Krijack,

You raise a separate but inter-related issue. Parental fitness, as in "fit to parent." Whenever the parent is unfit, the welfare of the child would be improved by removing him/her from the unfit parent and placing the kid elsewhere. But we only do that in extreme cases and generally permit people who are unfit to parent to freely breed and sorta' raise children. This gets at the "where do the rights of the parent (who is unfit) end and the rights of the child begin?" As a society we're still trying to figure out where to draw the line - Brave New World - style.

Sg