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Government, enemy of adoption

Political ·Sunday May 17, 2009 @ 02:03 EDT (link)

My wife and I were walking around the neighborhood in Duvall today and a thought came to me (probably from something we were talking about): governments—at least, socialistic welfare states like the US—have no incentive to support adoption.

If a single mother who is unable to care for a child adopts it out, the state loses in several ways:

The welfare rolls lose the mother (since she can now work, or at least go to school and become productive later on: and if she has the intelligence to give up a child for which she cannot care, she probably has the motivation to do so). Government programs hate to lose clientele, because it could reduce their budget and influence. Statists like people to be dependent, because they will vote for more theft to feed their addiction to Other People's Money. If someone joins the civil society as a productive member, they will not look kindly upon redistributionist theft of what they worked to earn.
Other welfare departments lose the child, or child benefits, from their rolls. Their influence, power, and budget also takes a hit.
The child will go into foster care or likely a state-run orphanage; if the child from there is adopted into a family that can care for him, the foster care system will also lose power and prestige: if they stay in the system, the department and the state will be able to justify taking more from the people.
Since having a single parent is the largest predictor of juvenile delinquency, crime, and other failures in life (including ending up on welfare), adoption to a stable home breaks the cycle of dependency. (And given this fact, it is not heroic for a single mother to keep the child: it is in fact cruel.)

(As an aside, what a disgusting creation is this welfare government that depends and relies on increased human misery for its existence and propagation? Consider the entrenched autocrats of these fiefdoms, whose increase requires that the people of the United States become yet more and more miserable, that they depend on government theft to feed and clothe them: how miserable and twisted are their souls, as they strive and grasp to handle, skim, and give away yet more of the American worker's labor!)

This is why fees for adoption are high: it is not due to some sort of "You value something if you pay for it" lesson—bringing up the child will be cost enough, but most adoptive parents will pay it gladly. It is to discourage good, honest people from attempting to adopt a child and stop a cycle of governmental dependence which they use to justify robbing hard-working taxpayers. It is not to ensure people can afford a child: the finances of adoptive couples are scoured already; their lives are examined far more closely than birth parents ever suffer (unless they incur the wrath of the local child services bureaucracy). No wonder would-be adoptive parents go to foreign countries to look to obtain a child: those countries usually aren't rich or foolish enough to subsidize out of wedlock births, and look upon relief of the burden of more uncared-for children as a positive, since there is no opportunity there to rob the people to subsidize dependency.

How would a libertarian society handle teen or out of wedlock pregnancies? There would be no welfare state or redistribution, so a parent (or couple) unable to handle a child would not profit from keeping the child: they would in many ways ruin their lives and the child's (but it would be their option as long as the child was safe—libertarian government will prevent harm—and they could do it given a good support network). Private organizations would handle adoption: either charitable organizations, or organizations funded by placements. In either case, adopting out more people to good homes would benefit them, and they would be accountable to their donors/shareholders, to the adoptive parents, and to the children if placement caused harm.

For charities that did choose to support single mothers, no cycle of dependency can be entered, because these charities will be narrowly tailored (it's not one government behemoth; for example a charity may choose to support only single mothers with infants, so it doesn't profit them any if the child becomes a juvenile delinquent—they don't get any more power if more people go to jail—so insofar as they can, they would want to help the mother raise a good citizen), can do far better means testing than government (the previous charity could choose to sponsor someone only if the mother has no other income, passes drug tests, and consents to periodic home inspections: the government can't do this, but a private charity could require this contract or take its money elsewhere), and if the donors are unhappy with a charity's work they stop their support or replace the board of directors.

Returning again to the parents that cannot care for a child and want to adopt it out: since adoption is a contract, and they could choose among several private agencies, they could find an agency and contract that specified open or closed adoption, or even had a provision for them to re-adopt the child at a later date (so perhaps more foster care than adoption), all parties consenting.

Books finished: Liberty and Tyranny.