The lie behind the question: Aren't those kids better off adopted?

Jane

Aren't kids better off adopted? That's the underlying argument of adoption apologists who feel the answer is an obvious yes. "Maybe mothers were misled about adoption or fathers were tricked by Utah's laws into losing their rights, but at the end of the day, aren't the kids better off with living in an intact family with more money who can give them better opportunities?"

Now that shame no longer propels young women to give their babies to strangers, the adoption industry relies on "better off" to acquire children. Mothers aren't giving up their babies; they are giving them more. American Adoptions, for example, claims that: "...birth mothers are choosing life for their child--a life complete with all of the hugs, laughter and lullabies that they desire for them.... Birth mothers place their babies into the arms of eternally grateful
loving families that will spend their days appreciating the gift that a special woman gave them."

Advocates for international adoption use the "better off" arguments in spades with a dose of divine destiny thrown in. "God wants us to rescue children from Russian orphanages or mud huts in Uganda," they argue conveniently ignoring the kidnapping and corruption which brings these children to our shores. 

THE TRUE MEANING OF 'BETTER OFF'
What's wrong with the "better off" argument? For starters, the Donaldson Adoption Institute, the Child Welfare League of America, and numerous other experts on child welfare tell us that the vast majority of children are in fact better off with their biological families, even if these families are headed by a single parent struggling to make ends meet.

I'm sure we will hear from adoptive parents who will comment that their children's birth parents are imprisoned for major felonies, drug addicts, mothers who have had a zillion kids with a zillion different fathers and abandoned them all, and so on.

For most of the 15,000 infants each year given up for adoption in the United States, however, this is not the case. We know this because the adoption agencies and attorneys who place these children promise their mothers that they can be actively involved with them through open adoption which the courts would not allow if the mothers were a threat. The children are given up because young parents like Catelynn and Tyler of 16 and Pregnant fame buy into the "better off" myth.

Although social scientists today favor family preservation, that view can change and the opinions of those who advocate redistributing children from natural parents to "better" parents might dominate if this trend continues, just as it did a few decades ago when Lorraine and I gave up our daughters. Fortunately the right of parents to nurture their children has greater protection than the changing views of social scientists: the U.S. Supreme Court has held it as an intrinsic liberty right which can be taken away only after due process.*

Last week, however, the majority of the Supreme Court glossed over these decisions in holding that the Indian Child Welfare Act protected only "intact" families, ruling against Dusten Brown, an unmarried Indian father who sought to raise his daughter, now three and a half. She has been living with him for more than a year.

NATURAL PARENTS HAVE RIGHTS, TOO
In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor (herself the child of a poor immigrant family with an alcoholic father and a distant mother) noted the folly in focusing on the "intact" family:

"The majority's focus on 'intact' families ... begs the question of what Congress set out to accomplish with ICWA. In an ideal world, perhaps all parents would be perfect. They would live up to their parental responsibilities by providing the fullest possible financial and emotional support to their children They would never suffer mental health problems, lose their jobs, struggle with substance dependency, or encounter any of the other multitudinous personal crises that can make it difficult to meet these responsibilities. In an ideal world parents would never become estranged and leave their children caught in the middle. But we do not live in such a world. Even happy families do not always fit the custodial-parent mold for which the majority would reserve IWCA's substantive protections; unhappy families all too often do not. They are families nonetheless."

In his dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia put it more succinctly: "We do not inquire whether leaving a child with his parents is 'in the best interest of the child.' It sometimes is not; he would be better off raised by someone else. But parents have their rights, no less than children do."

Let me add: The "better off" argument is not limited to child welfare; it has been used historically to justify all manner of exploitation by the powerful. Europeans claimed native Americans, Asian, and Africans were better off under European rule, allowing Europeans to exploit these people and their lands. Before the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, many Southerners argued that "darkies were better off in the south" because "we take care of them while Northerners left them to fend for themselves and they get into trouble.

As we celebrate the birth of our nation, we at First Mother Forum hold this truth to be self-evident. Our hope is that the South Carolina court comes to the same conclusion--again--and lets a father who wants to raise her daughter do so.
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The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption
"The Child Catchers is a shocking exposé of what the adoption industry has become and how it got there, told through deep investigative reporting and the heartbreaking stories of individuals who became collateral damage in a market driven by profit and, now, pulpit command."--Amazon
Jane's review:
The Child Catchers exposes the stench of international adoption--and domestic adoption too
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From FMF
Giving Up Your Baby?
The Child Catchers exposes the stench of international adoption--and domestic adoption too
Catelynn and Tyler--still grieving over the loss of their daughter
(Pro) Adoption Special: Dr. Drew encourages teen moms to give up their babies
How the Internet is changing adoption
Supreme Court rules against Indian father. limits Indian Child Welfare Act
Natural parents have the natural right to nurture their children

SOURCES
*Smith v. Organization of Foster Families for Equality & Reform, 431 U.S. 816. 845 (1977)
Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 68 (2000)
Adoptive Parents v. Baby Girl (2013)
American Adoptions
Sonia Sotomayor

Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self  The title says it all: the lifelong search for identity. If being adopted was so great, adoptees would not embark on a "lifelong search for self." A personal favorite of Lorraine's explaining the adoptee sensibility.

"Like Passages, this  groundbreaking book uses the poignant, powerful voices of  adoptees and adoptive parents to explore the  experience of adoption and its lifelong effects. A major  work, filled with astute analysis and moving truths."--Amazon   .