To think adoption is often more about adults’ desires than children’s needs?

[MyNoisyGreyPombear]

It’s always framed as noble. But AIBU to think adoption sometimes fulfils adults’ wishes first, while the child’s trauma and identity issues get overlooked?

I think that it is kind of irrelevant. Noble, needs - these are words that exist but they just seem to be describing something else. Was posting this important to fulfil your needs, for example?

I’m the sort of age now where friends who adopted in their 30s now have adult children. I don’t really want to go into detail because none of their stories are mine. I would say that I am even more in awe of what it takes to be the parent of an adult who was adopted as of what it takes to adopt a baby or a child.

I don’t think this is really the case any more, especially with shows like long lost families where quite often the adoptive families aren’t mentioned too much and the focus is on the experience of the birth parent and their (now adult) child, obviously understandably in the context of the show!

In a previous role I worked with a number of families where younger siblings were adopted and older siblings were put into long term foster care. I’ve never seen a child in long-term foster care not return to contact with parents or grandparents or sibling at 16. Or even before. A lot of ‘open’ adoptions I saw dwindling contacts due to moving away, or deciding contact wasn’t best.
If I’m honest I’m quite conflicted in the system. I have seen disrupted adoptions, I’ve seen long term foster care be a wonderful second family.
I do think we need to really reform/ overhaul the system we have and there’s very very complex issues we need to be open to, ignoring the morals and being more factual.
I wouldn’t go as far as the OP, but we need to have honest conversations a bit more and drop the belief it’s automatically good/ right. Just be less defensive about it all, more open to discussing that some mistakes happen in the current system and what to do.
Yes, almost all adopters are fantastic and the best option for the child - but some children don’t get the best outcomes too and that matters.

It depends. I know two people IRL who’ve adopted.

One couple’s son was born into v. difficult circumstances- sadly his mother had had several children taken into care due to her addiction issues. He has behavioral issues and learning challenges possibly related to his Mum’s lifestyle (she was taking drugs) while pregnant and his adoptive parents are doing everything they can to ensure that he has the right support. I really doubt that he’d have the same love and support in a children’s home.

I’m not sure of the circumstances in which my other friend adopted her daughter, but she’s currently at university and has always seemed happy and well-adjusted.

I think that the majority of adoptive parents just want to give a child a good life and do their best for them. They don’t always get it right, but neither do all biological parents either. I doubt that being in a children’s home is better for most children.

This 💯 %

How large is your database? How many "stories" have you read? The thing is, the adoptions that worked out really well and happily are rarely front page news . . . .

Also I would say that there are two sides to this - it could of course be people centering themselves. But it could also be parents protecting their child's story so they have control over how, when and why it's told. Joe Public is not entitled to any child's traumatic life story nor is it the place of any parent let alone an adoptive parent to share it. It's not their story to tell outside of their own journey to become an adopter. There are plenty of adult adoptees out there who do lots of advocacy and educative work if you look for them. I'm not an adoptive parent but I'm a parent of a child who has experienced certain trauma in their life and I see it as my job to support them through that but not to tell their story on their behalf unless they want me to. Its their story to tell. Certainly not for entertainment purposes on TV or similar.

Choosing to have a baby biologically is about the adults desires - what’s so bad about that?

Most heterosexual people I know tried natural conception and then various assisted conception routes before adoption.

So why would anyone think that in most cases the desire to adopt is anything other than a desire to be a parent?

Sometimes adoption does involve a lot more complexity. Dc with all sorts of long lasting issues caused by the reason adoption was necessary, and / or the process. Sometimes adoptive parents do know they will have challenges. If they knowingly adopt a child with disability or an older child with memories of trauma etc. And in those cases there is an element of selflessness alongside the desire to be a parent.

As parents of ‘bio’ children also find themselves needing to make big adjustments to support children with special needs etc.

What’s your issue with this?

Okay OP - so a child has a horrendous start in life, can't be looked after by their birth parent(s), no other relatives available/suitable to take them on as kinship care - what should happen to them? Do you support adoption but only in a set way?

I can see the argument for ideally a child would be adopted by a family from the same race, cultural, ethnic, religious background as their birth family. But with the best will in the world - if you have say a black child from an orthodox Christian background, parents were originally Nigerian, if you wait and wait and say only a black family from orthodox Christian Nigerian background can adopt this child, you might be waiting a long while. Do you wait for the "perfect" parents and keep the kid in temporary foster care for years. Then which is more important - should you prioritise black adoptive parents, even if they're not religious? Or orthodox Christian even if they're not black? Or would a black Christian couple from another African country do? Or just ANY parents, if they are willing to do the work to foster links to that child's cultural, ethnic and religious heritage?

My ds had been in the foster care system for years when we adopted him. He was an older child and he'd had three potential adoptions fall through before we adopted him. He was about to be moved to yet another foster home and to prevent this, our bridging period was rushed through very quickly. There was no way he would ever return to his birth mother so that wasn't an option. We both got something from the adoption, we gained a much wanted son and he gained a much wanted permanent family.

Are you about to engineer a false equivalence between adoption and surrogacy?

If you're going by social media I really don't think that's representative of UK adopters. Everyone I have encountered is doing a fantastic job of navigating a very tricky path.

I also think it's vitally important that prospective adoptive parents actually want a child! The whole bonding process depends on it.

I'm an adoptive parent and also have older biological children. I don't think I'm doing a significantly better job than parents I've met who came to adoption through infertility or same sex couples even if it looks more 'noble'.

In the USA…100% but from my experience in Scotland, not so much.

It’s actually incredibly hard to adopt in Scotland. The bar is so high. We were told my husband would have to stop vaping before we’d be considered and there were concerns that we both come from parents who are divorced.

In Scotland reunification or in family adoption is always the first priority, as it should be IMO.

(White) people who collect children of different races from around the world and then make a social media career out of displaying their “rainbow family” for the world, taking no consideration for the children’s ethnic and cultural backgrounds, 100% it’s about the adults not the children.

The podcast Finding Cleo does an excellent job of looking at the issues in people adopting outside their own race. & I the story of the Hart Family Murder/Suicide will always haunt me. It’s obviously a very extreme case but it shows the reality behind white couples using adopted children of other races as props.

I’m not sure what your motives are from this. Believe me the percentage of biological parents who should never have been parents is higher by many magnitudes than questioning the motives of those who go through the adoption process.

If it’s an act of nobility, I have most definitely earned my knighthood by now. I am a single adopter of two non-birth-related siblings of very nearly 18 and nine. Between them, my girls rack up diagnoses of: foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, neonatal abstinence syndrome disorder, various attachment disorders, binge eating disorder, autism, ADHD, PDA and severe sight impairment (blind). It’s disingenuous to argue that adopters cannot meet our own desires to have children. It’s an imperfect system but it is the only one we have. In my case, I’m a confirmed singleton. To be honest, the more I read on here about how terrible many birth fathers can be, the more I think my decision to adopt as a single person was the right one. Adopters are gaslit endlessly about how the process is all about meeting the needs of the children. But in my opinion, if there were no prospective adopters looking to give loving homes to children needing them, there would be no system.

I can’t speak for the rest of the UK but my experience of the system in Scotland is that a white couple would be expected to accommodate a black, Christian Nigeria child by ensuring they have role models from that group in their lives. So it could be taking them to a Nigerian church. There are mentorship’s programs to ensure the child has someone they can relate to in their lives. To keep their birth language/culture etc alive for them. This type of adoption would also likely heavily encourage contact with the birth family, if not abusive parents then grandparents/siblings/aunts and uncles who might not be in a position to adopt but would still be a wonderful source of love and support in the child’s life.

It’s difficult to find adoptive parents who are actually willing to go to all that effort of adopting outside of their own race.

The adults want to adopt, so they don’t know who yet, they want to give a home to a child. So it’s their wish at the beginning

Personally I’d rather be adopted than in care, just knowing they’re your family

No it isn't. It is made very clear to prospective adopters that the process is about the child. Adoption involves taking on traumatised children and parenting them is far from some fairytale picnic. I'm pushing 70 and still heavily supporting my kids. Not sure where you got your idea about it being all about the adults but it's frankly insulting

I definitely think there is a conversation to be had around the adoption narrative. I’ve come across a number of content creators on social media who have spoken about some of the more challenging aspects of their adoption journeys, such as not being kept in contact with their original cultures, or their massive sense of loss being minimised by the attitude that they should just be grateful because their lives would have been so much worse had they not been adopted. Obviously, adopted people are not a monolith and don’t all feel the same way but I think the views of those speaking out should definitely be received with empathy and compassion. I do think that adoption comes with a big responsibility to understand the trauma of family separation, including at birth, the complexities of intercultural and interracial adoptions and the potential harms of the well meaning but potentially problematic phrase “love is enough”. I strongly believe that adopted children shouldn’t be raised to believe they need to feel any more grateful than anyone else and shouldn’t be told that by society either. In this sense, I do believe that the social and emotional needs of adopted people can be neglected.

I don’t know op I personally know 3 families who adopted foreign born girls and all the families later experienced husband infidelity and divorce with one family in particular the adoptive mother became abusive to the children and adoptive dad wasn’t around to see it. I must admit with all these families I did think…do you need another child?! But I never voiced it because in the early 00s foreign adoption seemed very popular in my community and all the parents said the same mantra….guided by God to adopt or a calling by God to adopt. It felt a little status symbolish to me and more about the parents at the time.

also there was an influencer I call
her the “white bedroom wife” who adopted and then “rehomed” a child with many needs. It was the first time I saw an influencer outed by their followers the first time I read the term rehomed and I felt quite shook by the financial exploitation of the child

Doesn’t getting pregnant and having children that way also only focus on the adults’ wants and desires? No one asks the children if they want to be born. Most children are born because at some point adults decided they wanted to have children. Not because the children wanted them as their parents.

I find your statement ridiculous OP.
It is a want meeting a need. Parents want a child. Child has no parents and needs a homelife to prosper.
It is the want of the parents which drive the process, of course. A child cannot drive it, at least they have reached certain age.
Which trauma do you think adoption brings to the child, by the way? Or are you talking about the prior trauma, the one they get removed from?

You're so wrong. I'd say choosing to have a 3rd, 4th, 5th biological child is more about your desires than the wants or needs of a child that doesn't even exist yet. But adoptive parents are absolutely putting the wants and needs of an existing child first.

Is that not simply because stories are often written to for (the want of a better word) attract potential adopters? And also because the children's stories are private and theirs to tell, it'd be very wrong to share an under 18s story publicly. I think there probably is a lot of emphasis on things like identity struggles and trauma but that is done less publicly during training etc.

What a strange, strange post OP.