Friday, November 14, 2008

Barking up the wrong tree

Evidently, the case of parents dropping off teens in Nebraska due to an ill-conceived "safe haven" law has (thankfully) convinced legislators that the law need to be amended to allow only the dropping off of infants. Even that, though, probably misses the point.

How so? Look closely at the mother's testimony in the article. More or less, she adopted a girl from harsh roots, and when the girl acted as if those harsh roots had damaged her, social services pretty much refused to help her. My brother in law and his wife had much the same experience with twins they adopted; social services would do anything but come alongside those who desperately needed help.

Now I don't know whether I really want Social Services to try and help any more than they do. It would be far better if churches stepped forward and did what was needed. That noted, this illustrates what our libertarian friends have been trying to tell us for decades; government is a little bit better at "compulsion" and "command" than at "helping."

6 comments:

Shawn said...

and, as should always be noted, govt. is good at pushing private charity *out*, because it can't compete. We've got no idea how much the church/others would/could be doing if they were not priced out of the market by government "services."

Bike Bubba said...

Well, the bright side here is that the evidence I've seen demonstrates that Social "Services" doesn't do a whole lot of actually "serving," so one might infer that there is a great opening for the church!

Gino said...

to service what?
the govt controls the raw materials(babes in need of family) needed to provide the service in the fisrt place.

Mr. D said...

If there's anything that makes me want to work harder, it's the thought of being a "client" of the government. It must be like spending your whole life at the DMV.

Anonymous said...

Gino, it doesn't have to be that way. even now, a certain percentage of adoptions and foster placements (whether of infants or of older kids, usually with relatives) are private. Currently my in-laws are raising great-grandchildren of my fil, and the only government involvement was the court's approval to transfer custody from the divorced biological parents to the greats. It's at least theoretically possible that were the church able to establish a reputation in this area, people would look to the church as a place to turn if they were unable to care for their children.

Bike Bubba said...

One quick clarification; I was referring to social services in general, not just the portions that allocate foster children and handle adoptions be handled. Pentamom and others are correct that many adoptions are handled privately; social services handles only those where they've removed a child from a home.