Kinship placement

From time to time you hear mention of kinship placement or adoption. Is it just what it sounds like? Is it a family member taking in a child or is there more to it than that?

Kinship placement is when a relative of a birth parent adopts the child. In a perfect world, this would be a great idea. If the birth parent isn't able to parent, someone in the family can step in so the child doesn't lose their biological heritage. They are parented well and still have contact with their birth parent, just in a different way (i.e. their birth mom would be more like their sister). But this is not a perfect world. Adoption is complicated enough, and from my experience kinship adoption only makes it more complicated. Open adoption has the potential to be confusing for the child. But if a birth parent is still a part of the nuclear family, or even the extended family, it can be even more confusing. Being raised with your birth mom in the capacity of an aunt or cousin can really confuse family roles. There is the potential of strained relationships between the adoptive and birth parents. For example, I know a girl who placed with her mom. She thought this was going to be a great solution, but now her adoption is completely closed. She voiced some disagreements she had with the way her mom parented her daughter, so she cut her off entirely and now this birth mom never sees her mother or her daughter. In a less extreme case, I decided not to place with my parents, even though they offered, because I needed my mom to support me through my grief. She couldn't mother my child and support me at the same time. If you add secrecy in the mix, it can be disastrous. I know of a couple of people who have thought their birth mom was their sister their entire life, only to find out as an adult that they were adopted. I think that would really mess with my head.Not all kinship adoptions are like this, but these are some things to be aware of when thinking and talking about kinship adoption.

Have known a couple of kids who had sister-moms whom the child did not know was the Mom until around age 10 or older. I also have a friend who found out her uncle was her birth father and his brother, who raised her though she knew she was adopted did not know until well into adulthood how her birth father was. Have seen several where kids knew their sibling was ther birth parent but inevitably the disagreements over raising the baby when the sister mother is finally on her feet and want to raise the child themselves (with whatever boyfriend she had at the time which the Mom Mom did not want to expose to instability so ended up with major rifts).

This is actually what I am doing right now with my youngest two nieces and my parents did with my oldest niece. It has been difficult at times as my sister has a lot of expectations that I will look the other way and let her kind of work the system. She doesn't have the same respect she would likely have with a non-related foster parent. Nothing is really helped with my mom's issues enabling her behavior either. In my parent's case with my eldest niece it went to permanency, which has been both good and bad. It allowed us to maintain the relationship with the younger two girls and for my sister to have a relationship with her eldest, but with my sister's issues the oldest girl essentially was abandoned repeatedly by her mother. The oldest niece was raised knowing that my sister was her mother, so there was no lying, but it has still been difficult.