alt Hacker NewsDamn. When I had a child in Germany, our version of CPS came over and told me what fun things the city offers for children and asked me about my plans for day care and how I can get help to get a spot.
I once called them because the day care lady of a friend‘s kid is a bit of an idiot and kinda scared us about mass closure of day care centers and it was probably the nicest interaction I’ve ever had with a government agency.
But from what I’ve heard, America in general is a whole other beast both regarding expectations for parents, trust in the kids and the trouble you can get in for minor things.
I wouldn't be so quick to equate differences in personal anecdotes with stark country-level differences (though it's plausible that everything is worse in America as usual)
I grew up in a low income neighborhood in the Netherlands and many times saw people be utterly terrified of CPS. In many cases these were households where outside help could've been really useful, but even in the worst cases where heavy CPS involvement was the only option (real "take the child away" cases), the child's situation often unfortunately hardly got better, just different. In less intense cases CPS involvement often just seemed to thrust a compliance burden on households without offering much real support, mostly just leaving people feeling guilty and stigmatized. Overall still better for them to exist than not, and budget cuts and restructuring really hurt the situation later, but still an organization with very real odds of making the situation worse, sometimes catastrophically worse.