Adoption and Parent

Making decisions about the future for a child in foster care can be difficult and controversial. "Options include: returning the child to his/her birth parents; termination of parental rights (a formal legal procedure) to be followed, hopefully, by adoption; or long-term care with foster parents or relatives. Most states encourage efforts to provide the birth parents with support and needed services (e.g. mental health or drug/alcohol treatment, parent skills, training

Adoption is the process in which a person takes over the parenting of someone else’s child and permanently transfers all the responsibilities and rights from the biological parent or parents. Giving up a child for adoption is a very difficult decision for a mother to make. Today, many children are being parented by a single parent, a grandparent, a stepparent, foster parent or other parent figure. Making adoption an option is done by providing loving, responsible, and legally permanent parents to a child when their biological parents are not able or will not take care of them.(Carter)

Foster Care and Adoption are the most multi-faceted areas of child welfare. Foster care consists of placing children outside of the custody of their parents or legal guardians. This out-of-home placement can be temporary or long-term. Adoption on the other hand, consists of the legal and permanent process that establishes a parent/child relationship between individuals not related biologically (Downs, Moore, & McFadden, 2009). These two areas of child welfare are constantly evolving and the decisions made on a child’s behalf can affect many areas of their biological, spiritual, social, and emotional wellbeing.

The reasons why some biological parent(s) cannot take care of a child anymore is usually because, they have a drug addiction problem where all their money goes to support their drug habits, and not providing food for the child. The parent(s) is an alcoholic, where they also use all the money for their alcohol use, and where it usually leads to abusing the child, when they have been drinking heavily or high on some kind of drug. Another can also be that a child came from a very young girl, who can’t take care of the child and decides to give them up for adoption. Then there is also a part where the child goes through a

According to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting system, in 2011 there were 104, 236 children waiting to be adopted in the United States (p. 4). Adoption is the legal process an individual or family goes through to gain legal custody of a child in foster care. This child’s parents have lost custody of their child because they have been deemed unfit to raise the child, either because of neglect or abuse. After the child is removed from the horrible situation, he or she is taken by child services and placed in a foster home or with a family member. This system is in place to protect children from further abuse, neglect and trauma. Today, children in foster care are in the system for a very short period of time; there is a

A question asked by few, but the answer known by millions. The definition of the Foster System is “a temporary arrangement in which adult/s provide for the care of a child or children whose birth parents are unable to provide care for them” (Center). The adoption system is more or less the same, except adoption is a permanent placement of children with an adult/s that is not their birth parent/s (Center). Foster care can be informal or arranged through the courts or a social service agency. Usually, the overall goal is to get the children back to their birth parents, but that may change if there were another option that would be better for the child (Center). An example of the courts trying to get a child back to their parent would be with the story A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer. This story is an autobiography of Dave’s life dealing with an abusive mother for years, and it continues with a sequel that goes to show how the courts almost put Dave back into the care of his mother, but then he testified and went through living in the foster system until 18. Once the option of going back to the birth parent is out of the question, adoption is the next step. A story that shows this would be Tricia Spellmon’s story. She was put into the Foster System as soon as she was born, and was moved to different homes until the age of 2. After being at that home for two years the foster parents decided to adopt her, and at the age of 4 she became a part of a better family (Spellmon). This type of adoption is called a foster adoption, which means that a child is placed into a foster home with the expectation that the foster parents are going to adopt them (Center). The other type of adoption is when the foster parents will not adopt them, but since they are in the foster system the birth parents rights have been terminated, so children are legally free for adoption (Center). In the end, the adoption system is just a branch of the foster system, and

However, there are major problems in the Foster care/ Adoption system and many children continue too many years in foster care without a permanency plan. According to The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Adoption and Foster care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) from October 1, 2007 through September 30, 2008, there were 123,000 waiting to be adopted. Currently there are 200,000 plus children in foster care nationally. Many have been in continuous foster care for as long as 2-3 1/2 years. (1.) Initially children are placed into the foster care system because of high risk safety factors which determines how the government will respond. What’s not clear at the time is that the child may have underlining problems- mental health issues, truancy, juvenile delinquency. Once placed in foster care if the issues are not detected and the case management plans do not address the underlining problems they may be aggravated and increase the severity of the child’s conditions/ behavior. (2.) Many times agencies and case managers do not have access to information and files that their counterparts have even when they are involved in the same case because of

More than 100 000 children and youth in Canada are under the protection of Child and Family Services and the majority of them enter the system with emotional, physical or behavioural problems that need to be addressed (Hebert, P. C., & MacDonald, N., 2009). A foster child is described as a “young person who is temporarily entrusted to the care of adults other than his parents or legal guardian” (Being a Foster Child). There are many reasons why child welfare workers pull children out of their homes and place them in the foster system. Placement can be either voluntary or involuntary: parents may give up their rights to a child when they feel they cannot care for it, or a child can be removed from a home for its own safety (Being a Foster Child, 2017). Most of the time, birth parents are not able to care for their own children, due to financial problems or extreme illness (Foster Care, 2017). In other cases, the parent cannot handle the child, because it may have physical or mental disabilities, or display uncontrollable or criminal behavior (Being a Foster Child, 2017). Other children suffer from the

“It’s about my entire life, it’s not just about my childhood. I want to know that I’m going to have someone to walk me down the aisle. That I’m going to have grandparents for my children.” -Mary (a girl in foster care). Adoption and foster care is used as a solution to a child not having an adequate home, but because of its many issues, the child is put into an unfavorable position and left with an uncertain future. Foster care is when a child is placed into a home and waits for a family to adopt them. Adoption is the act of taking legal responsibility of a child and to protect them . On paper, it sounds likes like an act of kindness, but adoption and foster care has many issues tied to it. Due to the many problems of adoption and foster care, such as the environment in a foster home, the behavior of their peers, mental instability, the adoption process, a child that experienced it impact their life negatively, as demonstrated in The Murderer’s Daughter by Randy Susan Meyers.

If the child becomes available for adoption, foster parents may apply to adopt. The child best interest is the primary consideration when selecting a forever family. Whereas adoption is legal and permanent parental custody of a child along with all rights, responsibilities, and filiation. The adoptive parent take on all responsibilities of raising the child. (Center, 2017)

There are worse problems than not knowing whom their donor parent is, though. Lots of donor children grow up not knowing that they have a greater chance of having a medical problem. To donate, a person does not have to take any certain tests. They just have to show up and if their sperm or eggs look fine the hospital staff take it. “Regardless of socioeconomic status, donor offspring are twice as likely as those raised by biological parents to report problems with the law before age 25. They are more than twice as likely to report having struggled with substance abuse. And they are about 1.5 times as likely to report depression or other mental health problems,” said Karen Clark, an investigator. Not only are donor children more likely to get into problems with the law, they are more likely to get into problems dealing with their health. That is why donor children and their parents, the ones who raised them, should be allowed to know who the donor parent is.

Secondly, birth parent’s intense stress can continue into later years like on the child’s birthday and while they think of what type of person their son or daughter might have become under their care. For example, an adoptee might study and learn to play instruments very well with the adoptive parents, but if the child would have grown – up with his/her birth parents. They might would have been a great artist, but since this was not the case. The child may not develop those skills as the birth parents would have hoped. Through all this loss and guilt, the relationship among both parents may fall apart because of how each one feels about the adoption and their parent’s lack of support will distance them all even farther from one another. A major case is when the birth mother may have to leave her home and family due to pregnancy, which would degrade her educational and work status in the community. (Information Gateway) The birth parents have to encounter much hardship and denial to of most of an adoption plan, but more current issues, such as their shame, identity, and long- term issues effect them as well.

     Adoption is metamorphosing into a radical new process that is both sweeping the nation and changing it. But this process is not an easy one, there are many steps to go through. Through research it is made a lot easier. Adoption is a also a highly visible example of a social institution that has benefits from and been reshaped by both the Internet and the exponential growth of alternative lifestyles, from single to transracial to gay. It is accelerating our transformation into a more multicultural society; even as it helps redefine out understanding of “family.” The process includes three main steps including a type of adoption, the techniques for location a baby for adoption, arranging

Most of the time it is nearly impossible to receive full information on their birth family. In many cases these children experience the loss of important medical history and genetics. Adopted children are fragile individuals that can get hurt easily. At times simply taking an adopted child to the doctors for questions and a physical it is possible to make them feel pain and have awkward feelings because they are not exactly the same as their adopted family. That shows them that they are different and came from somewhere

Since 1776, the United States of America has had a growing problem with orphans and childhood adoption. Orphanages become overpopulated while foster homes shelter up to 3 children on average. The foster care system has been viewed as positive reinforcement for American homes; yet the point of fostering children is consistently overlooked. Adoption is necessary for orphans, foster children, or children in abusive homes. The act of adopting a child comes with positive benefits and fiscal responsibility, such as government assistance and wiser spending. Children obtain a healthy childhood with a familiar sense of belonging. The drawback of this is the long governmental process of petitioning for adoption. Seeking the birthparents, if they are alive, retrieving consent, being fiscally responsible, and having a safe environment for the child to grow up in are all responsibilities to look forward to when adopting a child. The adoption rate in the United States of America needs to increase dramatically, as there are social benefits, mental health improvements, and economical advantages for families who adopt.