Why are they in a hospital bed? (Adoption related)

[FightingtheFoo]

I just want to be clear this has nothing to do with the parents in question being a same-sex couple. I feel equally about surrogacy whether it's Kim Kardashian buying a baby or Pete Buttigieg.

With that disclaimer:

Why on earth is he posing in a hospital bed?

I just find the absolute airbrushing out of the woman who actually carried, nurtured and gave birth to those babies for 9 months horrifying.

https://twitter.com/PeteButtigieg/status/1434167993769111552

@Persipan

I think in terms of US adoption the cultural landscape is so different that it's hard to grasp.

If you're unexpectedly pregnant in the UK, you can access abortion fairly easily, and for free. Or, if you decide to go ahead with the pregnancy, there's a welfare safely net which, while not at all generous, leaves you not completely without means. And, the NHS picks up the cost of your antenatal care, whether it's straightforward or complex. You get to make that decision based largely on your feelings and personal situation - it may be hard, but neither path is impossible.

Then head across the pond There are many parts of the US where abortions are hard (if not impossible) to get. If you can get one, you'll need to do it quickly and there will likely be a cost to you - for the procedure, and perhaps for travel to where you can get it, and perhaps for a stay there in order to meet mandatory waiting times - and you may not have that money or that time. The religious sigma is also much more substantial and so you just may not feel able to go ahead with it anyway. It, you didn't even know you were pregnant until past the time your state allowed abortions anyway.

So, you're having a baby - but there are medical bills mounting up and the insurance system isn't your friend, and then maybe you live somewhere where the welfare assistance available to single parents is deliberately awful to 'send a message' and deter you from making the choices you didn't really have in the first place... It's all too easy to end up in a situation where both paths are impossible.

Which leaves adoption. Where you can get help to meet those expenses, and you can know that the baby is going to a family where they can give it all the things you can't; you can actually choose who and you can specify whether or not you want to remain in contact... It's a way out. I can completely see why people take it.

It's that highly problematic? Yep. But it's not really the adoption system that's the problem; it's all the other systems around it. I know people on here are very anti-surrogacy (I don't entirely agree with all the arguments against, but I recognise them) but it is a situation where there's a choice about whether to become involved. In terms of adoption in the US, on the other hand, that choice is somewhat illusory since it looks very much as though it may be the only viable option for many who find themselves pregnant unexpectedly.

I refer you to the above @PurpleOkapi

I find the US system barbaric and you are right not everyone wants to be a mother. Contraception and abortion are the answer to that, as is the apparently unattainable ideal of women being free from rape and sexual coercion of all kinds.

If a woman doesn’t want to be a mother why should she (and why would she) go through pregnancy and birth and all the risks that that entails?

BertieBotts has it right it is purely about controlling and punishing women.

Those adopted suffer too and there are consequences for all of society. When society is so fixated on controlling and punishing women the harms impact on everyone.

It's a ridiculous photo because it's contrived. A mothers first photo with her baby is often with her in a hospital bed, because it's likely that she has to remain in bed for sometime after the birth. There's no reason for them to be in the bed in the first place.

And I'm not going to get misty-eyed over men benefitting from systems that encourage women to go through with pregnancies they don't want and for children to be removed from their mothers.

These abusive systems are never going to be changed when people are praised when they benefit from them.

It is such a different system that newborn adoptions are a thing in the way they aren’t in the U.K. And perhaps, rightly or wrongly, if there was an option here to select the family your child would go to I imagine there would be cases where a pregnant teen girl would choose that over abortion/keeping the baby compared to the idea of handing your unwanted newborn over to Social Services and having no control on what happened to them and where they end up.

However I should admit that my first thought on seeing the boy/girl twins was it screamed IVF/surrogacy so I’m pleased to be wrong.

With the rolling back of abortion rights going on I am sure there will be more newborn adoptions not less, not through positive choice but because of lack of other options.

@AtLeastPretendToCare

It is such a different system that newborn adoptions are a thing in the way they aren’t in the U.K. And perhaps, rightly or wrongly, if there was an option here to select the family your child would go to I imagine there would be cases where a pregnant teen girl would choose that over abortion/keeping the baby compared to the idea of handing your unwanted newborn over to Social Services and having no control on what happened to them and where they end up.

However I should admit that my first thought on seeing the boy/girl twins was it screamed IVF/surrogacy so I’m pleased to be wrong.

With the rolling back of abortion rights going on I am sure there will be more newborn adoptions not less, not through positive choice but because of lack of other options.

Relinquished babies for adoption are vanishingly rare in the U.K. I have been a social worker for many years and only come across one, tangentially. I had one on my caseload once but the parents changed their minds. Pregnant girls or women just don't give their babies up in the U.K. where there is the option to keep them.

I have been a social worker for many years and only come across one, tangentially. I had one on my caseload once but the parents changed their minds. Pregnant girls or women just don't give their babies up in the U.K. where there is the option to keep them

And is that always in the best interests of the mother and child? How often does that lead to several miserable years on benefits with a damaged older child ending up in the care system with little, if any chance, of a permanent secure home?

I'm not comfortable with the idea which seems to be coming from some posters that an unwanted pregnancy should end in abortion or a woman keeping a baby she didn't really want and may not be capable of or interested in, caring for because, heaven forfend, adoption be considered.

And is that always in the best interests of the mother and child? How often does that lead to several miserable years on benefits with a damaged older child ending up in the care system with little, if any chance, of a permanent secure home?

I don't understand your point. Girls and women don't tend to relinquish their babies in the U.K. because they don't want to
So how would it be better for them to hand their babies over for adoption when they don't want to? Are you suggesting that babies would be better off with wealthy adopters than lower income mothers? What makes you think that babies will end up in the care system rather than being cared for largely happily by their own parents or families? It's a weird, social engineering, classist false equivalence.

And perhaps, rightly or wrongly, if there was an option here to select the family your child would go to I imagine there would be cases where a pregnant teen girl would choose that over abortion/keeping the baby compared to the idea of handing your unwanted newborn over to Social Services and having no control on what happened to them and where they end up.

How could a teen girl determine the best family for the baby? It puts more pressure and potent guilt onto someone who is little more than a child themselves.

Pregnant girls or women just don't give their babies up in the U.K. where there is the option to keep them.

And this is why the systems won't change in the US. Generally, only the poor or young will suffer and the wealthy benefit.

Contrived photos like this sugarcoat the reality for the benefit of those who are benefiting.

Adoption should only be considered if the child is at risk.

It is extremely damaging for children to be removed from their birth mother, even if it is done for “kindness” .

@TrifleCat

Adoption should only be considered if the child is at risk.

It is extremely damaging for children to be removed from their birth mother, even if it is done for “kindness” .

Of course far better to leave them with a completely inadequate mother and then step in after the damage is done.

@KimikosNightmare for some reason you're conflating babies being relinquished voluntarily for adoption and children being removed due to abuse or neglect. Not sure why that is?

This seems relevant here

www.facebook.com/695937376/posts/10158515501312377/?d=n

tinyletter.com/Glosswitch/letters/the-ok-karen-37-the-mumsnet-case-for-abortion

This may also be relevant.

You are one of those people who say: I really am not homophobic,but....... You are a homophobe,because you are looking for bizare reasons to make this picture look bad.shame on you

I see

UK--removes highly traumatized child from parents whose lives are out of control and chaotic=great!

US--birth mother knows that her life is out of control and her situation will lead to bad outcomes for child. Decides to give baby up for adoption =unthinkable. Awful.

Gotcha

I have mixed feelings. I actually think it is okay to give up a child at birth. But I do think that there should be a reasonable time table before adoption becomes final. I can think of many, many situations where having to keep the child for six weeks would absolutely ruin a woman's life, and would be a very manipulative act on the part of a state--lanother way of telling her she doesn't know her own mind.

Babies do not have to remain in the hospital if the mothers are ready to go home. They are the ones who have just experienced trauma. In the 1990s, it was common practice in many places all over the world to release women and their babies six to eight hours after birth from the hospital! (Look at this Swedish study below) Thank god we have backtracked from that practice. So there is no reason for adoptive parents to stay overnight with healthy children in a hospital--especially during Covid. In fact, a hospital is the worst place for any of them to be! pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10893053/

I would absolutely find it equally distasteful if a straight couple hopped into bed to perform this cosplay. A woman is grieving right now. The woman who is in pain and who is bleeding and who spent nine months growing those children in her body. It is unseemly to lie in the battlefield of her pain.

[quote PrincessNutella]I have mixed feelings. I actually think it is okay to give up a child at birth. But I do think that there should be a reasonable time table before adoption becomes final. I can think of many, many situations where having to keep the child for six weeks would absolutely ruin a woman's life, and would be a very manipulative act on the part of a state--lanother way of telling her she doesn't know her own mind.

Babies do not have to remain in the hospital if the mothers are ready to go home. They are the ones who have just experienced trauma. In the 1990s, it was common practice in many places all over the world to release women and their babies six to eight hours after birth from the hospital! (Look at this Swedish study below) Thank god we have backtracked from that practice. So there is no reason for adoptive parents to stay overnight with healthy children in a hospital--especially during Covid. In fact, a hospital is the worst place for any of them to be! pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10893053/[/quote]
They don't have to keep the baby for 6 weeks. The baby goes to foster care and at 6 weeks cafcass will be notified and the process will start. It takes a fair bit longer than 6 weeks to finalise the adoption. They won't even start matching until the 6 weeks have elapsed.

Why should a baby spend 6 weeks in foster care instead of forming bonds with the people who are committing to a lifetime of parenting?

Objecting to commercial surrogacy is not homophobic.

NiceGerbil

“
Can't find any data on the mothers.

Indiana govt says 2k adoptions a year. 6 million people.

3% of children there are adopted?!”

you have to remember that adoption statistics don’t include just newborns - adoption includes kinship adoptions, adoptions from foster care, step-parents adopting, etc.

@Driftingblue

Why should a baby spend 6 weeks in foster care instead of forming bonds with the people who are committing to a lifetime of parenting?

Because of the children act. It's about the rights of the child. Mothers (and fathers) must be allowed to change their minds and give children the opportunity to be raised within the family if possible.

@Driftingblue

Why should a baby spend 6 weeks in foster care instead of forming bonds with the people who are committing to a lifetime of parenting?

Because birth mothers and fathers need to be given the chance to change their mind.

If a baby goes to their intended parents rather than foster care and birth parents change their mind, the intended parents then have to facilitate contact until such a time that the baby can live fulltime with birth parent/s. If your baby was taken from you because their birth parents changed their mind think about how you would feel having to facilitate that process. Its a balance of the babies and the intended parents welfare.

We do have early permanence/foster to adopt where a baby has around an 80% chance of not returning to the birth family, I only know one person who chose foster to adopt, their daughter was returned to the birth family at 11 months old.

Presumably it's one of their first photos with their babies who have just been born in a hospital?

As for airbrushing irrespective of whether it's surrogacy or adoption, why would she be in the picture, the babies are with their parents.

@Driftingblue Thankyou for your posts, much more eloquent about the system than I have been and @Persipan’S post about different cultural landscape is absolutely spot on

Not convinced at all by any of the newborn adoption in such huge numbers just means that women in Indiana are more sensible argument or whatever is being said.

Along with a bizarre suggestion that the UK system must be wrong because obviously more babies should be adopted :/

Nearly 3 in every 100 children in Indiana is adopted. That's bananas.

The stats earlier on numbers. Speak for themselves.

It's a commercial enterprise. And it's telling that half the links when you Google are for agencies for adopting newborns and half are for agencies to help find birth parents.

This is now firmly on my list of terrible things for women and girls in some USA States.

Abortion
Adoption
Surrogacy

More?

The forced birth in USA mantra of 'just give it up for adoption' makes more sense now. It still totally ignores the fact that Pregnancy to term and childbirth are hardly a nothing and nor is handing over a newborn.

There was a recent host of stories in the media about birthday and baby homes. In England. Where unmarried women were coerced/ persuaded/ forced to hand their babies over at birth. The impact on the women was horrific. Decades later still utterly distraught by what was done.

Put a bit of legal talk around it. Commercial shininess. And that mechanism is apparently waay better than any other options. And in fact more babies should be taken this way in the UK. The fact hardly any are taken at birth or given up at birth instead shows the UK is derelict in its duty to protect children...