Licensing Adoptive Parents

It is at present in most jurisdictions very difficult to adopt a child in cases in which one is not already connected to the potential adoptee by ties of blood or marriage. Putting aside the financial burden that the process inevitably involves, governments and adoption agencies impose strenuous requirements on potential adoptive parents. They seek to ensure that they are able to provide the children they adopt with a stable home, that they have the financial means to see to the children’s needs, and that they have no health issues that might interfere with their being able to meet the physical requirements of child-rearing.To meet these requirements, potential adoptive parents not only must fit a set of descriptive parameters – candidates are often excluded from the outset on the basis of “demographic” characteristics such as age or income status – but also have to demonstrate competence and good intention through various tests, interviews and home visits. The process of determining potential adopters' suitability can be very demanding and intrusive, with adoption agencies delving in considerable detail into deeply private matters such as the potential adopter's past experience with parenting or being parented, the nature of her relationship with past and current partners, and even her sexuality. Moreover, adoption agencies may also insist on certain behavioral requirements, from acceptance of regular monitoring to attendance of parenting classes.This demanding process of becoming a parent through adoption contrasts markedly with alternative routes to parenting. Most obviously, it is comparatively very easy for people to become parents through sexual reproduction. Though many people in the world who want to become parents are afflicted with the inability to have children in this way, the vast majority simply needs to have sex in order to become parents. The ability to bear children is widely considered a sufficient condition, both empirically and morally, for becoming a parent. In fact, the “biological bias” surrounding parenting is so manifest, little thought is given to the idea that the act of reproduction (giving birth) can be separated – philosophically as well as practically – from the act of parenting (raising a child). Perhaps more surprisingly, even where parents require assistance though New Reproductive Technologies there is little or no consideration of the potential parent's parenting competence or intention. Instead, assessment of suitability for the procedure typically takes the form of strict medical criteria. So it would appear current practice views natural and medically assisted parenting as roughly similar, while socially assisted parenting such as adoption is taken to be an entirely different kettle of fish. The main dividing issue, it would appear, is that adoption is about parenting someone else's child instead of creating a new child – a point to which we return below.Now, to be sure, liberal democratic states impose limits on how parents who have had children “naturally” can raise their children. They must send them to school until a certain age, they must refrain from all forms of physical abuse, including, in certain jurisdictions, spanking. And while some commentators seem to detect a problem because the liberal state intervenes in what amounts to one of our most private spheres – the family – the equally liberal commitment to safeguarding children's interest seems to warrant such intervention. Nonetheless, the differences between the standards that are insisted upon in the two cases are considerable. They are so at least in two respects. First, the state intervenes to limit the parental rights of natural parents only retrospectively. It does not stand in the way of people becoming parents, but only imposes limits on what they can do once they become parents. In the case of adoptive parents, the restrictions are ex ante, as well as ex post: adoptive parents are not freed from the requirements that weigh upon natural parents simply in virtue of having passed whatever hurdles are put in their way as a condition of their becoming parents, but they also have to undergo the aforementioned kind of screening in order to become parents in the first place. Second, the requirements imposed upon prospective adoptive parents are more onerous than are the requirements placed upon natural parents. The latter seem to aim only to avoid the worst excesses, whereas the former are pitched at a much higher level. In other words, the liberal state only intervenes in the natural family where parenting is demonstrably bad (such has in cases of manifest abuse or neglect), while it explicitly regulates adoptive families to the more exacting standard of good parenting.The problem (for us) is not that there might be an inherent tension within liberal political thought (and practice) about crossing the public-private sphere, but rather that there appears to be an inconsistency in how we treat natural and adoptive parenting. For if the safeguarding of childrens' interests justifies intervention by the liberal state, we must also ask ourselves whether the level of protective (or preemptive) intervention currently visited upon parents by the state is sufficient given the interests at stake. We might think it a paradox of liberal family policy that much of justified intervention only appears to come into play after some significant harm has already occurred – at least in the case of natural parents. In addition, there are legitimate concerns about the inherent inequality of treatment of natural and adoptive parents as well as (let us not forget) children. Prima facie, it would appear differential protection regimes either unjustly treat adoptive parents in an intrusive manner or else unjustly fail to protect natural children. Our aim in this paper is to ascertain whether these different regimes – and the wide range of differences between them – can be affirmed philosophically. Thus, we will ask the question whether it is right for parenting to be governed as it presently is in most liberal democracies. To the extent that our answer to this question is negative, we will propose a range of arguments aimed at recalibrating the way in which the liberal democratic state ought to govern the institution of parenting.

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