Good luck to the Milibands with the adoption of their second son. However, we really need to ask why they had to go to America to adopt both their children. The reason is simple. If you are over 35 years of age in this country it is difficult in the extreme to adopt a child. Such parents are considered unsuitable. Excuse me? My sister had her only daughter at the ripe old age of 38. Is it really suggested that she is an unsuitable parent because she left it late in life to have a child? If her biological clock hadn't been in such good nick and she couldn't have had a child naturally, she would have found it almost impossible to adopt in this country. Unlike the Milibands she could not have gone to the US to adopt because she wouldn't have been able to afford it.
We really need to revisit this issue, and David Miliband ought to take a leading part in the discussions.
Great post, Iain. Polite yet pointed. Supportive of David M. as a parent, but critical of Right Hon. D. Miliband MP as a government minister responsible for an antiquated policy.
ReplyDeleteThirty-five just isn't what it used to be. It's much more. Today there are plenty of parents of a ripe middle age, who would have been considered old & in the way back when I was a lad (as indeed I am in the Brave New World!)
People are living longer; kids AND parents AND society should benefit from this fact.
And also, of course, because Britain allows the killing of 250,000 unborn babies a year. And some of them are unborn babies and not fetuses.
ReplyDeleteAnyone else notice how DM was too busy to meet the Saudi Royal Family, but is not too busy to put out some little statement to the press welcoming a hand over date for Basra..?
ReplyDeleteTime management is all about getting your priorities right...
For reasons too obvious to go into, there just aren't that many new borns available for adoption, and therefore adoption agencies can set up as many hoops as they like for folk to jump through.
ReplyDeleteThe Millibands wanted to adopt a baby - just born and no bad habits and no past.
ReplyDeleteThe UK mothers with unwanted pregnancies either have an abortion or are encouraged to keep their children despite their pproblems. The result is lots of 2-10 year olds in childrens' homes, disturbed, shunted from foster home to foster home. No one wants to adopt their problems. Sad but true.
Very good point, Iain. I agree with you entirely. I would like to hear all political parties talk more about helping Children in Care.
ReplyDeleteChildren in care are 'the forgotten ones' in this country.
Shouldn't the Milibands have set an example and taken one of our troubled home-grown youngsters out of "care" instead?
ReplyDeleteIt does have one advantage. It does mean that the Milliband DNA will not be replicated- Darwinism triumphs!
ReplyDeleteAs a man
ReplyDeleteIf the genes are not yours why would you want to help pass them on to the next generation?
Step parents and especially step-fathers are not generally a good idea for children. Any social worker will tell you that are the biggest contributor to child sexual abuse and neglect there is.
Adoption is so often a purely selfish act because too many people consider money more important then properly bringing up children.
Adoption services are right to be very choosy, in fact they are not generally choosy enough. Having children is a gods given honor not a human right.
Although old age is possibly the most silly reason possible for not allowing an adoption.
In a perfect world for children no man especially should be allowed to look after a child until he is at least 35. And at least 45 before he looks after an adopted or fostered one.
Giving birth to a child you can not afford to look after should be a crime punishable by being forced to work to pay for it.
Otherwise the NAZIS will start taking control of human reproduction and we all know what will happen then. Or don't we?
Adoption in this country is a minefield. The mines are sown by left-wing indoctrinated social workers. In particular, the policy against whites adopting black children is institutional racism of the worst kind.
ReplyDeleteAs Verity states 250,000 murders a year licenced by the state.
ReplyDeleteThis callas attitude to human life is about as disgusting as disgusting gets. Which is unbelievably f.....g disgusting.
It has the result that Illuminati inspired human sacrifice of the unborn was always supposed to have.
It makes people ashamed to be human, and devalue their own spirituality.
Thus raising the spirituality of the ruling class. Who would never do such a thing to their own off spring unless they had some rather dubious agenda they wanted to cover up. Or gain acceptance or licence from their own set of GODS.
How are we supposed to educate people from murder and violence when the state and doctors conspire to MURDER more young healthy life then they save old or injured?
Answer; We are not supposed to do any thing of the sort.
We are supposed to have all women employed, in order to vastly add to government revenue.
Destroy the traditional family unit.
Treat human life as a disposable commodity, on a level less equal to obedient cattle.
I agree with you Iain - and I wrote to the BMJ about it in 1994.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is that parenting requires a degree of maturity - you would have thought that older potential parents who are more mature and more financially settled should actually be an advantage.
Well said, Iain.
ReplyDeleteThe rules for adoption - and for that matter HIV treatment - are scandalous.
The State throws help at teenage mums but discriminates appallingly against would-be mums in their mid 30's and early 40s.
A no-brainer, I'd have thought.
Really? Are you sure that's the reason and not just that the rules are tougher over here? Any screener worth their salt would have gone, "you're a politician, an eco-nut, and a w*nker. There's no way we're letting you near a child."
ReplyDeleteIain I agree with you completely, lets hope miliband does this.
ReplyDelete(and whadya mean 'ripe old age of 38' - cheek!)
Anonymous 9:38 - "Otherewise, the Nazis will start taking control of human reproduction ...". Reading your post, I thought they already had.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 11:18 - surely "would-be" mums can go for HIV off their own bat?
ReplyDeleteSurely the state should not be shelling out taxpayers' money to kill 250,000 babies a year and also shelling out money to help women who have difficulty conceiving naturally, to conceive? HIV is an optional, private, some might say ego-serving, treatment and should be paid for by the woman who wants to conceive. Not by taxpayers who are, at the same time, paying to kill a quarter of a million babies annually.
BTW, what was wrong with "back street abortionists"? (Most abortions were done by properly qualified doctors, anyway, on the sly, for extra money.) Fear of "back street abortionists", though, concentrated the minds of many.
And now, with not only the pill, but other new chemical means of inhibiting ovulation, there is no excuse for allowing 250,000 lives a year to be created and slaughtered.
It is part of the socialist engineers' agenda to destabilise and desensitise our formerly stable society. Like mass immigration. And thought crimes and hate crimes. It's to make people feel rootless and helpless. And to viciously devalue human life. I look at Jack Straw and Gordon Brown and Tony Blair and all those plump, cashmere-clad, overweight, indistinguishable women like Harriet Harmon and clones thereof, with their vacant smiles that fail to engage, and I see malevolence.
Er... chaps. Help me out here, please, I'm falling into confusion.
ReplyDeleteIsn't HIV the precursor condition to AIDS? I always thought the correct acronym for "test tube babies" was IVF. I can't imagine that people voluntarily sign up for the former and even under this government I don't imagine the state actually spends money helping people contract HIV.
Or am I sadly behind the times when it comes to the wonderful world of human fads and fashions?
But shouldnt a political party that has been in Government for over 10 years have addressed this problem - not made it worse?
ReplyDeleteOr is it only a problem when it affects Government Ministers?
I agree with Ian here.
ReplyDeleteWith 200,000 abortions a year it is obscene that it is made impossible by the social services to adopt.
Both sides have a morally unimpeachable case on abortion (women should not be forced into having children but killing a foetus is, if not killing a baby, not that far from it either). But both should be able to agree that getting the social workers out of the equation & allowing mothers to give their children to new parents (& I would not find it inconscionable if money changed hands) would be in the baby's interest as well as making our society more humane & human.
Remittance Man - You are correct about HIV. The correct term is IVFin vitro fertilisation. They take eggs from the mother's ovaries during the stage in her cycle when they are ready to be released and save them and they fertilise them with the husband's sperm. Some women, or her eggs, it seems, are actually allergic to their husband's sperm and then is why they have to fertilised in a petrie dish. This is why when it's successful, it can produce twins or triplets, because they fertilise several eggs at the same time in the hope that one will take.
ReplyDeleteIt's an expensive process and should only be available to those who can pay for it. Satisfying someone's "need" to be a natural mother is not the business of the taxpayer. Of course, neither is satisfying someone's "need" not to carry a child they have conceived to term and "needing" to abort it.
I see this as a criminal, manipulative waste of taxpayers' money and a further piece of social engineering by the NHS/foul government.
It is also, I would have thought, against the "human rights" of taxpayers with religious or moral objections to termination of pregnancies for trivial reasons such as "it's not convenient just now" to be forced to pay for something they regard as a sin.
I would have thought if the favoured ethnic group, the islamics, made official protests against their taxes being used for such a purpose, the government would be like a chameleon on plaid.
I wonder what would happen if the Roman Catholics and the muslims made common cause under Cherie's HRA here?
I'm someone brought this matter up Herr Dale. David Mini-Blair needs to get his colleagues to sort out this oppressive adoption policy
ReplyDeleteWell as an adoption social worker I have to say you are wrong in thinking that there is any kind of age limit to adoption, although granted I can only speak about the county where I work. The last child ( a six month old baby) I placed is now with a mother aged 39 and father aged 53.
ReplyDeleteI see that social workers have as usual taken a bit of a battering in these comments too. Maybe your readers should consider how very damaged most of the children who are available for adoption are due to their early life experiences, and try to appreciate that social workers need to access would be adopters with the greatest care.The worst thing for these children and for society as a whole, would be an adoption breakdown caused by being placed with parents who simply can not cope with the child's needs.Oh and Trumpeter Lanfried - there is no such policy. We try and find the parents who can best meet an individual child's needs - if that includes a child's cultural background so much the better, but we do not exclude any possible adoptions on the grounds of racial background. Never let the facts get in the way of good old fashioned anti-social work bias eh?
j.j said
ReplyDelete"and try to appreciate that social workers need to access would be adopters with the greatest care.The worst thing for these children and for society as a whole, would be an adoption breakdown caused by being placed with parents who simply can not cope"
No. If this were such a risk nobody would ever be allowed to be a natural parent without social worker pre-approval. Ordinary families are not vetted in this way & it usually works. Indeed it works far better than children in care homes who, despite being a tiny minority, grow into a massive proportion of those in jail & homeless. This proves social workers are not as good at the job as those they dictate to.
In any case the worst thing that can happen to a baby is abortion. Anything that stops that is better.
Neil - I was speaking specifically about very damaged children, with behavioural and attachment problems caused by severe neglect and/or abuse which need far more than 'OK' parenting as offered by the vast majority of is.
ReplyDeleteThat is one reason why we have so many poor outcomes for children in care which you refer to - they are so damaged already that to find people who are capable of giving them a loving family for life is very difficult/impossible. And a life shunted from one temporary home to another is a recipe for disaster.
As you acknowledge it is only one reason & I suggest that, by what you say, OK parenting would still be likely to be better than professional caring & shunting.
ReplyDeleteI acknowledge this special case is slightly off the point about social services making adoption of new borns more difficult.