When I was pregnant, I chose adoption as my option. I’m a proud birthmom who has two gay dads, a beautiful daughter, and a decent stepdad who cares for her too. Adoption works out well for our family, and I am involved in my child’s education.
I’m happy because my kid goes to one of the best school systems in the country, gets to learn with Mommy, and also has a summer home too. My daughter’s two dads are happy because they got to enjoy the journey of parenthood. It worked out great.
With that said, adoption is not for everyone, nor will everyone have a good experience with it. In fact, I will say that the American foster system does a lot more damage than it does good — and I have good reasons to say this.
How do I know? My life is littered with horror stories from my adopted friends who did not have parents who did things the right way. Because a lot of my friends are in the “American underclass,” I’ve seen what happened to many people who were exploited, chewed up, and spit out.
Before we start, let’s talk about the history of orphanages.
Remember hit movies like Little Orphan Annie, where the star would be an orphan who came out of an orphanage into a loving family? Yeah, those were a thing for the longest time. In fact, the first orphanage in America was established in 1729, making them an institution older than our country.
Prior to 1950, there were quite literally thousands of state-run, religious-run, and private-owned orphanages throughout the United States. Every major city, every state had them. Moreover, there was a demand for them.
They were where kids ended up if their parents couldn’t keep them — and contrary to popular belief, it was fairly common for orphans to have two living parents. It’s just that they were dropped off when parents could no longer care for them. That’s how things were.
However, not all kids ended up in orphanages. In 1853, an “Orphan Train” was created that shipped orphans out to farms. It was a crapshoot. Some kids were treated well, others horribly, but they all had to work long hours. The idea was that this would give kids some semblance of family life — and that’s where the basics of fostering came into play.
By the 19th century, there were serious issues with the orphanage system. Beatings were common, as were sexual assaults. As the government grew concerned with the outcomes of orphans, they started to hold better standards for both adoptive families and the systems that cared for them.
Eventually, the foster system was developed as public concern over orphanage quality became increasingly concerning. By 1950, the number of foster care kids outnumbered the numbers in orphanages. But…was this actually a good thing? You might be surprised.
Let’s talk about modern issues with the US adoption system first.
If there’s one thing I learned from being a birth mom, it’s how bad the US foster-adoption system can be. When I was pregnant, there were six potential adoptive families per available baby — and yes, it’s been (kind of) growing.
But where do I start with this whole craziness? Let me tell you what I learned:
Birthmoms who do private adoptions can choose open (meetups and aware of your existence) and closed (your child will never know who you are) adoptions. If you’re a foster child, your family doesn’t get a choice in the matter — for anything. In fact, kids might end up being returned to their abusive families rather than getting placed with their loving adoptive parents. All adoptions I’ve heard of in the foster system are open, even when it’s a bad idea to do so.
The foster and adoption system often has low standards for adoptive parents. Private adoptions tend to be more stringent, but both systems tend to have issues with parents. Many companies will exclude parents who aren’t cookie-cutter “Christians,” or will encourage Q-adjacent families to adopt. In the foster care system, once you’re in the system, you get pushed to adopt as many kids as possible — often to disastrous degrees.
Adoption of babies is very pricey in the private world. It can cost anywhere from $30,000 to $150,000 to adopt a baby in America. That makes it unattainable for most people in the country, no matter how much they want a kid. You can adopt an older foster kid for under $10,000. Foster adoptions don’t always pull through, even when it’s better for kids. If you’re an average American who wants to do right, you might have your arm twisted when it comes to your adoption options.
In most states, birthmoms don’t have rights. Here’s the kicker. Even if you have an open adoption, that doesn’t mean you have rights that are enforceable. Countless families have moved out of state or even out of the country almost immediately once they got their adoption pushed through, often after having lied through their teeth with promises of keeping in touch.
Oh, and there’s also a horrific “rehoming” scene in America. This is basically child trafficking, but I’ll keep it at this: there are child “rehoming” meetups for people who decided they no longer want to keep the kid they adopted. And yes, it’s technically legal.
Now let’s talk about the foster system.
I’ve already gone over a lot of the foster system’s problems with adoption, but it gets so much worse. Studies show that a staggering number of foster kids age out into homelessness (20%), and only around half are even able to graduate from high school. The US foster care system also has a tendency to traumatize kids due to an overwhelmingly common problem of abuse.
Foster care and fostering are supposed to help bring kids back to their bioparents if possible, or at least keep them in the family. This is not always in the child’s best interest — and at times, the foster care system may overlook that simply because they don’t want to have to deal with placement issues.
The foster system is notorious for having issues, especially when it comes to causing separation trauma. Here’s the thing: regular adoption has the perk of giving most children a form of permanence. Fostering doesn’t do that for most kids.
Most foster kids get bounced from home to home, making it hard for them to stay on track at whatever school system they are placed into, and making it hard for them to actually grow roots. This has serious consequences for the kid in question, often giving them lifelong struggles.
Contrary to popular belief, there are a handful of quasi-orphanages left in America today.
Or rather, there are similar institutions to orphanages that tend to have slightly better outcomes depending on the child and situations involved. Group homes, though a “mixed bag,” often house troubled teens and young adults with severe issues.
In New York City, there’s the Children’s Village, which is a campus that offers shelter and services to kids who are in the foster system. South Carolina has the Church of God Home for Children, Thornwell, as well as the Carolina Children’s Home, which offers shelter for kids who aren’t placed.
Texas also has its own take on orphanages with Possum Trot, a church-run orphanage that has helped give over 70 kids a more stable home. (Yes, some churches can actually do good things. This is one example, folks.)
Technically, these are part of the foster system. However, they also have actual residences for the kids they serve. That gives them a lot more stability than, say, being shipped to a kid’s crazy grandmother who might decide to “rehome” them in a pinch when she gets tired of them.
Here’s my spicy take: it may be time to bring back state-run orphanages and give them an overhaul.
The orphanage system has a very bad reputation both stateside and abroad. Orphanages in other countries, including in Romania, have been shown to be potentially lethal for the kids dropped off there. However, it doesn’t have to be that way — especially here in America.
Right now, our foster system is failing kids. There’s no safety net once they reach 18 and many of the “graduates” end up almost immediately homeless with no help. The current system bounces kids back and forth between a variety of homes, many of which are abusive or overwhelmed.
If we really wanted to and started to actually push politicians to do right by our country, orphanages and age-out support would give at-risk kids a much better chance at life. Here’s what I’d suggest doing:
Divert the money from ICE to funding for social workers, child caretaker programs, and new large-scale orphanage-style homes for kids.
Tighten up controls and regulations for both adopting families, foster families, orphanages, and educators.
Drop the price required to adopt a child through subsidies.
Give all foster families regular check-ins with kids being given the option to pull adults aside and ask for immediate removal from the home. Should they ask, it should be granted immediately. (This would have saved the Fantastic Adventures kids.)
Give kids the right to choose whether or not they get adopted by the family.
Create a hotline for children who want immediate removal from adoptive families in the event of abuse.
Require that all foster and orphan children get immediate age-out services such as entrepreneurial coaching, life skills coaching, temp-to-move housing and more.
Require that all foster and orphan children remain in the same school district for a minimum of six years once they enter the system, giving them time to actually learn and develop skills alongside peers.
Of course, many of these kinds of services would also be great for the average American family. And the funny thing is, we have the money for it. We just can’t seem to get our own politicians to care for our most vulnerable. Strange, isn’t it?
