Family Action Council of Tennessee: Adoption

Adoption: What Kind of Family Is Best?

By David Fowler

President, Family Action Council of Tennessee

Tennessee’s policy of allowing two individuals to adopt a child only if they are married is a difficult issue for many since there are sincere people on both sides of the issue. This often leads to a lot of rhetoric that is not constructive. Regardless of opinion, people on both sides of this debate agree that no one—married or unmarried, cohabiting or not—has a fundamental right to adopt. Adoption is a privilege, and people are turned down for adoptions all the time for various reasons. And so that has to be the starting place—there is no constitutional or even moral right to adopt.

The state’s job, then, is to make judgment calls about who should or shouldn’t adopt because, unlike natural families, with adoption the state is creating a family. For those of us who aren’t adopted, we just get what we get, and most of us are thankful for our families. But with adoption, the state gets to stand back and ask, “What type of family is best for children?”

Determining what is “best” in any one situation can be a tough job for the state. It has a very serious responsibility to the welfare of children, and that is its top priority. Period. Thankfully, there aren’t many things to which social science speaks as clearly as it does to this issue: When it comes to healthy outcomes for children, married mom and dad homes are on exact opposite ends of the spectrum as cohabiting homes. The evidence is overwhelming:

Abuse: A child is 33 times more likely to suffer serious abuse in a cohabiting home than in a married home. And that’s when the mother and child are biologically related.
Death: One study found that a child in a cohabiting home was 73 times more likely to suffer fatal abuse than a child with married parents. Again, that’s when there is a biological relationship with the mother.
Assault by Live-in Boyfriends: The Justice Department found that women are 62 times more likely to be assaulted by a live-in boyfriend than by a husband.
Aggression: A study in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that aggression is at least twice as common among cohabiters as among married partners.
Violence among Cohabitating Couples: A University of New Hampshire study concluded that overall rates of violence for cohabiting couples were twice as high and the rate for severe violence was nearly five times as high for cohabiting couples when compared with married couples.
Violence among Same-Sex Couples: According to the Lambda Gay and Lesbian Anti-violence task force, rates of violence among same-sex couples is anywhere from 25% on up, which the National Gay and Lesbian task force believes represents only a tiny number of actual cases due to underreporting.
Short-Lived Relationships: Cohabiting relationships dissolve at twice the rate of marriages. The median duration of cohabiting relationship is 1.3 years.

As definitively as the research speaks on the instability of homes with cohabiting parents, it speaks on the stability of married mom and dad homes. Over 40 years of social science research shows that there simply is no better place for a child to be. Kids from married mom and dad homes are better off in every measurable category than children who don’t have that. They’re more likely to perform better in school, less likely to do drugs, less likely to commit crime, and on and on. Of course, there are exceptions, and in some cases, the absence of a parent cannot be avoided. But generally speaking, there is no better place for a kid to be than in a home with a married mom and dad.

By creating homes led by cohabiting couples, the state would be putting the most vulnerable children in home environments plagued by the most problems and greatest risks to the children. By doing so, the state would make a misguided and unfounded judgment that a cohabiting home is just as good for a child as a home with a married mom and dad. The research doesn’t support that, nor does centuries of history or common sense.

Again, this is a tough issue. On one hand we have the desires of adults, many of them very sincere, and on the other hand the welfare of children, and in this case children who are some of the most vulnerable children and who have the greatest need for the most optimal family environment. Without any doubt, from a social science standpoint and from just a commonsense standpoint, that optimal environment is with a married mom and dad. Therefore, the Family Action Council believes that Senate Bill 78 and House Bill 605 serve the best interest of children being placed for adoption.