#664: Restaveks-Davis comments (fwd)

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: Karen Davis <kdavis@marygrove.edu>

    I simply must play "devil's advocate" here--even if many restaveks are
being abused, what is the solution? To disallow children from staying with
anyone except a legally adopting parent, who has gone through lengthy &
expensive bureaucratic procedures to adopt? And does that guarantee no
abuse? Do legal parents never abuse, neglect, starve, beat, or sexually
molest their children? If children are not going to school, is it "slavery"
or because school is not free, and the household truly cannot afford it? I
know several families in Haiti who are caring for children left by relatives
or friends who have died. As far as I can see, the children are not abused,
although they do carry water, wash dishes, help cook, etc., and are no
poorer than the family's "own" children. Are we instead to have children
living on the streets? Being taken in by pederasts? Living in vast
impersonal orphanages? Farmed out officially to "foster" families supposedly
overseen by the state? Here in the USA, after all, MANY abuse cases are
happening & even the billions of dollars & millions of workers in social
agencies are not sufficient to stop abuse, or even, it seems, to recognize
it when it is clearly occurring & repeatedly reported. 
    Instead of pouring funds into paying social worker salaries, why not
directly fund all caretakers of children & provide free schooling & medical
care & food stamps? Oh, too expensive? Well, so is a vast social services
bureaucracy. Let's not just emotionally react--or we will, as they say, toss
out the baby with the dirty bathwater.
Karen