Husband Of Mum Too Fat Too Look After Children ‘Can’t Eat’
FROM the Scottish social workers who brought you “Too stupid to be a mum and marry” – we learn of the woman too fat to be allowed to keep her baby.
To Scotland, once more, where a fat woman is giving birth by Caesarean section. Already the youngest of her six children, aged 3 and 5, have been removed from her care. Why? Because social workers feared that they were at risk of becoming obese.
But aren’t we all at risk of becoming obese, just as we at risk of being hit by a bus or sat on by an elephant?
The facts are these: mum, 40, weighed 23 stone before falling pregnant. Mum called the social workers. She wanted help with a child who had developmental problems. Her toddler weighed 4 stone. Her 13-year-old son weighed more than 16 stone. Her 11-year-old daughter weighed 12-stone.
And having invited the social workers in, things took a nasty turn.
Says dad, who is married to mum:
“I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. I can’t tell you how powerless I feel. The other children are devastated too.”
He can’t eat. Is the social workers’ plan working?
Dad (18st) was left “shocked and traumatised” by social workers coming into the labour ward and attempting to serve papers on his wife.
The parents want their children back. But the state won’t allow it. Dundee City Council offers this mealy-mouthed response:
“Local authorities who are involved in the welfare of children have a legal duty to ensure they are protected from publicity that may have a serious effect on them and the council takes seriously this responsibility. We have made it clear on numerous occasions that children would not be removed from a family environment just because of a weight issue.”
So why were they removed? Perhaps the council has already adopted the San Francisco view of ‘people of stature‘?
The family’s solicitor Kathleen Price says otherwise:
“It is very difficult for the family to get a fair hearing if the social workers have got it wrong. The [children’s panel] are very influenced by the social workers’ recommendations … The family is not being helped here, they have been systematically bullied and disempowered.”
And it‘s just got worse:
Sky News: “Seven children, including a newborn baby, have been taken from their overweight parents and put into care because of concerns over their welfare.”
Anyone remember when the fat were jolly and prosperous?
Jeffrey Friedman wrote in Newsweek:
The heritability of obesity — a measure of how much obesity is due to genes versus other factors — is about the same as the heritability of height. It’s even greater than that for many conditions that people accept as having a genetic basis, including heart disease, breast cancer, and schizophrenia.
And then this:
According to the [second] study, obesity and extreme obesity cause about 112,000 deaths per year, but being overweight was found to prevent about 86,000 deaths annually. Based on those figures, the net U.S. death toll from excess weight is 26,000 per year. By contrast, researchers found that being underweight results in 34,000 deaths per year.
Granted , it’s selective science, but it’s all the social workers have to go on…
Via Kate Harding.
Image: 1978 Whizzer And Chips annual – click to make fatter.
Posted: 22nd, October 2009 | In: Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
