Smoking, Junk Food and The Nanny State

An Australian mother has been banned by a court order from smoking near her young daughter, and banned from giving her junk food.   You can read the article here.

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Whilst I applaud the no doubt well-meant intentions of those responsible for the ban, and agree that the mother in question may not be the ideal parent, I wonder if we are going a bit too far in our intervention in peoples’ lives?

Most people have opinions on how children should be raised, even if they don’t have children themselves.  But to make proscriptions on parents’ minute-by-minute behavior is taking it too far.  For the record, I abhor smoking and agree that too much junk food can be detrimental to the health of a growing child.  I’d rather not see a mother bend down to pick up her infant with a cigarette dangling from her mouth and waving in the toddler’s face.  On the other hand, I don’t want to live in a Big Brother state, where every minor misdemeanour is seized upon by authorities and used to administer a public whipping.  Nor do I want to endure a Nanny State, where everyone else knows what’s best for me and I can’t make my own decisions about how to live my life. 

Sure, the mother in this article is an extreme example, and the other parts of her behaviour (not the smoking and junk food) really did warrant intervention.  But as an indication of state interference in our daily lives, it should probably serve as a warning.