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?

I didnt see the video of her looking frail, but she could have hardly have been worse than whom they gave Preston to?

I daresay Preston's sister could have helped out.

It was cancer, so not a short illness, and presumably one where you don't know what your recovery will be. That, coupled with the fact she already had caring commitments to another child (we don't know what their needs are but they would have to be considered) and she was 66 and the child was a newborn. The assessor, and then the judge, would have had to consider whether she could realistically provide a home for the rest of Preston's childhood, and that's a tall order for someone in their sixties even if they had been in good health.

One report I read said gran wanted to support mum in keeping Preston, which alone may have ruled her out if the courts decided mum couldn't have any contact.

When decisions were made about Preston's care it wasn't just about what would be best as a little baby - they had to consider had he been exposed to drugs/alcohol in the womb, was there a family history of learning difficulties, mental health conditions etc. He had a very uncertain future.
A single, elderly woman in poor health may not have been considered as suitable to care long term for a child who might be a very challenging teenager.

In what way is the presence of a woman going to prevent abuse? Most children are abused with a woman present in the household, either colluding or oblivious to it

Imagine a scenario where you have a child in your arms: for whatever reason you cannot care for that child.

There are 4 people in front of you.

A couple of women and a couple of men.

You have to entrust one of these two couples with the child's care. There is no other alternative.

You know nothing about them: including their sexuality.
You only have your knowledge that men are far more likely to abuse and be violent then women.

Who are you going to pick?
No need to answer but we all know the answer is the women. Of course it is.

How is that analogy in any way relevant to finding homes for vulnerable children? Yes the system is perfect, given how complicated humans are, but we've come a long way from leaving babies in baskets on strangers doorsteps. And as a few have pointed out on other threads, institutions set up to care for children run entirely by women didn't keep children safe either.

It’s when the police are reading the statement. The grandmother is being flanked by Preston’s mum and a man. She doesn’t look well.
Making a 13 year old girl a carer thankfully isn’t something social services would see as an ideal solution. The grandmother is 66 now and would be late 70s by the time Preston is a teen.
It wasn’t a choice between the gran and Jamie Varley. It was a choice between the gran and placement for adoption. Obviously it wasn’t the intention that he would be placed with murderous abusers. Most adoptive parents are selfless amazing people.

Many on this thread think the ideal is a man and a woman though. And that’s what historically everyone has thought and those were the only people allowed to adopt. Despite men’s propensity for abuse and violence and the frequency of domestic abuse, the witnessing of which is a form of child abuse in itself.

typo in my above post and I can't edit, obviously I meant the system isn't *perfect

It's not. A child should have a mother. It's a huge disadvantage to a child not have a mother. Men cant be mothers.

They do have a birth mother but that person will not be suited to care for them. Children raised by same sex adoptive parents (including men) do not fare worse than those raised by heterosexuals. So yes it is homophobia.

Better a good father than a shit mother. Shit mothers do exist.

Safeguarding is everything, what is needed is a lot more monitoring and intervention. The perpetrator was trained in safeguarding but that just means he was trained in spotting abuse and reporting abuse. Maybe more psychological profiling is needed? I don’t pretend to have answers, the poor baby was doomed from the start, if two kind and caring blokes had adopted him it would have been a success story. I’d like to know more about private adoption agencies and who monitors them.

Where did i say the list was exhaustive?

It’s clearly not. Emma Tustin is not on there for instance. Theres umpteen threads on Mumsnet about people who are NC with their emotionally and sometimes physically abusive mothers. There’s lots about abusive stepmothers as well. The idea that someone is kind and nurturing because they’re female is total fantasy.

They certainly do. But as many as shit fathers. I think not.

Ideally a child should have both a mother and a father.

But children who need to be adopted already aren’t in an ideal situation. A caring parent, or parents, of any sex or gender is surely better than them remaining in care.

if there were failures in this particular case then that needs to be investigated. But the response shouldn’t be a knee jerk reaction against any specific characteristic.

Tell that to Rhys Cameron.

Louise Cameron - Murder

That's not answering the question.

Private adoption doesn't legally exist in the UK, in the sense of private/profit making businesses. The organisation that recruited Preston's adopters (Adoption now) is a partnership between local authorities. They're inspected and regulated by Ofsted just the same. They're usually a joining up of councils within the same geographic region.

Because it's a pointless question!

I haven't seen anyone defending men as a gender here, it's just silly reading people do the most basic statistical analysis of men = danger therefore no gay men can adopt because they don't actually want to spend the time looking into the data and statistics and forming a proper understanding. Instead they can type out a blanket homophobic statement which would also result in thousands more children staying in an awful life in care while they wait for solely lesbian couples to adopt them and then give themselves a pat on the back for how smart their unresearched idea is.

What a dumb analogy. The majority of children in care are taken off of their mother's because they're unfit, on drugs, prioritise abusive boyfriends etc etc so it's not ever an easy assumption that the women we know nothing about would automatically be safer. We can know statistically the dangers face from men as a woman and still weigh up a bunch of other factors to assess a safe environment. No one's ever making such a blanket decision in this way of choosing an adopter based on solely their gender or sexuality so it's a really silly example to give.

You think it's pointless. I don't. I think it's extremely relevant.