[msrenee]

I feel like the solution is to screen adoptive parents much more thoroughly. It is incredibly traumatic to find out that the people you live with and depend on don't want you around any more. Whether you think the parents at that point should nut up or find a new placement for the kid, it's already messed the child up just knowing that they might lose their home and family. Why are people able to adopt 17 kids and live off the government checks? That's an actual example from this series of articles. Why is that ever allowed to happen?

If the adoptive parents are screened more thoroughly, and given resources and help getting through the tough parts, we would see a lot less of this.

[notch656a]

You would see less, but it would still happen. There has to be some release valve other than putting the kid and parents into a corner like trapped rats, where risk for exposure to neglect/child abuse/trauma skyrocket. If you simply say a kid can't be re-adopted out by someone who's had them for X time, you're basically sealing the fate of some kids.

[msrenee]

I agree that there should absolutely be a way to rehome children whose families aren't able to handle the situation. The point of the article was that it needs to be tracked and regulated much, much more thoroughly. The article focuses on these online groups where people advertise these children and hand them off to interested strangers with basically no safety checks in place.

It seems like this often happens with parents who have had enough issues with the authorities in the past that going through more legitimate avenues would trigger an investigation that would likely see all of their children removed from the home. Which is why I think the root of the problem is people who are not qualified being allowed to adopt children, often way more than any reasonable person could hope to care for.