The Legislative Assault on Parenting, Cont.

dickensian, debilitating, dark, damaging

Yesterday I wrote about new legislation in Washington that aims to sever children from their parents. Today I learned about a bill introduced this week in the California legislature that, brace yourself for a huge surprise, aims to sever children from their parents.

AB 665, introduced on Monday — amazingly, not by Scott Wiener, who let someone beat him to a piece of anti-parent legislation — makes it easier for “a minor who is 12 years of age or older to consent to mental health treatment or counseling on an outpatient basis, or to residential shelter services,” without parental knowledge or consent. Existing state law allows minors to seek counseling or shelter in the case of abuse at home, and allows mental health professionals to exclude parental involvement if “the involvement would be inappropriate,” so this bill isn’t about giving victims of incest and domestic violence a way out. Instead, AB 665 streamlines the removal of parents by dropping the connection between home-centered harm and secrecy:

Because the bill would allow for residential mental health treatment without parental knowledge or consent, its effects are a great deal like the Washington bill introduced last month: it incentivizes runaways, and gives them a state-funded avenue — allowing Medi-Cal to pay the bills — to hide from their parents.

The bill presents a series of declarations, and I encourage you to click on the bill text and read them all for yourself. Scroll down to Section 1, “The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:”, and read from there. The presumptions underlying the bill are that childhood is miserable and rotten, parents can’t help, and everyone needs professional therapy to survive. It’s a dismal view of human existence, centered on the “helping professions” as a savior class. Sample declarations:

(c) Less than 19 percent of low-income teenagers on Medi-Cal received screenings for depression and a followup plan in 2020. This is despite the reality that nearly one in three adolescents in California reported symptoms that meet the criteria for serious psychological distress.

(d) Less than 9 percent of Indigenous youth on Medi-Cal received a screening and plan, the lowest of any racial or ethnic group.

How is anyone supposed to get through childhood without mental health screenings and a therapeutic plan? Are they supposed to just, like, be twelve year-olds, without even having a bottle of Lexapro or anything?

The bill notes the alarming increase in teenage depression and suicidal ideation, without noting the decline of healthy behaviors and strong families. Children are all very depressed, now, so let’s give them an avenue to be parented less and transition to an identity as permanent mental health patients before they stop being tweens.

How can a child live a healthy life? Like this:

(g) Youth, especially youth of color, express significant trepidation about needing to disclose to parents their mental health concerns and their need to access services. Without access to a trained professional, youth report they turn to mostly free resources of mixed quality that they access without parental intervention or adult assistance, such as social media accounts and online videos.

A child can live a healthy life by accessing services, a path that’s most productively found outside the pathological misery of having moms and dads. You thrive in childhood because of “access to a trained professional.” Go outside and take SSRIs until the streetlights come on.

The progressive view of childhood is increasingly dark, and it increasingly creates its own darkness.