Most people involved in adoption have heard about the story of the Danish diplomat and his wife that recently relinquished their eight-year old daughter, who had been adopted by the couple at the age of four months.

A new article about this heart breaking story was published yesterday on Yahoo News titled "Can Adoption Children Be Returned?", and after hearing about this story the obvious and painful answer is, "Yes, adopted children can be returned."

There is a lot of speculation about this story, and like most stories in the news, we will likely never really know what happened. The family never applied for the girl's Dutch citizenship, even though they had her for eight years and the father works in a consulate. In the article cited above quotes a former babysitter of the girl, who claims she was rarely cared for by her mother and that she was always in the care of nannies and babysitters.

The couple claims that the child was diagnosed with a severe fear of attachment, which is certainly not impossible in a child adopted as a young infant, but is still raising a lot of eyebrows.

No matter what really happened in the eight years that little Jade was with her adoptive parents, it is a truly sad thing that her parents have relinquished their rights to her, and in a sense, "returned" their adopted child.

Adoption disruptions are not unheard of, and in older child adoptions they can even be considered somewhat "common". A lack of monitoring and reporting makes it impossible to keep track of the actual number of disruptions in the U.S. or other countries that allow parents to adopt children.

The article above states that it has been said that approximately 10% of adoptions of children under the age of 10 by British couples "fail" and end in disruption.

On one hand, after reading stories like this one, about adopted children being abused and even killed by their adoptive parents, I would never wish for a child to stay in a home where they were not loved, cherished and 125% wanted.

I also feel strongly that adoptive parents need to be better educated and prepared for the children that they choose to adopt. It is one thing to fall in love with the photo of an older child (or even a baby) and to want to parent that child, but parents must educate themselves and truly be prepared for the challenges that adoption brings and be willing to work through hard times.


Disruption is an option for adoptions. I know several families who have adopted children through disruption and their children are thriving and happy. Disruption was definitely the right thing in those situations. I also know a few families who have disrupted children, and it was a horrible, gut-wrenching decision that was not made lightly.


Adoptive parents need to remember that adopting a child is no different on the part of the parents in regards to commitment to that child than giving birth to a child. To adopt a child is to make a child that was not born to you or created by you, permanently, legally and emotionally your child in every way, as if he was indeed born to you.

It is not a trial, a test run or something that you should enter in to with the thought that you can always bail out if things "don't work out".

While I believe that disruptions will always occur in extreme situations, I believe that better education, preparation and screening of adoptive parents would cut back significantly on the number of disruptions that occur and the suffering of the children involved.

Stories like this do no good for the future of adoptions. Countries like Korea and Russia are already cutting back on international adoptions and are worried about the care their children are receiving by their adoptive parents. Stories about children being "returned" eight years after they were adopted do a lot of harm and do call a lot of negative attention to adoption, which already is under fire in the media.