Quick hit: the best interests of the child

Two articles in The Guardian today which bear some thinking about.

1. A study has been conducted which seems to suggest that if a child is abused, that child will do better in the long term if sie is removed from hir family and not returned.

That may well be what the study found. And the result certainly has the force of logic behind it: if a child is abused in a particular environment, the child will be better off not being in that environment.

However,

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A tribute to a mother

Rosalind Croucher is undoubtedly an influential, intelligent and highly-placed woman. She is currently the President of the Australian Law Reform Commission and before that, was Dean of Law at Macquarie University.

Justinian has profiled her this week.

Of note, the following quotes:

Who has been the most influential person in your life?
My mum – she’s amazing. She writes poetry and novels on any surface that will record her thoughts and can make a meal for a regiment out of whatever happens to be in the cupboard or fridge at that moment.

What is your greatest fear?
Heights and losing my mum.

What would your epitaph say?
I hope to earn this one: ‘She was so like her mother.’

Croucher is a mother herself, and acknowledgement of the influence of motherhood on her professional career is also clear in the profile.

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Amy Alkon was a perfect child, apparently

Shorter Amy Alkon: I didn’t get to scream in public when I was a child, so neither should anyone else.

SRSLY.

Of course, Ms Alkon is basing this on her recollection. I’m sure that, like most people, she doesn’t remember very much before the ages of 4 or 5, probably not daily events even after those ages, and I’d be fairly surprised if she didn’t do her share of screaming in public at age approximately 2. But even if she’s right and she never did, she clearly doesn’t understand the concepts of “community” and “family” and “parents having a life even when they have small children”.

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18th Down Under Feminists’ Carnival!

Welcome to the 18th Down Under Feminists’ Carnival! (And apologies for the delay.)

This Carnival has an optional caring theme, thanks to Australian Carers’ Week (which was October 18 to October 24). The theme for this year was “Anyone, Anytime, Across Australia”, which I modified to “Anyone, Anytime” for the purposes of the DUFC.

There wasn’t much sent in on theme, so I’ve expanded the DUFC rules just a little.

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“Why are maternal death rates remaining stubbornly high?”

Carolyn Hardy, chief executive of UNICEF Australia, in the SMH today:

Some half a million women die in childbirth each year around the world. The deaths are almost entirely contained to poor nations. It is estimated up to 80 per cent of these death are preventable.

Why are we failing? Why are maternal death rates remaining stubbornly high?

A key reason for this is patriarchal. It is the ”dark little secret” of poverty today. We too often ignore the discrimination that goes on in communities directed against girls. It is the equivalent of the glass ceiling in industrialised countries, but in developing countries it is deadly.

Today the face of poverty is a woman or a girl.

They are the least likely to be in school, the most likely to miss out on food or medicine. It’s been tagged the ”Cinderella principle” – the girl in the family only gets to go to school or to get medical treatment after everyone else has been looked after.

I would strongly recommend reading the whole thing.

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Perceptions of medical risk

Note: Thanks to Lauredhel for encouraging me to write this post; otherwise, it might have slipped through the cracks of “other priorities”.

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For various reasons – mostly because I seem to have a lot of friends who are doctors – I’ve had the opportunity to chat to a number of doctors, nurses and midwives about birth. Particularly topical at the moment is the home birth debate (as I’ve been drafting this post, I see that the government has announced that it will no longer be effectively prohibiting home birth, although it still won’t be supporting it).

All of the doctors with whom I have had the home birth vs hospital birth discussion have expressed a clear preference for hospital birth. This is not because they think hospitals are perfect – most of the doctors I know work in the (public!) hospital system, and are aware of at least some of the failures of that system. Similarly, the nurses and mid-wives that I’ve spoken to who work within the hospital system generally expressed a preference for hospital birth.

The reason for this near-universal preference is, I think, for two main reasons: (1) they spend more time with the births that go wrong (especially the doctors), and those stick in their minds, and (2) they are incredibly risk-averse.*

And fair enough, I say. However, I disagree with their assessment of risk.

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Out of the mouths of …

I’m not sure if I have enough of a readership to get a decent number of comments on this thread, but I’m going to try, as I think that this post is one that will benefit far more from comments than from whatever I might post.

My mother – who is pretty good about not sending forwards – sent me a forward with the text below.

I’m an atheist, and I was a bit irritated by the title and the first four questions. I don’t like the idea that questions like this reinforce the story that a god made people. Although that only really matters if this question & answer set up is real – I always doubt these things.

However, I left in the irritating title & first four questions for the sake of completeness, and also because I actually quite like the idea of people made out of string! But maybe that’s just me?

I’ll let you read it before I subject you to any more of my own thoughts (the emphasis is all mine, though):

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