• What is "The Adoption Option"?
• The myths about adoption
• The reality of adoption
• The adoption industry:
  • Consumer demand
  • The Motive is Money
  • Reproductive exploitation?
  • Reproductive "predators"?
  • Coercion: How they do it
  • Open adoption: how they knew it would work
  • Adoption: Comparing America and Australia
• Considering "open adoption"?
• What Mothers Have to Say

• Don't be scared!
• Confronting the Myths of Single Parenting
• The Research is In: Young Motherhood is not a Crisis!
• Getting the Resouces You Need
• A Support Forum for Young Moms
• Your story of success
• Your rights as a mother
• Confronting the Myths of Single Parenting

• Bonding Before Birth
• "A Special Message to Baby's Grandma"
• What Adoptees Say about Adoption

Alternatives to Adoption?

True alternatives to the current system of adoption would include support for families in danger of losing their children for economic reasons, individualized custody (not ownership), fostering, child guardianship, co-parenting, an open system under uniform fair laws guaranteeing uniform rights, true and uniform birth  records, joint public-private partnerships for family preservation and program oversight, and removing financial incentives for separating children from their families...

See also our list of Parenting Resources

is an alternative to permanently removing a child from parents. One or both biological parents share custody of their child with a relative or court appointed guardian. The benefit to the child and his parents is an extended "family" to share the responsibility and one or two homes with which the child is familiar rather than frequent moves f rom one foster home to another and no real family.

is a successful, community-based family preservation program headquartered in Washington state and designed to assist families at risk of losing their children to foster care. By helping families in trouble, the program seeks to avoid removing children from the home. Washington estimated it saved $17-million dollars in its first few years since the program began in l974. The comparisons:
— Homebuilders, 5 weeks $2,600
— Foster care, 9 months $3,607
— Group Care, 12 months $19,465
— Correction all institutions, 3 months $14,437
— Acute Psychiatric Hospital, just 1 month $10,000
— Residential Treatment, 12 months $67,525
(Source: National Governor's Association, chart in Family Values newsletter.)

A pioneering website, www.Co-abode.com, offers a unique "matchmaking" service to provide single moms the opportunity to house share, while pooling resources and finances with another single mom of their choosing.

Founder of Co-abode.com, Carmel Sullivan, is a single mom who knows the issues single mothers face firsthand. She describes the website as a source of real help for single moms where they need it the most - social support and better living arrangements for their children. "If the 'It takes a village' notion has any credence - as I firmly believe it does - then connecting single moms is the way to make it work," says Sullivan.

Co-abode.com also offers single moms a way to stay in the family home by sharing its expense with another single-mom family. Moms without a home can find an appropriate housemate through the service, enabling them to afford a larger and more comfortable home together.

also known as Building Brighter Futures, a 37-year old non-profit organization. In order to continue receiving public assistance, the young mothers must stay in the program until they obtain their high school diploma or GED. They get counseling and help with transportation, child care and discuss issues such as parenting skills, birth control, employment, with volunteers according to their expertise. The focus on the program is to help the young women become self-sufficient. - The New York Times, July 15, 1990, Section 12, "Teenagers Need Effective Parents To Win Drug Battle," by Brien O'Callahan:

... We must reverse our spending priorities so that 80% of our 'drug war' monies is taken away from interdiction, enforcement and rehabilitation and put into parent education and assistance. Parental assistance programs like Homebuilders or family preservation and parent-school collaboration programs must be given more funds. The focus must be on talking to parents, not just children. Better parents are a better weapon in the "war against drugs."

Senator Patrick Moynihan, when arguing against a $1-billion dollar appropriation for family preservation and support, said 'The ability of social workers to intervene with the goal of family preservation has never been proven."

is described in "Boot Camp For Moms," Los Angeles Times (May 27, 1993, E-1), brainchild of Asenath Andrews, Principal of Catherine Ferguson Academy, which teaches students living skills needed to make it on their own. They camped in Yellowstone National Park and helped build a day care center in Washington, DC, funded with both public school money and a grant from the state of Michigan.

"an alternative to foster care, was created to prevent the need to separate mothers and children. In 1887, the Milford Industrial Home, also known as the Nebraska Maternity Home, was a reformatory and charitable institution for unwed mothers who had financial problems and could not arrange their own care. Each of the "inmates" was taught homemaking and nursing skills and obtained a high school diploma. Those who could go on to earn a living and pay the monthly upkeep for themselves and their children were permitted to stay. Those who did not pay within 6 months had to give up their babies for adoption, which need not be the price to pay today. An innovative program, sponsored by Women's Alternatives Inc. in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, today it serves only female heads of households and their children by providing educational and clinical services to women in a crisis situation through 3 to 6 month comprehensive residential and non-residential programs for mothers and children with problems. By providing temporary housing, a supportive environment, relevant skills and necessary training for female heads of household, WAC enabled families to become financially and emotionally independent and effectively manage and direct themselves and their children within their communities and the mainstream of American society. WAC was initially headquartered in a 3-story home in rural Chester Heights, offering families a contrast and easy access to urban areas. WAC was funded as a demonstration project on a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its operation was maintained through corporate, foundation and community support. The Center's residential families lived in a safe and supportive environment. WAC also helped prevent child abuse and neglect and made the community more aware of the needs of the female headed household.

which the media called "the most innovative program for homeless mothers and children in the nation," is similar to WAC but extends post-program services including mentoring. Headquartered in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, the Michigan program was launched with 1,000 homeless applicants.

is described in "Life Off The Streets," TIME (November 16, 1998, p. 8), by Wendy Cole: "At Genesis House, society's 'throwaway women' get a fresh chance... Opened in 1983 (on Chicago's South Side) by a British-born feminist theologian named Edwina Gately, Genesis House is just one of a handful of U.S. recovery centers for prostitutes (many of whom are raising children). As social services and law enforcement agencies have learned about its success rate and unusual approach in dealing with seemingly intractable clients, it has become a model for similar programs from Florida to Thailand. Nonetheless ... Genesis House is in financial jeopardy from the loss of a half million dollars in federal funds and had to find volunteers to replace about half of its 25 paid staff members. About 70% of enrollees complete the program and 80% of the graduates don't relapse."

co-sponsored by a Savannah, Georgia hospital and Lutheran Ministries, fills the gap left by parents without grandparent support, HMO'S, Social Services and busy nurses who don't have the time to simply cuddle and nurture an infant. "Open Arms" takes care of "border babies"--infants who are born seriously premature or who have been abused or abandoned or who have parents who cannot care for them. The infants stay in a three-bedroom bungalow operated by Open Arms until the courts place them in foster care, put them up for adoption, or return them to their parents who might otherwise permanently lose their babies from temporary situations. Communities need to promote hospital volunteerism through churches, libraries, retired citizens groups, local organizations.

Child Guardianship

   In one version of "subsidized guardianship," the court appoints co-guardians to act on behalf of a child when the parents cannot do so.  In the Vera Institute on Justice Report on Guardianship, author Maerl Schwartz envisions a situation where co-guardians work as family mentors and partners during times of crisis.  The co-guardians may be family friends or relatives.  The co-guardian is like a caseworker in a family preservation project but with access to the family that no outsider can hope to achieve within time limits imposed on those efforts.  Schwartz' study names 10 states that, as of 1995, operated subsidized guardianship programs at some level.  Feedback from the states indicated varying degrees of success and challenge.

   Three years into the Massachusetts and New York "Guardianship Demonstration Project," researchers reported that the majority of children were thriving with their guardians.  An Illinois program administrator's efforts to transfer about 2,000 children from kinship care to guardianship were slowed by a lack of alternative funding to cover the cost of federal medical insurance.  Like other child welfare plans, subsidized guardianship must be monitored.  It is not the panacea for every situation but it is an option that could help achieve permanence for kids without permanently severing their kinship ties and basic human rights as adoption does.  (Source:   New York City Comptroller, Office of Policy Management, A Model For Subsidized Guardianship,  by Matthew Grosser, Diane Pausell and Regina Poreda, NY May 1995; Merrill Schwartz, "Re-inventing Guardianship: Subsidized Guardianship, Co-Guardians and Child Welfare, Institute of Justice Inc., June 1993).