Why adoption should, in some cases, continue
Anti-adoption advocates want adoptions banned in all circumstances. But the issue is more nuanced than that, writes Centre for Independent Studies research fellow Jeremy Sammut.
The Leader of the Opposition got himself into trouble during yesterday’s speech in response to the Prime Minister’s national apology for forced adoption.
Tony Abbott, during the course of his remarks, was forced to issue an apology of his own when some in the audience at the Great Hall of Parliament took offence to his use of the term “birth parents” instead of the preferred term of “separated parents” or just plain “parents”. This apparent gaffe has attracted considerable media attention. However, there was another, more interesting, incident that illuminates the politics behind the national apology.
When Abbott said future adoptions “have to be for the right reasons“ he was again heckled, with one women yelling out: “All adoptions should be banned!”
This is an example of what I call the use and abuse of the history of forced adoption.
Approximately 150,000 babies of unwed, mostly teenage mothers were adopted between the 1950s and 1970s. An unknown number of mothers and their children, including some of those present in Canberra for the national apology, were traumatised by harsh treatment (including coercion to sign adoption forms) and have experienced ongoing pain and loss. Based on these experiences, opponents of adoption claim it should be banned in contemporary Australia (including adoption from overseas) because what happened to the “forced adoptions generation” supposedly proves all adoptions are inherently harmful for devastated mothers and their “stolen” children.
These ideas have been promoted by the anti-adoption academics and lobby groups who led calls for the federal Parliament to say “sorry”. Their aim was to ensure the national apology discredited adoption as socially and politically unacceptable in 21st-century Australia by insisting the nation learn from past mistakes and “never again” sanction any policy that would separate grief-stricken parents from identity-deprived children.
“Adoption is currently taboo in Australia, meaning that child protection services practice what is known as ‘family preservation’.”
The context for the efforts made to shape the meaning and significance of the national apology is the contentious subject of child protection policy. In reaction to past forced adoption practices, adoption is currently taboo in Australia, meaning that child protection services practice what is known as “family preservation”.
Even when parents are highly dysfunctional, all efforts are made to keep problem families together. Instead of removing children, priority is given to providing families with support services that frequently fail to address the serious and often intractable problems (welfare dependence, single motherhood, substance abuse, domestic violence, mental illness) that impede the ability of an underclass of parents to properly care for their children.
This approach is coming under increased scrutiny from critics aware too little, too late is being done to protect children, who in the end finally have to be removed from their families but only after they have been damaged by prolonged exposure to abuse and neglect.
We know, for example, that the flawed family preservation approach is responsible for the increasing numbers of children in out-of-home care in Australia who have “high and complex needs” — serious developmental, behavioural and psychological problems.
The mounting toll of damaged children in care is encouraging state and territory policymakers to realise many vulnerable children would be much safer and have much better prospects in life if they were removed earlier and adopted by good families. This is unthinkable for the anti-adoption movement, which viewed the national apology as an opportunity to nip any revival of adoption in the bud.
The political strategy was to reinforce the taboo on adoption as wrong and harmful. This involved getting the federal Parliament as part of the national apology to endorse the continuation of family preservation policies or else (in the words of the Vanish lobby group) “any national apology will be undermined”. The political objective was to make state policymakers reluctant to publicly support adoption lest they be accused of backtracking on the apology and “stealing” children from parents.
However, my reading of the national apology is that our national leaders did not go as far as anti-adoption activists wanted.
The Prime Minister took a tactical approach. In the modern style of “share your pain” politics, Julia Gillard’s speech extended the nation’s sympathies and focused on acknowledging and expressing the pain felt by the victims of forced adoption malpractices.
Abbott, as befits a seasoned culture warrior, took a more strategic approach and risked mentioning the need for future adoptions in the right circumstances. This was code for using adoption for child protection purposes.
Neither the Prime Minister nor the Opposition Leader explicitly rejected the idea that all adoptions are illegitimate and harmful, but nor did they repudiate adoption based on the history of forced adoption.
Thankfully, therefore, what was said by way of apology yesterday is unlikely to stymie the debate we must have about using adoption to prevent child abuse and neglect in this country.
*Jeremy Sammut is a research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies. His report, The Fraught Politics of Saying Sorry for Forced Adoption: Implications for Child Protection Policy in Australia, was released by the CIS on Tuesday.
I don’t believe that single motherhood is a serious and often intractable problem - especially not in the context as the other issues mentioned. See quote from article - “Even when parents are highly dysfunctional, all efforts are made to keep problem families together. Instead of removing children, priority is given to providing families with support services that frequently fail to address the serious and often intractable problems (welfare dependence, single motherhood, substance abuse, domestic violence, mental illness”
“This apparent gaffe has attracted considerable media attention.”
Really? I haven’t seen or heard a peep about it, but understandable given media standards today.
Good article Jeremy. I think the current “forced adoption” debate has become too black & white (excuse the pun) with all “forced adoptions” being labelled as bad without considering the circumstances. Today’s brilliant First Dog cartoon is heart wrenching, but you could also change the imagery 180 degrees to come up with something completely different. Measured and careful thought is required, not populist rhetoric.
You are joking are you not? “Strategic approach”???
More excuses for any comprehension of the basics of human decency by the LOTO, the nasty mealy mouthed liar, political opportunist?
No. The apology is not compromising a decent and humane approach to the childs needs NO: 1
The apology to the those affected by an illegal, forced, adoption, only re-enforces the need for proper process, correctly funded and staffed to assess very early, that imperative.
Your apologist stance and language to defend the indefensible LOTO’, lack of empathy, understanding, or proper place and time, does not offer hope that YOU would be capable of being part of a solution.
I’ve long got used to the tepid, bland musings of Keane, Dyer,Farmer et al.,but Gawd help me I draw the line at imbibing the toxic propaganda of the Centre for “Independent” Studies. Jeremy Sammut displays the the same ignorance of the psychological destructiveness of forced child/parent separation that led Australia down this path decades ago. I always feel that I should be paid to read the musings of the right- wing think tanks that proliferate in the media. As Crikey is unlikely to pay me to receive its daily email, I am just as unlikely to renew my subscription.
I agree with Louise, single motherhood, per se is not a serious problem in the same way that domestic violence is, though of course many women and children find themselves in situations where single motherhood and a period of welfare dependence are a consequence of domestic violence. As the activists whose campaigning led to the apology for forced adoption attest, adoption is not a solution to a situation defined as socially disruptive (so-called unwed motherhood from the 50s - 70s).
Other interventions in the social issues that Sammut wants to remedy with adoption would cost more money than any currently imaginable government would spend. Think of it - specialist drug and alcohol programmes for mothers that include both children and wide ranging parenting education; mental health provision for young people, for women with children, for indigenous women and men; decent social housing and some real engagement with notions of masculinity that lead to domestic violence as well as peer male on male violence. Adoption seems cheaper - but without the other services I listed, I suspect there will be the need for yet another apology in 35 or 40 years time.
“All adoptions should be banned!” - what an extremist.
And if calling birth parents “birth parents” is a gaffe these days there’s no hope for humanity…..
I’m not interested in the issues raised by the words of the Opposition Leader. He may have meant them or he may have been reading a speech he’d never even seen before. I’m really sorry that those words deflated the whole function because those present did not need or deserve that.
I am kind of interested to respond to the words in the other Crikey article on this subject today - that by the victim of forced adoptions who (probably coincidentally) used the “family preservation” phrase. I think adoptions in the 21st century are a world away from those happening in Australia in the 50s to 70s.
In Queensland today (and probably in all other states), adoption (other than overseas adoption which is a special case) is virtually unknown. You can count on one hand the annual adoptions arranged and coordinated by Queensland agencies. Australia-wide there are probably way less than 100 per year. It is virtually impossible to obtain a child by adoption now and it is virtually impossible to ‘relinquish’ a child, no matter how much you might want to or try to do it. ‘Forced’ adoption is completely non-existent. It simply does not happen, ever.
What does happen is something entirely different and way more disturbing and the author, Jeremy Sammut, supplies us with the tawdry details in the link:
“Some of the issues are beyond debate. The number of reports of child abuse and neglect, as this paper stresses, has increased enormously. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), there were more than 317,000 ‘notifications’ or reports of abuse and neglect in 2007–08. In turn, there were more than 55,000 ‘substantiations,’ involving more than 32,000 children who were found to be abused or neglected, or likely to be. Similarly, the number of children on court orders continues to rise: 16,449 in 1998 and 34,279 in 2008. The rise in the number of children in out-of-home care has been similar: 14,470 in 1998 and 31,166 in 2008. Most of these are in foster care or kinship care. Almost 10,000 of these children have been in care for five years or more, an extraordinary figure. Many of these have had multiple placements.”
Some of these thousands of children would probably benefit from being adopted by a loving family - that is, properly legally adopted rather than ‘fostered out’ as some sort of halfway measure where the state can’t be accused of damaging children in the way that forced adoptions clearly damaged them (and possibly their natural parents - terminology borrowed from the other writer, thank you pedants). Our society might not want to have adoptions taking place but we can’t hide the awful statistics about ‘out-of-home’ care and foster care and we can’t deny the rise of child abuse and neglect. Adoption may well be an acceptable course of action in the 21st century if we are able to differentiate a modern version from the perverted and unjust processes of yesteryear.
i read the article and was starting to agree with a little of what this man was saying but then i read this — -> “frequently fail to address the serious and often intractable problems (welfare dependence, single motherhood, substance abuse, domestic violence, mental illness)”. — - At this point i felt a little sick and had to stop reading.
I work with the broken end result of children left in families they should not have been.
Some adoption is necessary and I know I will be harangued for this view but I stand by it . I would
Never countenance forced adoption at birth but when children are repeatedly left in homes suffering physical and psychological neglect and violence the well being of the children must be paramount - the other issue is where do these children go — because to be frank sometimes the state and services can make matters
Worse not better. .
Yeah, I caught the sickness of single motherhood too.
@Phen - Are you a parent? A mother? IF you’re a parent, how would you feel if your eyes were averted, a curtain in place or even sedated to such an extent that you don’t even recall pushing the baby out, how would you feel if that baby(babies - some women had more than one baby stolen)was whisked away, your breasts were bound up; you were refused even to look at your baby let alone hold him/her and had to cope with married mothers feeding their babies in front of you? You were bullied, threatened etc or told your baby had died and you thought you were signing the necessary ‘death papers’ only to find out years later that your child had been alive all the time?
To then, years later be insulted by being referred to as a “birth mother” would be insulting at BEST!Abbott at best is bone lazy. This sort of thing has happened before. The reason is that he’s too lazy to do any research, and in this instance when this is coupled with his own gross insensitivity, you get the words that fell out of his mouth and insulted already distressed, traumatized people!
Women were yelled at, threatened etc, and were told that if they didn’t ‘sign’ their other child/children would be removed from their care/their parent’s home etc?
Mothers these days are only guaranteed a bed for 4 hours after delivery. They receive a couple of home visits and that’s about it. There’s no Baby Health Centres like the years when my sons were born(1960’s) and thus no support for new mothers, and exhausted parents have little to no help except perhaps from their computers via online help or support groups etc.
By contrast, states that follow new babies for at least one year(SA did at one time, not sure of others) have less post natal depression negative outcomes or domestic violence, child neglect or abuse; mothers or babies being readmitted to hospital etc - these situations can be and in many cases are acted upon before they cause real problems? Also, spending a ‘dollar a day’ in this way on a family with a new baby helps prevent having to spend many in the future due to criminal activities resulting in prison time/costs etc.
Of course, all of this makes too much sense, costs money and is not a national policy, and so the need for foster care/adoptions etc sadly is a reality!
What is “intractable” about dependance on welfare? Prior to the Whitlam Govt introducing sole parent financial support in 1973 (which resulted among other things in the sharp decline re the flourishing adoption activities) meant that women exposed to violence could leave and not be forced into poverty? Many of the sole parents today are women who were in what they believed was a permanent relationship, but it broke down or violence either physical, sexual or emotional (or all three) forced them to leave to save their lives? Also, single mothers could keep their babies and nurture and raise them in loving environments. Most mothers, even poor ones raise their kids with love and support. Extended family members can also become involved. I am at present (with a great grand child) and am delighted to do so. I look forward to a loving relationship with her always, as we’re bonding strongly while she’s a baby. Many other families have and are doing the same and are loving it!
NSW has a policy(introduced by the Labor Govt)called ‘Staying Home, Leaving Violence’ where a woman and her children remain in their home but the perpetrator(mostly men) have to leave. This means that the children can keep going to their school and enjoy their friends etc, their mother can go to her job as usual(if she’s lucky enough to have one) and the woman doesn’t have to start furnishing another home/unit/flat etc. However, this is not always practical (to protect the woman/kids) and the budget has restrictions re numbers to be helped each year.
The last year resulted in domestic violence costing $13 BILLION to the economy. It makes sense to me to support the woman and her new baby in all circumstances and thus negating the need for them to be separated, except in extreme circumstances - (assuming that the community would assist in preventing all others).
Of course another vital aspect is EDUCATION - re sexual behaviours, rights, responsibilities, contraception etc by responsible people and of course parents. I’m often amazed by the lack of awareness of simple bodily functions pertaining to conception etc. Better, free access to contraception would probably lessen the number of births, but of course when a former Treasurer encouraged more babies and a govt made it difficult to access abortion etc, the birth rate rises while education is insufficient or absent!
Funny how a national govt finds $11 BILLION to hand out to the fossil fuel industry, heaps more to the superannuation industry, but cries poor re paying single parents a miserly amount after their youngest child turns 8. Nobody in the govt has explained or even mentioned how a sole parent goes to work at 7.30 or 8.30 am and also provides supervision for an 8 yr old before and after school? I’m waiting for (but hoping for none)the first instance of a medical or other emergency arising when said child/children are alone in the home during these hours? ‘Latch key kids’ is the term these women will be accused of? Of course it will be her fault. She’ll be a ‘bad mother’ blah blah blah!Shock jocks will accuse her and the ‘current affairs’ sensationalized headlines will blast her also!If Labor is still the govt, msm will blame them, if the Libs are in, the mother will bear the brunt! Have seen it happen before! We learn nothing from history!