1. Pictures and letters from my children's first mothers. They need them.
2. Truth and transparency between expectant mothers considering adoption, prospective adoptive parents, adoptive parents, first parents, and adoptees.
3. Tax credits for women who choose to parent and raise their child(ren), equal to the Adoption Tax Credit available to adoptive parents. There should not be more financial support for people who adopt than for the women who bear the children.
4. More support and better protection for first fathers who want to parent/would want to parent if they knew.
5. That everyone who reads this will read the post, The Reality of Adoption 2012.
What's on your list?
Sally Bacchetta
The Adoptive Parent
My Google Profile+
4 comments:
Just our baby boy that's due any day now :) God bless!
I like them all - especially number 3!!
I like the idea of tax credits for women to keep their babies. But for the life of me, I can't figure out how to make it work or how in reality it would help. I mean the tax credit can't apply to every woman who gives birth. So do we apply a income/number of kids at home formula? What does the mom have to do to qualify for this credit? Does she have to make an "adoption plan" and then change her mind? See, the problem with this is that if we can't figure out how it would work, the politicians aren't even going to consider it.
The second piece of this puzzle, is would it actually help? Think about it this way - mom gives birth in February, the promise of the extra money from the tax credit gives her hope that she could make it through that first year raising her child, but in reality, she won't see a dime until the following summer. The adoption tax credit is processed manually not electronically and takes longer to receive. So you can bet she won't see it until May - 15 months after giving birth. How does this actually help her keep her child? I wish the answer was this simple but I just don't think it is. Yes, families should not be separated from their children because of financial issues. But how do we realistically accomplish this? From an honest perspective, what services need to be available to her and for how long? Some situations the AP's are paying close to $2k per month, that's most of the living expenses. Even if, they could do part themselves and only need half of tha, how do we provide that? Our daughter needs special formula not covered by insurance (about $85 per week right now), medicine (about $30 per month), in addition to the normal clothes, diapers, wipes, toys, etc. A tax credit that doesn't give anything back until 12 months or more later doesn't help in the now. It only helps those who already can. And as it stands, it's nonrefundable, meaning you can only get back what you've paid in tax liability. If you make next to nothing, you aren't going to see much from this. As I said, I like the thought behind providing the tax credit for moms, but I don't think it would really help. Can't we come up with ideas that might have an immediate effect? I'm not a birthmom, so I don't know what might have helped. I know many first moms think the idea of the tax credit would have helped, but that's not thinking through what it actually would mean.
It's so different here in the UK. Financial support is available for first mums so relinquishment is not common. Most children needing adoption are children coming from abusive and neglectful homes so our experiences are so very different. As an adoptive parent our role will often be to support and help a child who is suffering from attachment disorders or the results of physical or sexual abuse.
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