contested adoption

I hear a lot about birth fathers contesting adoptions. I understand that adoptive couples believe that adopting the child is in the child's best interest, but I"m not sure I could ever adopt a child knowing one of the birth parents was against it. Any insights on this?

I couldn't adopt a child who has parent who's able to be a parent. The problem is parenting is relative. What's acceptable in some places is taboo in others. The bm of my 2 youngest was young when she became a mother. I think she gave them up not realizing how to fight to get them back. Then there's Baby Victoria, who had a father willing to parent her but a bm who wanted to relinquish her and adoptive parents not caring about the child at all. Adoption can be an ugly place, sometimes.

I'd say to be very careful about the agency you choose and the state that agency is in. My son's parents both consented to the adoption. While I understand that there are cases where the father is unknown, I also think it is too easy for someone to say they don't know who the father is, only to have a mess after the child is born and in the home of the potential adoptive parents. Too many agencies don't look closely enough, because their purpose is placing children for adoption. Too many states have laws that strongly favor mothers over fathers and adoptive over biological parents. Unfortunately, unless the father is available to consent to the adoption and proven to be the father, there is always some risk that a father's rights are being circumvented. The way I see it is that there is a change needed in the laws to uphold the rights of fathers in adoption as well as to significantly penalize adoption agencies that attempt to circumvent those rights. With private adoption being such a profit-driven business, there will always be agencies that will be unscrupulous as long as they can get away with it, but if the risk outweighs the benefit, that behavior is more likely to change.

Sometimes birth moms have legitimate reasons for not wanting birth fathers to know about placement. The example that comes to mine is if it's someone who is abusive. There are two concerns that come to mind for a situation like that. First, a controlling/abusive person would possibly use the baby as a way of continuing to control/abuse the woman. For example, I have a friend who had a baby placed with her for a week until the birth dad stepped up, claimed paternity, and refused to sign TPR. The birth mom really wanted her child to be raised by this family, didn't feel ready to parent, etc, but because Birth Dad refused to sign TPR, and she didn't want the baby to end up with HIM, she is now parenting the baby - and he took off. He is not in the picture at all. From my perspective, it looks like he stepped in because he wanted to control and punish his ex-girlfriend, not because he cared about their child. The second (huge) concern is that he would be abusive toward the child.If that is what I was told about a birth father, I wouldn't want to reach out to him and risk putting the expectant mother and the child in danger. Sometimes birth dads are kept in the dark and it's NOT for legitimate reasons, but often adoptive parents have no way of knowing this, since everything is filtered through the expectant mom.

This can happen even if the father is around. Read the story about Baby Victoria. Her father was about to be deployed and he thought he was signing rights just to bm, not for adoption. When he found out, he tried getting her back, got her back but in the end the adoptive parents ended up with the child.

As a Mom, I would like my Kids to have the experiences that I had or did not have growing up.I feel or I think your question also relates to ?? How well can a Parent ' Parent, and what type of Family Support does he or she have to Parent??