A set of grandparents - ages forty-six and fifty-nine - have been told they're too old to adopt their addict daughter's two kids. Outrageous, I know.
But as heartbreaking as the tale of grandparents torn from their grandchildren seems, the story of their plight in the Daily Mail is almost as bad.
Instead of breaking down the bizarre notion that forty-six is somehow too old to parent, the tabloid tells a tale of grandparents done wrong by a system that would allow a gay couple to adopt these people's grandkids.
Who cares?
To me, the real meat of the story are the strange rules for potential adoptive parents in the UK. Shannon reported recently on the 'derby about a couple denied adoption because the father-to-be was extremely overweight; prompting the question of whether the UK is more concerned with the potential of a parent's death than their ability to actually parent.
In this case, the little girl and little boy are five and four; their mother is a twenty-six-year-old heroin addict who has been ruled an unfit parent. The grandparents have been trying for two years to become the childrens' legal parents, stopping only recently when legal bills became too much to handle. They said they were told if they didn't agree to the adoption with the gay couple, they would likely never see the children again.
Evidence has shown that keeping children with relatives is often the best option; making adoption outside of the family the next best (not bad, necessarily, just not as good). So why not let the kids stay with their grandparents in Edinburgh?
The (admittedly biased) Daily Mail piece says this is all about age. Life expectancy for women in Scotland is seventy-nine. It's seventy-four for men. The grandfather is the elder - at fifty-nine. If he lives as long as the average Scottish man, he's still got fifteen years left on this earth - enough time to follow the youngest grandchild to the age of maturity. Grandma is the younger, she's got as good a chance as any woman to live another thirty-three years on this planet; she could see them not only graduate but get married and have kids.
They have health issues - Grandpa with angina, Grandma with diabetes. But those aren't being blamed for the decision to keep the kids from their grandparents; and, depending on the severity, would seem the more pressing issues.
Then there's the gay adoption issue. The article makes a big deal to point out that the grandparents are homophobic, but Grandpa talks about how awful it is that the kids won't have a mother figure and Grandma makes a point to say that the little girl is "wary of men." Ironic - because they're pushing for a heterosexual couple to adopt the kids, which, last time I checked, would include a man!
The article also makes reference to research that has supposedly shown children fare better with a mother AND a a father - research that has been contradicted by other research saying children of gay couples fare just as well - which brings us back to the crux of UK adoption policies. Are they pushing for two parents? Gay adoption is legal in the UK (fortunately), but are they being chosen not because they can best care for the kids but because there's two of them?
Image: Daily Mail
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