Posted on 03/19/2006 10:41:42 PM PST by Giant Conservative
Jeremiah Clayton Jones discovered that his former fiancée was pregnant just three weeks before the baby was due, when an adoption-agency lawyer called and asked if he would consent to have his baby adopted.
"I said absolutely not," said Mr. Jones, a 23-year-old Arizona man who met his ex-fiancée at Pensacola Christian College in Florida. "It was an awkward moment, hearing for the first time that I would be a father, and then right away being told, 'We want to take your kid away.' But I knew that if I was having a baby, I wanted that baby."
Mr. Jones has never seen his son, now 18 months old. Instead, he lost his parental rights because of his failure to file with a state registry for unwed fathers — something he learned of only after it was too late.
Under Florida law, and that of other states, an unmarried father has no right to withhold consent for adoption unless he has registered with the state putative father registry before an adoption petition is filed. Mr. Jones missed the deadline.
Although one in every three American babies has unwed parents, birth fathers' rights remain an unsettled area, a delicate balancing act between the importance of biological ties and the undisrupted placement of babies whose mothers relinquish them for adoption.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
An adopted child is not a bastard, he is the real child of real parents. That's why adoption is the loving choice for out of wedlock births. And as for stigmatizing a bastard, I'm not the one who produced it. The responsible parties are the ones who are...responsible.
Well stated.
How many biological children with how many women does he have the right to lay claim to?
No, DNA is a small part of the picture, and the odds are small that some guy whose sperm did the job will be a better parent than the adoptive husband and wife.
Totally different circumstance. So much so it sounds silly to read.
A widow or divorced parent is NOT a single parent, but rather a widow with children or a divorced parent.
The blurring of terms to include widows and divorced parents in with single parents is completely unfair to widows and divorced parents.
The entire human race, and its future prosperity is based upon the FAMILY (mom+dad+kids).
If a man's wife died in childbirth, would you recommend that he give the baby away so it could have a mother and a father?
A little bit of Monica in my life
A little bit of Erica by my side
A little bit of Rita's all I need
A little bit of Tina's what I see
A little bit of Sandra in the sun
A little bit of Mary all night long
A little bit of Jessica here I am
A little bit of you makes me your man
Also well-stated.
See post #65.
(Don't they teach logic in school any more?)
And you think that letting this kid be adopted is better than the father raising it? Just how do you come to that conclusion? Should people who get divorced put their children up for adoption? More importantly and to the point, should fathers who are divorced be stripped of their parental rights also? You somehow equate a father raising a child as some kind of hell for the child. I don't see how you come to that conclusion without knowing who the father of each particular baby is.
See #65.
(Don't they teach logic in school any more?)
Family begins with biological parenthood, followed by biological parents raising their own kids. No father becomes less of a father simply because his child's mother walks away from their kid...
He didn't know she was pregnant, how do you equate that with deserting the mother?
Are you adopted ot an adoptive parent who feels threatened by a story such as this?
I was one of those babies, although my mother did not give me up for adoption. The man she married when I wwas 2 adopted me and as far as I was concerned, he was my father.
"For the good of the child" meant my biological father had no contact with me. What no one ever realized was that there was room in my heart for both. Even at 53 I cannot tell you how huge a scar that is for me. I don't dwell on it, it is just there. I know the decision was made in what everyone thoought was my best interest, yet it still hurts to this day.
My point is these babies grow up, learn the truth and then have to deal with whatever the reality of their situation is. I know what it is like to know a father wanted you, wanted to be a part of your life, but "the good of the child" did not allow it.
So until you have been there, done that as that child, I respectfully suggest you may not know what you are talking about.
The biological mother sticks with her child through 9 months of not-so-fun pregnancy and Lord knows how many hours of labor
The biological father puts his sperm out there and doesn't care to stick around long enough to find out if his boys swam to the target.
And as soon as he found out, he absolutely stepped up to the plate: no deserting rogue here whatsoever!
Please illustrate the flaw in my logic:
You advocate that an unmarried biological father should not try to keep a child offered for adoption, because the child is better off with a loving father AND mother.
A no-longer-married man (losing his wife to childbirth) has a child. There is no mother to help raise his child. Because, as you claim, it is better for a child to have a father and a mother;
AND because in this situation, there is no mother;
you should logically advocate the superior situation of giving the child up to an adoptive mother AND father.
It's really irrelevant if we call the biological father a "widower" or a "single parent." No matter what, the man who loves his child is without the wife and mother the child needs. The difference in label doesn't change the situation, or the (claimed) best outcome for the child.
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