Forced adoption

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Forced adoption is the practice of forcefully taking children from their parents and placing them for adoption.

Contents

Forced assimilation

Removing children of ethnic minorities from their families to be adopted by those of the dominant ethnic group has been used as a method of forced assimilation. "Forcibly transferring children of [a] group to another group" is genocide according to the Genocide Convention. [1] While this usually revolves around ethnicity, assimilating children of political minorities has also occurred.

Australia

The Stolen Generations in Australia involved Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, [2] [3] where over 60 years from 1910, it is estimated that as many as a third of Aboriginal children were taken from their families. [4]

Canada

In Canada, the Canadian Indian residential school system involved First Nations, Métis and Inuit children, who often suffered severe abuse. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] The Sixties Scoop is a period when Canadian child welfare agents had the authority to take indigenous children from their families for placement in foster homes so they could be adopted by white families. [10]

China

As part of the persecution of Uyghurs in China, in 2017 alone at least half a million children were forcefully separated from their families, and placed in pre-school camps with prison-style surveillance systems and 10,000 volt electric fences. [11]

Poland

In German-occupied Poland, it is estimated that 200,000 Polish children with purportedly Aryan traits were removed from their families and given to German or Austrian couples, [12] and only 25,000 returned to their families after the war. [13]

South Sudan

Among nomadic groups, particularly the Murle people, children are abducted in raids against other tribes to be raised as their own. The practice is thought to be intended to increase the tribe's numbers. [14] This includes the 2016 Gambela raid and 2017 Gambela raid.

Spain

Hispanic eugenics was pioneered by psychiatrist Antonio Vallejo-Nájera who proposed a link between Marxism and intellectual disability, leading to the thefts of many Spanish newborns and young children from their left-wing parents. [15]

Ukraine

In April 2023, the Council of Europe voted overwhelmingly, with 87 in favor, 1 opposed, and 1 abstention, to deem the "deportations and forcible transfers of Ukrainian children and other civilians to Russian Federation or to Ukrainian territories temporarily occupied" as an act of genocide. [16]

Child welfare

Child welfare is often the rationale given for separating children from their parents. Family preservation is the perspective that it is better to help keep children at home with their families rather than in foster homes or institutions. How that should be balanced with the potential of harm to children is a matter of debate. [17]

Abusive parents

Separating children from parents is most commonly used today for parental abuse of children.

Single mothers

From the 1950s to the 1970s in the anglosphere, babies were frequently taken away from unmarried mothers without any other reason simply because unmarried mothers were considered unsuitable parents, in what was known as the baby scoop era. [18] [19] In 2013, the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard apologized for the forced adoption in Australia of babies born to unwed mothers that occurred mostly in the twentieth century. [20]

In Belgium from the end of the Second World War to the 1980s, the Catholic Church took in pregnant unmarried women and, during childbirth, some women were given general anesthetia while others had to wear a mask to prevent them from seeing their children. Some women were sterilized. About 30,000 such children were sold to adoptive parents for between 10,000 and 30,000 Belgian francs (roughly between €250 and €750) and sometimes much more. [21]

Parents in poverty

In Switzerland, between the 1850s and the mid-20th century, hundreds of thousands of children mostly from poor families, as well as single parents, were removed from their parents by the authorities, and sent to work on farms, living with new families. They were known as contract children or Verdingkinder . [22] [23] [24] [25]

Parents belonging to minorities

A 2023 report from the South Australian Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People warned of a new "stolen generation" finding Aboriginal children were increasingly being removed from their families with every other Aboriginal child in South Australia being subject to a one child protection notification in 2020-21 compared to one in 12 for non-Aboriginal children. [4]

Norwegian Child Welfare Services are accused of disproportionately removing children of immigrant parents. [26] [27]

Parents with criminal records

In the United Kingdom, former judge Alan Goldsack called for the UK Government to forcibly remove children from 'criminal families' at birth and to place them for adoption. His remarks have been criticized and he has been accused of "criminalising babies". [28]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stolen Generations</span> Indigenous Australian children forcibly acculturated into White Australian society

The Stolen Generations were the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian federal and state government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments. The removals of those referred to as "half-caste" children were conducted in the period between approximately 1905 and 1967, although in some places mixed-race children were still being taken into the 1970s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adoption</span> Parenting a child in place of the original parents

Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from the biological parents to the adoptive parents.

A single parent is a person who has a child or children but does not have a spouse or live-in partner to assist in the upbringing or support of the child. Reasons for becoming a single parent include death, divorce, break-up, abandonment, becoming widowed, domestic violence, rape, childbirth by a single person or single-person adoption. A single parent family is a family with children that is headed by a single parent.

Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of institutional discrimination based on race or ethnic group and can include policies and practices that exist throughout a whole society or organization that result in and support a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others. It manifests as discrimination in areas such as criminal justice, employment, housing, healthcare, education and political representation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canadian Indian residential school system</span> Schools to assimilate Indigenous children

The Canadian Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples. The network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by various Christian churches. The school system was created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally. By the 1930s, about 30 percent of Indigenous children were attending residential schools. The number of school-related deaths remains unknown due to incomplete records. Estimates range from 3,200 to over 30,000, mostly from disease.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Home Children</span> Child migration scheme

Home Children was the child migration scheme founded by Annie MacPherson in 1869, under which more than 100,000 children were sent from the United Kingdom to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. The programme was largely discontinued in the 1930s but not entirely terminated until the 1970s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Sorry Day</span> Annual Australian event on 26 May

National Sorry Day, officially the National Day of Healing, is an event held annually in Australia on 26 May commemorating the Stolen Generations. It is part of the ongoing efforts towards reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Child abuse</span> Maltreatment or neglect of a child

Child abuse is physical, sexual, emotional and/or psychological maltreatment or neglect of a child, especially by a parent or a caregiver. Child abuse may include any act or failure to act by a parent or a caregiver that results in actual or potential wrongful harm to a child and can occur in a child's home, or in organizations, schools, or communities the child interacts with.

The Baby Scoop Era was a period in anglosphere history starting after the end of World War II and ending in the early 1970s, characterized by an increasing rate of pre-marital pregnancies over the preceding period, along with a higher rate of newborn adoption.

Aboriginal child protection describes services designed specifically for protection of the children of "aboriginal" or indigenous peoples, particularly where they are a minority within a country. This may differ at international, national, legal, cultural, social, professional and program levels from general or mainstream child protection services. Fundamental human rights are a source of many of the differences. Aboriginal child protection may be an integral or a distinct aspect of mainstream services or it may be exercised formally or informally by an aboriginal people itself. There has been controversy about systemic genocide in child protection systems enforced with aboriginal children in post-colonial societies.

The Kimelman Report had a substantial and lasting impact on aboriginal child protection in Canada that was part of a fundamental shift in international child protection paradigms for aboriginal peoples.

Adoption in Australia deals with the adoption process in the various parts of Australia, whereby a person assumes or acquires the permanent, legal status of parenthood in relation to a child under the age of 18 in place of the child's birth or biological parents. Australia classifies adoptions as local adoptions, and intercountry adoptions. Known child adoptions are a form of local adoptions.

Child abduction or child theft is the unauthorized removal of a minor from the custody of the child's natural parents or legally appointed guardians.

The Sixties Scoop, also known as The Scoop, was a period in which a series of policies were enacted in Canada that enabled child welfare authorities to take, or "scoop up," Indigenous children from their families and communities for placement in foster homes, from which they would be adopted by white families. Despite its name referencing the 1960s, the Sixties Scoop began in the mid-to-late 1950s and persisted into the 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Verdingkinder</span>

Verdingkinder, Verdingsbuben, "contract children", or "indentured child laborers" were children in Switzerland who were removed from their families by the authorities (due to poverty, moral reasons, and placed in foster families, often poor farmers who needed cheap labour. In the early 2000s, many of these children, by then adults, publicly stated that they had been severely mistreated by their foster families, suffering neglect, beatings and other physical and psychological abuse. The Verdingkinder scheme was common in Switzerland until the 1960s.

Forced adoption in Australia was the practice of taking babies from unmarried mothers, against their will, and placing them for adoption. In 2012 the Australian Senate Inquiry Report into Forced Adoption Practices found that babies were taken illegally by doctors, nurses, social workers and religious figures, sometimes with the assistance of adoption agencies or other authorities, and adopted to married couples. Some mothers were coerced, drugged and illegally had their consent taken. Many of these adoptions occurred after the mothers were sent away by their families 'due to the stigma associated with being pregnant and unmarried'. The removals occurred predominantly in the second half of the twentieth century. According to Sydney Morning Herald journalist, Marissa Calligeros, it was a practice which has been described as 'institutionalised baby farming'. In evidence given to the New South Wales Parliamentary Inquiry into Adoption, Centrecare's Chief Social Researcher was quoted as admitting to "a stolen white generation."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foster care in Australia</span>

Home-based care, which includes foster care, is provided to children who are in need of care and protection. Children and young people are provided with alternative accommodation while they are unable to live with their parents. As well as foster care, this can include placements with relatives or kin, and residential care. In most cases, children in home-based care are also on a care and protection order.

Forced adoption is the practice of removing children permanently from their parents and the subsequent adoption of those children, following intervention by the Children's Services department of a Local Authority in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kinder der Landstrasse</span> Swiss project to remove Yenish children from their families

Das Hilfswerk für die Kinder der Landstrasse, more commonly known as Kinder der Landstrasse, was a project implemented by the Swiss foundation Pro Juventute from 1926 to 1973. The project aimed to assimilate the itinerant Yenish people in Switzerland by institutionalizing the parents and forcibly removing their children and placing them in orphanages or foster homes. Approximately 590 children were affected by this program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Child abductions in the Russo-Ukrainian War</span> Forced Russian adoption of Ukrainian children

During the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russia has forcibly transferred almost 20 thousand Ukrainian children to areas under its control, assigned them Russian citizenship, forcibly adopted them into Russian families, and created obstacles for their reunification with their parents and homeland. The United Nations has stated that these deportations constitute war crimes. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for President of Russia Vladimir Putin and Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for their alleged involvement. According to international law, including the 1948 Genocide Convention, such acts constitute genocide if done with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a nation or ethnic group.

References

  1. ↑ "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide". www.ohchr.org. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 9 December 1948. Archived from the original on 13 April 2022. Retrieved 24 October 2023.
  2. ↑ "The Stolen Generations". Australians Together. Archived from the original on 19 November 2015.
  3. ↑ "The agony of Australia's Stolen Generation". BBC News. 9 August 2007. Archived from the original on 4 December 2007.
  4. 1 2 "Australian Aboriginal child separation at 'devastating rates': Commissioner". Al Jazeera. 5 October 2023.
  5. ↑ Griffiths, Sian (13 June 2015). "The schools that had cemeteries instead of playgrounds". BBC News. Archived from the original on 19 October 2015.
  6. ↑ "Survivor of Canada's residential schools talks about abuse". BBC News. 5 June 2015. Archived from the original on 18 October 2015.
  7. ↑ Paquin, Mali Ilse (6 June 2015). "Canada confronts its dark history of abuse in residential schools". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 21 January 2017.
  8. ↑ Luxen, Micah (4 June 2015). "Survivors of Canada's 'cultural genocide' still healing". BBC News. Archived from the original on 25 July 2016.
  9. ↑ "Canada apology for native schools". BBC News. 11 June 2008. Archived from the original on 18 November 2015.
  10. ↑ Dart, Christopher. "The Sixties Scoop Explained". CBC Docs POV . CBC. Archived from the original on 11 May 2021. Retrieved 24 October 2023.
  11. ↑ Sudworth, John (4 July 2019). "China separating Muslim children from families". BBC News. Archived from the original on 5 July 2019. Retrieved 5 July 2019.
  12. ↑ "Searching for missing relatives in Poland". Financial Times. 30 October 2009.
  13. ↑ Gitta Sereny, "Stolen Children", rpt. in Jewish Virtual Library (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise). Accessed 15 September 2008.
  14. ↑ "Why hundreds of people are dying over cattle in East Africa". Los Angeles Times. 21 April 2016. Archived from the original on 22 November 2016. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
  15. ↑ Morcillo, Aurora G. (2010). The Seduction of Modern Spain: The Female Body and the Francoist Body Politic. Bucknell University Press. ISBN   9780838757536.
  16. ↑ Taylor, Harry; Henley, Jon; Sullivan, Helen (27 April 2023). "Council of Europe says Russian-forced deportation of children from Ukraine is 'genocide'". www.theguardian.com. The Guardian. Retrieved 24 October 2023.
  17. ↑ "MP claims 1,000 children 'wrongly' adopted every year". BBC News. 13 December 2011.
  18. ↑ ‘We were human beings’: UK families seek apology over historic forced adoptions Archived 20 March 2022 at the Wayback Machine The Guardian
  19. ↑ The UK's forced adoption scandal was state-sanctioned abuse Archived 20 March 2022 at the Wayback Machine
  20. ↑ Calligeros, Marissa (2010-12-23). "'Your son is gone. He's with his adoptive parents'". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2024-06-07.
  21. ↑ "Catholic Church put up 30,000 children for adoption without mothers' consent". Brussels Times. 14 December 2023.
  22. ↑ "Historian reveals tragedy of Swiss child trade". Swissinfo.ch. 29 February 2004. Archived from the original on 18 November 2015.
  23. ↑ Puri, Kavita (29 October 2014). "Switzerland's shame: The children used as cheap farm labour". BBC News. Archived from the original on 20 July 2016. Retrieved 28 June 2016.
  24. ↑ Jordans, Frank (24 November 2011). "Swiss grapple with history of forced child labor". Boston.com. Archived from the original on 18 November 2015.
  25. ↑ Foulkes, Imogen (19 January 2012). "Swiss 'contract children' speak out". BBC News. Archived from the original on 13 January 2016.
  26. ↑ "Forced Adoption Case Against Norway Hits European Rights Court". courthousenews. 27 January 2021.
  27. ↑ Whewell, Tim (3 August 2018). "Norway's hidden scandal". BBC News. Retrieved 2 March 2023.
  28. ↑ Adams, Stephen (2013-05-27). "Alan Goldsack QC wants children removed from criminals at birth". News.com.au. Archived from the original on 25 August 2013.
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