One of the most telling things about the misguided nature of CPS and its investigators and their attacks on families is found in the "stock" questions they ask children in the course of their investigation. They will ask children if they are afraid of anyone. The question will, of course, vary, as there is the very distinct possibility that little Johnny acted up on the way to the interview and knows that discipline will await him once he returns home.
A child's indication of fear is not necessarily an indication of abuse. Although a child observed over time who is consistently fearful of his/her parents may be an abused child, such a judgement cannot be made through casual observation. If my fifteen year old child swipes the family car, gets in a high speed chase with the police and wrecks the car, they damn well better be afraid of the consequences. If they're not, I haven't done my job as a parent.
The presence of fear is often an indicator solely of the presence of authority. If a police car pulls up behind you and flashes the lights, your heart will race, and you will have a fearful reaction. That's natural, even if you've done nothing wrong, and even though, in all likelihood the stop is likely to result in little more than the issuance of a piece of paper unless you KNOW you've done something wrong, or your face happens to resemble a police sketch of a serious crime suspect. While certain reactions can indicate the illegitimate use of authority, other signs of abuse are often present to accompany the declaration of fear.
Too many times, I have seen parents whose children were ruined by the system, who, even though their parents were found to be innocent, come home asserting all the authority by telling their parents, "you can't spank me or I'll call the cops and you'll go to jail", or similar threats against legitimate parental authority. The teenage years are hard enough for a parent to handle without being emasculated by a system that effectively revokes all parental authority by giving children an automatic appeal of every decision. Is this weekend's curfew too early? Call the social worker! Need a raise in your allowance? Call the social worker! Don't want to eat your broccoli? Call the social worker! While my parents genuinely needed help in their parenting skills, they were not helped by the fact that we, as children, could veto every decision they made with the threat to call the social worker. If they took the social worker's card away from us or denied us phone privileges to make the call, that was a BIG TIME no-no!
The increased oversight that government has (illegally) given CPS has effectively ensured that millions of children will age out without real, effective parental guidance. Children do not have the capacity to make a number of decisions for themselves, and should not be given the authority to do so. And no social worker, no matter how well meaning, can make a sound decision on the quality of parenting based on the limited criteria they have at their disposal. So many factors, including the culture and religion of the parents, the needs and disabilities of the parents and/or the child, rural or urban settings, economic background, and others come into play that it is literally impossible for someone not schooled in all of these areas to truly know and judge whether or not a parent is a "good parent" to any meaningful degree. And that is why the state should not even try. Serious cases of abuse or neglect can be identified and should be dealt with with the full force of the law. But those cases are an infinitessimally small number of the cases that CPS actually deals with, and should be handled instead, by law enforcement, who are actually trained in proper evidence gathering techniques.