Regulating inclusivity: reforming adoption law for the 21st century

Ball, Caroline

doi:10.1046/j.1365-2206.2002.00257.x

Cited by 9 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…In Great Britain, for instance, stepchild adoption comprised half of all adoption orders in 1998. Following a 2000 amendment to the Children Act 1989 , which allowed children to have a legal relationship with a stepparent in addition to their two biological parents, this figure dropped to 35% (Ball, 2002). This suggests that stepchild adoption may be an imperfect solution for stepparents and stepchildren who want to formalize their relationship.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Children's trajectories and family relationships are also embedded within a system of norms, laws, policies, and institutions, which provide the parameters within which children's developmental processes unfold. The conditions under which U.S. stepparents adopt their stepchildren are less clear than in some other countries, and laws vary from state to state (Ball, 2002; Fine, 1994; Loftus, 2003; NAIC, 2006). In contrast to Great Britain, for example, in most states of the United States children cannot legally have two parents of the same sex (Slater, 2000/2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the exact numbers are unclear, the adoption of a stepchild by a stepparent is thought to be one of the most common forms of adoption in the United States (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2008; National Adoption Information Clearinghouse [NAIC], 2006) and Europe (Ball, 2002; Loftus, 2003). Yet, very little is known about adopted stepchildren (Chambers, 1990; Fisher, 2003; Ganong, Coleman, Fine, & McDaniel, 1998).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Characteristics and Well‐Being of Adopted Stepchildren

Stewart

2010

Family Relations

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The Characteristics and Well-Being of AdoptedStepchildren This study draws upon 22,680 children from the 2002 National Survey of America's Families to investigate the demographic and family characteristics and well-being of stepchildren who have been adopted by a stepparent (n = 140) relative to children with 2 biological parents, children with 2 adoptive parents, and children with 1 biological parent and 1 nonadoptive stepparent. Five percent of all stepchildren and one quarter of all adopted children have been adopted by a stepparent. How the characteristics of adopted stepchildren compare to those of other children depends on the child's age-whereas younger adopted stepchildren are most similar to children with 2 biological parents, older adopted stepchildren are most similar to nonadopted stepchildren. Adopted stepchildren of all ages have significantly more behavior and emotional problems than children with 2 biological parents, but have similar levels of school engagement. There were no significant differences between children with 2 adoptive parents, nonadopted stepchildren, and adopted stepchildren on any measure of well-being regardless of the child's age. Implications for practice and policy include increasing awareness of adopted stepchildren and paying greater attention to the legal context under which stepchildren are adopted.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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The Characteristics and Well‐Being of Adopted Stepchildren

Stewart

2010

Family Relations

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“…Progress between the publication of the 1992 report and legislation, described in detail elsewhere, was frustratingly slow, with two White Papers (Department of Health 1993 and 2000) and several false starts (Ball, 2002). The consequences of delay were not, however, entirely negative.…”

Section: The Reform Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Adoption and Children Act 2002: A Critical Examination

Ball

2005

Adoption & Fostering

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“…Moreover, it stands in contrast to the increasingly flexible and creative ways in other UK family law contexts of recognizing a range of adults as significant to a child. To take just two examples: parental responsibility can be awarded to any number of adults and current adoption practice seeks to maintain links with birth parents alongside those with social/legal parents (Children Act 1989;Ball 2002). It also stands in contrast to developments and discussions in a limited number of other common law jurisdictions, namely Canada and New Zealand (see further Lotz, this volume).…”

Section: The 2008 Act and The Sexual Familymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Sexual Partnership in UK Family Law

McCandless¹

2012

Families – Beyond the Nuclear Ideal

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The question 'What makes someone the parent of a child?' is at once straightforward and complex. Straightforward because we often have what we feel to be a 'common sense' or 'intuitive' response. This might be with respect to individual parent-child relations -'Z and Y are X's parents' -or it might relate to a more generalized normative standard -'the woman who gives birth to you is your mother'. However, if we collected a number of these 'common sense' or 'intuitive' responses, we are likely to find variation and contradictions within, signalling that our notions about parenthood are rather more complex than we might first envisage. In this chapter, I set about exploring this complexity through the lens of legal parenthood in the UK. It should be noted from the outset that I am not suggesting law to be somehow representative of how people understand parenthood: this is an empirical question far beyond the scope of this short chapter. Instead, what I am interested in are the various grounds upon which a person may be regarded as a legal parent at the moment of a child's birth in the UK. When we investigate this closely, we see that while these grounds have arguably shifted and expanded over recent decades, the notion that a child has two 'real' parents has remained constant. This is reflected in the strict two-parent model for legal parenthood (see also Lotz, this volume).Although legal parenthood has primarily developed through the common law, specific statutory provisions have been enacted in response to a number of assisted reproduction techniques, namely donor insemination, IVF using donated gametes and certain surrogacy arrangements. While clearly these provisions affect a relatively small proportion of births in the UK, the extent to which assisted reproduction generates controversy and captures the social imagination renders related legislation highly significant and symbolic.Moreover, Part 2 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 ('the 2008 Act') provides the most recent formal statement and codification of legal parenthood in the jurisdiction. That this codification reaffirms the strict two-parent model for legal parenthood is important, not least because the parenthood provisions apply to reproductive techniques which very directly dismantle the seemingly axiomatic two-parent connections of sexual reproduction which conflate bio-genetic ties with socio-legal roles and responsibility in most, if not all, Western societies (Boyd 2007;Diduck 2007;Dolgin 1997;Franklin 1997;Strathern 1992). What purpose does reaffirming the two-parent normative model serve and what does it say about our understandings of parenthood and family more generally? What tensions does it present for how legal parenthood is determined in the context of sexual reproduction where bio-genetic ties are increasingly determinative, especially for fatherhood? Did the law-makers involved really engage with the question of who counts as a parent and on what basis? Or were their deliberations primarily informed by 'common sense' a...

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Regulating inclusivity: reforming adoption law for the 21st century

Cited by 9 publications

References 4 publications

The Characteristics and Well‐Being of Adopted Stepchildren

The Characteristics and Well‐Being of Adopted Stepchildren

The Adoption and Children Act 2002: A Critical Examination

The Role of Sexual Partnership in UK Family Law

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