LisaSimpsonsbff I fear you have misunderstood what I was trying to say, I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression.
To be very clear, under the circumstances depicted in The Adoption I agree it was utterly necessary that those children needed to be taken away. Their safeguarding was paramount and so it should be. Given the system then yes adoption really was the only option.
For me though 'the circumstances' is not just what those parents (or any parents) did to their children. Its also what we, wider society, do through social services, other agencies and 'the system' in general. I don't think enough is done in general to support families at risk, where children are at risk of neglect and worse. It was too late for the family on The Adoption, the children had to go.
The points I was trying to make were a reaction to the situation for families like the one in The Adoption in general, rather than saying those parents should keep their children now. I still believe it would be better if they could but to give them the chance would require such a massive change in how things are done that its not likely any time soon. Not to mention the effects on the children being in care waiting...
You say that the children need to be taken away before anything can be done. While it is the case that The Pause Programme is designed to support women who have already had children taken into care and adopted, its not true of all interventions. The point I have been trying to make is that more needs to be done earlier on, when the very first signs of concern show themselves. This would be support we just don't see at the moment, in pretty much any situation where trauma is involved. This would be way before someone even had children.
My sentiments about this are not restricted to adoption. It's all trauma situations. As the granddaughter of a man who suffered severe PTSD after fighting in the Far East in WWII and with a sister who was severely traumatised at a very young age, I know the consequences of having no specialised help available. I have seen first hand how the effects of trauma rattle through the generations, how trauma's victims get mislabeled with various mental illnesses or even personality disorders, of being useless, inept... how it can rip families apart and leaved people struggling just to get by day to day.
Jon Marnel the interviewer was really surprised what the birth mother said about getting pregnant again and that she did so soon. It was entirely predictable. As was the fact that the father's girlfriend was an adoptee herself - it was predictable she chose him as a partner. All of us all the time try to repair what is broken in our lives by repeating the cycles. If we're not conscious of what is happening then we'll just do the same over and over. Even if we are conscious, we still likely need help to get out of going round the same destructive loop. But getting through and out the loops is how we grow, so its worth doing and in my opinion worth investing in so that all in society have that chance. Parenting classes barely start to scratch the surface though... although of good ones are always worth having.
So I guess for me it was very hard to listen to how unidentified trauma can rip a family apart. Its all too common in this world (beyond adoption) and I so wish we were doing more to break the cycles that rattle through the generations.
Yes childrens' immediate needs first. And those parents 'wants' were also needs, we need to see them as that as a society. And yes even given all I say the kids had to be taken away in that situation...
