What does "a normal family" mean?

A few days ago, a news story broke in the media that chilled us. It was, presumably, one of the most harrowing cases of violence against a baby by its parents that has been disclosed. As soon as it became known – and in the supposed search for context – several media outlets emphasized an aspect of this context that immediately aroused my indignation as a social work professional for 30 years. The greatest surprise of pundits and supposed 'experts' was how this situation had occurred, given that it involved a family they described as 'normal.' In this context, 'normal' referred to the fact that they lived in a neighborhood not designated as an area at risk of social exclusion, the father and mother worked, and furthermore, the mother was a nurse. In short – and without calling it such – it was defined as a family that had no financial problems. Thus, when reference was made to a "normal" family in these terms, it follows that all families with a situation of economic precariousness are not normal and, on the other hand, I also deduce from the context that what is said without being said is that, in families where there is no poverty, it is not usual for violence to occur or we have no way of explaining it. It seems particularly interesting to me to emphasize what is the mental framework that underlies half-said words. These frameworks can often determine people's lives without express intent. In this case, we are talking about stigma towards poverty, now called aporophobia. Under this classist premise, we understand that children in economically vulnerable families are always at risk and, therefore, under observation, control, and suspicion. On the other hand, those children for whom – due to the economic situation of their living environment – there are no mechanisms that allow the alarm bell to be sounded, may be experiencing situations of neglect or physical, psychological, or emotional violence without any protection mechanism being deployed, except in cases of extreme severity like this one.Although, in general, there is a high level of professionalism in the various public systems for child and adolescent protection, as well as in the health system, stigma can operate and does operate both at a structural level and in the specific area of individual perception. Stigma leads us to accept as a society a system where all children who attend only private circuits (especially educational and health) do not receive the same level of control as in the public sphere. Precisely because we think that in “normal” families all this does not happen. And, on the other hand, we have also accepted that the places where families go to request economic aid for situations of economic vulnerability are analyzed from top to bottom. Everything is understood and explainable from a particular analysis, but the final result is a structural classism and often racism that presents a bias in the social perception regarding the relationship between violence and economic inequality.