Australia

The Stolen Generations in Australia involved Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children,^[2][3] where over 60 years from 1910, it is estimated that as many as a third of Aboriginal children were taken from their families.^[4]

Canada

In Canada, the Canadian Indian residential school system involved First Nations, Métis and Inuit children, who often suffered severe abuse.^{[5][6][7][8][9]} The Sixties Scoop is a period when Canadian child welfare agents had the authority to take indigenous children from their families for placement in foster homes so they could be adopted by white families.^[10]

China

As part of the persecution of Uyghurs in China, in 2017 alone at least half a million children were forcefully separated from their families, and placed in pre-school camps with prison-style surveillance systems and 10,000 volt electric fences.^[11]

Poland

In German-occupied Poland, it is estimated that 200,000 Polish children with purportedly Aryan traits were removed from their families and given to German or Austrian couples,^[12] and only 25,000 returned to their families after the war.^[13]

South Sudan

Among nomadic groups, particularly the Murle people, children are abducted in raids against other tribes to be raised as their own. The practice is thought to be intended to increase the tribe's numbers.^[14] This includes the 2016 Gambela raid and 2017 Gambela raid.

Spain

Hispanic eugenics was pioneered by psychiatrist Antonio Vallejo-Nájera who proposed a link between Marxism and intellectual disability, leading to the thefts of many Spanish newborns and young children from their left-wing parents.^[15]

Ukraine

In April 2023, the Council of Europe voted overwhelmingly, with 87 in favor, 1 opposed, and 1 abstention, to deem the "deportations and forcible transfers of Ukrainian children and other civilians to Russian Federation or to Ukrainian territories temporarily occupied" as an act of genocide.^[16]

Abusive parents

Separating children from parents is most commonly used today for parental abuse of children.

Single mothers

From the 1950's to the 1970's in the anglosphere, babies were frequently taken away from unmarried mothers without any other reason simply because unmarried mothers were considered unsuitable parents, in what was known as the baby scoop era.^[18][19] In 2013, the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard apologized for the forced adoption in Australia of babies born to unwed mothers that occurred mostly in the twentieth century.^[20]

Parents in poverty

In Switzerland, between the 1850s and the mid-20th century, hundreds of thousands of children mostly from poor families, as well as single parents, were removed from their parents by the authorities, and sent to work on farms, living with new families. They were known as contract children or Verdingkinder.^{[21][22][23][24]}

Parents belonging to minorities

A 2023 report from the South Australian Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People warned of a new "stolen generation" finding Aboriginal children were increasingly being removed from their families with every other Aboriginal child in South Australia being subject to a one child protection notification in 2020-21 compared to one in 12 for non-Aboriginal children.^[4]

Norwegian Child Welfare Services are accused of disproportionately removing children of immigrant parents.^[25][26]

Parents with criminal records

In the United Kingdom, former judge Alan Goldsack called for the UK Government to forcibly remove children from 'criminal families' at birth and to place them for adoption. His remarks have been criticized and he has been accused of "criminalising babies".^[27]