Post adoption contact has ruined the chance of adoption for so many children

[Popcornhero]

I am a paediatrician, Mum of three children (who arrived by adoption) and have several foster carer and social worker friends. I keep seeing children no longer getting adopted now there is an expectation for face to face contact with birth families.

I have seen this through work recently, and today was chatting to a foster carer friend who was saying how many children in their fostering network are no longer being adopted. Shehas a 14 month old in her care, who she's been approached to keep as a long term foster as he's been up for adoption for a year with no one to take him.

The rules now around face to face contact with birth families have meant adoption rates have plummeted. I'm so angry about it. Children deserve a fresh start with their new family & they aren't getting it because needs of birth parents are being prioritised.

Some research suggests adoptees would have liked more contact, but there is a bias in the literature. It's those most affected by the adoption that are coming forward not those who grew up and moved on and adoption is only one part of their story.

I know we wouldn't have adopted it we had had to maintain face to face contact with the birth family. They are our children and they have a lovely protected life. We changed our children's names to give them a better chance in life ( they had for example names like Thor, Loki and Renesmee and are now, Theo, Luca and Esme) **just an example. We never send photos so they can be captured in birthday parties and their identity remains safe. They know their story, they know why we are their parents. We write to the birth family yearly. It would be awful for them to feel split between two worlds.

Surely they need to review the impact this has had,before more children lose the chance at having a family?

Cited as one social media source that challenges the saccharine narrative of ‘fresh starts’ / ‘we’re your family now’ / ‘contact not in child’s best interests’ 🙄 I find the class dimensions that are highlighted there interesting too… Do you find Mumsnet to be the haven that you seek?

@FerriswheelsKissesandLilacs I think this is feeding into the misconception that adopting is almost an act of charity. There will be adopters who are more open to contact and that's great. But from years spent on forums, I've observed that most prospective adopters want a fairly normal family life. Call it selfish, but most prospective adopters don't want to assume the role of an unpaid foster carer (maintaining regular contact with birth parents.) They may have had multiple miscarriages and been desperate to be parents for years. Adoption needs to factor them in too, or the placement will break down. The child should always be at the heart of any decision making. But there is a general shift towards direct contact that is deterring potentially very good adoptive parents, often in situations where contact wouldn't have been advised ten years ago. And there are very few relinquished babies nowadays, so safeguarding is almost always an issue.

I’m wondering if some rule regarding age of child and age of decision to meet their birth family could be put in place. Say 10 years (age dependent) before they meet/have contact with their birth family even if they were old enough to know sooner?

I’m not sure this is what you are referring to but I do think when it comes to social services involvement in some forced adoptions people are deemed too poor/lower class/stupid to raise a child. And wouldn’t the child be better with a nice middle class family going to Brownies. And maybe in some respects they would be, but is that really morally right?

Interesting that it is considered (by some) beneficial for an adopted child to have some contact with their birth family and an acknowledgement by most posters that adoption, even for babies, is traumatic.

And yet one reason put forward for a decrease in adoptive parents coming forward is the availability of surrogacy.

Surely surrogacy is a form of the adoption process, at least one of the parents has no biological link to the child. The removal of the child from the birth mother must be just as traumatic as in cases where the removal is court ordered.

I do hope that all concerned recognise the trauma and that SS/court are involved in the process.

This.
Yes the adoptive family are also their family but it is INCREDIBLY traumatic for some children to be kept separate from their bio family. You cannot deny biological reality. I'm sorry but as the child of a mother who was adopted without knowing until she was in her 40s.. the damage was incredible.
Yes some kids would be absolutely fine never meeting their bio family.. but many wouldn't. The opportunity needs to be there. For so long it wasn't and the damage has ripped through generations.

Infertility is heartbreaking but it should not be a factor in adoption. Adoption should be about the needs of the child. Children do not exist to heal infertility. That is not to say contact would be advisable in every case but the needs of the adoptive parents should not be a factor.

Adoptee here, 1970s vintage.

Many adoptees from my era did find the closed adoption process difficult from an identity standpoint - I was also born in the US where even today there are states where adoptees are not allowed to access their original birth certificates or adoption files. This is inexcusable.

There is also the outrage that women who very much wanted to, and would have been able to, successfully and safely parent their children were not supported as single mothers, due to religious and social shame. Another unmitigated disgrace.

In this era, adoptive parents were encouraged to buy into the idea that babies were like a blank slate, downplaying the genetic connection to the birth family. Misguided and wrong. Birth mothers encouraged to put their experience behind them and pretend it never happened etc. Basically - everyone lying to themselves all around. Good times, hey? (NB: ooh but don't mention anonymous egg or sperm donation because that's diffeerreeennt? I hope we see the worldwide end to this soon. In any case Ancestry etc has blown this wide open, there is literally no place to hide now.)

Research around the benefits of contact will include feedback from individuals like me who were adopted into families who were often very similar to their birth families in terms of ethnicity, education, and economic class. On one estimate up to 4 million babies were adopted in the US and Britain between 1946 and 1972. There were...sorry if this sounds crass...options to assess which healthy (white, sorry) baby went to whom.

Would contact and more openness have been achievable in these scenarios? Maybe. I wouldn't have chosen it. I would have chosen freely available and easily accessible information from 18 and updated medical information but not the confusion of 'two families' - once you have been relinquished it's hard to see how you can pretend that there is - somehow- a future relationship to be had. Adoption is about an ending, there is no use pretending it isn't, to suggest otherwise feels like gaslighting to me.

ALSO- it would have been traumatic for me personally to feel like I had to keep both my adoptive AND birth family happy in that scenario.

The pressure and expectation on the child would be immense.

Also - there will be some women who didn't have access to contraception whose decision to relinquish was the right one for them. I have wondered if it feels like being shamed all over again when they are faced with a reunion or hear about parents maintaining ongoing contact now.

The children who are up for adoption today are in a very different place, dramatically different, and it's hard to see how findings from research with earlier adoptees is applicable. It does feel to me like the basis for the conclusions comes from looking at a population of adoptees that is not reflective of the current environment.

It may be the case that adoption as we have known it needs to be re-configured which could include some contact with birth family members that are safe, as many children adopted today may have memories of these families.

The risk of being retraumatised seems dreadfully high to me though.

I can see why, as an adoptive parent, you'd be very wary, and it would have nothing to do with being an egoist wanting to erase your child's history.

me and my partner looked at adoption and reconsidered due to this reason. Once you adopt a child it should be no contact till the child turns 18 and then decides but the child should know all along.i went to school with a girl and she never knew until her 16th birthday when her real parents knocked on her door at her birthday party and said were your parents. She never forgave her adopted parents and I don’t blame her.

What if the child wants contact before 18? If a child knows they are adopted (and I agree with you they should) and the child is say 12 and really wants to meet their biological mother, why not?
If the mother consistently doesn’t turn up or is a risk etc then ok, but why not start from a place of contact.
A child and a biological parent could be nearly 20 years without seeing eachother and it doesn’t seem necessary.

You have no idea how bad at parenting someone has be has to be to have a child removed. Children are not being removed because their parents are poor, lower class or stupid, or so they can be middle class and go to brownies. Anyone who believes that is far stupider than any of the birth parents I know or know of.

Do you have any idea how much it costs the state to remove and care for a child away from it's birth family? Heaven and earth is moved to keep birth families together.

Surely you've seen some pretty poor parenting from parents who have not had their children removed? I know I have, since my DC were small. I've known children in DCs class witness to DV, or having parents with LDs who went to special school and can't read, or subjected to a revolving parade of both parents new partners. I've known children who didn't have their own bed FFS. None of them were removed. It's not the 1950s with children being given to middle class married couples who have a reference from the vicar.

It’s one thing to facilitate regular contact with siblings and in most cases I’d imagine that is in the children’s best interests, but I think I’d find it really hard to facilitate contact with someone who harmed my child, even if the harm was caused by struggling so much themselves or battling mental health/addiction. I think it’s better to tell kids your birth parents loved you but weren’t in a place where they could take care of you, than to force children experience the confusion and pain of inconsistent contact with someone who very likely isn’t doing well. I’d absolutely support adult adopted kids to make contact with their parents. But by then you are hoping and praying that 15 years or so of care and love will mean they are able to cope with the ups and downs that might bring.

It’s not the 1950s. But I have seen documentaries on children being removed by Social Services where it seemed to me that the outcome was harsh. And the 1950s happened, and the Irish babies being sent to America happened and the Spanish babies scandal happened. Adoption has been abused in the past. Do I think religious order are selling babies now - no. But neither do I think that social workers are immune from bias or that children are only ever, with no exceptions at all, removed in only the most extreme cases.

Im so sorry this has happened to you, I had much the same experience when I found my birth family. My adopted Mum didnt speak to me for over 2 years and although we are back in contact now she maintains that the hurt she felt at me doing this was completely validated- no thought whatsoever about my feelings and wishes.

Im also so sorry you didnt feel able to make contact with your birth Mum. I have done and it certainly isn't Long Lost Families (fuck that programme) but it has answered some questions. As mentioned my biological Dad died very recently and I am so shaken by the loss, despite never knowing him.

But it's not a normal family and it never will be- it came about through trauma and pain and if you're adopting in the hope of pretending like all that hasn't happened then I don't think that they are "very good adoptive parents". Babies removed from their families are not sticking plasters for couples who would really rather their own baby but will settle for an adopted baby, so long as they can pretend they aren't adopted.

I think a key issue now days is the inability to manage contact with birth parents via indirect roots

My DW is adopted, and gained access to her birth parents at 18. If it had have been an option, She absolutely would have been searching them on social media, and responding to contact prior to then and would have eloped to them.

It absolutely wasn't in her best interests, would have been awful for her but she wouldn't have been stopped. She got a FB message at 18 (when she got their name) but it could have been 12, 14 etc. Luckily social media wasn't as available then to under18s, but it is now

We simple no longer live in a world where you can confidently say your children will only have contact as adults.

We are in a situation where we now are looking at facilitating it for our AS who we have noticed (via internet controls) was showing interest of them.

Simply because we know that when curiosity gets the better of him, we will struggle to stop it. We hope that by having contact it will never be a mystery, never be a case of him thinking the grass is greener, force it underground and doing something sneaky and dangerous.

We don't trust his birth parent particularly so we hope this allows us to be able to be part of the conversation, and have some control.

I'd rather us be there, be able to deal with the fall out and talk about it, rather than it be happen over sneaky tik tok message that we have no idea about with secrecy with a child who isn't equipped to deal with it

The idea that it only happens at 18 is completely naive to the reality of adopted children in 2025 with the Internet at their fingers

Adoptee here - 1980s. Went into foster at birth and was placed with mum and dad before 10 weeks before being formally adopted about three months later. They changed my name and I’m glad because I don’t think the one given at birth was me at all!

I’ve always known I was adopted and that there were no negative reasons for it - just a young woman who had left it too late to tell anyone and didn’t want the baby. I bear her absolutely no malice but, like someone else said, she’s irrelevant to me.

In my 20s, out of curiosity, I obtained my file and there were no surprises but still no desire to find her. I have a fabulous family, and she is not it. My identity comes from my family.

The only thing I wonder about is medical
stuff - I literally only have my medical history up until the point I was adopted, but it’s not enough to make me want to go looking. Medical people are very accepting when you explain why you don’t know!

In a plot twist, I have recently been made aware that the woman who gave birth to me has family who have started looking for me. So I’m in the process of having a veto put on the contact register with social services, so that they can be made aware I don’t want contact if they ask. I’ve got to think about whether I leave them a letter saying I’m fine and just don’t want contact, or just leave it at a veto.

We have fertility issues ourselves and I would not adopt if we were told we had to maintain contact. I just can’t imagine if I had been pulled between two ‘families’ growing up. I am pretty sure it would have put my parents off.

@Thoseslippers the landscape of adoption has changed radically in the last 30 years. Most adoptions are now due to serious safeguarding concerns. I have to say that my son's story is extreme but also fairly typical. We adopted him less than ten years ago. He had multiple siblings that were adopted before him, but social services still gave his birth parents another chance. His birth mother smoked heavily in pregnancy, took methadone but also heroin and cocaine. He was left in her care for far too long and was malnourished when placed in emergency foster care. He has health and behavioural issues as a result of this neglect. As is advised, I do life story work with him so he has some understanding of why he was adopted. Birth parents didn't engage with letterbox. Direct contact wasn't as common when we adopted him, but if it had been we probably wouldn't have felt able to adopt him. Being so close to a chaotic family would not have felt right for us. That may seem selfish but adoption is hard enough and there is little support for adopters.

It used to be very different, and babies were taken from mothers who were too young or couldn't support their children financially, which was awful and unfair.

In current adoptions, i'm not against contact in all situations, but I don't agree that there should be a general assumption that it is in the child's best interest.

sorry but you sound so naive ! it costs a fortune to remove a child , go through court and find foster carers and adoptors and provide ongoing support ( such as it is). The bar to remove children is incredibly high . Most local authorities and social services departments are teettering on the cusp of bankruptcy. Do you really believe they are removing children just because families cant afford brownies ?Or because families are working class? Especially as they don't have foster carers or adoptors to place them with
You would be shocked if you.saw what some kids are enduring because the threshold for removal is so high.

@nothingcomestonothing I'm so sorry this happened to you.

I was also spun the line that if I wanted to make contact later, my parents would support me. My mother and I have a tricky relationship and she now appears to see my adoption (as opposed to her parenting and conduct) as an excuse for the tensions we've had over the years. She encouraged me to do Ancestry, I took her at her word and ended up connecting with my birth father who, remarkably, ended up making her look like the warm-up act in terms of toxicity. He was also adopted. I had to cut contact in the end, it was too tricky for me. He passed away a year ago. I am still in contact with a paternal cousin I met. I think my mother was happy for me to do Ancestry cause she was curious too but didn't appreciate the difficult journey I could face or that you can't just put people back in boxes, so to speak, when you've satisfied your curiosity. They may want all sorts of things from you it's not possible to deliver.

I also think it's much better before 18 because then the birth family isn't this amazing fantasy princess in a castle, and also teens don't try to contact them on their own at a younger age with no support.
One of my DCs probably has siblings that we don't know about and we will make sure we talk to them about finding that part of the family and we'll do it together. It's a family link with a different ethnicity to the rest of us and really important for identity.

@FerriswheelsKissesandLilacs nobody who adopts goes into it thinking that, believe me. The training and entire process is brutal. You can be trauma informed and still want some semblance of a happy family life. Or do adopters not deserve that?

I have no illusions about the level of trauma my son has endured, thanks. I've written in detail about it in an ehcp application, advocated for him in meetings with teachers and social workers. Sat with him in a and e where he was admitted countless times due to being so poorly when he first came to us because of early neglect at the hands of his birth mother. But still I wouldn't have wanted to facilitate contact with his birth parents, who were drug addicts.

You've completely misunderstood what I've said and twisted it to fit your narrative.

make sure you have any social media accounts locked down. Good thing your name has been changed.

I have no experience but reading this thread I think case by case with deciding vote with adoptive parents is best route.

The reality in my circles is a huge amount (but not all) of adopted teens have someform of ,"underground" contact before they are officially meant to have via social media etc

I know of multiple people who have suddenly discovered their adopted children of varying ages (youngest was 11!) Have stumbled on their family and made contact (or been contacted)

It does make sense to try and do it in a more controlled way