I have a friend who is going through something terrible. I’m going to give her history, even though she is not the main subject of this post, just the jumping off point. And also because she needs help and is one of the most terrible people at ASKING for help, because she’s so mortally embarrassed about the whole thing.
I first “met” her online (though I’ve met her several times now) when Darkship Thieves came out. Which I think –though I could be wrong– is when she found me. Weirdly, she didn’t send me a fan letter, but instead asked if she could post in my facebook conference a plea for help for a neighbor who was a disabled veteran with no family and was having some health problems. She was helping as much as possible, but she had almost no resources, since she was either studying or had just finished nursing school. This is by the way of giving you an idea of her character. This is what impelled her to write “big writer” (I’m not, but at the time, before the blog, I seemed even more remote, I guess?) and ask for help.
I’m not going to say she is a saint. She can be salty, and sometimes hot tempered. But she and her then husband-to-be are basically, fundamentally, good people. So good, as you will see if you follow their Give Send Go Link, that we trusted them with two of Miso’s kittens, Bruiser (now renamed Ranger) and Banshee.
Even before they were married, I knew they wanted a large family. I didn’t know that Amanda had had her tubes tied, before legal age in what I can only term an inexplicable act of parental and medical malfeasance. (I’ll just say she’s the vanguard of a lot of very hurt people. I’m sure if she were fifteen years younger she’d have been put on puberty blockers.)
Unfortunately she found the sterilization couldn’t be reversed, so having babies became a matter of harvesting eggs, creating embryos and implanting them, which required them to have the sort of medical insurance that would cover some of it, and the money for the rest Which meant waiting far too long, until it was an unlikely endeavor, due to her age.
Last year they tried and spent all their savings. They got two “viable” embryos, which is a shockingly low number. The one implanted didn’t take so they have one remaining. They are trying to take care of some remaining issues to give this little snowflake baby (frozen embryo) a chance at life. (Note that the chance of success is about 20%. Still worth it.) The problem being they’re all out of money. I had to kick them, screaming, into putting up the GSG.
Note, though THIS ISN’T US ASKING FOR HELP. WE’RE SHUFFLING THINGS AROUND AND I ACTUALLY MADE MONEY LAST YEAR, FROM AMAZON. AND I NEED TO WRITE MORE: We’re very tight right now because of the watermain break, which involved breaking up part of a concrete foundation (but not to the house) and other exotic amusements just to get fixed, and for other reasons, which took up most of my income for the last year, but when I told my husband the knife I was about to plunge into our bank account for their GSG he didn’t even flinch “Do it. Poor kids.” So, I consider their cause very worthy.
So worthy that I linked it at instapundit.
I never read the comments at instapundit. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to continue posting there, both for time sink reasons and because it would corrode my soul.
However friends have reported the comments are full of “Just adopt” and “so many children need homes.”
And I see it’s time, once again, to turn Heinlein’s picture to the wall, roll up my sleeves and speak frankly.
WHY ON EARTH WOULD PEOPLE ASSUME THE ADOPTION PROCESS WORKS WHEN ANYTHING ELSE THE GOVERNMENT DOES IS A FLAMING DUMPSTER FIRE? WHY WOULD THEY ASSUME IT’S NOT INFECTED WITH DEI AND WORSE? WHY?
As with student loans, as with everything else that the government has got its dirty mitts into, I find a lot of people have a rose-colored idea of what goes on in realms they never had anything to do with and don’t understand.
I suspect if most people actually knew what is going on with children: CPS, fostering, adoption, etc. etc. etc. there would be torches and pitchforks. In fact I suspect that’s true if they really understood student loans; what’s being done to the job market, particularly for youth; youth labor laws; schools, etc. etc. ad nauseum. (And trust me, the nauseum applies.)
I haven’t had recent experience of any of this, but I have seen young fans go through this, and I know it hasn’t gotten better. It MIGHT have gotten exponentially worse, but it’s hard to tell because at some point you hit infinity, and how much worse than infinity can you get. It was already a horrible system for mothers, fathers, babies and everyone.
Lately there has been a ridiculous upswell of anti-IVF on the right because of various misconceptions, including what IVF is, what surrogacy is, etc. BUT ALSO this idea that babies are just waiting to be adopted, and if you only weren’t so h*ll bent on having your own genes you could just adopt, and it’s so much cheaper, etc.
All of this are fantasies. And those comments tempted me into doing something I never like to do and speak of my own life, particularly very private parts of my own life here.
When I got married at 22, we wanted a very large family. For whatever reason I was fixated on “at least eleven children” though I was willing to take more, if they were given to us. We were “careful” for a year, while we frankly got used to each other, since we’d dated mostly by phone and letter. Only not that careful, because we wanted kids. And frankly, being young and ADD the only reason we didn’t have a honeymoon baby is because… I turned out to have the fertility of a small rock.
I’ve only recently identified what I think caused it, and this is based on a bunch of things, including an episode (months long) of unexplained body-bruising (like, bruises just appeared randomly all over my body) in my late teens. If I’m right, my issue, never really diagnosed (though there were guesses, but those were more on the symptoms and treating the symptoms) is an auto immune disorder (natch) that attacks pregnancy hormones. One of the clinchers on this is that the way to defeat it is to get supplemental pregnancy hormone from the moment of conception (and that means guessing, because you can’t tell. You can just tell there was a chance.) And that if you defeat it, you’ll have pre-eclampsia.
The symptoms… My cycle went from absolutely regular — 28 1/2 days — to being 40 or 45 days one month, 14 or 15 the next. This came with uncontrollable weight gain, and um… exponential breast growth.
For six years. There were days I got my period, at 45 days, and cried for the next two weeks, because I’d been hoping and dreaming.
After a year and a half we sought help. Because at 24.5 a year and a half is a long time not to be able to conceive.
We found and shook out a bunch of other little things. Despite being regular, my ovulation wasn’t. So for instance, child one was conceived on the 27th day of my cycle, Second child on the… 4th? None of this makes sense.
Also I’m more neurotic than a shaved cat and episodes of anxiety translated to my period arriving because why not.
Now, various religions — including mine — have problems with at least part of these processes, and I was lucky we never needed IVF, though we skirted the edge of licit (in our religion) with what we needed. And I was desperate enough to do IVF, etc. if we could have afforded it. However, even back then, it was as far from our grasp as the moon from the Earth.
When we sought help for infertility we found that at least in the eighties, in Charlotte NC, most infertility doctors were the least sympathetic bunch of loons I ever dealt with. All but one.
Anyway, the ones I went through, besides bizarre and dehumanizing exams and tests and “therapies” that made me feel like a malfunctioning machine, were full of advice.
My favorite was the guy who told me all Portuguese people were infertile. (WHAT?) And then there was the one who told me G-d knew why he didn’t give me children, and if we adopted we should get a severely disabled child, so we couldn’t screw him/her up more.
All of them were interested in one thing only: Doing a laparoscopic exam for endometriosis. This was the hotness in the eighties, because most people looking for help were mid thirties to forties, and relatively well off two-income couples and because the exam was new. I no longer remember what it cost. My memory insists it was 20k, but I actually doubt it. It was probably 5k. At any rate, back then we made 20k a year. 25k if I was working. So either amount might as well be “the pound of flesh closest to your heart” for our ability to pay it. Also, though I know younger women can have endometriosis, it was highly unlikely at my age and history. But most of the doctors, once they found out we couldn’t afford that, told us they couldn’t do anything else.
Needless to say, meanwhile I was reading books on infertility left and right. And eventually in one of them found a mention that one of the best infertility doctors for desperate cases (which due to age and long-trying we qualified for) lived in Charlotte, NC. I called, and scheduled an appointment. I’ll point out parenthetically that this was the ONLY female doctor for female issues I ever found who was competent and a decent human being. Most of the female doctors in this field are far worse than the males. This is MY experience, note, and I don’t claim it’s universal.
Anyway, Dr. Hoover was an amazing doctor, the kind you can talk to, and who goes “Oh, okay, no that theory is crazy” but doesn’t hold it against you. And if the theory wasn’t crazy, she would try things.
I thought what I had was a short lutheal phase, so she went “what the heck” and gave me hormones, starting the day I could have conceived (and to ensure I did, she did IUF (intra uterine fertilization.) Though there was also opportunity for natural conception. However, she wanted to make sure it “got there.” The possibility was for “false pregnancy.” But in fact when we had the ultrasound at 8 weeks, it showed 10 embryos. Which in turn set of a panic, as they wanted us to reduce, etc. But a month later there was only one. That was likely due to pre-eclampsia and a whole different ball of wax. We won’t go into that portion of it.
Instead, I want to point out that as 20 somethings, really tight on money, we were spending $500 a month in an attempt to have children.
DO YOU THINK WE DIDN’T LOOK INTO ADOPTION?
We did. Both before older son and after, when his brother — miracle child — made himself waited a mere three and a half years, and after younger child, when we continued to have no luck while actively trying to conceive for SEVENTEEN YEARS. (I told you we wanted a large family, right?)
Though I will admit, once we had the second we didn’t push into what it would take to adopt quite as assiduously. For one because we already knew it was hopeless. For another because I was leery of the intrusion it would entail.
Hopeless? Intrusion?
Pull up a rock.
Back when we started looking into it, in 86? 87? I had the same idea most people do. There are all these kids being moved through group homes and foster care, in the hope of adoption, but no one will adopt, the heartless cads, preferring to spend hundreds of thousands on IVF or even inexplicably adopt abroad. (Though that seems to be less now, for various reasons. Mostly ours and their governments.)
The truth… we went to various meetings, read everything we could on the process, talked to people who had adopted or were in the process.
The idea of us adopting was… hopeless:
1- we were too young, and only one of us worked. We weren’t judged “stable” enough. Ultimately? We didn’t make enough money. There was a minimum to even apply.
2- we didn’t have enough money. To even enter the process for adopting you needed to pay money to go through things like “home study” etc. We didn’t have the money. And later on you’d have to pay court fees, etc. I THINK — again, it’s been a long time — fourteen thousand dollars? Something like that. No way did we have that. Our savings were negative at the time, but anything we managed to sock away was “to buy a house.”
3- we were the wrong race.
Now here people will rant and rave about how most kids needing adoption are black or Hispanic, but most adopters are white, and “waiting for a white infant” because they’re obviously “racist.”
Pardon me, it only hurts when I laugh. I’d have taken a child of any tone or description, BUT THE SYSTEM WON’T ALLOW IT. The system is designed to place the children with people perceived as being the same race. And even though Hispanic is not a race but a culture, my culture wasn’t close enough. And even though I have more than the required drop at the time I couldn’t prove it (And I’d have claimed it for a kid. Even though I don’t, because I don’t have the experiences.) As a “present white” couple, we just weren’t allowed to adopt ANYTHING ELSE. Weren’t ALLOWED. Wouldn’t even be considered.
Heck, we wouldn’t even be considered for disabled babies or toddlers. We would be considered for older children, but we were in our mid twenties. We weren’t qualified for older children. And frankly, I still wouldn’t take anyone much older than 3 because I know how children develop, and the depth bombs that can be buried, even though the person no longer remembers them. Losing a child because of trauma inflicted before we got him/her or because we weren’t qualified to raise someone almost our age was not acceptable.
So the other advice we got was to foster-to-adopt. But there again, you had to be willing to do this, with the possibility when you started the process to adopt the kid would be yanked from your house and you could never contact him/her again. Or the possibility his/her say incarcerated natural parent would suddenly claim to have found Jesus, get parole and take them back.
I don’t know in what percentage of cases this happens, but the fact it happens at all — the fact that manifestly unfit parents are given “back” infants or toddlers they haven’t seen since the day of their birth because our child services worship Rosseau and think there’s something special to the “natural” link — made me unable to do it, because I’m more neurotic than a shaved cat.
This left private adoption. We did tell people (And for the love of heaven, even though we’re now grandparent age, if you’re a hun who finds herself in that bind, do not abort. We will take the child. We’ll figure out the financials to make it legal.) and put out feelers, but one child she decided on abortion (long story) and one the mother decided to keep.
Things we hadn’t even considered at the time, because we couldn’t, because we didn’t have life experience, but which, now, having dealt with schools and assumptions of officialdom about our child rearing, are the fact that after adopting, even foreign or private adoption (I think) you lay yourself open to scrutiny by the government busybodies, who can yank that child from your house for any reasons or none, after you’ve been his/her only parent for life.
I wouldn’t put it past, in the current environment for “you don’t vote for democrats” or “we don’t like your yard signs” to be a reason to take your child away. You know they’ve convinced themselves we’re all secretly horrible people, anyway. What about being a sincere religious person? You think that won’t turn CPS against you?
As an example of our brush with stupidity, they tried to start the process to take younger son — born very much to us and our genetic child — away because he had a speech impediment and a problem paying attention (both proceeding from a hearing issue), which they — using their powerful intellects and no information, not even casual query beyond his PRESCHOOL TEACHER’S OPINION — determined came from us speaking exclusively Russian at home. This was revealed to us when we fought back. We had to break it to them, not only didn’t either of us speak Russian, Dan speaks only English and bad public school French, and I speak only English except for the weekly call to mom, when I speak Portuguese (and the guys amused themselves pretending to understand.) BUT NO ONE HAD ASKED. AND THEY’D STARTED OFFICIAL PROCEEDINGS to first take his education out of our hands, and eventually the child. (That was fun to fight. BUT we ended up diagnosing and fixing his unusual hearing issue.)
After that, and knowing the possibilities, we remained registered with our church should they absolutely need a family for a child. (We did get a ping the one year it was absolutely impossible and when we were unlikely to get approved as we were over 50, but that’s something again.)
It never happened.
It never happened because it’s almost impossible. Yes, there are children in need of good, permanent families. There are families willing to give them homes.
But the government is standing between and making it almost impossible for the two to meet, and also bleeding them of money when they do meet, to the point you have to be well of to do it.
People aren’t undergoing dehumanizing exams and treatments that cost the Earth or adopting abroad (when it was possible) because they are heartless loons, but because it’s almost impossible to adopt. And when you do “adopt” it’s conditional, and your child could be yanked from you for years.
Now, would too loose an adoption system have issues? Likely. There are nefarious actors abroad.
Would it have more issues than this?
Look, it’s almost impossible.
I hate to say it, but there is no perfect system. Children will be harmed either way. But this system seems to harm children UNIVERSALLY, instead of the rare case.
And it was created by a combination of wanting to avoid the occasional bad outcome for a child (a laudable goal) and wanting to keep the iron rice bowl of CPS bureaucrats filled (A far less laudable but predictable goal.) The result is a inhumane meat grinder that ends with many miss-placed, often dead children. And with decent, middle class, not wealthy Americans balked of their chance at parenthood.
Now you know.
In any such case where masses of otherwise rational people are doing what seems oddly expensive/harmful/irrational, assume the system is borked. Because every official system, in which the government has ANY hand is borked right now.
Fixing it is going to take things getting much worse. Which will hurt more people but seems inevitable.
And that’s the times we live in.
According To Hoyt 
The racial crap with adopting is known to me. Has been for some time.
Unfortunately, many are not aware of it.
Just one reason why so many American couples choose to adopt from abroad.
and now that avenue, which was very expensive, is mostly closed.
Yes, the governments have figured out that losing population is not a good Idea. So that, which was once a good option (expensive, but possibly less so than private adoption in the States) is also closed.
That, and for countries with more traditionalist bents, the only way they can make sure their kids end up in a home with a mother and father married to each other is not not allow adoptions to the US.
I have a friend who got bit by that problem when trying to adopt from Poland.
Yes, the governments have figured out that losing population is not a good Idea. So that, which was once a good option (expensive, but possibly less so than private adoption in the States) is also closed.
Friends are fostering-to-adopt – and the kid is part (1/16th?) American Indian. The tribes (all of them, as I understand it) have until it’s finalized to step in and remove the kid. It’s going to be a long process – hopefully not fruitless for them.
On the positive side for any enrolled members, it’s easier for them to adopt because of that rule. I know someone who was going to do that until one of his relatives ended up as, uh… “not a parent”, so the adoption happened with actual related children rather than strangers. From several states away, which is *definitely* not usual for foster-to-adopt situations. (Foster children usually stay in the state in which they enter the system.)
Some of them might become aware of it except that their justification for an abortion was that even though they knew there were waitlists of people who would adopt their baby, the people on it were raaaciiissst, so the kid was better off dead.
The mother whose essay I read gave off, to my reading at least, vibes of “no one gets to be better to my baby than I am being.”
☹
Thank you for the share to the fundraiser, and a bigger thank you for explaining so clearly why we gave up on adoption as soon as we started looking into it. It’s insane, what the government is doing to children and families.
It’s abuse.
It really is. They keep people broken on purpose. The welfare system is explicitly designed to keep people poor and desperate.
First, my heartfelt sympathy for what you all went through; I had no idea the problems were that bad (although I had my suspicions about CPS after seeing some of their actions in AZ). The welfare system, Child (non)Protective Services, and every other government bureaucracy is simply a graphic illustration of Pournelle’s Iron Law. And it can’t be fixed except through periodic (10 years? 20?) dismantling of the bureaucracy and banning of all its upper and middle parasites from ever again holding any position in government. Draconian? Yes. But nothing less will fix the problems invariably created by the Iron Law and its perpetrators.
For those who don’t know, there are mandatory reporters, which include all medical personnel, teachers, any one who works with kids who are fined or charged if they don’t report suspected abuse. So they report every injury, because better report one that isn’t true then not report a case. So protective services are overwhelmed in stupid stuff, people reporting that’s have no idea what they are talking about. And this system is (obviously!) ripe for abuse. Custody battles are my least favorite, but don’t leave out grandmothers that don’t like the other parent, teachers with an ax to grind, nurses who don’t like someone, a volunteer at school who wants to feel important, and the whole panoply of human craziness.
There is no way to fix this system without changing the laws that made it what it is. Even if saints ran child protective, they would fail.
there are mandatory reporters,
I think that my favorite part of the “mandatory reporter” thing at the university level, is that some universities advise employees that if a student or other employee looks like they’re about to regale you with an account of some kind of sexual misconduct they’ve experienced, you are supposed to warn them that you are a mandatory reporter, and if they tell you about this you are obligated to report it to the appropriate authorities.
Which starts with the university itself, not the police, for…. reasons.
I’m not sure if this is designed to discourage people from reporting reportable incidents at all, or to discourage them from reporting frivolously.
Mandated reporting is one of those things that really illustrates the problem with using laws to try fixing all problems.
It starts out with a kid being abused, and everyone being like, well if people had reported it something could have been done to stop it. And then “something must be done” so a law is passed to mandate reporting.
But then we get to many reports, and malicious reports, and people in positions to be mandatory reporters being terrified of the law. I know when I was a teacher it was one of many things that was always hanging over your head–it is not enough to try getting a little math into the kids heads, you also have to be on the lookout for anything that might be an indication of abuse, along with the twenty other legally mandated things that have to be done simultaneously.
So then kids still get abused, and people want to add more and more laws, when the only way to solve the problem is for individual people to do something.
And then if you go back and look at what started it all, the laws probably would not actually be relevant to the original problem.
“…the laws probably would not actually be relevant to the original problem.”
Let’s hear it for every “gun safety” law ever passed. 😒
Anyone registered with BSA, volunteers, are mandatory reporters.
I think volunteers with local kidsports, coaches & referees, were also mandatory reporters. Given our son was a referee at age 14 & 15, not too sure about that requirement. OTOH I was there too (had to drive him. Funny when other parents asked which kid was mine. Toned down rhetoric when my answer was “the referee”. Um. Oops?)
Yes, we (hubby and I) were peripherally part of mandatory reporting. Scout had been abandoned by mom at the house, younger two were taken to their uncle, before she took off. He showed up dirty, at scouts, and school. Not one of the adults who with scoutmaster took him aside. Was reported up the chain to district and council. Do not know if school officials got involved or not (should have). But also, found out where uncle was, and scout was with him and siblings, by the time it was reported. Which is where he remained. Also contacted mother’s former partner. We’d known they broken up. We didn’t know the scout had been abandoned at the house, without power, or water. Neither did the former partner (who had no custodial options). The uncle hadn’t known either. He was told by mom that she could handle the oldest, but not all three. Yes, technically what the troop committee did was beyond scope. And? Worse case the adults that talked to the uncle would have found out he couldn’t take all 3. Not the case. Mom just didn’t take all 3. Took younger two, left oldest at house, went to uncles, dropped younger two there, and took off. Until power and water were turned off, no one had a clue.
This is the same scout, an outing well before all this came out, went on an outing and forgot his sleeping bag (no pre pack check that weekend). (Can this be blamed on mom? No. We didn’t pack our scout’s pack by this time. They were the same experience level. Not the same rank, but same experience level.) His two tent mates and him handled the situation, which is good. The bad? The only reason the adults found out is because other scouts found out, and eventually someone told an adult. Also, it was awhile before no pre pack checks occurred either, no matter how experienced the group going was. And yes, while extra sleeping bags weren’t packed, JIC. Blankets were.
Also note (for people who have not been involved with the BSA) that there is a policy called “two-deep leadership.” This means two registered adults (minimum) at all times at meetings and outings, and no one-on-one scout to adult in any context. You can have a Scoutmaster conference, sure. It just has to be visible—not alone in a room, but maybe off to the side in a large meeting room.
You can also have, say, a merit badge counselor and a passle of scouts, but even then, policy highly encourages another adult in close proximity, for protection of both the youth and the adults.
What two deep leadership means. Actual questions that came up:
On an outing. Only two adults and 10 youth. One youth gets hurt does everyone have to pack up and leave? Answer: Yes.
On an outing. Three adults and 9 youth. One youth gets hurt, does everyone have to pack up and leave? Depends. Is a parent of the hurt youth present at the outing? If so, yes, then the parent can escort their injured youth out alone. Otherwise? No. Everyone packs out.
Safest option 4 adults, minimum at all outings.
Reason I used the above count combinations is as a troop it was the 9 – 10 day backpacking trip into local wilderness areas. Where the maximum group count was 12 (worse for Mt Hood wilderness where the maximum group count is six). The other monthly outings there were always enough adults present.
Summer camp, camp staff and other units were always willing to help. Extreme example. That is what happened 2005 National Jamboree when the adult leaders were killed. Same happened when one of the adults took sick at Philmont the week son’s contingent was there. Not their contingent, but one staying at a campsite above them one night. Woke up to scouts running through camp. Stopped them. Sent two of their contingent down with one of the scouts to get staff medical. Went up with other scout to see what they could do to assist while waiting staff medical. They left when staff medical were there and took over. Found out later that staff had to step in so the contingent could finish out the trek.
Despite extensive medical forms filled out by physicians, required, people still can have medical episodes. This guy was probably altitude sickness in combination of the physical exercise. Hubby not only had to have his medical physical, after the form was sent in with the contingents, his doctor had to write an additional note, because of the medications he was on.
Elevation was something the local contingent was leery of. No way to acclimatize locally before going. Trip was in July. While the local passes were open, not high enough (5500 feet), and the needed high elevation trails were still snowed in. They flew down, spent a few days at the high elevation before hitting the trail. Everyone did fine.
Well, when you are willing to be nasty enough…
Had something like that with my eldest, way back when. Struggling in school, so they referred her to the psychiatrist. Twenty minutes, and she (psychiatrist) was wanting to put my daughter on the drugs.
We said no. Psychiatrist began to act like she was going to push it through by reporting – and I simply reminded her of just how MUCH empty desert was just outside of town.
Never heard a peep from ANYONE after that. Apparently decided that suicide to get her own way was not worth it.
That decision is sort of surprising; it’s been my experience that bureaucrats (and from her actions I would include her in that category) usually feel that there can be no possible serious pushback against their arbitrary pronouncements, and doubly so for the possibility of any implications regarding their personal responsibility for their actions. After all, they are The Authorities!
They are normally protected by two things: first, the difficulty in identifying the guilty party (“faceless bureaucracy”); and, second, the fact that they are, almost without exception, protected from any legal repercussions.
I simply made it quite clear that she was not protected by either of those.
(Lest I leave the impression of being a nutcase, I have a very, very bar before I contemplate making this kind of promise. It has to be the potential for direct and serious harm to my immediate family. Not even to myself (except in the obvious case of physical self-defense).
Sigh… “high bar.”
Agreed. And I have the same attitude; regardless of legalities there are some threats (such as the one to your daughter) which must be addressed, as strongly as necessary. I believe your answer was not only not irrational, but was rather mild given the circumstances.
Our first contact with this was when son was 5. First birthday party of the school year. Before party the kids were playing basketball in the cul-de-sac at the house of the party. Son slips and falls on the asphalt. Has a road rash on side of little finger. The next morning decide it should be looked at. Yep. Fractured. Not obvious without xray, but definitely there. Splinted. He got asked “how did this happen” by: Receptionist, triage nurse, room nurse, xray tech, doctor, and the nurse who splinted it. They finally gave up when he started screaming at them that he fell playing street basketball. I wasn’t even in the room for most the questions.
When he was 9, he went roller blade with boys across the street to the school. They came back with the two helping him home. Both boys said he fell going down a ramp at the school. Implying the handicap ramps. I could see that. Was not wearing wrist braces. Was wearing a helmet (thank god). Son was forthcoming. “Ramp” also known as the school slide. Yep, compression fracture. Resulted in wrapped brace. This time, when asked “What happened?” My response was “Part of his punishment is he has to tell everyone exactly what happened.” He got asked by reception, the nurse, and the doctor. That is it.
Third time was a year later. Other arm. This time his response to medical personnel was “Learned some physics, what happens when a bike stops unexpectedly, I don’t.” He thought a stick got in the front spokes. Same as time #2. Minimal repeat questions.
I wasn’t there for the hard ball to the eye incident (broken lower orbital bone, cracked, not blown out, thankfully) nor for the initial doctor emergency visit. There for followup visits and surgery to release the eye (how discovered how lucky he was). But no drilling.
Why we knew we had to take him in the second and 3rd time? He wouldn’t grip anything with the damaged arm’s hand. Learned that lesson from his classmate’s parents, who fell off school equipment to break both arms. He and his twin tried to hide the injuries. That what their parents told us other parents, wouldn’t grip anything with hands. She was ready to either get him a t-shirt or sandwich board for him to wear with “It happened at school recess!”
If I’d been growing up over the last 40 or so years, mom & dad would have been being grilled by teachers. I bruise easily. Always have. No reason. (Hubby does now too, but that is recent and age/medication related.)
In college it’d be late fall at the earliest before I’d wear a dress. My legs were covered in bruises. Because I’d been climbing up and down mountain sides, through brush. Not on trails. Not along the side hills (walking in to units, and back out, kind of, the future roads might been brushed out) mostly up/down, or down/up. Forestry, what climbs down, must climb up; and what climbs up, often it is step/slide/step/slide, down. Obviously I was being abused. (sarcasm, JIC)
Even now. Someone will note a bruise on an arm and ask how I got that. Answer. Dang if I know. Probably pet caused. But really do not know.
I think it has to be some genetic thing. I swear that $SPOUSE$ acquires a new bruise just getting out of bed in the mornings. (We kid that this is the reason I don’t dare get her too mad at me.)
One daughter has the same thing. The older one doesn’t, though. (I think that the son does, too, but it’s hard to tell. He was always very active, and is now a Reserve Marine. I see him Sunday on his way back home from drill, there will probably be a half-dozen new ones. His “graduation” picture from boot camp, his face almost matched the color of the dress blues!)
Son has it too, just not as bad, and as he got bigger, less noticeable. Worse he inherited my reaction to bug bites. Only worse. As a small child he’d end up on antibiotics for the major swelling and the cellullitis. Still has the major swelling as an adult, but the cellullitis, like mine depends on where (feet/ankle/hands/wrists – guarantied cellullitis). At scout camp, as a teen, got asked “doesn’t that hurt?” Answer was “normal for me.”
Which has the knock-on effect of encouraging helicopter parenting. Why can’t we have free-range kids anymore? Because everyone and their brother either feels they have to or are legally compelled to report it when they are.
And there will be *incidents.* My brothers and I used to go roaming around the neighborhood down by the creek and around the railroad tracks and such. My brother ran his head into an old i-beam, smacked himself pretty good. He’s also ripped his underarm on barbed wire and had a stick shoved a good way down his throat.
Then there’s me with the broken arm from playing “airplane” with my older brother, the slicing my foot half off (still don’t know on what) racing to tattle on said brother because he was harassing me while we were “building a treehouse.” Otherwise known as messing about with boards and nails and a tree.
So to prevent this kids have to be watched EVERY MINUTE of every day, and never allowed to do anything. And then there’s “Stranger Danger!”
I guaranty none of the incidents (except the hardball to the eye) would have seen a doctor when I was growing up. Fall and get a road rash on side of hand, swelling finger? Unless obviously broken, would not see a doctor. Ditto on both arms. Who hasn’t fallen off a bike, or anything, and landed on the arms jarring them? Compression fracture. Not even a hairline fracture like the finger. Unless obviously broken or major swelling, no doctor. “It’ll hurt a bit. ‘Walk it off.’ Don’t do that again.” Now the son’s classmate who broke both arms ended up in casts. More than compression or hair line fracture. He was going to the doctor anyway. Yes, he fell from the school equipment (he was where he was not “suppose to be”, on top of *structure) before there was the more bouncy safety padding laid down on the playground under equipment. Doubt the padding would have helped. But the equipment isn’t as high anymore either.
((*)) Not the structures I grew up in. Metal, boxy. If we weren’t expected to climb it? News to me. We had cement (crumbling) structures we crawled all over and walked the walls, too. Remember a few scrapes and bruises, don’t remember any casts.
Two broken arms for me, and one nasty gash on my cheek that needed a butterfly.
Otherwise, I pretty much was doctored by Dad. Okay, he was a veterinarian, but not that much difference…
Second day of second grade, I ran off to bed and turned the corner too soon. Corner of the door from (hard corner because it was a pocket door) into my forehead, big old black eye. Brand new school to me, too.
My mother wondered aloud, years later, why she’d never gotten a CPS call. I told her that on the day I went back, in a little sleeveless dress showing off my unbruised arms, my teacher had me go up during Show & Tell to talk about my eye. “It’s not my day, though!” “It’s okay, just tell us about it.” Well, I did the five-part Massacree bit, telling everything in great detail. It was only years later that I realized how horrible little kids are at lying, and that the teacher figured out that I was telling the truth because of my great enthusiasm about the subject.
I still have the scar.
Now, years later, my mom volunteered as a Court-Appointed Special Advocate, which is basically someone who shepherds one child through the foster system, so that they have one constant through the parade of lawyers and social workers and so forth. She got the detailed mandatory reporter training, the kind with photos and extensive details. The main thing there is that you look for the type of injury—bruises on the elbows and knees are expected and almost always normal, while bruises on interior surfaces are not, for example. Black eyes are ambiguous; finger-spread bruising is pretty much a certain tell of abuse.
“mandatory reporter” depends on the state.
In NC, every adult is a mandatory reporter. There is no special career or role that is required to report. Anyone who has reason to suspect abuse is occurring is required to report.
“Reporting. Closes a loophole by requiring any person 18 years of age or older to report all reasonably
suspected child abuse to local law enforcement, regardless of the abuser’s relationship to the child.
Previously, it was only mandatory to report child abuse when the abuser was in a parental role and in a
residential setting. That did not include adults who supervise children outside the home, such as coaches,
camp counselors, clergy members, or youth leaders.”
A “loophole”, eh? That’s an interesting concept, for values of both”interesting” and “loophole”; “reasonably suspected” is entirely subjective. You can make training a requirement for professionals whose jobs involve dealing with children (and even then it’s frequently iffy), but exactly how is an untrained adult supposed to determine if a scrape is the result of abuse rather than, as is most often the case, kids being kids and doing “kid things”? I was never abused as a child; I was also almost never without some sort of visible cut or scrape (usually road rash). The same for most of my pals. Whoever wrote that particular idiocy needs some serious help in rational thinking.
Even training professionals becomes very subjective fast. Delay of care is one sign to look for, meaning didn’t come right in when it happened. Of course, some kids just don’t say anything. My son probably has a broken foot for days before I noticed. Shoulda reported myself apparently…
Oh, dear Lord, BOYS. I mean, you can’t keep up, and they hide injury. And you never know if they are truly injured or hamming it up.
I almost killed older son by accident, by removing what I thought was a tiny wood splinter from his foot at home with tweezers.
It was three inches long. If he hadn’t bled so profusely and with pressure — seriously, there was a line from the wall behind me, and down my face and cert of my body. I was kneeling, while he set on his (high) bed. — he might have got blood poisoning. As it was I had a few bad days and kept an eye on it.
My three-year-old got a broken leg that took us a day to get checked because he wasn’t crying about it, he just wasn’t standing on it. Even the pediatrician didn’t think it was anything, and suggested an X-ray in a couple of days if he still wouldn’t stand, at which point I suggested we might as well get it done.
The look on her face when we came back upstairs and she showed us the hairline fracture. Even the doctors can miss it sometimes.
When son’s took the hardball to the eye, they wanted to wait until the swelling went down, for two weeks before an xray. We pushed it at less than a week. Was sent to xray, told to stay until specialist saw it. Was immediately told to go to the specialist. Son was in the hospital that night for surgery immediately the next day. Was asked why we “waited”. Chorus of “we didn’t”. Not only had we pushed it, we’d been calling every single day. Kid got lucky. “Looked like” on the xrays that the orbital floor bone had been blown out (usually happens). That bone does not repair itself. What they do is go in and put a plate over the hole to keep the eye out. As it turned out, the eye was holding the cracked bone open. All they had to do is release the eye, let the crack close. That crack healed. Residual scaring, of the eye, effect from the eye being unable to move those 7 days.
Hubby’s cousin and wife wanted to adopt. While waiting for a child to become available, they took in a foster daughter. Had her from age one to age nine. The birth-mother then renounced her parental rights and there was no one else in the family so Whoo Hoo! They petitioned to adopt a girl who had never known another family.
Where upon Child Services removed her from the home because they weren’t next on the list for adoption and placed her in foster care. She was in foster care for 5 years then ran away and disappeared.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the couple were told they were no longer eligible to adopt or foster because they’d had the very nerve to try to jump the line and try to adopt a foster child.
So, they went to Romania and adopted a son. When he was 8 they had a miracle daughter of their own. ( Mom was 48years old by then)
A happy ending though because their foster daughter contacted them a few years ago and came back in contact with the family after she was certain sure TPTB could not separate her from them again.
She’s married and they are now doting grandparents. In spite of everything the government tried to do to ruin them.
So glad that had a happy ending!
Yes, I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief at the happy ending!
“When we sought help for infertility we found that at least in the eighties, in Charlotte NC, most infertility doctors were the least sympathetic bunch of loons I ever dealt with. ” – Yep
Susan M – thanks for sharing an amazing tale.
Sarah – OMG. You really have been to Hell and back several times. And blessed as well.
I can’t overemphasize the importance of passing on family genetics if at all possible as a human, personal, ethical and moral imperative. Trying to label this as selfish, etc. is a ghoulish parallel to engendering gender dysphoria [I have been waiting months to use that phrase] or promoting it as a sane perception of reality.
I had spent much of this day enraged at the utter dysfunctionality of what should have been a fairly straightforward commercial exchange. (I give you money, you give me services, but no, you have to be cryptic about when the exchange become available, then offer me a later time for the exchange when the first time becomes unavailable, at which later time I’m told the exchange is no longer possible except through a middleman at extortionate rates.) It made signing up for LibertyCon feel like a walk in the park (literally, on a beautiful spring day), and this was dealing with an organization that one would think would be much more efficient at the task than some hinky-dinky sci-fi con.
I thought I was enraged at the incompetence and the scorn for those they’re supposed to be serving. Then I read your post, and found people and organizations doing far worse to others in far more vulnerable circumstances, about matters not trivial but essential. And that it has been awful for decades, but not this awful, because it keeps getting worse, and by design.
You were right in replying to outofthedarkness83: it is abuse, perhaps even worse.
And I ask myself, is there a bulldozer big enough for everything that needs to be knocked down and plowed under in this country? And are there enough willing hands to restore things, not to perfection, but to a state of bumpy but good-willed functionality? I hope both are the case.
My sincere sympathies to your friend, and to yourself.
Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est (which may include several universities by this point).
There are hands. And the come back can be stunningly fast if allowed.
I just saw this, so I thought I would share it, because the baby is a miracle all on her own and we need some more good stories today: https://beautybeyondbones.com/2024/04/23/a-prayer-for-my-third-trimester-of-pregnancy/
But yeah, adoption isn’t like what you see in older TV series. It’s not even what it was in bygone eras. You may as well forget about it unless you manage to accomplish it privately somehow. Any other option is so expensive, invasive, or nonsensical that it might as well not BE an option at all. ARGH.
Glad to give what I could. Have added them to my prayer list.
Adoption is not an easy solution. One couple I was friends with back in the stone ages adopted a daughter and son when they were babies. Adoption folks didn’t tell them that daughter was deprived of oxygen during birth and they were unprepared when she ended up retarded. Younger son had emotional issues which I hope he grew out of. It probably hurt that so much attention went to his older sister. Mother was type I (brittle) diabetic and died in her forties from complications.
Sharon and I went to war with Child & Family Services back in the 90’s on behalf of our nephews. It took us 4 or 5 months to finally suss out that the only reason my brother wasn’t given custody of his 4 and 6 year old boys when his soon-to-be-ex wife was arrested for rampant drug use was because his current two-bedroom house (they had already legally separated) didn’t have a separate bedroom for each child! The kids had been sometimes sleeping in the carport while Mom used the apartment for recreational purposes, but separate bedrooms for a 4 and 6 year old boy was essential. Older brother and I shared a bedroom until he went off to college. It cost thousands of wasted dollars on my brother’s part and me using up all of my vacation and then getting creative with work while Sharon gathered intel and strategized. Family court could have simply awarded my brother custody and washed their hands of the whole thing on the first court date, letting divorce court sort things out later.
Lord save us from the do-gooders and self-righteous who have sore arms from patting themselves on the back.
My sons shared a room until older was 10.
Have these people never heard of bunk beds?
i spent most of my childhood sharing a room with one of my brothers. On the top bunk.
Ever seen the movie Gifted, with Chris Evans? He sorta kinda ends up kidnapping his niece from his monstrous mom after his brilliant sister commits suicide, and mom (who has lots of money) gets CPS on him because he works below minimum wage with no health insurance and owns a tiny house in Florida where she saw one roach/Palmetto bug.
Doesn’t matter what evil things she did to his sister that he brings to light, Evans’ character doesn’t have a prayer of beating her. Why? The judge sides with the party who has money. And Evans’ character has none.
He gets his adoptive daughter back – the movie has a happy ending. But that is…far too common to what actually happens in real life. Oh, and the reason grandma wants his niece? She’s a math whizz and gramma wants her to solve one of the Navier-Stoke problems.
That’s it. That is the only reason she wants her granddaughter. Not because her son has no health insurance and lives in a bungalow with the occasional bug problem. She wants her granddaughter to serve her ambitions, just like she used her daughter, driving her to suicide in the process.
It’s a good movie – one of Evans’ best performances. But hooo, boy, do you need to be in the right mood for it….
That is an excellent movie.
That is an excellent movie.
Our three older boys had a triple decker bunk bed that was hand built by their dad because they WANTED to all share a room and we didn’t have any room large enough for three beds.
They loved it.
lol
Sounds nice!
I shared a room with my younger half brother from the time we moved into the house (the year he was born) until I left after high school.
I am thinking of the Brady Bunch. According to the separate bedroom methodology, that was a very unwholesome household.
13 for me. First oldest brother, then the middle brother when I was 8. Finally got separate rooms when $OLDEST graduated JC and went to the 4 year Uni to finish his degree.
Yes, bunk beds for the win. (Also convertible to twin beds.)
Sister and shared a room, Younger Brother and Youngest Brother shared another.
I’ve wondered for years if it isn’t better for family life if shared kid bedrooms, a single bathroom, a single telephone and a single TV and computer aren’t more conducive to a healthy family life. Nothing can really be kept secret from other family members … which might be better in the long run than everyone retreating to their own rooms, and closing the door.
Middle sister’s kids shared a room, 4 children in a 4 bedroom house. Well technically 3 bedroom and a office/den. There for awhile it was 4 children, and oldest grandchild, sharing the 4 bedrooms. Now they are empty nesting (3 of 4 married, five grandchildren, counting one step-grand, plus 4 grand-dogs … latter is my fault 😁… sis despises pet fur).
Youngest sister’s children, when they built their current house has 4 bedrooms, with the 3 non-main bedrooms designed for each of their three. No TV’s or computers allowed in their rooms.
Hubby shared a room with his brother, until hubby was 12, when brother moved out at 18. His sisters also shared until oldest moved out, when hubby was 11, when she was 20.
Mom and her sister shared a room. They believed they were lucky they didn’t have to share a room with their (much) younger brother.
Children must have their own room? Please. Rolls eyes.
Step 1: assume an already healthy family.
Otherwise that quickly leads to absolute hell, wit the only respite being the tiny spaces each person can carve out for themselves. For many of the people here that would be the inside of their minds.
Youngest, still a toddler, had the smallest room, until I was 12, and she was 7. Then I got the smallest room, until I left for college. Then middle sister got the smallest room, technically until she “left” for college (she lived at home). Youngest said, “I’ve had my own room for the last two years, and it is the biggest room.” Technically she shared with me when I was home. Holidays, a few weekends, and since I went away for work during the summer, not even then. She didn’t want to exchange rooms.
Son shared a room, briefly at age 4, with his older cousin. BIL was transferred to Eugene, from Portland. They sold. Then started building their home. Lived with us for about 5 months. Then lived with mom and dad the last six weeks (mom, dad, and baby, had the other spare room). Son didn’t share again until college dorm. Well technically he did share a room, we have cats.
My best friend shared a room with her next sister till she got married.
One the eve of my wedding I realized that I was never going to have my own room since I shared with my sister until my wedding day.
She had HER own room after I left though.
I have had shared rooms with siblings (family of 6 kids), college roommates, or a spouse for over 50 years.
I had a room of my own once, for 1 1/2 years in the mid 70s, but only because my younger brother’s “room” was a big landing upstairs. The new baby shared my parents room, and toddler sister had her own room.
Bunk beds were what I knew for many years, even as a pre-schooler.
How horrible to assume that every child needs the luxury of a room not shared with a sibling of the same sex. And that’s what it is — a luxury.
Never had a computer, phone, or TV in any of the bedrooms.
Even now, all of our computers and the TV are down in the family area.
Like already posted, as the oldest of 3, I had my own room from age 12 to (almost 18). College shared a dorm room until mid year, when room mate dropped out. Then sophomore year lived in a quad, my own room, shared kitchen and bathroom. Jr year was interesting as I semi-commuted from home, and stayed with friends couple nights a week at college town. The next year I had a studio apartment for most the year, moving into a house with 4 others, still had my own room, but that was that a mistake. Next year had a housemate, and we brought in a 3rd roommate (my fiance/husband) before we graduated. Haven’t had my own room now in 45, and counting, years (he steals the covers). FYI. When he isn’t there? I sleep lousily. Since I have sleep apnea (under control), that is saying something.
Dan throws the covers on top of me!
And I also can’t sleep without him in bed. 38 years
Give it a few years. Last 5 years, or so, hubby is 72, we have switched who is cold/who is hot roles. He is now the cold one, I’m the one doing the covers on/covers off, one leg out, pull it in, routine. When we got married I was used to a lot of covers. We compromised with a sheet and electric blanket with dual controls, then I also had a smaller afghan that I made, to add a little weight back (not anymore). Then I used the electric blanket but hubby rarely did. Now he does most nights and I rarely do (my feet still get cold).
My wife and I realized very early on that separate blankets in bed and separate tubes of toothpaste were necessary if we were to continue living together. That woman is the worst blanket thief I have ever seen or heard of, and she squeezes the tube from the *middle*. Irredeemable, I tell you. (smile)
People share tooth paste tubes? We don’t even share the same tooth paste brand! Never have. Anymore than we share the same soap type, or shampoo. Savages, just savages.
😉😉😉😉😉😉
I keep a blanket handy for the lost blanket/sheet situation. Usually discovered when I come back from a nightly visit down the hall. If the dog hasn’t moved to my sheets, hubby can’t pull them too far over. If she has (usual) then hubby rolls over and there everything goes. Pull out blanket, nudge dog, and curl up. Waking him up to get some of blankets back, just means we are both grumpy in the morning. I don’t like me much when I’m grumpy. He’s no fun if he’s grumpy. Still working after 45 years, doing something right 😁💕
I have decided to sleep with just a sheet and a bedspread (cotton, not quilted) summer and winter. That way he doesn’t throw it at me. I then have a light blanket that goes over ME so I don’t ice over.
We have a king-sized bed, with a king-sized blanket on top of it. And then twin sized blankets piled on each side according to the individual’s preference at that time of year. Easy.
The cats all end up on top of me for the most part. Who needs a weighted blanket? 😀
Since so many have responded to my mention that CFS insisted my brother have separate bedroom for his 4 and 6 year-old sons, I should make some additional clarification. If you are ever involved with CFS, hire a lawyer, your own lawyer, IMMEDIATELY. It will save you a ton of money and grief.
When my brother found himself before Family Court about the disposition of his children after their mother, from whom he was separated, had been arrested for illegal drug use among other things, he had had no experience with the courts, much less Family Court, which is a very special place capable of ridiculous abuse. Despite his spotless record of being currently employed and having never been arrested, the court assigned each parent a “rehabilitation plan”. The mother’s consisted of monthly drug tests (which she did not do). His consisted of the absurd insistence that he get a 3 bedroom domicile as I noted.
He was assigned a court-appointed attorney as were the mother and, collectively, the children. These attorneys were paid less than half what an outside attorney makes as hourly fees. That eventually led to a scandal of many such attorneys not only prolonging cases but charging as much as 24 hours each day to separate cases. In any case, by the next appearance some weeks later, my brother had indeed rented a satisfactory place, and the court responded by “placing” his own kids with him. If you’re not a lawyer, you might not realize that “placing” is not custody. Without any of us realizing it, that meant that, instead of the court washing its hands of the matter and letting the eventual divorce court decide custody arrangements, my brother got the kids, but they were still wards of the court. That led to 6 months of protracted (although benign by some standards) abuse by the courts, with numerous court appearances, almost all cancelled at the last minute because one of the 3 attorneys was busy charging to another sucker’s case. One further item of note is that, as the only employed party, my brother was charged hourly fees for all 3 attorneys. And, as anyone who has paid skilled labor fees knows, there are no fractions in labor charges. An hour and 5 minutes means a labor charge for 2 hours labor.
If my brother had had a family law attorney working for him, he would have objected to placed vs. custody, and the matter would have been resolved instantly as far as family court was concerned. Also my wife and I would have never had to get involved. Please, please, heed my advice at the top of this comment.
Cheap/Free legal counsel is one of the most butt(HONK) expensive thing you can obtain.
Seriously. Better to mortgage your future than go with court-appointed. At least you -have- a future if mortgaged.
You might luck out and get a good pro-bono lawyer. But you might also win a Lotto jackpot now and again.
I kinda hate it when people use the “children in foster care” number as “children waiting for adoption” for a different personal reason…
My parents fought like hell to get me back for years. (They did win eventually.) They’re not perfect parents or anything but the whole setup was a travesty of lies from one end to the other. I was in foster care, but I *did not need* to be adopted. How many are in that boat, for it to be so blithely cited.
It just … seems like there’s only wickedness to the whole setup no matter what angle you come to it from.
Probably a lot. Our younger son almost ended up in the same position.
When I was looking into it, approximately 15% of kids in foster care were eligible for adoption.
In other words, 85% are stuck in the “in our bureaucratic opinion, your parents are too crappy to take care of you, but not so crappy that someone else can become your legal parents” holding pattern.
Arizona has been taking steps to reform their system, including little things like foster parents who have taken care of the child for at least a year are given the same preference as family members, and that any family members who haven’t been found in a year of searching are not eligible for having children placed with them.
My favorite comment with regards to adoption was “You do realize the process has changed a bit since Matthew Cuthbert brought home Anne of Green Gables because the orphanage was out of boys that day, right?”
My favorite comment with regards to adoption was “You do realize the process has changed a bit since Matthew Cuthbert brought home Anne of Green Gables because the orphanage was out of boys that day, right?”
That…is putting it very mildly. And yes, most foster kids STAY foster kids. There’s more money in it for guess who that way. :glares at system again:
Agreed, but it helps them realize just how much they’re relying on “what everyone knows” about the process with no actual information.
Hell, how many people realize there hasn’t been an orphanage in America since the 70s? Yet a major plot point in “Despictable Me” is that the villain protagonist can drop by the local orphanage, check out three orphans for a weekend, and then return them like library books. The myth of “there are lots of well-adjusted healthy orphans living in orphanages just waiting for adoption” is still being perpetrated fifty years after it became fiction.
THIS.
Honestly even that crazy system might be better.
Despicable Me‘s sole excuse is that Illumination Entertainment is primarily quartered in Europe. I don’t know if they have major orphanages there still, but here? Yeah, that trope is being used when the number of orphanages is about as small as the number of circuses left in the country. But Hollywood is so thoroughly and willfully clueless…. Can we even get that mule to water? I know it won’t drink, but….
They don’t have orphanages, unless the East does.
Go figure. :sigh:
Back when we were looking into international adoption (20 or so years ago), there were a number of orphanages in Eastern Europe. The rule of thumb I recall is one month of developmental delay for each month the child had been in such an institution – just miserable results.
We got lucky and ended up with a private adoption in the US. A friend of the biological grandmother met my dad in an AA meeting of all things and we ended up in email correspondence with the birth mother (who was very young herself at the time). Admittedly not a cheap process, but we got very lucky.
Fertility struggles are amazingly hard and can be devastating. I won’t try to recap them all here. Amazingly, my wife became spontaneously pregnant (without additional problems) after we brought our eldest into our household as a baby. They are close, thankfully, but they always had their own room….
In fairness, it’s also part of the system. Parents have a Constitutional right to their children. Stripping someone of a Constitutional right *shouldn’t* be a quick or easy process.
Children have only a statutory right to a safe environment. There are attempts in states to ensure that they get into and remain in a safe environment as quickly as possible, but balancing competing rights is not easy.
:nods to concede the point: It need not and should not be quick or easy, I agree. But the level of trouble they insist on is downright diabolical, particularly since it is mostly facilitated to cause harm to the children in particular more than the adults.
It causes more harm to the kids than the adults, certainly.
I think the system in its current state is mostly a matter of incentives though. If a kid gets placed with a good family, no one credits the agency. If a kid gets placed with a bad family, everyone blames the agency. If a kid never gets placed at all, the agency gets more funding because they have so many kids.
When you punish a failed attempt and reward not even trying, people not going to try more than they absolutely have to.
That’s the positive side. The other side is, “How much money does the state/agency get per child?”
While I agree that this is one of those “inalienable rights,” it’s not specifically mentioned as far as I know. I’m curious as to why you say it’s a constitutional right.
Parental rights should be defended under the 10th Amendment, but the main precedents mostly use the Due Process clause of the 14th.
Santosky v. Kramer, 455 US 745 (1982). The right to parent one’s children requires due process to terminate, and merely finding a preponderance of evidence (the standard in civil trials) that the parents are unfit is not enough. The state must present clear and convincing evidence to sever parental rights.
Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 US 390 (1923). Laws forbidding the teaching of subjects (in this case, German) encroached on the freedom of parents to raise their children as they see fit.
Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 US 510 (1925). Laws forcing children to attend public schools are unconstitutional because parents have the right to educate their children as they see fit.
Duchesne v. Sugarland, 566 F.2d 817 (2nd Cir 1977): the state cannot deny parents their children without due process and can be liable for monetary damages if they do.
Skinner v. Oklahoma 316 US 535 (1942). The state can’t sterilize people as a punishment for committing felonies.
Note: Buck v. Bell, the source of the famous “three generations of imbeciles are enough,” has never been overturned, but the law allowing sterilization of the institutionalized mentally ill was repealed in 1980.
(The numbers after the case parties are [volume number] [collection of cases called a reporter] [page number] ([Court the case was heard in and omitted for SCOTUS] [year]))
I am a lawyer, but not your lawyer, so this is not legal advice.
No problem. I appreciate seeing the cases, although I would think most of those items would be state based, since parental rights are not specifically mentioned in the Constitution.
At this point any appeal to the 10th amendment is automatically void, there have been so many cases that bypass it.
There is a concept called the Incorporation Doctrine, which holds that the 14th Amendment’s clause stating “nor shall any State deprive a person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” means that at least some of the first ten Amendments also are binding on state governments, and that the government can’t take away “liberties” that may not even appear in the text, so long as they were understood to be things people were free to do in 1868. Like have, raise, and teach their children.
This is where the “emanations and prenumbras” language comes from in Griswold v. Connecticut. Privacy, including whether the sex one is having can result in pregnancy, is one of those liberties that can’t be taken away without due process. So contraception cannot be categorically forbidden to people at large.
There are times where I wish we could imitate the Emperor Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis and write a new constitution that is nothing but a compilation of the results of all the hundreds of Supreme Court cases, so people could know exactly how it had been interpreted and easily compare it to the original.
Yes indeedy, and it is horrible for the kids who have spent all their lives in foster care, age out at 18 and are essentially dumped. No home, little ability to organize a functional, independent adult life for themselves. The CPS money spigot is turned off, and they are on their own.
Yes, and it’s another not-so-tacit reminder of the idea (or fact) that they’re not wanted, as who tells the children who get swept up in foster care because CPS essentially kidnapped and kept them from their parents that said parents are fighting to get them back? We have stories about little children being coerced to lie about sexual abuse on the stands by the lawyers, why? Because that’s more money for the lawyers, state, and agency, and who cares if the kids get ground up by the system and their parents didn’t do a d@mn thing to them at all? The lawyers can now brag about stopping pedophiles that weren’t after their bank accounts get a boost, while the state and CPS have new victims to mangle.
There’s a “homeless shelter” downtown specifically aimed at “youth,” by which they mean 16-25. The vast majority of their client base is foster youth aged out.
And don’t necessarily blame the foster parents, either. A lot of them would not kick the kids out at 18, but have to or they’ll get kicked out of being foster parents entirely, especially if they have younger kids on the premises.
There’s also the opposite end of the problem: many of the children in the foster system are effectively not adoptable because the neglect or abuse piled on them by their parents before the state intervened has left the children virtually unfixable. People unacquainted with child protective services have a tendency to naively believe all these children can just be loved out of their dysfunction like one of those inspirational films where a teacher who cares saves his urban pupils. Most people would not take a lot of these children into their homes, and most probably shouldn’t. It would take a fairly special kind of person to take in these very damaged children, who often resemble juvenile inmates.
We know.
The possibility his/her say incarcerated natural parent would suddenly claim to have found Jesus, get parole and take them back.
Some of my husband’s relatives were foster parents that experienced this. They would have these two girls for a few months; the girls would be in a rough situation to start with, but eventually they would get into a routine, accept the rules, and things would get better. Then the egg donor would get out of prison, claim the girls back, and keep them for about a month to six weeks. And then, inevitably, the Foster Parents would get the call at 2 in the morning: “Mom’s been arrested again. Can we drop the girls off at your place?” and the whole cycle would start over.
Manifestly unfit parents are given “back” infants or toddlers they haven’t seen since the day of their birth because our child services worship Rosseau and think there’s something special to the “natural” link.
I have heard about a number of cases in my lifetime where the biological parents, years after an infant adoption, will suddenly decide that they now want their 3- or 4-year-olds back. I have never heard of one of those cases where the adoptive parents succeeded in keeping custody. It’s a depressing reminder that, no, it doesn’t matter how long you take care of the child; it will never be “yours” as far as the law is concerned.
Not just adoption. My cousin got pregnant, her husband demanded she abort the baby. She refused. He handed her divorce papers at the hospital, said he wanted nothing to do with the baby. Then the kid turned 4, and suddenly he wanted a relationship with “his” daughter.
This is also an issue with the adoption thing. Guy says he doesn’t want anything to do with the kid so the girl gives it up for adoption (this is often young kids with not a lot going for them, but no other problems). A few years later, they decide to get back together and want to “make a family with their kid.”
The entire point of adoption is that it is a legal statement of kinship that’s not supposed to be sunderable.
The laws actually got changed after those cases to make it harder to upset a finalized adoption. Most of those fights were triggered by the fact the baby daddy was not informed and/or did not consent to the adoption…and so there are now registries where fathers can stake a claim to a potential child and failure to do so waives their rights. 99%+ of final adoptions now are just that … final.
Don’t know if it has changed but in ’80s, when we were looking into it, Oregon’s rule was if not married, the male biological contributor had no rights. To the point where women were not coming to Oregon to abort, but to have their baby and give them up for adoption. Would the process get the biological father’s sign off signature if available and willing? Yes. But the mother had the final say. The Open Adoption orientation meeting we went to had an adoptive parent, with their 7 month finalized adopted baby. She explained how the biological mother came to Oregon, had the baby. Did not want the biological father involved. Did not want an open adoption herself, but wanted baby’s adult half siblings (brothers) kept in touch. Older mother.
Adopted niece. Both her biological parents signed off on the adoption (also while private, through Open Adoption). Biological single mother already had a 5 year old, didn’t feel she could raise a second while single. Niece has 3 half siblings. When she met everyone at 18 (no choice, part of the adoption legalese), oldest sibling was blunt “you were the lucky one”.
BTW, preschool teacher must have heard you say, “moose and squirrel”. 🙂
Go ahead and throw carps. I’m supposed to be abstaining from meat.
The more I see and hear tales like this about the nightmare that is adoption in the current day, the more fortunate I understand I am, being the human foster fail that I am.
They really, really don’t want people to have families.
I hope they all burn.
And that’s something I need to write about too. We realized recently how parenthood is portrayed in ALL the shows. they really hate people having children.
The ultimate proof that they are Satanic, IMO.
Completely off topic
Watch: Fire-breathing robot dog that can torch anything in its pathWatch: Fire-breathing robot dog that can torch anything in its path https://www.yahoo.com/tech/flamethrowing-robot-dog-shoot-fire-130140930.html
I posted this because well this is a heavy topic and some wonderfhl mayhem is needed
Needed at Yale, Columbia, and DC, for starters.
RELEASE THE HOUNDS!!!
(diabolical grin)
A cousin of mine and her husband went through invitro 3 or 4 times in thr early 90s. Nothing. To compress a really long sad bad story, they had an opportunity to adopt a friends cousins boy. Mom dead. Dad gone before birth. He was 6. Family court, lawyere money. Boys family all petitioned the court to let my cousin adopt him. They were too young or old or going through divorce. Biological father did show up. He paid a lot of the bills, told his son this is better for you and left a sealed envelope for my cousin to give him when he turned 18.
He is a top level aerospace engineer. His wife is a ministers daughter. They have 4 children and it is about as storybook as you can get.
Also about the time the adoption was approved, my cousin found she was pregnant. So she has a son and a daughter.
it was the decency of people thst did it despite the bureaucrats.
Fagan was a saint compared to a lot of people in the adoption/fostering/orphan ‘care’ system. Doesn’t mean there aren’t some good people in it (there’s usually a good apple in every rotten basket – they just don’t stay good for long.) Pournelle’s Iron Law applies equally to that sector, and when you have people who think of children as just numbers, bad things happen.
Mom was a registered foster mother, primarily because my sisters had a habit of bringing home friends that were being abused. She never took in a child that didn’t come to her that way.
My father’s last wife fostered something like 19 kids when she lived in Connecticut. She and my Dad adopted the last child, who was a drug and alcohol baby with quite a few problems. He’s functional enough to hold down a simple mechanics helper job in a garage, and his common law wife scarfs up his monthly SS check, but at least she knows he’s her meal ticket and doesn’t seem to be abusing him beyond that.
Well, unless you read the delightful “Artful” by Peter David, that has Fagan and Judge Fang as vampires that need to be defeated by the Artful Dodger, assisted by a young Abraham van Helsing and the Baker Street Irregulars.
I’m not so sure that even vampires would be as damaging as some of these people. And at least a vampire is more honest about it.
Thanks for writing this.
My wife and I are childless. We’re blessed with a nephew and several nieces (well, “blessed” and that’s a whole ‘nuther story…). All this is very, very familiar, though it happened about 10 years later for us, also in NC. My wife endured the endometriosis stuff and some treatments for. And an additional medical issue. We actually both contributed medically to this problem. Family didn’t help…yet another story; well, stories, because we each have a family…
We sat through some adoption presentations; between the money and the intrusions (especially the money), nope. We met with a couple from our church that had done some fostering…oh my. They could have lost the custody of their OWN children, due to the character of the child they fostered…and that child will be believed, NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY AND WHAT HISTORY OF LYING/MANIPULATING THEY HAVE.
No. They don’t want you to have children or to raise them right. These are people that should not have any of this power.
And what the attitudes of some who have children do to those of us who don’t, particularly my wife…I’ll just have to stop there.
We used to get the stink eye at church, because two children, “normal time” spaced. people shouldn’t judge but they do. And they assumed we had been avoiding children.
Meanwhile I cried inside at every discarded child, every person who had an abortion because “no one wants my child.” Sigh.
And honestly, when tech gets to the point that a fetus can be transplanted into an artificial womb or another woman, abortion should get the death penalty. It’s premeditated murder.
There is no such thing as an unwanted baby in this country. Only babies unwanted by their egg donors.
I live very near a lovely place called Chicks in Crisis. It’s designed to help young women who are pregnant to either keep their babies or match them to adopters.
It’s successful because it’s not a governmental program. Just people who want to help and who figured out the best way to do it was things like parenting classes and car seats and job training.
But it isn’t easy, and it isn’t cheap. Ever.
Can’t speak to that one personally, but I know the statistics are that approximately one in one hundred women who go to a crisis pregnancy center adopt out their child. The rest keep them.
Which, as the biggest risk factor of becoming a single mother is having had a single mother, means the crisis pregnancy centers will never put themselves out of business.
The fact that it’s still better tax-wise and government benefits-wise for a mother and father to remain unmarried so he can be single and she can claim head-of-household is a disgusting indictment of how little Republicans actually mean anything they say about strengthening and defending families.
Democrats brought that program in, and Democrats designed it to be near-politically impossible to get rid of.
To be fair, some Democrats fought it strongly. One of them even wrote a book about how it was wrong and was going to destroy society. (Sorry, I can’t remember his name.)
Anyway… one of the points of pork programs of any kind is that they are hard to kill. Welfare is one of the biggest pork programs, and one of the best non-corporation examples. Once you start the money funnel, you can’t stop it or change it without making life hard for _someone_.
Patrick Moynihan.
Wrote The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, aka the Moynihan Report, noting the then record high of 25% of black children being born out of wedlock. (Current number is north of 70%.)
and Defining Deviancy Down in 1993.
He was a Democrat of the social conservative and help the little guy school. In today’s politics, he’d be at least as far to the right as Trump.
Pearl’s Hope in Tulsa will take any single mom in for 90 days. If they go through the whole program they get training in how to handle money, good work habits, child care and general life skills. When they “graduate,” they have a job and a place to live outside the group home, and at least a fighting chance of making it.
Now and then the word will go out that someone’s boyfriend is in the area and may be ready to make trouble, so be vigilant. So far as I know, all false alarms. So far.
People give the stink eye no matter what. Upon meeting us and our six kids our new RC pastor turned to hubby and said, ” Don’t you know what causes that?” Gesturing toward the kiddos.
Hubby said, “Yes, and obviously we’re good at it “ Which did not embarrass Fr. as much as it should have.
Doesn’t matter how many you have it’s either too many or not enough.
But the general trend is definitely toward, have one if absolutely must, but more than that is an abomination.
I liked BIL’s and sister’s answer to that question with the 4 girls. “No. We were told we can’t have children. They keep coming anyway.”
“We child-proofed our house and they still got in.”
“Stork keeps getting tired at our house and leaves them with us.”
😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁
Cat-proofed. Same.
But cats can walk through walls. 😎
That’s what keeps happening. They come in our walls, then settle in.
“We used to get the stink eye at church, because two children, ‘normal time’ spaced”
Were you attending a very trad Catholic parish at the time? One that had the Latin Mass, a very conservative pastor, lots of homeschooling stay at home moms, or some combination of the above? Because those are the communities that in my experience really push large families as the ideal. I understand why they do it — they have to push back twice as hard to overcome the anti-family pressures from the rest of the world — but sometimes they can go a bit overboard in assuming that any family with only 1 or 2 kids must have “selfishly” chosen that.
No. It was actually fairly liberal, and went nuts after we left.
Sarah Hoyt, Bearer of Sanity. :-)
Sarah Hoyt, Axebringer.
I understand completely why Sarah prefers not to read the comments at Insty, because between the trolls, the “women should never have gotten the vote” commenters and the “everyone who lives in a blue state/city is just getting what they voted for” commenters, it can be kind of frustrating to read.
Insty also has some commenters who, whenever the topic of declining birth rates comes up, insist that anyone who doesn’t have at least 2 children shouldn’t get Social Security because they selfishly refused to replace themselves as taxpayers to the system. If I bring up the fact that couples shouldn’t be punished for simply being infertile or for circumstances that are not their fault, some will agree, but others will say that should still be the general rule and infertile couples would just have to accept it.
AAANND right on cue, here’s a thread in which they suggest that not only should Social Security and Medicare but your right to vote should be contingent on having at least 2 children because otherwise you aren’t “really invested in the future of your country”.
https://instapundit.com/643681/#disqus_thread
Not to mention the increasing number of single people. Do they put an age limit on this thing? How many times can a child be counted? Is it linked to tax status? What about divorced couples who share custody? Do they each get half a vote? What if a child dies? If someone has four children, do they get four votes? Ooh! What about a biological chimera? Or families with multiple marriages? If someone raises a child, is that enough, or does it have to be biological? What about peoples fur babies? If a child decides she’s a cat, are the parents no longer eligible to vote?
ROFL
And here I thought they were against single motherhood.
Oh, that’s REALLY kind to folk with fertility issues. Or those who will never have kids of their own by choice because, and I quote, “My kids would be even more messed up genetically than I am.” (She was not joking, and neither was she the person I know with the most messed up genetics.)
Here’s an idea: let people decide for themselves how many children they want to have, if any. Don’t punish them for having ‘too many’ or ‘too few’ and sure as HELL don’t steal other people’s money to support them.
We used to call that ‘Liberty’ and ‘Freedom’ but such notions seem to have gone quite out of style lately.
Small problem, their parents can’t have as many as they’d “want,” because their money is being stolen to pay for the folks who didn’t have kids, and their kids’ money will likewise be stolen.
What you wrote is our experience. 100% Same time period.
We started a little sooner, early ’80s. Then we got told “too soon to do any testing”. Had a “miscarriage” ’84. Tore apart so not fetus, egg implanted no fertilization, false pregnancy. Had that happen (suspect) regularly until ’89. In ’87 started taking a drug that forces fertilization from both ovaries (did not luck out and get twins, nor did genetic quirk of identical twins happen). Hubby started taking same drug to increase his fertility (humoring us? IDK) in ’88. Also in ’88, along with (slightly) younger sister started looking into adoption.
Sister was told, via tests, she’d never *conceive. Endometriosis had her tubes blocked. They tried IVF (we were told because no diagnosis, IVF would not be offered, nor would any more potent fertility drugs). Open Adoption group was either of us only option. Not CPS. Through 3rd parties, sister found out about 3 possible. They were chosen for one of them, born Jan 1, 1989; cost $15k, not counting the costs of home visits, which went through the OA group, even though a private adoption. We had the paperwork filled out, and was ready to start the process to get in the queue (potential adoptive parents notebook), but then our miracle happened. Found out I was pregnant, officially (lab test) Oct 20, 1988 on my birthday, born June 1989. We never turned in the paperwork. Also, what had been happening, with the “miscarriages” never happened again.
Youngest sister, give both our problems conceiving, never bothered with preventing pregnancies. Married Sept 4, 1988. First child born Aug. 11, 1989. They have two more, 3rd one, they had hit our luck.
Interestingly enough, niece and nephew in law, no extraneous tests, couldn’t conceive, mid/late 20’s, and the doctors went straight to IVF. They too got low egg count, or maybe it was low vitality count. One miscarriage. Two live births. Now have a 3 year old girl, and a newborn male. They plan on birthing the remainder.
Coworkers, early ’90s adopted two infants (different years) through Washington state CPS. $30k, each (might include home visits). Both have life time major developmental issues (drug/alcohol babies). Granted now almost 30 years later, but for reasons, the parents never had state officials out of their life because both children were/are forever are state medical wards.
Aunt & Uncle adopted their youngest through California CPS as foster parents, he was 5 or 6 when he came to live with them. He now has 3 of his own. He too is forever a state medical ward.
((*)) Same sister who went on to have 3 of their own, with 5 pregnancies. The unsuccessful ones were tubal and had to be terminated. Yes her tubes are blocked, by her ovaries. Each pregnancy? Doctors were surprised. FYI, BIL’s comment was “a lot less expensive” (because insurance kicked in), $300 -ish, each.
This one actually seems culturally tractable, given a few years and the right kind of push. The horror stories help a lot. No one can read them and say justice was served.
Now imagine one of those stories coming over the transom every week or two. Each one chips away at the illusion that the system is working as intended, until “everybody knows” the system is broken.
Framed the right way, the adoption issue plugs into ready-made narratives on both sides of the political divide. For the right, it’s an attack on the family and yet another case of government overreach. For the left, it’s a regressive system that hurts the poor and probably is racist to boot.
You could even get Hollywood in on the act. Imagine an Oscar-bait drama about a poor but progressive single white woman fighting the bureaucracy to adopt a black girl. Play up the racial impediments to adoption, the damaging financial hoops she’s forced to jump through, and the patriarchal condescension of the bureaucrats keeping a woman from her daughter.
The script practically writes itself.
Yes. Also won’t happen. because the left controls Hollywood and the news. And they’re really, really, really anti-children/anti-family. An abortion script? Oh, boy, it will catch fire and be pushed into books and movies. This? No chance.
I think the Cartman as Kathleen Kennedy line goes here.
I suspect that (with the right in) you could flip individual celebs and work outward from there. Framed as a social justice cause, “adoption inequity” is immediate, emotional, and explicit, whereas the anti-family bias is implicit and diffuse. (Just my impression; I could be wrong about that.)
But, yeah, the media’s not touching this with a ten-foot pole. I can see it getting traction on the blogosphere and social media, though. You’re totally right that it’s a topic most people don’t know the first thing about, and stories like this go a long way towards dispelling their illusions.
Angel Studios might pick it up, at some point. But right now, the closest film I know of to get within spitting distance of the issues is Gifted. Where the nice, maternal next-door black lady who acts as the little girl’s mom-figure tells Chris Evans, “You couldn’t even afford a white lawyer!” (He hired a black lawyer, who was very good, but the implication…. Well, I don’t think I need to spell that out.)
It was one of several moments in the movie that made me go, “WHOA!”
It’s not actually true, you know? Because of the abundance of black kids needing families AND the stupid idea race is culture, they will place kids with black families and give them grants for the expenses and all.
Which is another reason this will never hit Hollywood. This is not a minority and destitute problem. It’s a middle class and mostly white (and maybe Asian) problem.
So the movie was backwards and upside down. Like all of Hollywood.
The same thing is true with other minorities (Hispanic / Native American).
of course.
Pinches bridge of nose. Nah. The celebrities won’t talk to anyone on our side, because it will get them blacklisted. Same with fiction writers still in the traditional mills.
The only way this breaks is when tech gets to the point indie movies are easy for individuals to make with a few friends on a weekend and rival Hollywood.
Megan Fox over at PJ Media has been investigating the whole CPS / guardian ad litem / therapist / medical mistreatment racket for the last 5 years. Look her up under their columnists. You’ll want to not have throwables around.
Yeah, her stories sometimes make no sense to someone who works in the system and has for 30+years. Not defending the system but it don’t work that way
Seems to me that the last Hollywood movie that bothered to come out against the side of “adoptions have to race-match” was…”Follow that Bird”.
In which Big Bird gets taken away from Sesame Street and placed in the home of family of other birds.
Given that it’s Sesame Street, I have no doubt that the message runs into the other ditch: the only meaningful family is “found” ones, but still.
The racial stuff *is* the left these days. The left is big on making sure that minority kids are raised by parents of the same ethnicity. Remember that this is the same side of the political aisle that pushes “safe spaces” that explicitly don’t include white people.
They think culture is the same as skin color, the Hitler-following bastards.
Movie people. Not Hollywood. But it’s not high budget.
(Deep breath)
Adoption is an absolute horror show. My wife is infertile, various treatments failed, so all three of my kids are adopted.
There were also another four failed attempts, more fraud and pressure tactics than I wish to shake a stick at, and more heartbreak than I care to remember.
Hugs. I imagine. We got miracles. But we saw that really clearly in our future.
And there was one fetal death and PROBABLY a miscarriage. (Early and… it was weird, okay?)
This thread makes me want to cry and go hug my daughter. I will once she awakes.
And I did pick her up and hug her as soon as she woke, and I didn’t want to let her go, but I did eventually put her in carseat so we could go grocery shopping.
I know of successful adoptions, but honestly, the only ones that didn’t involve lots of spare cash were the in-family adoptions, as in “Your family member and their partner have both been declared incapable of being parents, so if you don’t take this kid they are going into the foster-care system.” (One of them was for a registered tribal member, so those kids wouldn’t have gone into general foster care several states away, but he was a bit surprised at the timing of becoming a parent. They’d intended to adopt, just not right then.)
Note that perfectly lovely family people can have relatives who are not suitable as parents. I usually find that drugs are involved at that point.
Note I still mourn because we were offered a group of three siblings under 5 right after a cancer diagnosis, and while we were paying mortgage and rent and incredibly broke.
We couldn’t. But I still have dreams we did. (And yes, it was stupid. Mother was Portuguese. Father Anglo-Irish so they came to us first. At 53. But a year earlier/a year later, we’d have broken ourselves to take them.)
When we first move in, Nov ’88, we had a family down the road. Got to know them, because one of the first things we did was redo the front yard. Pull down skinny pitch dripping lodgepole pines, dig up the low maintenance wild strawberry “lawn”, pull and dig up (again, and again, but that is off topic) the yucca plants, and bring in a load of loam. Which became a short term play ground for their 3 young boys. Not for long (we were spreading it out, too). They took in 3 nephews. Sold the house and bought something larger (if I remember correctly, an accident that took both parents, they became the boys legal guardians).
in 1991 I watched Jonathan Mann on television while he told the world about the scandalous horror of orphanages in Romania. The children, starved and anemic, were given blood transfusions with utterly predictable results.
At the time I worked at CDC, AIDS Program, Seroepidemiology Branch. Hysteria about AIDS was at fever pitch. I knew when I got a wrong number because people would scream and slam the phone down.
The Surgeon General sent out a pamphlet through the mail, and people didn’t want to touch it because it had the word AIDS on it.
I tell you this because Americans spent small fortunes to adopt those kids. Kids who would be pariahs, forbidden to play with the neighborhood kids. Kids who would never live to grow up, but grow sicker every day until they finally died, ripping out the hearts of their adoptive parents.
Not many people will do that if they have an alternative.
In 1990 I visited the chamber of horrors known as a Romanian orphanage. Many of the children in there were basically feral. They couldn’t speak, they often were restrained because if they were not they would (and did, I witnessed one such event) harm themselves and others in bezerk fits. And those were the good ones. The fact that they had AIDS on top is just the cherry on the cake.
Anyone who adopted one of those has my respect.
Wow. It was even WORSE than I remembered. You have my respect for going in there.
Amen sister. We adopted both of our boys in the eighties. We were in our thirties and doing well. We were in California. The drug problem was in full swing. We went with the foster adopt system because that was the only way to get a child. Our first boy was in a foster home that was going to adopt him but had problems so we thankfully got him. He is a great kid, now 40, and turned out to be a polymath. Who knew?
Our second was a drug baby because by then that was all that was available to us in the L. A. County system. Months in neo-natal ICU and into a group home that he was aging out of at 22 months. We got a new social worker who put us together.
In both cases we were foster parents at first while birth mother’s cases wound through the courts. We discussed just between the two of us what we would do if the courts decided in favor of the birth mothers. Mexico was an option. Thankfully both adoptions went through. Second son is doing well. But it took a lot of work, as did his brother. Both exceptionally gifted and special needs kids are a handful. Expensive too with private schools, doctors and counselors but worth it. Love them both
Eh. Our younger was “twice special.” also.
On endometriosis. Big family lots of girls. Also lots of their friends. Lots of endometriosis diagnosis. Also not. The earlier and more frequently they took thr pill and the lower the body weight, the more likely they were to have it.
They all managed at least one.
Cannot prove my observations and I havent found much in the literature. Its like the vaxx. No one looks so no problems
In 62 or 63, one of my sisters was ‘diagnosed’ with autism. They reccommended she be institutionalized immediatrly for the good of all. My mother said she isnt autistic she is shy. (She was and is autistic or ADHD or neuroatypical. Most of us were/are. So.e of my kids are as well.) She is now PhD biologist teaching and doing resesrch with grown kids and a life. Still working though near 70.
The experts never were.
They told us younger son was profoundly autistic and would never live a normal life.
The last is true, because he’s weird.
BUT his impairments were sensory issues and yes being extremely introverted.
But he went through 10 years of two engineering degrees, then exited sideways to become … a comics editor.
That boy ain’t normal. However his tested IQ is in the 180s and he’s holding down a job and will get legally married this month.
None of the rest of the family is normal either, so hey.
When they did the big diagnostic psych testing for my eldest, they sat me down (literally) and hesitantly told me he had autism. I think I really surprised them when I cheerfully said, Okay, that makes sense, what’s the next step?
This was 2011, so right in the midst of the awful “vaccines cause autism” moral panic. They must have been very used to parents who would freak out about the very word and assume their lives were over. Me, I’m pretty sure my husband is lightly on the spectrum (can’t really get diagnosed due to overlapping issues, but he definitely has sensory issues and decades of coping strategies.) I figured, he’s fine, my kid will be fine.
Said kid is off his IEPs entirely after a dozen years, communicates as well as any teenaged boy (probably better, TBH, since he does more than grunt), and is doing well in scouts. Still has a couple of obvious stimming behaviors, but since they’re not harmful, who cares? Incidentally very intelligent and likely to go into some flavor of engineering, possibly aerospace.
Back when I was young, autism was considered a form of schizophrenia and “treatments” included things like “shock treatments” and hallucinogens. Let’s just say that I’m really, really glad that I got my diagnosis under DSM-V and not DSM-II.
I know of two couples from my church congregation who have adopted children.
Both couples have 2 children who are not the same skin color as they are, as well as older natural children (or step-children, in one case). How they managed this– I suspect this is why: both couples are quite well off (one couple is an orthodontist and a nurse, the other is an orthodontist and a state legislator).
I am anti-IVF, for the same reason I’m anti-surrogacy– and, though a half step removed, for the same reason that I want to smack the “just adopt” folks with what is probably not a whiffle bat.
They’re all treating people as commodities. We’ve seen how this goes with “just adopt” for animals– they are even explicit about how the adopted “product” is lower quality, but you need to suck it up and take the trash because how dare you?!?!
Incidentally, yes, I donated. Because the issue with IVF is the creating part, and the kid is already there. Of course I’m going to try to save the kid.
PTB are already pressuring niece to donate the remaining embryos for stem cell now that they’ve successfully had two. Wasn’t there. According to her husband, what she replied is not printable without a lot of censoring, and went downhill from there. She might have been less vehement if their timing had been better. Answer wouldn’t been different. Might have been fewer cuss words.
Isn’t it “strange” how it keeps coming back to that?
Good.
Thank you for articulating the problem with the “just adopt” mindset.
It’s always bothered me, and couldn’t express why.
Sarah wrote, “This is MY experience, note, and I don’t claim it’s universal.”
It varies wildly by state. I have strong feelings about adoption and the bilge spouted by various officials about this magical blood tie. BUT–see quote above–when I met my current husband, he had two adopted children. Who were foster “fails”. After two bio children.
Which makes up for my being unable to have any, and now I’m past the Change. Anyway.
He says that when they were going through the foster-certification program, his first wife was onboard but he was doubtful. So in the interviews, he kept naming possible impediments to fostering….and the Official would handwave it aside. “Well, my employment is a boom-and-bust thing, so our income isn’t reliable.” To which the Official reply was “Well, you’ve kept your house, haven’t you?”
And so forth and so on. Every obstacle was handwaved aside. And once they had two children placed with them, the state would call regularly and try to get them to take more.
This was long, long ago, over twenty years. Things may have changed. But it was crazycakes then.
My husband and I looked at the possibility of fertility treatments or adoption, and soon realized that neither were an option, because the money wasn’t there. Sometimes I’m a little sad that the opportunity has passed me by, but given my neurodivergences and my husband’s health issues, it’s probably for the best.
Oh my. You hit one of my major soap box issues.
A. I’m adopted – in 1966, private adoption through mutual acquaintances at church. Pretty much miraculous. My blue collar parents had 2 boys via c-section due to mom’s polio as a child, felt the family wasn’t complete, wanted a girl. A Sunday school teacher mentioned she worked at a doctor’s office and sometimes helped unwed mothers place their babies with LDS families, and mom approached her.
B. We went through our own struggles with having kids – 9 miscarriages, carried to term 3 times. Went through infertility treatments that never did anything, unless the endo laser surgery made miracle baby #3 possible. Might have – she was unexpected because by then I’d been told given my hormone levels it would be a total miracle if I ever conceived again.
C. We looked into foster/adopt in CA the year before we ended up moving to UT. Got the foster worker from hell. A friend was fostering drug babies, and sometimes worked to get them placed in good homes. We started the home-study process. She got in trouble, we got in trouble, and nobody intended any wrong doing but she almost lost her foster parent license. And the baby she had that we hoped to adopt ended up going back to his druggy family, most likely BECAUSE somebody wanted him. Left such a bad taste in our mouths that we gave up on that idea completely.
D. Our middle child married an abusive jerk, got divorced, and decided religion in general, ours specifically, and therefore us – was responsible for her getting married too young to the wrong guy and ending up divorced. That God – if he existed – hated her because she felt she’d received an answer to prayer to get married to the guy. Yeah – parse out THAT convoluted thought process, I dare you. Anyway, one messed up thinking process led to another, which led to her getting herself sterilized at the ripe old age of 24 by some idiot of a doctor, because she was never putting her body through pregnancy, and if she changed her mind about having kids – “she could always adopt” due to there being so many kids needing homes. We tried and tried to talk her out of it, unsuccessfully.
Now, she’s bi/ace/some form of LGBTQ+, mostly due to trauma she nurses like a well-loved grudge, and honestly I’ve decided that it’s probably a good thing she’s not going to have kids because if she thinks I messed her up – she’d be on track to do a way worse job with her own if she could have them. She’s also now estranged both herself and her little sister – my total miracle baby mentioned above, because we’re the toxic ones. Enabled the mentally ill, ASD/ADHD/BPD little sister to move out with her and cut us out of her life, both blaming us for every bad thing ever, taking zero responsibility for anything..
Our adoption and fostering system are run by the Left. It’s been captured by Idealogues Untethered From Reality, who abhor the virtue of Prudence/Practical Wisdom (IUfRwAPPW). It’s hard to imagine how any “soulless corporation” could be more callous and destructive to human lives, human society, and human civilization. Screwtape would be inspired by them, if he had any inspiration beyond himself.
And our family courts seem enthralled in their service.
Like you, I have reservations about IVF. Like you, I’m horrified about parents stealing a minor daughter’s chance to have a family. And I have donated.
I did, however, skip much of your own medical detail. I’m happy to appreciate your suffering and sorrows, but that depth of personal detail is more than I care to be trusted with (unless you choose me personally and specifically).
May the great spilled water crisis hasten to its end, and may the next crisis be stuck forever in a Baltimore-Washington traffic jam!
I get. I wasn’t comfortable sharing, but sometimes it’s needed.
The real problem now is how to get back to a more sane system. I fear there is no way short of societal collapse sufficient to cause the end of all social security, CPS and related government busibody departments.
I think I’d prefer it if society didn’t collapse that much, but I have to say it is appearing more and more attractive by the day right now
BTW for those who may not be aware, John Ringo’s substack novels have the screwed up US CPS/foster care system as a background to the first book – the one that is currently being snippeted for free and which you should not read more than a couple lest you end up subscribing
https://johnringoauthor.substack.com/p/not-that-kind-of-good-guy-chap-1 and then search the more recent posts for “Free NTKOGG” if you want get hooked
Thanks Sarah and others for sharing your stories. The wife and I have had four battle trying get owe granddaughter out of the foster care system. We have had owe lives put though the microscope and past all requirements yet the process drags on. In Australia natural justice has been stripped and replaced with committees.
Neighbors of mom raised their grandson (now owns their house). Never went through the court system. Mom had her rights stripped. Dad should have. But he came and went, rarely taking the kid. They just didn’t get the system involved. By the time it came down to that the kid was old enough to have a say.
Don’t know what it took because all done by the time we knew the scouter and his scout sons. In fact just figured he was an older parent like us. Turns out he was 20 or so years older, and raising his grandsons. Adapted when they were very young.
As bad as the system is with people fighting over custody of a child. It is 10x’s worse watching where the problem is “who has to take the child”. Child not being neglected, if only because of other family members making sure. But those family members had no legal rights. Grandma wasn’t possible even though he and dad lived with her. Other closest relative, on dad’s side, was cousin once removed. Kid was not a bad kid, no medical problems. Bit messed up because of the situation, who wouldn’t be. We’d step in too when we could. (Dad didn’t show up to pickup from sports practice, take him to grandma house. Dad showed up reeking of alcohol, even if not visibly drunk? Practice had a bit to run, or some excuse, we’ll run him home. Wasn’t always successful but we tried. Scouts, cousin and husband were involved, so we were more hands off.) Last we heard (through cousin) was he is doing great, had twins in 2006, was living with baby mom and her parents, until they graduated HS, were married when both were 18.
A very insightful article. You xould have explained more on the topic that the government agencies see themselves as customers and children UNDER their care as the product. Sunlight, making all court hearings public, is the best cure for the government child care racket and many other government problems. We’ve had 3 biological and adopted 7 more ages 4-12. All the 4 tear olds should have been adopted by age 2 except for the government’s compulsion to hold onto “their kids”.
“Now, would too loose an adoption system have issues? Likely. There are nefarious actors abroad.
All to often currently, the nefarious on the adopting side are of a “protected” group. Pothole Pete and the like are being fast-tracked and potential problems ignored.
Seems to me — from a wholly external perspective — that the entire system is biased in ffavor of abortion, and so the more difficult adoption becomes, the more viable an option abortion becomes.
The entire system is biased against people — children and adults alike. Just like most of the Leftroids’ grandiose social programs.
“not only didn’t either of us speak Russian”
Sarah, I would bet the price of my house that the moron heard your accent and assumed that was your native language, because Stupido.
I’m sure. Even though it REALLY isn’t a Russian accent.
Having heard you speak, I have to say that you do sound sort of like a native Russian speaker using English as an acquired language. Which is not to lessen the irresponsibility of identifying you and Dan as such without making inquiries into the actual facts.
Dan has no accent, except Connecticut upper class when he gets testy. (He also becomes unearthly polite.)
It would be quite astonishing if he had a Portuguese accent, I have to say.
In any case, even initiating an action that could restrict or terminate parental rights just on someone’s conjecture is appalling.
LOL. yes. But they had talked to him.
Oh, like MomRed. When she speaks slowly in a thick East Texas accent, flee, run, don’t ask why. Detonation is imminent.
I fully agree about the adoption thing being borked. We spent thousands of dollars, and three years, in our attempt to adopt. We had to attend classes, have background checks done, get approved for a license, and get approved to be foster parents, etc. And we never even got a hint of adopting. When my wife suddenly became pregnant, after trying for nine years, we gave up on the adoption thing. It was expensive, time consuming, and heart breaking. And that was through a christian organization (though I was never very impressed with that organization in any of their endevours).
Fingers crossed for the couple in need.
Yep. And yep. I’m hoping for them.
Gave what I could yesterday (almost total roof replacement has to be done while we’re in the dry season here).
Then thought about it. That goal seems terribly low for what will be needed before we (hopefully) can welcome a new Hun into the fold.
I know that we, for one, will have more coming in later this Spring, but just when and how much I can’t plug into the cash flow spreadsheet yet. Please keep the campaign open even when the goal is reached, and I’m sure we’ll be kicking in more later.
Honestly, same here.
Thank you so much.
We’ve given Government People power and ensured they will be unaccountable except for rare and horrible things. They see rare and horrible things everywhere and do great harm in their learned fear. They are allowed, nay, encouraged to imagine all kinds of nightmares in ordinary life, and to believe in a world of perfect and perfectable people, whom everyone should be, but nobody can be.
And, between these godlike powers and the sort of world they believe in, most of the Government People have so lost their humanity that they can no longer accurately assess real human beings or understand real children.
The most in there is falling into the mental error you’re describing.
It doesn’t take “most.” It doesn’t even take “many.”
Combine normal, lazy, and evil, and it covers the cases like HSLDA will tell of, where a malicious reporter sends the CPS in on a family a dozen times, and on the first time the agent says “…this is stupid, your kids are clearly not abused.”
But they have to show up ever time, and even when it’s not the same agent they also say: nope, this kids are clearly fine, sorry to bother you.
Looking for the bad actors on the CPS payroll will improve situations… although one of the lazy is the folks who go in and say there’s no problem because it’d look bad. (Who wants to take the drug dealer’s kids away? Even the sixth time they’re in the hospital?)
Warning: Wall o’ Text. TL;DR version: Yeah, no, adoption is NOT an easy process, and when it is…there’s usually potentially family-breaking reasons as to WHY social services suddenly made it easy…
Yeah. Four of the seven kids in my family are adopted…(well, five of eight, but the unofficial probably doesn’t really count bc he joined us in his twenties).
Of those–only one was an infant, my parents adopted him at four months. After he’d had his first open heart surgery. And–and this is the really important bit–it was via our church’s social services*. Truth was, my parents weren’t even on the LIST with him–they’d just had (and lost) my brother that March (1989), and had only about six weeks before we got the call about Josh decided to put their papers in. Why did they get the call? Because our church’s social services also fasted and prayed about placing infants and children, to at least attempt to get some divine guidance in making sure the kids were put with the right families. So with Josh…they got an incredibly strong feeling that they needed to call my parents. Our social worker was reluctant, because he knew very well that my parents had *just* lost a baby, and here they had an infant who was less than two months out of open heart surgery and whose prospects, while not dire, were also not great. But the feeling wouldn’t go away, so he finally gave in and called–and my parents said yes. (He is now a healthy, if grumpy, 35 year old with little to no health issues from his heart.) His adoption I can truly say we never regretted, though of course he’s a human being and we have all had our issues over the years. But he is my brother, in every sense of the word.
Before that–and before my mother got pregnant with the one we lost via fertility treatments–they spent the 9 years between my (quite premature) arrival trying to adopt. They were foster parents, which is when we learned that state-run social services will cheerfully take away a child you have bonded deeply with and give them back to utterly dysfunctional parents. (We also learned that most foster parents out there…were not much better, and often actively WORSE, than the birth parents, unfortunately…) They were also told, flat out–and this was 1986 in Texas, mind you–that no, they would not be allowed to adopt or even foster a black child, because they were white. Same with Native kids. Hispanic kids were allowed to be fostered…but more likely to be taken away. (And look, the reunite the family thing *isn’t* a bad idea, given the kind of damage we now know the foster care system is doing to kids–but the problem is that they’re doing the damage anyway, and frankly social services will take kids away for ridiculous reasons. And the more affluent/left leaning an area is–like, as a not at all random example–Denver area–the more likely they are to do it for really awful reasons. Like, as our hostess says, assuming, without evidence, the parents only speak Russian at home and that is somehow abuse…)
The other 3 kids were all older, all considered unadoptable by social services (as it turns out…for very good reasons, much to our later dismay and grief). The youngest of that bunch was only four…but the abuse had been so bad, and the policy of that state’s social services refusing to get psychiatric care for children under 3 (bc they had to disclose it, and that made it harder to get the kids adopted…so leaving massive trauma untreated was, of course, somehow MUCH better…) meant that we were finally forced to institutionalize him at the age of 9 or so (and this was after we’d moved states–to the aforementioned problematic areas of Denver, no less, AND he’d attempted to molest the caseworker’s kid, so suddenly they stopped fighting us.) It wasn’t his fault he was that damaged, but we truly couldn’t help him–and he had attempted murder on the youngest (the other surviving–and VERY unexpected–birth child), on the other kids, and on himself before we got to that point. His older sister had her meltdown in her teens, and sadly went looking for the same kind of abuser she’d spent her early childhood with, in the end. My older sister…well, she was 15 when she came to us, and that was a whole other can of worms and problems, but she at least had a stable home until she was 18 and decided she didn’t want us anymore. (Except for later attempts to get money.) We also found out (after the adoption was final) that social services had deliberately lied/concealed certain psychological incidents in her recent past, because they knew if they told us, odds were good my parents would have backed out. (Maybe, maybe not. But it was our first experience in “if it’s easy to adopt this kid, even a teenager…there’s reasons, and you’re not gonna like them.”
*LDS Social services only provides counseling nowadays. I don’t know all the reasons why they no longer foster or adopt out kids, but I can guess, and I can guess government–state and fed–interference had a big hand in it. Rather like why most Catholic adoption agencies have also shut down…
So…yeah. “Just adopt” is NOT the solution people think it is.
Catholic adoption agencies were the ones who contacted us about the three-sibling-group. As I said, I never regretted more having to turn anything down. Sure, I’m sure there would be issues. The oldest was 4 or 5 and there’s room for a lot of trouble there. BUT any other year. A year before, a year after, and we’d now have 3 more kids.
WHY ON EARTH WOULD PEOPLE ASSUME THE ADOPTION PROCESS WORKS WHEN ANYTHING ELSE THE GOVERNMENT DOES IS A FLAMING DUMPSTER FIRE?
This is important to repeat. Does the Murray-Gellman effect apply to the government or just media?
On the bright side, I’ve been interacting with the city government here (filing for a zoning variance) and everyone has been very helpful and friendly – but it’s a small town, not the feds. It’s also not approved, yet, just filed.
I was adopted at 9, after my divorced mother died. Her grandparents decided they were too old to raise another child (which angered me at the time, but now that I’m older I completely understand). My adoptive father is my biological second cousin (or first cousin, once removed; I get them confused; maternal grandmother’s sister’s son). Oddly enough, I’m much closer to my adoptive mother’s side of the family.
As far as I know, it was a painless affair. It’s entirely possible it was horrible and I’ve never found out about that part. Going from an only child to one of six was not an easy process – for any of us. In retrospect, it went OK. Even at the time, I was well aware that things could have been much worse.
Speaking of which, I need to call dad…
Second cousin.
I used to get them confused too.
Nearest common grandparent, which would be your adoptive father’s and yours great-grandparents. Take # of greats and + 1. So 2. Or second cousin.
Ugh. Her parents. They were my grandparents.