Mother-to-be deemed 'too stupid' to raise child or marry fiance

The link.

Quote :

Kerry Robertson, 17, who has mild learning difficulties, has been told that
she will not be allowed to bring up her own child, who she has already named
Ben.

Last month Miss Robertson was prevented from marrying her fiancé Mark
McDougall, 25, after council officials claimed that she “did not understand
the implications of getting married”.


She has now been warned that she will only be allowed a few hours with her
baby, which is due in January, before it is taken into foster care.

Quote :

After hearing the news, Miss Robertson, of Dunfermline, Fife, who is 26 weeks
pregnant, said: “I couldn't believe it. I am so upset – I can't stop
crying.”

Mr McDougall, an artist, said he wants to take on full responsibility for his
son but claims that he is powerless because he is not married to Miss
Robertson.


He added: “Social Services are ruining our lives. As we are not married –
because social workers would not let us marry – it seems I have no rights as
a dad at all.

“Kerry's gran is trying to apply for custody of Ben but social services have
already told us it is unlikely she will be successful. We feel helpless.”


The extraordinary case first came to light last month when the couple’s
wedding was halted 48 hours before Miss Robertson was due to walk up the
aisle.

Just let the poor couple marry, for goodness's sake! They've already had a child together; why not let them be married and formalize whatever commitments they've already made to each other?

This...there are no words.

...When. When did social services get to decide who breeds and marries and who doesn't?

I just. What?

*reads article*

Well, Malganis, still the reigning Queen of awful news, I see.

You really wonder how someone could hope to get away with something so cruel-sounding and hackle-raising with todays world-wide-web of easy "compassion."

Oh seriously fuck social services. This is the same social services who would deny a struggling family food stamps if they make something like $100 over the cutoff limit, would gladly reunite a child with their drug-addicted prostitute neglectful mother if she makes false promises to be good, and try to refuse custody of a child to obviously caring grandparents because of some stupid misdemeanor charges against one of them that were DROPPED THIRTY YEARS AGO. And then they'll sit there with their stony fucking faces while you cry and beg for them to do something, then claim they're doing "what's best for the child."

TL;DR: Social services are a bunch of insensitive fucknuggets who I'm pretty sure get off on people's suffering.

...is it wrong that I might agree with this if I knew how bad her learning difficulties were?

Thanos6 wrote:

...is it wrong that I might agree with this if I knew how bad her learning difficulties were?

Well, she had consensual sex with her boyfriend/fiance, and apparently no one has charged him with statutory rape on the grounds that she could not consent to sex due to her alleged disabilities.

Where is the social services department getting this diagnosis of 'learning difficulties' from, anyway, and is it an unbiased source? Is it more than one source? Sometimes people are tagged as having learning difficulties when they have nothing of the sort.

What do they mean by 'learning difficulties', because the article is using it in a very vague way. What was/is she having trouble learning?

This just comes off to me as some bureaucratic asshole(s) fucking around with this couple, because they can/feel like they 'should', like the racist judge who refused to marry the mixed-race couple here in America.

I wonder how many of the people posting their sympathies in this thread are the same sort that thinks procreation should require a license.
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I have ADHD and dyslexia. My brother has them too just worse than mine. Does this mean that I'm not qualified to marry a person? Does this mean that my brother isn't qualified to marry a person?

Having learning disability doesn't mean you're a RETARD who needs custody and who wouldn't survive in real life.

Sorsa A. Jänis wrote:

I have ADHD and dyslexia. My brother has them too just worse than mine. Does this mean that I'm not qualified to marry a person? Does this mean that my brother isn't qualified to marry a person?

Having learning disability doesn't mean you're a RETARD who needs custody and who wouldn't survive in real life.

This. A learning disability does not make a person unable to have a successful marriage or raise children (and not having a learning disability doesn't necessarily make a person able to maintain a marriage or raise children). I've known people who are mildly retarded who were able to marry and raise children successfully.

I would like to know more about this case. What do they mean by learning difficulties? Learning difficulties can run the gamut from not being able to figure out calculus to being so disabled that the person in question has to be taught to use silverware over again every day (yes, I've seen both extremes).

TheHermit wrote:

I wonder how many of the people posting their sympathies in this thread are the same sort that thinks procreation should require a license.
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I can see how you might think it's ironic to express sympathies to the targets of procreation regulation, while at the same time believing that procreation should be regulated.

Unfortunately, you are mistaken, and here's why - by no one's(except idiots) standards in this thread does 'mild learning disability' qualify as a valid reason to deprive someone of a child.

If she was a dangerous schizophrenic with high potential to go nuts and kill her child or something equally severe, then yes, it would be best to take away the child into someone else's more capable hands. And even before that, the mother and the father have to be proven incapable.

As far as I recall, I was the only one to actually state what getting a license should entail; and I think that if procreation needs outside(not father and mother) regulation, then it better damn have good justification to do so.

I'm pretty sure, as a minor, she has to have approval from someone to marry. Also, if she isn't fit to raise the child, she has no business raising the child.

And hasn't half of this board advocated a parenting license to keep fools like this from raising kids?

However, I want to hear some explanation as to why the father can't be responsible for the kid. Really, it's as much her kid as it is his, if he can manage to take care of it by himself, let him.

TheHermit wrote:

I wonder how many of the people posting their sympathies in this thread are the same sort that thinks procreation should require a license.
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Quote :

And hasn't half of this board advocated a parenting license to keep fools like this from raising kids?

Congrats, you have the same thought pattern as Mikey.

Now feck off.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

However, I want to hear some explanation as to why the father can't be responsible for the kid. Really, it's as much her kid as it is his, if he can manage to take care of it by himself, let him.

It says in the article that since the father isn't married to the mother, he has no legal right to the child. This is also the case in Ireland, largely because we used to deal with single mothers by shoving them in Magdalene Laundries for the rest of their lives and sending the children to industrial schools to be abused by the Christian Brothers. The men who made those babies were invisible.

I'd be interested in knowing what 'mild learning difficulties' means as well. My mom used to work with handicapped adults, and there's a world of difference between someone who's, say seriously brain damaged and basically has to be taken care of and someone who just has problems retaining information. Also, I applaud her boyfriend for wanting to do the right thing. And if the mild learning difficulties means she sometimes has to be reminded to do something, I imagine her boyfriend would be more than willing to take up the slack.

Also, just because the mother has mild problems doesn't mean the child will be born mentally handicapped. Most mentally handicapped kids are, in fact, born to perfectly normal parents.

Cyberwulf wrote:

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

However, I want to hear some explanation as to why the father can't be responsible for the kid. Really, it's as much her kid as it is his, if he can manage to take care of it by himself, let him.

It says in the article that since the father isn't married to the mother, he has no legal right to the child. This is also the case in Ireland, largely because we used to deal with single mothers by shoving them in Magdalene Laundries for the rest of their lives and sending the children to industrial schools to be abused by the Christian Brothers. The men who made those babies were invisible.

Well yes, if the men are going to be either as incompetent as the mothers, more incompetent than the mothers, or off the chart, then they probably have no business raising the kid. My point is, if he wants to, and is capable of doing so, why not give him the option to raise the kid himself?

YES I'M AWARE A POINT CAN'T BE IN THE FORM OF A QUESTION! NO I DO NOT CARE!

Judging by the one line in a news article on the internet, he seems to be a better option than social services taking over.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

I'm pretty sure, as a minor, she has to have approval from someone to marry. Also, if she isn't fit to raise the child, she has no business raising the child.

And hasn't half of this board advocated a parenting license to keep fools like this from raising kids? [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

However, I want to hear some explanation as to why the father can't be responsible for the kid. Really, it's as much her kid as it is his, if he can manage to take care of it by himself, let him.

1) The only people saying she isn't fit to raise the child are social services, and that's on the very vague grounds that she has "mild learning disabilities".

On that note, can anyone find any information about what these "mild learning disabilities" are?

2) Getting a license to procreate is completely different from this.

3) In the article, it says he has no rights to the child because they're not married.

I hate how the article uses the word "stupid". She is not stupid, she is intellectually disabled. She should not be put in the same category as assholes who leave their cigarettes out for their two-year-old to play with, and then beat them to death for it.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Well yes, if the men are going to be either as incompetent as the mothers, more incompetent than the mothers, or off the chart, then they probably have no business raising the kid. My point is, if he wants to, and is capable of doing so, why not give him the option to raise the kid himself?

Because under the Scottish legal system, he has no legal rights to the child because he isn't married to his/her mother. As far as the law is concerned, he might as well be a stranger. I don't disagree that it sucks, but there it is.

This is awful. The father has no rights to look after his son because he's not married to the mother. Okay, okay, I can deal with that law.

What I can't deal with is that the reason they can't get married is because social services forbid that too.

So now the baby is being taken away from her.

It looks to me that even if she doesn't fully realise the implications of marriage, the father understands enough to want to marry the pregnant girl.

Next thing you know, they'll be sterilising people beneath a certain IQ.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Next thing you know, they'll be sterilising people beneath a certain IQ.

Ssh! Don't give them any ideas!

EileenK98 wrote:

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Next thing you know, they'll be sterilising people beneath a certain IQ.

Ssh! Don't give them any ideas!

It's not like eugenics is a new idea. Sterilizing those who were deemed unworthy or unfit to reproduce has already been done in America and Europe in decades past.

EileenK98 wrote:

I hate how the article uses the word "stupid". She is not stupid, she is intellectually disabled. She should not be put in the same category as assholes who leave their cigarettes out for their two-year-old to play with, and then beat them to death for it.

I have to disagree. She is (or may be, since they give us no usable information) stupid. Assholes who leave their cigarettes out and then beat their 2-year-old to death are not stupid; they're murderous sons of bitches. "Stupid" is lacking intelligence; "murderous son of a bitch" is lacking humanity.

Stupid is a perfectly valid word, meaning "not smart". I prefer it to whatever euphemism is in fashion this year, if for no better reason than I don't have to keep learning new ones or risk being told that whatever was last year's proper euphemism is politically incorrect this year.

One has to wonder what word should apply to someone who complains that a word isn't being used as an insult.

Yes, THAT'S WHY I SAID 'Next Thing You Know'.