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Date:         Tue, 29 Sep 1992 10:35:21 EDT
From:         Lon Mendelsohn <LMENDELS@CMS.CC.WAYNE.EDU>
Subject:      Divorce from Parents?

On Sunday there was a post on children's rights in connection with
the recent court decision which granted a 12-year-old the right to
divorce himself from his mother.  In Sunday's Detroit _Free Press_,
there was a column on the subject.  The columnist was Mitch Albom,
and he is hardly one to promulgate the conservative viewpoint.  Also,
I cannot say anything about whether or not he is a Christian.  He
makes several interesting comments, and I have reproduced the column
here:

From the Detroit _Free Press_, Sunday, 27 September 1992, page 1G,
column 1.  Reproduced with permission.

        COURT PLAYS GOD WITH PARENTS, KIDS

   Raise your hand if you ever felt like running away from home.
   Raise your hand if you ever felt your parents ignored you.
   Raise your hand if you ever felt you'd rather live with another
family, one that had more fun and more money.
   Hmmm.  A lot of hands.  Now consider what happened in a Florida
courtroom last week: 12-year old Gregory Kingsley was officially
"divorced" from his natural parents and awarded to foster parents --
one one of whom happens to be a lawyer who helped represent the boy
in court.
 "I just thought (my mother) didn't care anymore," the boy said on
the stand.
   It was the first case ever where family rights were ended by a
child's legal action.
   It also sets an incredible precedent.
   On the one hand, young Gregory has a sad tale.  His father long
ago abandoned him.  His mother, an unemployed waitress, had given him
up three times for foster care.  He barely lived with her the past
eight years, and witnesses testified she was promiscuous, smoked
marijuana, and got involved with bad men, at least one of whom beat
her.
   On the other hand, she is still his mother.  She claimed lack of
money was the reason she put her boy in foster care.  She said she
still wanted him to be her son.  The judge said no.
   He is someone else's son now.

HOW TO JUDGE A HAPPY HOME

   Our knee-jerk reaction is probably this: The boy is better off in
his new home.  The couple that adopted him, George and Lizabeth Russ,
are upper-middle-class Mormons; they have eight children and a
supposedly happy environment.  And they have money.  When the judge
gave his decision, the Russes hugged their new "son" and gave him a
baseball cap and a specially embroidered shirt.
   Witnesses felt warm all over.
   They shouldn't.  Because the new family should have nothing to do
with this decision.
   I find it very dangerous to fall in love with the idea of taking a
child from his natural home and putting him in another simply because
it seems happier.  First of all, things are not always what they
seem.  Second, if we are to judge the worth of families strictly on
the basis of alternatives, we would be splitting up half the country.
There are countless poor, dysfunctional homes out there, and plenty
of rich, happier ones that might open their doors.
   Also, lets remember that while the idea of kids "divorcing" their
parents may be fine from a children's rights point of view, few, if
any, children are going to go out there and hire a lawyer themselves.
There will almost always be an adult involved.
   Which raises the question of motive.
   How many of us, even innocently, have remarked on someone else's
parenting techniques?  How many of us have privately thought that we
could do better?
   Now, after the Kingsley case, it may strictly be a case of
convincing a child of the same thing -- and getting him or her a
lawyer.  You can see the potential problems.  A rich, religious
family, seeing what it feels is a poor, godless home, deciding to
take matters into its own hands.
  "Would you like to live with us?"  the family might ask one of the
children.  "You can, you know..."

NOT EVERYONE SHOULD BE A PARENT

   The only important issue in the Kingsley case is the boy'sJnatural
home: Is it safe?  Is it positive?  Does the child have a chance to
grow up without undue problems?  And, by the way, money is not a
measure of this.  Poor people do not have less rights to children
than rich people.  Kingsley's natural mother raised at least one good
point in the trial, when she asked why our government will help pay
for her son's foster care with other people -- yet wouldn't give her
the assistance she needed to raise the boy herself?
   Now, I am not saying that in this case, a good move wasn't made.
It probably was.  But I am saying we must be terribly careful about
playing God and deciding who is a worthy parent  _after_ a child is
born.
   If you ask me, we'd be better off taking the money spent on
lawyers and trying to educate people about being a parent _before_
they give birth.  Remember that scene in the movie "Parenthood," when
a teenage son bemoans his abusive father.  "You need a license to buy
a dog or drive a car or catch a fish," he says, "but they'll let any
(bleep) become a parent."
   Sad, but true.  And that's the real problem.  So before we hop in
the sack to make some babies, maybe we should ask ourselves at least
these questions:
   1) Are you willing to part with most if not all of your money?
   2) Are you willing to be responsible even when you don't feel like
being responsible?
   3) Are you willing to put yourself second in every aspect of life
for the next 20 years?
   If you can't answer yes, you'd better think twice.  Otherwise, you
might find yourself in court someday being divorced by your kids.
   And they might win.

************************************************

I note that today's newspaper (again, the Detroit _Free Press_) has an
article about another 12-year-old boy in Mississippi who is, based on the
success of the Kingley case, also planning on filing for divorce from his
parents (page 2A, U.S. Dateline).  While I do not agree with everything
which Mr. Albom says in his article, I think that his comments are worth
reading.

Shalom,

Lon Mendelsohn
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