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?

In practice the parents who have no interest won’t maintain the contact anyway so I wouldn’t worry.
if the parent is reliable enough to engage then the benefit to the child is they know their roots and where they come from. They have the security of knowing that their mum or dad love them even if they couldn’t keep them which will benefit them psychologically in the long term I would imagine.

In my case an early, closed adoption. There were no breadcrumbs to follow even had I wanted to for more than moments at a time. It's admittedly harder to do that where the children might know their family names but certainly it's practicable for children too young to know or, thinking of some adoptees I know, where their birth family was so abusive & neglectful that the poor little sods didn't know their own given names, being at best called "you" & usually much worse.

Edited for an "m" key that's misbehaving

Why do you assume it wouldn’t? A parent may be unable to care for a child day to day but able to show up for occasions, contact etc. There are two stories just above of an adopted child who really wanted contact with their bio mother and one who didn’t. Why have a blanket rule of no contact for 18 years? If the child wants no contact fair enough.

It’s also not practical teenagers will just use social media if they are that determined to contact their bio parents.

Oh spare me the "roots" drivel.

This is not my experience at all. The mothers I work with are completely aware that they are the reasons their children have been removed- that their crack addiction has completely destroyed their lives. They know they neglected their children. Haven’t met one yet who doesn’t hate themselves for it.

Completely agree, and I'd much, much rather a child found out about who their parent is and their issues and how to navigate that safely in a planned and safe setting rather than trying to figure it out alone. Especially now we live in such a digital age and with ai etc it's just too easy now for things to go wrong than what it would have been maybe 20 years ago.

I think it’s a case of biology mattering a lot more to some people than others like to admit. Look how many people keep some level of contact with awful bio parents and siblings just because it’s family. Biological bond isn’t really explainable but it is often very strong, especially the bond between parent and child, even when it isn’t a great relationship.

I do think we’re very good at saying families come in all shapes and sizes, which they do, but people like to tell that to themselves to make themselves feel like they’re doing right. They often are, but biology can’t be ignored like many like to do.

It’s not ‘drivel’. It’s basic attachment theory.

Absolutely agree. I’m adopted and the confrontation of the fact of being rejected by a birth family would have changed my actual make up!
I’m so lucky to have had the incredible parents I’ve had. I’ve always known I was adopted, yet never cared. My precious, wonderful family is all I’ve ever wanted. I know I’m privileged and lucky, and the gorgeous children I now have give infinite joy to my Mum and Dad alongside all of us.
friends don’t always understand, they can’t. All they know is their own situation. xxx

With respect I suspect this is pre social media though.

There are whole pages dedicated to circulating photos of adopted children with birth parents searching prolifically from moment of adoption for example. I obviously monitor social media but cant stop them finding him, and as a fromer sneaky teen accessing all sorts, there is a massive deficit on what any parent can control. It only takes one friend with a parent that doesn't realise there's a browser on a fire stick, or their game console for example. This is true for many things and why we have to talk to young teens about all sorts of things they aren't developmentally ready for, because just because we wish they wouldn't or its harmful doesn't mean they doggedly seek it out at times

Its very unusual to change adopted children's names these days, and often children are given things like life story books etc where you can piece together information

Any breadcrumb is a start, and the only option is you tell them zero about their first life until they are 18, and then suddenly push them off a cliff with lots of info and the ability to make contact.

It makes sense to me it's in a graded way where possible.

Lots of people will be coming at it from a view point that frankly is out of touch because it's from an era where you weren't a potential Google search away from unsupervised contact at 13 and where it was much easier for courts and parents to decree who had contact with who and when.

Me too. Addiction like that is usually also bourne out of trauma and poor mental health, then made worse by the addiction and risks that go hand in hand with it. I know a number of bio parents who are now completely clean they just couldn't do it fast enough to still keep their kids. And I know others who keep having babies because actually they are inherently desperate to be loved back by someone and feel a baby will be that person which is just tragic and obviously isn't going to be what they hope. The parents I know who exploited their children for financial gain were a completely different kettle of fish altogether.

All good reasons why international adoption should be much more tightly regulated. International adoption is often a result of poverty, not poor parenting and you’re talking about removing a child from their family and culture and denying them the right to know them. That’s not ‘being a mom’, it’s entirely selfish.

Junks n’drunks is THE most insulting and lacking in insight terminology I have ever read in terms of adoption.

Agree with all of this.
I also have lost a mummy as she never got over her children being removed due to her addiction and took her life.
Its a complex issue but I stand by my point that contact should be maintained if safe to do so.

So sad. I wish people would understand more.

As someone who has experience of this I 100% agree. International adoption raises all sorts of complex issues including raising a child who is a different race and culture to you. And that is immediately apparent and how the child feels about that can be very complex

“Almost all”, so not all. I know of a few cases personally in which mothers have opted for adoption rather than aborting.

It doesn’t change the fact that they have biological parents and as much as adoptive parents may not like that, nothing will change it

The main focus should be the child and their interests. In cases where there is no safeguarding concerns, children should be able to meet with their biological parents.

To be clear I didn’t use that phrase- was responding to it.

I think it's more than that as well, obviously it's different for everyone and everyone will experience it differently. But my child doesn't see their other parent for reasons I won't get into here, but i realised that they were looking at every man they came across and asking if they were their daddy, they couldn't put a face to him so they couldn't work out their family tree and they were looking to any random bloke to fill that gap and they were only little. Even though we had talked about it and I had given an age appropriate explanation it wasn't enough. The last thing I want to do is make my child's parent a mystery they need to investigate, but I also want them to understand that part of themselves so they aren't trying to fill in the blanks with nothing good to work with. I want to make sure my kid comes to me when they have questions and not the Internet.

Same with egg and sperm donation. And all the ancestry tests makes nothing "anonymous".

I agree mainly...but this :

'They may have had multiple miscarriages and been desperate to be parents for years'- this is a terrible situation...but the focus needs to be on the child's needs. It can become dangerous when adoption is framed as a solution for adults who have undergone reproductive trauma.

Indeed most of our kids are one access on a friends unrestricted device that their parenr doesnt even know exists away from a postal kit, google search etc that completely undermines any court order.

We shouldn't be allowing so much contact to be commenced by teens in their bedroom with zero trusted adults who don't have the maturity yet to understand why it's not ideal.

I found in older adoption circles many felt the urge as a teen and now there's possibilities. It doesn't matter if you then decided as an adult not to seek them out, if you fb messaged them in a moment of curiosity at 13

Yes...I don't agree at all with her opposition to same sex parenting, but Katy Faust's site Them Before US does have valuable material on adoption, as well as sperm and egg donation and surrogacy

Where I am you're expected to have stopped all fertility treatment/ not be ttc and have undergone therapy to make sure you've addressed and dealt with any fertility related trauma before being approved to proceed with adoption pathways.

Laughing so hard at the ‘nice couple’. I’m a ‘nice’ person. Despite me being very nice/naice, my adopted teen attempts to kill me and her younger sister on a regular basis.