[twstws]

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 not expect to have a newborn, and a child under 8 was unlikely.

So to hear that, on a hunch, a judge can give a newborn to a couple that had expressed no previous interest in having kids, wtf. It's a nice story, and I'm glad that it worked out so well for everyone. But for me it really underlines how fucked up the system really is.

[ajtaylor]

My wife and I also adopted through a state Family Services division. You probably don't want to hear how we got lucky and got a baby within a few months... But we did come pretty close to taking a sibling group of 5. The case worker basically decided she didn't like/want us and that was that. We were pretty upset at the time, but things often have a way of working out.

The system is massively screwed up, but I hope you can be patient. Being a parent is worth all the waiting and heartache x 1000!

[salgernon]

It's 4am and I'm reading hacker news in the play yard.

I guess without kids it's be 4am and I'd be debugging something.

In only one of these scenarios am I not covered in vomit.

I'm hoping for one of those "what'll you remember later" moments, but right now I'm remembering a particularly nice day with gdb and otool -tv. Darling little otool!

[Tichy]

The puking phase is only a couple of weeks, really. I think you exaggerate...

[salgernon]

Kid is ten months old with a stomache flu, so not really.

Although it is telling that you inferred that the vomit was associated with the kid, and not the debugging session :-)

[Tichy]

Ok didn't think about that... Hope kid gets well soon!

[fnordfnordfnord]

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.

[konstruktor]

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.

[unreal37]

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

[corin_]

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 new parents", meanwhile no other children are getting adopted to prevent this minor one-in-a-million chance. Definitely too much paperwork.

Before saying that bureaucracy, in this area, helps more than hinders, or hinders more than helps, you not only need to know these stats (i.e. how many children would be worse or better off with more or less bureaucracy), but also make a subjective judgement call on what rations are acceptable.

[unreal37]

I don't disagree that there is an invisible line somewhere where having process and formality is important to have. But I have the world-view that, in 2013, most legal and governmental processes have too much bureaucracy. Sure, we can't just give babies away to anyone who wants one without checking them out. But it shouldn't take years and $1000s to successfully apply to adopt one under normal circumstances. (Although heterosexual parents can breed them without such checks so it seems overly unfair.)

By its very nature bureaucracy only ever grows. It's far easier to add a new form to fill, add a new step, do a knee-jerk reaction to one bad thing that happened, add more months to the waiting list, than to analyse the monstrous process to figure out what to change or remove.

[jacoblyles]

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

[corin_]

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

[Evbn]

Were you waiting in the same state/program/whatever? Maybe your state has less supply and you should enlist in NY.