MeDeFe wrote:btownmeggy wrote:darvlay wrote:herndawg wrote:Anyone capable of taking care of themselves has their own responsibility and shouldn't have special laws against them.
[Devils Advocate]
There's the rub.
If a person with a mental handicap
cannot take care of themselves or requires special attention to do so, then they should not be allowed to have children of their own based on the fact that they would not be able to raise them in a fit manner.
Same goes for a drug addict or street person who ends up forgoing the back alley abortion in favour of having a child. That child should be taken away from them if they are unfit to raise it themselves.
[/Devil's Advocate]
So you take away children that are being raised in a manner that is visibly and recognizably dangerous to their well-being. I mean, even that is a difficult thing to propose, because what's dangerous? Who decides? I'm not sure. In the US, the family court policy is "maintain natural family units except in the most extreme situations". It's not perfect, but its minimalism has attractions and benefits... as well as drawbacks. No family is perfect, according to my ephemeral idea of the perfect family anyway, and the government shouldn't put itself in a position of tearing every imperfect family apart. However, it means that a lot of children grow up in unhealthy, unhappy, uncivicallyminded environments.
And what's a "natural family unit", pray? Does the law define that, or is it
really minimalist?
In the judicial practice of family law, concerning who should raise a child, there's an order of preference that goes something like this:
biological mother and father --> biological mother --> biological father --> biological grandparent or other close relative --> non-related guardian.
And it's certainly not always the healthiest way of choosing.
I think I related a circumstance of my own experience in a thread many, many months ago. My sister married a really crummy guy when she was 17 and quickly had two children with him. They're now divorced. If something should happen to my sister, she's expressly stated that she would like my partner and me to become her children's parents. My partner and I have for some years been in a stable, loving relationship; we're financially secure; we have, I believe, good values; and we love my nieces dearly. Their father is a chronically unemployed and has an extreme anger problems which ultimately forced him out of being a MERCENARY IN IRAQ. Though he lives only 1/2 an hour away from his daughters, he very seldom sees them, and he's never paid a cent of child support. In my opinion, though I am not a biological parent to them, I think I could be a much better parent to my nieces than my ex-brother-in-law. Most family court judges would balk at putting such an apparent truth into meaningful practice.