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The (Simplistic) Solution

Ok. I will answer all of your questions. All at once. First I'd just like to say, a little courtesy would be nice; even assholes deserve common decency now and then.

That said, without knowing any more detail of any situation presented, I will give you the best answer I can, assuming we've implemented the systems I propose as opposed to the current system. (Seeing as how that's what I'm after.  I don't want to force women who don't want their kids to raise them, I want reform the system so that adoptees don't lose their rights. I want to stop the corruption and coercion of the adoption industry. It IS a multi-hundred-million-dollar a year INDUSTRY, make no mistake.)

Under the system I propose, all adoption agencies have been shut down, their proprieters jailed for child trafficking. We have done away with the $13,000 a head benefit the government pays to each adopter upon finalization. The hundreds of millions of dollars (our tax money) the government saves in a year is now funneled into the freshly revamped foster for guardianship system. There are more resources available for traumatized children.  We spent a lot of money in specialized counseling for our workers to understand the realities of these situations. We've provided formal education for foster parents. We've increased screening procedures to weed out the crazies. You think they tear your life apart when you want to adopt right now? Just wait till you see the buzz-saw we take to your life to be a foster parent after we make our corrections.

Everyone who wants adopt with have to foster first. EV.RY.ONE. No more newborn adoptions, either. No more womb-wet babies. There has been an eight week hold placed on all relinquishing mothers. I originally said six weeks, but I've come to think that humans ethically deserve more time with their mother than dogs do before they can be separated. So, eight weeks from the minute of birth, She can sign papers giving the state (no one else) custody of her child. If child placement is state business, then it is all state business. No more private arrangements. Private arrangements are against the law. Child trafficking. Signing custody of a child over to another person is now going to be listed as child trafficking as well. Considering the amount of money lawyers charge for custody services.... 

When we have a mother who has drug problems, she is put into inpatient drug rehabilitation as soon as the problem is detected by health care officials. If that does not happen until the birth of the child, mother and child are placed together in a drug rehabilitation facility to detox together. She will care for her child under the supervision of clinicians, doctors, and nurses. Eight weeks. 

I'm going call the relinquishing mothers RMother from now on. It's more accurate to my system and less offensive than likening a person to a Bowel Movement, or defining them by a intrauteral accomplishment.

Rmothers will be provided support services during their eight week hold. Directly post partem is no time to be making life altering decisions. No one would ask a vet fresh from combat to decide if he was fit to be a parent, and let's face it. We've had a child fighting in our body, rearranging us, physically, mentally, and hormonally, for the job of motherhood. Childbirth, especially natural, choice or not, is explosive. How dare you ask me to make a decision like that right after a bomb just went off in my vagina?

The services will be continued as long as she decides to parent the child, and until she no longer requires state aid to continue to parent. During that eight week period she will receive help from child welfare agents, who are bound by law to make no mention of child placement before the eight week term is up. If the woman has no place live, there will be mother-centric housing facilities available.

If after the eight weeks is up, the woman insists she does not want to parent, she will sign the relinquishment/sterilization permissions. Consider it a final encouragement to parent your child.   (Honestly, this is the mild version, because I need you to listen.)

Once the child is state care, every avenue of kinship guardianship must be exhausted before a child can be placed into a foster home. The child will remain in the supervised care of the Rmother until suitable placement can be found. (You made this person, and you don't get to be an asshole and walk away from it without some consequences.)

Once all kinship possibilities are exhausted, then the child is matched in a suitable foster home. These foster parents are the former "HAPs" who actually managed to pass all the upgraded physical, psychological, and financial screenings. (You want it to be about kids getting a "better life"? Then we're damn well going to make sure they get one.) No more abusive, narcissistic adoptive mothers who "need a child" to be whole. You won't be allowed to foster until you've received a squeaky clean bill of mental, physical, and emotional health. You must be of an appropriate age to raise the children. No more 58 year old mothers of eight week old babies. Sixteen year olds, maybe.

Children will keep their names given at birth. They will have their original records, because no records will be altered. No children need be renamed when they are rehomed. 

Foster care is no longer a temporary system. If you do not want permanent guardianship of a needy child, do not apply. When a child is placed (after the MANY levels of qualifications required) in your home, the child is there to stay. You will provide for the child's needs as its parent. You will not buy, sell, or trade any more children. 

After some sort of reasonable probationary period, during which the child's well being will be monitored closely, you will transition into permanent guardianship. This is where you can relax. The social workers will drop in with the randomness whenever they see fit, to make sure your placement is going well.

If the child is being abused or mistreated, it will be removed to a new suitable foster home and the foster parents will be jailed.

Now look, I know I don't have all the answers, no single person does. This is the long winded, trying to be reasonable version.

The short version: you don't want the kid, abort. If you have the kid, raise it. If you don't want to, or you mistreat your children, we'll take you out behind a barn and shoot you like we do sheep that reject their young.

Since it's unreasonable to expect the government to institute the "take-you-out-behind-the-barn-and-shoot-you" legislation, I submit we burn adoption to the ground and reform the foster care/legal guardianship system.

Comments

  1. excellent suggestions. I have shared it to our ARMS page in Australia, although we don't have the horrible system that you have in the US. Jo

    ReplyDelete

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