The Social and Cultural Politics of Adoption

1. The Social and Cultural Politics of Adoption Transformations Week 10

2. Structure of lecture • Media interest in adoption • Legal and policy context • Who’s fit to parent? • Transracial adoption • Inter-country adoption

3. Media interest • Labour MP Clare Short’s reunion with her son ‘given up’ for adoption • Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies; Jackie Kay’s The Adoption Papers • ‘Internet adoption’ by the Kilshaws (2001) • November 2010 – a Christian adoption advisor dismissed for refusing to recommend same-sex couples as suitable adoptive parents lost claim for religious discrimination

4. Legal and policy context • Adoption = legal process by which a child becomes a permanent member of a new family. Birth (biological) parents' rights and legal responsibilities are transferred to adoptive (social) parents. • In UK, adoptions arranged by adoption agencies or local authorities, and made legally binding by the courts. • Birth parents no longer have any legal rights over the child and cannot reclaim children given up for adoption. • Adoption as an irrevocable severing of child's relationship with her biological family largely a European and American practice. • In many third world countries informal adoption and kinship care have always existed.

5. Adoption in the UK: A brief history • Adoption legalized in UK in 1926 – many children orphaned and many women left unable to raise their children alone. • For next 50 years adoption practice was primarily about finding babies for childless couples. • The ‘perfect’ baby was newborn, white, and developmentally normal. • Always more applicants than babies so definition of ‘the perfect adopter’ could be restricted by age, marital and professional status, and wealth. • 1970s saw dramatic drop in the number of babies available for adoption. • Adoption became solution to care problems of children whose parents were unwilling, unable, or unfit to care.

6. Current dilemmas in adoption practice • Identifying circumstances that justify permanently removing children from their birth parents • Finding permanent families for very traumatised children • Resolving policy dilemmas around transracial placements • Ensuring intercountry adoption is carried out in the best interests of the child.

7. Some Statistics: Children in Care • 64,400 children were in the care of local authorities in England on 31st March 2010, 56% boys and 44% girls • 6% of children looked after on 31st March 2010 were under 1 year 17% were aged between 1 and 4 years old 17% were aged between 5 and 9 years old 39% were aged between 10 and 15 years old 21% were aged 16 and over • 73% of children were living with foster carers 10% were living in children’s homes 6% were living with their parents 4% were placed for adoption 4% were placed in residential schools or other residential settings Source: http://www.baaf.org.uk/res/statengland#pc

8. Some Statistics: Adoptions in 2009/10 • 3,200 children were adopted from care in England during the year ending 31st March 2010, down from 3,300 in 2008/9 and 3,800 in 2004/5 • 51% of children adopted were boys, 49% were girls • The average age at adoption was 3 years 9 months • 91% (2,900) children were adopted by couples and 9% (280) by single adopters • 72.4% children were placed for adoption within 12 months of ‘best interest’ decision Source: http://www.baaf.org.uk/res/statengland#pc

9. Adoption and care • Relatively few children adopted from care in the UK • Very few ‘ideal babies’ awaiting adoption • Increase in numbers of newborn babies under a month old being taken into care • ‘Today’s social workers ....are rushing cases through to meet new government imposed targets for improving adoption rates just as social workers decades ago hurried to fulfil the dreams of childless couples waiting in the wings’ (Guardian, 5 January 2008 ‘Unfit to be a Mother?’)

10. The case of ‘Baby G’ • In January 2008, an 18 year old woman gave birth to a son (baby G) in a Nottingham hospital. • Social workers ‘snatched’ Baby G from his mother and placed him in foster care. • The child was removed without his mother's permission because the ‘birth plan’ said she should be separated from the child • The woman won back her son, after obtaining an emergency high court order that ruled social workers had broken the law when they removed the baby two hours after his birth. • Social services succeeded in their second attempt to obtain an interim care order and remove the four-day-old boy from his mother. The baby was placed in foster care.

11. Who’s fit to parent? • Mukhti Campion (1995) argues that historically adoptive parents must show themselves to be extraordinary parents. • Adopted children generally gain an improvement in their social status • Social workers see this as ‘compensation’ • Jane Rowe: Adoptive parents should be married couples of good standing and health, lacking neuroses

12. Current guidelines for adoption • Since 2005 legislation in England defines any family structure as appropriate for a child's upbringing • Single people, older couples with their own children, gay men and women, people who have remarried, childless couples, people with disabilities can all adopt • Gender differences - a single woman may adopt children of either sex and of all ages • - a single man can only adopt a male child, and generally single men are excluded from adoption of very young children, babies or toddlers

13. Adoption by gay partners • Some resistance to adoption by gay couples • Religious opposition • 2007 Equality Act • 11 agencies given 21 month exemption period • Half the Catholic adoption agencies adopted the guidelines • Still controversial: Catholic Care lost appeal

14. Transracial adoption • Transracial or transcultural adoption means placing a child who is of one race or ethnic group with adoptive parents of another race or ethnic group • In the UK and US usually refers to adoption of black children by white adoptive parents • Shortage of black adoptive parents • Transracial adoption is a political minefield

15. ‘love doesn’t see colour’ • In 1950s and 1960s black children were considered 'unadoptable'. • In 1965 a recruitment drive to find parents willing to adopt transracially - mainly middle-class, educated, already parents, living in predominantly white areas • By the 1970s there were three factors backing transracial adoption: • it was seen as successful, • there was a shortage of black adopters • the thinking was that 'permanency' was best

16. Political and ethical questions • Disturbing tales of black children in white adoptive families trying to bleach or scrub themselves white, feeling ashamed of their blackness • Black children falling victim to racial abuse both inside and outside the adoptive home • Longing to know more about their cultural heritage • Were adoption agencies discriminating against black adoptive parents? • 1972: National Association of Black Social Workers came out favouring same-race adoption, calling adoption of black children by white parents a ‘particular form of genocide’

17. For or Against Transracial Adoption? • Promoted confusion about the child’s identity • Denied black children the necessary coping strategies for dealing with racism • Cut adopted black children off from the black community • A ‘same-race’ policy was adopted by UK adoption agencies, championed by London authorities such as Brent and Lambeth. • Adoption and Children Act 2002 sees re-think • Importance of finding a loving home supercedes race

18. Intercountry adoption • Adoption of a child by adoptive parents who are residents of another country • Began in North America as philanthropic response to devastation following World War II, initially involved children moving from orphanages in Europe to North America • As a more global phenomenon, it has grown rapidly since 1990 when the world first discovered Romanian orphans • Global movement annually of about 30,000 children per year moving between 100 different countries

19. The ‘Hague Convention’ • Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, The Hague, 29 May 1993 • Provides a framework for the process of intercountry adoptions • Aims to protect the best interests of the child • Establishes a system of co-operation between contracting countries to prevent the abduction, sale, or trafficking of children • Incorporated in UK adoption law under the Adoption (Intercountry Aspects) Act 1999 superseded by Adoption and Children Act 2002

20. The Kilshaw case • 2001 internet adoption of mixed race twin girls from America by the Kilshaws • paid £8200 in fees, 'quickie' adoption in Arkansas • the babies had already been 'bought' for £4000 by California couple • biological mother wanted them back • a third couple came forward to say that they too had been offered the twins for £5800 • In April that year, the twins - who had known four sets of parents in their nine months of life - were handed to foster parents in their native state of Missouri.

21. Child trafficking • Poverty and war are biggest reasons for children being put up for intercountry adoption • Times of war and social upheaval are precisely when children should not be adopted • UNICEF’s guidelines: ‘In natural emergencies or even armed conflicts there is a very clear guideline that no intercountry adoptions must be allowed for at least two years if a child's family, its wider family, has not been traced.’ • Zoe’s Ark

22. Conclusions and issues raised • the rights of parents versus the rights of the child • how we arrive at notions such as ‘good enough parenting’ • how societies are economically structured to enable some parents to cope with the financial costs of children and not others • sexual orientation and parenting • the commodification of children and new markets in child welfare • neocolonial practices and how the richer West relates to the ‘Third World’ and to parts of the former Eastern bloc • ‘Race’, class, biological and social parenting