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?

@ThePieceHall Thank you for sharing. I think there is a huge lack of awareness about the issues many children removed from their birth parents face.

The numbers of LAC children with behavioural and learning difficulties is markedly higher than in the general population.

I wonder, is there any real support for women who have had more than one child removed that might encourage them to have contraceptive implants or opt for sterilisation?

I didn't realise that, I'm sorry.

I agree...it wouldn't be right to do this, and probably not practically enforceable either. I suppose I was just thinking how frustrating it is that this damage will be done in utero and there is no way to change the root cause...

I’m not really sure about your final question as I imagine this would be a massive breach of human rights? Also, the fact is that many birth mums keep having babies, possibly to replace the one/s taken, or in the hope that they may eventually be able to keep a child? My elder AD’s birth mother has eight children in care. My elder daughter is the only child adopted out of the birth family.

To be fair, some parents who have children removed do manage to turn their lives around and do go on to have subsequent children. For this, I am glad, because often it means that generations of neglect and abuse have been broken.

@Seymour5

So sorry, my last comment was directed to you. I made a mistake.

I (adult adoptee) got given a photo of me as a baby with my birth mum. My adoptive mum asked for it and I’ve never seen it since, I’m not sure everyone realises what a struggle identity is for an adoptee. Ironically my children look more like DH than me so I’m still yet to see what a genetic relative looks like!

You're right...I know , really, that that wouldn't work.

If damage were mostly in the third trimester I do think there could be an ethical case for restraint. But as you say, that's not true. And anyhow it would be extremely difficult to ethically enforce without driving women away from support services

And ofc there is a long & ugly history of state control over pregnant women which we don't want to return...

I appreciate your point about women having baby after baby in the hopes of keeping one...😢 and the only way to responsibly help women like that is for them to be able to trust support services. One wishes there were a way of stopping them consuming alcohol but some problems can't be fixed so simply without causing more problems...

I spoke to my ex partner about this. Both him and his sister ( different birth parents) were adopted as babies. Neither of them ever had any interest in evening finding out about birth parents never mind having contact, especially through their childhood. Both in their 50s now with kids of their own

As far as they were concerned their parents were their parents end of

No trauma. Id imagine a good percentage of trauma for adopted kids is due to the failed efforts to keep them with birth family and then going through the care system. If the had been adopted before all this then probably less trauma

As an adoptee I agree. I had no constant reminders or failed contact visits messing up my Saturdays. I was allowed to have a normal family life without potentially chaotic people influencing my life.

My parents are my parents. My identity is strong. As I posted up thread I hope my birth parents are at peace - they made the right choice. And I am glad they left me alone afterwards to form bonds with my family, without constant reminders.

Honestly all my life I forget for months that I am adopted. Apps and contact and letters etc just keep it front and centre of your life. It becomes your identity. I am an adopted child. I was rejected. They still don’t show for contact regularly. Did I write enough? Will they hate the fact I love my parents. Are they sad about the adoption? Why? Etc.

I am AHappyPlaty. I had siblings. Loved riding my bike and reading books. I was a bookworm. I’d use my grandads library card as well as my own to get more books. I liked holidays in the sun etc etc. I had a pet.

Adoption wasn’t my identity. I barely thought about it. I don’t hide it in medical appointments for example or to my children. But it’s a small detail of my life.

Dr ‘any history of heart attacks in your family?’ Me - ‘I don’t know I’m adopted’.
Thats pretty much the only time it comes up.

Contact if the child wants it is one thing. If it’s without consent it’s wrong.

@Nn9011 yes being removed from a birth parent, the loss, inability to establish a bond is traumatic. It’s why I think it’s disruptive to then maintain contact. Time should be spent on the new bond and relationship to make the child feel that that is their family. Bob and Mary the birth parents who couldn’t/wouldn’t care for the child and may not show for contact (as per other posts on here) and may not be the best role models are not people I would want to see when I was a child.

I am so glad there was none of this contact nonsense when I was a child. This thread has been really helpful, I am an adoption success story and adopted children often hear they are ‘lucky’ to have good supportive parents. I am not keen on adoptees being told they are lucky .

I have always considered the child and parent is lucky if it’s a good match and bonding occurs etc. My family love me the same as my siblings without a shadow of doubt. They were lucky as was I as are my siblings (my parents birth children).

However thanks to this thread I realise I was REALLY bloody lucky not to have waffling from social workers about identity and needing to see my birth relatives. Keeping my adoption as a large part of my identity. I am glad we were left alone by social workers. We were VERY lucky!

People cite studies on why contact is importantly for identity etc. What studies have been done on the damage contact causes to bonding and the new relationship? Or the ability to ‘forget’ you are adopted for months on end?

This book is good ‘The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child’ is a book by American author Nancy Verrier published in 1993.

After the traumatic event of being removed the ability to form a bond is crucial. We bonded, I attached and saw myself as belonging.

There are quite a few anecdotal posts on this thread about being glad they didn’t have contact. Maybe interviewing these success stories and further studies would be a good idea. I wonder if the unhappy adoptees have been more vocal and involved in studies. Maybe seeking them out.

I can’t imagine successful adoptees spend much time looking at being involved with studies. Do they even still have contact with agencies? What adoptees are they asking? I have never been asked to do a study.

I don’t read adoption stories or look at adoption websites, I don’t volunteer for studies. It’s not in the forefront of my mind. I rarely read the adoption board on here (only if it pops up in popular threads and there’s nothing else of interest). I have never been part of a study or filled in a form. How would the researchers know to contact me? I am not aware that the adoption agency has my parents contact details anymore never mind mine! Maybe those volunteering for studies are ones who still struggle with adoption or at least think about it daily or weekly. Or at the minimum still have contact with authorities. I think about it so rarely.

I am prepared to be involved in any legitimate study on potential issues with birth family contact if any researchers are on the thread now or in the future I am happy for you to DM me with the link to the research page and I’ll take a look. If I think it’s genuine and legitimate I will contribute. I dont look for such studies but if you find me I am happy to assist. I would like other children to experience successful adoptions. And after reading the anecdotal reports on this thread and from a few people I’ve met through life maybe contact needs re-exploring.

Totally agree. A proper parent is more than biology.

There are not many mentions in this thread of the “triangle of adoption". There are lots of mentions of birth mothers as potential victims of earlier adoption policies and maternal failures of current policies...

Are there any Birth mothers on this thread at all? Is it any wonder if there aren’t?

I am an adopted child of the late sixties.

Yes, there are.

I am a birth mother of the late 60s. I have been reading the thread with interest, in part because a family member has recently adopted a child and it is so different.
My son is now dead, so can no longer speak for himself, but we did discuss his views often over the many years we were reunited. His adoption was unstable and abusive - ironically with the kind of issues that could have caused him to be taken into care now.
I did ask if I could have a letter every couple of years to let me know how he was and was treated as if i had asked for something terrible.
My son did not like the idea of contact as a child, as he felt it would be too confusing and made like even more difficult. He never felt he fitted and knew he was adopted before he was told.
He felt that adoption defined who he was. He got his adoption file in his early 20s and learnt that I was a teen and forced into adoption by parents and the church. He then contacted me. He was quite obsessed with who he looked like and would pore over photos of extended family.
If I had the choice back then, I would have wanted contact and to act like an aunt or family friend but my son would not have wanted that.

From what I read about current adoption, I would have thought more people would be put off by the possibility of FAS or other extreme behavioural issues developing due to genetics/epigenetics/early life experience, than the possibililty of contact.
My relative who has recently adopted is not expected to maintain contact.

There's a constant push pull of people talking about how hard adoption is to raise awareness, but equally that putting people off going through the process, and then adoptees feeling vilified by it

In my adoptee groups for example there was some anger about the recent bbc reporting and how its all doom and gloom

It feels that all parts of the triangle are constantly being told to be quiet, be grateful and not question the status quo

That's a vile way to talk about any woman.
My birth Mum was 17 and it was the 70s, I don't even know if she wanted to have me adopted and I never will now.
I do know she never got over it and took her own life 15yrs later.

My adopter groups ARE the BBC coverage!

I am grateful for that

I think you make good points about research and it may well be that studies do include more people who are unhappy. However a properly designed study would account for variations in the sample and be cautious about drawing conclusions if that was the case.

Can any adopters on here who do face to face say how frequent it is? Do any do it more than twice yearly? I find it hard to imagine anything more frequent than that in terms of before and after disruption it might produce.

I don’t know that any research project would be able to successfully include the opinions of adoptees. I hesitate to speak for them, as adoptees are not one homogeneous group. However, adoption is an evolving narrative through the history of society. Absolutely no disrespect to historic adoptees, ie the babies of shamed, unwed mothers, who are perhaps themselves middle-aged now, but there are limited parallels between some of the experiences of the older adoptees here and those of my now teen AD1, who was born addicted to heroin, methadone, multiple other drugs, plus alcohol and was the product of a birth father who hanged himself with schizophrenia and a birth mother who has significant mental health disorders and was such a one-woman crime wave that she was ASBO’d from her home town. My AD1 has brain injuries and is registered blind as a direct consequence of her in utero experiences.

I do understand about the primal wound and I have read the Nancy Verrier book, which, in my opinion, is not ageing well as it’s nearly 30 years old and neuroscience moves on apace. Very many modern adoptees are permanently brain damaged as a direct consequence of their in utero experiences. Their life chances are significantly diminished.

I haven't read the thread but I am a family lawyer often involved in public law cases. I understand that in England and the rest of the UK we have been unusual with our closed adoptions and other countries do it differently. It may be that the reasons for the change have been based on data from abroad.

I am aware of horror stories with young teens seeking out their birth mother and moving to live with her (never for long, predictably).

I don't know what the answer is. But I know the state is a terrible parent.

Me! I do it at least six/eight times a year for my AD2(9). I’m not naive and I would knock it on the head for my family if it wasn’t working. But it is! I’m 20 years in now and I’m not daft so I do what is right for my children now. I give no whatsits about social policy, social worker-think etc.

Thank you. It seems a lot. Is that what you committed to up front or has it increased as you saw it worked?

The state is not only a terrible parent but it is an active persecutor of adoptive families parenting society’s MOST vulnerable children.