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?

And what happens when that safeguarding goes awry because child and NHS services are afraid to ask questions for fear of causing offence, because the adoptive couple are gay men ? Because that has played a part here. That child was taken to hospital three times with suspicious injuries and they were explained away. This is not about whether men are more likely to abuse - it’s about the torture and murder of a vulnerable child at the hands of an adoptive parent, and the failure of the authorities to provide adequate protection.

@PinkyFlamingo @Honeyhonay it is research that is available online if you wish to find it. You don't - fair enough.

Doesn’t excuse what they did. At all.

I may be wrong but I think the point of that post wasn't to excuse what those women did but to say that men are the common thread/ the origin of the abusive patterns of behaviour. Maybe to imply that these things wouldn't happen in an all-female utopia. Not saying I agree, just that I don't think the poster was trying to excuse or defend those two women.

And yet you can’t provide it.

Not RTFT (sorry). You can't make a decision based on statistics and call it safeguarding. Would you exclude all Muslims from adopting, or all Irish people? Maybe only rich people should adopt?

Tbh I think that the process of becoming a foster carer or a parent by adoption is so gruelling, the people who end up abusing their children shouldn't be getting through.

The biological mother of this child was a murderer herself - i believe i read she tortured and killed an old man when she was 14

Can I say that I just checked and both my son and I are very happy that the vast majority of people don't share your nasty, small-minded and frankly ignorant point of view.

Now that’s food for thought!

Leading sociological, psychological, and child welfare organizations do not support the claim that children raised by two-parent male families have a higher likelihood of experiencing sexual abuse.

It’s tricky for a gay man to find a wife.

I’m not going to list them, but a simple Google search will provide numerous examples of children abused and murdered by parents and step parents in heterosexual couples.

The OP is absolute bollocks. Homophobia dressed up as safeguarding.

There is a high incidence of abuse in religious institutions, so do we stop religious people from adopting?
Another statistic shows that most child abuse occurs "in a home setting". So so we stop children being adopted into "a home setting" 🤔
You can hopefully see where I'm going with this - my suggestions are (deliberately) ridiculous. So is yours.

There's more than one way to abuse a child. Yes, sexual abuse is awful and it's much more likely to be a male, but it is by no means the only abuse experienced by children in foster care (or generally) and in SA cases women have been known to be enablers.

Medical abuse, or Munchausens by proxy is more likely to be perpetrated by women and it isn't as rare as you might think. Physical and emotional neglect is just as likely to be perpetrated by women as men. Emotionally abusive women aren't uncommon at all, there's been plenty of threads on here about people's awful experiences with their own mothers.

The trouble is, when we talk about abuse, people forget that SA and physical violence are not the only forms of abuse children experience. There have definitely been cases of emotional cruel and neglectful female foster parents, and it would be interesting to see how the numbers stack up alongside SA and physical violence (and despite popular belief, women can also be physically violent to children).

The media will pick up on any incidence of abuse where the perpetrators are not your usual heterosexual married couple, and the abuse is sexual, but tend to largely ignore abuse of children that includes modern slavery, physical and emotional neglect, medical abuse, etc.

It's worth remembering that, statistically, children experiencing abuse from adult women in any form will be less likely to be believed.

Disagreeing with notion of discriminating against men, gay or otherwise, isn't just a NAMALT stance. It's a concern about how much we take our eyes off the ball when we focus our concern on one gender and specific types of abuse.

I can see a thread of a point in what you say - that society as a whole hasn’t come to terms with the fact that men as a whole are a threat to women, children and other men. The fact that men are a problem hasn’t been confronted.

This is also the thing with some of the anti immigrant riots etc that we are seeing - it’s not immigrants who are the problem, it’s men. But some of the most dangerous men in society (many with DV convictions) are out protesting and saying it’s immigrant men as they can’t face the truth.

That said, OP, I think your argument falls down at the idea that having a woman in the home is a safeguard. Sadly, women don’t seem to be able to safeguard children very effectively from dangerous men in their home. If a man is there, he holds the balance of power due to his size and strength (and often greater financial power).

And you also see women (such as in nursery abuse cases) willing to positive enable abusive men. So requiring a man to be married to a woman before adopting wouldn’t help.

Perhaps only single women and lesbians should be allowed to have children full stop? I’m not saying I think this, but that’s where your argument goes.

Or perhaps we should try to eradicate the problem of violent abusive men for the protection of everyone- after all, men seem happy to abuse their biological children too.

And tbh most abusive or violent men aren’t gay (obviously there are some but the majority).

Sma happened to Baby P when his mum took him. He was paralysed with a broken back.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/mother-tragic-preston-davey-notorious-34125416?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwdGRjcASficxjbGNrBJ-JwmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHsk2WbPm5Sqwl0t4WASUBWxfvxggtVzpyeAyw1CYl4ePw1aPjMNJ9UvcBS6r_aem_wCmOnGkDGuATHzmNaVThuQ#Echobox=1781590463. One of the links to an article about it in the Manchester evening news.

Shes a monster too

So then children aren't safe with single women either because new partners.

This. We need to treat the actual problem, not make decisions based on generalisations. The actual problem is the kind of personality that lacks empathy, that sees children as a lifestyle extension, that is short tempered under pressure, that is certain of their own rightness when challenged. Then you identify people who put children at risk, people like Varley and people like Ruby Franke, the influencer guilty of abusing her own biological children in plain sight. There is a type - a pushy, self-aggrandizing, superficial values-heavy type. They are over-valued by society and the risks they run are minimised.

https://www.timesnownews.com/world/william-zulock-zachary-zulock-gay-couple-gets-100-years-for-raping-adopted-sons-article-116614832

Interesting that you haven’t commented on this

A person who murders a little old lady and dumps her body in a bin does not have any morals or instincts sorry!

We do need to take account of statistics, but we also need to try to avoid the kind of emphatic heterosexism espoused by the OP, who seems to be batting for "radical conservatism" rather than radical feminism.

One could argue that even with the most stringent vetting and carefully designed community participation in childcare, there will still be some abused children, who can be mapped statistically. "Banning men" would result in a different map, but not necessarily less misery - indeed it might result in a sharp increase in abuse and neglect, after turning off all the resources contributed by worthy men.

What one can say is that there have been some spectacular failures of safeguarding recently, which doubtless continues in some quarters (look at the Stephen Ireland case, for example). We need to ditch some of the more damaging ideology associated with radical "queer" activism, without re-embracing the damaging heterosexism favoured by the OP.

Baby P, my MiL - women can and do abuse and they go under the radar because of stupid thinking like this

The trouble is abuse has always happened and continues to happen prior to gays allowing to adopt Being gay is only a small percentage of the population 2.9 percent I believe and I highly doubt that they are making up the huge percentage of abuse cases.
So many children are killed and abused, we could argue to stop it no one can become parents.

yes men are more likely to be abusers than women we all know that but surely you can’t be that deluded to think that women aren’t capable of it when it comes to children.

children are abused by their
biological/adoptive fathers , by their birth/adoptive mothers,by family friends,relatives step parents etc it can be anyone
You only have to read the news to see how many children are sufferring.
statistically mothers/ stepmothers make up around 30 to 40 percent of children’s deaths the other made up by fathers / stepfathers
so stopping gay men from adopting still won’t stop the abuse these poor children have to suffer.

You are right OP, so so right.