Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Found Our Son in the Subway

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 182 posts

Re: We Found Our Son in the Subway

#131

Post by precisioncoder »

siscia wrote: post #30

Love the story. When we talk about gay marriage and adoption I always need to query a little more, especially about the kids. What's about Kevin ? His life is "perfectly normal" (how stupid is this expression) ? He is happy ? Does he have problem with his sexuality ? Do anybody have any experience to share ? Please to be obvious, in neither way... (Why this is on HN ? Well, because I believe that HN is one of the bes…

I would assume he would have less problems than a normal child in accepting his own sexual identity but more problems in acting on it if he was straight. Gay parents would probably be accepting of any sexuality and supportive which would free a child with a non-normal sexual identity from judgement and provide more support. If however the child was straight while the parents would probably be supportive he wouldn't necessarily know what his traditional gender role in a relationship would be from observation of his family. (Which could be a help or a hindrance in the dating world) however I'm sure that could be easily counter-balanced by the accessibility of straight role models in normal society who could give advice and guidance.

Re: We Found Our Son in the Subway

#132

Post by jacoblyles »

corin_ wrote: post #101
unreal37 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing this. The OP is a great story as well. Bureaucracy sucks more than it helps almost always.

I think that's much too simplistic a view - I don't know whether you're right or wrong, but based on the way you worded it I think you almost certainly don't either. If, without paperwork, one child was sexually abused for every one child who got adopted, would you agree that more bureaucracy was needed? Now go to the other extreme, where the bad scenario happens only once in a million and is "child gets insulted by…

You're assumption that the bureaucracy produces any good effects may be false. See: the TSA.

Re: We Found Our Son in the Subway

#133

Post by lucian1900 »

gojomo wrote: post #110
tptacek wrote: post #52

Sound reasonable to me. That judge is probably a parent. I suspect most parents understand: if we waited to be "ready", nobody would ever be a parent. Conventional parents get months and months of notice. If they're like me, they're still nowhere close to "ready". It's terrifying. But you, and these guys, and everyone else just do what we've been doing for hundreds of thousands of years.

Indeed, the judge managed (on an ultra-compressed timescale) to provide this same-sex couple the same experience of surprise parenthood that alt-sex couples may have through an unplanned pregnancy. This principle could be advanced more systematically. That is, perhaps adoption by same-sex couples should not just be permitted , but random and compulsory . If you're married and of child-rearing age, you might be assign…

It would need an opt out, much like contraception.

Re: We Found Our Son in the Subway

#134

Post by justincormack »

Evbn wrote: post #117
slurgfest wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But these are not randomly selected questions. To illustrate, consider if someone posted a story asking whether Jews were genetically disposed to be greedy. This could be dressed up quite a bit, and it's not impossible that this would very rarely be asked by someone without any social awareness. But there's a smart prior which says that someone asking such a question has a strong agenda and that the "just asking ques…

Racial social identity in inter-racial families is a hugely important issue, and ignoring it is deeply harmful to a child, who faces harassment from peers and strangers, internal confusion, etc.

And is present in this case. But the OP decided to ask about gay parents instead...

Re: We Found Our Son in the Subway

#135

Post by Adirael »

vaadu wrote: post #109
jiggy2011 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an exaggeration, sterilisation should be sufficient. Edit: I'm being sarcastic.

Not a bad idea. What if the government offered free tubal ligation and vasectomy. If you later want to have kids that cost is on you to reverse it.

The vasectomy (and I guess the tube ligation as well, I haven't looked into it) is NOT reversible. You can try and there's some success rate, the sooner you do it the better chances, but it's not a reversible method.

Don't use it as contraception, it's easier to educate and use different methods.

Re: We Found Our Son in the Subway

#136

Post by kerneis »

zeidrich wrote: post #55
siscia wrote: post #30

Love the story. When we talk about gay marriage and adoption I always need to query a little more, especially about the kids. What's about Kevin ? His life is "perfectly normal" (how stupid is this expression) ? He is happy ? Does he have problem with his sexuality ? Do anybody have any experience to share ? Please to be obvious, in neither way... (Why this is on HN ? Well, because I believe that HN is one of the bes…

The child is better off than he would have been had he been left in the subway. Kids need most of all someone who will go out of their way to keep them safe and healthy. He had parents who were presumably a man and a woman. They left him in a bundle in a subway. He had parents who were a man and a man. They dropped everything in their life and rearranged it so they could save a stranger's baby who only needed to be t…

> He's prepubescent, he's not got a problem with his sexuality because he doesn't even have a sexuality.

I agree with the rest of your comment, but that specific sentence... It has been known for at least a century that children, and even babies, have a sexuality (which does not mean they have sexual intercourse).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosexual_development

Re: We Found Our Son in the Subway

#137

Post by corin_ »

jacoblyles wrote: post #132
corin_ wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's much too simplistic a view - I don't know whether you're right or wrong, but based on the way you worded it I think you almost certainly don't either. If, without paperwork, one child was sexually abused for every one child who got adopted, would you agree that more bureaucracy was needed? Now go to the other extreme, where the bad scenario happens only once in a million and is "child gets insulted by…

You're assumption that the bureaucracy produces any good effects may be false. See: the TSA.

Bureaucracy has the potential to do 100% good or 0% good, specific examples don't change that.

Re: We Found Our Son in the Subway

#138

Post by konstruktor »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #119
twstws wrote: post #92

This was hard for me to read. I spent four years waiting to adopt a child.Did almost a year of training and home visits, then waited. And waited. Why does it take so long? Because we selfishly insisted that we'd only take one ortwo children. The social workers were not subtle in letting us know that we were selfish to not want a sibling group of 4 or 5(?!) kids all at once. They made it absolutely clear that we could…

I'd like to think that the judge in this case was (very pragmatically) wanting to avoid having the infant in foster care for any longer than necessary. I'm happy that it seems to have worked out.

With a long backlog of couples interested in adoption, having undergone rigorous checks, this would have been easy. The judge let a couple adopt a child where half the couple wasn't even informed.

Re: We Found Our Son in the Subway

#139

Post by lotsofcows »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #111
vaadu wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a bad idea. What if the government offered free tubal ligation and vasectomy. If you later want to have kids that cost is on you to reverse it.

Here in the UK at least basically everyone has access to free contraception, you can usually walk into a health clinic and ask for a bag of condoms and they will give them to you. I think there may also be mechanisms for women to get the contraceptive pill gratis if they are on government support. The issue is though that this requires some degree of responsibility and planning, which is almost by definition missing…

Not a particularly vicious cycle given a society that a) only works if it grows b) only grows due to immigration

Re: We Found Our Son in the Subway

#140

Post by taejo »

zeidrich wrote: post #55
siscia wrote: post #30

Love the story. When we talk about gay marriage and adoption I always need to query a little more, especially about the kids. What's about Kevin ? His life is "perfectly normal" (how stupid is this expression) ? He is happy ? Does he have problem with his sexuality ? Do anybody have any experience to share ? Please to be obvious, in neither way... (Why this is on HN ? Well, because I believe that HN is one of the bes…

The child is better off than he would have been had he been left in the subway. Kids need most of all someone who will go out of their way to keep them safe and healthy. He had parents who were presumably a man and a woman. They left him in a bundle in a subway. He had parents who were a man and a man. They dropped everything in their life and rearranged it so they could save a stranger's baby who only needed to be t…

> He's prepubescent, he's not got a problem with his sexuality because he doesn't even have a sexuality.

A lot of people would like to believe this, but is it actually true? Some people report knowing they were gay by the age of seven or eight; I know (straight) people who started masturbating to pictures of naked people at age six.

Is the idea of the sexual innocence of children just a leftover of Puritanism?

Post reply on HN