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?

Even in many of these high profile cases, they often involve heterosexual couples where the mother/stepmother has turned a blind eye or in fact been involved in the abuse. And either way they are just as guilty.

The logical conclusion of OPs argument is that children should only be adopted by single women or female couples.

That logic is going to fall apart the minute any of those children are abused by a woman, because logically you should then refuse to permit any women to adopt.

So, then there’s no-one to adopt and kids stay in care. But who staffs care homes - not men, for the reasons above, and not women, for the same reason.

In conclusion, the OP is doing what a lot of people do and offering up a knee jerk, brainless, tough sounding policy, that won’t address any of the issues it seeks to tackle and will be completely unworkable and pointless.

What we need is a thorough review of what happened, why it happened, and how it can be avoided again, to inform some intelligent and effective policy making.

Not sure that’ll satisfy those with the attention span and critical thinking skills of a goldfish.

Yes,

That's quite a common pattern for women involved in CSA. They rarely (although not never) are motivated by libido in a direct sense. It's more likely to be wanting to impress a male paedophile, fancying the male paedophile because he's a bad boy, money etc. Men can also have these motivations but men can also be motivated directly by by being paedophiles.

It's why you can't assume a gay man would never be involved/complicit in in the abuse of female children. But it's also why women don't always make men "safe". It's why heterosexual relationships aren't safer than homosexual relationships because both of those can contain an abuser (male) and a party to abuse (male or female).

Fortunately most people are not like this. And most women and men are horrified by abuse. But banning gay adoptions because women are needed to make men safe is the wrong tack. Having continued oversight of gay AND straight adoptions and fostering s is.

I agree men are more dangerous to children than women but I see no evidence that a woman in the house has much of a protective affect. It's step fathers/ mum's new boyfriend who seem to be the biggest problem.

I agree. The biggest risk to a child in the home is an unrelated male. I mean it increases the risks hugely. To place a vulnerable baby with two of them, and no woman at all in the household, makes no sense when there must have been many, many couples of either one or two women that would have loved and cherished him had he been placed with them.

Are you against same sex male adoption then?

Who are these children who have to go into care removed from? Would it be the women who gave birth to them?

I'm for the best possible outcomes for vulnerable children.

Absolutely agree with OP. Sadly. Whatever that makes me. This does not mean than other adoptive couples should not be scrutinized more closely in general. Or any parents really including and esp. fosters. We need more child protection.

Which is surely for them to go to a safe, loving family regardless of gender? Correct?

No, it's for them to go to the safest circumstances, and the sex (not gender ffs) of the parents has a bearing.

Safety and care has no gender bindings.

"Children living with an unrelated adult—most frequently a mother's romantic partner—face a significantly higher statistical risk of severe maltreatment and fatal injury compared to children living with two biological parents. Authoritative peer-reviewed research, such as a prominent population-based study published in Pediatrics by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), indicates that young children in these households are 8 times more likely to die from general maltreatment and up to 50 times as likely to die from inflicted injuries, such as blunt force trauma or shaking"

There it is ‘American’. Please at least consider UK statistics first

additionally, even your ‘source’ doesn’t specific same sex parents

You're right. I'm sure men in the UK randomly present a completely different risk profile.🙄

Actually often different countries do have different statistics.

Yes, exactly. I'm talking about the risk of unrelated men in a household with a baby, and how much more likely this risk is likely to be when it's two men and there's no woman in the household. You're the one that's trying to shoehorn homophobia into it.

I'm really starting to understand how the social workers and medical staff are willfully blind.

This suggests the worst people to let adopt are single straight women - on the basis they'll be most likely to introduce a male "romantic partner".

I agree. I know it's not only men who abuse children,but the statistics show that the vast majority are.

We dont know that the romantic relationship with the mother isn't the factor that makes the man kill her children. If we look to the wider animal kingdom, males will kill the young of a female so she is more available for breeding with him.

This was a particularly horrific case in the animal kingdom (Bad Shamu!)

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/orca-killer-whale-infanticide-calf-video-canada-spd

And the gay community sees them the fuck off every single time.

Gay men = paedophiles is a disgusting slur used by bigots through the ages.

But where is your evidence that there’s any higher likelihood of abuse with two gay men vs a hetero couple?
I can’t find a single thing to back up that assertion so it’s certainly not a widely accepted theory.

And her argument, sadly falls down with the death of Star Hobson.