Question: Last week my husband and I flew across the country to meet our potential adoptive baby. We had been matched 5 weeks earlier and were full of happiness. We’ve always known the risks of having a fall through but based on the case, we didn’t think it would be the case. It was. Despite being in contact with birthmom via email and text, getting her updates and baby pictures, she ghosted us and the agency. We met her and birthfather, she let us take pictures holding the baby and gave the agency’s social worker some missing paperwork. She had a change of heart last minute which is fine, but what made things more painful was that she never informed us.
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Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.
Welcome everyone to Weekend Wisdom by Creating a Family. Creating a Family is a national support and training nonprofit for foster, adoptive and kinship families and this segment of our podcast is part of the overall Creating a Family podcast.
We drop a long version interview with experts in the middle of the week and then on the weekends we drop this shorter version where we are answering a specific question that you submit and by the way you can submit your own questions to info @creatingafamily .org.
Just put weekend wisdom in the subject line and it will find me. So today's question is about a failed adoption match. I'm going to read the question to you. It's from Carolina.
"Last week, my husband and I flew across the country to meet our potential adoptive baby. We had been matched five weeks earlier and were full of happiness. We've always known the risks." of having a fall through,
but based on the case, we didn't think it would be the case. It was. The site being in contact with the birth mom via email and text, getting her updates and her baby pictures,
she ghosted us and the agency. We met her and her boyfriend. She let us take pictures holding the baby and gave the agency's social worker some missing paperwork. She had a change of heart last minute,
which is fine. but what made things more painful was that she never informed us. Perspective adoptive parents are often provided with lots of information about adoption process, possible drug,
alcohol exposure, transracial adoption issues, et cetera, et cetera, but we're rarely given information on failed adoptions. Our local and out -of -state agencies have been wonderful and they're providing support now,
but I wished I had had some information before. before. Well, Carolina, you are so right. You know, adoptive parents know or at least should know that an adoption match does not mean that the baby is theirs.
But you know, it's really hard to not to begin to dream and plan and hope once you hear the word match, once you've met with the expectant mom and perhaps her partner. It is really hard not to start thinking,
yeah, intellectually, you might know this. this baby is not yours yet." On the other hand, emotionally, you're beginning to attach. So a failed adoption match is when a mom who has originally planned to place her child for adoption changes her mind after birth and decides to parent.
She has the right, even if she was matched with an adoptive family, and even if the prospective adoptive parents have paid her living experience or counseling fees. And you know, it's interesting. interesting, there really isn't much known about failed adoption matches because no one's keeping track.
The only one who knows about a failed match are the individual expected parents, the adoptive parents in the adoption agency or the adoption attorney. So a while back, in order to get a better picture,
creating a family ran two surveys, two years apart with our extensive audience of adoptive and foster and kinship parents. And we also conducted each of these surveys. surveys and interviews of several adoption agencies and adoption attorneys to understand better what this is.
So the questions we asked were, did the adoption match fail, i .e. the expectant parent changed their mind before or after birth? We also asked at what trimester in the pregnancy or after the birth were you matched with the expectant parent?
The third question was, how much money did you, quote, "lose" on the failed match? And the fourth question was, were you able to later successfully complete an adoption? Now, you can see the results of the survey by going to our website and searching for the words "failed adoption match" or just googling our name,
creating a family and failed adoption matches. And we have an entire blog article that goes into a lot of detail about what we found out and we had a huge response. But the bottom line,
line is that failed matches are not uncommon. And this is some of the information we heard when we did interviews with adoption attorneys and adoption agencies, and I'm going to just quote from some.
Here's the first quote, "I rarely have adoptive parents who do not have at least one failed potential adoption once matched." Another adoption professional said, "I would say at least 50 % of adoption matches fail." And and the expected mom decides to parent." Here's another quote.
"In general, our percentages have fluctuated from year to year, going from about 60 % success, meaning a non -failed match, to 93 % success. And by success,
I mean that the placement goes through as planned. So that means that in some years, as many as 40 % have changed their minds, while in other years, only 7 % changed their minds." minds.
I've seen no rhyme nor reason for this, but we calculated every year. Last year we were at 73%, 27 % failed. It changes all the time. Another quote.
"I would say over the last five years I see more and more fail matches and more and more lost money. It used to be agencies held the risk on expected mother's expenses. It was included in the agency fee.
Now, it is the perspective." adoptive parents, and they pay the agency fee plus any expenses. Also, I see more agencies charging a fee every time,
when back in the day, it was more usual to charge one fee until a successful match. Agencies have shifted the financial risk. So, as the questioner,
Carolina, said, "We don't do a good enough job preparing prospective adoptive parents for this possibility." And some agencies and attorneys do a better job than others. I take it to heart because we are an adoption education organization,
Foster and Ken as well, but this applies to adoption. So I think it is a good admonition that we as an organization need to think about. And I think we could do a better job. But in the meantime, let me give you two resources to check out.
Both are at our website, creating a family .org. The first one. one is the report from the surveys and interviews we did. It's called failed adoption matches,
how common, how costly, and how to survive. And the second resource is 12 signs that an adoption match may fail. You can find both of those by just Googling our name and those titles or going to our website and using the search function.
I hope that helps Carolina and we'll see you next week. at Weekend Wisdom. Before you go, let me tell you about the Creating a Family E newsletter.
It's free. It's terrific. All you got to do is sign up for it and you will every month get a newsletter in your inbox. And we curate four of the best resources that we have seen that month that would help you.
you. And when you do, you get a free guide. So in this case, you can sign up at bit .ly /cafguy. That's B -I -T dot L -Y slash C -A -F guy.
Thanks for listening to this week's Week in Wisdom. If you liked it, please tell a friend to subscribe at wherever they subscribe to the creating a family dot org podcast. Once you subscribe, we can wisdom automatically draw drops into your feed on Sunday.