Legislating family matters: You’re doing it wrong.
I promise, we did not adopt a child…
I thought long and hard before even pointing at legislation I’d want changed. Everyone thinks they can legislate better than the specialists themselves, and sometimes they’re right (because legislators are only human themselves and what looks like a good idea at a time may very well turn out to be a big mistake). But nobody can be right on everything, so I felt I had to pick my battles and concentrate on one primary cause.
Being the kind of person who wants to do right by everything and everyone, that was very hard. It’s incredible how much effort it needs to say, ‘This is an admirable cause, but it is not my cause.’ But if I had to choose only one law to reform, it would have to be the criteria for adoption.
The issue is close to home, because I could have had to deal with the adoption nightmare myself, having remained childless until the age of 35 and thus not knowing if I would ever be able to have biological children. The ordeal of an acquaintance, who was denied on grounds of age when she was barely past 30, only compounds my interest. Both she and I are lucky: she fell pregnant with twins soon after she gave up all hope, and I had my gorgeous boy without a hitch at 36. Not everyone is like us.
I feel that prospective adoptive parents are grilled way too harshly on issues of finances, health, and age. The vast majority of children are born into families less than financially stable (really, who is financially stable today? not even the filthy rich, it seems). People fall ill, even with life-threatening conditions, and an orphan is in the same predicament whether biological or adoptive. Additionally, I do feel that there are extremes in the realm of biological parenthood – teenagers simply don’t have the necessary resilience, physical, mental, or emotional, to bring up children, and the menopause is a sign that the childbearing years are over, not a cue to go for IVF – but the restrictions imposed on prospective adopters are ridiculous. With more and more women waiting until after 30 to attempt a first pregnancy (ironically, in order to be more financially secure), it makes no sense to deny them the right to adopt if nature won’t cooperate.
And don’t even get me started on the hoops a single parent or a gay couple would have to jump through in order to adopt. Most of them would be denied even the chance to foster.
I’m convinced that, if all one needed in order to adopt was a job, no potentially fatal pre-existing health conditions, a healthy age difference between adopter and adoptee (dictated by the societal trend of the time), and, okay, a partner as well, I can give you that, because single parenthood is not a walk in the park… well, then there would be much less bureaucracy and fewer abortions, geriatric IVFs or surrogacies, all of which strike me as – to varying degrees – unnatural. Not to mention it would cut right through the illegal paid adoption industry – because without the law’s support, people will just go outlaw.
But then I’m a simple woman who would, in all probability, have been turned down as a poor old hag, what do I know?
