Parents who don’t love their children should not be criminalised
By Max Wind-Cowie
Under the terms of the proposed ‘Cinderella law’ parents could face up to ten years in prison for ‘emotional neglect’.
You can’t legislate for love. Sad though it may be, frustrating as it often is, whether or not we love one another isn’t something that can be written into law. It is ironic that our society – which allows for quickie divorces and which just this weekend conducted gay weddings for the first time – should be so blind to this simple fact. We subscribe to a dogma of ‘what the heart wants’ when it comes to the coupling and, to borrow a phrase, ‘conscious uncoupling’ that we see about us. And yet, when it comes to people’s relationships with their children, we’re unable to follow our own logic. Instead we try to regulate for feelings.
So it is that our Government, in what it clearly considers its infinite wisdom, wants to enact a ‘Cinderella law’. Under the terms of the proposed legislation parents could face up to ten years in prison for ‘emotional neglect’. We’re not talking about beating or starving your children – this is judicial intervention for parents who have failed to love their kids adequately.
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Under the terms of the proposed ‘Cinderella law’ parents could face up to ten years in prison for ‘emotional neglect’.
You can’t legislate for love. Sad though it may be, frustrating as it often is, whether or not we love one another isn’t something that can be written into law. It is ironic that our society – which allows for quickie divorces and which just this weekend conducted gay weddings for the first time – should be so blind to this simple fact. We subscribe to a dogma of ‘what the heart wants’ when it comes to the coupling and, to borrow a phrase, ‘conscious uncoupling’ that we see about us. And yet, when it comes to people’s relationships with their children, we’re unable to follow our own logic. Instead we try to regulate for feelings.
So it is that our Government, in what it clearly considers its infinite wisdom, wants to enact a ‘Cinderella law’. Under the terms of the proposed legislation parents could face up to ten years in prison for ‘emotional neglect’. We’re not talking about beating or starving your children – this is judicial intervention for parents who have failed to love their kids adequately.
read more