Realwomen of BC - Briefs

British Columbia Adoption Act

Bill 51

Submission to the Honorable Penny Priddy, Minister for Children and Families

September, 1996

by: REAL Women of BC
Box 39068, Point Grey RPO
Vancouver, BC
V6R 4P1

Executive Summary

Background (Who We Are)

Placement for Adoption

Financial Assistance

Post-Adoption Openness

Recommendations

Executive Summary

This submission is being made before the November 4th proclamation of Bill 51 in BC, to address the main concerns which our organization has with the legislation as it has been drafted. Since the mid and late 1980''s our organization has submitted briefs regarding child protection, adoption, and family services culminating in our brief to the Gove Inquiry last year.

Once again we feel that it is important to promote some common-sense popular opinions, in the hopes of them being considered before drastic action is taken which will detrimentally affect the family in British Columbia.

We appreciate the government''s concern for acting in a manner most beneficial to British Columbians, and trust that in the act of proclaiming Bill 51, the legislation itself and the surrounding policies and regulations will be changed to reflect the following concerns.

Submission Regarding Bill 51

(British Columbia Adoption Act)

We, REAL Women of B.C. respectfully submit this brief regarding the new Adoption Act, to the government of British Columbia, before this legislation is proclaimed into law on November 4th, 1996.

Background:

REAL Women of B.C. is a registered, pro-family, non-partisan, non-profit, non-denominational, grass-roots, women''s political lobbying organization and family advocacy group. We represent thousands of British Columbians of all ages and ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds from hundreds of communities around our province. Our organization publishes a provincial newsletter which goes out to our members informing them of issues with which they may not have been familiar; we also maintain a Web-Page on the Internet, to educate people and promote and defend the beliefs and values of our members, and we make submissions (such as this one) to all levels of government on issues affecting women and their families. As individuals, our members are active locally, regionally, provincially, nationally and internationally in political- and other realms that have an effect on the family.

We are the provincial affiliate of the National pro-family women''s movement, REAL Women of Canada.

Some of our members have read Bill 51, and analysed its effect on the family. We would now like to bring to your attention a few concerns which we feel should be addressed by our government before the Act is proclaimed into law this year.

Placement for Adoption:

Part 2, Division 1, Section 5 (1) states that a "child may be placed with one adult or two adults jointly". Part 2, Division 3, Paragraph 29 (1) also states that "one adult alone . . . may apply to the court to adopt the child". These two paragraphs seem to be in direct contradiction to the Introductory Provisions in Part 1, Paragraph 3(1) "Best interests of child", especially, though not exclusively, when dealing with infants and young children.

There is a great deal of recent, reputable, published research which maintains that children do best in a two-parent traditional (heterosexual) family setting where the primary caregiver (usually the mother) remains at home full-time. During the first year after birth, child development experts state that babies need a "close, continuous, and intimate" relationship with their primary care giver. The experts also indicate that children do not engage in peer play until they are about two years old. (Home by Choice, by Brenda Hunter, PhD, Multnomah Press, 1991, pp. 51-52).

"Children need continuing parental care to have a sense of wholeness. They need someone at home who''s passionately concerned about them, not just during the early years but over the long haul. Even beyond infancy and toddlerhood, children need someone to be present during most of the hours they are at home. Someone needs to be available on a daily basis to educate, love, nurture, discipline, and guide. It is my (Brenda Hunter''s) conviction that that someone is mom. If a mother wants to rear a child who will leave home with a sturdy sense of self, she needs to be there for her child during his growing up years. Mothering is simply not a job she can turn over to babysitters or teachers or to the child himself" (Ibid., p. 102-103).

Dr. Deborah A. Dawson of the National Centre for Health Statistics, working with data from the 1988 National Health Interview Survey of Child Health, reported that children living in one of three alternative family-types (never-married mothers, formerly married mothers and mothers/stepfathers) had a greater probability of being "treated for emotional or behavioural problems...to have elevated scores for behavioural problems and health vulnerability." Compared to children living with both parents, she continues, " those living with single mothers were at increased risk of asthma" In addition, "Children from...single-parent families also have been found to be over-represented among outpatient psychiatric patients and to be more likely than other children to have visited mental health professionals" (Dawson, 1991, pp. 573-574).

Among other things, Dr. Dawson''s study found "an increased risk of frequent headaches among children living with formerly-married mothers, an increased risk of speech defects among children living with never-married mothers" and she discovered that the increase in risk for children having to repeat a grade in school was as high as 75%" (Dawson, 1991, pp.578-579).

Dr. William Galston, who served as President Clinton''s Deputy Assistant for Domestic Policy, stated: "The economic consequences of a parent''s absence are often accompanied by psychological consequences, which include higher than average levels of youth suicide, low intellectual and educational performance, and higher than average rates of mental illness, violence and drug use" (Galston, 1990, p.14).

Maggie Gallagher, author of "The Enemies of Eros" and "The Abolition of Marriage" states "the baby of a college-educated single mother is more likely to die than the baby of married high school dropouts...the risk of death to her infant more than doubles" (Maggie Gallagher The Abolition of Marriage, Regnery Publishing, Washington).

Children from broken homes are at greater risk of being involved in dangerous or unhealthy behaviours because "adolescents in mother-only families are more susceptible to peer influence than those living with both...parents" (McLanahan, 1991, p.59).

Rutgers University Researchers found , based on two national American surveys, that "single mothers report poorer overall physical health for their children than do mothers in intact marriages."

A study presented at the American Sociological Association in 1984 and later published in the journal Family Relations found that "persons raised by single parents (primarily single mothers) tended to have lower educational, occupational, and economic attainment during early adulthood than their counterparts raised in traditional two-parent families. . . Those from single-parent family backgrounds were more likely to have their first child at a younger age and to be separated or divorced rather than married" (Mueller and Cooper, 1986, p.174).

Dr. George Rekers, a practising clinical psychologist and professor at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, reveals "Research has documented that children without fathers more often have lowered academic performance, more cognitive and intellectual deficits, increased adjustment problems, and higher risks for psychosexual development problems (Rekers, 1986).

There is a wealth of data to show that the best defence against children being raised in poverty is to raise them in a home where both a mother and a father are present.

Drs. Edward L. Wells and Joseph H. Rankin, in an analysis of fifty separate studies found "the prevalence of delinquency in broken homes is 10-15% higher than in intact homes" (Social Problems, Wells and Rankin, 1991, p.87).

On October 12, 1993, The Globe and Mail editorial "Time for a family talk"stated:

"The primary experience of children is the family. It follows that, if there is a notable increase in pathological behaviour among young people, we should look to the family for clues and causes...The main change in the family over the past 20 years has been the increase in two-income households. The growing participation rate of women in the workforce means that many children do not have the constant, home-based attention that was once the norm in our society. This is not the fault of women or of men. This is not an attack on women who work outside the home. This is not a critique of feminism. It is simply a historical fact whose implications must be more fully explored." (p. A-28)

In a 1986 speech at Harvard University on the family and society, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan commented "... a community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any rational expectations about the future -- that community asks for and gets chaos. Senator Moynihan stated on September 19, 1993 "that the principle social objective of American national government at every level...is to see that children are (raised in) intact families..."

A 1994 Angus Reid Poll commissioned by the Canada Committee of the International Year of the Family and paid for by big corporations found that 68% of adult respondents believe the best type of family for child-rearing is a "traditional" two-parent household where one parent stays at home to look after the children. (Globe and Mail, June 16, 1994)

The data indicating that single-parent families are not the best model for rasing children is overwhelming. Children raised in single-parent families are at greatly increased risks of physical/mental illness, substandard academic achievement, being poor, having a criminal record, etc. While REAL Women of B.C. supports the thousands of single moms and dads who are doing a heroic job in raising their children to become productive and responsible citizens, we do not feel that children being adopted should be placed into family situations where there are such greatly increased risks of not thriving mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially, and educationally. Children being placed for adoption do not need the extra handicap of being placed in a family which cannot possibly meet all their needs. Adoptees deserve better than that.

Therefore, we respectfully encourage the government to write and pass provincial legislation which mandates that children being placed for adoption continue to be placed permanently in traditional family settings consisting of a male and a female united in marriage.

Financial Assistance

Part 6, Paragraph 80(a), allows that "the superintendent may provide financial assistance or other assistance to a person who proposes to adopt...a child placed for adoption by the superintendent." This section is patently unjust, and extremely interfering on the part of the superintendent and the Ministry. By playing favourites, the Ministry is no longer impartially acting in the child''s best interests, but can be seen to be meddling in the affairs of the courts, and attempting to sway the outcome of cases in which the superintendent has granted financial assistance. Further, the other party in the case which is seeking to adopt the child is always a British Columbian taxpayer and through the taxes which he/she/they pay to the provincial government, can be understood to be supporting the case against themselves, at the same time as they have to pay out of their own pocket all their own legal fees and court costs for the furtherance of their bid to adopt the child.

As an example, a family who are members of our organization paid over $10,000 out of their own pockets to adopt their own grandson. The cost of these legal proceedings and the time they took was augmented several times over because the superintendent elected to grant financial assistance to the foster mother who helped to look after the child when the biological parents were still trying to decide if they could manage to be parents. The legal proceedings also lasted almost a year longer because of the financial assistance backing the foster mother over the paternal grandparents. The child was a pawn jerked by the Ministry between one family and another and the paternal grandparents carried almost unbearable stresses and financial burdens as they paid for both the case for themselves and the case against. A year later, now raising a young child, the financial burden remains for this family, and they no longer can afford to have a mortgage to own their own home. Was this in the best interests of the child? Was this impartial?

REAL Women of B.C. respectfully urges the government to delete Part 6, Section 80 (a) and (b) and not provide financial assistance to one party in an adoption proceeding over the other party in the same adoption proceeding.

Post-Adoption Openness

In reading the legislation''s section dealing with post-adoption openness, it would seem that before the adopted child is 19 years old (or 12 years old, if the child is aboriginal), consent to exchange non-identifying information must be received from both the biological relative(s) and the adoptive parents, and there must be specific consent from both parties before any identifying information is released to the other party by the Ministry or by the Ministry of Vital Statistics. This is good because it protects the privacy of individuals and families for whom outside interference would be unwanted or perhaps even detrimental during a difficult period.

However, once the adopted child reaches 19, these defensive protections of familial and personal privacy no longer exist, and both child and biological relatives must now be on the offensive against unwanted intrusion by signing and filing disclosure vetoes {section 65} or no-contact declarations (section 66}.

In the province of Ontario, recent changes to the adoption Act did allow contact to be made after the adopted child turns 19, but only if both the adoptive and biological parties in the original agreement register with a specific government ministry, which is then charged with releasing information between the parties, offering pre- and post-reunion counselling and mediation during the reunion.

Perhaps, after the adopted child has reached the age of forty years, for example, and still no interest in contact has been evidenced in one or the other party and an adoption which goes back almost forty years, then the ministry could take a more active role in searching out anonymously the second party, or near relative(s) if the party is deceased, to verify that contact is still not desired and to seek a statement as to why from the second party. In this case, REAL Women of B.C. would also like to recommend counselling for at least the "rejected" party, if not for both of them.

REAL Women of B.C. feels our provincial legislation would better serve our citizens by continuing with the privacy protections given adoptee and their families until the child comes of legal age and by modelling our reunion regulations, policies and services after those used by the province of Ontario.

Honorable Minister, on behalf of all our members in B.C., REAL Women asks that you carefully consider these aforementioned concerns, and seek to address them either by not proclaiming the relevant sections of the Act on November 4th, or by adding regulatory amendments, and/or changing internal policies.

Recommendations

REAL Women of B.C. would like to respectfully encourage the government to write and pass provincial legislation which mandates that children being placed for adoption continue to be placed permanently in traditional family settings consisting of a male and a female united in marriage.

REAL Women of B.C. respectfully urges the government to delete Section 80 (a) and (b) so as to not provide financial assistance to one party in an adoption proceeding over the other party in the same adoption proceeding.

REAL Women of B.C. feels our provincial legislation would better serve our citizens by continuing with the privacy protections given adoptee and their adopted families until the child turns nineteen years old; by deleting sections 65 and 66 and any and all references to disclosure vetoes and no-contact statements; and by modelling our reunion regulations, policies and services after those used by the province of Ontario.

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