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?

That's easy to say til you're in it though, and understand the damage some birth parents have done to DC. My DC is named after a birth family member who was a convicted murderer before he was old enough to vote. Still think you'd have no issues with that birth family being in your DCs life?

I could not agree more @Popcornhero Adopting a baby/child is bloody hard enough as it is, as you have to jump through SO many hoops, and have every miniscule microbe in your life scrutinised. DH and I were going to adopt a few years ago as we got a bit broody, but were a little old (in our opinion) for any more natural children... (We had 2 in our early 30s.) We were early-mid 40s, and were happy to adopt a child as old as 3 or 4. Boy or girl. This was around early 2010s. I am pretty sure post adoption meet ups with bio family was not a thing then. If it was, they didn't tell us. Probably would have waited til we'd officially adopted the child!

Luckily we were told early on (so we didn't waste too much time) that the birth parents have a right to have letters and photographs and phone calls with 'their' child at any point in the future. We were like 'what?' All the adopted people I knew (adopted before 1980 I think,) had NO contact with their birth parents and didn't know who they were. Indeed many didn't know they were adopted til they were virtually adults...

And now the birth parents can meet up with the child THEY decided to give up whenever they fancy it?! When did this start?! Sooooo many people who want to adopt a child will be put off by this. It's a terrible idea, and cannot possibly benefit the child, and it will certainly not benefit the adoptive parents.

Why are people putting the babies/children up for adoption? Because they don't want them, and/or want them to have a better life than they can give them. So let them have that better life - with a family who can look after them/raise them as their own...

From Google...

People place children for adoption primarily out of wanting to provide the best life, stability, and opportunities they feel unable to offer due to personal challenges like financial instability, young age, health issues, substance abuse, lack of support, or unsafe environments, ensuring the child gets a loving home, education, or freedom from abuse, often as a selfless choice for the child's future..

So why, WHY do 'bio parents' insist on maintaining contact? As I said, I don't see how this can possibly benefit the child, OR the adoptive parents, and it all seems to be massively weighed in favour the bio parents. They'll be giving the bio parents the opportunity to adopt the child back next when they have sorted their lives out!

.

I thought this thread was going to be about DNA testing sites like AncestryDNA. So many adopted people have found biological family by sending a sample in, likewise many have found out they aren't biologically related to who they expected.

Having this available for anybody to sign up and do must be putting a lot of people off. Between this and social media, the ball is much more in the child's court.

For anyone who has TikTok I recommend having a look at an account called “therapywithilie” a woman who was adopted from Romania to Ireland at 4yo. She speaks so eloquently about her whole experience and trauma.

That's so sad. This would have been about 25 years ago. I know he stayed with his foster family but haven't seen any of them for about 15 years.

Same here.

I’m in a different country where there is very little adoption like this. Years ago I worked in a job with vulnerable families. Ultimately surely it should work on a case by case basis. You can’t erase a child’s past, at some point they always start seeking answers and questioning everything that happened to them. It’s so important for them to know their whole history, the entire story of their lives. Even if they had terrible parents, losing your birth family is traumatic in itself. Adoption changes their parents, changes their names. It severs them from their past lives so, if possible, any contact with their birth families it helps for them to make sense of what happened.

Obviously all decisions need to be made in the interests of the children, not the birth families and not the adopters.

Very hard agree. I always considered adopting but decided against it as there was no way I would be prepared to take my children to meet with people who neglected, abused and abandoned them. The whole system these days seems very much focussed on the rights of the parents rather than the child, and time and time again we see kids left in terrible situations for sometimes years in the vain hope the parent might suddenly decide one day to look after them properly. Obviously we don't want to go back to the days of social workers ripping children from their parents as the garden's a bit overgrown, but in my opinion we have gone much too far the other way. The child needs to come first, and wrenching them for their comfortable, safe life to go and sit with their 'real family' who gave them away sounds extremely traumatic. Especially if they don't even bother to show up.

Of course there needs to be sympathy for people who cannot care for their children, but there's so much reluctance to put a child up for adoption now that by the time they've reached that point there will have been ample opportunities for the parent to change if they genuinely wanted any relationship with the kid.

I am adopted and the both mother of an adopted child. At the time my child was adopted I believed that birth family contact was largely a negative beyond some pics and narrative details. I never pushed for any. I felt that had I grown up with a little more knowledge than I had it would have been overwhelming and would have always been a mythical but rather too real tempting alternative option. I think that for adopted babies that is probably largely true.

I work in a related area and see many children harmed by the repeated failures of birth families to keep children safe. I imagine if more people saw how very low the bar is for what constitutes parenting deemed to have a chance of recovery than more would be done to facilitate adoption. Foster care is a similarly fraught issue with too many of the options it encompasses being appalling.

Individualistic, evidenced based care that puts children first and supports adopted families is hugely needed and mostly lacking as are the programmes that scaffolded some vulnerable birth parents. It’s a shit show.

I know a fair few adopted children being in my job and I don’t think there are many circumstances where having contact with the birth parent is a good idea. A colleague adopted 2 siblings whose parents were addicts with no resolution in sight. I’m not sure she would have gone ahead if the birth parents had the right to see the children. The children were safe with her, but wouldn’t have been with their biological parents. Another family adopted 3 siblings, foetal alcohol was at play, the last baby was on the books for adoption before she was even born. The adoptive parents were beyond the usual age to adopt, but an exception was made as they had her adopted siblings. Contact was not appropriate but one child found and contacted her birth mother. It caused no end of issues.

@Popcornhero Are you sure this is the main reason adoptions are plummeting? I would think it's more to do with better knowledge of FAS and other disabilities due to genetics/life style of the parents. Not to mention MH problems with older children who have lived through hell. I think it's very brave to adopt and agree birth parents shouldn't have any "rights" after having deemed unfit to care for their children.

Perhaps. But in either case it’s for the adoptee themselves to decide.

'the birth parents have a right to have letters and photographs and phone calls with 'their' child at any point in the future' is rubbish, an adoption order severs the birth family's connection to the child, they have no rights to anything from that point, they are then legally unrelated to the child. I adopted approximately around the time you say you looked into adoption and this just isn't true.

'Why are people putting the babies/children up for adoption? Because they don't want them, and/or want them to have a better life than they can give them.' In the UK almost all adopted children have been removed from birth family by the courts, almost none are 'put up for adoption'. Your Google might be relevant in the US or elsewhere but it's not here.

For someone who looked into adoption you seem not to be that informed about it.

The focus on trying to keep children in their birth family results in children being put up for adoption after severe damage has been done, via neglect and abuse, instead of allowing a child to be adopted from birth. Then the disgraceful lack of support frightens people off. DH and I originally considered adoption but were put off by this.

I'm repeating myself now but I think choices should be made based on research about what's actually best for adoptees so they grow up as happy and healthy as possible. For some children that will involve no contact as it wouldn't be safe. For others contact could be recommended.
I agree the preferences of birth parents shouldn't be centred but the preferences of adoptive parents shouldn't be centred either. It should be about the child.

There may be more children relinquished voluntarily in America with birth parents and adoptive parents choosing what they call open or closed adoptions. In the uk it's rare for healthy babies to be relinquished voluntarily, most children are in foster care for a reason and adoption involves a choice to take on everything they come with, which might be a recommendation for contact.

It's an interesting point though that parents should be able to decide ultimately. I decide everything for my own biological child so I can see the argument for that, if adoption is to come with full parental rights.

It’s to do with IVF, surrogacy, the cost of living and the availability of abortion. Plus, very many of us/we (grammar?) adopters are comprehensively telling our truths. I sincerely hope it’s working.

But what if that contact risks them not getting a permanent home? Life isn’t ideal and adoptive parents aren’t saints, they have their own needs too which they balance with the needs of their adopted child.

I think we like to assume that adopted parents will be perfect and do absolutely anything for their adopted child but they’re just normal people doing a good thing, they’ll put themselves (and potentially other kids) first sometimes. And quite rightly so.

My cousin lost custody of her 4 young children. Her partner (dad to 2 of them) was a drug addicted convict who became controlling and violent. My cousin has stood by him for 10 years, through prison sentences, abuse and herself getting into drugs and becoming a shell of who she was. She was never the perfect parent but absolutely couldn’t keep her kids safe and wasn’t prepared to leave her partner (social services said she’d likely get them back if she left him permanently as when he’s in prison, she’s much better).

She still has contact but I wish the kids would be adopted. It’s been 2 years of foster parents, luckily together, and they deserve a forever home. My cousin would love contact but she brings trouble to people’s doors and her wants shouldn’t come before the kids. She had her chance to be a parent and she continually put the kids last. Cutting contact with her and their dad would be overall positive for the kids. Social services asked if we’d have the kids but (as well as already having 3 kids) we didn’t want her trouble coming into our life. Why would random adopters?

True. Just bumping for the reality check. Adoption now is very different to adoption in the 1970s. Sorry, older adoptees, I don’t mean to be rude but it’s not helpful for a process to be compared to four or four decades ago.

My eldest daughter is adopted and has been with me since she was four weeks old. Her birth Mum had her as a teenager and had mental health difficulties and addiction issues her whole life. My daughter was able to remain in contact with her biological grandmother, Aunt and the sibling who was born when my daughter was four (and ended up being raised by her biological Dad, who was a different person to my daughter's biological father). Contact with her birth Mum happened occasionally and my daughter chose not to continue it once she turned 18. She has never allowed her birth Mum to be in her own child's life. She did however, go and visit her birth mum in hospital when she was dying. My daughter was able to hear her Mum say how much she had loved both her girls, how much she regretted not being able to raise them herself and how proud she was of them. My daughter was able to tell her she forgave her and understood that she knew it wasn't what she would have chosen if it was as simple as that. It brought my daughter (and no doubt her birth Mum) a lot of peace. My daughter has struggled with lots of things over the years around identity, fear of turning out like her birth Mum (she had a difficult few years as a teenager) etc, but says now that knowing her family, having a chance to get to know her birth Mum and being there at the end has really helped. Even when someone isn't capable of raising their child, even if they are violent, addicted and unstable, that genetic tie will always be there and there are ways to support an understanding.

I was also adopted at 6 weeks old, and wonder too if my suspected add and nd behaviours would be present if I had not been adopted. These nd traits I think have held me back in life sometimes.

as to whether birth families get involved after adoption, when child is under 18, for me it would be a no, but, I had amazing adoptive parents and maybe all don’t. To me personally it would have been far too messy and disruptive as a child.

Exactly what happened to a friend of my daughter's. Adopted by a well-off family, birth family found him in his teens, proceeded to try and coerce him out of money, then robbed the house.

I’m not an adoptee but if I were I wouldn’t want to lose contact with my birth parents unless there had been abuse.

I’m a deeply curious person I couldn’t personally cope with having part of my life and identity blanked.

I can see this would make things more difficult and stressful for adoptive parents, but I can understand the policy.

I’m an adopted adult. I was told I was adopted from a very young age. My parents said they would be fine if I wanted to look for my birth parents. Right up until I did. They’ve never forgiven me, and I am completely the black sheep of the family. In my scenario, the adoption happened in the 60s, unmarried mother, I wish there had been something more binding to help me, and help my adoptive parents. They act like I betrayed them, and it’s so obvious I was their solution to infertility, and not this generous gesture. I get it must hurt to be reminded, but facts are facts.

ultimately it has resulted in me feeling too guilty to establish contact with my BM (I did find her) and my adoptive parents have done everything except completely severing contact. Feels like a double rejection.

"Fortunate" to lose their entire family through adoption? Wow. Just wow.

There is an extremely high presentation of neurodivergences in adopted children. Conditions such as ADHD and autism have incredibly high heritability factors (about 80 per cent). Thinking about how hard it is for fully functioning parents to secure diagnoses and things like EHCPs today, there is no chance of dysfunctional families doing so. Also, very many birth families will self-medicate their neurodivergences with illicit drugs and alcohol.