When Foster Parents Don’t Want to Give Back the Baby
When Foster Parents Don’t Want to Give Back the Baby
In many states, adoption lawyers are pushing a new legal strategy that forces biological parents to compete for custody of their children.
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Although hired as a consultant by Washington County in this case, Baird had a long-standing independent agenda: helping foster parents across Colorado succeed in intervening and permanently claiming the children they care for. Often working hand in hand with Tim Eirich, she has been called as an expert in, by her count, hundreds of child welfare cases, and she sometimes evaluates visits between birth families and children without having met them. Baird would not say how many foster parent intervenor cases she has participated in, but she can recall only a single instance in which she concluded that the intervenors should not keep the child. Thinking that particular couple would be weak adoptive parents, she told me, she simply filed no report.
what the fuck
I fully believe that woman is a monster. She doesn't care about any of those kids. She's being paid to get the foster parents a baby, so that's what she's determined to do. Eirich is just as bad. They're getting uncomfortably close to being traffickers.
Of course there are parents who should never get custody back, but I've seen plenty of cases where they work extremely hard, make big changes, and are very successfully reunited, and everyone deserves the chance to try before we just decide they can never have their kids back.
sounds like someone had some related trauma in her past she's projecting, and got to a position to do that unbridled
There are specialized lawyers for everything. There are also judges who specialize in child welfare cases. Eventually, in the future, I fully believe there will be a license requirement to have children that includes showing you have the available income to support the child, adequate space in the home, and a background check and drug tests to ensure both parents are safe to raise a child.
and she sometimes evaluates visits between birth families and children without having met them.
she can recall only a single instance in which she concluded that the intervenors should not keep the child.
Thinking that particular couple would be weak adoptive parents, she told me, she simply filed no report.
I also don't find the concept of "You have to be rich and stable enough to be allowed to reproduce without your child being taken from you" quite as comforting as you seem to phrase it.
You're not wrong, but I can see it happening. The cost of childcare is growing beyond $10K a year and it's certainly something that can be regulated under Child Protection Laws.
The current counter is that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects this liberty, incorporating “the right to marry, establish a home, and bring up children.” That doesn't prevent regulation of bringing up children, meaning qualifying factors. These factors could not be based on race, religion, or any other protected status. Financial would likely be the hardest barrier were the mother would have to show that the child would be financially stable. That might mean having a married partner, support of the larger family, or other means of support.
I love the move from good ethical moral thinking leading to "the welfare of children should be supported by the state" to the current "no kids if you're poor or we don't think you're good enough to raise them".
No way that system won't be MASSIVELY ABUSED to discriminate against women and minorities. Nope, that's just a good idea plan all around, 100% no potential issues. Caught having kids without a permit, to the gulag with you! Your kids get given to a nice family who will take good care of them. We could even reversibly sterilise women until they're licensed to breed, on a voluntary basis of course. And if they refuse and they're too poor or don't meet the moral standards of the government (unfit), we can place them in a nice house so any kids they have can be raised by fit parents. In the meantime they should have a job, I mean you can't get out of poverty if you don't work hard. Oh I know maybe they can take care of the house hold, you know cook and clean a bit, good opportunity to learn good moral fiber and potentially become a fit parent. I'm sure the rich household would live to give these women a chance to earn their keep!
OMG you just invented the Handmaid's Tale and you don't even see it.
So your belief is that children should live in extreme poverty which leads to a life of drug use and crime.
The proposed regulation would allow 99% of couples to have at least two children.
I literally said I think the welfare of children should be supported by the state. A just society takes care of it's children/future.
As to "the costs" that whole argument is laughable. First child support services are not a significant portion of the budget in any modern country. The biggest slice is education, maybe you want to argue against educating kids too. Then if that's not enough, investing in children and families LITERALLY BRINGS IN MORE MONEY THAN NOT. Healthy well educated kids become far more productive adults that bring in far more taxes than was spent on them.
Next, contrary to your claim, literally no one is proposing any such "regulation" unless you think your post constitutes a regulation let alone a regulatory framework sufficient to enact such a ridiculous dystopian policy.
This brings me to the last point, since nothing you have proposed or referred to even remotely approaches "regulation" you have NO basis for your claim that 99% of couples would be able to have at least 2 children.
In the US alone more than 10% of Americans have used illegal drugs in the last month and a quarter of those (almost 3% of the population, have a drug disorder)
More than 40% of Americans drink in excess, 5% of Americans have an alcohol use disorder.
https://www.addictiongroup.org/addiction/statistics/
The current poverty rate in the US is over 12%
https://time.com/6320076/american-poverty-levels-state-by-state/
I don't know what your definition of "too poor" and "unfit" are, but no reasonable definition would allow 99% of Americans to have children.
If you're not in a modern country that isn't America the numbers may be somewhat better in large part due to the state supporting it's citizens, especially it's children. Which again, is whatI advocate for.
available income to support the child
So poor people don't get to have kids, huh? Which is easily and quickly turn into only rich people get to have kids. How would you enforce that? Involuntary sterilization? Involuntary abortions?
Why would you have kids if you are unable to support the kids?
Rather than forcing basically eugenics on people, why not make sure that everyone is able to support children?
Socialism?! In MY America?!
No no, a fascist eugenics state that preys on poor brown people is clearly the better option.
Being able to have children is a fundamental human right. It’s the whole reason we exist according to biology. Restrictions on that right, no matter how well intentioned, is effectively genocide. Especially when considering how authorities have tried to wield that power in the past
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The whole reason life exists at all in the universe is to propagate
Edit: this isn’t to say that individuals should have to have children or that anyone is living life unfulfilled by not having children. Just that biologically it’s the purpose of life not the existential “purpose” of life
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I don’t know if you caught my edit or not, but I was just defining having children as the biological purpose of life rather than the existential purpose. Philosophically the purpose of life is up to the individual.
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If you think of it as biological beings and not separating us out as humans, then it is clearer to think about. Like bacteria, we are driven to reproduce, as a species.
Way to misrepresent what they said completely. Please point to exactly where they said what you're claiming.
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Genocide of who? We are not talking about a race, religion, or anything. It would be viewed more of population control and if anything a take on selective breeding, or artificial selection. At worse it would be Eugenics by choice, or finding a superior mate to have children with. That already occurs with artificial insemination in the United States.
Genocide of whatever group of undesirables in the population are denied the right to have children. Involuntary sterilization or removal of children without chance at reunification fits the definition of destroying that particular group. It was attempted on native populations in this very country as recent as a 100 years ago.
If it happened then it can happen again. Heck it’s happening now to migrants
What if the group are severely mentally disabled that got kids together in the assisted living facility they live in? Should the staff working there assist them by caring for a child they're simply incapable of taking care of themselves? Generally they want to keep the kid too and don't opt for adoption at birth.
Staff in group homes shouldn’t have to parent those kids. I think that this is where the nuance of the family court system should step in. If the parents are shown unable to care for the child then the court removed them and places them with a foster parent with an improvement plan for the birth parents with an end goal of reunification.
I agree that in an edge cases like this that there is not a good outcome, but the other side of an edge case like that is the system involuntarily sterilizing or removing children of individuals that are fit to parent because of bias/abuse by the system.
You can show that someone is unfit to parent and take action via the court with facts but preemptively doing so or preventing it with involuntary sterilization are violations of human rights in my view.
Absolutely, I just wanted to challenge your black and white statement.
The world is a gray place.
I also 100% agree that involuntary sterilization has no place in a modern humane society, even if it leads to people who have no ability to care for kids having kids. Because no medical intervention is without risk and incontinence, ED or worse side effects are not worth to even risk. And because of that we will always need foster homes.
Courts consist of people and people aren't infallible, so we'll always need newspapers and journalists calling them out when shit goes wrong. Checks and balances are needed at every level of human society. And nothing will ever work perfectly.
Another good thing to keep in mind is that there very rarely are true bad guys out there. The foster parents love and care for that kid and fight to keep it, the bio-parent does as well and the lawyers, judges and jurors try to uphold the law and by extension the fabric of our society. Some have their set interpretation (which you and I might disagree with) of what the law means, sure, but that's mainly because the law was written by humans in human language which just isn't ever going to be perfect, if it was we wouldn't really even need the court system.
So you view it as genocide against illegal drug users.
You really truly think that it would stop with drug users? How naive can you be?
The fourteenth amendment wouldn't allow for anything more than ensuring people are fit to be patents. Now if you were wanting to have ten kids, it would be restrictive if you lack the financial background to afford it. For most situations you could have two kids with no worry. Waivers for three and four kids. Five or more would require an full review.
My guy, the 14th amendment was ratified in 1868 and they were still sterilizing people WAY after that. For being poor, stupid, non-white, not the right kind of white, and so on. I'm very glad you're not in charge, because you're either incredibly naive or willfully ignorant about the United States' fairly recent past. Or you're evil and pretending not to be, I suppose, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt.
I don’t see it that way at all. I am 100% ok with children being sent to a foster home at birth if drugs are found in their system. Or removing kids from homes for any sort of reason that keeps the parents from being able to care for their kids. I’m not against the family court system or removing children from the home. The system is broken but it’s not useless. And parents usually have recourse to be reunited with their children if later found to be fit parents.
What I’m not OK with is the government saying who is and who isn’t allowed to reproduce and backing it up with forced sterilization or abortion because I don’t trust the government to use that power equally or responsibly. I’m also not ok with children being removed with no path to reunification with the parents. That kind of power along with an unscrupulous government is what leads to genocide.
forced sterilization or abortion
It would be huge fines / jail for both DNA donors and the child would be removed from the home. Contraceptives would be free to the public. The fourteenth amendment protects against the threat of force sterilization or abortion. I get you think it would be missed, but in reality it would make coupling more difficult with women choosing quality mates with higher education and well paying careers. It would change the culture for the better. The worst part about it is that you would be under a contract to raise the child. That doesn't mean marriage though, just that two DNA donors must agree to support that child until adulthood.
It’s clear you’ve put a lot of thought into this system, I appreciate that. How do we reconcile the fact that contraceptives aren’t 100% effective and an individual can become pregnant through no fault of their despite using protection. I don’t think you can make consensual sex between two people individuals subject to fines. Nor do I think it’s fair to take the child from the parent in this kind of scenario either.
The simple answer is there will always be a waiver process.
Let me walk you through the proposed process.
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A couple apply for a parental license. The license allows for two children by both DNA donors.
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A background check for criminal activity and a drug and blood test is done to check for contamination and health. The blood test is saved to confirm upon birth that the submitted DNA matches the license.
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Upon approval the couple are allocated a license for two children. A financial statement on the license requires support until adulthood by both DNA donors.
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If a accidental pregnancy occurs you would have until the delivery date to secure a license or waiver.
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If a license is not granted there would be a legal appeal process to grant the license and to ensure the denial is Consitutional.
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If a child is born without a license, that child will be turned over to foster care until a license is granted. A review would be held if the DNA donors acted wrecklessly and if the intent would require a fine or jail time (rape for example).
What about adoptive parents? What about single parents? egg and sperm donors? Do people who lose their jobs lose their families? As if employers need more power over workers. What about people who want more than 2 children?
By the way you know the population replacement rate in developed nations is 2.1 children per woman right? How can you plan POSSIBLY maintain a population? Do we just have less and less people until we're extinct?
This is quite possibly the dumbest idea I've ever run into. You put so much effort and yet so little thought into this hare brained idea I'm frankly flabbergasted.
If you're like a kid or something then good thought experiment. Maybe take some time to learn a bit more about the world around you when you come up with ideas.
- Ask yourself why your idea ISN'T already implemented?
- Is it only possible due to a modern development?
- Is there some fundamental aspect of human nature that's preventing your idea from having already been implemented?
- Who makes the policy decisions?
- Is there a way to implement your idea without putting too much power in the hands of too few?
- Is your implementation overly sensitive to corruption?
- How will you deal with people who disagree?
- How will you deal with people who break the rules?
- Is the punishment/control more damaging to society than the problem you're trying to fix?
- How will you deal with people who don't fit into your framework of who constitutes a suitable family?
- If you gave the general idea to someone else for implementation can you trust that they will implement it fairly and according to your vision or do you personally have to be in charge for this to work in a fair manner?
- Do you think your idea of fair is more valid than someone else's?
These types of questions will help you flesh out good ideas and avoid the common pitfalls to bad ones.
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