Are birth moms happy with their adoption choice? New study explores their experiences
Adoption has been in the news since the U.S. Supreme Court heard Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the case that overturned the constitutional right to abortion access in June 2022. At the time, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, herself an adoptive mother, posited that adoption sharply reduced the consequences of pregnancy — thus reducing the need for abortions.
But how do the pregnant women who choose adoption feel about it afterward?
Sixty-three percent are satisfied, the National Council for Adoption concluded in a new study exploring birth parents’ experiences.
However, 22% were not satisfied with their decision to relinquish their children. And across the board, 86% felt stigma for making that choice.
Takeaways from the report
The median birth mother had placed her child when she was 23 1/2 and answered the survey about 15 years later.
Birth mothers were more likely to be satisfied when they felt like they weren’t coerced into making the decision, the council found. Open adoptions mattered as well: Eight in 10 birth mothers said they had contact with their children. Women who placed their children more recently were more likely to be satisfied.
The results highlighted birth mothers’ love for their children. When considering adoption, women felt major or moderate concern that they would miss their children too much, that they would not know what happened in their children’s lives, that their children would be angry with them in the future and that the adoptive parents would cut off the relationship.
Four in five respondents had a role in choosing the adoptive parents. For them, the most important factor was that the adoptive parents supported open adoption.
Seventy percent said that adoption could work in the best interests of the child.
Still, the report found significant cause for concern. Along with 22% not being satisfied with the decision, close to 25% of birth mothers were dissatisfied with the extent of their contact with their children. Many said they didn’t get the psychological support they needed after relinquishment. And the stigma birth parents face has only grown over the decades. Ninety percent of women who placed their children since 2010 said they felt stigmatized for their decision.
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“While we can be glad that current practices lead toward higher levels of birth parents’ adoption satisfaction, higher rates of birth parents describing their decision-making as free and non-coerced, and higher rates of birth parents saying they received accurate information about adoption, we must still recognize and respond to birth parents’ perception of stigma,” the authors wrote.
NCFA analyzed survey responses from 1,160 birth mothers and 239 birth fathers, and also held focus groups. The study included only private, domestic adoptions – not cases through the public welfare system.
The numbers in context
Adoption is rare. There were an estimated 49,771 U.S. children adopted outside the public system in 2019, and close to half of those adoptions were stepparents legalizing their relationships to a spouse’s children, according to an earlier report by the council.
In that same year, Tennessee had 2,654 private, domestic adoptions, again including stepparents.
Anti-abortion groups have long promoted adoption as an alternative to terminating a pregnancy. Still, the University of California’s Turnaway Study found that women who were denied wanted abortions rarely chose adoption.
One year after restricting abortion, Tennessee enacted a law making adoption easier. The new provisions allow birth parents to revoke their rights over a video platform instead of in a judge’s chambers; shorten the potential waiting period before a birth parent legally relinquishes the baby; allow interested parties to cover the birth mother’s living, medical and legal expenses for the entire duration of the pregnancy, not just the last trimester; and expand the period when interested parties can be made to pay for birth parent counseling from one to two years.
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Reactions from the outside
Two adoption professionals had mixed reactions to the findings.
Metro Knoxville, Tennessee, adoption attorney Dawn Coppock agreed that the stigma is intense.
“We so lionize the role of maternity. That a woman would make a different choice, people just can’t process it,” she said.
Many birth mothers don’t tell anyone, even subsequent partners, she said. “Holding that big a piece of your history and not having anyone to share it with – it just makes me so sad,” she said.
She found the demand for counseling in the study somewhat curious, simply because in her experience, birth mothers rarely take advantage of the counseling that’s available.
“I haven’t seen a lot of use of the services we’ve had,” she said. “People don’t want to talk about this."
Therapist Leslie Pate Mackinnon of Asheville, North Carolina, scoffed at the report. She placed two children for adoption in the late 1960s and believes adoption should be a last resort. “NCFA’s entitled to their opinion, but I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with it,” she said.
She noted the average age of respondents – about 40 – and the higher satisfaction among women who placed their children more recently. Mackinnon thought they just hadn’t faced the trauma yet. “We call it ‘coming out of the fog,’” she said.
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In her view, the National Council for Adoption emphasized stigma – potentially a barrier to choosing to place a child for adoption – because the organization didn’t want to publicize birth mothers’ struggles, which might make women considering the option think again.
“It’s getting out there that birth parents are not happy campers after all,” she said.
Danielle Dreilinger is an American South storytelling reporter and the author of the book “The Secret History of Home Economics.” You can reach her at ddreilinger@gannett.com or 919/236-3141.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: Birth moms share feelings about adoption decision in new study
