Foster care reform is about as popular an issue as prison reform or the abolition of slavery or reparations for the Indian schools, and for many of the same reasons; if people don't want to think about uncomfortable topics, they must certainly don't want to talk about them, and no politician will ever get rich basing their campaign platform on an issue that no one wants to talk about. But that isn't really a good reason to ignore the suffering of children. Sometimes I feel like the American public at large have abdicated nearly all of their adult responsibilities toward others, and I wish I could say I didn't understand why, but I do... and it makes me very upset.
Yet people talk about the uncomfortable topic of abortion all the goddamn time!
Maybe the point is that there needs to be a discussion on this, and it needs to be elevated by the left. We need to steal adoption as a talking point.
Edit: the idea being if the pro-choice side comes out loudly and strongly to reform the failures of the foster and adoption system, the forced-birth side will truly only have forced birth on their platform. They want to speak to adoption?!? The system that is rife with corruption and sex slavery and child trafficking, that the pro-choicers are the only ones apparently willing to try and repair?
There is no island for both sides in that discussion.
I think that most people think of adoption as a positive —what could be better than helping a family who wants a child have a child? Or of ensuring that children without parents are raised in loving homes by parents who wanted them?
To a certain extent, people are ‘aware’ of parents so hungry for a baby of their own go overseas to adopt. In my community, I was aware of a number of children who had been born in Korea but who were adopted by very Caucasian American couples in my town. A friend of one my kids was born in India and adopted by a local couple. An acquaintance had adopted a toddler from India and had ongoing struggles related to her earlier life in an orphanage. Family friends from my childhood were foster parents for years and eventually adopted one of their charges, who was 9 or 10 at the time. Other foster kids were reunited with siblings in a new family. I’ve often wondered how those kids did, afterwards. A series of unrelated events put our families out of touch and so I never knew. Indeed, I believe that further contact with their foster kids was discouraged or even forbidden at that time.
More often we hear about pregnant couples scamming hopeful parents. Rarely, about failed adoptions. Rarely about stolen children sold in adoption schemes.
That's the thing though... Women are convinced to be pregnant and then the baby is often hauled away straight from the delivery room, to be held for some months in foster care (its own special hell) at minimal expense on taxpayer dollars while a family is lined up to shell out 20-50k
to the agency to adopt them.
A successful adoption, under the current infrastructure, is as much a trafficked human as anything else.
Moreover, there is heavy religious bias even to who is given access to this dubious process, both in encouraging those who would otherwise think such thoughts to not think such as they are "religious" and "godly" agent and parent both.
And international adoptions are straight up RIFE with child trafficking situations.
I'm increasingly under the belief that the only ethical adoption is the one in which the parents are
volun-told rather than volunteers, drafted from the population of those in registered domestic partnership contracts of some form and with allowance to opt out, but very much opt out than in, perhaps with an extra box filled out that gives extra weight (but not much) under "yes please", and this "less additional weight" particularly on account of suspicion of motive.
Oh, I absolutely do NOT agree that people should be randomly given a child for any reason other than the express desire to have a childamd being emotionally and financially equipped to do so. Period. It takes more than a notion and good intentions to be even a halfway decent parent--starting with the express desire and wherewithall to be one.
More, I think that they should be randomly given the opportunity, that they then have to answer.
As you have said, "unexpected but not unwanted".
I just suspect that the current model is too desire-based, too thirsty.
At the very least the selection mechanism needs less targeting and interviews and more people who needs parents ending up having parents.
As it is, this would mesh with my expectation that the state provide for every child, including and especially these.
There would be fewer unwanted and uncared for children if there was less of a burden in having and raising them.
Actually, I think that adoption should be free.
I think that we absolutely need to overhaul the foster care system. I think that there needs to be better financial support for children who are being fostered and for certain, a good program that is universal and helps children raised in the system to successfully transition into adulthood--i.e. prepares them for life as an adult, provides transitional housing, education (college, trades, whatever the kid wants/needs), health care, SUPPORT for at least 10 years after 18th birthday. Some foster families do maintain an ongoing relationship with their foster kids, even after the child 'ages out.' Some will adopt foster kids, but this is a situation that is heavily fraught for the kids and for the parents of origin and the foster families. The system is heavily biased towards reuniting families for a good reason: most kids want to be reunited with their family, however broken it is. I've watched kids in foster care struggle with this. I've had serious discussions regarding simply housing and providing care for one of my kids' friends who was in a terrible, terrible family situation but the grandmother refused to let him live with us where he could attend the same high school instead of changing 10 times (literally) before he graduated--that graduation was nothing short of a miracle, btw, as was his getting into a good college. Unfortunately, when your grandma and your uncle literally steal from you, leaving you with nothing to pay rent or tuition, you're kind of out of luck there. But still: this kid wanted to know his father, a bigger POS I've never met in my life--dude never paid a dime of child support, never made any effort to see the kid who looked like his twin. Literally gave him a set of bedding for his dorm room at graduation--the first time they met, btw. Did invite him to meet his 'new family and new kid. The one he raised.' Makes my blood boil just thinking about what that kid had to endure. (He's doing well, employed, two kids, mental health issues -duh but still intelligent, hard working and reliable against a lot of odds).
Even kids whose birth parents abused them, neglected them, abused alcohol, drugs, etc. still love their parents and still want to be with their 'real' family. Most of them. No matter how unrealistic. I've watched too many kids break their hearts trying to fix a broken family.
