# You give up a child for adoption. Who do you tell? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 29, 2021, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-give-up-a-child-for-adoption-who-do-you-tell/938987 "2021-03-29T19:42:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![mordecaiB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mordecaib/32/7725_2.png) [@mordecaiB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mordecaiB)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2021, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-give-up-a-child-for-adoption-who-do-you-tell/938987/41 "2021-03-31T19:23:20Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Hillary would be managing your health care and your every darkest medical secret would be shared with her. And since she was/is Teh Evil Personified, that would be bad. So of _course_ Hillary would be told you’re an unwed Mom. And where your infant was going. That was only the beginning of Hillary’s world domination plans. Once that was thwarted, she had to fall back on Plan B, the cannibal/pedo operation. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2021, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-give-up-a-child-for-adoption-who-do-you-tell/938987/42 "2021-03-31T20:22:11Z")
And … much like the COVID pandemic being a “Democrat Hoax …” I always think to myself: if the Democrats are _really that good_ at orchestrating such massive, complex, multivariate, and global projects – seemingly with great success and few to no material leaks – then I _definitely_ want them running the country. It’s another great RW CogDissonance thing: they suck, they’re incompetent, and … yet … they quietly and efficiently rule the world. Color me surprised. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2021, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-give-up-a-child-for-adoption-who-do-you-tell/938987/43 "2021-04-01T15:40:03Z")
If I, a 75yo cis man, gave up a child for adoption, I’d tell EVERYONE! ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2021, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-give-up-a-child-for-adoption-who-do-you-tell/938987/44 "2021-04-03T02:29:17Z")
> [@mordecaiB](#): > > The daughter in the book seems to be mentally disabled somehow, tho it has not been elaborated on. She is about to age out of what seems like a halfway house where she has a room with a bed and a small bathroom. She has also been homeless. She’s unable to hold a job because she doesn’t understand the concept of being on time, sees nothing wrong with showing up an hour late for work and doesn’t understand why her boss gets upset about it. Her only friend is a girl even younger than her who convinced her to steal vintage clothing from the used clothing store she volunteers at. The friend sells the clothes on line and they split the cash. > > Given the above, I assume she did go to a good family but they, and any subsequent families, found her too much to deal with. I misread your OP and thought this was a book you were writing, rather than reading. The daughter having some developmental disabilities would still have made it extremely unlikely that she’d have been “in and out of care” if she was born in the 1990s. A failed adoption can happen, of course, but these are people who are vetted for a couple of years, have to go through several courses, and need to have financial resources sufficient that they could have one parent permanently at home if necessary. That’s what parents had to go through to adopt a healthy newborn in the 1990s in the UK. ~ And after a year (I think? Possibly two?) the child is the parents’ child. They can’t just say no, she’s too difficult, take her away. Plus, even a newborn with obvious cognitive impairments would have been placed easily, but with parents who had support from social services. And there would be support for the whole family from social services throughout the child’s minority. It’s just not realistic. As is the idea that someone could be in a “halfway house” without any specific diagnosis. She’d know what it was, and it would be mentioned. Obviously it’s just fiction, but you were asking about it from a real-life perspective. The story seems to be written from the perspective of someone who knew about adoption in the 60s or 70s and treated it as if it were the same in the 90s. ---
**Author:** ![mordecaiB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mordecaib/32/7725_2.png) [@mordecaiB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mordecaiB)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2021, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-give-up-a-child-for-adoption-who-do-you-tell/938987/45 "2021-04-03T05:26:39Z")
A little further on in the book so some more details. The adoptee is a compulsive liar. Her adoptive parents are indeed very good parents and are still trying to help her but she refuses. She has been in therapy and hospitalized for still unnamed reasons. She does not have contact with her parents unless she need something, like being bailed out of jail, which is why she was in a half way house. She lives on the streets by choice and has a series of boyfriends who are drug abusers. She was never in a foster home of any kind, she just tells people that. She has now blackmailed her bio mom for 10,000 pounds so she doesn’t make herself known to the husband and kids. Bio mom still refuses to tell her husband anything. Frankly, the book is so bad at this point I think I’m just write it off as a waste of time. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2021, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-give-up-a-child-for-adoption-who-do-you-tell/938987/46 "2021-04-04T16:36:55Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > The daughter having some developmental disabilities would still have made it extremely unlikely that she’d have been “in and out of care” if she was born in the 1990s. I have a cousin who was adopted as an older child after she was placed with my aunt and uncle as a foster child. She wasn’t adopted in infancy for reasons I won’t go into, because it’s not my story to tell, but it does happen that kids don’t get placed as infants, and end up spending a lot of time in the foster system. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2021, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-give-up-a-child-for-adoption-who-do-you-tell/938987/47 "2021-04-04T22:11:27Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I have a cousin who was adopted as an older child after she was placed with my aunt and uncle as a foster child. She wasn’t adopted in infancy for reasons I won’t go into, because it’s not my story to tell, but it does happen that kids don’t get placed as infants, and end up spending a lot of time in the foster system. Sure, but there will be reasons, like you said. Maybe the mother is serving a prison sentence or is a drug addict, and there’s a chance she might be able to have her child back, so she goes into foster care. A healthy baby, however, with a mother who’s voluntarily surrendering the baby and an unknown father… It’s just vanishingly unlikely that she wouldn’t be adopted as an infant. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2021, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-give-up-a-child-for-adoption-who-do-you-tell/938987/48 "2021-04-04T22:58:56Z")
I’m not saying these apply to my cousin, just that I learned about them when I learned about her background: first, people are very reluctant to adopt any baby born drug-positive, even if it appears to be healthy, and is white, and full term; and a lot of people are reluctant to adopt babies surrendered through safe haven locations, because they are afraid the fathers will come looking for them and have the adoption overturned even years later. Personally, I have my doubts that the second one would happen, but people have been scared by one or two news stories blown up all over the media, and TV episodes and movies using this as a theme. I even know of two couples who adopted from overseas, because they thought it offered protection from a father popping up at some point in the future. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2021, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-give-up-a-child-for-adoption-who-do-you-tell/938987/49 "2021-04-04T23:06:01Z")
TBH I wouldn’t have thought of a baby born drug-dependant as a healthy baby, and often it wouldn’t be a case of voluntary adoption either. WE don’t have safe haven adoptions in the UK, so I didn’t really consider them - I guess that would cause a delay, yeah, but I’d expect it to be a _delay,_ not being “in and out of the care system.” There are a few foundling babies every year, but from reading about them for something I was thinking of writing, even they seem to spend the first few months in foster care then are adopted into nice families. None of this seems to apply to the book the OP’s talking about, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2021, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-give-up-a-child-for-adoption-who-do-you-tell/938987/50 "2021-04-04T23:07:24Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > TBH I wouldn’t have thought of a baby born drug-dependant as a healthy baby, I didn’t say drug-dependent, I said drug-positive. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2021, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-give-up-a-child-for-adoption-who-do-you-tell/938987/51 "2021-04-04T23:23:23Z")
Fetal alcohol syndrome or would be adopting parents’ fears of currently hidden fetal alcohol damage is another closely related issue with newborns with unknown or rough backgrounds who find themselves in foster care. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-give-up-a-child-for-adoption-who-do-you-tell/938987.md?page=2)