The motivations and decision-making processes of parents who adopt older children

Older children as ‘hard to place’

In the 1970s, there was a shift in UK adoption policy and practice whereby children who had previously been viewed as ‘unadoptable’ began to be placed for adoption (Howe, 2003; Ivaldi, 2000; Lowe et al., 1999). These included those who were older, who had physical and learning disabilities and developmental difficulties, who needed to be placed with siblings, who were of dual heritage and who had experienced early adversity, abuse and neglect (Lowe et al., 1999; Triseliotis, Shireman and Hundleby, 1997). These children became described as ‘hard to place’ (Triseliotis, Shireman and Hundleby, 1997: 9).

Several factors influenced this shift. For example, it was, at least in part, a response to concerns about children ‘drifting’ or ‘languishing’ in the care system with no clear plan for their future (Parker, 1999: 3; Rowe and Lambert, 1973; Thomas, 2013: 16). Changing social factors, such as the availability of more effective means of contraception, the legalisation of abortion and the increased availability of support for single mothers, also meant that fewer relinquished babies were available, but this was not matched by a reduction in childless couples wishing to adopt (Ball, 2005; Triseliotis, Shireman and Hundleby, 1997). Therefore, some prospective adopters became more receptive to considering the adoption of non-infants as a means to create or add to their family (Ball, 2005; Triseliotis, Shireman and Hundleby, 1997).

Although the practice of placing older children for adoption is now well-established, there are acknowledged challenges relating to the experiences of children who are older at the time of placement and the families that they join. Research into the outcomes of adopted children has demonstrated that older-placed children experience less stability in their adoptive homes than their younger-placed peers (Fratter et al., 1991; Palacios et al., 2019; Selwyn, Wijedasa and Meakings, 2014; Wijedasa and Selwyn, 2014). Increased age at placement, when compared to other child attributes such as gender, placement with siblings or ethnicity, has also been identified as the key indicator in ‘adoption disruption’ (Palacios et al., 2019; Selwyn, Wijedasa and Meakings, 2014; Wijedasa and Selwyn, 2014), a term used to describe the child prematurely leaving the adoptive family home.

Alongside this propensity for increased difficulties for older-placed children is a reported level of reluctance on behalf of prospective parents to consider adopting older children, with many waiting parents initially stating a preference for younger ones (Dance, Neil and Rogers, 2017; DfE, 2011; Rogers, 2017; Ward, 2011). Moreover, there is some evidence that adoptive parents who are open to adopting older children may be discouraged from doing so by cautious professionals who are concerned about the increased risks associated with the child’s older age (Brind, 2008). When these factors are combined, it can be seen that older children represent a group who may experience greater challenges in adoptive family life and who may be more difficult to place in adoptive homes.

Adoption as a marketplace

Several scholars have drawn on the concept of the marketplace when theorising about family formation in adoption (e.g., Fonseca, 2006; Garrett, 2018; Higgins and Smith, 2002; Raleigh, 2016; Skidmore, Anderson and Eiswerth, 2016). Much of this research has focused on the US context where the adoption landscape is different – more intercountry adoptions, a mixture of state and privately arranged adoptions and, often, financial costs incurred as part of the process.

In the UK, adoption is a little different. Prospective adopters of children from care, the primary means by which children are adopted in the UK, are not expected to incur any significant financial costs and have less choice around differing types of adoption; for example, private adoption is not lawful in the UK. Nevertheless in spite of these differences in practice, some scholars have explored the concept of the ‘marketplace’ in relation to the UK adoption context, including understanding adoption through a perceived lens of commercialisation. For example, Higgins and Smith (2002), in a critical and theoretically informed discussion of the adoption process in the UK, consider the moral consequences of using marketing techniques, particularly in relation to child-specific advertising, such as that which used to appear in the British Association of Adoption and Fostering (BAAF)’s Be My Parent magazine in which children available for adoption were advertised to prospective parents and their social workers. They argue that through child-specific advertising, the child is presented as a category for the perusal of the intended audience, namely adoptive parents, rather than as a child in their own right. They suggest that this was considered acceptable through a belief that the end of achieving a permanent family justifies the uncomfortable means of marketing the child to prospective parents.

Similarly, Garrett (2018) has critiqued adoption activity days and other events where prospective adopters can meet available children or view their profiles as being ‘consumer driven’, whereby the adoptive parent, conceptualised as the ‘customer’, is ‘afforded the opportunity…to peruse and select from an array of “goods”’ (Garrett, 2018: 1251). But in response, it is arguable that these methods can provide an effective means of promoting children to parents where matches may not have otherwise been made. This is because they allow for ‘chemistry’ (Cousins, 2003: 13) and an emotional response to a specific child rather than eliminating children from the process by the application of broad exclusion criteria, such as age and disability.

However, the analogy of the adopter as a ‘consumer’ is not entirely straightforward, and the notion of adoption as a marketplace can prove uncomfortable. Higgins and Smith (2002) have suggested that it is not just children who are commodified by the adoption process. They argue that declining numbers of prospective adopters meant that adoption agencies needed to widen the criteria of those considered to be acceptable future parents to include previously excluded groups, such as single parents or same-sex couples, and that for prospective adoptive parents, as with waiting children, ‘relative value is determined by supply and demand and the needs of the marketplace’ (Higgins and Smith, 2002: 187). Indeed, over 20 years ago, Lowe and colleagues (1999) reported that it was assumed that older parents would be more suited to adopting older children rather than younger ones. Similarly, historically, there has been a tendency to link single and same-sex adopters with ‘hard to place’ children, with heterosexual couples viewed more favourably by placing agencies (Lowe et al., 1999; Owen, 1994).

The analogy of adoption as a marketplace therefore seems to be both uncomfortable and compelling. Due to its provocative analogy, criticism of the notion of adoption as a marketplace is understandable but oversimplifies the complex moral societal issues around state intervention in family life and the related practices around matching prospective adoptive parents with children (Higgins and Smith, 2002; Tarren-Sweeney, 2016). There is a need for balance, of course, in how issues around adoption are represented, and whilst there are persuasive explanations as to why adoption practices have evolved in the way they have, it is important to consider that markets have moral limits and thus to ensure that adoption practices and processes are ethically justifiable; it seems sensible to both consider and critique the experiences of all those involved in adoption as they navigate this complex terrain (Featherstone, Gupta and Mills, 2018; Higgins and Smith, 2002; Sandel, 2013). This article seeks to clarify this complexity by exploring how adoptive parents of older children narrate and experience the adoption process. It then considers the marketplace as a conceptual lens through which to understand their experience.

Initial preferences

In all but one of the 14 families represented in the interviews, the parents had initially arrived at adoption for reasons of involuntary childlessness, having experienced primary and/or secondary infertility. The remaining family arrived at adoption for altruistic reasons linked to their religious beliefs. Some adopters had explored assisted reproductive technology, including fertility medication and IVF, while others had struggled to conceive and quickly decided to adopt, seeing it as preferable to the treadmill of treatments involved in ‘doing infertility’ (Sandelowski, Harris and Holditch-Davies, 1989; Ward and Smeeton, 2015).

Several parents described the family that they had always wanted or imagined. For example: ‘Initially I always imagined…I suppose an 18-month-[old], I always wanted a little girl… I had a picture of a little blonde 18-month-old [laughs]’ (Sophie, parent of children placed at ages six and four). The use of the word ‘always’ here is emotive, suggestive of long-held images of future family life. As part of the process of identifying potential matches with children, prospective adoptive parents are asked by social workers to note their preferences for their future child. However, these conversations and decisions were frequently described by parents as an especially difficult part of the adoption process. For example:

To be honest…they give you an awful questionnaire asking…well…do you mind if the child has a touch of Down’s syndrome…What colour?… Race?… Religion?… It was horrible…you [were] just sat there thinking, ‘Well, actually, what does every parent want, really?’. Well, you’re looking for the box that says ‘One perfect child, please’. Well, there ain’t no such thing…and so that, I think, made both of us feel really, really uncomfortable. (Phillip, parent of children placed at ages five and two)

Why an older child?

Through the interviews, it became clear that there were various reasons for accepting a match with an older child. Early in the process, some adopters had come to the decision that they did not want to parent a baby:

When we discussed it initially, we said [aged] two to five…we knew that younger than two would probably be a really steep learning curve. Rose [adoptive mother] is principal carer for [child], and I think it’s tough being thrown into looking after a baby… Also, we knew enough about it just from reading about the system that the chances of actually having a baby placed with you are very slim. So, it wasn’t something that we’d even considered really, and then we thought five because, well again, just because that was a section on the form, it said two to five. (Michael, parent of child placed at age seven)

Other parents who had also settled early on adopting an older child cited moral reasons for their decision:

We didn’t want a baby, but we were prepared to take up to about [age] nine. And we sort of knew that between six and nine they were very unlikely to be placed, so we took the decision that we would do that mainly to give a kid another go really, a second chance. (Jennifer, parent of children placed at ages six and two)

For other parents, the primary reason for choosing an older child was due to a consideration of their own and other family members’ ages, including other children living in the home. Below is an example of this:

I’m 44 and technically I would have been 37 when [child] was born and I think if you think about the bigger picture, it means that we’re not going to be doddery elderly [parents]… It made sense, and I think that I feel like I’ve caught people up. (Rose, parent of a child placed at age seven)

Older children as potentially less risky

Another key theme in the participants’ decision-making was the notion of adopting a child who was old enough for any developmental issues to be apparent. For some parents, adopting an older child was perceived as less risky than adopting a very young one where difficulties may not yet be fully understood or visible. An example of this thinking is illustrated by one set of parents below:

Sophie: Talking through it with our social worker, they explained that often babies have a lot of uncertainties in terms of health and…development and so the age thing definitely moved.

Ben: Yeah… Once we had been on the initial course, you learn more about children and what the pros and cons are of older or younger children, it actually made a bit more sense… You never thought you would get a baby, and I’m not into babies anyway. (Sophie and Ben, parents of children placed at ages six and four)

Stretching of preferences

Several parents had initially hoped to adopt a younger child but through the process of assessment and their developing perception of the state of the marketplace had altered their preferences regarding the child’s age. In some instances, this had happened prior to the point of any links being made with potential children, often with encouragement from their social worker early in the process. Most did not feel negatively about these changes and accepted, perhaps reluctantly, that an element of flexibility was part of their adoption journey as they had not had any initial matches and widening their criteria would increase their chances of securing a child. For example, Ruth was encouraged by her social worker to consider a child whom she would not otherwise have looked at:

My social worker nagged me, she said, ‘You need to look at this little boy’, I said, ‘No, I’m not’…this was a bad time… I had a serious discussion with her as to whether or not I could carry on with the process at that point, and she said, ‘You need to look at this little boy’. ‘No, he’s too old.’ ‘You need to look at him, I think it will work.’ ‘No.’ And in the end she persuaded me to have his social worker and the family finder come round and tell me a bit more about him. (Ruth, parent of a child placed at age five)

Sibling groups

Out of the 14 families interviewed for the study, half had begun the process with a desire to adopt a different number of children from what they had eventually accepted. There appeared to be a good deal of movement in this area. In the seven families where there was a shift regarding the number of children desired, four went on to have more children placed than they had imagined and three went on to have fewer. Of those who adopted fewer than imagined, one was a single adopter who was persuaded that an individual child would be more manageable than siblings, one family was deemed not to have the financial resources to adopt two children and one family who had been fairly ambivalent about numbers decided in the assessment process that one child would be a better fit in their family than two.

Of those who had more children placed with them than they initially imagined, one set of adopters described their change of mind as caused by the ‘process’; they had gradually changed the type of family they had in mind from viewing different profiles of sibling pairs rather than individual children. Several parents realised that if they adopted more than one child they could instantly achieve their desired family size without having to repeat the potentially difficult and lengthy adoption process (as described in Palmer, 2020). One family broadened the number of children that they were willing to have because the local authority offered a support package that gave them the resources to have more children. In the final family, the adopters stated that their social worker had persuaded them to change their mind to consider two children rather than one. They viewed their social worker’s encouragement to agree to this as a sign that the social worker recognised and appreciated their potential as parents:

[Adoption social worker] knew that we were really serious, and she said to us quite candidly…‘You’ve said one, would you consider two?’ And we said ‘Well…we had always said if we had been lucky enough to naturally have one child we wouldn’t have stopped there’… So, all of a sudden then she was saying…‘But you can cherry pick…You’re taking them off the shelf, aren’t you?’ And we sort of thought about it and said, ‘Well we’d be open to up to two’. (Jennifer, parent of children placed at ages six and two)

Two families in the sample had adopted large sibling groups, defined as groups of three children or more. One of these parents, Charlotte, explained how she had always hoped for a large family and adopting a large sibling group was a way to achieve this instantly. Although the sibling group contained a child over the age of four, the other children were younger, and so it was the combination of wanting a sibling group of relatively young children that led her to become a parent to an older child. Therefore, as Ivaldi (2000) suggests, in this instance, the adoption of a sibling group paints a distorting picture in terms of the parent’s desires about the age of her children. It was not the child’s older age that influenced her decision-making, but the relatively young cumulative age of the sibling group that made her and her partner consider them.

Finding the ‘right’ child: Ideas of destiny and fate

The perception that there was a ‘right’ child waiting for adopters was a powerful narrative within the interviews. Adopters phrased this in different ways. For some, when they saw their child’s profile, they had a sense that this was the right child for them. For example, Margaret explained:

There was a couple of children that were sort of in the background but we both immediately had a connection with [child] and that was really important for us… From the paperwork and his picture, we immediately…he was lively, he was energetic, he had some educational problems, but it was nothing that John and I felt we couldn’t cope with… He just seemed perfect, didn’t he? (Margaret, parent of a child placed at age seven)

The notion of the ‘right’ child was also called into question when parents felt an immediate emotional connection with a child’s profile, only for the match not to be made. As Linda explained:

[Social worker] presented me with a few profiles and I kept putting my name forward… I mean, the first one I looked at I can still remember her actually. She was a lovely little thing… I can still see the picture in my mind’s eye…because it was that first one…and I got all emotional and I went ‘Oh yes, I want her’. I had no idea that the process would be the way it was… So, she [social worker] put my name forward and of course nothing came of it. (Linda, parent of a child placed at age five)

Children who had been ‘miss-sold’

Several adopters spoke of the gap between the information that they had been given about their child and the reality of the individual with whom they were matched. Phillip (parent to children placed at ages five and two) stated:

To be honest with you what we ended up with was…umm, I hate putting children in the way of sounding like buying a car, but if I said that we were buying a top of the range car and it had everything on it, which is what we were led to believe, and then actually what we ended up with was a five-year-old car with bits that were broken and didn’t work on it anymore, and weren’t quite strictly how the salesperson’s pitch was.

In another family, Fiona questioned the adoption process, suggesting that key information may be omitted by social workers to secure a match for children:

I think the big thing is that the social workers want [children] to be adopted…because they can see the benefits of them having a sound family environment…so is it in the social workers’ best interests to tell an adoptive family everything? And the answer is, well, possibly not. So, having spoken with the foster carers subsequently…there were bits that we maybe should have been told. (Fiona, parent of child placed at age six)