introducing a "families get separated" rule on immigrants. You guys should both get shot just for that alone. You deserve it. The misery imposed on these people is incredible, and for no reason other than punishing innocent people. Obama for introducing it, and Trump for not expanding it).

[1] https://www.fosterclub.com/blog/real-stories