My views on adoption changed dramatically in the last 2 years, I like to think I know more about it now, but there’s a part of me that sometimes wishes I didn’t.
At the beginning, adoption was a much simpler concept. Babies waiting to be adopted existed in a vacuum, in various combination of sex, age, and colour, waiting in a suspended state until adopted by their new, loving, and caring parents. The nice people from the Social Services office were there to hold our hands throughout this difficult process, and to make sure we were getting the best possible child to suit our needs. Adoption was the perfect win-win solution: good for the aspiring parents, and good for the children.
I might be slightly exaggerating here, but I assured you, not by much. I suspect I wasn’t the only fool in my class either.
It is staggering how wrong I was back then, and how long it took me to fully realise it. No one slapped me in the face and forced me to deal with reality, not even the adoption training managed that. Learning from the experience of people that have been around much longer that I had… that helped.
Going in, I had incredibly vague ideas about parenting too, while now I have nothing but firm convictions on how children should be raised. All children: in care, adopted, or otherwise. I’m only joking of course, to some extent.
But all this learning is making me a little cynical, and increasingly conflicted.
By cynical I mean that I constantly need to remind myself that these children’s parents should not be pigeonholed for the little that is known about their cases, only so that we can make sense of the situation. I realise they are not all monsters and villains, but people with their own past that needs to be read and understood with the same empathy we grant their children. But after reading about some of the ugliest accounts of violence and neglect, I have a hard time keeping impartial and objective, or calm. And I never met the people involved.
In many cases children must be removed from their families for their own good, but how is that decided? It’s true that making the wrong call could have severe consequences, that’s why Social Services tend to err on the side of caution. But that also means that some of these children should never have been removed from their family at all; it only happens because it’s safer to do so. I can’t possibly imagine how terrifying it must be for a parent to have their children taken away, even if only for a few days, and having to prove they don’t deserve what is happening to them and their children. What will I do when one of these children is sent to my door?
I feel like there is a lot about fostering that I still don’t know, the same way I didn’t know about adoption two years ago. The only difference is that not knowing, back then, never worried me for a second.
There will be things I find hard to accept, or even understand. I hope that focusing all my attention on the children, and do the very best I can for them, will be enough to distract me from the rest of it. Should I come across one of these blood-chilling cases, I’ll turn to the children to remind me that there’s still hope in humanity. And if it turns out that the whole adoption system, however made up of well-meaning people, is broken and unfair, at least I’ll find some comfort in being a well-meaning part of a broken and unfair system. How’s that for a plan?
Don’t forget that it’s Social Services, or in many cases, the police that remove the children but judges who decide their permanency. It is easier if a parent is bad rather than unable to parent because the odds are stacked against the latter and foster carers feel helpless knowing that, with help, they could possibly turn it around.
I’m not sure I fully get what role foster carers take. In my idealistic view foster carer are there to offer support to the children until the situation is resolved. The meaning of “resolved” is the one that escapes me. Wound’t it be better for everyone involved if the children were to be returned to their family if at all possible? But how often is that really the case tho?
None of the children I’ve fostered have been successfully returned to their families, although it has been tried with some. Also, I’ve never fostered a child who I felt ought not to have been removed – I don’t know how I will react/cope if I ever do. I have seen first hand the efforts of SWs and others to try to return children to families and, in my experience, I can honestly say that I really do think that lots of support has been offered to birth families, often beginning years before a child actually comes into care. However, I do feel desperately sad and sorry for the birth parents of the children I foster as it is often abundantly clear that their difficulties have arisen long before they reach the point of losing their children, and sometimes generations before. Sadly, most of the little ones I’ve fostered have been children of care-experienced young people. It does sometimes seem like tragedy piled upon tragedy, and even extensive support from professionals (and some families I have worked with have received really extensive input and support over a long period of time) is sometimes not enough to overcome a range of complex difficulties. It certainly is very conflicting, emotionally.
That’s what I’ve seen with Ben’s adoption too. Ben’s birth parents should both have been helped 20-odd years ago. Their childhood was the stuff of nightmares, and it’s is simply unfair that after all of that, they see their children taken away because (for obvious reasons) they cannot be good parents themselves. As you said, sometimes it goes back generations. During the adoption I felt terribly guilty because I thought that not enough had been done to help them, but the information we had was very limited. You comment gives me hope that Social Services made a real effort to help Ben’s family too, but simply couldn’t. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. (PS: Laura loves the shoes).