Should parents of obese children be held accountable?

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Jebus
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Should parents of obese children be held accountable?

Post by Jebus »

Personally I don't see why such parents should be treated any differently than physically or sexually abusive parents except in the rare case where the obesity is caused by a medical condition.

Not knowing that obesity is harmful is at the same level of stupidity as not knowing that sexual molestation is harmful and if a parent of a young child doesn't take action or seek help I believe she should be held legally accountable.
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carnap
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Re: Should parents of obese children be held accountable?

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The reason they should be treated differently is because we have an entire food system that makes healthy eating a challenge and whether or not some kid becomes obese in the face of a poor diet is highly correlated with genes. With current science there is no meaningful way you can determine how much of a kid's obesity is related to his/her genes or the parents actions. Lastly poor eating is something kids are likely to do to themselves, once a kid is school aged they will have the freedom to seek out junk food at school, after school, etc. There is no law in our society that restricts kids from buying soda, candy, etc at the store on the way from school. Furthermore being skinny doesn't immune you from the impacts of poor diet, there are plenty of skinny kids that eat like crap.

Kids eating poorly is the norm, holding parents legally accountable would mean accusing the vast majority of parents of child abuse.
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mkm
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Re: Should parents of obese children be held accountable?

Post by mkm »

If they force-feed them with junk, than yeah, they should. In usual scenarios though holding parents accountable is just pretending that they have much more control over their children bahaviour, than they have.
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Jebus
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Re: Should parents of obese children be held accountable?

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carnap wrote: Fri Apr 06, 2018 5:29 pmWith current science there is no meaningful way you can determine how much of a kid's obesity is related to his/her genes or the parents actions.

carnap wrote: Fri Apr 06, 2018 5:29 pm poor eating is something kids are likely to do to themselves, once a kid is school aged they will have the freedom to seek out junk food at school, after school, etc.
This is likely the defense that would be used in a court of law. However, both of these defenses would be largely invalid if the prosecutor could prove that the parents actually feed the child foods that are known to cause obesity.
carnap wrote: Fri Apr 06, 2018 5:29 pm holding parents legally accountable would mean accusing the vast majority of parents of child abuse.
It has already happened a few times, but yes I think legal liability should be broadened to include not only the most extreme cases.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-27730696
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PsYcHo
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Re: Should parents of obese children be held accountable?

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Jebus wrote: Fri Apr 06, 2018 5:07 pm Not knowing that obesity is harmful is at the same level of stupidity as not knowing that sexual molestation is harmful and if a parent of a young child doesn't take action or seek help I believe she should be held legally accountable.
Should we as a society judge them to be bad parents, and should we feel free to openly criticize them about allowing their ignorant(in the sense they know no better) children to gorge themselves? Absolutely. We're doing it here now.

Should they be held legally accountable? Absolutely not.

Ignorant people have unintentionally endangered their children in many ways . I could pull up stories of Vegan parents whose child almost/did die from an ignorance of proper nutrition.

Unless the parent is intentionally doing something to cause their child harm, no group of legislators should intervene in someone else's private life.

You make a law against allowing obesity, the opposite side makes a law against diets that may lack nutrients without supplementation, then a different side makes a law about criticizing someone who opposes one of those laws.....
Alcohol may have been a factor.

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carnap
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Re: Should parents of obese children be held accountable?

Post by carnap »

Jebus wrote: Fri Apr 06, 2018 10:12 pm This is likely the defense that would be used in a court of law. However, both of these defenses would be largely invalid if the prosecutor could prove that the parents actually feed the child foods that are known to cause obesity.
The prosecutor could never prove that. We don't have a good understanding of what is driving obesity but there is a clear genetic component to it. Whatever foods you think may promote obesity, you can find numerous kids eating them that aren't obese. So if the idea here is that its abusive to give kids foods that may promote obesity why single out the kids that are currently obese? Rates of obesity increase with age and many don't become obese until they are adults. Also the reasoning here assumes that parents have complete control over their children which just isn't the case unless you're talking about very young children. But in the very young its hard to judge weight, some babies are just really fat and lose the fat by 2~3 years old.

Furthermore there is no way to know what exactly a parent is giving a child.
I'm here to exploit you schmucks into demonstrating the blatant anti-intellectualism in the vegan community and the reality of veganism. But I can do that with any user name.
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