Orange County Voices : COMMENTARY ON CHILD CARE : Tax Credit Would Remove Financial Impediment to Adoption : Senate bill would help parents surmount high initial costs, benefiting children in need of permanent families.

Individuals of sturdy character are the building blocks of a civilized society, and a stable, loving family is the crucible in which they are forged. From birth, children are imbued with their family’s values and world view; from their parents they learn to acquire virtues and avoid vices.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the national social degeneration and moral decline of the last three decades has coincided with the accelerating collapse of the traditional two-parent family.

Growing up in a two-parent family gives children a far better chance at success in school, career, marriage and parenthood; it is also an advantage unavailable to many thousands of children in our state who lack families.

Adoption is a truly compassionate vehicle for extending that advantage to unwanted or needy children. Unfortunately, the costs of private adoptions are prohibitive for many prospective parents.

Independent adoptions (directly between families) typically cost $8,000 to $10,000, while private agency adoptions can cost from $10,000 to $30,000. Despite this financial impediment, many couples choose to shoulder it in order to adopt.

Contrary to the general myth, most adoptive families are not wealthy but, in fact, are working-class. While they can handle the day-to-day costs of absorbing another child, surmounting the high initial costs can prove impossible. Were adoption a less expensive endeavor, it stands to reason that even more couples might consider it.

Statistics from the California Department of Social Services reinforce this. Sixty-one percent of all parents who put children up for independent adoption are single parents, usually mothers. They are typically young (average age 22) and low-income and have a high school education at best. Another 10% are young birth parents with the same profile who are separating and have decided to give up their child for adoption.

The profile of these parents correlates significantly with the profile of many receiving public assistance, such as Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC). It is logical to assume that many of these adoptions are removing children from welfare families and placing them into financially stable families. Not only are the sizes of AFDC grants cut back with these removals, but the children are far more likely to become productive citizens and less likely to enter into intergenerational welfare dependence.

With regard to foster children, reasons for adopting them into families are manifold and compelling. There are approximately 10,000 children in foster care with adoption as the goal; the average state payment per foster child is $1,096.30 a month, or $13,155.60 a year. Taxpayers would save millions by adopting them into loving, stable families.

Adoption is also in the best interest of children in foster care. “The odds of moving easily into independence are stacked against foster children,” according to Richard P. Barth, a UC Berkeley professor and recognized expert on the subject.

The need for a stable family environment is especially acute during the adolescent years. A 1983 study found that males in foster care had “strikingly more academic and social problems than a comparison group of non-foster youth.” A recent survey of the homeless in Alameda County found that one-third of them had lived in foster homes; similar studies of the homeless in New York and Los Angeles revealed that 30% to 40% had been in foster care.

“The conclusions are clear that foster care is a primary source of the homeless and that they remain homeless for a long time,” Barth said.

It must be said that we are all grateful to the many selfless and hard-working foster parents who do their best to love the children in their care and provide them with stable surroundings. Clearly, though, the best foster care is still no substitute for the bonding and sense of belonging that comes with membership in a family. Foster care is temporary; family is forever.

What can be done? For starters, financial barriers to adoption should be lowered. In that spirit, I have introduced Senate Bill 1920, which would establish a one-time, per-child tax credit to help adoptive parents. The credit would be equal to 50% of the cost of the adoption of an American citizen, to a maximum of $2,500.

Making adoption a more affordable, and thus feasible, option is not only morally good but socially practical. Interestingly, this obvious notion was acted on far more thoroughly and effectively a century ago. In his exceptional book “The Tragedy of American Compassion,” Marvin Olasky points out the enlightened attitude toward foster children evident in 1890.

“Compare treatment now--shuttling from foster home to foster home, or growing up in a home without a daddy--to treatment then, when adoption into a two-parent home was a priority preached about in churches and facilitated by a lack of bureaucracy,” Olasky wrote. “Then, the New York Children’s Aid Society alone found permanent homes for 70,000, and Jacob Riis (a contemporary liberal reformer and poverty fighter) wrote, ‘The records show that the great mass, with this start given them, become useful citizens.’ ”

Another contemporary social activist, Charles Brace, wrote of children who grow up lacking parental love and guidance: “The faculties of the individual are mainly bent on securing support by means other than industry. Cunning, deception, flattery and waiting for chances become the means of livelihood. Self-respect is lost, and with it go the best qualities of the soul.”

Clearly, this very reasonable tax credit is a bargain for all concerned. Although the state government will forgo an estimated $7 million, that is a pittance in comparison to direct taxpayer savings when a foster child is adopted. After all, a onetime credit of $2,500 is cheaper than a $13,000 annual foster child subsidy.

Unfortunately, the myopic, bureaucratic bean-counters cranking the wheels of government are unable to grasp this simple concept. Thus, the seat-warmers at the state Department of Finance peek from under their green eyeshades and fret about “lost” revenue, and the Senate Appropriations Committee ill-advisedly bought their argument and restricted the credit to county adoptions.

Still, it is a beginning. Passage of SB 1920 will place on the books a policy tool to strengthen families that can be expanded in the years ahead.

There are thousands of children in California eligible for adoption. Common sense and hard experience dictate that these children be placed into stable, loving, permanent families, lest they fall into social pathologies and wind up hurting themselves and others and costing taxpayers millions in welfare and criminal expenditures. The simple step of lowering the economic barriers to adoption--enactment of SB 1920--is a step toward avoiding that situation.