Background Information

“PrayingTwice” asked a few questions to fill in the background of the last three posts. I’ve alluded to some of these questions, and given answers elsewhere, but here they are in a condensed format:

Concerning the adoption at such a later age: Did you and wife marry late? Did you try to conceive normally? Were you on a waiting list for a great while? Did you go through a Catholic agency?

My wife and I married when we were in our late thirties. We did try to conceive since our honeymoon. We also employed the assistance of a friend who taught NFP, but nothing worked.

I forget the exact timetable these days, but from the time we began our first classes to our daughter’s placement, two years elapsed. We indicated interest in twenty-eight different children–some of them family groups of two or three. We drove substantial distances in the state of Iowa to meet social workers, attend seminars, and the most-dreaded of experiences, the adoption fair.

One such fair took place at the hockey arena in Waterloo, Iowa. It was very sad and discouraging. Imagine a dozen or so kids “on display” as prospetive parents watched and skated with them. One little girl slowed down each time she passed where Anita and I were sitting (my wife doesn’t skate) and it was clear she was showing off for us.

“How are you feeling?” my wife asked at the end of it all.

“It’s not a feeling, but I’d like to adopt them all and take over the church basement at the parish to house them,” I said.

We didn’t go through our diocesan Catholic charities, because of reasons given in a previous post. We chose to adopt a special needs child through the state department of human services.

2) How old was your daughter when you brought her home? Does she have any special needs?

She was almost five. She was born with a congenital heart defect and had this procedure to enable her to live. God bless her foster families and the medical people that guided her through it.

As one who was adopted as an infant into a loving home, this is an area of interest for me and your background would clarify a few things for me.

A polite request is almost always a pleasure to respond to. The mindless accusations, name-calling, and intentional ignorance of so much of St Blog’s stands in stark contrast.

 

Yet More on Adoption

Tony summarizes his position, with which I agree:

#1. If the agency is to be called Catholic, they have to follow Catholic teaching.

The Boston agency in question would lose public funding. I haven’t read in between every line of the story. Would they also be denied the legal right to place children in their care? There are other ways to promote the common and moral good of adoption. They can write me: I’ll tell them what they could do.

#2 If the choice is between moving a child from foster home to foster home, where the child is regularly abused and his spirit is being broken, or putting him in a loving home with two men who care for him, even if the two men are screwing each other, I would say choice two is in the best interest of the child.

The foster home situation is one worth considering. The main disadvantage is lack of permanence for the children. The kids know such a placement is a way station. In some cases, the foster parents take on a child whose legal status is unresolved. In others, they take a child who might be considered un-adoptable. Or the foster family might have set its own limit: not adopting any new kids. And it is true that abuse happens in foster homes. A good amount of it is perpetrated by other foster children. And some parents.

Bill appeals to the CDF:

A situation which is gravely and objectively immoral can never be in the best interest of a child.

I’m aware of the CDF teaching, and here are the reasons I find it flawed:

1. It addresses the issue from the point of view of prospective parents, not children. To my knowledge, the CDF has never issued a document discussing the moral impact of children awaiting adoption.

2. The Church has addressed such topics as waging war. Killing another human being is an objective evil. Yet killing is conceded morally in just warfare for the purpose of avoiding a greater evil.

Church teaching on adoption is not necessarily wrong or particularly correct; it is just incomplete.

Bill appeals again:

Children need a mom and a dad.

Of course they do. Foster care provides stand-ins. The relationship of mother-to-child or father-to-child implies permanency and stability. It’s part of the reason why marriages are morally superior to live-in arrangements.

Catholic social service agencies have also been placing children for adoption by single parents. Some children lose fathers or mothers. Is the permanence of the remaining parent plus opposite sex friendship or mentoring adequate for healthy child-rearing? Or maybe this just isn’t the core argument.

And I’m not sure the sins of the bedroom have that much of an impact on children. If so, Catholic social agencies would inquire if the adopting couple uses contraception. That, too, is considered “gravely and objectively immoral.” The specific moral teachings may be objective, but often the application of morality is subjective.

The Church may well believe it’s in a position to lobby against secular agencies placing children for adoption with gay couples. That, too, is within its right. But thanks to its own moral scandals, the Church’s voice is woefully weakened on that front. The American public was reasonably forgiving when sex predators in the clergy were seen as isolated evils. But when bishops were revealed to have been at fault for ignoring evidence and closing clerical ranks, I’m afraid the underlying credibility is lacking. Steve’s blog had a quote from Peter Maurin last Friday which sums up the situation:

Feeding the Poor at a Sacrifice

1. In the first centuries
of Christianity
the hungry were fed
at a personal sacrifice,
the naked were clothed
at a personal sacrifice,
the homeless were sheltered
at personal sacrifice.
2. And because the poor
were fed, clothed and sheltered
at a personal sacrifice,
the pagans used to say
about the Christians
“See how they love each other.”
3. In our own day
the poor are no longer
fed, clothed, sheltered
at a personal sacrifice,
but at the expense
of the taxpayers.
4. And because the poor
are no longer
fed, clothed and sheltered
the pagans say about the Christians
“See how they pass the buck.”

Church teaching on the worldwide situation of parentless children would be a welcome addition to the discussion. We’re all still waiting for it. As we recently read in Gaudium et Spes:

This faith needs to prove its fruitfulness by penetrating the believer’s entire life, including its worldly dimensions, and by activating him (or her) toward justice and love, especially regarding the needy. What does the most reveal God’s presence, however, is the … charity of the faithful who are united in spirit as they work together for the faith of the Gospel and who prove themselves a sign of unity.

Documents alone will not do the job, nor do it much justice.

 

More Confusion on the Parenting Front

… so let’s try to clear it up.

Bill didn’t like my earlier post today about adoption. Too bad. I’m still more concerned about America’s 127,000 kids in the adoption pipeline than I am about Bill’s feelings. He’s a grown man; he can take care of himself. He might be able to care for an adopted child, too. It wouldn’t surprise me. We need more passionate adoptive parents. And less aimless passion on the sidelines, please.

One mis-aim is this suggestion:

Todd just doesn’t think that morality should enter into a couple’s fitness. The Church disagrees.

This might actually be news if it were true. But in typical St Blog’s fashion, we have a prime example of the philosophy “Those who are not with us are against us” in play here. Then add in a dollop of playground name-calling and potty mouth. Bill seems upset that he cannot account for 127,000 children not getting adopted by heterosexual couples. Maybe there’s a bit of good ol’ Catholic guilt in the house. Hope so.

For the record, I think a single parent’s or couple’s morality is an important factor. The Church is as well equipped as anyone to make a judgment on that. I would be nervous about a secular agency attempting such a discernment. Wouldn’t you?

In fact, the Massachusetts webpage says, “individuals and families seeking to adopt very young children may wait for a significant period of time.”

Heck, that’s not news. Many parents want to adopt young, and there is indeed a long wait for you if you want to adopt an infant or a toddler. Some parents are willing to build a family with an older child. The latter type of adoptive parents are especially needed.

Large families are discriminated against–if you have six kids, then regardless of your income or ability to care for them, you will not be permitted to adopt.

One person’s discrimination is another person’s prudential judgment on the best suited families. I can tell you that in our experience, some older children from foster care would not do well in a large family. In fact, our daughter’s social worker looked favorably on us because we would be giving a lot of attention in a home without other children. I think a social service agency would have a PR struggle with placing an infant in a home with seven other children over a home with none, all other factors being equal.

But my wife was upset that diocesan Catholic charities had a rule that both parents needed to be under forty–which she wasn’t at the start of our process. I was more upset that an unnamed social worker with the diocese said that an exception might be made because I worked for the Church. That closed off that avenue in my mind: it seemed unfair on two fronts.

Being in my late forties with an active child, and with some hindsight, I do see something of the wisdom in age being a screening factor. And in some cases, I can see family size would be a detriment in some adoptions. Much of these stories give the air of injustice. But such unfairness pales in comparison to the older foster children who have barely a flimsy dream to pin their hopes on. If a gay couple can provide something better and pass the necessary screening to become adoptive parents, I see no reason why the state or the Church couldn’t place children.

So in Massachusetts, a large Catholic family will be denied, and a homosexual couple will have preference.

Trust me, Bill; there are more parameters in the decision than the sexual orientation of the parents and the size of the family. A whole lot more.

Tony has weighed in on this discussion. He and I don’t see eye to eye on things from time to time. But his experience as an adoptee carries considerable weight.

When it is about the child, they are all born, all helped, and each and every one of them is attempted to be placed in the very best situation possible.

Amen, brother.

God bless all adoptive parents, their children, and especially the children who still wait.

 

It Needs To Be About The Children

… not about the parents.

Bill Cork weighs in on a Boston globe piece:

Bishops’ gay ban may cost millions – The Boston Globe; bottom line for secularists–you won’t get our money if you don’t do what we want.

I think it’s inaccurate to speak generally of “secularists.” The law is what it is. And the courts have interpreted discrimination in the secular sphere as inclusive of gay people. For the Church, the solution seems simple enough: abide by the principle of not sending children in its care to gay couples. In other words, we do not participate in the system, and we don’t take its money. That seems straight-forward, right? It’s hardly a matter of individual philanthropists telling the Church to kowtow to their individual wishes. The laws of a government are to be followed. The alternative might include civil disobedience, non-cooperation, and the like. But the money in question is not “owed” to the Church or any of its agencies.

You can make a case that the law is wrong. Or that it should be disobeyed. But it’s not a matter of whim or blackmail.

But even the supporters of gay adoptions acknowledge that there have been very few. It isn’t like hundreds of kids are affected.

I’m not surprised at this. I don’t know why Bill is. Any gay couple seeking to adopt a child from a civil service agency or the Church must go through the same hoops as anyone else. One is found fit by one’s psychological make-up, maturity, ability to raise children and provide for them, and other particular factors that match a child’s needs.

Just to tell you: after Anita and I completed our training as foster and adoptive parents, we “applied” to adopt some twenty-eight different children over a period of about two years. Our daughter was the twenty-ninth. In those twenty-eight cases, more experienced and more suitable parents adopted more challenging children. It was sad and wrenching for us, but we knew the adoption process was not about us. It was about the children.

We knew up front that the social workers making the calls on these placements had the best interests of the children as the top priority. Prospective parents do not have the same priority. Nor should they. The concern for the prospective parents is their overall suitability, plus a workable match with the child or children in question. We understood this and could easily assent to these conditions.

Which leads me to Bill’s last question which, I think, shows a substantial naivete about what is entailed in adoption:

Meanwhile, how many heterosexual couples were kept waiting who wanted to adopt?

Because it’s not about the couples wanting to adopt. It’s about finding a permanent and loving and stable home for children who have not known permanence, love, or stability. At least not in the quantities needed for healthy development. So if thirteen heterosexual couples were kept waiting, it was because they were less qualified psychologically and particularly than the gay couples who had those thirteen children placed with them.

In the secular realm, I have no problem with gay people adopting children. The option for those fortunate ones who do go to permanent homes is not adoption by a heterosexual couple, but more time in the foster care system. And while there are many good people doing heroic things standing in for a permanent parent, it is important to remember this is a stopgap solution. It is second best–and a distant second–to the ideal of adoption.

In the realm of the Catholic Church, I have no problem with bishops setting standards for placing children in its care for adoption. My parents were denied such an adoption before I was born because they were not Catholic. Non-married or single parents may be denied adoption, as well as gay people. If you have the children in your care, you make the rules. It’s no different from foreign adoption services, private adoption agreements, or any other legal set-up. Some of those set-ups cater more to parents. Some prioritize the needs of the children.

As a Catholic, I also believe the needs of children must be prioritized. The advocacy of straight couples waiting while thirteen children are placed with gays badly misses the boat. Parenting is not a right. Let me repeat: nobody has a right to be a parent. Parenting is a duty. Children without parents are cared for by various persons and organizations. As children are placed for adoption, the duty is passed from one entity to a permanent one. Those doing the placement have a moral duty to ensure the children have received the best possible placement for their lives.

I would find the concern of the bishops and the curia about gay people adopting children more convincing if the Church (meaning hierarchy and laity) addressed the more harmful state of not-being-adopted. What I’ve read betrays a parent-centered approach more than a concern for the hundreds of thousands of children worldwide who lack parents.

I would go so far as to say that the enormous numbers of children waiting for adoption is a direct contradiction of Church teaching. While I cannot say that particular couples should be adopting children, I will state that the numbers of children waiting to be received into permanent and loving homes is as scandalous to me as some people find a scandal in contraception or deliberate childlessness. That more Catholic couples do not adopt is an institutional sin. I can’t get any clearer than that.

 

More on the “Gay Takeover”

CNS reports from Rome on a seminar entitled “The Homosexual Question: Psychology, Rights and the Truth of Love.”

It seems one-sided to me. And a bit paranoid.

In a public conference Feb. 23, professors teaching the seminar spoke at length about the threats posed by the gay rights movement and said current legislative proposals around the world could have far-reaching effects on how society is structured.

Comments like this always slay me. Depending on whom you ask, homosexuals make up 4 to 10% of the human population. The majority prefer not to bother with marriage and family. I’m curious to know how this would have the impact some say it would. Perhaps if heterosexual marriage were outlawed. But nobody’s suggested that. Perhaps if heterosexuals began choosing gay activity because they found it (?) an improved way to be. But I haven’t heard of that. Except in prisons.

French Msgr. Tony Anatrella, a psychoanalyst and consultant to the Pontifical Council for the Family, said gay couples were unable to give children the model of sexual difference that any child needs to develop his or her own sexual identity.

Does Anatrella suggest that genital sexual expression is the only model for sexual identity? I’ve hardly ever heard gay people advocating they are a “third sex,” though I know that some extremists advocate five, not two.

He referred to one recent study, which he said showed that 40 percent of children raised by homosexuals became homosexuals themselves. Msgr. Anatrella said there were other psychological “collateral effects” of being raised by a same-sex couple that show up only in adulthood, including anxiety over sexual differentiation. When it comes time for these young people to form their own families, they suffer because they have not learned to accept the sexual difference between two adults, he said.

A few things:

- First, parenting by SSA individuals and couples should be studied. Some SSA parents suggest they impart advantages to their children because of certain healthy aspects of their approach to relationships. I can understand how it would be difficult for extreme findings to gain a fair hearing. It’s got to be worth the attempt.

- Second, Anatrella’s comments lean toward it all being about the adults. It’s not. Even if certain risk factors were elevated for children of gay couples, the baseline of comparison is not healthy heterosexual couples. It’s life in a non-permanent home versus being parented by someone other than the “ideal” heterosexual couple.

 

Frenzy

Mark Shea can be a snappy writer sometimes. But occasionally, he’s just clueless. And not enjoyable. Like this headline:

16 States Have Citizens Sensible Enough to Think that Experimenting on Children with Gay Adoption is a Bad Idea

34 States say, “Hey! What could it hurt?”

If only the question centered on those nasty gays stealing children from nice, well-mannered, suburban straight couples.

Thing is, that about 127,000 kids are waiting to be adopted. Right now. No legal entanglements. No stalking birth parents. No overseas trips. No foreign red tape. C’mon people, pony up in line.

There’s about three to four times as many kids in foster care.

If the hierarchy wants to make determinations about the moral quality of prospective parents when overseeing the adoption of children, that is within their privilege. But unless 127,000 kids start disappearing off the adoption rolls next week, protests against gay people adopting children will fall under one of two categories:

- ignorance of the adoption need in the US

- immorality in promoting the abandonment of parentless children

 

Kids Adopted By Homosexual Parents

The water of discussion is pretty well poisoned to begin with, so it’s hard to see that saying anything at all about it will come to much good. Amy reports on the Boston Globe editorial.

While respecting the church’s right to its opinion, it has become increasingly hard to demonstrate what harm might come from gay adoptions. Many studies, including a 2004 article in the journal Child Development, research from 2002 by the Child Welfare League of America, and a major survey in 1995 by the American Psychological Association all conclude that children brought up by single-sex couples were virtually identical to other children in academic performance, socialization, and sexual orientation.

A news outlet’s editorial staff is entitled to an opinion, but that doesn’t stop some Catholics from falling into either the trap of absolutism or snarkiness. Headlines such as “The Globe issues its instructions to the bishops of Massachusetts” cannot help but turn up the heat in discussion. Is it helpful? Does it further the Church’s ideals? You tell me.

I wasn’t wholly impressed with George Rekers’s summary of the anti-gay adoption case. Rekers and other commenters at Amy’s overlook the basic question I’ve raised time and time again, usually with little more than evasion and flimsy charges of dissent. Is it wrong to ask:

Is the parentless child better off in a group home or in temporary foster situations than being placed permanently with a gay person or couple?

Rich Leonardi, to his credit, responds seriously to my question:

Regarding the questions you ask at the end of your post, the lack of “permanence” in homosexual relationships is what makes placing children with such couples so risky, i.e., these typically are children who already have experienced disruptive transitions in their lives; we shouldn’t be increasing the odds that they will face more of them.

No foster or adoption placement is without risk. Many foster and adoptive parents bring their own baggage into the endeavor to bring a child into their home. My experience with state agencies is that social workers are scrupulous and careful in their screening of potential parents. Anita and I had the experience of going through the ringer. I have no reason to doubt that gay couples are examined with any less diligence.

Substantial numbers of children remain without parents. Many are in the foster care system, and though they might enjoy some of the benefits of a home life with parents and siblings, foster care is not always permanent. In striving to reunite foster children with birth parents, a great deal of risk is undertaken. In almost all cases, the children would have been better off being adopted during infancy, regardless of the parents’ promises or wishes to get their act together. But the legal and social care systems make a presumption in favor of blood over the health of children. For the children of addicts, it’s often a no-win scenario: reunification often takes place months or years after initial separation, and the critical ages of 0-3 are messed up with impermanence. If the reunification fails, the children have lost much of their attractiveness to prospective parents.

Before they are adopted by gay couples, children are already living in a 100% impermanent situation. By definition–otherwise they wouldn’t be available to be adopted. Comparing the birth children of a heterosexual couple to the adopted child of a homosexual couple is a straw man argument. The real comparison is with the life a child would have not being adopted.

Parenting instincts are independent of a couple’s sex life or sexual orientation.

My daughter was not the physical result of my wife’s and my marital relationship. Yet our ties with our daughter are not less strong than the ties between biological parents with their biological children. Why? Because parenting, at its root, is love. And love is a choice. Not a biological urging.

I remain unconvinced that homosexual people are less capable of choosing to love children and rear them to a healthy adulthood in the context of a family. Their sexual relationship does not enter into child-rearing in the presumed best of circumstances that we would expect of heterosexual couples. And if it did so in a way harmful to a child, no social worker would ever place a child with a sexually damaged couple or person.

I think a church organization must come to terms with church teaching, certainly. If a bishop finds he cannot permit involvement in permitting children to be adopted by gay couples, then the solution seems straight-forward: time to withdraw from the business of adoption, and leave it to others. That would be a prudential judgment, in my view. It would not necessarily be the only faithful response to church teaching.

But I’m convinced the Church might consider a prudential rather than a strict absolutism in looking at this. It might be one thing if less-qualified gay couples were given the opportunity to adopt over and above more suited heterosexual couples. But this isn’t happening. Tens of thousands of children languish in foster care, awaiting adoption, but there are simply not enough parents, single, gay, or straight, willing to fill the need.

In the end, it isn’t about the parents and their lifestyle. It should be about the children and their needs. I have my own beefs with the adoption process as it runs in the US. (Call me and ask me sometime, and I’ll give you an earful you never expected.) Keeping the focus on the parents, their needs and sins and all, reinforces the notion of children as less than fully human and more as possessions to be used by adults.

Children have a right to a stable and nurturing home. Every child that goes without such a home is an accusing finger pointed at whomever thwarts the just end of a stable upbringing. The primary morality coming into play involves the best possible result for all unparented children. What the parents are or what they do is secondary, given the understanding that they make the choice to parent needy children in the most healthful and sound way they are able.

 

Adoption Assistance

CNS reported last week that the Metuchen Diocese has inaugurated an adoption assistance program for employees that offers both financial assistance and paid time off, believed to be the first such program in any U.S. Catholic diocese.

 

A positive pro-life step other dioceses would do well to emulate.

 

Males in Churches

It’s a problem shared by most all of us. That U Washington study I’ve linked before confirmed that every major world religion, including the ones perceived as male-dominated in hierarchy, have more women than men participating.

Though we know women make up a shade over 50% of the population, here are the church numbers I’ve seen (These are approximate and from some study I read about 15 years ago): registered parishioners 55%, churchgoers 60%, active volunteers 67%, professional non-clerical ministry 83%. I think the USCCB document on lay ecclesial ministry now puts the last number at 80%, but regardless, we see where the religiosity drifts.

I think boys-only altar server cadres are undeniably well done in some places. But do we want ten-year-olds starting on their path to church involvement motivated by a boys’ club? Are men so immature they can’t work along with women in choirs, committees, soup kitchens, parish festivals and dances?

Just as an aside, my grade 3-4-5 children’s choir is doing well with boys this year: about 25% of eighty-some kids. That’s up from zero in year one and four or five last year. There is a hump to get over in children’s activities, a barrier of sorts after which both sexes feel they can comfortably get involved.

That said, how do you make Sunday Mass, if not the parish, more attractive for men? I have a few ideas.

It’s a fact that untrained singers will sing out less if unsupported by strong music underneath their vocal range. Treble voices (women and children) do well with guitars because of the harmonic support an octave under their singing range. However, untrained male voices tend to struggle unless their voice range is supported by organ pedals, string bass, or piano left hand. Without the undercurrent of lower tones, people feel their voices are standing out. And if the acoustics are poor, that problem is compounded. Men will sing if they have any combination of competent musicianship playing on the needed instruments and good acoustics.

As for church decoration, I suspect that’s a lower priority in anybody’s list of must-have’s in their parish. Traditional clergy tend to wear more ornate vestments. I’ve seen photos on priests’ blogs and the Latin Mass society and all. These are not manly vestments. And most mainstream men today would probably vote for clerical shirt and black blazer over a cassock.

I’ll raise the importance of parental example. When Anita and I were in the adoption pipeline, I was reading various articles and books about the role of the father. I recall that in giving advice to fathers of boys, one writer said one of the most important things a father could do is to read: read to his son, and be seen by the boys in his family as a lover of reading and knowledge. No other single factor was more important for a boy to take education seriously. Except in math and maybe science, we know that girls consistently out-perform boys academically. (It’s one reason why I support gender-separate education in theory.) I wonder if our fatherless society is reaping that harvest in its sliding education performance today.

I suspect the involvement problem in church will require the cooperation of dads giving good example to sons: joining choirs, becoming lectors, volunteering at soup kitchens and charity drives, and especially doing things religious with their sons. This issue strikes me as more aligned with apprenticeship than instructional education. You can tell a young man: go to church, tithe your income, sing in the choir, give to the poor, pray daily. But without the let-me-show-you-how-it’s-done personal example of a father or father figure, I think we cast many boys (if not most) adrift without benefit of a paddle, or sometimes even the boat.

 

Happy Anniversary

Four years ago we picked up our little girl and brought her home to live with us. (She was little then.) Anita remarked that couples take much longer to court and decide to marry than we got to get to know Brittany.

After checking a few online news services for photos from the Cassini fly-by of Titan, the Calder Cup Playoffs, and a possible new pope (in that order) I signed off, went shopping for bedroom furniture and kitchen sinks and countertops with Anita. She dropped me off at our two-in-one staff birthday celebration (youth minister and receptionist) where I heard the news, Habemus Papam! Our twenty-something youth minister seemed the most bummed out of those staff that were talking, but I find it hard to get either excited or discouraged with Pope Benedict. She was most curious.

Ideology grows less and less relevant to me as I grow older. Pragmatism seems to have come to the fore. How can I pray better? How can I provide for my family? How can I serve my parish and facilitate their best possible celebration of liturgy? The pope will not have an impact on any of these three items, so the election of either a Latin American moderate or a theological European will not nudge my life’s focus in any significant way.

I also explained to my friend that real leaders are made and are most effective at the grass roots level. By the time you get to be pope (or bishop, most likely) your life is full of people who won’t tell you when you’re full of spit because they’re so busy telling you who else is. The people who think Pope Benedict will come riding over the Palatine hill on a white horse leading the faithful minions of MaChurch will be sorely disappointed, I suspect. Our new pope strikes me as intelligent enough to know he’s moved from the ranks of bureaucracy to the level of pastor. Effective pastors on the level of the Bishop of Rome get talented, intelligent, and qualified people to do the work. They know they can’t be effective doing it all themselves.

I know I’ve heard and read from dissatisfied Catholics ready to give up or bail out. My advice is: don’t bother. The Church still needs you. Our new pope is intelligent enough to realize he also needs you. It’s a big ship, and somebody’s got to keep things running.

Anyhow, anniversary day continued with a trip to two libraries, and then off to Brit’s favorite restaurant where we all ate too much. Evening bath for the child (which took too long) followed by reading in bed. We sang the family anniversary song loudly in the car a few times and before night prayers.

My short vacation will be over too soon: back to meetings and rehearsals tomorrow, same as last week, same as next year.

 

Fertility Tourism in the News

Fertility Treatments were not our method of choice for having a child, and I can appreciate, however slightly, the urge to have a child of at least 50% of a couple’s genetic make-up. These procedures, and especially the “tourism” aspect of it, indulge the affluent fantasy that if a person has enough money, they can do anything. It’s not buying children, but it’s uncomfortably close, in my opinion.

This quote bothered me: “People will do anything for a baby. There’re women out there who’ve hocked the house. So what’s the big deal about taking your passport and leaving the country.”

People won’t do anything for a baby, or even a child. Hundreds of thousands of American children languish in the foster care system for lack of parents. Too few people do much of anything for these boys and girls, whose only fault was being born to parents who were unable or unwilling to care for them properly.

We continue to tell our daughter that most of her friends were born into their families, and that’s a blessing, even though they weren’t chosen. She’s special because she was chosen by her parents.

I couldn’t let this story pass without suggesting some people could be better off with special children, rather than affluent ones.

 

Getting old on the slopes

Age discrimination. When Anita and I were planning to adopt, many of the social workers gave us this policy: adoptions for forty-somethings were handled with some care. The suggestion was that the ideal maximum age separation between adoptive child and parents was forty years. We were in the running for sixteen adoptions in the two years before Brittany, and we had sixteen “no’s.” After we had viewed videos, read profiles, interviewed caseworkers, and seen these kids at large social functions, it was quite difficult. My former pastor asked us how it was going. I told him that each refusal felt something like a miscarriage, from our point of view.

Anita and I were not totally congruent in our approach. She really wanted two or three children, preferably a family unit. My first choice was an only child. But we decided to be open, consider all opportunities that came our way, and see what would happen.

This morning, the inch of snow over slick ice made for some fine sledding. Too nice in the backyard, for the fence at the base of the hill is a much harder backstop when there’s no soft snowdrifts to cushion the end. So we trekked to the park near the bottom of the hill. I tell you: it was fun, but I’m getting too old for this nonsense. Brit wore too many socks (3 pair) and her feet got cold. I, on the other hand, sledded into an ice patch over a three-inch deep puddle, put my foot into a foot-deep hole filled with slush, then tried to get cute making a new sled path and crashed into a tree stump, bruising my hand. She whimpered a little when we had to go home early, but we all napped for a good hour this afternoon.

The rest of Baptism Day had her choices for meals: fondue for breakfast, and a great Mexican restaurant for dinner. Never got around to the cookies, though. Maybe tomorrow. I suspect school will be back in session. It’s my regular day off, so the vacation is extended yet another day. But I tell you: I’m not going sledding.

I don’t think that at 47, I’m too old to parent an active eight-year-old. But I’ve learned that I can’t go full-speed ahead like an eight-year-old anymore. After my last mishap, I told Brit that it was time to go home. For a moment I considered gritting my teeth and playing Dad Indestructable. But then good sense took over. She took it pretty well. We had to pass a less vigorous slope on the way back, and I asked her how many times she thought we should go. “One,” she said. “Let’s go together.”

So we had one more for the road. A small concession to childhood fun, but also a sensible limit from my growing girl.

 

Don’t get me started on the foster care system

A few tickles of conversations here and there about gay individuals or couples adopting children. About a month ago, I heard a piece on NPR which stated there has yet to be a definitive study of children of homosexuals. The CDF naturally has a problem with this. Elsewhere on the net I was accused essentially of being a heretic for the simple suggestion that kids are worse off in the foster care system than being parented by homosexuals.

One thing clues me in that this discussion is not about kids. Or their safe and healthy upbringing. Because if it were, the Catholic Church would have come out more strongly against the ills of the foster care system. And it would have done so years ago. It would not have waited for the alleged problems of thousands of kids with gay parents. The hierarchy would have addressed the situation of millions of children without parents.

When Anita and I were taking classes for being foster and adoptive parents, we heard a story about a young boy who could have been adopted by his grandmother. The lady was retired, and living in an apartment that didn’t permit children. The management looked the other way until the child was five, but then it was time to move or cut the kid loose. Her suggestion to the social services people was that if she could only get a living allowance for housing, she could care for her grandson properly outside of a retirement location. No go. Sadly, the woman and boy separated: she to subsidized elderly housing, he to the foster care system where he bounced from home to facility to home and all over till he landed in jail as a teen.

Our facilitator said a social worker estimated the state of Ohio spent about $500,000 on prison, legal costs, social workers, special ed, etc. by the time the lad reached age 18. Maybe he would have been a delinquent under granny, but a nice little $50,000 home somewhere in a small town might have been a good investment for the state.

What am I getting at? The CDF needs to lay off the gay parents. They suspect, but there is no proof gays make worse parents than heterosexuals. We have more important issues, namely, the millions of children worldwide who languish in foster care or worse. In almost every case, a child is better off living in a one or two-parent permanent home than in a foster home or group home. You think the world is falling apart because gay couples want to adopt children? Get serious. The world has already come to an end for way too many kids who are buried in circumstances that are no fault of their own.

As long as a social service agency runs the prospective adoptive parents through the ringer (our experience), I have little doubt the best parents are adopting the lucky kids. Frankly, I have far more serious worries on my mind for parent-less children. Unless and until the morality of this situation is addressed, I’m afraid the gay adoption flak is little more than using children to manipulate emotions on an unrelated issue.