Such a similar experience. Birthfather contested my adoption in family court but I was “awarded” to Catholic Social Services and a “well-meaning” married couple from highly clannish farm families by a judge with clear political and religious motivations. . Birth mother was forced my her father to relinquish parental rights.

While I appreciate your comment and what it does to try and provide an educational-based solution to the separation of children from their blood, I feel that it fails to take note of the realities of adoption in the United States. The majority of birth mothers (first families) that relinquish their children are not doing so out of a lack of knowledge or understanding of raising kids. I would argue it is the exact opposite. These mothers are putting their children up for adoption because they know EXACTLY how much it takes to properly raise a child.

The reality is that the majority of these adoptions are simply families that do not have the financial means to support their own children. That’s where the solution lies. Make sure families have what they need to support their own children–keeping families together and removing the cause of so much childhood trauma leading to CPTSD and other mental health issues in adoptees. As an adoptee, I know just how much damage was done to me by being separated from my mother only hours after birth. How can we still be so naive to believe that giving (mostly Black and brown) children to other (mostly white) families is an ethical solution?

Shane hit the nail on the head. There exists a demand for children–via infertility, savior mindsets, the belief that people deserve to be parents, and a supply–young mothers/families with no money to feed their children, and no feasible access to reproductive health care.

I have often thought of the issues outlined in Frank’s post: educate parents-to-be on what parenting actually requires. Tending to feedings and changing diapers are not even the basics. Perhaps OBGYN practices and hospitals should be augmented with mandatory – yes, mandatory – training to ensure that every parent is at least exposed to the emotional and physical needs of children through the developing years. Such information should also be readily available on .gov websites for easy and consistent access to all.

It’s astonishing how much we as a society are willing to spend on recovery programs, therapy sessions, not to mention mental health pharmaceuticals. And yet not willing to dig for, name and work on addressing root causes.

We as a society seem to be more inclined to come to the rescue with band aid social programs or direct philanthropy to such causes rather than direct funds to new policies and how to giving all our children a truly fair shot at being who they are.

In hindsight I could have used such education myself. Now my failures surface every so often in well articulated conversations with my young adult child.

Along with their physical wellbeing, children’s sound psychological health should be the most significant aspect of a parent’s (or caregiver’s) responsibility. Perhaps foremost to consider is that during their first three to six years of life (depending on which expert one asks) children have particularly malleable minds, like a dry sponge squeezed and released under water, thus they’re exceptionally vulnerable to whatever rearing environment in which they happened to have been placed by fate.

If society is to avoid the most dreaded, invasive and reactive means of intervention — that of governmental forced removal of children from dysfunctional/abusive home environments — maybe we then should be willing to try an unconventional proactive means of preventing some future dysfunctional/abusive family situations: Educate all young people for the most important job ever, even those who at the time plan to always remain childless. The wellbeing of all children — and not just what other parents’ children might/will cost us as future criminals or costly cases of government care, etcetera — needs to be of importance to us all, regardless of how well our own developing children are doing.

A mentally sound future should be every child’s fundamental right (up there with air/water/food), especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter. Regardless, consequential dysfunctional parenting occurs considerably more often than what is officially known/acknowledged. To quote Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint (Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School): “This is the most important job we have to do as humans and as citizens … If we offer classes in auto mechanics and civics, why not parenting? A lot of what happens to children that’s bad derives from ignorance … Parents go by folklore, or by what they’ve heard, or by their instincts, all of which can be very wrong.”