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?

Exactly this.

Surely this is to protect the child's anonymity and also to help advise any potential adoptive parents who may have questions. Of course people adopt because they want children. I'd be quite concerned if someone adopted who didn't want a child.

So no personal experience?

@RainbowBrighite

As a longtime adopter, I wholeheartedly agree with your post. I don’t think that adoption as it is in the UK will exist in, say, three decades time. After18 years at the coalface, I don’t actually think that some adoptive children can live happily within family settings as they have experienced such harmful pre-natal and early life experiences. Plus, you have to factor in epigenetics. Love can’t always conquer all. For children with reactive attachment disorders, being forced to live in a family setting is the most dangerous and harmful experience for them. There is much more knowledge and research about RAD happening in the US. Many, many adopters of teens I know personally and virtually are struggling massively as the teen years are when there is the interplay between puberty, a drive for autonomy and independence, plus the search for identity, but when you factor in the pervasive brain damage caused by the in utero exposure to alcohol, drugs, domestic violence and chaotic lifestyles, then it’s a powder keg waiting for the fuse to be lit.

I think all parenthood begins with the adults desires regardless of wether it begins with natural conception, IVF, adoption or surrogacy. Some parents are good and some parents are shit in all of those situations. However I do believe strongly that when it comes to adoption "open adoption" should be legally enforced so that the child can maintain a connection with their birth family (unless very severe safeguarding reasons not to but that should be judged by the family courts) and not stopped by the adoptive parents on a whim. I have known this happen with 2 out of 3 adoptions I know about.

Same as someone physically having a child too sometimes. I don’t see why adoption should be especially singled out.

I think being an adoptive parent can be an extremely challenging route into parenting in so many ways and with so many unknowns - they have my utmost respect.

Maybe we should ignore adults' needs and desires completely, and instead simply assign adoptive children to the household where we believe they would get the best upbringing? (I'm joking, in case that wasn't clear. PP have said all the serious stuff much more eloquently than I could).

Adoptive parents aren't allowed to just give out the details of the traumas their children have been through. The children are afforded privacy, as they should be anyway, but also so they can't be identified by the family they've likely been removed from.

So you're not likely to hear an adoption story that goes into detail about their loss or identity struggles. Parents will focus on themselves to avoid giving their children's stories.

Sadly , rehoming of adopted children happens in the US. This is from 2013 & I read it years ago but it still upsets me.
Reuters investigates The Child Exchange
I’m sure this would not happen in the UK.

I think that’s true for parents of biological children
as well though.

Ultimately being a parent is a selfish choice.

Out of interest would you ever say that to someone trying to get pregnant or is pregnant?

What do you think would be best for these traumatised children?

To remain in the care system being cared for by professionals?

Genuine question. As I agree with the reality of the outcomes for these children when adopted.

I'm just wondering what the alternative would be and is there evidence for this being better?

I think having no family bonds, even adoptive ones, and only professional relationships would replace one long term problem for another.

It would save many adoptive parents heartache though. There are many tragic stories of breakdown or well meaning adoptive parents feeling their life has been destroyed.
It's not talked about enough.

Sounds like everyone who tries to have a child? Most people are not giving birth to be noble. Hopefully they can make good parents though.

Are you saying that is not in a child’s interest to be adopted?

I think you could say the same of parenthood in general. Some people do it well. Some dont. Some are more selfless than others. But whether you birth or adopt your children, the decision to make a family is essentially selfish.

And before I get flamed -being a good parent is not selfish, its the opposite. But deciding to become a parent - that is a fundamentally selfish decision.

I agree. If you’re adopting a child because you think you should, you are seeing it as a task. You are probably not going to do as good a job as someone who really wants a child to love.

In a world where some parents abuse and neglect their children, let’s not demonise those willing to step up and give a child a family home to grow up in, all forms of parenthood are selfish after all. Is it a perfect solution? Nope, but it’s either that or growing up in the system which has even poorer outcomes.

Adopter here. I never went into it thinking it was a noble act. I had secondary infertility and we wanted a second child. We went into it selfishly. However, we have NEVER overlooked our son's trauma or identity issues. He has a lifestory book and knows a lot, age appropriately (sensitively presented), about his past. We spent over a year learning about the backgrounds of potential children and what their issues would be likely to be. The training and scrutiny is incredibly robust when they are assessing you. They don't just hand you a baby and he wasn't a baby . Matching is far more about the needs of the child, often at the expense of the adopters. You get sod all support once the adoption order goes through.

I have done Therapeutic Parenting causes, secured him an ehcp (that I put in rather than the school) and seen him through countless hospital admissions (asthma). That's what I would do if it was what my birth son needed, so it's not about being an exceptional parent. But just to say that going into it selfishly doesn't mean you can't be a good parent or that you bury their past.

He should never have been left with his birth mother for as long as he was. She was a drug addict, refused all help, didnt feed him and also subjected him to a cocktail of drugs in the womb which will have lifelong impact. We tried letterbox contact for years but she never responded. He's late primary age now.

Hope this gives you a new perspective on this OP.

So just leave kids in care homes or with shitty families? Do you have other options?

A UK couple have turned their adoption journey into social media content. They were already content creators sharing another life changing journey before they started the adoption process.
I don’t understand how a UK adopter is allowed to share so much online. Yes if they adopt they may keep their child anonymous but they themselves aren’t so part of the child’s story is out there.
It all feels very selfish.

I haven't heard of him.

Thank you, if it wasn't for people like yourselves I dread to think where some kids would be right now.
I appreciate it xx

@StrawberryWasp

I’m no expert but I do have nearly 20 years of very extreme experience. My AD1(18), place with me as a healthy baby, is now: blind, autistic, ADHD, PDA, mentally unwell and she has a very rare autoimmune disease that requires weekly chemotherapy. My AD1’s birth parents had manifold mental health diagnoses between them, her birth father hanged himself in prison suffering from schizophrenia. AD1 admits that she does not enjoy family life and she simply cannot cope with any demands. We joke - because we share a black humour that has probably kept us both alive at the worst points in our 18 years together - that she would be happy to live alongside a robot, provided it put three square meals on the table at regular intervals and did her laundry. This is the type of family interaction that AD1 would prefer. It’s not her fault, nor is it mine. It just is. Last year, because she was peeved at me about something or nothing, she made a false allegation of common assault against me. I was arrested, detained in custody for 21 hours and interviewed under caution before the police decided no further action. Then I was put through a s.47 Child Protection investigation by my local authority. My AD1’s only comment on the matter was ‘no hard feelings?’ when the police brought me back home on bail.

My AD1 would much prefer to live in supported lodgings or independent living, with me scaffolding her, as I always do. There are many, many hundreds, if not thousands, of adopters who, like me, are experiencing violence, verbal abuse, coercive control, beyond parental control antisocial behaviours etc. I genuinely think that such young people would benefit from being cared for in a group residential setting, staffed by rotating therapeutic staff who can pour their shift into being therapeutic and supportive but who also get to go home to recover and live a ‘normal’ life.

Once a child is adopted they are the legal child of the adopters, just like a birth child. So an adoptive parent can do and say anything they want about their child. (within the law obviously)