That's a very interesting post, yukoncher, and I agree with pretty much everything you say. I think it is unarguable more and earlier support could mean many more families being able to stay together, and I think the moral, economic and social argument for that support is overwhelming.
I'm not a social worker, and I don't have NanaNina's wealth of experience. But I know a fair few adoptive parents, and I read the casenotes (CPR is it, NN?) of about 20 children before finally adopting my daughter. Of all the cases I have heard detail about, I would say that in a small handful of cases the birth mother was, frankly, evil, or damn near it. In a couple of cases, I did find myself questioning whether better support could have meant that adoption wasn't necessary. In most cases, the family was enmeshed in generations of dysfunction, neglect, drugs and often mental health problems. The birth mother wasn't an awful person, but they would have a real struggle to achieve good enough parenting because they had never experienced any themselves. Intervention and support may have made a difference, but it would have taken an awful lot and for a very long time.
I think most of us would agree, though, that society should do more to stop families getting into that position, and that we have got the balance wrong between prevention and taking children into care. The difficult question is about where that balance should be, and how much resource we are prepared to put into it. How much tax are people willing to pay to fund intensive support for broken families? Are people prepared to tolerate early intrusion/supervision in order to catch problems before they become too entrenched? And should we raise the bar for individual cases, so that parents are given longer to get their act together in respect of an individual child?
Personally, I would be prepared to pay more tax to support struggling families. I think we should all be prepared to intervene (personally, or via social services) if we see a child at risk. I think families that have become dysfunctional over generations should get long-term, intensive support - sod the expense, the cost of not doing so is astronomical. But I don't think we should raise the bar on how much risk a child should face before they are taken into care. I think the bar is pretty high right now, frankly. So in the case of my own daughter, I feel very sad that she's not able to be with her birth family. My conscience is clear that adoption was the right thing to do - I would defy anyone to read the details of her case and argue otherwise. But I do feel angry that her mother's problems were evidence for years - decades - before the state intervened in any way, and then in a very punitive way.
And then, of course, the other question is how the system operates and whether it does so fairly. Obviously individual cases are very hard to judge from the outside, but I would be amazed if there weren't miscarriages of justice. It seems to me a system under great strain, overburdened with targets and bureaucracy (and often unhelpful ideology), and struggling to recruit and retain enough high calibre, intelligent, mature and insightful social workers. All of us who are in any way part of this system get damaged by that, but undoubtedly the people who get most damaged are children who are not taken into care when they should be, and birth parents whose children are taken away when they shouldn't be.
So I don't see us on opposite sides in this debate. I think all of us need the system to change, and improve. You say you appreciate that stories of miscarriages of justice must make adoptive parents feel uncomfortable, and of course they do make me feel uncomfortable, but no more so than if I wasn't an adopter, I don't think. To be honest, I don't know what to make of them, since we usually only get one side of the story and never the full picture. But I don't feel I have a vested interest in denying that sometimes children do get taken into care unjustly. I would be absolutely horrified if I discovered that was the case with my daughter, but frankly you just have to look at the bare facts of the case - or at photos of the children who stayed within the family - to be certain that she needed to be taken.
As an adopter I take very seriously my responsibility to help my daughter to understand and come to terms with her history. I will need to discuss her birth family with her in a way that is as truthful as it can be, neither demonising or romanticising them, being honest about how bad the situation was but helping her appreciate why people sometimes end up in situations like that. After all, she may one day be reunited with them, they may become part of her life again. I won't be able to do this if I just hear what I want to hear about them; I have to hear the truth - from them as well as from the social workers - and pass it on as best I can.
I'm sorry about the ridiculously long post, but I hope it has helped you understand that the adopters on this topic are not smug judgy types who have got their kids so they don't want to hear any more about those pesky birth parents, thank you very much. I think we're really a bit more thoughtful than that! We're up for a good discussion with anyone with integrity.