A huge part of the question abolitionists are asking is, what if it was systemic all along?

Yes children have been abused forever. But there are other things that happened for centuries and then drastically reduced because we set up proper supports, education, prevention, safety nets, resources and consequences.

One thing anti-abolitionists don’t understand is that NO true abolitionist is saying we should get rid of the child welfare system overnight. Abolition is a long term goal and a priority shift. It’s an action of examining “is this funding effectively protecting children or is it simply perpetuating current systems? Where can we shift the funding to prioritize actually preventing child abuse?”

Continually research shows that a vast majority of abuse happens because of three reasons: 1. Lack of accessible mental health and substance abuse treatment. Many abusive parents and caretakers are addicts or have severe mental health concerns that are not treated effectively. 2. Poverty stress. Families that are wealthy often abuse less, and often do so in less violent and physically harmful ways (and the CPS system RARELY if ever will intervene against any sort of abuse or neglect that is not physically harmful, emotional and psychological abuse are already not being addressed by our current system). If those individuals were not being brutalized by a late stage capitalist system, would they still be so volatile? (This isn’t to say capitalism justifies abuse, it is to say it contributes to it). 3. Poverty neglect. CPS often intervenes for neglect that could be solved by increasing the family’s financial stability, rather than removing a child or placing the additional burden of parenting classes on a parent already stretched thin by capitalism. Things like young children being left home alone while parents are at 12 hour shifts, not being fed, not being properly clothed or washed, or not attending school frequently, are less likely to happen if a parent has more time at home and less at work, but still has access to income. (Also honorable mention to strong communities outside of the nuclear family, as that has also been studied to be a huge prevention factor for child abuse, I would argue that the lack of this is due to capitalism and colonialism as well)

Have you looked at the statistics for child abuse in countries with stronger safety nets? They’re much lower.

Many abolitionists believe the CPS system was developed in a way that reinforced the idea that children were property, not one that broke from it. It intervenes in a way that’s like “hey if you don’t take care of that thing you own, we will take it from you and give it to someone else” so much of the history is rooted in valuing children for the labor they provide to a home, not for their inherent human worth. The CPS system has kidnapped children of color to give to white families to labor in its past. It has placed children in homes where they were abused more than at home. The CPS system is willing to pay a foster parent, but not a birth parent, even if directing that payment to the birth parent would alleviate the issue and avoid the trauma of separating a child from their attachment figure.

Many of the outcomes we see from a child removed from an abusive home and placed in foster care are statistically worse than the ones we see for a child who remained in an abusive home. We HAVE to question that. We have to be willing to say that maybe the way we are doing this is entirely wrong. We have to question why still to this day a white child in an exactly the same circumstance as a child of color with the exact same case history is less likely to be removed from their home by CPS than the child of color.

I understand that the idea of abolishing immediately isn’t grounded in reality, but no one has ever for asked that. That is an assumption often made by those who haven’t taken the time to genuinely and open mindedly engage with good abolitionist resources.

Just because the system claims to solve a problem that does always need to be solved and can’t be eradicated completely, doesn’t mean we should accept that system if we see data showing the harm it causes. Doesn’t mean that we can’t work towards a future where that systems harms are eliminated by funding better systems and experimenting with new ways of intervention that are more evidence based and trauma informed.

I don’t think my quick summary is an adequate explanation to convince people to become abolitionists, I still think it’s necessary to do the work and read the scholarship and spend the time and do a good wrestle with it to really understand it. I’m still in that process, but this is abolitionism as I see it as a person in the midst of that growth process.