To be pissed of that infertile people are getting the blame for falling adoption rates.

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As in infirtile person you are forever having adoption suggested to you by helpful people.
Now people having successful IVF are being blamed for the drop in adoption rates.

Why not blame the hoops you have to jump through www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-46081726

Perhaps people with bio children just don’t see it

So now fertile people are to blame for not agreeing with you? Blimey.

The people who say, "Why don't you just adopt a baby?"... do they honestly think the UK has not moved on from its relationship with contraception/abortion/stigmatisations against unwed or teenage parents since pre-1980?

I mean, do they GENUINELY believe there are still hundreds of women just giving up their newborn babies for adoption?

Actually, really believe that?!

Is it a poor headline? Yes. Does the headline wrongly appear to attribute the whole of the 62% drop in adoption rates to ivf? Yes (although the body of the article is marginally less ridiculous). Is it blaming people who have ivf for ruining children's chances of adoption? No. It is not blaming anyone for anything. Nobody is obliged to adopt someone else's children. If, miraculously, fertility rates naturally increased in the population and fewer people needed to try ivf in the first place, we wouldn't blame anyone for that, either, even if it did mean fewer people trying to adopt other people's children. It is extreme hypersensitivity to get upset for being "blamed" for something that nobody whatsoever has tried to blame you for. People using ivf are not to blame for children needing to be adopted and nobody is claiming they are to blame for not wanting to adopt other people's children.

Totally agree with you. Requirements and length of time for adoption are crazy.

In 1970s, many babies up for adoption were physically healthy, had not been neglected and were up for adoption only because they were born out of wedlock. Thankfully now these children are raised unstigmatised by their birth mothers. These days the majority of children up for adoption have severe and critical health and/or behavioural problems, having been the victims of parental addiction or neglect. That makes it harder to place them for all sorts of reasons.

We looked at adoption, then a new type of IVF came along that worked for us. But I never got beyond researching adoption. I knew I couldn't cope with attachment disorder or some of the most challenging behaviour.

"Most children looking for adoptive parents today bring very many additional challenges with them."

One of my friends use to be in charge of placing children for adoption, and she said that it was very difficult because of this ^^
She said the children with AFS were particularly difficult to place.

So now fertile people are to blame for not agreeing with you? Blimey.

So if I had seen a headline that I perceived as sexist, and other women agreed was sexist, but men didn’t think it was, would I be blaming the men for not agreeing with me or would it be the case that men just don’t get it because they are not women?

Tbh, I think it needs to be harder to adopt than to have ivf, because such a high proportion of adopted children have such traumatic backgrounds, not all parents can actually cope with the long term effects on development and behaviour. For a lot of adoptive parents, the biggest problem is the sudden lack of support once the adoption has gone through, which is even worse than the effort made to adopt in the first place. Adopting a child is not like having your own child from birth.

Perhaps it’s because getting ‘did you adopt/think about adopting’ every fucking time you mention that you can’t have children gets wearing.

I’ve had it twice this week. My last IVF was 3 years ago. I don’t tell people about it. People ask if I have children and I say no. Then they ask if I didn’t want them, so I say about ivf. Then I get the adoption comment. Every time.

Never in my life have I seen an article saying adoption rates are too low because fertile couples aren't considering it. Yet if every fertile who said "Why don't you adopt?" for the umpteenth time actually did so themselves, it would make a huge difference.

Disgusting. YANBU. Adoption should never be a consolation prize for people who can't conceive naturally. People should want to adopt, not have to adopt

The people who say, "Why don't you just adopt a baby?"... do they honestly think the UK has not moved on from its relationship with contraception/abortion/stigmatisations against unwed or teenage parents since pre-1980?

I mean, do they GENUINELY believe there are still hundreds of women just giving up their newborn babies for adoption?

Actually, really believe that?!

Honestly, I think that that is still the public perception of adoption. Programmes like Long Lost Family present a pretty rosy view of the whole process - yes, it’s all terribly sad, but look, the biological mum is a lovely old lady now who went on to have more children with her beloved husband, and the adopted child had a wonderful childhood with loving parents and now has a second chance with their biological parent. Of course it deviates from this from time to time but it’s very formulaic. And so everybody watches it and has a little sniffle and says thank goodness we treat young mothers better these days, but I don’t think the crucial link between the change in social attitudes and the change in the nature of adoption is fully formed for many people.

I cannot think of a recent, mainstream TV presentation of a modern adoption, except for Kiri.

correction - fertile person

University lectures being unable to adopt because of removing a child from its working class roots?

This came up when they were interviewed. And they were told that they would no doubt insist that the child go to university, and because any eligible child would come from a working class background, they would be effectively severing his or her roots.

Then they were rated as unsuitable for adoption.

This was in Scotland, btw.

There was a thread a week or so ago where the poster was talking about finding out she’d not have children.

Every other post was ‘have you considered adoption?’

as the stigma against single motherhood decreases the type of child up for adoption has changed
This is spot on. There are fewer healthy babies available for adoption. The available children are more likely to have additional needs and/or have spent years in the care system while SS tries to return them to their birth parents. Many people, myself included, might have adopted a healthy baby but wouldn’t consider adopting a child with additional needs.

Distance - we got this. We had an initial home interview and felt like we were being told off for having lots of books. We were asked a few times how we'd feel if our child wasn't academic. I think it's a fair question. It's easy to believe you'd love any child you could give a home too, but I bet it's harder if you have nothing in common with them.

Adopting a child with additional needs takes a very special kind of person. I take my hat off to the people who do that.
I am not that person.

Turn the question around and say back "Why didn't you adopt?"

We were asked a few times how we'd feel if our child wasn't academic. I think it's a fair question.

They answered that they would just want their child to be happy, and would respect their choices when they grew up. Still, it was thought that growing up in a house with books would damage the child's working class identity (which is, in my view, ridiculous: identity is not static, and why is it assumed that working class people don't read?)

To be honest, I think this is a particularly nasty form of the class system which is pervasive in Britain.

Well this whole 'too many books' and university thing is the exact opposite experience to the one I had.
Social Services were thrilled that we were avid readers and had a house full of books - and, whilst some of the very many questions we were asked centred around how we would deal with children who might be differently abled to a biological child, no one ever mentioned university as a negative choice.

I very much wonder if there were other issues at play in terms of reasons for not being taken forward.
Adoption is very challenging - as it should be. It's not an alternative to IVF because it's not to do with fulfilling a desire to become a parent, but everything to do with finding a family for a child in need.

However it's also a misnomer to suggest that there aren't healthy babies in the system who need to be adopted - there are.

I suppose the report has a basis in reality in that a large percentage of adopters do go down that route as a result of infertility. And for plenty of people, IVF is often a choice first. That's not to suggest that it is the fault of infertile people that adoption rates are lower - it's not their responsibility to adopt - but it is probably a factor.

it was thought that growing up in a house with books would damage the child's working class identity
That’s tantamount to saying that working class children don’t like books or have academic aspirations, which is just plain wrong. I grew up in a council house with parents who left school at 14 to work in factories. I spent all my pocket money on books and subsequently achieved a PhD. I find it ridiculous to think that’s at odd with my “working class identity”. Not least because many manual labourers earn more money than university professors nowadays!

One major reason for the decline is that these days there is an expectation that you maintain a relationship with the birth family, no matter how awful they must have been to have the child taken into care,

I can see why it is better for the child in the long term, but for the adoptive parents it must be absolutely awful to have to take your child to see their “real family” every couple of months - it must feel like they are never fully yours. Like a glorified foster career, as a PP said.

And there is definitely a lot of bias from social workers. A couple of my friends were turned down because both worked (apparently you need one SAHP - not really affordable in Lambeth unless you are either millionaires or on benefits). I have heard the “too academic/too middle class” thing from quite a few couples now.

It probably does depend on where you live, but the kids up for adoption in Lambeth are predominantly black and working class (like the majority of Lambeth residents), so being well-off and white/Indian (as my friends are) is not going to be a good fit culturally. Still better than being in care, I would have thought.

The adoption process is ridiculous and so subjective. One SW will see something as positive and the next one will see it as a negative. You work? Too much routine. You have flexible jobs? Too little routine. You have birth children? They will always need to come second. You and your husband have different parenting styles? Great that's we want/thats a concern because you won't be able to agree on anything.

We went through this for months trying to work out which SW would prefer which response because they didn't like us being honest, they just wanted us to say whatever they felt was the right thing. Eventually we just had to give up.

So now fertile people are to blame for not agreeing with you? Blimey

So if I had seen a headline that I perceived as sexist, and other women agreed was sexist, but men didn’t think it was, would I be blaming the men for not agreeing with me or would it be the case that men just don’t get it because they are not women?

You ascribed a point of view on this issue based on readers' fertility, i.e. only the fertile could not agree with you/get this.

My analysis has been based solely on the grammar/semantics of the article.