Obesity and child custody: When, if ever, should the law intervene?
This week, a sad story out of Cleveland made headlines everywhere.
An 8-year-old Ohio boy, weighing more than 200 pounds, was removed from his mother’s home and placed into foster care. Social workers deemed that his weight — which is considered “severely obese” — was putting his health (and life) at risk, and that his mother’s inability to help him manage his weight constituted medical neglect.
“They are trying to make it seem like I am unfit, like I don’t love my child,” the boy’s mother, who was not identified, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “It’s a lifestyle change and they are trying to make it seem like I am not embracing that. It is very hard, but I am trying.”
This marks the first case in which the state removed a child specifically for a weight issue.
Lawyers representing the mother claim the boy’s removal was an example of the county overreaching.
“They say the medical problems he is at risk for do not yet pose an imminent danger,” writes the Canadian Press.
[See also: Trainer gains weight on purpose]
Ten years ago, in New Mexico, 3-year-old Anamarie Regino was temporarily removed from her parents' care because of her obesity. Doctors later determined that she suffered from a rare disease that caused significant weight fluctuations.
These American stories apply to Canadian families, too.
In the last 25 years, obesity in Canadian children has almost tripled.
Dr. Jean-Pierre Chanoine, a clinical professor at the University of British Columbia and head of endocrinology and diabetes at B.C. Children’s Hospital, told Postmedia News that he can recall at least one decade-old case in British Columbia in which an obese child was removed from the home.
Chanoine stresses that such a decision would be a last resort, as being separated from family is “traumatizing for the child.”
In Ontario, there are no known cases of weight-specific loss of custody thus far. Mary Ballantyne of the Children’s Aid Society says that social services would first attempt to rally around, and work with, the child and his/her family.
Only in extreme cases, in which families won’t meet the needs of a child or are actively working against those needs, would there be intervention.
According to Canada’s Department of Justice, child neglect, a type of abuse, is defined as chronic incidents of "failing to provide what a child needs for his or her physical, psychological or emotional development and well-being” and includes "failing to provide a child with food, clothing, shelter, cleanliness, medical care or protection from harm."
This summer, the Journal of the American Medical Association claimed that improper dietary practices should be considered neglect and child abuse.
Has the war against childhood obesity gone too far? Or is this sending the right message: parents need to make responsible decisions about the eating habits of their offspring?
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