SHOULD MARRIED COUPLES GET PREFERENCE IN ADOPTION?: Lee Walzer

I think it's a tough question, Maggie. In general, I think that children benefit from having two parents. There are some situations where a child would definitely benefit from having a mom AND a dad. But I know so many kids who have been adopted by single parents, and by same-sex couples, who do just fine with one parent (or two parents of the same sex). This is why social worker discretion is important, particularly when it comes to the public system where so many children have "issues" because of past abuse or because they've been placed in multiple foster homes.

What wasn't clear from your article was why the social workers placed the twins with the gay couple in the first place, even though the married parents, who'd adopted a previous child from this birthmother, wanted to adopt the twins. My own guess: they may not have been "paper-ready." There is a lot of paperwork to do in order to adopt and the paperwork does not carry over from one adoption to the next, in general (unless you adopt another child within the one year period that a homestudy is valid for, for example). In this case, the social workers had a loving home for the twins and acted -- although I agree that it would have been wonderful for the
siblings to all be in one home (regardless of the sexual orientation or relationship status of the parent/s).

I greatly enjoy marriagedebate.com even though, as you can tell, I do not agree with a lot of your views. I am glad that you do not favor bans on singles or gays adopting though! I think one thing that you ignore in these discussions is how much our concepts of parenting and parenthood are indeed social constructs. The way we raise children, and relate to them, today is much different from a century or two ago, let alone across cultures. There are plenty of mothers out there who do not ascribe to "traditional" concepts of motherhood, and the same goes for fathers and fatherhood -- this is a good thing actually. It's only a few decades back that fathers had very little to do with raising children whereas today, it is socially
expected for fathers to be involved.

To sum up, it sounds nice in theory to say that kids need some theoretical construct of what you expect fathers and mothers individually to provide a child, but I don't believe that day to day life, even for married heterosexual couples, conforms to your vision of what kids have, or receive. Nor can it. There is so much variation in how parents parent. In your view, do fathers who address their teenage sons as "honey" or "sweetheart" (and I know plenty of heterosexual fathers who do so) provide a proper model of what masculinity is or what it means to be a man (whatever that means!)? You may well think so, but I read some of the stuff that your allies on these issues among the religious right publish and they probably would say that such fathers are insufficiently "manly" and put their kids "at risk" for homosexuality.

I think that if children have love and stability in their lives, they're going to do just fine.
posted by Eve at 2:21 AM | Link |

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