I can imagine an argument for checking basic abilities of a parent for extreme cases, where the kid's life might be in danger (extreme psychiatric problems, drug addiction, sex offenders, etc).
This is completely different and fully dystopic, though. looking at Rorschach tests? cultural trivia like asking about mother Teresa? What is happenning in denmark that allows this process to exist?
I feel this part is also particularly damning:
>Like Zammi, her son was meant to have been taken away immediately after birth.
>But because he was born prematurely on Boxing Day and social workers were on holiday, she and her husband Ulrik got to keep him for 17 days.
So the state decides that the child is in enough danger to justify removal from their family. Let's say they truly, honestly believe this is a dangerous enough situation to justify the measure. It is then fine to leave the newborn with those parents for weeks due to scheduling conflicts?
Exactly my thoughts coming into the article.
Reading what was being tested, playing with dolls, trivia, and math problems. That's just insane. You need none of that to be a good parent.
The closest I could see to doing a test like that is if you wanted to administer a dementia test. You know, something that could actually get the kid seriously harmed.
There are cases when a state should take away a kid. But it should be because the kid is in danger, not because the parents can't pass a trivia game.
> There are cases when a state should take away a kid. But it should be because the kid is in danger, not because the parents can't pass a trivia game.
Really? Such as? Because if what you care about is the child, the child's future, even in absurdly extreme cases birth parents turn out to be better:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/05/980505092617.h...
And the closer the family bond, the better children fare. Which means "state care" is always the worst option. Unrelated foster care is the second worst option.
Study after study shows bad situations ... and always state intervention is the worst option. Take the child away when the parents are arrested? Or put the kid in jail too? Best option turns out to be ... let the kid stay in jail too.
Drug addicts refuse treatment? Best option for the kid? State care or just leave them? Best option turns out to leave them.
And even truly extreme: actual, bona fide abuse. Which in 99% of cases is the kid just being left home alone for too long btw. What is best? State intervention or leaving the kid there? Best is leaving the kid there.
Violence at home? Whether it's witnessing violence or actual victimization: best option is to leave the kid at home (and of course, often it's the state's fault, for example failing to protect a mother from an ex-husband)
Parents want to get rid of a child? Best option is to refuse to help.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that "the state should take away the child" should never be used as long as the parents or any family willing to help are even alive.
Because, study the system and you will quickly see how it really works. You will find foster care is only forced on the parents and the children. Foster parents want to get rid of a kid? Easy. A care home wants to get rid of a child? Even if the kid ends up on the street that's easy. Of course, nobody suggests changing that. In those cases, of course, the parents get punished, not "professionals" *. And, of course, child protection cannot be forced to care for a child through studies (but parents can). And so on.
* this, despite the fact that punishing the parents is often not possible. If the parents have nothing, what are you going to do. Of course, even if child protection or social workers are very much involved in the problems of the parents (e.g. the parents were foster kids themselves), they cannot be forced to deal with the consequences.
I generally agree.
I'm not saying that removing a child is something that should be done lightly or often. And preferentially, if it is done it's not permanent.
I'm saying there are extreme cases, such as a child being in actual danger of death, in which that's the only option.
> looking at Rorschach tests? cultural trivia like asking about mother Teresa?
Is that a part of their evaluation process? Good Lord.
Yup, it was in the article.
Some real eugenicsy vibes.
Another one: in the US, mothers suspected of drug use can have their baby's urine screened and then have the child taken away. Johnson's head-to-toe baby wash cross-reacted with the THC urine test and could cause false positives. Picking out which mothers to suspect and screen was probably full of racial and economic bias.
> What is happenning in denmark that allows this process to exist?
I would first ask what happened such that Denmark owns Greenland in the first place, because it's all part of the same process, same as this:
> Thousands of Inuit women and girls were fitted with an intrauterine device (IUD), commonly known as a coil, during the 1960s and 70s... it is unclear how many cases lacked consent or proper explanation.
> Among those affected were girls as young as 12, and several have stated publicly that they were not properly informed.
> cultural trivia like asking about mother Teresa?
In 2024. For most parents the correct answer would be "someone who died before I was born", but in the case of this particular mother it is "someone who died before I was a teenager".
I'm not sure it's ever been relevant cultural trivia for Denmark and is irrelevant to modern culture anywhere.
> What is happenning in denmark that allows this process to exist?
Surprised at your reaction. It is well known that several of the Nordics have historically have fairly questionable processes when it came to the indigenous people. Eugenics sounding processes given the euphemism word "assimilation process". The Sami people are still suffering from the legacy of these processes in Norway and Finland. This is no different than the Canadian whitening policy via cultural assimilation via one way adoption, one way intermarry, residential schools, etc. Australia had the same thing. Virtually, every colonised country where the colonised population wasn't wiped out right had similar processes on them.
I think people on here often have an overly rosy views of the Nordics due to the surveys ranking them as the happiest people in the world.
Let us remember that this is the same country that has guetto laws defined as places with less than 50% western people. And yes, the Danish word for "guetto" was in the official documents and it actually only got removed 4 years ago
Don't leave Sweden out of this. They only recognized Sami languages in '09.
Slippery slopes do exist. It’s not fallacious. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.
> Keira adds that "they made me play with a doll and criticised me for not making enough eye contact".
I didn't have the first idea how to even hold a baby before mine arrived. This test is insane and the psychologists involved should be imprisoned.
I had to stop reading half way through the article, what an outrageous and disgusting state policy. Denmark should be absolutely ashamed.
The psychologists doing what they're supposed to do should be imprisoned? Putting aside whether imprisonment is a sane punishment for something like this... why not the lawmakers that enabled this?
> the psychologist told her: "To see if you are civilised enough, if you can act like a human being."
This is not a foot soldier "just doing their job" ignorant of its rammifications. This is an educated, motivated person with transferrable skills who has chosen to enthusiastically engage in systematic oppression. This class of person is incompatible with society.
There are alternatives to imprisonment for people who rip babies from mother's arms in service of cultural erasure/eugenics, but I don't want to stoop to their level by advocating for them.
Why not both?
Because I don't think it's fair to punish these people for doing what the law says they have to do.
You're not supposed to obey unjust laws, you're supposed to organise resistance against them.
> Keira says the questions she was asked included: "Who is Mother Teresa?" and "How long does it take for the sun's rays to reach the Earth?"
I’ll be honest, I don’t know off hand how long it takes for sun rays to reach the earth.
What do these questions have anything to do with parenting and how can you determine if a parent is fit for parenting based on these irrelevant questions? It sounds crazy to me that your children may be taken away because you cannot explain random questions like that. We could just research it online with the children, for the children and I.
About as much as voter "literacy tests" used to have to do with whether you could read:
https://secure.splcenter.org/page/67431/survey/1
https://www.openculture.com/2024/10/take-the-near-impossible...
About 8 minutes - but yep it’s kind of a trivia fact.
My guess was minutes, and looking it up it turns out that's right (is that a precise enough answer though?), but I wouldn't have been shocked if it turned out to be seconds or hours. Fot some odd reason astronomical distances just haven't come up enough in my day to day life that this is something I have ready to go at a moments notice.
And I wonder if “one light-day” would even be accepted as an answer.
That's an incorrect answer. A light-day means "the distance covered by the speed of light in a day (24h)". The day length is related to Earth's turn speed, it's not related to its distance to the sun.
also, a light-day is a unit of distance while the question asked about time.
> And I wonder if “one light-day” would even be accepted as an answer.
Absolutely not. First, a light-day is a distance, not a unit of time. Second, Voyager 1 is almost 1 light day from the sun. The earth is approximately 0.5% of a light-day from the sun.
One light-AU would be more like it.
That sounds very similar to what happened in the USA where native children were taken from their families in a deliberate attempt to wipe out their culture, summed up by the phrase “kill the Indian, save the man.” Outrageous this is still happening in modern times, in a supposedly liberal democracy.
Exactly. It looks a lot like "Fitness for parenthood" is a pretext, where the real goal is to grief native Greenlanders. You just need some legitimate looking process (that you apply unequally) so you're not accused of discrimination. Tale as old as time...
Just to remind everybody, this is the country [whose politicians are] pushing chat control in the EU.
The worst part here is that the test isn't even in their native language...
This sounds like an intentional anti indigenous scheme. Note that this is in Greenland.
Not the only one either, unfortunately.
No, it is in Denmark. The stories are about Greenlanders living in Denmark.
It is not in Greenland. These are tests carried out by the danish child authorities on all parents deemed to potentially have issues fulfilling their roles as parents.
edit: Down votes for providing a correction? Alright.
> deemed to potentially have issues
How is this determined?
Which is the approval rate of the test? Let's made up 50%. Is it because the preselection is very accurate or because the test is unnecessary hard?
Would you volunteer to take the test if the consequence is that they will remove your children if you fail?
Even if everyone take the test, rich people will pay a trainer to prepare for the test. Like
fake quote> If you see [the main hero of Denmark] heroically removing the eyes of [most evil enemy of Denmark], then you should reply: Three flowers in a pot.
Perhaps the eyes removal makes no sense in the Denmark mythology, but just fill with a similar one. Here in Argentina, it may be "San Martin cutting people in half with his saber in San Lorenzo".
A possible to solution is that each day a random member of congress or minister or judge or king/queen/heirs is selected. If they fail, they get banned from any public position for 18 years (because taking away their children is too much for me). If the test is fair, they don't have anything to worry about.
People are down voting because "they test everyone" does not actually really respond to the allegation that it's anti-Indigenous, eg:
> When Johanne was asked in 2019 what she saw during a Rorschach test - a psychological test where people are asked what they see when looking at ink-blot images - she said she saw a woman gutting a seal, a familiar sight in Greenland's hunting culture.
> Johanne alleges that on hearing this answer the psychologist called her a "barbarian".
Using a Rorschach test here seems designed to make this "test" so subjective that anyone could fail it if the invigilators want them to. Inkblot tests? In 2019, to decide if someone's a fit parent? That shouldn't pass the laugh test. You don't have to be an expert to think that's an obviously bad idea.
This kind of thing has been routine in Canada for decades, too. For both children of Inuit and other First Nations.
I thought Canada stopped this after the Residential schools and other whitening practices were stopped. Mind elaborating?
There's plenty of ongoing abuses of the foster parent and social services system.
For example:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/first-nations-child-welfa...
"The payments are part of a $23.4-billion settlement for people removed from their homes on reserve or in the Yukon and placed in care funded by Indigenous Services Canada between April 1, 1991, and March 31, 2022."
Note the dates -- well after the residential school closures.
Or:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/41-20-0002/4120000220240...
"Indigenous children are vastly overrepresented among foster children in Canada. In 2021, Indigenous children accounted for 7.7% of all children under age 15 in the general population, but 53.8% of children in foster care (Statistics Canada, 2022).Note The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (2021) has reported on how this overrepresentation within the child welfare system is a legacy of the residential school system and a perpetuation of a history of colonial policies and practices that have separated Indigenous children from their families and communities."
The situation is especially bad in Manitoba.
https://globalnews.ca/video/11122619/1-in-2-manitoba-first-n...
This is by no means a past problem.
My first reaction was this has to be fake news. But no, it is real. Here's another story: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/world/europe/denmark-gree...
"Greenlandic children born in Denmark are five times more likely to be taken away from their parents compared with other children in Denmark."
> Keira says the questions she was asked included: "How long does it take for the sun's rays to reach the Earth?"
what happens if a parent answers that they believe the Earth is flat?
- [deleted]
This is Colonialism, pure and simple and US Soldiers have to "protect" the authorities responsible for this abuse of native Americans by european settlers. Greenland should be taken away from Denmark and these Mothers should get their kids back.
The mothers are in Denmark. Changing colonial master for Greenland wouldn't change anything.
We had this in Australia. It was called the Stolen Generations, and it was horrific.
Can they not go in front of the court? I mean to grow up by their own parents is a child right.
I can't even imagine what I would do to a government trying to take my children.
The french had some inspirational methods.
Imagine growing up as a foster child because your parents failed a pseudo-scientific biased psychology exam mandated by danish government to test parenting abilities. Another chapter on the dark side of psychology history. I hope Denmark will be sued for breaking human rights laws.
If the response of "barbaric" to a woman seeing a seal being gutted in a Rorschach test is at all indicative of the attitude of the testers, then not just pseudo-scientific but outright ignorant and racist too.
This isn’t even pseudo science.
What was described in the article sounded more like answers to questions on the game show Jeopardy.
And not even in their native tongue :(
Is this a textbook case of Fatal Conceit by the Danish Government?
It's a textbook case of colonial racism.
Absolutely disgusting. This is just plain evil. Absolute stain on Denmark society
> Defenders of the tests say they offer a more objective method of assessment than the potentially anecdotal and subjective evidence of social workers and other experts.
> But critics say they cannot meaningfully predict whether someone will make a good parent.
1) If that is a problem, then just shut the child protection agency. Because subjective evidence of social workers and other "experts" ALSO cannot meaningfully predict that (besides, we all know what education social workers get, ie. 6 months of legendarily easy theory with zero tests. There are barely any psychologists "in the system" and psychiatrists ... well, has anyone seen any at all?)
2) I find it baffling the real issue is never discussed. What fundamentally matters is whether the situation of children in government care, with the help of social workers and other "experts", is better than children abused at home. Is that the case?
NO, it isn't!
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3135630/
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/shared/ods/documents?PublicationDoc...
and most dramatic:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/05/980505092617.h...
Study after study shows the same pattern. Again, and again, and again: even abusive birth parents or absent ones or addicts or ... with AND without any help (including the ones that refuse help) are better caregivers than "professionals". And that's ignoring the real, horrible, problem.
The real problem is that children who get abused generally become abusive themselves. This causes professionals to refuse these children, because they cannot deal with such children, and even if they can, they get stronger, smarter and sneakyer every year, while professionals don't. Of course, they do need children, otherwise not even the most absurd politician will let them keep their job.
So ... they are regularly accused of "filling beds". Which essentially means foster care is full of children who don't need or want foster care AND children who do want foster care can't get or stay in the system.
This is why obvious, simple rules that would force the system to work for children aren't allowed to exist. For example, above a minimal age, say 8 years or even 12, you could say that without agreement from the child they cannot be kept against their will. If such a rule exists, you can just shut child protection since almost no children will choose child protection, and those that do will be the worst ones the system doesn't want.
taking kids from parents should almost never happen. Every family should be able to raise their kids as they wish.
I can only see a couple cases of clear abuse where this should happen.
But intelligence should NEVER be a reason to take kids from parents.
This is so dystopian. Next step is to take your kids if you don't have the right opinions or political views?
The same awful stuff happens here in Canada.
Beyond the (in)famous and awful situation with the history of residential schools, there's been a decades long (ab)use of the social work & family services sector to demolish indigenous family structures among First Nations in Canada.
e.g. https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/first-nations-child-welfa...
Or just read anything written in the last couple decades by Cindy Blackstock (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Blackstock)
Often it starts with seemingly well meaning social workers dealing with actual real risks of harm to children in communities with high rates of poverty and alcoholism and domestic abuse on account of centuries of problems... but the bureaucracy gets used in terrible and insensitive ways. And in the end children get taken from their parents and put into foster care, ripped away from their culture, language, history.
This is nothing but a disgusting vestige of old school European colonialism. Greenland should declare independence and kick Denmark out.
- [deleted]
This is reprehensible, but I can't help but wonder if the fact that we're reading about this is related to the recent rhetoric about Trump "liberating" Greenland.
Unlikely: stories about Danish treatment of Inuit girls, women and mothers have been in the English-language press for a few years, eg:
Ah, good to know, thanks.
If this is true it takes Greenland from someplace not worth worring about to something we should want. Though even then I think Canada is better placed to take over, and ending the Whisky war (then I double checked and turns out that ended a couple years ago...)
Note this is not about what happens in Greenland, it is about Greenlanders living in Denmark.
As a Canadian I can tell you we've done all the same things to our Inuit and First Nations generally, and probably often worse. And I imagine there's similar crap in Alaska.
FWIW my parents did a trip up to Baffin Island and then across to Greenland briefly some years ago. They said the living standards of the Inuit on the Greenland side were immediately and obviously much better. Better housing, infrastructure. They shared their photos.
That's not to say the Danish are saints. They are implicated in the same kind of colonial shenanigans as Canadian settlers.
In any case the US has no business there.
There does need to be stronger trade links between Canada (and the US probably) and Greenland. Canada only just now opened a consulate there for the first time in history. Same with cultural and linguistic links, I would expect as well.
I was watching an interview with a Greenlandic politician and he was pointing out how right now all trade between Canada and Greenland goes through Denmark first and then to Greenland. Which is preposterous considering proximity. Canada has a free trade agreement with the EU, and therefore Denmark and therefore Greenland, but the physical trade infrastructure is inadequate.
Note Greenland is not in the EU. (External territories of EU countries can decide whether or not to participate.)
Ok, sure, but presumably tariffs on goods traded into it through Denmark from Canada would have the EU-Canada tariff (or non-tariff) policy applied?
Note: this is not in 1970. This is now? What the absolute fuck?
A parenting test? Wtf?
[dead]
What a horrific nightmare. This is what happens when you let government grow and grow and grow. It keeps finding new things that sound like good ideas, but there's no way to rein it back in when it gets out of hand.