[2duct]

A monitoring solution might have worked for my case if my parents had monitored my Internet history, if they always made sure to check in on what I thought/felt from what I watched and made sure I felt secure in relying on them to back me up in the worst cases.

But I didn't have emotionally mature parents, and I'm sure so many children growing up now don't either. They're going to read arguments like these and say they're already doing enough. Maybe they truly believe they are, even if they're mistaken. Or maybe they won't read arguments like these at all. Parenting methods are diverse but smartphones are ubiquitous.

So yes, I agree that parents need to be held accountable, but I'm torn on if the legal avenue is feasible compared to the cultural one. Children also need more social support if they can't rely on their parents like in my case, or tech is going to eat them alive. Social solutions/public works are kind of boring compared to technology solutions, but society has been around longer than smartphones.

[ipaddr]

Should the state have force your parents to give you up for adoption? That's the social support the state can offer.

[Wobbles42]

This is the real point that needs to be made.

You can argue that many parents are less than ideal parents, but that is not sufficient to justify having the state step in. You also have to show that the state is less bad.

Decades of data on the foster system strongly suggests otherwise. The state, by any objective measure, is terrible at raising children.

[2duct]

I don't think it would have helped, given the outcomes for foster children are near universally worse except in the most extreme cases of abuse. I did threaten to call CPS but I was, of course, berated for it and threatened that I would be taken away, so that shut me up. Since I was never assaulted I doubt it would have reached the standard for foster care anyway, yet the consequences still endure to this day.

I was told over and over by in hindsight unqualified persons that emotional abuse wasn't real abuse, so after a few years I was disinclined to seek help.

If I had had even one person that supported me unconditionally instead of none at all, even if that person wasn't a parent, I'm fairly certain I would have turned out differently. That was just a matter of luck, and I came out empty-handed. I never felt comfortable talking about what I was exposed to online with anyone, and that only hurt me further, but I was a child and couldn't see another option.

[jama211]

So the only options are no support or give you up for adoption? No middle ground is possible?