Perhaps social workers can be counted on in the absence of laws? Susan Esbenshade once thought so. She and her husband had adopted one child by a troubled unwed mother. When her child's birth mother again became pregnant, Esbenshade and her husband wanted to adopt that child, too (twins, as it turned out). The birth mother requested this placement. But the Esbenshades say they were (falsely) told by social workers in Mecklenburg County (North Carolina) that the twins could not be placed in a home outside the county. In a letter to Mecklenburg County Commissioner Bill James, Susan said she was "shocked" to later discover "that DSS would place the twins in a home with two men rather than placing them in a home with a mother and father and a biological sibling."
How could this happen? One reason may be that social workers tend to be deeply committed to family diversity as an ideal. A 1996 study by Sarah Holbrook studied the attitudes of more than 300 social workers. They strongly supported "the rights of single people, gay men and lesbians, and older women past menopause to have families." Conversely, notes the author, social workers were most likely to reject "the traditional approach to families where couples are favored over single people" and "where the ideal for a child is always a two-parent home."
Why has social work, as a profession, been so uniquely deaf to the cries of children hungering for absent fathers, or to the social science evidence that generally support intact marriages as important for child well-being?
I don't know for sure how common Susan Esbenshade's story is. I do know that even one case of a child being deprived of a loving married mom and dad, not to mention her brother or sister, in pursuit of ideological or political correctness is one too many.
State legislators and governors concerned about child welfare, take note -- and then act.