Hopefully you participated in yesterday's game. In case you missed it, the question I asked was:

What percentage of adoptions are contested?

I also gave information to help define what contested means.

Remember that contested means that a biological parent (or other pertinent entity) attempts to legally fight the adoption based on the laws that govern their state. This could be an accusation of fraud or duress or a father whose rights were not respected in the relinquishment of the child. Contested does not mean overturned. Contested simply means "legally challenged."

Are you ready for the answer? Good!

Less than .1% of adoptions are contested each year. (Groza and Rosenthal, 1998). Source.

Don't miss the decimal point in front of that number. POINT-ONE. As in less than one tenth of one percent of adoptions are contested each year. Sort of makes you wonder why the media latches on to the number of cases that they do instead of reporting the 99.9 percent of adoptions that are not contested. Very interesting, no?

I'm always disheartened when I hear that potential adoptive parents are avoiding domestic adoption because "birth parents come back and steal the children." No. For the most part, they don't. And, of course, people are also getting confused about failed matches, contested adoptions and overturned or disrupted adoptions. They are all different things that represent different rights for different people and different places along the adoption process. A failed match, in which an expectant mother chooses to parent her child prior to signing the Termination of Parental Rights, is not a failed adoption or even, as we've been discussing, a contested adoption. Prior to the signing of the TPR, the mother has all rights to the child and all decisions made concerning the parenting of the child (as in, whom will be doing said parenting) are hers to make. After the TPR is signed, we then enter a contested adoption issue of the first mother or father decide, at that point, they want to parent. State laws vary as to the length of time in which an adoption can be contested. An overturned adoption is one that was contested and found in favor of the birth parent(s) or family. A disrupted adoption actually covers a wide range of possibilities and isn't solely limited to birth parent custody disputes.

And now we've learned a little bit about how voluntarily relinquishing birth parents aren't all out to ruin the lives and hearts of adoptive parents. Quite frankly, birth parents are often seeking the same things for their placed children that adoptive parents want for their parented children: stability, love and a great family. Moreover, if we concentrated on ethical treatment of expectant parents in the pre-birth and post-placement phases of adoption research and relinquishment, my guess is that the number would be lower. (Reason being that many contested adoptions are by biological fathers who had their rights trampled upon by unethical agencies and individuals.)

Pass the word on.

Also! If you have a good idea for next week's learning game, drop me an e-mail to jennah at adoptionblogs dot com! Don't forget to come back next Wednesday for the new question! Thanks to all of this week's initial participants! You make blogging fun!

//



Photo Credit.