There is something uniquely infuriating with people that believe that devolving human civilization is the answer to all our woes, isn’t there? Sometimes they’re Luddites, sometimes simply isolationists and naturalists, but they always tickle a particularly derisive bone in my body. They sometimes call it “clean living”, opting out of the crutches of society to get back to basics, in some vain hope to avoid the ills that has festered in our civilization. Which, aside from their smugness would be fine, if it weren’t for them sometimes taking things a little bit too far.
Like, for example, when a Swedish couple nearly starved their two year old daughter to death.
The news hit the Swedish headlines in early April. A pair of “clean living”-parents had taken their lives off the grid. Eating what they made themselves. Shunning support and aid from Swedish social services and healthcare (which is free mind you) in order to raise their child “free from the machinery of society”. They birthed her in their home. Never visited any government facilities to conduct physical checks or vaccinations. And these people, in their self-vaunted expertise in dietary matters, raised their daughter without the awareness of one of the most organized societies in the western world.
Well, until the moment that they brought in their daughter to the emergency room where she was diagnosed with acute, life threatening malnutrition.
The parents are currently facing charges. They’re defending themselves, citing not a faulty diet, but a particularly nasty stomach bug, allergies, and perhaps some sort of autoimmune disease as the reason for their daughter nearly dying.
In police custody, the father was asked whether the girl had received some sort of food supplements.
“No, nothing like that”, he answered according to the report on the transcript. “Just sunshine, laughter, and hugs.”
To no great surprise, public opinion is incensed against the parents. But you know what? It is terrifyingly easy to disparage against people that strive to live outside the bounds of society. Even though, granted, it is a virulently privileged attitude to subject yourself and your freshly popped child to living conditions that haven’t been prevalent in Nordic society in over a hundred years, purely as a lifestyle choice. But credit where credit is due; it’s a ballsy move. Well, it was ballsy up until the point where they came running back to the Great Terrible State for help once their unsustainable living conditions nearly killed their daughter.
It’s not for naught that infancy death was sky high before the invention of vaccination, sanitation, and all those other little comforts that society has afforded us.
But, I’m not here to point and laugh and rage at the privileged “clean living” parents that nearly brought the death of their two year old daughter upon themselves. No, I’d like to examine another can of worms that this little charade has opened. Namely, at the end of the line, who owns the responsibility for this child?
One should assume it would be the parents, right? They’re responsible for her well being, no? Seems legit? Until the girl would reach the ripe old age of eighteen under the guardianship of her parents (which admittedly seems unlikely from the earlier cited report), they practically, for most intents and purposes, own her. The child is theirs to birth, and raise, and inadvertently kill. I mean, in many other cases, with older children and teenagers, parents seem to have the right to neglect, beat, mistreat, indoctrinate, and ruin their children. With government agencies such as social services, the cops, and schools not being able to do anything about the slow-rolling tragedy in motion. I’m referring to the many thousands of teenagers this country, and likely the world, around that slip between the cracks. That government facilities don’t give a shit about in lieu of equally non-shit-giving parents. That aren’t endearing enough to make the headlines. So, why not also let parents starve their child to death in its infancy?
It’d certainly be cheaper to let ’em die young than to let them become delinquents.
No? Parents don’t have the right to kill their children, inadvertently or otherwise? If they do, social services and the judicial system takes over, doesn’t it? The parents are placed behind bars, and they’re stripped of their right to govern their child. And if the government can strip the responsibility of raising a child from its parents, then it’s not much of a right, is it? It’s more of an… allowance. A license. Given to the parents by the state, pending the safety of the child. Which would seem to indicate that the government considers the child theirs to dole out wherever they see fit, isn’t that so? Theirs to ultimately care for.
Frankly, I’m not sure how I feel about a sovereign state that considers the children born within its borders its own to do with as it wishes. It smells something awful of the serfdom of old, does it not?
Yes, I can sense you getting all huffy over there! What’s the option, you ask once you’ve calmed down a bit? That the government aught let their subjects cause the death of their children, the future of the country, all through ignorance and a romanticised illusion of the living conditions of pre-industrialized society? Just like the anti-vaxxers of anti-intellectual America? Or am I arguing that the government shouldn’t protect children from abuse? What kind of a monster am I?
I’ll tell you what… I’m the kind of monster that think that these parents brought this tragedy upon themselves. I’m the kind of monster that think that no one should be surprised that their daughter nearly died, considering the child mortality of the days gone by that these parents strive to emulate. I’m the kind of monster that think that their idealism and romanticism is ill fitting with the responsibility of parenthood.
But I’m also the kind of monster that think it’s uncanny that a liberal, socialist, democratic government claims ownership over the children born upon its soil. And I’m the kind of monster that thinks that if a government claims the right to dictate how parents raise and feed their children, then it should also take as determined care of the many thousands of children and adolescents that wither away into suicidal depression, drugs, and crime under the tutelage of incompetent parents.
For I’m the kind of monster that thinks there’s not much difference between a malnourished two year old on the brink of death, and a teenager circling the drain between impotent schools and apathetic social services. The kind of monster that would like its nation state to take its disputable guardianship as seriously with all its children. Not just those that are cute and cuddly and not yet raging hormone monsters. I am the kind of monster that would like to see a little consistency.
/Sebastian Lindberg 30/4-2019
WastedWords 