Teen charged with stabbing mother of her boyfriend's baby

You can post whatever comments you wish, but don't go out of your way to say how "bad" you feel for the kids (as the original commenter did) one sentence after publicly expressing your resentment that some miniscule fraction of your taxes might be keeping them fed or paying their rent.

While it certainly seems like what happened here was pretty fucked up and inexcusable, these may well be competent parents. It's obviously extremely traumatizing for a child to be removed from the home, and most children who are removed will first go to a temporary foster home (or more than one), then if the courts terminate parental rights, they will move again into an adoptive home. Children are resilient and mostly recover from this, but it still leaves a huge mark and lifelong issues around trust and forming relationships. It's the preferred alternative when it's been proven that the original home situation is beyond repair, but otherwise it's usually better that the child remain with the parents s/he is already attached to. If you had a basically stable upbringing, or even if you didn't, can you imagine being torn out of your family due to one stupid thing your parents did, that they even made damn sure you weren't around to witness?

And as for encouraging adoption and fostering, there are about 100,000 children in Massachusetts who don't have a permanent home. Pouring money into the system isn't going to create these homes. As someone who adopted from the foster system, we actually got quite a bit of money, most of which continues until our child is 18 -- and this is for a young, healthy child who doesn't have major special needs. People who choose not to build their families through this system aren't doing it because of the lack of money; most of them choose to build their families through reproduction or private adoption, and in many cases are SPENDING money to get their children, and in all cases are completely footing the cost of raising their children. No, it's not about money.

What it IS about is the attitudes expressed all over this thread. The public at large is quick to dismiss and ridicule people with less class and educational privilege, less stable upbringing, poorer mental health and problem-solving skills, etc. I'm doubting that most of the people who would say that this child needs to be removed and adopted would actually be for stepping up and becoming that adoptive parent, and welcoming the biological family with their flaws and all in as extended family members.

Most people don't actually get this far though in their consideration of how to build a family, because most people just think that kids from the foster system are inferior and are already damaged beyond repair, and most people think that foster parents are by nature abusive and neglectful. We run into this pretty much every day, with acquaintances and teachers and doctors making all these crazy assumptions -- assuming that our child had never been talked to, wasn't read to, wasn't fed enough, had never been to a restaurant, had never been on vacation, never celebrated holidays, never had possessions etc., none of which was remotely accurate and pretty much never is, except for in those rare horror stories that make the news.

THIS is why there's a shortage of people adopting from foster care, because people have these horrible skewed ideas about what goes on in the homes of poor people (and aren't even aware that there are also a modest number of middle-class and upper-class people who do foster care) and don't want to even consider being involved.