Self-Defense & Violence Prevention Blog

Many questions have come up about what qualifies as child abuse.

For example, some people have advocated making it illegal for parents to smoke cigarettes in a car with a child, at least with the windows down. Namely because of the very harmful health effects of secondhand smoke, some people see it as child abuse to make children secondhand smoke by smoking in a car.

In another example, many people wonder about when it qualifies as child abuse to let a child become morbidly obese. At what point of extremity does neglecting or enabling a child’s unhealthy eating habits become abusive?

I think we have no black and white answer. I think we need to look at the specific situation in any case to determine whether or not that specific case qualifies as child abuse. More importantly, when judging a parents’ relationship with their children, we have to consider the whole relationship. Generally, we can not judge it based solely on one factor such as whether the kid has become obese or whether the parent makes the child secondhand smoke. We also have to look into how else each parent treats their children. The one action may or may not represent a pattern of neglectful or abusive parenting.

I avidly want to stop child abuse, but I also worry about trusting the government to micromanage people’s lives and parenting methods.

What do you think? Do you consider it child abuse to make a child secondhand smoke? Does it qualify as child abuse to let a child become morbidly obese?