How to Get Reliable Info on Risk of an Expectant Mom Changing Her Mind? - Weekend Wisdom

Question: I wanted to bring up something about your article on the risks for an expectant mom changing her mind. You have a point that says any placement before five months into the pregnancy is a risk. We recently had a match with a woman who was only four months along. We asked about this, and our agency tells us that there is no correlation between the time of the match and disruption. What is the truth?

Resources:

• Understanding the Birth Parent's Experience (Resource)
• Evaluating Risk Factors in Adoption (Resource)
• Choosing an Adoption Agency (Resource)

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.
Welcome to this week's Week in Wisdom by Creating a Family. Week in Wisdom is our opportunity to answer your questions. So please send us your questions to info @creatingafamily .org.
And you can just put question in the rail line or Week in Wisdom in the rail line. Either way it's going to find itself to me and I will answer your question on the next Week in Wisdom. This week we'll jump right in,
here is the question. I want to bring up something about your article, 12 Risks for Expected Moms Changing Her Mind. You have a point in those 12 lists that says any placement before five months is a risk.
We recently had a match with a woman who was only four months along. We asked about this and our agency tells us that there is no correlation between time of match and disruption. What is the truth?
What are reliable sources of data on adoption? For example, when we were in our waiting period, I was told over and over that there was no particular type of adoptive family that is more likely to be chosen than another,
that it is all completely random. I don't believe it. I'm sure that if you looked at the length of wait time measured against a variety of adoptive family characteristics, you would find some clustering.
The same goes for what situations exist for expected moms to more likely change her mind. There should be some clustering for certain things, such as what you listed in your Top 12 article.
Or maybe I'm wrong, and it's just one of those rare things in life that is totally random. Well, here's the truth. Reliable aggregated information on domestic adoption is really hard to come by.
And that's primarily because there is no one collecting this information. Now, we have good information on international adoption and foster care adoption, and that's because the federal government is collecting data on those two types of adoption.
But domestic adoption is governed by state law, and I don't know of any state that's collecting that level of detail. Some states collect more detail, but there's no one aggregating at all.
So for questions like the ones you're raising, risk factors of an expected mom changing her mind or what type of adoptive families are more likely to be chosen. We just, honestly, how we get our information is we interview a lot of agencies.
I know it is not a perfect system, but it's the best one we have or the best one we know of. Now, as to your specific questions, saying that there is a risk that a mom will change her mind if she matches early is not the same as saying that it will automatically fail.
I think you know that, but I just wanted to stress that. All we are saying is that she has more time to change her mind, more time for things in her life to improve so that she feels like she can parent, more time for her support system to fall into place,
and things such as that. I don't know if there is a particular type of adoptive family that is chosen more often, but I believe that there are certain things that tilt the odds away from some families.
For example, single moms and adoptive parents over say about the age of 45 or older. And there are things though, keeping in mind they can tilt it back though. Being open to more,
and I use air quotes around this, risk factors or possible special needs or being open to the full breadth of open adoption and things like that. And of course, we have to leave open the intangible factors that can sway a mom when deciding on someone to parent or kid.
And I suspect that's what your adoption agency was trying to say that you never know why a mom chooses the family that she does and that is absolutely true but and I want to say this gently in some ways I think your question is an attempt to gain some control in a situation where you have very little control but here's the thing all the data in the world won't change this and you're still not going to have control
and I just want you to know that I know how uncomfortable that is and I know that probably doesn't help a whole lot. Anyway, I hope that we somewhat answered your question and thanks for sending it in.
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