AIBU - Men should not be allowed to adopt or foster children unless they're with a woman. Safeguarding first.

[RedQuail4]

I know this will get the "bigot" and "not all men" brigade out in force, but can we please talk about actual child protection instead of feelings and equality checkboxes?

Children in care are already some of the most vulnerable kids in the country. They've often been abused, neglected, or come from chaotic backgrounds. The state has a duty to place them in the safest possible environment, not to use them as a social experiment for adult rights or to prove how progressive we are.

Look at the data on who harms children. The vast majority of serious physical and sexual abuse is committed by males. Single male households show higher risks in the statistics for child abuse, domestic violence exposure, and poorer outcomes in some studies. Women aren't perfect (far from it), but the biological and statistical reality is that men pose a higher risk, especially without a female partner in the home. A woman in the household often acts as a natural safeguard - someone who is more likely to notice, intervene, or report concerning behaviour.

We've seen too many tragic cases where single men (or gay men with access to children without proper oversight) have gone on to abuse fostered or adopted kids. Social services and adoption agencies are under huge pressure to find placements, so corners get cut and "inclusive" policies mean they bend over backwards to approve single men. The child's safety should trump everything.

Why are we gambling with kids who already lost the lottery once?

Adoption and fostering aren't a right for adults. They're not about giving men a purpose or validating lifestyles. They're about finding the most suitable, lowest-risk home for damaged children. A stable married couple (or at least a man with a woman in the home) should be the gold standard. Single women? Fine, the evidence supports they generally manage better. Single men? A male couple? No. The risk profile is different.

If a man wants to parent, he can find a wife first. Harsh? Maybe. But we're talking about other people's traumatised children, not virtue-signalling or men's feelings. Safeguarding isn't prejudice - it's pattern recognition.

This isn't about hating men. It's about not ignoring sex-based patterns in crime and abuse data when placing vulnerable kids. Same reason we don't put male staff in every girls' changing room. Thoughts? Am I being unreasonable?

Very few couples who apply to adopt, have a healthy baby placed with them, even thirty years ago when we went through the process we were the only couple out of eight being assessed at the same time, who adopted a healthy baby. One couple had a baby with significant health issues placed with them and the others had older children.

So I can't stop wondering how many heterosexual couples did they consider before deciding that these two evil men were the best match for him. Were there really compelling reasons for choosing them or did the panel just want to prove their woke credentials?

I hope this decision is haunting them because the smiling, curly-haired baby we adopted is a strapping 31 year old now with a career, a life and a girlfriend he loves, planning a baby of their own and Preston is in the ground.

I don't know exactly where these stats cover, but in the area I work in the family finding social workers (who are searching for adoptive families) typically tell us that at any given time there are usually around 200-250 prospective adopters on their lists, and around 900-1000 children that need adopting, ie that they've been through the court system and the judge has agreed that plan.
I can't think of one case that I've had oversight on in the last five years where more than one set of adopters has come forward and there's been a choice of who to go with. Of course some come forward, they or the social worker decide it's not a good match and it doesn't go any further. But it just isn't the case that there's multiple options of likely matches who want one particular child and someone is deciding to pick a gay couple to fulfill a personal agenda.

I've also not had a child under the age of one adopted in a long time, and those that have been removed at birth the reason for that is partly the backlogs and delays in the court system, and judges giving parents second chances for assessment, or time to track down absent dads etc meaning that even when things seem pretty clear cut the plan for adoption isn't being agreed until the child is over a year old. And then of course, the waiting on top, due to the shortages.

I don't know what the answer is. We absolutely need more adoptive families, but it is such a big commitment I can understand why people are reluctant to do so, especially when there is still a significant lack of specialist support for those who need it when the child gets older.

OP is correct, but the thread title is a convoluted way of saying every child should have a mother and father and gay couples should not be allowed to adopt children.

These are good points.

Prestons grandmother - who already cares for his sister - wanted to take him, but she asked for some time first, to recover from an illness.

Instead the state placed the child with these men, an ideologically driven move.

The state always prioritises its modern ideologies over common sense.

That preston was allowed to suffer for months before his horrific death shows the ideological blindness of the state.

No one wanted to intervene because that would be "homophobic". Just as the Pakistani muslim rape gangs were allowed to prosper for so long, because no one wanted to be "racist". Just as Henry Nowak was allowed to bleed to death in handcuffs because his killer said he was "racist" which the police obediently lapped up.

We urgently need to ditch these false modern ideologies of political correctness, equality and equity and instead go back to using common sense and recognising what is in front of us.

@BlueSherbet the judge would have made the decision that the grandmother wasn't fit to care for Preston, and instead be adopted, before there would have been any searches for potential adopters. No one at that point knew which families would be interested in adopting Preston, whether straight/gay/couples/singles. As much as you want to believe it's an over arching ideology, the decision wasn't grandma Vs gay adopters. It was: parents ruled out, kinship carers ruled out, plan of adoption agreed. Once that permission is granted by the judge, it's then up to the local authority and regional adoption agency to search for a family.

Exactly. It is a fact that a child is far more likely to be abused by a biologically unrelated male in a household than by its father.

I think your cognitive reasoning is impaired if you think that 1 x gay male couple = all gay males are child abusers. Or even that most gay males are child abusers. Surely you can see that is ridiculous? Does one black man committing murder mean all black men are murderers? Oh wait....Recent events in this country would imply there are others who think like you! I wait with baited breath for all the indignant posts and riots the next time a white woman commits a crime. Or will you even know about it? Depends which 'media' you are consuming and if they have the same bias as you (likely, if you are reading it).

I think this is too general, in my experience from some work in this area over 10-15 years in the families we supported most physical abuse (and emotional) was done by the mothers than the fathers. In the majority of domestic abuse cases we supported it was the wife abusing the husband. We think this is partly because there was so much support for the ladies, all they had to do was threaten the husband that they would go to the police and be believed while v few would believe the husband if he was the victim.

”Some sort of weird ideology” - aka gay people existing

As others have pointed out this is not homophobia as you are not suggesting two lesbians should not adopt, or indeed that a gay man could not adopt with a lesbian/straight woman.

It's not about who fancies who, it's about 2 people who are from the class who are much more likely to abuse - men having access to a vulnerable child.

Yanbu.

Indeed it is far far from homophobia as it could be argued that two women raising a child is safer for the child!!!

It only goes to show that there's a knee jerk unthinking response to the situation, doesn't it? Nasty homophobe nonsense.
How so? Lesbians are fine in this situation.

So much support for women that two a week are murdered in the uk by their male ex/ partner…
I assume the number of men murdered by their female partner must be even higher. Oh wait.

Absolutely agree.

As far as I'm concerned, anybody who was involved in this adoption process of him should feel terrible forever more. I don't know how they can sleep at night.
In fact I don't care if they ever sleep again.

Someone else on this thread or the other one has explicitly said that lesbians should not be able to adopt as a child needs a father and gay people can’t naturally have kids so aren’t meant to raise them. And yes it is homophobia.

I don't care what other people's views are.
My view is that a child is likely to be safer in the care of two women than two men.
Indeed it is likely to be safer with two women than a man and a woman!

I won't be cowed by anybody calling me a homophobe.

Im clear about this you see: it's not about who is attracted to who. It's about their gender.

No statistics as this is a hunch not facts but -

I think that if you look at all abused children in uk - the majority would have been abused by heterosexual men .

i think more abuse is perpetuated by men than women

i think there are far more heterosexual men than gay men in the uk .

so by the OP logic - no hetro male whether married or not should adopt or father children as I think statistically they are ‘most likely’ to abuse.

but this is crazy - Men don’t abuse because they are hetro male - they abuse because they are sick and depraved and evil specimens of humanity.

Anyone who abuses a child is absolutely sick and deserve great punishment.

but let’s not have a knee jerk reaction to men adopting because one pair of evil men have been caught.

so many kids are stuck in the care system for years who deserve a loving family. Everyone who adopts is subjected to a massive scrutiny program and there are so many hurdles to jump to prove yourselves as worthy parents and get to panel to be approved and then matched

surely we need to look at the process and see how these evil 2 slipped through the net and how this can be prevented happening again rather than banning all men?

Unfortunately, there's not much we can do to stop abusive males breeding with women.

What we can do, though, is only allow lesbian couples to adopt.
I'm absolutely fine with that.
Though the child would need a male role model but being from the class of people - women! - who are generally more kind, they'd sort that out.

Magdalen laundries come round mind

You mean sexual abuse rather than abuse in general? Because I don’t think the statistics show that women are less likely to abuse children than men. Yes men are more likely to sexually abuse a child but abuse covers a broad range of behaviours.

Indeed. Sadistic horrific cruelty, perpetrated by women. Sometimes with a sexual element like forcing them to strip and humiliating them. I have no idea where the idea that women are inherently kind and nurturing comes from. Maybe towards their own children for most but plenty of mums are cruel and indifferent to kids who aren’t their own.

I mean yes - of course a heterosexual couple would have got away with it. We know this because of the many children killed by one of their straight parents where safeguarding failures occurred.

And the fact that you just made up that it was ‘political correctness’ that caused signs to be missed with no evidence.

Disagree.
Most women feel a protective instinct towards children even if not their own.

I have absolutely no idea why women here are so keen to defend the rights of the class of people. men who are far far more likely to be violent and abusive than the other class of people i.e. women.

There's outliers, nobody's saying there isn't, but so what.

I'm also not sure if there might have been an element of cultural blindness and also an element of fear of challenge.
The murderer was white, a teacher and operated in safeguarding, and would be in a strong position, maybe even with contacts in the child safeguarding department of the same authority. Was he hand- waved through?

Having historically worked in this area it would not entirely surprise me

I only want to believe what is true.

Certainly its true that an intervention might have come - after repeated hospital visits - had the parents not been a gay couple.

I dont see how they could say the gran "was not fit" given she is already a successful carer for Prestons sister?

It was reported in the media she was willing to take him, but needed a short time to get ready (get over some illness?) but I appreciate we can believe everthing we read.

But there wasn’t anything in his background that would have raised a red flag. What would it have been that should have alerted people before Preston was placed with them? Neither of them had any convictions, they had a nice house, good jobs, good incomes and were middle class and educated. It’s not like one of them had a conviction for violence or rape and the social workers just ignored it because they wanted to be kind and inclusive. People aren’t mind readers.

to be fair there’s a video of her coming out of court and she looks frail and not like she’d be able to care for such a young child. Preston’s sister is a teenager by now. I think they probably made the right call by discounting the grandmother as a carer.