My child, my choice

   Adoption for me has been a never ending struggle. The bureaucratic hurdles are huge, and I am fighting different state imposed timelines. Thank goodness I am not German. In Germany the state stops adoption when you turn 30, period. I must say if there is a force more sinister than the bureaucratic hurdles of the state, it is "well meaning" people who spew advice on subjects they understand little about. I am reminded of some of the Muslim Arab couples in Northern Israel I have seen delivering babies. When you ask the woman if she wants something for the pain, the man responds. In his mind it is his decision if he wants his wife medicated for the pain even if she has to labor and push out the baby. The truth is he knows little of the pain of childbirth; but he must think he understands; and understands so well that the decision is naturally his.
   Some of the cold hard facts about adoption are as follows:

1. Even depending upon which state you live inside in the USA, South Africa or many other places it can be easier or harder.

2. Although there is no explicit age limits in some places this is largely an illusion for legal purposes. States do not want to be sued for age discrimination; this does not mean they do not actively discriminate based on age.

3. Social workers and others in the system actively look for reasons to deny non-related people adoptions.

Let me pause right there and give an interesting case I met the players in personally. A German woman I met in South Africa battled the court system for five years to adopt while she held her son in foster care. She met her son while volunteering with abandoned children. Eventually all her sons contactable relatives had died of HIV or were unreachable. Nonetheless, it took 5 years of court battles and fighting to be able to take care of her son instead of turning him over to an orphanage. Her case appeared in several local papers and even on TV. The adoption system defies logic, and everyone can see it.

4. Adoption is fairly easy for a select group of people. People with a net worth in the millions will find adoption much easier to navigate. Do you have millions of dollars? If so you are in the tiniest of minorities. Most of us do not. To claim that because adoption was easy for Madonna anyone can do it is about as logical as claiming that because Halle Berry got pregnant, or let's be real, donor egg pregnant at 46, anyone can get pregnant at any age.

5. Those actively working to accumulate the wealth adoption requires will often be precluded from adoption by their work hours. I've experienced this personally. I was condescendingly told by a social worker that an ideal single adoptive parent should not be working even what are considered full time hours. How many single women do you know who can afford to live on a 20 hour a week job? Lots, right...it's called welfare. But I suspect, although I've never been on welfare, it might look less than favorable on an adoption application.

  There are many, many sad truths about the adoption system....which brings me to the real point of this post. No woman who has ever had a child has any right to judge a woman like me who has worked, and has not yet had children in what childbearing plan she has. I recently got an email from a woman who had a child before she turned 20 discouraging me from immediate adoption. I get discouraged by people all the time.
  Plenty of single childless men beg me not to have a child. This is somewhat understandable. These men have made a choice not to have children; therefore they view it as the best life path possible I assume. These men are no hypocrites. They just want other people to take up their miserable lonely lifestyle. I can forgive these men for not understanding that not everyone has the goal of being an angry old bachelor. But I can not forgive women who had their own children telling other people not to. I don't know any woman who supported her child by herself. By and large the people who pay for children financially are men (husbands and taxpayers), grandparents, the community and the state. The contributions of the women I know to the financial cost of raising their own children have been on average laughable. Even the most independent women I know have not taken 100% responsibility for their children because short of being born an heiress no one can. Do you know a pair of young doctors, lawyers or other successful professionals with a baby when they are under 35? Well guess who paid for the stroller? In the modern anglo world an education costs so much money the payout comes after the childbearing years. Not only can most women not support children alone, most educated people (read student loan holders) even in couples can not shoulder the financial costs of children. They must either get into more debt, or beg the bank of mom and dad. Yes, perhaps their salaries are enough for baby food, but we are talking more housing, more clothing, and yes, more of that most costly thing we call education now for their children. Good luck to anyone trying to pay the $200,000 price tag it takes to make a modern university educated professional. Such realities make the differences between one parent and two pretty marginal, because after all most young people get divorced. Which leads me to cold hard fact number six:

6. For the last few decades most young couples have been get divorced, and are financially worse of than people who never got married for it.

     Look everywhere are you will see the divorce rate in the USA is 50%. Whether that is true or not really does not matter. The divorce rate that matters the most is the one of young people in their childbearing years, not the one of older people suddenly dissatisfied with their partners as dementia sets in. Geriatric divorce is probably a terrible phenomenon...but let's face facts: old people die; young people raise the next generation. Geriatric divorce is a heartbreaking problem with it's own issues: like who is going to take care of grandma now...but let's get real, how many recently divorced 75 year olds do you know? I know more people who ended up widowed than suddenly divorced at such an age. Marriage in the anglo world is and always has been about children. Going all the way back to the days of serfs and lords, the institution of marriage was a way to force local serf men into financial responsibility for his children along with the lord's bastard kids from prima nocta. Nice, eh? The local lord rapes your lady, and then you must raise the offspring. Well, things have gotten mildly better for us serfs nowadays...although only mildly. Marriage is still about kids and finances. Coincidentally this is why a woman in her thirties is much less marriageable than one in her twenties. A friend of mine put it bluntly "I would fuck a 40 year old, in fact I do...and I would date an older woman...but to marry, NO, a 40 year old is not going to bring children." Of the very few women I know of who got married after menopause, many of them got roped into supporting their husband's kids from previous marriages. Every man whining about how the modern state steals their money and screws them over ( MGTOW et all) can take heart that women after menopause are put into the same boat.
   Marriage has been pushed as the financial solution for women of childbearing age especially by social conservatives. It is true that even in the case of most poor people they would be better of married. But what is also true is that especially in the case of poor people divorce often results and leaves all parties worse off both financially and emotionally than if they never got married in the first place.
  We do not live in anything close to an ideal world. In my home country of the USA children and poverty go hand in hand. The single best predictor in the USA (where the state doesn't even give maternal leave after childbirth) of which women will collapse economically is having a child; not low education, not when they have the child, not family wealth, not a criminal record, and NOT marital status...just having a child. Perhaps this is the reason so many discourage it...nonetheless, people with children have no right to advise others against it. They are the moral equivalent of women who have abortions, then join pro-life rallies. Instead of advising women against what in a better society would be their right; such women should put their energy into making  world in which children are not an impossible burden. After all, if everyone stopped having children there would be no one around to support their retirement...and that would be grim for all. What we actually have moved towards instead is a world where only uneducated young women have children, for which everyone but them pays ( the taxpayers are largely men and working women )...and then lord their "wisdom" over the rest of us.