In the most general sense, what I was alluding to here was that "think of the children" stuff tends to be restrictive and authoritarian, subjecting kids to additional adult control in order to "make them safe."
In my experience, additional adult control can make kids safe, but it depends so completely on the character of the adult that codifying it into law has the opposite effect: it makes kids vulnerable to exploitation. It makes them used to being constantly surveilled, no privacy, being controlled all the time, and therefore sets them up perfectly to be groomed and abused as kids or as young adults.
On the other hand, what I tend to want for kids, and what they tend to want for themselves, is a degree of independence, confidence, and strength, to meet the world on their own terms. They need to be able to problem-solve and work things through on their own. They need to know when their boundaries are being encroached so that when it happens they can say no.
It's basically impossible for a court to foster these things (though admittedly the judge I practice in front of does Genuinely Try given the tools available) so often I'm like "but what if we just.... didn't intervene and let this child live their life"
Like... I am thinking of the children. I'm thinking of the vast majority of children exposed to violence, privation, and hunger, and abuse, and how it's not from the danger of the Stranger kind, but the people in their homes who the law has authorized to have every kind of power over them. And in the face of that, if someone is talking about library books, they are not about child safety, they are about child control.
