Easy-PC
Complete nonsense!
A Captain is employed to use his professional judgement. That's what we get paid a reasonable (let's not get side-tracked on that one!) salary for. Day after day this involves making judgements about acceptable risks.
This usually means taking the most sensible course of action AND taking responsibility for it. It is impossible to cover all situations with an Ops Manual, and sometimes real life comes up with situations that were never envisaged when drafting such documents.
As the child in question was sat next to the mother (and was being looked after by another woman) - the risk of child abuse was so small as to be completely negligible.
The chances of an accident from which the child would be injured was also exceedingly small - and if there had been such an accident the chances of a Judge convicting someone of not looking after that child after the parent had accepted their offer of help, is again incredibly small.
Factored together I think the Captain in this situation make a poor assessment of the possible risks.
Too often the "unintended consequences of well mean legislation" bugs our lives and it can only be balanced by good professional judgement.
The paranoid will always try and hide behind the "just in case I get sued" caveat. In this case I suspect it may have been a very junior Captain not used to shouldering the responsibilities involved.
When these sorts of situations crop up you have to take a deep breath, then take a balanced look at the risks involved and use a grown up, professional, responsible, and often common sense, decision.