If you are against adoption, what should happen to children who are beaten,sexually molested,and neglected...?

Question

born addicted to drugs, etc...by their biological parents. I'm really curious. Especially the ones who are sexually molested. Sometimes it seems easy to complain about a system, but never provide a solution. I want to know people's solution for these children if you are against adoption. I'm not saying this in a confrontational way. I'm really curious.

I'd ask that people please stay on this subject and not rant. I understand that adoptive parents do this to their children as well sometimes but I'm specifically asking about biological parents and their children.

Answer 1

I, too, was labeled an "adoption hater" on that list by that woman who is trying to solicit a baby online here.  Nowhere have I ever stated that I am against adoption in all cases.  Remember, people who are generally not in favor of adoption want something BETTER for the children.  We are advocates for the children.  Interestingly enough, those who seek improvements or replacements to the adoption system are primarily adoptees, and those who would prefer to leave it as it is are primarily adopters.  That alone should speak volumes.

I don’t believe children should be separated from their families except in the most extreme of cases.  Help should always be provided for the parents first in the forms of drug/alcohol treatment, parenting classes, whatever is needed in an attempt to preserve the family.  Adoption is not needed in most cases, and it is not the magical cure that some would like to believe.

To answer your question about children who have been abused, those and the ones with deceased parents, are the ones who are most in need of alternate arrangements on their behalf.  Ideally, they should be placed with relatives.  The next best scenario should be a guardianship arrangement where they retain their identity and there is no deception, pretending, deceit, or name-changing going on.  Adoption with strangers should always be a last resort, regardless of how many people are waiting for children.  (That fact that others WANT children, while true, should be entirely irrelevant when it comes to making a decision on what's best for the child)  Guardianship would be preferable because that is the only solution that most honors the child and is less damaging to him/her in the long-run.

We should be thinking less about what adults want, & more about what the child wants and needs.  For those who say, "But they are only babies or children, they don't know what they want," please listen to those who have lived it and grown up and have voices now.  They will overwhelmingly tell you that reforms to adoption are necessary, particularly when it comes to permanently sealing records.  Taking away somebody’s identity is too high of a price to pay for any child, abused children included.

However, the people who glowingly speak of adoption seldom want one of those older children who have been in foster care.  They want a healthy, white newborn in most cases, and those children are rarely in the system.  What they want is not readily available.  According to the laws of supply/demand, that means it will become more expensive to adopt and more questionable practices will be utilized to meet this demand.  In other words, if there was nobody on a waiting list to adopt, the prices would drastically drop & solutions would be encouraged that promote preservation of the family unit.  It also means that those who want children would more seriously be considering those very children who most need homes.  That should be an indication that the needs of those seeking to adopt often supersede those of the child, particularly in the long-run.

We, as a society, need to examine whether we are really creating a cure to fix infertility for adopters or whether we really have the children's best interests at heart.  Ask if we truly wanted to help those abused children, then why are we not taking them into our homes?  Why are so many overlooked while infertile couples continue to wait years and years to adopt a different child?  I think you will see some hypocrisy there.  In most cases, it doesn't seem like all those people who say “adoption is wonderful and loving” are really thinking of placing the children who are available now & need homes.  Furthermore, guardianship does provide love & care for a child who needs it.  All evidence shows agencies are clearly more interested in finding babies for their adopting clients, and what those clients want is adoption, not guardianship.

Finally, do not underestimate the pain that adoption can cause for those who are adopted, regardless of whether they were abused by either family.  The reason so many people think that adoption is nothing but happiness is because that is the case for the adoptive parents when they get a baby.  When the grown adoptees speak up they are often dismissed.  With abused children, there will always be some pain involved.  Let’s not compound that by adding adoption to the hand they were dealt.

Thanks for asking.

julie

reunited adoptee

Answer 2

I think molested kids should be put for adoption

Answer 3

1-sexually abused, neglected, et al children are not desired by most adoptive parents.

2-most anti-adoption folks are against domestic infant adoption, especially because there is some evidence of coersion of birthmothers; and financial motives to place babies.

3-most babies are adopted from healthy, young women.

4-most babies that are born to drug addicted mothers or to minority mothers usually end up in foster care.

5-adoption appears to be less about providing children with homes; yet providing infertile couples with children.

so here's the gist: most adoption in the US involves healthy infants, usually by a mother who is temporarily experiencing a hardship or is young, as a means to provide a child to an infertile couple.

Answer 4

Great question!  These are things I have been wondering about some of the messages as well.

As a woman who can not have children, I am looking to adopt.  I am going through our local children's services agency and will adopt a child out of the foster system.  Reading some peoples responses, they would feel I am doing something "wrong" by wanting a child.  If the child needs a home, love and guidance, how can adopting them be wrong?  

I do agree that the baby brokerage business is out of control, and I do not agree with "buying" babies.

Answer 5

your failing to get the point. the people that are against adoption arent really against anyone getting a better home. we're against the process.

If you have read the other posts. you will see that most of the people that are happy with their adoptions are the kids that were abused and then got adopted. the ones of us that are miserable were adopted from birth. these are two completely different processes with differnet issues and different circumstances.

adoption is a great idea if it worked. but the system doesn't work. it only seems to work better for abused adoptees than it does for from birth adoptees. It's the incompleteness that we deal with that causes the pain. you really don't have to deal with that pain when you know you're in a better situation than you were.

Answer 6

I am glad to be adopted. I get to call someone dad and have a normal life instead of foster where you could loose your home whenever.

Elizabeth, you think noone should be adopted? You think that will mess kids up more having a real family? You are crazy, no kid in the world wants to be in foster care forever!

Answer 7

So many people do think that ALL adoption is wrong. That's what makes them anti-adoption. Apparently some of these people think that the child should stay with the bio-family because being abused and molested can't be nearly as painful as being adopted.

Maybe the child should go from home to home where the family uses them for just a paycheck and possible grow up in an instituition never being truely close to anyone or REAL part of any family.

this is what happens when people try to "preserve families" at all costs.

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Arch...

These children should have been protected ABOVE ALL!!!

here's somewhat of an update to this story

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Arch...

Answer 8

I am labeled as an adoption hater here so I will try to answer this for myself. I am pro family preservation more than against adoption. That means I think adoption should be the very last resort. That doesn't mean never, it means only as a last resort. I am also more focused on domestic infant adoption. That is what I know about so foster adoption doesn't enter into my opinions much. I simply don't know enough about foster adoption to have many opinions on it at this point. So now that I think about it, I guess this question doesn't really have much to do with me.

Answer 9

Okay, so now people who people who point out flaws in the screwed up US adoption system have gone from being labeled as "adoption-haters" to supporting child abuse.

This question is another pathetic attempt to deflect questions about the truth regarding the corrupt US adoption system and is not worthy of an answer.  If the truth hurts anyone THAT much, I suspect a guilty conscience.

Answer 10

There is this one anti -adoption lady (this lady isn’t even adopted)  who says that children babies of parents who are abusive, etc  should just become wards of other people. However I think most kids would rather be a true part of a family, then to be a ward. That could give kids just as many problems. Their ‘parents’ love them but not enough to legally adopt them.  Why not talk to some kids/people who have grown (or grew) up in foster care moving around constantly, never truly having a real home, most would have given anything to be adopted by a loving family.  It is really sad someone would want this deprived from an innocent child(ren), just because they have their own issues.

Answer 11

So many people here want these situations to be cut and dried - not messy like they are in real life.

I support and promote family preservation but, even before that, I am adamantly against child abuse in any and every form.  ANYone abusing children needs to be called in and educated about what constitutes child abuse.  They need retraining.  Guess what - a lot of people, including adopters, would be among the guilty!  

We live in a child-abusive culture.  We pay our abuses as children forward to the children we raise.  We think that abuses like shaming, humiliation, neglect, spanks, smacks, slaps and, yes, even "time-outs" fall under the category of "upbringing" or "discipline."   We are, for the most part, completely unaware that traditional Western "upbringing" includes a tremendous amount of child abuse.

If we took every abused child from his or her parents, natural and adoptive, there would be only a handful of people left to raise them - millions of them.  So let's not get on our high horse so quickly.

Why, for instance, do you think people get involved with drugs?  Do you think maybe they were shamed or smacked as kids?  Or maybe because they were told if they didn't do their homework or "behave" they would never amount to anything?  Why do you think young people have s*x indiscriminately?  Could it be they are just looking for the acceptance they never got at home?  Oh, we just keep paying the abuse forward, don't we, because we MUST honor thy father and thy mother and anything a child does wrong is the child's fault or flaw.  WE were smacked and shamed, and we turned out just fine, didn't we.  DIDN'T we??  So repeating this treatment is just fine for the children we raise?

"Troubled child," is NOT the child's fault - it is the person's fault who is raising that child.  Children are born innocent and loving.  Most people want to take that "troubled child" and straighten them out, using shaming, humiliation, and smacks or slaps.  Oh, nice, very nice.  Yeah, that'll help.  Not.

Yeah, keep it up, people.  Keep up the abuses you call "upbringing" and "discipline" and then see how it all pans out.

Adoption doesn't fix this stuff.  It is shaming and insulting.  Adoption changes identities, rejects personal histories, defines "ownership," and avoids enlightened corrective measures for those who lose their children.  Adoption condones abandoners and abusers by way of forgiving them (as we take their children) instead of enlightening them.  

Indefinite legal guardianship is much more respectful to children.  

It doesn't matter to me whether the abusers are biological parents or adoptive parents - except that the latter should be held to a far higher standard (if we accept that being adopted offers a "better life").  But history has shown us that children are not necessarily getting a better life through adoption.  It has shown us only that they get a different life.

My solution?  For starters, make spanking against the law.  Make it punishable by law, and removing the children temporarily and educating the caregivers.  If that doesn't work, then indefinite legal guardianship is the next best thing.  And, by "indefinite" I mean the same thing adopters mean when they use the term "forever family."  The difference is that the child is respected and honored by recognizing where s/he came from, his/her identity remains fully intact, the new caregivers do not claim ownership, and yet the child is welcome in that family as long as they want to be a part of it - forever, if that is their choice.

I respectfully wonder why, Dirtyred, you ask specifically about bio kids, when there are far too many cases to name where adopters have also been abusive in every way imaginable - including murder.

Thank you for asking a reasonable question, Dirtyred.  I will not even respond to Florida Gal's draaama and far-fetched ASSumptions.  Maybe someone needs their Rx refilled...

Answer 12

I think more people are labelled "anti-adoption" than actually are. Some people really are "anti-adoption" in ever case.

Usually these people advocate for legal gaurdianships (NOT that abused children remain in abusive families). As has already been stated.

I personally believe that adoption has a very important role in the lives of children without safe families.

I think that at older ages a child should be able to choose if they want to call their adoptive parents "mom and dad" or by their first name. Especially if we are talking kids who are middle school and older and already know their original family as mom and dad. Some kids would LOVE to call their new family mom and dad, and I would never want to deny them that opportunity, but I know other kids are still feeling kind of thrown into a family they didn't ask to be a part of, and I think expecting the title "mom and dad" is not really fair to them.

But I also agree with stinky pete, I have only the knowledge of foster care from friends I have who've been in it, a few family members who've been in it (and were glad to return to their biological families, did not want adoption BUT my family has never been abusive, they were poor and mismanaged which is different)

So I think that people who have been adopted out of foster care, and experienced that kind of abuse should have the first say in reform issues, and maintaining the best system we can for kids of abusive families.

(I was not adopted out of foster care, so I will not speak for anyone who has been!!)

Infant adoption is a really different issue, although they can in SOME cases over lap.

Parents can be obviously dangerous to an infant in which case the child has to be removed. And in such cases, I would say adoption is a good option for the child...

just in my opinion, I think better than institutionalized care hands down. I would say that if a family has the financial means to care for a child and just doesn't want to? That's abuse.

Serious abuse.

Answer 13

i hate people who put their childeren for adoption or just kill the baby because there for that there is no reason to have it if u don't want a baby, SO DON'T PUT UR CHILD TO ADOPTION BUT I GUESS  COULD GET CHILDEREN FROM THE ADOPTION CENTER

Answer 14

I never heard of anyone being against adoption.

But I guess if the mother puts up a kid for adoption without the father knowing about it, I guess then you could have an augment.

It happened to my oldest brother.

And he was married to her, and he was in the Army at the time.

I think she should have gone to jail for what she did.

But in that case, yeah I think he should have fought the adoption.

Answer 15

My mother is my biological mom and my father adopted me.  I didn't know that there were people actually against adoption.  What should the children do then, raise themselves??

Answer 16

I am proudly anti-adoption. I think abused children should be raised by a relative (preferably in another state).

If no relatives are willing and/or able to raise the child, then I believe in foster care and permanent legal guardianship.

Some day (when I'm more financially flush) even I might become a foster parent, but I would never, ever adopt.

Adoption is an un-necessary burden to an already traumatised child.

Answer 17

I too have been labeled an  adoption hater on here, but I'm not. I'm NOT anti-adoption. I'm pro family preservation. I think adoption is an appropriate response for children who are abused, and in fact I think the criteria for "abuse" ought to be lowered, to include verbal abuse.

I don't want to speak for people who DO label themselves anti-adoption, but for those FEW people out there, not a single one that I personally know would still be in favor of allowing these children to remain in abusive or neglectful bio families..... the anti-adoption people I know would suggest legal guardianship for those children.

Seriously, I have never in my life met a person who advocates keeping children in abusive or neglectful homes. Never.