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Adoption Florida

This is an excellent article on adoption facts!! Working with parents in the adoption process, I have heard many stories that were both great experiences and not so great experiences.  

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/eight-facts-about-adoption-wont-hear-from-adoption_us_59ff7696e4b076eaaae270b2

A few of the tidbits from the article- to view entire article see link above to Huffington Post:

Reality #1. Voluntarily signing away your parental rights is not brave. Raising your child is!

So-called open adoption is a continuum of scenarios starting with birth and adopting parents meeting prior to the adoption, to being identified, to sharing letters at agreed upon intervals, perhaps photos and at the ideal tip of the spectrum – visits. The problem is that even these alleged “open adoptions” all begin with the termination or relinquishing of parental rights, sealing the child’s OBC and issuing one that falsely shows the adopters as the parents of birth. The severance of the rights of the parents of birth gives adoptive parents 100% of the decision-making. They can claim any number of reasons to stop visits or even all communication. Conversely, some mothers find visits too painful. There is no way to force openness to continue if either party is non-compliant.

Reality #2: Children are not clients of adoption agencies nor are mothers in distress or fathers who are too often left in the dark. The only paying clients in the mega billion-dollar industry are those who seek to adopt.

Adoption agencies, whether for- or not-for-profit are business that have overhead and salaries to pay. Not-for-profit and non-profit are merely tax statuses. They meet those financial obligations and make their salaries by completing the transfer of children to those who pay tens of thousands of dollars per transaction. There is no national oversight of interstate adoptions within the U.S. nor any ethical code for agencies and practitioners.

Reality #3: All adoptions are not equal. Programs such as NAAM and the Adoption Tax Credit were both initiated to encourage the adoption of children in state care who might benefit from the security of adoption and both have been coopted by the profit and greed of a market driven industry that procures infants and imports or traffics babies from overseas to meet the excessive demand while rejecting those in care who are labeled “special needs” in some cases simply by virtue of age – the ones the programs were intended to help.

Adoption is not an altruistic act of “saving” or “rescuing” “orphans” when in many cases families have used such facilities to provide education and health services. Nearly 90% of children in orphanages worldwide have family who have no intention of allowing their children to be permanently taken from them. Many countries are terminating their international adoption programs and encouraging adoption within their homeland.

Reality #4. It’s not simple – or cheap — to “just adopt” if you wait too long and find conception does not come as easily past your prime. Fertility is stressful. Treatments are costly and can be painful. Many people experience adoption failures before succeeding. All of this is tremendously draining on the psyche and bankbook.

Rather than sponsor and support adoption, we need to work to reduce demand by providing education on reducing as much infertility as possible by educating the public starting in High School health classes focusing on preventable causes including delayed childbirth. As with cancer and heart disease, there will always be some infertility. But reducing the numbers of sufferers is a goal worthy of pursuit.

Reality #5. Many who succeed in adopting find that while they tried to avoid children with “special needs,” every child who is separated from the person they spent nine months or more with, suffers a trauma. T

Reality #6: Traditional adoption is not the only – or best – way to be provided safe, permanent care for children in need. American adoptions in all states except Kansas an Alaska seal original birth certificates (OBC) and deny adopted persons access their true and accurate OBC for all of his life in most all states. 

Reality #7: In general adoption – both domestic and international - takes children from families in lesser materially advantages situations and places them with those better heeled, so to speak. But how do we measure “better?” Is it all financial? If having more “advantages” is the goal, why not take every child from every family temporarily on food stamp assistance or those from parents working two jobs each to stay afloat and give them all to more affluent professionals, CEOs or celebrities? They’d have “better” lives by dollar and cents standards.

Reality #8: There is no guarantee of a “better” life – only a different one with a huge tradeoff! If adoption is “better” why are so many adoptees so outnumbered in care facilities and why do they attempt suicide at four times the national average?

If adoption is “better” why do professionals and adoptive parents, such as Nancy Verrier, author of The Primal Wound, document the trauma?

Ten to 25 percent of adoptions disrupt before they are finalized. Fewer adoptions fail after finalization according to statistics that are dated and do not include the trend called “rehoming.”