Individuality-ness wrote:Llamalandia wrote:I think our misunderstanding may arise from the fact that I said "all else being equal." Allow me to clarify, if it was shown that the best interests of a child were equally served by either a foster parent or by a biological parent a court will always 'break the tie" by awarding the custody to the biological parent. Now obviously things are rarely so equal (biological parents previous termination of rights or for example history of neglect) I'm merely making a somewhat narrow argument that when it comes down to a "coin flip" bio parents win every time.
And the reason they often award custody for the biological parent is why? Often because they believe that biological ties are more stable and that it would be less disruptive for the child.
Which isn't really the case. But I digress. You will still need to show evidence that biological parents are
de facto better caregivers than adoptive/foster parents, rather than saying "because court precedent!", preferably by a peer-reviewed study.
Llamalandia wrote:Also you seem to view american democracy with a great deal of cynicism I believe in general law makers act in the interest and according to the will of the people (for better or for worse).
You have not been following the current gun control debate, have you?
Ok well guess what like most people I'm pretty darn lazy so indulge me while I shift the burden unfairly back to you, how would you decide cases in which, a biological parent is as equally qualified as a non-biological parent? In fact, by what right do any biological parents get to raise their children, after all wouldn't it be best to take every infant away from its parents at birth and then have the govt determine who out of any number of millions of prospective parents is best suited to raise said child, that is if you're arguing for a best interest model of child custody? My point is this is in fact best decided by the political processes and peoples will
and not by so-called experts. Now obviously our system is flexible enough as it currently is to remove children from bad situations (at least usually before they turn fatal) and place them in foster care but absent some compelling reason to do so, guess what
we don't remove kids from bio parents, it sounds like based on you line of reasoning that perhaps we should but you know why we don't because society as a collective through the political process has decided that it isn't really the best thing to do, that even if some kids might be slightly better off with non-bio parents we feel it is more important that be raised by parents who are genetically related to them.