Call to give birth parents contact rights under law
Submitted by Niels on Sun, 2009-08-23 16:14.
By Simon Collins/Herald on Sunday
August 21, 2009
Adoptive parents are welcoming a call to rewrite New Zealand's 54-year-old adoption law - but say the most urgent need is to legislate for "open" adoptions where birth parents can keep in touch with their children.
Acting Principal Family Court Judge Paul von Dadelszen called this week for a review of the 1955 Adoption Act to remove discrimination against de facto and gay couples, who are currently barred from adopting.
But groups representing the country's dwindling numbers of adoptive parents said adoption was now so rare that they had had inquiries from only a handful of de facto and gay couples wanting to adopt.
Simon Kingham of the Adoption Option Trust in Christchurch said the biggest problem with the law was that it was written at a time when adoptions were "closed", meaning birth parents gave up all contact with their children.
Today virtually all adoptions are "open" and birth parents actually choose the adoptive parents for their babies - and stay in touch.
Dr Kingham and his wife, Sue, have an adopted girl aged 6 and a boy aged 4. Both children see not just each of their respective birth parents but also their birth grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
"So in terms of grandparents they have six lots of grandparents," Mrs Kingham said.
"For me, being brought up in an open adoption is no different from a blended family, you just have more people in your life to love you."
Not all adoptions are quite so open. Mrs Kingham said some birth parents still wanted to keep their babies secret and just occasionally receive photos.
But Dr Kingham said Child, Youth and Family's adoption service encouraged open adoptions and New Zealand led the world with them.
The only problem was that, because the law had not kept up with changed practice, birth parents had no legal rights to maintain contact with their children if the adoptive parents later tried to exclude them.
"The law needs to change to give biological parents some legal protection against people changing their minds," he said.
Adoptions have declined dramatically since 1955 as both solo parenting and abortion have become more socially acceptable.
Adoptions outside the birth parents' family rose from about 1000 a year in the mid-1950s to a peak of 2617 in 1968, but have plunged to fewer than 100 a year in most recent years. There were just 77 last year.
A group of Christchurch birth mothers are about to launch their own Birth Mums Support Network to support young mothers wanting to explore open adoption.
Michele Daly of the Auckland-based Open Adoption Network, a social support group for adoptive parents, said she had only 150 couples on her database nationally, 80 per cent of them in Auckland.
She said the group included at least one couple who married so that they could adopt, because of the Adoption Act's rule that only married couples or individuals can adopt.
The network also includes same-sex couples where one partner has adopted but the couples cannot adopt children together.
"My personal view is that the law needs to be changed so that it's a reflection of the society that we have today," she said.
But Catholic bishops yesterday expressed concern that the debate about the law was focusing on the rights of adults, with almost no reference to the rights of children.
Bishop Peter Cullinane of Palmerston North said the church wanted to protect the rights of children.
"We accept the view, held by many researchers, that a mother's and a father's love are different and complementary, and that a child has a right to both."
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Choosing sides
If the first-parents are still allowed to have contact with their child, why push the open adoption-plan? (What purpose does this really serve?)
Why not grant temporary guardianship/custody, (to the more "responsible" party), and leave it at that? After all, theoretically, at the age of adult maturity (18 in the US), the child IS legally allowed to leave the nest and create his own home/life.... wherever that "child" may choose.
Simply put, I don't believe all biologic parents are bad, (it's known many children have been wrongly removed, just to fulfill a wish/desire -- see: child trafficking, coerced adoptions and wrongful removals). AND, I don't believe all foster/adoptive parents are great do-good people. [Our abuse pages help prove that!]
Adoption, from my own personal experience, has taught me how children are forced to do something they really don't want to do: Choose a side.
This is where it get's muddled...
Hrm, interesting post.
My adoption (1979) was of course a closed adoption. By the time I was 10 I was asking about my real parents and what
had become of them.
I guess we would have to establish two major things:
wanting to know their birthfamilies. Children that are emotionally disturbed
(or could be from an impending adoption) may not make the best candidates
for that kind of desicion.
I am all for children having a voice in adoption but I wonder to what extent would the argument be made that a child should
be involved in that process? If I would have known my birth family when I was younger it would have been 15x worse for me,
and that's probably a conservative number
Michael
" The very survival mechanics RAD Adult's use to survive slowly kill them" M.S.
It is always muddled.
I actually think it is far more intricate than you just describe. You mention you were 10 years old when you started asking question about you biological parents. I think that is not an age where parents should let children make decisions, but it is an age where a child has more of an input on the decision making than a 6-year-old.
It would be cruel to let children make decisions like these, that's what parents are for, but that doesn't mean children have no voice. It makes sense the older a child gets the stronger that voice becomes and the bigger the influence becomes on the decision making.
Unfortunately these decisions are not made in a vacuum where only the best interest of the child counts. Adoptive parents quite often prefer to delay meeting the biological for personal reasons, and while they may not always say so, adoptees may still pick up on those signals and downplay their desire to learn about their origin. On the other hand adoptive parents may also want to do it all too well and push for a reunion when the child is not really looking for it.
All this stuff is really complicated and there is no one size fits all solution. It all the more shows that adoption is in many cases far too complex an issue for humans to deal with.
I totally agree to an extent
Dear Neils,
I agree to a point. When I was 14 years old I was already heavily into drugs and animal killing. Does this mean that my "voice" or "input"
would be valid in my placement? Even at that age, I wouldn't be ready to make that kind of desicion. What I think needs to be addressed
are the circumstances of that child's emotional stability. When does a child's input have any kind of relative impact? 6, 10, 15? I would
think that would actually require more court involvment, along with a therapist's POV as well.
Simply being 15 years old isn't enough to have any more input than a 6 year old without some kind of emotional evaluation of the child.
Michael
" The very survival mechanics RAD Adult's use to survive slowly kill them" M.S.
Simplicity
I think input from a child is always important, irrespective of age, but I also think a person at the age of 14 is more capable to think about issues like meeting their biological family than at age 6. At the same time I don't think many 14-year-olds are ready to make such an important decision, that's why there is parental responsibility till the age of 18.
I don't think that court involvement has anything to do with this issue. It's not a legal decision, but a personal one, so I'd rather see judges stay out of this realm. Involvement of therapists can be helpful, though I have my doubts about that too. Therapists can be helpful, but I have experienced myself how they can be counter-productive too and learned from many others who had similar experiences.
As much as I love science and fact or evidence based approaches, some things are too complicated to be dealt with in such a way. Finding the right time to meet biological family before adulthood requires adoptive parents to be in tune with the needs and resilience of the children they adopted. That by itself is a very vague and muddled description, but I believe it's as far as we can go,
Albert Einstein made the very good observation: Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. In his field there are many things that can be made relatively simple. Even though his theory on gravity is not all that easy to understand, in principle it is still a simple reduction of a phenomenon in a mathematical formulation.
Human interaction and child development are vastly more complicated than gravity and the structure of the universe and none of it can be reduced to simple rules or mathematical formulas. Yet we are all human, with some sense of empathy which can help us out. Empathy is not quantifiable, it's hard to describe, it doesn't reduce to rules of thumb, but it is a requirement to make the best decision for a child. As I said, the input of a child is always important, it's what feeds the empathy, but in the end it always has to be the parent's responsibility to make the right decision.
In retrospect
I look at adoption now, not as an adoptee, but as a struggling parent. [Heaven KNOWS I needed help when each one of my babies arrived!]
So many many variables alter a person's ability to parent. [ I think people tend to forget there is a basic human need to learn HOW to parent, properly.]
With that, in this day and age, I would like to think services for "struggling parents" would be at least 15 times better than they were 30 years ago.
In this day and age
I have been called an over-optimistic bastard many times, but this time you definitely beat me, liking to think services for "struggling parents" would be at least 15 times better than they were 30 years ago.
Around this time 30 years ago the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act (AACWA) was being drafted and for the first time "permanency" entered American legislation as a notion in child placement. The intent of the legislation was to reduce the number of children in foster care by either making sure they permanently returned to their family or they permanently moved to an adoptive family.
AACWA was signed into law in 1980 and worked well for a couple of years, but as a federal law eventually fell victim to the anti-government ideology that was being promoted by the political powers at the time. Without federal over-sight the family reunification and "services for struggling families" lost out against the financial incentives that could be found in institutionalization and in adoption from foster care.
With the Adoption and Safe Family Act of 1997 things even turned worse, because an additional pressure was put upon the process to reach permanency in 18 months, which in practice lead to far more people losing their parental rights and a further reduction of family preservation efforts.
So while there has been progress in services for struggling families in the last 30 years, all progress took place in the first five years, followed by a decline in services in the following 25 years.
The Wanna-Be's
40 years ago I was adopted by a woman who was told she could no longer have any more children. She had birthed a son. She wanted "one more". A girl.
In the last 30 years, how (dare I ask) has the struggling infertile couple been helped by "family services"?
Services
Over the last 30 years the struggling infertile couple and those wanting to adopt for other reasons have been helped tremendously in attaining their goal of expanding their family. Most obviously infertility treatments have become available, which has helped many of the potentially fertile couples, but those not necessarily constitute the whole spectrum of potential adopters.
Where infertility was the main reason to adopt 30 years ago, this is much less the case nowadays. Many adopters, especially those who adopt from foster care are single parents. There also has been an expansive growth in faith based adoptions, where the need to "save" children is the driving factor, more so than infertility. Finally gay and lesbian adoption has found its way to the mainstream in the last 30 years.
Due to this diversification in prospective adopters, "family services" have diversified too.
Some of those "family services" have declined in the last 30 years, but most have expanded. What has declined are the services offered by doctors, mid-wives and lawyers able to facilitate a black/grey market adoption. Instead these days there are some 3000 adoption agencies and an unknown number of adoption facilitators publically offering their services.
The availability of the much treasured white infant has declined too over the last 30 years, but the availability of children with an "exotic" heritage has expanded enormously.
Unlike 30 years ago, "family services" are no longer just about the availability of adoptable children. Nowadays there are adoption subsidies, adoption loans, adoption preparation classes, post-adoption services, adoption therapies, cultural heritage programs, disruption and respite services, roots travels, reunification services etc. There is an entire industry geared towards the needs and the insecurities of adoptive parents and for every possible issue there are "professionals" offering their services.
If the same effort was put in family preservation, the number of adoptions would probably be one tenth of what they are now.
Serviced/Diserviced
*Some of those "family services" have declined in the last 30 years, but most have expanded. What has declined are the services offered by doctors, mid-wives and lawyers able to facilitate a black/grey market adoption. Instead these days there are some 3000 adoption agencies and an unknown number of adoption facilitators publically offering their services.
The availability of the much treasured white infant has declined too over the last 30 years, but the availability of children with an "exotic" heritage has expanded enormously.
Unlike 30 years ago, "family services" are no longer just about the availability of adoptable children. Nowadays there are adoption subsidies, adoption loans, adoption preparation classes, post-adoption services, adoption therapies, cultural heritage programs, disruption and respite services, roots travels, reunification services etc. There is an entire industry geared towards the needs and the insecurities of adoptive parents and for every possible issue there are "professionals" offering their services.*
-All of this only further waters down any childs real ability to be protected in the new frontier of computer generated 1 click child shopping. Childrens needs are not being cared for in this new era of wholesale world market adoptions. Jurisdictions can't be held accountable and laws to protect can't keep up.-
Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness.
Thomas Paine (1737 - 1809)
How many generations of humanity is it going to take to overthrow a system that is so poorly regulated and out of control?
we were so vulnerable...
You all know I am an adoptive parent of 7 adopted children... 5 are at home. I believe if Holt adoption agency had cared anything for these children, they would have provided the services we needed to adopt and incorporate each sever Special Needs (their definition) child into my home. We were interested; they made it easy; they walked away... THEY defined us to the sending countries as: Having huge success in fostering special needs kids. I never said or pretended any such thing. I told them up front that I could NOT handle the sexually abused child OR the drug abused child. I was given both in adoption. I failed at so much, but I truly tried, and am still giving it my all. But when Niels states the obvious:
"If the same effort was put in family preservation, the number of adoptions would probably be one tenth of what they are now."
I have to add: IF the agencies offered the same amount of after-placement help according to the needs of the child, there would be LESS disrupted adoptions. Also: "IF the agencies were other-than money focused, THEIR priorities would be finding the RIGHT homes for each of these children.
My home was NOT suitable for at least two of my children. We were over-crowded in a small house and they gave me severe needs in two of my children. These children were the ones who, along the way, were severely abused. I have the paper work put together now, but at the beginning it was well hidden until they were home.
The families in Korea and Viet Nam SHOULD have been helped to keep these two children; family SHOULD have been found to assist. Adoption agencies have this mantra: The biological families are not suited for their own children, therefore it is up to THEM to place them in America where we are suitable... They hardly know the adoptive parents who take these children. The just assume because we have the money that we are smart enough to find our own help.
You should READ the paperwork we sign: leaving THEM with NO responsibility for ANYTHING concerning the children they place. It's quite in-depth legalese. They state that they make NO guarantees that the children are as stated by the sending country. THEY are not responsible in ANY way for ANY problems that may occur. They learned their lesson by the many law-suits that began to crop up. Did it change the way they do things? NO! Business as usual: herd them like cattle from one country to another and go back for more.
I used to have great respect for Harry and Bertha Holt, but I now think them to be the biggest fools to ever adopt children. They were OLD. They had a huge family who suffered greatly because the Holt children were made to raise the children while Harry went back and forth to Korea, leaving them to survive alone. Being a single mother, now, I RESENT the hell out of Harry Holt! And how they uprooted those children, taking them back to Korea to live in tents was worse than them living in an orphanage where they at least had consistency and a heritage.
I see adoption agencies as cruel and unfeeling monsters who have pushed the blame onto unsuspecting adoptive parents; and then that developed the "cheap babies for sale" mentality I see in the NOW adoptive parents of the past 20 years or more. I do take my blame for adopting too many children with needs I could never have met. But I turn and point my finger at HOLT adoption agency and scream: "WHY did you do this when you KNEW their great needs were too much for my family?" But I hear K.K. say with a smile: " you can do it, Teddy, I know you can." And look at me now... K.K. do you even care or think of me?
What did I ever do to deserve this... Teddy
lemon-laws
I used to think it was only the unwed mother and ("poor unwanted") child who got used and abused by the adoption industry. Thanks to forward-coming people (like you)and brutally honest stories, I am better able to see how so many AP's have become yet another growing group of victims touched (and dropped) by
family-producing companieshighly motivated adoption agencies.It's WRONG to keep sending when proper resources are NOT readily available and easily accessible.
It's wrong.
On a lighter (and somewhat sour cynical) note, I had to laugh at the following comment:
I used to liken adoption to kennel-keeping and pet-selling. [Foster/adopt the much wanted pet you yourself cannot produce.]
I now see adoption as being a bizarre and twisted human experiment, one that follows the path paved by the automotive industry. Produce the product, and those that have been pre-owned/used, create lemon-laws so the seller (not buyer) gets total and complete coverage and protection. In addition, create new business made especially for repair-jobs. [Don't fix the problem, simply sell the problem to someone else.... hey, isn't that The American way?]
I can almost hear the manic voice of an enthusiastic child-salesman screaming to the public:
"Drive, drive, drive... save, save, save! At _____ , we have all sorts of kiddie-cars sitting in our lot, ready for the taking! Name the size, shape, color and model and we will find it for you, NO QUESTION! Stop by, and ask, "What will it take to sit behind the wheel of my dreams?" We'll show just how easy it can be! It's as easy as ABC, 123!" <small impossible to hear disclaiming voice chattering on about license, tax, registration,tags and other little liability issues>
Who cares if the purchase turns out to be a lemon? The company is protected, and more than likely, the recruited workers can provide a list of "approved" repair services.... upon formal request.
sorry...
I feel ashamed to have written what I did. I did expect perfect children; children who would respond to love. NO ONE prepares an AP for the damage that is already done to the child by ripping them away from their GOD-GIVEN family and traumatizing them to the point of numbness before sending them on a plane to foreigners who don't even speak their language! I think of Kim... and my heart bleeds for what they did to her! DAMN THEM TO HELL! I saw her pictures. WHY did no one else SEE her??? The pain, the trauma, the losses were so hugely etched on her face!
And then I look at the pictures of my own adopted children: before and after. I can see something now. But at the time, they were babies who took time to adapt and that's what they were forced to do. And as more and more children came into the family, the less was evident of their losses because they were stuck in the middle of a family who was HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY!
The signs were there... but I just could not see them. Yes, I loved them. And as Kerry said, " Can Love Be Unhealthy? " Yes, it can be unhealthy, dumb, blind and selfish!
What did I ever do to deserve this... Teddy
Getting the whole picture and story
If a person is trying to manipulate and deceive, how can you punish yourself for wanting to believe the image that's being pushed?
In these cases, I don't blame the doe-eyed AP who wants to believe in the power of love.
I blame the agency-facilitators who operate in such a way that they will pull whatever heartstrings they need to pull, just to make the final sale (and move the inventory).