This Week’s Teachable Moment: Seeking Balance
Okay, so I have another teachable moment to share this week.
Last week, I met with a dear friend who is fully up to date our adoption plans. She is someone who has been with me throughout every stage of this journey. While we were having coffee, she mentioned to me that she recently heard about several adoption reversals and that those stories made her worry about me.
Now, I know that adoption reversals are a very real fact of the adoption process. Many people have shared stories with me about birth moms who changed their minds about giving up their newborns. In most of the cases I’ve heard first hand, these adoptions were reversed before the adoptive families met the babies because they were pre-birth situations.
My friend, however, insisted that she saw some show (she couldn’t remember which talk show it was because they all seem to be the same) that this is a very real phenomenon and that I should be really, really cautious about the whole thing. She was referring to situations where the pre-adoptive parents had had a chance to take the baby home and spend several weeks with the kid only to learn that the birth mom wanted the baby back. And I know that those things do happen. I’m sure that it is absolutely heart-breaking, but given my friend’s advice, I wanted to get a sense some more information before I launch into hysteria mode.
So this week, I visited a leading adoption website. adopting.org and I learned a few things. According to this site, the vast majority, between 80 and 90%, of all adoptions are successful. However, when an adoption ends before it has been legally finalized in a courtroom, it is called a “disruption.”
I also learned that “less than 1% of infant adoption are disrupted” but the older a child is, the higher the disruption rate can be, according to National Adoption Information Clearinghouse disruption rates can range from 3 to 53 percent.” Yikes!
I think that those stats, particularly the 53%, are horrible. And I can’t imagine being in that situation and I hope I won’t ever have to. But I also think that there is a lot of misinformation about adoption, promoted by the media, which winds up creating this air of suspicion about adoption and that pisses me off.
I don’t know. I’m still pretty green in this process. I am just trying to maintain my balance. And I desperately need a balanced view of the adoption journey. These weekly columns help me figure out where that balance is.
Yowza! I think what it so hard is that if one media outlet reports on something, then they all do, and it makes it seem like it’s happening everywhere all the time! good for you going and getting some real stats. Are you planning on an infant adoption? I like those nubmers much better!
1Yes, dearie, we are looking forward to adopting a newborn
2wow! i had no idea about those stats! i’ve been thinking but can’t come to a conclusion as to why. it seems like those with older children would be more definate with their decision to proceed with adoptions than those with children just born.
3Those numbers are certainly scary. But I had to ask myself how many of the older disruptions happen as a result of the adoptive parents. I used to do therapy geared toward helping adoptions not fall through. Many potential adopters are unprepared for the level of behavior and emotional issues that older children can present. Unfortunately lack of secure bonding in early childhood changes the brain and causes lasting issues. So my point is that I wonder how many disruptions on the adoptive end rather than the other side— an area you have control over and makes the process a bit less scary… maybe? a bit of balance.
By the way, I love your title. Isn’t that what we are all seeking all the time?
4A lot of it depends on what the definitions are. We’re trying to adopt from foster care and our state tries to do everything possible to make sure there won’t be a disruption, but until you actually have a child in your house you really can’t know how it works. With 15-year-old Rowan (who visited us but wasn’t technically a pre-adoptive placement, though the hope was he would be able to succeed in our home) he was adamant that being back in the part of the state where the trauma from his past had happened wouldn’t bring up any trauma response for him because he’d dealt with that already. Turned out that wasn’t true at all (not that he lied but that he didn’t know) and it was only because he got the experience that he figured out what he was able to handle. Some things that look good on paper aren’t. Some people are not cut out to be special needs parents. It’s a tough situation and it’s so sad that kids get hurt in the process, but it seems pretty different to me from the domestic infant side of things.
5Some adoptions disrupt, as you put it, for sure, mostly older child adoptions which are much more complicated (but probablly very rewarding when they work). However, it would be interesting to compare the rate of disrupted adoptions with the rate of disrupted parenting – in other words, at what rate kids go into foster care. Just a thought. Great blog, as always.
6I think there is also often confusion, in the media and among friends and family new to adoption, between a disrupted adoption and a failed adoption match. Though both are, of course, devastating emotionally to the adoptive/potential adoptive couple, I imagine a disrupted adoption would be so much more heartbreaking. So the fact that the statistics for disrupted infant adoptions is so low is a relief for many potential adoptive parents.
My understanding (though it could obviously be faulty) is that a disrupted adoption is when the TPR has been signed, the legal revocation period (different for each state) for the TPR has passed, finalization is yet to happen, yet the adoption placement is contested by one of the birth parents or birth family member. My guess is that a disruption would be most likely to happen in an infant adoption if one original parent signed TPR but the second did not or was not made aware of the adoption plan (sometimes, birth-mothers do not name birth-fathers, making it difficult for agencies or lawyers to find the father and procure a signed TPR from him). Any professional and ethical agency will inform an adoptive couple when a potential disruption problem might exist (our lawyer always referred to uncertain situations as ‘at risk placements’) so that the couple can decide if they want to accept the emotional and financial risk.
A failed match is when an adoption placement does not proceed to finalization because a birth parent changes his/her mind during the legal TPR revocation period, or when a match does not become a placement because the TPR is not signed (i.e. the mother changes her mind regarding placement prior to signing TPR). Because the TPR revocation period varies by state (some states have no revocation period and TPR is final once signed, while others have revocation periods of 30 days or more) it is possible for a couple to bring a baby home and begin parenting, only for the child to be removed from their home when the placing mother decides to revoke her TPR. Again, professional agencies and lawyers will always make sure that adoptive couples know the laws regarding TPR and revocation periods in their state.
We experienced three failed matches (the mother decided not to place after the baby was born), and a few of my friends have also experienced failed matches. So in my limited experience, failed matches are a very real risk of the adoption process. But when well-meaning friends and family cite the increase of ‘failed adoptions’ they often really mean failed matches. And yes, failed matches are horrible and gut-wrenching, but they are not the same as having a child removed from your home after all the legal paperwork was completed and you were reasonablely assured you were on your way to finalization and permanent parenthood.
As a side note, we specifically chose a placing agency in a state that did not have a revocation period after TPR because we did not feel we could handle the emotional stress of a child being removed from our home after out IF experiences. Even though ethically I think a revocation period is important for placing mothers, I just selfishly couldn’t handle the potential pain. We have since learned through research that many mothers who change their minds regarding placement do so right before or after birth, not after signing TPR. We have also learned that the statistic for failed adoption matches is around 20%. I think we single handedly helped to raise that statistic
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