The worst fear of every parent who adopts domestically is
that a birth parent will decide he or she wants the child back. That’s exactly
what happened in two custody battles that culminated Friday in two very
different outcomes.
The first case involved a Florida boy, now 3 ½, whose birth mother placed him for adoption in May 2001, when he
was two days old. A month before the adoption was supposed to be finalized, the
boy’s biological father filed a motion demanding custody. At that time, the
judge informed the adoptive parents that the birth father would likely gain
custody.
The birth mother supported the adoption until it appeared
the court might grant the birth father’s request for custody. In late December
2004, the birth mother was awarded custody (she lives in Illinois, is married to someone else and has an infant daughter) and the birth father was
given liberal visitation rights. The adoptive parents appealed the ruling but
the court took no action, so today, the little boy went to live with his
biological mother.
The second case mirrors the first one: a birth mother made
an adoption plan and placed her son with a Colorado couple when he was 3 days old. The boy is now 21 months old. Somewhere along
the line (I don’t have the details but I assume it must have been fairly soon
after the boy was born), the birthmother changed her mind and won rulings from
judges in Missouri (her home
state) and Colorado that her son
be returned to her. The Colorado Supreme Court intervened and said that a
District judge needed to decide what was in the “best interests” of the child
in determining custody.
Wonder of wonders, the birth mother and adoptive parents
agreed privately that the boy’s adoptive parents should continue their role as
parents and his birth mother will move to Colorado to be near him and involved
in critical decisions as he grows up. “He has three people who absolutely love
him so much that they’d be willing to do anything,” said the boy’s biological
mother.
A few reflections:
Adoptive parents tend to live in denial. We yearn long and hard
for a child. When it appears that we’re finally being given the opportunity to
adopt one, we’re prepared to move mountains to assure that happens. Sometimes,
that means ignoring the obvious. When biological parents challenge the adoption early on, we
continue parenting “our” child in the desperate hope that the court system will
miraculously change and grant us custody. After all, we’ve already jumped
through so many hoops to bring “our” beloved child home. We are convinced that
we will be better parents than the birth parents, and that once the child comes
to live in our home, he is ours, period.
Our emotions and our love for the child overcome our common sense.
History proves that adoption laws almost always favor the biological
parents. It doesn’t matter whether the adoptive parents believe they're
better parents. It doesn’t matter what’s in “the best interests” of the child. It
doesn’t matter whether the birth mother decides she needs to parent her child
because she hates the birth father and can’t stand the thought of him regaining
custody. It doesn’t matter whether the birth parents acted as if they could
care less about their child when he was born, and suddenly, they decide they
love him dearly. Adoption laws almost always favor the biological parents.
No matter how heart-wrenching it would be to return the child to his
birth parents at the first sign of a court challenge, I believe it is in the
best interest of the child to do so. I often hear about adoptive
parents who are embroiled in court battles for years in the desperate hope that
they’ll be able to retain custody of their child. And it rarely happens.
Everyone ends up heartbroken, especially the child who is ripped from the only
home he has known. The media, of course, makes a big splash about the event,
and fears about adoption continue to be perpetuated.
These scenarios remind me of the Bible story from 1 Kings 3:16-28, in
which two prostitutes testify before King Solomon. The two women give
birth (in the same house) within three days of one another. During the night
one of the newborns dies. The mother of the dead baby switches the two babies,
but in the morning, the other mother recognizes that the dead baby isn’t hers.
The two women argue before King Solomon about whose baby is whose. He asks for
a sword and orders that the baby be cut in two. “Give half to one and half to
the other,” he proclaims.
While the woman whose son died is content to see the baby cut
in two, the woman whose son is alive has compassion for her son and cries out,
“Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don’t kill him!”
While I certainly don’t advocate cutting a child in half in
order to resolve a custody battle, that’s often what happens to a child,
figuratively speaking. I’m so grateful for the parents who truly did consider
the best interests of their child and decided to implement what is essentially
an open adoption. The adoptive parents and birth mother put selfishness aside and
let love and compassion guide them.
