Adopting children is increasingly becoming more complicated and controversial. Most adoptions are heartfelt motifs; a husband and wife saving a child nationally or abroad from abuse, adopting a child due to a terminal illness when their parents abandoned them, a couple or person adopting a child after years of abuse in the foster care system, or a same-sex couple adopting a child who was abandoned at birth. These are the successful and honorable stories, ones which are the most shared for a feel-good story; but what about the adoptions which are dissolved each year (Morson)? In the case of Anita Tedaldi, it was her only choice. Anita and her husband made the decision to reverse the adoption their son, Dan, nearly six months after adopting him. Reverse adoption or “unadoption” is the legal absolution of the adoption of a child. The absolution of an adoption is legal in all states, but many citizens are conflicted with the idea of terminating the rights of a child which one vowed to take care of. What are the reasons of unadopting a child? Why adopt a child if you’re not one hundred percent sure you want to care for them? While many may at first disagree with the idea of dissolving a legal adoption or “unadoption”, there are many factors that aid both sides of the argument.   

Unadoption affects many stakeholders, in Dan’s case, he was a primary stakeholder. People who are directly affected by this case are Anita and her husband, her biological children, and Dan’s new adoptive parents and their children.

Dan was adopted from a South American country, he was picked up in a Miami airport by Anita while her husband was deployed on active duty. Upon arrival, Dan had many developmental problems. He had been physically unable to walk because of the abuse he received in South America; Dan had been found on the side of the road. His head was completely flat due to the hours of the day he had spent lying in a cot; Dan also had very weak legs and was unable to walk without support. Anita knew she had a long road ahead of her concerning Dan and his developmental and physical health, but she was ready to face the obstacles; after all, Anita loved Dan the way she loved her biological children.  Nearly 135,000 adoptions occur every year in the United States each year; unfortunately, for Anita and her family they would not be a part of the vast majority (Phillips et. al). According to Child Welfare Information Gateway, 10 to 25% of adoptions are disrupted each year, this means the adoption ends before a child is placed in the home. In Anita’s case the adoption was dissolved, meaning that the adoption ended while the child was in the care of the home. Dissolved adoptions are not as common, only 1 to 5% of adoptions are dissolved every year (CWIG).

Anita decided to dissolve her adoption of Dan because of his attachment problems. She writes “Five or six months after his arrival, I knew that Dan wasn’t attaching. We had expected his indifference towards my husband, who was deployed away from home for most of this time, but I worried that our son should have been closer to his sisters, and especially to me.” This was a significant enough reason for Anita to unadopt Dan. He was indifferent toward all the members of the family, including her daughters, who he spent most of his time with, and when her actively deployed husband returned home. She wanted to feel the same attachment with him as she did her biological daughters, but for a child who had suffered severe trauma from birth, it wasn’t coming anytime soon, if at all. Anita’s decision couldn’t be easy at all, she had to make a decision whether she wanted to unadopt a child which she committed to take care of as if her were her biological child.

This situation allows for obvious ethical questioning. Using the utilitarian approach, Anita would have to make a decision that does the most good and the least harm for all of the stakeholders. Many adopted children deal with mental health issues; in a study conducted by JAMA Pediatrics, it was found that out of 120,000 children who were adopted, 25,000 were seen by mental health professionals (Keyes). Many of those cases is for children such as Dan, who suffer from attachment issues. For Dan, placement into a different home may deepen his attachment issues, making it even harder for him to recover from his mental trauma. Although keeping him would be a long and hard journey of forming attachment, placing him in a different home would create more harm for him than it would for Anita and her family.

Concerning the Rights Approach, Anita would have to make a decision which protects and respects the moral rights of everyone affected. Morally, dissolving the parental rights of a child Anita legally promised to be the guardian of would be wrong. Although Anita has the right to legally end her parental rights over Dan, she made a moral commitment to become his mother. According to Anita “Our paediatrician diagnosed our son, when he arrived in the US, with some expected health problems and developmental delays” (Teldadi). Dan is an infant who does not understand morals and therefore does not know the difference between right and wrong.

The Fairness or Justice Approach would ensure that  everyone in the situation is treated equally. In this case, Anita is an adult who has complete control over the situation, while Dan is an infant who expresses no control over his situation. Anita has the right to legally adopt or dissolve the adoption of the child. Dan could not verbally accept or deny if he wanted Anita and her husband to adopt him or not. Anita explained, “ he had been found by the side of a road – but the doctor estimated he was a little younger than one year.” (Teldadi). Due to his developmental delays, Dan is probably not aware that Anita and Dan are his parents in the first place.

The Common Good approach emphasizes that all community members are good our actions that are contributed to the community should be good. Although this might affect their literal community, Anita and Dan’s story affects the adoption community. A large majority of children who have trouble in their adopted homes are put into foster care, but Second Chance is finding an alternative method. Second Chance is an adoption agency who rehome adopted children who have trouble adjusting to their new living circumstances (The Daily Dish). In an investigative article by Jenn Morson, she discovered, “According to Kaiser [ a coordinator for the agency], the agency began the Second Chance Adoptions program out of concern for children whose adoptive parents were attempting “rehoming” on their own, posting online and potentially putting their children in grave danger” (Morson).

Using the values approach would allow for ethical decisions to mimic a certain ideal which allow for the full development of humanity. In this approach, Dan should remain with Anita. With evidence of his developmental delays and attachment issues which would most likely increase if Dan should virtually not be rehomed (Loehlin). By allowing Dan to continue to live with her, Anita and Dan would both develop substantially. In both physical, emotional, and mental aspects, staying with Anita would allow Dan the best chance to allow him to grow in all areas. A similar situation plagued the Miller family in Texas, but with intensive counseling, they were able to create pathway that helped their adopted child (Riben). Surely the addition of a new child to a home can be emotionally, physically, and mentally taxing, but Anita’s biological children would also be allowed an opportunity to grow and understand the struggles and trials of their adopted brother.

Ultimately, I would use utilitarian approach to decide whether to terminate Dan’s adoption or to keep him. I felt as if Anita’s reasons for terminating the adoption were rushed and loosely supported. It is common for children to have attachment issues when they are placed in a new home. I also feel that if I adopted a child, I should be prepared to take of the child no matter what physical or mental state they were in. Dan was only in her house for 6 months before Anita decided she wanted to terminate her parental rights. With evidence of his developmental status, I would decide to put him in therapy and actively work with him at home and with his biological siblings to enhance his attachment. Anita did not explicitly state that she provided Dan with a psychiatrist, but rather only took him to a pediatrician who did not specialize in child psychology. Evidence that suggests placing Dan in a new home would deepen his attachment issues would also persuade me to continue the adoption. With those minor adjustments, I believe that if Dan was not placed into a new home, slowly but surely Dan’s attachment issues would dissipate; he would have a chance of feeling as he belonged in the family.

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Works Cited

“Adoption Disruption and Dissolution.” ( June 2012) Child Welfare Information Gateway, Children’s Bureau, www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/s_disrup.pdf.

Keyes, M. A. (2008, May 01). The Mental Health of US Adolescents Adopted in Infancy. Retrieved December 6, 2018, from https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/379446

Loehlin, John C., et al. “Antecedents of Children’s Adult Outcomes in the Texas Adoption Project.”

Journal of Personality, vol. 77, no. 1, 2009, pp. 1–22., doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.00536.x.

Phillips, S. (2014). Global families: A history of asian international adoption in america. Journal of Asian American Studies, 17(2), 234-236. Retrieved from http://proxy.library.vcu.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/docview/1544419822?accountid=14780

Riben, Mirah. “Preventing Un-Adoption Tragedies.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 5 Mar. 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mirah-riben/preventing-unadoption-tragedies_b_6325132.html.

The Daily Dish. “The Missing: Unadopting A Child.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 6 Sept. 2013, www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2011/01/the-missing-unadopting-a-child/177585/.

Tedaldi, Anita. “I Gave Back My Adopted Baby.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 21 Nov. 2009, http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/21/adoption-anita-tedaldi.