Many people have very good intentions when wanting to adopt a child. There are many adults who would like to have a child or additional children to raise and care for. In fact, in the U.S., it is difficult to adopt a child...there are more adults wanting and able to adopt children than there are people willing to facilitate that. Please note how I phrased that. I did not say, there are more adults wanting and able to adopt children than there are children to adopt. This fact is crucial in understanding the evil of selling children.
By some estimates, approximately 25,000 younger children die on the earth each day from preventable disease and starvation. It is estimated that there are on average 18 million orphans on the earth on any given day. In the wealthy U.S., there are approximately 400,000 children in the foster care system and of those, about one quarter or 100,000 are available for adoption. However, 33% or 33,000 will be bounced around in the foster care system for 3 years or more. What does it mean to be bounced around in the foster care system? It means that they will be 'placed' with guardians who are paid by the state to look after those children, and many of those guardians will at some point reject those children and pass them off to other paid guardians. What do you think that does to a child's heart?
So, why are there about 20 million orphans in the world on more or less a continual basis? The answer is very simple if you are willing to receive it. Here is the answer from the Light of the world...
To not truly love and care for children is evil or part of the darkness the Light speaks of regarding the world. So, the base reason why there are so many orphans is that people do not practice the love that Joshua teaches.
What are some of the specific causes accounting for the millions of orphans? When people decide to war against each other, there are typically hundreds of thousands of children or even millions who become parentless or who don't have responsible or competent adults caring for them. Abandonment is another common reason for the existence of orphans, especially by women who are not married and who either don't see a way to provide for them or who simply care more about themselves than their child.
The reason's why children do not have parents is not the focus of this article, but rather the fact that the people who control the orphans or are in a position to determine their fate are not willing to give them to responsible adults is the focus of this article.
So, to paint a clear and simple 'picture' of the orphan situation, there are many millions of parentless children who WANT and NEED adults to be their parents...to care for them and raise them. Yet, many will never be adopted but instead will be bounced around from one adult to another, which adults don't really want them or who make poor parents. At the same time, you have many hundreds of thousands of adults in the U.S. who would be willing to adopt some of these millions of orphaned children, and yet it does not happen UNLESS the adoptive parents are willing to spend ten's of thousands of dollars to buy the child from those who control the child's situation or who profit from the sale of the child. This is simply a fact, and all who dispute it are blind and part of the problem.
Let us be clear. It is evil for those people who can help needy children yet who will not help them or will only help them if they get money to do so. Yes, this includes all those 'good people' who run adoption agencies and who take money in the child buying process. This includes the Christian adoption agencies as well, for they operate pretty much on the same principles as the non-religious agencies.
Parent's willing to buy children in order to get a child to care for are not the problem IF orphaned children cannot be adopted by any other means. It is the sellers of children - yes, this includes all the 'good people' at the adoption agencies and their lawyers and all who take a dime in the 'process' - who will stand before the Judge and have to explain why they would not help those children unless they received money to do so. And, I have some bad news for those people...their justifications will not stand.
The U.S. Foster Care System
The U.S. used to have state run or private "orphanages" to 'handle' orphaned children. These were large, institutional dormitory type buildings with administrators who oversaw the operations of the 'orphanage'. They were very impersonal and cold and were not too different than current minimum security youth prisons or youth military academies. The results - manifest in the type of adults the children would grow up into - were not successful. So, since around the 1940's, most orphanages have disappeared and have been replaced by the foster care system.
Is the Foster Care system better than the older orphanage system? Well, that is a bit like asking which of two unsuccessful systems has the fewest evils. One thing is for certain. The contemporary Foster Care system in the U.S. is broken and is turning out adults who are - on average - no better than the traditional orphanages. In fact, the bottom line question comes down to this - which will harm a young human being (a child) more...having no adults showing them real love and compassion (orphanage) but not being rejected; or having some adults pretending to love them while sometimes or regularly being rejected. In this author's opinion, the latter is worse, and the latter represents the current Foster Care system in the U.S.
Here are some basic facts about human nature. We need love, especially as children...we need parents/adults who care more about the well being of their children than about themselves, for that is what the highest form of love does. Children who have the security of knowing they have parents/adults who care about them and for them, will have the greatest chance of turning into good adults. On the other hand, children who do not have parents/adults who care about them and for them, will have significant problems growing up and will generally not turn out to be good human beings. The fear and insecurity of being a child with no adults to truly love you, will take its toll in some damaging or negative manifestation in that child as they grow up and when they become adults. Is there anything worse than not having any parent/adults love a child while the child is growing up? Yes, there is. What is worse is having adults who SAY they love you, but who truly don't, and who reject you by sending you away to other adults who get money to take you. By this, the most important concept that exists - love - is destroyed, as well as the ability to trust other human beings. By this, fear is firmly cemented in the human soul.
If you can, imagine being a young child who has lost their natural parents or was rejected by their natural parents or who were never aware of their natural parents. That child desperately needs someone to love them...to care for them and model what a good human being is. Some adults come into your life and assure you that they care about you and they place you with a 'family' - really paid guardians. The child has good and natural expectations that those adults will love and appreciate them...guide them and teach them. The child will seek to bond or place their deepest trust in those adults to make the commitment that true love makes...that they will care for them 'their whole lives'. Then, after months or a year or so, those adults - paid guardians - say to the child something to the effect of, 'Jonny/Suzy, things are not working out here' or 'we are not able to...' or 'the situation has changed and so...'; or a myriad of other statements that mean the SAME THING TO THE CHILD, which is "we are rejecting you...we are not willing to truly love you".
What do you think happens to the child's heart at that point?
If that same things happens several times, what do you think the state of the child's heart/soul will be?
The simple truth is that the average child will be so deeply hurt that they will trust no one, and they will become bitter and angry and will grow up to be bitter, angry, resentful human beings, and that only adds to the existing darkness.
The above descriptions accurately describe the Foster Care system in the U.S. Therefore, those who work in it and support it are willingly contributing to the evil and the deep problems the evil works create.
Yes, there are exceptions. Yes, some adults will end up extending true love to a few children. Yes, some children are exceptional and have discovered love on their own and can withstand the rejection and turn out to be decent human beings. But the exceptions are few and the system, as a whole, is rotten to the core due to the adults running it.
So, what is a solution? The older orphanage system was a failure as judged by the decentness of the adults it produced. The Foster Care system is absolutely a failure and is arguably worse than the older orphanage system. Here is what I think would work.
Use larger houses or apartments to house orphans or those with incompetent parents. Place not more than X children in the housing. Staff the house with adults who will care about the children - this is the most difficult part. The staff to child ratio should be somewhere around 1 adult to 5 children. So, let us say there are 15 children in the house with 3 adults. The adult "caretakers" must both keep their distance from the children, making it clear they are staff, not potential parents. At the same time, the caretakers must be good people constantly caring well for the children and saying good things to them. The caretakers do not need extensive training, rather, they just have to be decent people who care about children.
People who want to adopt children would review the children in a given home, express an interest in a child or children, and meet with the caretaker(s) who know the child(ren) the best. The prospective adoptive parents would view the child's records and video tapes. Depending upon the age and maturity of the child, the prospective parents would either make a decision to adopt (younger children) or start meeting with the prospective child off site away from the home (older children) prior to adoption.
While no system is perfect when a child loses their natural parents, I believe the proposed system would work the best. Certainly it would work better than a large scale orphanage with a staff ratio of 1 adult to 10 or more children. And certainly it would work better than the current foster care system which deeply harms so many children that are rejected from foster care adults whom they view as potential parents.