General

I only see this causing more problems with delinquency and other behavioral things. There's no way this will solve obesity though. They're just fooling themselves if they think that.

The problem is, there are a VERY few isolated cases of children being made ridiculously obese by parents with particular mental health issues. This is not the child's choice and obviously does cause health and psychological problems. Until Social Services can identify that any particular family is not toxic - as in causing significant harm - they tend to err on the side of caution these days. This is only in the TINY number of cases where there's clearly something very weird going on. There's no way the UK has the resources simply to remove any chubby or even obese kid - that doesn't happen.

Such a mental health issue would be completely unprovable. Any parent abusing their children in this way could always use the excuse of lack of cooking skills, nutritional knowledge, their children having a large appetite or aversion physical activity or being genetically predisposed to be heavy. Or any number of legitemate reasons that could explain their child's weight. The real problem is when child services start to look at all obese children as a potential victim of an extremely remote form of abuse. So remote that in a sample of 1000 obese children it would be highly probable that none were being abused in this way. All this does is cast undeserved suspicion on innocent parents who incidentally happen to have an obese child.



It occasionally does happen and I've heard the media suggesting that it maybe set to increase in frequency, even calling for it. But even if removal remains rare, investigation and ***essment of the parents capability could become common place.

The problem is that the idea that 'obesity in children is bad' is making its way into the collective subconscious. Someone: maybe child services, maybe obesity forums and institutes or possibly government departments, wants us to consider child obesity as a form of neglect and/or abuse. I don't know about most people but both of these ideas don't sit right with me. It's surely the opposite of neglect like an over-attentiveness or subserviance to their children. The same with "abuse", i think a lot of children being forces to eat the sprouts they detest or being allocated 1 chocolate bar per week would see things differently. Forcing children to adhere to a strict body image sounds far more abusive. I do not believe that all people should exist within a 70lb weight margin, allowing for height differences. To me anyone promoting such an idea is guilty of endorcing eugenics which is tantamount to fascism.

Again, welcome to the new United Nazi States of America.