Newish relationship, can we apply to adopt?

[satsun]

I was single up to a year ago, and had put in plans to adopt which included changing jobs, volunteering etc.
I had been 'passed' to start the application by my LA (but didn't start because I wanted a bit of time to organise myself and get my head around everything - I am mid-40s)
I then unexpectedly met a really nice guy and we moved in together. Been together a year now. Neither of us have previous children.
We're not keen on TTC (he's also mid-40s) because of all the risks and are both very interested in getting married & adopting together.
It's a bit of a whirl-wind and I am surprised to be where I am today.
I would have stated the adoption process alone this spring, but now am I ruining my chances as presumably SWs won't think I am in a stable relationship as it's fairly new.
Would getting married make any difference?
I'm pretty desperate to adopt and have a family - but I love my partner and don't want to have to split up from him.
He is a wonderful guy, and we could offer a lovely stable home to a child/children, but I feel I'm running out of time especially as I would like to adopt a baby if possible.

I actually don’t know how SS would view this - why not call them up? Try a couple of agencies/local authorities. It does seem very quick but I think as you get older - relationships moved quicker. You’re living together so that shows commitment. are you going to buy a house together?

Adopting does put a huge stress on your relationship - so they will want to know how you will cope and what your support network looks like.

Marriage doesn’t usually make any difference - and you should certainly not get married to adopt - although if you definitely do want to get married then I would probably do it before adoption.

Wishing you luck.

Hels20 is right. I don’t think that getting married would make any difference at all.

What SWs are looking for is commitment and stability. It is their job to ensure that each child is placed into a stable and secure environment.

I appreciate that a year in a relationship may feel like a long time but in the eyes of a SW it may not seem to be the case. They like to see resilience in relationships. Facing challenging times together and showing how you’ve come out the other side. I’m not saying everyone has that but from personal experience (twice) it’s worked in our favour being able to show our resilience.

I understand you may feel under pressure to get the ball rolling and that you feel your time is running out, it’s not. Adoption is not something you should rush into. The process alone is really exhausting and intrusive. Nearly 8 years into our relationship and I discovered a lot about my partner during the adoption process. Not all of it I liked.

You seem to be clued up on the ins and outs of adoption but is your partner as clued up as you?

Adoption can put a lot of strain on a relationship as anyone here will tell you. You just need to be sure that your relationship can handle that. When my partner and I applied first time around we had been married for 2 months (together for 2 years) and there was so much doubt from our SW about our ability to adopt because in their eyes we hadn’t been together that long. Cut a long story short, we didn’t go to panel but 5 years later and we have our LO and we are both 5 years older but in that time we have experienced the loss of so many family members, buying a house, breakdown of our support network and now a global pandemic and it has made us stronger and more confident about parenting our LO.

My advice would be talk to others, talk to each other, research and don’t put pressure on yourself. 40’s is still young in this day and age.

Hope some of this helps but if not it’s because my LO kept me awake until 4am going ‘mummy, mummy, mummy’ and I can’t think straight☺️

We live in my house which I own, we rent his out.
I think we are individually both good candidates for adoption, but obviously in such a short relationship together we are not an ideal couple.

Should we be considering breaking up so I can adopt alone?
I've been in a long marriage before (ended in divorce) so I guess I'm more interested in having a child than I am being in a couple (I enjoy being single and can support myself & child).

It seems a gamble either way because it's going to look like I'm a bitch for breaking up with him to SWs because being with him will damage my chances in matching.
Ironic because he's a great support to me (I have a good support network without him too) and financially and socially life would be easier to co-parent with him (we are very similar in terms of why and how we want to parent an adopted child).

It's so difficult to know what's right!
I'm mid-forties and in good health, but I don't want to be a 'grandma' at the school gates!

I do love him BTW, but I've loved a few guys in my long life and I'm pretty desperate to have a child/family of my own.

dredging my memory I think about 2 years is the minimum length that SWs would see as an established relationship.

I agree thst getting married won’t make any difference.

Breaking up won’t help you either - SWs will also expect you to have given some time to come to terms with the breakup of a relationship.

If you weren’t planning on going ahead until the spring, waiting another 6 months or so to get past that 2 year mark isnt that long.

Being in your 40s is not unusual in adoption world, I was 46 when my son came home, although he was 7.

A question for me, is had he thought about adoption before he met you?
What research has he done, what is his understanding of children in the care system, their level of need etc ?

I think if you think the relationship is permanent then I would wait six months or so - there are many many fabulous single adopters on this board but, since adopting, I have come to realise that I don’t think I could have parented alone, let alone parented an adopted child alone. If you are going it alone - you just make sure you have a strong network / going into this, I thought I did - but without my partner I wouldn’t have made it I don’t think. For the first 2 years - it would have been ok - but not the last 5 years. I have needed that help (and frankly, that break) when I just needed a bit of time out for myself. (I don’t have a particularly close relationship with my family - and have felt let down by my mother and whilst my friends are great - they have busy lives themselves). So if this relationship is “ for keeps” - then wait a few months and adopt together.

Kids need stability - particularly adopted children - and you would be opening even more cans of worms if you broke up a year or two after you have adopted.

I agree that SS are not going to look positively on someone who has just broken up with someone they were living with - I appreciate it looks like you are damned if you do, damned if you don’t. But if you are living with your DP then my advice would be to wait another six months, if you want to get married do (but not because you think it will help with adoption) - and if you don’t, I wouldn’t really consider getting married for at least a couple of years after adoption. Get more experience being with children together. Then approach SS. No harm in having an off the record chat now though.

If your plan would be to adopt as a couple, I’d consider marriage for all the reasons I’d advise women to get married before having kids.

If you don’t plan to adopt I’d look at ending the relationship, because the question of what his role would be with any children would always come up for discussion.

In any even you’re looking at a wait either to let the relationship get past the two year mark, or to adjust to the relationship ending. I know it’s difficult but sw need to know that as far as possible children aren’t going to a home where people will leave, break up, get back together etc, they need stable people with stable relationship to parent the children to be placed.

Congratulations on your relationship, that’s a lovely thing to find.

When going through the process you are going to have to be completely honest with your SW. You are going to have to explain why you decided to break up from your partner. As much as you may see it as you put adoption first and that you are dedicated, it’s not going to look like that from a SW point of view. It may come across as you just throw away relationships when it no longer suits you or that you want something better instead (jumpy a judgment, just trying to see it from another POV).

Adoption is a long process regardless and you have to be patient. Have you looked ahead to see both situations? What would life look like with just you and a child or you, your partner and child? How do you see your family? It’s not just about being able to, it’s about what you want too. What impact is this going to have on your partner? How will they come to terms with being second best to a child that is not yet a part of your family?

Have you thought that there may come a point that you resent your child for not enabling you to carry on your relationship. It’s not uncommon. If you are having a particularly bad patch with your child then these sorts of feelings can appear.
‘ I gave up the man of my dreams for a destructive 5 year old’. Just an example.

You really need to think about everything before you make any hasty decisions. Have you spoken to your partner about the possibility of you ending the relationship to adopt as a single adopter?

Thanks for all the input, I have considered all the points you've raised Painted (plenty of time to think this year).
I've researched adoption a lot over the last 2 years, so nothing any of you are saying is a surprise to me - I think I'm going to have to stop trying to control everything and just see how it all pans out.
I don't want to lose dp, he's great, and I assume I would be a better parent with him around, he's very stable and kind - but our relationship hasn't been tested by having children obviously.
Dp is interested in adoption and he actually works with cared for children so in some ways he is a better candidate than I am.
However he had only considered adoption when I told him of my plans - he had assumed he would just settle down with a younger woman and have children with them - lucky men, with all the options!

We’re in a similar situation, we are getting married in April on our second anniversary, well, if we’re out of tier 4. Then we are going to wait six months before we start looking at agencies, if they suggest we wait longer, get to the three year mark etc then thats fine. But if you ask the worst they can say is “not yet”.

I know in our adoption support group we have two couples who hadn’t been together very long when they started stage one, they had both been together just under two years, neither were married. Both couples were approved and one had a match before they hit the three year mark in their relationship. The other couple had to wait a little longer as the child they were matched with had significant needs so from matching to first introductions they had about a six month wait.

I’ve adopted before (as a singleton), but that was an in family adoption, so I doubt my experience of the actual process will be much use this time around.

We were turned down for a match with our now son because they decided our relationship was too new.....it was 3 years in at the time, 2 years living together. The people they went with as a match then pulled out for health reasons and we were approached again. By this point we had been together a few months more and they decided that was ok! We have now been together 7 years, married 6 months ago and parents for 3.5 years.

I think that's what I'm most worried about Monkey - being accepted and going through the process and all the sacrifices and hurdles, but then being rejected in the matching process, or having to accept that we would only be in the running for a harder to place child or wait til we are almost 50.

@satsun

‘harder to place child’ this is a bit of a hobby horse of mine.
Children can be hard to place for many reasons, it does not mean they are harder to parent or have more difficulties than the apparently easy to place baby or pre schooler.
My son ticked every hard to place box going, male, ASD, ethnicity, age.
Yes we have had our share of problems but at 16 he is happy, settled, was a School Student Leader and Scout Patrol leader. He got a decent clutch of GCSEs and is now at college doing an engineering course. He is popular, has lots of friends and has two weekend jobs. He makes his poor old mum a mean cup of tea.
I know many ‘easy to place’ children who turned out to have much higher level of need and more severe problems than my son has.

Any child comes with a level of uncertainty, its one of the things you have to accept if you are to adopt.

Its also quite common to be turned down for a potential match. I was declined for three children, I also looked seriously at three other children who I decided were not for me. Matching is hideous, and it can take time to connect with the right child. I would think its rare to be matched with the first child you inquire about.

I agree with @Ted27, my two were considered hard to place but that doesn’t mean they are hard to parent.

satsun I adopted a three year old at 49, I'm not sure a year either way would make a big difference in terms of the age of child you could adopt.

"Should we be considering breaking up so I can adopt alone?" To be honest if you are living together and break up then it may be that that change is enough to mean you need to put a break on things. I don't know for sure but it may be.

i think you need to decide if you want to stay in a relationship with this man, first and foremost.

"I'm mid-forties and in good health, but I don't want to be a 'grandma' at the school gates!" Don't worry about that, it is not an issue these days really.

Good luck, whatever you decide.

I was 43 when we adopted our son, he was 7 months old. OH is 9 years younger than me so that might have made the difference in the age we got (although it was never mentioned).

We kept being told we were a 'new relationship', even though we'd been together for 6 years and married for 2!

But my OH moved in with me, and left his job in another country, after 'dating' for 6 months. We've now been together for 10 years. So moving in quickly does work!

I'm all for relationships not needing to be long to be lasting, but a social worker may think that you don't know each other that well, and haven't been through anything stressful as a couple so don't know how you'll cope or even last if/when that happens.

It's a tough one as you don't want to lose your partner, but if he is the difference between adopting or not it may come to it.....

Or wait until you get to the 2 year mark and try together?