Millie Bobbie Brown adopts

[wandererofthekingdom]

Millie Bobbie Brown and her husband have adopted a baby. It’s so refreshing to hear of a celebrity adopting rather than using a surrogate. Especially as we heard of another celeb using surrogacy yet again this week.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8ry4m80mn7o

When I saw this story I knew there would be a thread here. Like others it doesn’t sit well with me. They seem very young to be adopting a baby and it does seem like it is their ‘new toy’.

It’s too young in my opinion and it seems like her life is on fast forward. Weird.

It has been liberal for a long time. I always remember when I was pregnant, there was a US woman in the same IVF due in group who was also concurrently adopting a three year child from Russia at the same time. I was so shocked it was allowed.

And yes, after she gave birth to the newborn, she decided the 3 year old Russian boy (who was obviously traumatised) was too hard work and rehomed him privately with a “nice lady” without needing to involve the authorities. I was horrified and so was everyone else in the group. She felt she had done nothing wrong.

I hope it was a legit adoption and not a purchased baby from another country - looking at Angelia Jolie and Madonna the baby snatchers here...

I remember losing all respect when David Miliband and his wife adopted a child through a surrogacy agency and bought the baby back 11 days after birth from the US. All surrogacy should be banned. I’m wondering if this is a child to order.

@Ketzele

I think losing your birth family is always traumatic, and adoption is always a tragedy for the child. Adoptive parents have to always work with this, while also giving the child as happy and normal a childhood as possible. It takes a great deal of commitment and maturity.

Exactly.

Quite honestly, it's always baffled me how surrogacy has so much hate thrown at it on Mumsnet, yet adoption doesn't.

Surrogacy is someone paying a woman to have a baby for them, and then her giving the baby up so the couple/person can bring the child up themselves. Adoption is not paying, and pretty much doing the same thing. (Taking a baby away from the woman who has given birth to it.)

But for the woman who gives up the baby for adoption, it is way more heartbreaking to give up the baby (in most cases.)

In most cases, behind all the joy and celebration of a couple 'getting their adoptive baby,' lies a devastated birth mother who had to give it up. Then the child will be wondering later on in life why they were given up, and will very likely want to trace their (blood) family. Many surrogate babies are from the egg and sperm of the couple who has them. And in the vast majority of cases, a surrogate chooses to have a baby, knowing she is going to give it up, (and she gets paid for it.)

How anyone on here can say that adoption is better than surrogacy just baffles me quite frankly.

(Disclaimer: I am indifferent to both adoption and surrogacy, but IMO, it's breathtakingly disingenuous to be hating on surrogacy, but then be fine with adoption.)

@Zov Surrogacy is intentionally bringing about a pregnancy in order to separate the mother and baby. How naive about adoption do you have to be to say what you just said? Adoption is the next best thing to a mother keeping her child because it's deemed to be better for the child not to be with the birth mother. They are completely different and it's offensive to adoptees and adopters to say otherwise.

I think when it comes into adoption in America there are differences in play.

As previously said money does indeed talk, but we also need to remember that many people are more religious and would not want an abortion but financially could not cope with a child or might not want a child without a husband or support.

the way she’s fast forwarding her life makes me wonder about her parents and her childhood. Is she trying to find stability by creating this family set up whilst she’s barely out of childhood herself? The only people I know who had babies in their late teens/very early twenties were from very dysfunctional backgrounds and/or had accidental pregnancies rather than planned.

Having worked in children’s services not all mothers are devastated to ‘ give their children up.’ Sadly.

She's a similar age to my Dds and i was shocked when she got engaged at 19 and ditto adopting a child at 21.

But then I thought it's not that young for my generation , even less so for earlier generations.

@Zov

Its not an issue of adoption being ''better" than surrogacy
They arise from entirely different scenarios.
In the UK adoptive parents do not take away children from their birth families. Those decisions are made by the courts, often after months or years of interventions and support with the intent of trying to keep the family together.
It is normal practice in the UK for parents to drip feed in an age appropriate way information about their life story, many will have more focused life story work when they are old enough. Most families have some contact with the birth family.
As is their right many adoptive children in the UK will want to meet their birth family when they are older. Every adoptive family I know has supported their children in this.
Its clear you don't know anything about UK adoption.
Adoption in the USA is very different but this is likely to be an open adoption where the child will grow up having a relationship with birth mum.

I adopted at 34, after receiving the adoption order I had no more help or contact from social services. In the same way as other parents we are simply trying our best. MBB has been in the spotlight since very young and seems very mature. I doubt I was anymore prepared to be a parent tbh!

Unless the biological mother got pregnant on request, it is completely different to surrogacy.

well if we are being pedantic, it’s called an adoption certificate

They are different because in adoption, the child exists and a decision has been made that removing them is in the child’s best interests (I’m talking about UK adoption here). Not the best interests of the adoptive parents.

Not necessarily the case in the USA - you still get the unmarried young mothers giving up newborns for adoption in a way that used to happen here up until around the 60s. The child may not have come from a traumatic background.

But the bit you are missing, Zov, is that in the UK adoption is done for the benefit of the child. While surrogacy is done for the benefit of the adults.

US and UK adoption are very different. Very few babies are voluntarily relinquished here, and the process is much more tightly regulated.

I stand by my view that adoption is a tragedy for the child, but in many cases it is a bigger tragedy to leave children with mothers who cannot adequately parent.

@Abuye presumably that is even more of a problem in states where abortion isn’t possible?

I would rather take my chances as the dc of MBB than the dc of a mum who didn’t want me and couldn’t afford to have me.

I adopted in the UK - and due to the early trauma experienced by adopted children, it was vital that I could provide stability. This means that any big life changes are limited and they are looking for people who are going to be present, not moving around and not likely to have birth children, as all of this can be added layers of trauma to an adopted child, who has already lost one family.

I hope they take their responsibilities seriously, unlike the Angelinas who seemed to do everything that adoptive parents are advised not to do

The US private adoption system sounds awful though and very much buying a baby - adoption should always be a last resort

It’ll probably go as well as Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s adoption.

I was adopted, always knew for as long as I can remember. I was loved and adored by my adoptive parents. It’s only now looking back that I realise it had a negative effect on me in some
ways. I was an incredibly insecure child - I remember being heartbroken once when a little friend sat on my mums lap for a hug. I remember crying myself to sleep, afraid that I was going to be replaced not necessarily physically but in my mums affections. I remember one time my mum took me and the slightly older daughter of a friend of hers whom I’d never met before, to an event. I was spectacularly sulky and rude to the other child. No idea why. Maybe I was just a horrible child 🤷‍♀️

But being given away HAS to be the ultimate rejection doesn’t it, however loved you are by the people who take you in.

Years later I found some of my birth family and found out that my birth mother bitterly regretted giving me up. I totally understand her reasons now I’m an adult and in fact even before finding out the circumstances, having my own children brought home to me how agonising giving me up must have been.

But primal wound - yeah. I get that.

This is got more than a whiff of spoiled people wanting to play “ families”.

Adoption and surrogacy are two completely different things, not even remotely interchangeable.
Both need a conscious decision for the respective option, not a decision against one!

As someone who is familiar with two incredible couples who both went through the adoption system and one ended up adopting two siblings, one with severe needs and the other couple not adopting due to the constant barrage of pain they suffered of being told they could adopt then those adoptions falling through, I am also surprised. Adoption is hard and the process is quite brutal, in my opinion. It can be heartbreaking as I’ve seen first hand. I think it’s a wonderful thing to do, but it seems a lot for a couple so young. Hopefully there is lots of support and everything works out for all of them. It is a wonderful thing to do.