My wife was one of these kids. She knew then (and I know now) how and why she tried desperately to get into a state program and away from her drug addict parents. Living in the desert, in a broken trailer, 2 adults and 2 children, only a water tank (reuse that bath water), miles of flat hard (or wet slick) brown dirt in 120 degree heat in every direction. No money, no radio, sometimes TV rabbit ears.

Begging for food from grocery store clerks as her parents bought beer and toilet paper inside, drugs outside. She grew up thinking they were derelict because of the drugs. As they got older and had to quit the drugs or die, she found they were just unfit people.

Lots of people in the world are unfit to care for the children, but the children often persevere and society absorbs the damaged alongside the deaths.

This colors my views of the world, as much as anything I experienced.

I got reduced price lunch for a significant part of my childhood.

My parents weren't bad. My mom was just impoverished. Our society does not pay people what they deserve. Our society pays people as little as possible. That leads to good, well meaning, and talented people who are nevertheless poor.

It's disappointing that there is such an automatic response to cover up for the parents who starve their children that people automatically dismissed your argument.

I have a problem with government stepping in to remove children from their parents but parents should definitely be blamed for their own child starving. I think all empathy should go to the child who is starving and significantly less to the parent who caused it (even if they are starving too, they are an adult and they have significantly more choices then a starving child)

It's a reductive one-liner from someone obviously unfamiliar with and disinterested in the problem space, and it's the kind of statement people familiar with and interested in the problem space hear so frequently that it sounds intentionally ignorant.

When you're reasoning outside of your own domain it's easy to get stuck in a "yeah, but why male models?" loop unless you listen to feedback.

That's very judgemental, assuming he's unfamiliar and disinterested.

A lot of people have their own detailed reasons for why things are happening that don't make sense when you zoom out and ask basic questions. E.g the children are already starving, all the nuance you are describing is based on the assumption that the children aren't already starving.