Introduction

In the United States, most of the states have a child protection agency responsible for handling issues related to child neglect and abuse. It is known as Child Protective Services though some states use different names. They often use names which are more inclined towards family-centeredness rather than child-centeredness. Some refer it to as the Department of Social Services. The agency intervenes in child abuse cases that have been reported to ensure that the well-being and safety of the children are promoted. When it is proven to be safe, the children can be allowed to stay in their homes, but when found in risks environments they are provided with a safe one. The CPS workers are trained to be able to assess situations and establish whether they pose a danger to a child or not. Their actions are guided by standard policies which have been set based on the rules of the land.

The Glass Castle, written by Jeannette Walls,is a memoir about her early experiences with her family. The book gives an account of the struggles that the Walls family went through during the time that Jeannette and her three siblings were growing up. The family was mainly nomadic, moving from one part of the city to another probably because of the numerous debts that the parents had accumulated, and the parents were often dysfunctional with atypical priorities despite the need to take care of their four children. Notwithstanding the betrayal from her parents, Jeannette was able to go against all odds and got out of the condition in an astonishing triumph (Walls 45). This paper will examine the case of Walls family and discuss why the children should have been taken away from the parents by the Child Protective Services for a better environment which would support them comfortably.

The Good and the Bad of Walls; andwhy Child Protective Services

The parents of Jeannette were on and off in different occupations, with the mother preferring her art to teaching which seemingly had better prospects. The father had been an engineer but also lost his job hence supporting the family became hard. All the same, the family is relatively happy, and the children have hope of a better future. Battling with so many debts, the family moves to the cities of California and Arizona several times so as to evade the creditors. It is one of the primary weaknesses that this family has. The children would grow up believing that the best solution to debts is avoiding repaying them by relocating often. The parents should have been responsible enough to take only the loans that they could be able to repay to prevent this drama. The children can be adversely affected by this nomadic behavior. They could easily get confused in between the different environments and fail to gain some essential growing values and it can later have negative impacts on their lives (Walls 51).

Jeannette’s father, who is often drunk, poses another challenge to his children. He is always not there for his children, implying that he often neglects his role as a father. He has battled with the alcoholism to an extent of once tying himself to the bed to avoid the temptation of going out to engage in the drinking activities. It has significantly affected the family since he loses his job and cannot support them because of the lack of funds. Worse still, he drains all the money that his wife earned from a local school that she was teaching. The children suffer so much from the lack of sufficient food and clothing despite the continued hope for a better future. When they finally settle in their late grandmother’s house, their hope is rekindled but soon the money that had been left behind by the grandmother is misused, and they get back to poverty. The education of the children is often disrupted because of the constant movement from one location to another (Walls 58).

As discussed earlier, the role of the Child Protective Services is to ensure that children whose lives are exposed to risky situations are taken care of and given the necessary environment. The Walls children deserve such an offer. The conditions in the family didn’t support a healthy living and continued exposure to the circumstances could hinder the average growth of the children and hence lead to the development of severe complications in their later lives. Children need a stable environment where they can establish their relations with friends and other children, and where they can start schooling. However, the rapid movements of the Walls family make it difficult for the children to enjoy this stability. They end up becoming nomads while the parents don’t seem to care about their well-being. The habit of relocating from one place to another can also pose achallenge to the health of the children since any new environment will demand the generation of new body adaptation features.

Counter Arguments

Some can say that the kind of life that the parents exposes to the children is good for hardening and educating the children on the challenges that they are likely to face in their later life when they out there on their own. Admittedly, a hard life is good for learning lessons on how to face difficult situations. Having so many experiences to learn from, the children could be able to become better individuals in the future and understand how to persist even in the most challenging circumstances. Moreover, the children can be able to establish where the parents went wrong, how they failed to act, and what they should have done to avoid making the same mistakes. Thus, in that way they can grow to be responsible children. Also, it would not be an easy task for the Child Protective Services to get a family or an environment that could comfortably sustain all the four children. Normally, taking care of up to two kids is quite manageable, but four is quite a big number. The four children would better stay with their parents despite the little food available since they are not too desperate to develop hunger-related complications (Walls 74). Nonetheless, it should be noted that the situation that the children face is not easy to handle as they are often left on their own to work their way out. Leaving them under the care of the poor parents would give them not only malnutrition but also psychological abnormalities. Furthermore, the nomadic life is not good for the very young children.

Works Cited

Walls, Jeannette. The glass castle: A memoir. Simon and Schuster, 2006. Print.

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Posted on May 14, 2016Author TutorCategories Question, Questions