Adoption in Canada

A Summary of the Important Issues

By The Vanier Institute - Courtesy Child & Family Canada

Screening criteria
People who apply to adopt children face a rigorous screening process to determine whether they will make suitable parents. In many respects screening criteria may appear discriminatory, unfair or arbitrary. The screening process is often intrusive and demanding. Standards vary widely according to the jursidiction and the adoption agency. Applicants may be rejected due to marital or economic status, sexual orientation, age, physical disability or other reasons. Such criteria would be clearly seen as violations of Charter rights with regard to housing, hiring or other matters. Advocates for single people, homosexuals, the disabled, poor people and other groups have argued that their constituents should be considered on an equal basis when they apply to adopt a child.

Special needs adoption
Disabilities offer even greater challenges for adoptive families than for others. Ironically, those with disabilities comprise many of the "hard-to-place children most available for adoption. For many reasons, adoptive families of disabled children usually have an even greater need for support services than other families with disabled children.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) and Fetal Alcohol Effects (FAE)
Alcohol consumption by a mother when pregnant can result in many kinds of lasting emotional and physical damage to the child. A signficant number of children with FAS or the milder FAE are placed for adoption. FAS/FAE children can be extremely hard to work and live with. Without a high level of post-adoptive support services for their parents, these children risk developing problems that can make them troubled and dependent for life.

Post-adoptive services
Because it is difficult to find infants to adopt many people adopt older children. Most parents who adopt older children for the first time have little understanding of what lies ahead. Many of these children have troubled backgrounds and may have health or behaviour problems. Living with them can be demanding, especially for new parents. Many of them go through hard times during adolescence. Parents and children may need different kinds of advice, counselling or therapy. Yet very few jurisdictions offer support to adoptive families beyond the mental health services available to the general public. After a short period of probation, they usually must deal with problems on their own.

Growing numbers of adoptive families need postadoptive services. The few professionals who are available to help these families often have little training regarding the special needs of these families. Adoptive families need professionals who understand child development the psychological issues for children who have experienced separation and losses, and behaviour management. Ongoing supports such as networks and workshops can also greatly help adoptive families.

Trans-racial adoptions
Most of the people seeking to adopt children are white and middle-class. The waiting list for children to adopt especially white infants, is quite long. It is often easier to find non-white children who are available for adoption than white ones. This is because non-whites in our society tend to be poorer than whites, and many non-white women, therefore, find it difficult to raise their children on their own. As a result, there is considerable interest in trans-racial adoptions.

Many activists and social workers with Aboriginal, black and other non-white groups feel that trans-racial adoptions lead to assimilation - the gradual erosion of the cultural identities of their communities. Others see trans-racial adoption as exploitation: "poor women supplying babies for middle-class women." Furthermore, many black and native leaders doubt that white parents can really share the pain and rage provoked by racism. They question whether such parents can provide the pride, appreciation of cultural heritage, culture and sense of identity that a child would gain from parents of the same race.

International adoptions
Due to the shortage of white infants available for adoption, international adoption has become more common. These are usually arranged by private agencies and usually involve the adoption of children from poor countries. Recently many families have adopted Romanian orphans with severe health problems due to terrible conditions in the institutions they come from. International adoption raises similar concerns to trans-racial adoptions, with other complicating factors:

• It is nearly impossible for adopted children from foreign countries to locate their birth parents later in life.
• It may be difficult for international adoptees to develop a healthy sense of identity in the absence of others from their cultures. For older children, having to speak a foreign language may retard or harm their development.
• Many adoptive children from foreign countries, such as the Romanian children, arrive with severe health problems which may not be well understood by Canadian health care providers.
• Canadian special needs children who lack parents may be overlooked due to sensational accounts of the plight of children in foreign countries.

Private adoptions that fail
In recent months there have been several well-publicized cases in which birth mothers, birth fathers or their families change their minds and decide to reclaim a child that has been placed for adoption. Provincial laws generally allow birth parents time to change their minds. In the case of inter-provincial adoptions, differences in the laws of various provinces can complicate these situations. For one reason or another, adoptions fail to work out in about 15% of cases.

Parental leave and UI benefits
Adoptive parents are not eligible for many of the benefits available to birth parents. By virtue of recent changes to the Unemployment Insurance, adoptive parents now receive fewer weeks of insured leave than biological parents. Different standards exist in provincial legislation as well. Ontario, for example, guarantees 35 weeks of leave to a biological mother and just 17 for an adoptive mother.

Search and reunion
Contrary to what some may believe, adoption never stops affecting those involved. Most adoptees feel the need for ongoing, accurate, sensitive information about their birth origins. Equally important is the need felt by most birth parents for information about the children they placed for adoption. These needs make search and reunion important for adoptive families. For a variety of reasons, laws in most provinces and practices of adoption agencies mean that adoption records are typically kept sealed. It is usually hard and frustrating for adoptees and their birth parents to find one another. Until they do so, a great many adoptees feel unfulfilled and incomplete.

Private and public adoptions
As noted by Professors Daly and Sobol, there has been a dramatic increase in private adoptions and a similar decrease in public adoptions over the past decade. On the positive side, private adoption has the benefit of greater openness and family autonomy. On the other hand, private adoption is expensive, and as more children are placed privately, it becomes harder for lower-income parents to find children to adopt. Also, private agencies are less likely to handle hard-to-place children. Furthermore, a primary function of the public system is to protect the rights and interests of all concerned.

This Article courtesy of The Vanier Institute of the Family