Social norms go in and out of fashion like anything else. Some are explicit, others are implicit. Everything from the tip percentage for a waiter to how you raise your children is subject to the scrutiny of acceptability. Unfortunately, adoption too has fallen victim to the whims of social normality, and for many people “giving up” your baby for adoption is simply not a social norm. Martin Narey is looking to change all that.
Teenage girls and women pregnant with unwanted babies should be offered the ‘golden option’ of adoption alongside abortion or struggling on to raise the children, a Government adviser said yesterday.
The call from Martin Narey, the Coalition’s new adoption tsar, will pile fresh pressure on social workers to end three decades of hostility to adoption as a way of finding homes for children with troubled mothers.
Ministers have already tried to clear the way for thousands of children to find new families by ordering social workers and their managers to scrap race rules that have prevented white couples from adopting black children, and barred people in their 40s and older from adoption.
The suggestion by Mr Narey, a former chief executive of Barnardo’s, would mean a return to the practices of the 1970s, when mothers who could not keep their children often offered them for adoption. Since then, adoption has gone out of fashion with social workers, and the number of children adopted from state care has dropped from more than 20,000 a year to around 3,000.
In a report into the state of the adoption system, containing 19 suggestions for improvements, Mr Narey said social workers should no longer press pregnant women with personal difficulties to bring up their children.
And he suggested it was wrong to tell teenagers they would make good mothers.
‘For six months we are all over her telling her how well she is doing – and then she is on her own. What we are doing is cowardly,’ he said in the report, commissioned by The Times.
‘Adoption should be a third option to abortion or keeping the child. It is an attitude that must be allowed to grow.
‘In the U.S. mothers who give their children up for adoption believe they are giving them a great start.
‘Here it is viewed as a success if we talk them out of it..
Changing attitudes: Mr Narey said that pregnant women should follow the American example and believe that if their child is adopted it is being given a good start in life‘I am afraid some people just don’t like adoption. They think it is social engineering, allowing middle-class people to bring up working-class children. Where there are successes, professionals are apologetic about it, like it is some sort of tragedy.
It’s controversial to want to encourage young mothers to routinely consider adoption, but the alternative is that they routinely consider less positive options. Wouldn’t it be great if all young girls had it in the forefront of their minds that if they did get pregnant, they could always choose adoption?








Funny, same country that went berserk the day before when the report of abortions due to fetal anomalies came out. Loads of loving parents lined up around the block to adopt Downs babies, right?
Oh, you want to know the qualifications for ‘adoption czar’?
Actually, http://www.rainbowkids.com/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=618
Yes.
According to this article the Daily Mail, there are 60,000 children in the state care system.
I fail to comprehend how anyone can claim that it is the so-called “loving” option.
Children end up in the state care system typically once their parent(s) are unable to care for them for socioeconomic reasons (as well as imprisonment). Not all of those children are in fact available for adoption.
According to this data, http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/foster.pdf#page=3
only 25 percent of those children are actually available for adoption, while the majority are in foster care until their parent(s) are able to care for them again.
By encouraging adoption early on, rather than single parenting for teenagers who later find themselves unable to care for their children, and bettering the adoption process (ie. speeding up wait times) I think Narey is in fact going to lower the total number of children in state care.
Firstly, infants have a higher adoption rate, and by cutting that “3 year wait time” more available children will be adopted. And secondly, by encouraging disadvantaged young girls to choose adoption (and this is where he is controversial), Narey is hoping that they can avoid having to foster their children in the future.
Blah. No, no, no.
Promoting adoption encourages the idea that you shouldn’t parent unless you are in great circumstances. Young women are told that their child would be better off without them. It tells them a child deserves more than they have. Those are nasty messages to send to young women and while they might encourage the mother to place the child for adoption, the same message can encourage mothers to abort. Or people use those same arguments that a teenage girl needs to complete her schooling, or get a career, or whatever… its the same argument whether the girl is pushed towards abortion or adoption. Yes, there’s a world of difference for the child, but when the message is the same there’s going to be problems.
Promoting adoption also encourages the idea that the parents should bare all the burden of the child. It suggests the responsible thing for a broke or single parent to do is give their child to someone with more money. (“Not wealthy enough? Then you shouldn’t have a child. Don’t expect anyone else to help you raise the child…” “Why should my taxes pay for daycare… parents shouldn’t have a child if they can’t pay for it…”) How do we get the political will to end child poverty while at the same time selling people on the idea that poor babies should be given away to wealthier “more deserving” parents?
In what you quoted, what stands out in my mind is that line “for six months we are all over her telling her how well she is doing – and then she is on her own.” The solution isn’t to encourage her to give up the child earlier, the solution is to have supports available to her for longer. Don’t walk away at six months! Help longer! Offer better help. Real help. Lots of help.
And work more on prevention. Young women need to see possibilities in their lives. They need to have hopes and dreams, and the practical means to obtain them, so that they have reasons not to get themselves pregnant.
Yes, women should have adoption as an alternative to either aborting or raising her child. Unfortunately there’s still tons of stories of women who wanted to raise their own children being pushed into giving the child away. They are told it is the loving thing to do. They are told the child will have a better life without the struggles the mother faces. But it doesn’t always work that way. There are no guarantees and many come to regret it. Even the modern “open adoptions” where the mother still gets to hear how her child is doing doesn’t always work, as they are not legally enforceable and way too many close too quickly. Imagine knowing that if you do anything the least bit wrong… if the child likes you too much, or if you offend in any way… you might never get to see your child again.
The problem with “pro-lifers” is they treat women as morons, and pregnant women as prey. It is as wrong to “promote” adoption or parenting as it is to promote abortion (which only really happens in the minds of ignorant people or conservatives). Adoption can be a minefield. Ask anyone who has been adopted. I shudder to think that anyone in their misplaced zeal to save the unborn, would make it their business to talk a young woman into placing her child for adoption, then inevitably walk away from her life and go on to the next vulnerable girl. Women must be free to make their own choices and abortion must remain a legal and safe option. If we want to encourage adoption and parenting, then we need to enable those options with a bigger social safety net, including universal daycare to make those options realistic for everyone. Yet, we elect a conservative government with its head stuck in the fantasy 50’s, refusing to help families in any way that recognizes the economic and social realities of our time, never mind the aspirations of women.
And if you want to reduce the incidence of abortion, then reduce unplanned pregnancy. If you think you do this by offering less sex education and reducing access to birth control, well guess what? That’s what we are doing right now and how is that working?
Calvin Waters: No one here is treating or has ever treated women as “morons” or “prey”. If you can’t be civil, your comments will be deleted.
@Christy
I absolutely agree that encouraging young women to aspire early on should be a priority. But in Mr. Narey’s defence, adoption in the UK is something that, as it does in other countries, carries negative undertones. If you read almost any English novel one can see how steeped in class struggle the English existence is. Adoption, for this reason, has been viewed as he stated as “social engineering”.
Yes, there are incidences of forced adoption, and that’s absolutely not what anyone is in favor of. But can adoption itself be a positive option? Of course.
That being said, UK teen pregnancy rates in certain areas have been on the rise, including those among girls under age 15. Narey obviously doesn’t wish to treat them like “morons”, but it’s probably in their best interest to let them know adoption is an option.
It’s not wrong to want to make adoption a more accessible and socially acceptable option, and it’s certainly not wrong to want to make that process take a lot less than 3 years to complete. Girls, especially those who don’t intend to keep their babies, should be told adoption is available.
It’s interesting that I know many adopted people, but very few who have put their children up for adoption. It shouldn’t be something women are made ashamed of.
Jennifer, I think pregnant women know adoption is available just as they always know they can parent. They don’t have to be “told”, as you put it. This is what I mean by treating women as “morons” – like everyone in the world knows about the secret of adoption, except pregnant women. When a woman faces an unwanted pregnancy, she is very alone with the problem. No matter how many people around her are offering her help and advice, she is the one who must live forever with the outcome, and whatever her choice, there is no easy way out. Trying to convince someone of your preference only serves to make you feel good and holy, but it’s not a process that serves her well, and is certainly not a good counselling model. She needs to make her own decision, one that she can live with.
Your observation that few adopted people put their own offspring up for adoption speaks to the complexity of adoption, and not just social stigma. I know people who were adopted and were raised in happy and loving families, but say they could not-would not ever place a child for adoption. Maybe less stigma (I really don’t think there is much stigma) would go a long way to normalizing the lives of adopted people, but the questions and conflicts of not knowing one’s bio-parents is a natural response and can be a difficult process for many. Some people just do not want to inflict that on their own.
The point is not that people are unaware of adoption as an alternative. People are aware of lots of things but before choosing them they need a significant amount of information. This is what pro lifers support, lots of information about the various options that could provide potential parents with alternative options to killing their baby.
Part of the reason you and Jennifer disagree is that your concern is with the mother making a decision she can live with. Jennifers concern is with not taking a baby prior to being born and killing it. The differing ends make for different approaches.
If an act is wrong then feeling bad for committing it is a healthy human response. I know women and men who feel bad for killing their baby, this is a healthy response and crucial to their own healing. I know a woman who had an abortion very close to full term. After she had a baby she was traumatized knowing that she killed a baby only a few weeks younger than the baby she held in her arms. You seem to be suggesting that we should seek to cultivate a kind of sociopathology where she and others would never ever have to come to terms with the tragedy of what happened. Even muddying the water by making a mother imagine the future of the baby (as inevitably occurs when adoption is considered) are to be shunned. The ‘pro choice’ movement wages war on information in order to engender an inhuman ignoring of the natural progression of the life inside her. I wish I knew why as I could maybe dialog more clearly with them if I did. To me your concern with dehumanizing the moral reasoning of the mother is part of an approach to moral reasoning that has a very sinister history.
Sorry, I just want to edit my last sentence. Perhaps it reads better as “I know many adopted people, but very few people who have put their children up for adoption.” I wanted to make the point that parents who choose to give up children for adoption don’t talk about it and it’s not necessarily acceptable for them to do so. I don’t think they should feel ashamed of speaking up, as it’s clear we would all benefit from their input.
Also, this article about Narey is predominately about very young girls, and they probably don’t in fact know what adoption fully entails (many adults don’t either).
I appreciate everyone’s comments, and it’s clear from this thread that adoption needs to be discussed in the public realm more often.
As a birth mother, I am so glad that adoption was suggested as an option for me. I was certainly not able to raise a child at that time, and so was able to release my child into the hands of a loving family. I had always felt I made the right decision, and this was reinforced when I met my son again when he was 22, and saw what a wonderful young man he had turned out to be. We now enjoy each other’s company several times a year, and I thank God for the blessing that he is in my life.
to Calvin: I really can’t see how aborting a child is better than inflicting a difficult process on one’s own. You can’t experience even a difficult situation when you’re dead.
I read an article in the Canadian edition of Reader’s Digest about how in vitro fertilization and invasive fertility treatment should be paid for by the taxpayers. Stand back for a bit and imagine a country where in one part of the hospital abortions are being performed paid for by taxpayers and in another part invasive, costly, largely ineffective procedures that treat early living beings as commodities are being carried out paid for by taxpayers. There is really no such thing as an unwanted child in the world today – somewhere, someone wants the child, with Downs’ Syndrome, without. There is nothing condescending in getting that message out and in doing so one is not treating a pregnant girl or woman as a moron or as prey.
I speak from experience. I became pregnant as a result of “non-consensual sex,” planned to give my baby up for adoption and then changed my mind when she was three weeks old. I was treated very well by all involved at all times in the process. Adoption is a noble choice and it dignifies the situation of an unexpected pregnancy.
Hi Jennifer;
My story goes back 73 years, when born to a teenage mother who could not support me or care for me along with a brother and a sister. We were all put in an orphanage that gave us loving care and the necessities of life. It was war time and times were difficult as I understand.
My brother was a toddler and my sister a baby when our mother lost the means to support us and the family could not either. The orphanage was a holding place for the young until the family situation could better itself. As it turned out my mother remarried and I was taken home to a step father and mother. My brother was taken home by an Aunt and my sister was put up for adoption.
We have all survived and became contributors to society, and have reunited. I cannot see how this loving option would survive today in the secular progressive society that we live in. The orphanage run by a protestant church affiliation provide a time period for decisions and adjustment of emotions etc. Whereas today it seems that decisions are made while the child is still in the womb and looking at stats that usually means destruction of the child as a popular option.
The orphanage has too gathered negative reaction by the public but my experience is one of joy. My mother and my grandfather visited me regularly which is vividly remembered.
herm
Thank you, Herm, for sharing your story. That’s quite something! And a very different perspective on orphanages. Incidentally, I recall meeting with a woman who ran an abortion clinic once and she said to me, “Do you know what we’d have if we didn’t have abortion?” I expected her to say “back alley abortions.” Her answer? “Orphanages.”
There are those who believe it is better to be dead than living the less than “ideal” life. We here at PWPL are not those people, however (thankfully).
Abortionists are against adoption because it’s competition for their business. Every baby who is placed in the arms of an adoptive family represents a lost sale for the abortion industry. The more infant adoptions, the more lost sales the abortion industry experiences, and the less their profits. At anywhere from $300 to $1200 per abortion (depending on geographic location and stage of pregnancy) that can add up to millions of dollars of losses for the abortionists over time. No wonder they try to convince the public that adoption is so cruel, and therefore, you should abort (as if chopping up babies to death without anesthectics is perfectly kind and humane).
It’s all money driven for the abortion industry. For the ordinary civilian who is against adoption, it’s a matter of being brainwashed by the abortion industry that has everything monetary to gain when society turns against adoption.
If only the positions in this story were adopted by all social services organizations and pregnancy clinics. If you are truly prochoice, then all options should be presented in full living detail and I firmly believe that adoption numbers would take a dramatic rise. Adoption providers, such as myself, are looked upon with disdain and suspicion and denigrated as “baby brokers” instead of the loving match makers that we are, helping these pregnant ladies through a difficult time and a difficult, but loving, decision to allow the child to live with someone else.
Open adoption is a far healthier emotional experience than the killing of a child in the womb.