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Continued from here …
Citing the work of Camila Batmanghelidjh, a woman in the UK who, “takes in children who haven’t eaten for days, who
have nowhere to sleep, who have been forgotten by social services, who were born addicted or encouraged to take drugs by their parents,” the author of the article I’ve been writing about for three posts now says:
It cannot be right to leave defenceless babies with such parents: it is condemning them to a life of misery.
It is almost certainly condemning the rest of us to an increase in social disorder and violent crime. For every teenage murderer there are scores of delinquents who admire, fear and copy him. They grow up to abuse our freedoms, which is why we have a right to interfere with their parents.
The Center for Policy Studies in Britain put out their own pamphlet about children in care in the country that illustrates that the state does no better job at raising children than do feckless parents.
So ….? Here, apparently, is the deal …
There are a whole bunch of people whose parenting leaves a lot to be desired, to put it mildly. Some of their kids grow up to be rotten human beings who are at best, a waste of space or at worst, a menace to society. The state does a lousy job of just about everything to do with families like these except when they are pointing out the problem, its causes and effects, time after time through studies and research, occasionally launching a program that costs a lot of money and does very little good, if any. The problem is on-going, and up until now nothing anyone has done has helped.
The answer, according to the author of this article?
Swift compulsory adoption is the answer. And adoption very early, of babies; the cognitive and emotional damage to such children is done in their first months. Yet fostering is still preferred to adoption and adoption takes far too long.
Now there’s a challenge to politicians: stop talking about the cycle of deprivation and break it by taking away the babies and giving them to loving adoptive parents. A modest proposal, and a difficult one, but the only realistic one.
Discuss this amongst yourselves, then let me know your thoughts.
From other news articles I have read, this seems to be the British approach. Once a child is in the custody of Social Services, the parents have to FIGHT to get them back. If SS decides to place for adoption, they can do so without the consent of parents. And once a child is placed with adoptive parents, EVEN IF there was something legally in error about the adoption, it is hardly ever revoked.
I am not saying this is all good — but it is a faster and more secure system than ours — years of reunification, TFC, PFC, TPR and finally, maybe, a permanent adoptive home.
Maybe as always the best road is somewhere in between our road and theirs? Neither method sounds quite right.
Though there are complexities to this idea I can see where it makes some sense. The way we do it now (in the U.S. anyway) biological parents who goof get chance, after chance, after chance…all at the expense of what could be better for the child (and in the long term society). Someone posted somewhere in the blogs a time back (sorry not sure who) something about most of the parents who really did need to place a child for adoption would seldom do so, unless compeled. Sometimes I wonder if our society is so into “MY RIGHTS” we forget about the rights of others including a child’s to have a stable & non abusive upbringing. That said I acknowledge there are plenty of abusive adoptive homes, but I think far fewer because of all the checks and accountability required when you adopt. Where is that same accountability for bio parents? My mother suggests that we should require a lisence to parent period. She also wondered if she would have passed the exam.
This was very interesting read in any case so thank you again Sandra.