Giving up my baby: open adoption Stacey someone In the USA

[JazzAnnNonMouse]

I don't know how the birth parents do it.
Happy for the adoptive parents obviously but especially one of the women I felt didn't really want to go through with it in the end.
Is any one else watching?

Open adoption does seem to work though and the 17 years later people seemed v happy with how it had gone.
Why don't we do in the uk?

Well, for a start in the UK nearly all children who are available for adoption are not relinquished, they have been removed by social services and placed for adoption by the court system. Relinquishment really is rare. Of course just because the adoption was done without the birth parents consent doesn't mean contact won't benefit the child but it's very complex.

I had to turn this program off because it was too much for me - don't usually turn things off, and I watch lots of adoption programs being an adoptive parent, but it was heartbreaking. I have very mixed feelings about it. One of the negative ones is that I really think meeting nice potential parents can make the mother feel very pressured and more tied to adoption and that's not right. She shouldn't be worrying about them if she's considering changing her mind

I thought it was very well done and Stacey was very good,really presented the whole thing well,judged situations well.

But it broke my heart.

I thought the birth mothers and fathers were incredibly brave and selfless.Seeing the mother 17 years on was so sad.

I wished we could have seen the birth parents a year on in order to see that the pain was worth it iykwim.Would like to have seen them having rebuilt their lives.

I felt very sorry for the young couples. Faced with not having much money, they had put themselves under huge pressure to do the 'mature, selfless, sensible' thing and relinquish when emotionally they just wanted to keep their babies. I think the friend who described it as a 'permanent solution to a temporary problem' had it right.

Yes I thought that,it was spot on.

Makes you wonder if the lack of an NHS,decent welfare system etc in the US makes parents in that situation more likely to do it.

It was so sad seeing the young parents holding their son, all lying in the same bed. A little family. But not.

Yes I think the friend had it spot on.

Yeah that is spot on.

We don't do it in the UK because we have a benefit system. Additionally we no longer have areas where the religious right have huge influence and so the influence of church and state hadn't conspired to create a lobby that promotes a 'better start' for your child. When we had a negligible benefit system, difficult to access education and more dominant church groups we did do it, in protecting our most vulnerable we don't create coercive pressure to separate mothers and babies.

There is research about adoption and as a trend there are no benefits to birth parents, abortions are much better experiences ( of course there can be individual exceptions). There is vocal online group representation of birth parents many of whom are very angry about the 'choices' they made and who feel their children were stolen. Some can't face up to these feelings until decades past the adoption- makes me wonder a bit how honest the birth parents could be with themselves the adoptive parents, the children and the cameras. What huge pressure to say it is ok.

I wonder what Stacey thought.

Especially to breast feed and have for 72 hours. The bond could've already happened and to give up a baby because In the short term you're a bit short on money is so sad IMO.

I wouldn't be able to do it, the birth parents were very selfless and had to detach emotionally. I just couldn't do it.

Which channel?

BBC 3 or 4

Be warned,I did find it quite upsetting.Didn't think I would.

Misty sobbing as she left.

The adoptive parents seemed so gleeful(understandably) and nobody seemed to care re Misty as she trudged off out the door.

Thanks Retro

I might wait