ok here's a tough one to ponder ..

[frenchy]

i just saw somethin on pbs the other day .. it seems that the kids of mafia families are pretty much doomed to go into the family business weather they want to or not , so a judge in southern italy decided he had to break the cycle .. so his solution was to remove the kids and move them to another part of the country and put them in foster homes .. so far this is still new so no stats on how successful it will be or not but if it is would you support somethin like this in this country ?? say a kid is bein raised in a gang atmosphere and you know his chances of gettin out are slim would you support leislation that would remove the kids from that kinda toxic atmosphere ?? and move him so far away he can't keep in contact with all the criminal element that can only doom him to a life of sorrow and regret ?? 

awhile back bill oriley said somethin in the midst of the zimmerman trial when black people wanted to have some kinda dialogue on racial justice and it pissed a few people off .. and what he basicly said was the fatherless homes contributed to this problem .. or the fractured lifestyles .. i thought he had a point to a degree which was a sort of shock to me cause i don't usually agree with him .. but a point i made was if you look at homes where the dads were positive influences the kids were so much more likely to become successful adults .. in homes where the dad is a doctor or a lawyer there's a good chance the son might also be a doctor or a lawyer .. not 100% but a lot higher than a dad who's a plumber .. but even there if the dad is a plumber there's still a higher chance the son might be too .you gravitate towards what you're taught and know ..my point was some kids need mentors .. if they don't have good role models they need mentors .. and while i think moms are important too one of the things the italian judge said was even the mothers of the mafia sons fought to keep their kids even tho they knew they would end up in the family business someday .. so how many mothers here would do the king solomon thing and give up their child to see it get a better chance ?? 

there's no right or wrong answer here .. me personally i'd rather see my child go to a foster home where they would give him a better shot in life then keep him in a toxic enviroment .. but i'm not sure if thats the right thing to do .. we all think nobody can love our kids like we can ..but love is not what i'm talkin about here .. i'm talkin about survival .. in chicago they are shootin each other daily .. kids shootin kids cause they looked at each other wrong .. how do you break that cycle ?? not by keepin them in that enviroment thats for sure ..

whew ... this was a long one huh .. so what do you guys think ??? 

[dwalt]

Well I wouldn't want to "foster" one of those kids.  You could become dead...

[Wayne Goodwin]

It's not happining just in Chicago , it's happining all over . I really don't see where it would help much Kid's may or may not follow in there parents foot prints . I would hope they reach for the stars and make something of themselves . Onside of right not wrong .

[Lifesighs]

I think most mafia dads are good family people, their lifestyle may be as a crook however in my opinion a lot of lawyers are complete slimeballs and not very good dads either. The kid should stay with the family who loves him, it's like royalty you're born into it. Is it harder to be a prince than a mafia kid?

The other thing is a lot of the mafia guys have legit businesses, they educate the kids and let them run those businesses because they don't want the kids to be part of the life they've lived.

I'm sure there are some kids who try to escape the life they grew up in and succeed. I don't trust the court system or the foster care program. It may be ok for some but I've seen too many who are abused in that situation.

[frenchy]

well the show i saw made a point of sayin just how violent these mafia families were and that by the time most of the kids were 17 or 18 they had already killed somebody .. but thats the family business .. murder inc... i guess i didn't make that point clear enough .. these kids were pretty much doomed to a life that was nothin like the king or queen .. and you don't get the chance to walk away from the mafia .. once you're in you know too much to get out .. and in italy it wasn't voluntary to take the kids .. they just labeled the parents as unfit and took the kids .. i agree that they shouldn't be able to take your kids on a whim .. but if they had no shot at gettin out any other way , sometimes you have to do somethin drastic to break the cycle .. when you see all the gun deaths in places like chicago and detroit and washington dc it makes you wonder gee what can really be done to curb this ?? i really don't know .. would this work ?? i don't know , but what we're doin now ain't workin either .. but anything to break the cycle would be better than doin nothin at all .. 

[crestofwaves]

The government tried to "civilize" the native Americans by forcibly taking them from their families and sending them to live in boarding schools and there were lots of suicides as a result, but some of the kids did well.  I don't know if it's good to have the government do that, however, getting the kids out of a bad environment is a wonderful idea.  Touch one!

[Wayne Goodwin]

There are few things government does right ...

[T2Friends]

And Wayne, that is just not true.  Government is not perfect, since it is in fact made up by humans who are also not perfect, but government does a lot of things right, just not perfect.  And in this day and age what is perfect?  

[T2Friends]

And that is a rhetorical question so there is no need to respond.

[T2Friends]

Wow, this slope is very slippery.  Children that are born into poverty could also be doomed, should the same solution apply there?  I mean after all, this issue  - abject poverty costs governments, city, state, county, federal,  a great deal of money over the lifetime of that child and family  whether there is direct assistance or not to both the child and the parents. So if you took the children away from parents that are poor you would really be saving the state a lot of money over time and giving them (the children) a better chance in life.  Sounds good doesn't it?  If that is the real goal - helping the children, wouldn't it be better to tackle the problem of poverty rather than punish the parents and children with seperation?  I don't care what anyone says, having the courts rip children away from their families for any reasons like that is not a good solution.  It is a way of diverting attention away from the fact that the law and society have been unable to deal with the real problem - poverty or the mafia or drug use or what ever the issue might be.  

There is a word for this kind of approach, "obsa-something-or-other"  and O'Riely and his ilk are masters of it.  This is not a solution for this kind of problem.  Just think for a minute how it works when foster care IS the only option, children being abused.  It isn't a great solution then either, the impact on the child is carried with them for life...

But then this is just my opinion.  

[frenchy]

its a good opinion t .. and you are right .. it is a slippery slope .. where do you draw the line if you were to step in .. or not .. i realize that doin somethin can be just as bad as doin nothin sometimes .. and doin nothin can be 10 times worse than doin somethin too sometimes .. and like i said i don't really care for oriley all that much .. but even a blind squrill will find a nut every once in awhile .. 

[crestofwaves]

It's dangerous to capitulate to this no matter how good it sounds on paper.  It could start an avalanche.  Someone might think that foreign babies need to be placed with "American" families or babies of people who are not high achievers should be placed with smarter families.

If something like this ever came to pass, I would hope it would be community based, not government based.  It makes me think of the book Anthem where kids were placed in homes from birth according to the social class the government thought they should be in.

The kids might survive better in another environment, but unless they are being abused in their own homes, I think it's a bit harsh to remove them.  Mafia families seem to have one kid that becomes a cop, one who becomes a priest, and the rest are up for grabs.

I watched the entire series called The Wire about the drug culture in Baltimore. It was on HBO for years but I watched marathon style.  And I thought many times, "Just get these kids away from this place." 

I still don't have an answer on this. Just thinking out loud.

[blithe spirit]

This was an idea that gained some traction in the early 1900's as a possible solution to the getto type environments with the crime and poverty in the large cities...social engineering. There were groups often times connected to different churches and they would get permission from the parent to take the children to other locales with the idea to provide a better opportunity for them..don't remember reading too much about good things that resulted...happens quite a bit in third world countries now...with the promise of taking the kids to the US for a better life...now we would call it human trafficking. Orphanages...foster care..we don't have a good record of child protection.
I remember back in 60's I remember reading about a plan of trying to match a family from poor circumstances with another family as a type of family mentoring...moving families from a totally different environment to another..
When you start deciding what is best for others...the devil is always in the details.