Russell Moore has a nice post about how, although there’s generally a moral mandate upon Christians to adopt, there are plenty of people who ought not to be the ones to fulfill that mandate [ht: Justin Taylor]. In particular, certain kinds of issues tend to come up with adoptions that most people, because of the reasons they’re interested in adopting are not well prepared for and do not have the commitment to see those problems through, which leaves kids twice orphaned in too many cases.
I think this is a nice example of what I’ve elsewhere called a secondary moral obligation, an obligation you incur because you fail at a prior moral obligation. You ought not to have the attitude toward children that you see them as fulfilling your needs, but if you do then it’s immoral to adopt, even if it’s generally a moral mandate to adopt when such immoral attitudes are not present (and they shouldn’t be present) and when there aren’t other extenuating circumstances making it a less good idea to adopt (whatever those might be, and I’m open to their being lots of them).
What Moore does not mention is that the same is true of having children naturally. If you have the attitude that children are to meet your needs, then you shouldn’t have children, even if (and I know not all Christians agree on this) it’s Christian teaching that we ought to seek to have children or at least be very open to it (as many believe it is; whether it is is irrelevant to my point here, but assume it is for the sake of argument). My suspicion is that many new parents who were seeking to have children were doing so for completely selfish reasons. It strikes me as a thoroughly immoral reason to want to have children, and it seems to me that it’s just as immoral to go ahead and have children if your desire is for them to fulfill your needs. That’s so even if there is a moral mandate upon Christians to seek to have children, as many Christians do believe.
What makes this a nice case of a secondary moral obligation is that you have two obligations that conflict, one of which only appears if you violate the other one. It’s wrong to have this selfish kid-possessing attitude, and those who have it ought not to have children. But you ought to seek to have children (on the premise I’ve been assuming, at least for the sake of argument). There’s no inconsistency in such a position, despite the initial surface-level appearance of two contrary obligations. You do have an obligation to seek to have children (at least certain people do, anyway, on this view), and you do have an obligation not to want children for the wrong reasons, but if you do have the wrong reasons for wanting children then you simply ought not to have children, even if that means failing in the first obligation. It’s worse to seek to meet the first obligation but violate the second than it is to fail the first because you’re meeting the second.
But it becomes a fairly messy question if children come along anyway unintentionally when someone has this attitude. The original obligation still remains in such a case, and you simply ought not to have this attitude, even though most people do before they have children. Once they appear, you ought not to rid yourself of them unless your situation is so bad that they’ll have a much better home without you than with you (and this selfish desire isn’t usually so bad as to generate that situation; other conditions need to be met for that). I would argue that someone with the selfish attitude toward children does conceive a child, they ought (barring other considerations) to raise that child and to remove that selfish attitude. But that’s compatible with thinking they ought not to seek to have children until they can rid themselves of that attitude, especially when it comes to great expense as with adoption.
[cross-posted at Parableman]
October 30th, 2011 | 7:11 pm | #1
If the cause of the attitude is selfishness, isn’t the moral obligation to repent rather than to find a moral context in which your sinful attitude will not cause more damage?
These questions that being with the premise, “If I’m consciously sinning in X way, should I….” never make sense to me. There’s only one right answer — repent! Then and only then figure out what your next moral obligation is.
October 30th, 2011 | 10:41 pm | #2
The point is that there’s wrong, and there’s even worse. The wrong is in having the attitude. The even worse is in having children based on that attitude and damaging them as a result.
October 31st, 2011 | 10:47 pm | #3
But if you’re stating a moral obligation, shouldn’t you state an actual moral obligation, rather than “what to do if you want to be immoral in this way, so you’re not also immoral in that way?”
I don’t understand how there can be a moral obligation based on continued immorality. The moral obligation of the unrepentant person is repentance, not unrepentance plus not committing more sins.
I get your point — I just think framing “what you should also do if you’re going to be immoral” as a “moral obligation” doesn’t make a lot of sense.
November 1st, 2011 | 11:56 am | #4
pentamom, you said “I just think framing ‘what you should also do if you’re going to be immoral’ as a “moral obligation” doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
I don’t think that is Jeremy’s point. I am not sure I agree with the principle of adoption being a moral duty (it’s seems like a supererogatory act to me), but I think one could frame it as Rossian: We have a prima facie moral duty to adopt. However, we may not be in a position to fulfill that duty. So we have an obligation to not to adopt at least until we come to the position of being able to adopt. Prudence recognizes that the consequences of adopting a child when you are not in a position to care for the child would be just as bad if not worse than refraining from adopting. That’s the point.
November 1st, 2011 | 10:24 pm | #5
But Jeremy refers to “an obligation you incur because you fail at a prior moral obligation.”
He’s not just talking about considering whether you’re the right person to adopt — he’s talking about someone who by his own lights has morally failed, and what he should do. Presumably this hypothetical person agrees with Jeremy that it’s a moral failure, or the advice would be pointless.
And apparently the solution for moral failure is something other than repentance. Apparently there’s some moral halfway condition where it makes sense to think about how limit your sins to a certain degree so that you don’t mess up more than you already have, rather than to orient your attitude entirely to renouncing the devil and all his works. And that’s what I don’t get.
Don’t misunderstand, I completely understand the moral principle that the selfish ought not to be encouraged to adopt, and that every person has the obligation to discern his own fitness to undertake any commitment.
And the person who finds himself too selfish to adopt might in fact undertake to repent and reform in that area, but still come to the appropriate conclusion that his habits at the present time are not such as to make him a good adoptive (or natural) parent.
But the idea that you should sit around and consider what to do while remaining in your unrepentant state, rather than move toward a repentant one, seems odd from a Christian point of view. I’m speaking of moral theology here, I’m not at all attacking the premise that some people should self-assess and come to the conclusion that, at least at present, they ought to forgo parenthood.
November 1st, 2011 | 11:59 pm | #6
[...] Adoption, Having Children, and Secondary Moral Obligations Evangel, Jeremy Pierce Comments (4) [...]
November 2nd, 2011 | 11:46 am | #7
I don’t think that is Jeremy’s point. I am not sure I agree with the principle of adoption being a moral duty (it’s seems like a supererogatory act to me),
I doubt anyone seriously adopts for reasons other than personal desire – and it bothers me a great deal that the culture at large often speaks to adopted children as if they should be “grateful” (as if the parents adopted for altruistic motives) – thus rendering the class of people “adopted children” a sort of second-class category (since they are expected to be “grateful” for things that wanted children are viewed as being entitled to, like room and board).
Adopted children are also second class legally, in that they are the only group that cannot access their own self-information, and are thus deprived of crucial identity (including but not limited to medical) information that is of real value. And it is heartbreaking that Christians are leading the movement to block lawsuits from grown-up adoptees wanting access to their birth records.
I don’t understand how, if adoption is about what’s best for the child (as opposed to what’s best for the adopting couple), can anyone support the idea of taking something so precious away from someone, above and beyond the point where it actually needs to be taken away for practical reasons?
I think it would be more accurate to say that if you are going to adopt, you have moral obligations that go with the act – and that the first obligation is to remember that adoption is legitimized by the “child’s best interest” standard, and that standard is the dividing line between adoption (which is viewed as noble precisely because of that selflessness and presumed sacrifice) vs. merely trafficking in human flesh – which is what adoption becomes when the child’s best interest is not the primary motive/primary actions taken.
November 2nd, 2011 | 10:35 pm | #8
“I doubt anyone seriously adopts for reasons other than personal desire…”
You’ve got this thing for warrantless statements, Blake. You gotta stop that. I don’t see any evidence for this being the case at all. Yes, it is true that some parents do adopt out of want for children (because perhaps a certain disease prevents them from having children), but consider what having a child means. A child isn’t something you can use as a plaything; it’s a serious investment. Anyone who wants to have children so bad that s/he adopts a child that has no biological ties to them has no incentive to use it merely for personal satisfaction. Parents want to help nurture, love, and care for someone that they can help bring into the world. That’s not necessarily selfish. Children cost quite a bit of time and money to raise; most people are aware of that and don’t take that decision lightly.
But moreover, your claim is non-unique to adopted couples; if parents can be selfish in their desire to have kids, then certainly the same applies to parents having children via the normal, biological route.
“…and that standard is the dividing line between adoption…vs. merely trafficking in human flesh – which is what adoption becomes when the child’s best interest is not the primary motive/primary actions taken.”
Let’s step aside from the fact that comparing the lives of children who are forcibly taken from environments for the purpose of being used as sexual objects or slaves and the lives of children who are adopted and live comfortable lifestyles is beyond offensive, though difficult that is to do. “Trafficking in human flesh” is not applicable to all adoptions, since many are done free of charge (such as foster children). More than that, traffickers don’t always discern whether or not the child they’re trying to take for the purpose of gaining money has parents; with adoption, parents are taking in children who don’t have homes or families to provide for them. I’m not sure why you paint this picture of adoption as “taking something so precious away from someone,” when these children usually don’t have homes or parents. We aren’t talking about parents breaking into someone’s house and stealing their children; this is about adoption, which is fundamentally different.
November 10th, 2011 | 1:04 pm | #9
You’ve got this thing for warrantless statements, Blake. You gotta stop that.
No, I don’t. I am allowed to doubt or not doubt whatever I want.
November 10th, 2011 | 1:13 pm | #10
A child isn’t something you can use as a plaything; it’s a serious investment. Anyone who wants to have children so bad that s/he adopts a child that has no biological ties to them has no incentive to use it merely for personal satisfaction.
Sorry, but I have known too many adopted children whose parents make little secret of how disappointed they are.
Because they had all these expectations, and the adopted kids weren’t what they wanted.
The sad thing is that they imagine themselves to be good parents, because they delude themselves that their kids don’t recognize how they feel.
Yes, adoption in a perfect world would be this huge selfless thing. But in this world, people adopt for selfish reasons, and there’s nothing anyone can do about that. But we can expect parents to behave according to certain standards, and dropping this ridiculous nothing that adopted children “ought to be grateful” is a good start.
To say that adopted children “ought to be grateful” implies that their rightful place is somewhere lower, had their presumably selfless parents not rescued them – and it’s not true: adopted kids are not dumpster trash, and their parents didn’t rescue them out of selfless motives. They probably paid tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of having that kid, and they probably expected that the kid would solve all their grief over their infertility issues.
No kid “deserves” substandard life circumstances, and therefore no kid needs to be grateful for being “rescued” from anything. If anything, they deserve extra sympathy for what they’ve lost, not a dose of “well aren’t you lucky that someone decided to spare you from the life you were assigned”. Which is what you’re implying when you suggest adopted kids owe special “gratitude”.
Of course all people should be grateful to their parents for what their parents do for them, and grateful to God for whatever they’ve got, but singling adopted kids out as if they had some sort of moral or emotional debt is cruel. Adopted kids deserve better than to be made to feel less deserving than the kid next door just because they were unfortunate enough to have suffered a terrible loss.
November 10th, 2011 | 5:14 pm | #11
Okay… so your argument is, “adoption can be abused.”
I agree. I do think that some parents are bad towards their adoptive children.
That is not, however, a compelling argument against adoption as a whole, nor does it make adoption analogous to human trafficking. I don’t doubt the experiences you’ve had interacting with children who are treated badly by their adoptive parents, but that is not a sufficient reason to blanket slander adoption.
November 11th, 2011 | 3:11 pm | #12
Okay… so your argument is, “adoption can be abused.”
I agree. I do think that some parents are bad towards their adoptive children.
That isn’t my argument at all.
It is true that I have met adopted people who were abused as children, but I was actually talking about the cultural assumption that adopted people should be grateful for being raised above their level. Adopted people have no such obligation. They do not owe anyone their “gratitude”. There is no way to suggest such a thing that does not suggest they are a lesser class of persons, and they’re not.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is the parents who should be grateful for the child they have been given. They should view having this chance to raise the child as a gift.
Those people standing on the sidelines commenting on someone else’s family should not say to the child, “You are so lucky to have parents”. They should say to the child, “Your parents are lucky to have you.” (If they cannot say that – because the child is a brat – they should just stay out of it altogether).
November 11th, 2011 | 3:15 pm | #13
That is not, however, a compelling argument against adoption as a whole, nor does it make adoption analogous to human trafficking
I am not arguing against adoption.
When adoption is about finding the best possible home for a child in need, there can be no argument against it. What possible alternative could there be? The child needs a home.
The only time adoption becomes “like human trafficking” is when we stop observing the line that separates adoption from human trafficking. That line is the “child’s best interests” standard.
When a custody decision is made based on what is best for the child, that is the essence of adoption.
However, the minute you start prioritizing what the adults need or want over what is best for the child – whether you are talking about an individual child or establishing the rules by which all homeless children are bound – you transform adoption into something that is not what adoption is. You might still call it adoption, but it’s not the same thing; it’s lost its essence – it is now mere baby-selling.
November 11th, 2011 | 7:20 pm | #14
Someone write this down in a history book but I actually kind of agree with Blake….
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