III. More About the Children Available for Adoption, Page 6
Children of Mothers Addicted to Drugs or Alcohol, or with HIV
Children born to alcoholic or drug-addicted mothers can be addicted themselves at birth and they can be affected in other ways by their mothers’ abuse. If not afflicted with fetal alcohol syndrome or born addicts they are likely to be undernourished, smaller than normal, sickly and have some degree of temporary or permanent mental handicap. Affected babies need help to recover from their addiction and to make up for the other effects of abuse. Their early care can be very distressing for the adults involved because they are in such pain.
Mothers with HIV, which can be transmitted by dirty needles, transfusions with infected blood products or unprotected sex with infected persons, may pass it onto their babies in the womb or in their breast milk. While HIV infection is no longer the automatic death sentence it was until recently, these babies will also need very special care, possibly intensive drug treatment for their entire lives. And until society becomes more rational about AIDS there will be a need for secrecy about the child’s condition, to protect him and his adoptive family from prejudice.
Agencies are unlikely to test for HIV infection unless they think the mother is infected.
I was surprised to find that one of our children had not been tested for HIV, even though her mother’s lifestyle made her at risk of infection. When I asked, the agency simply refused to have her tested, and because we did not at the time have parental responsibility, we could not have her tested ourselves. We adopted her not knowing whether she was infected or not, because we wanted her regardless. She turned out to be the healthiest of the bunch!
Some people have a special empathy for children born with this kind of problem, and while HIV+ babies needing adoption are still not common in Britain, the number of babies born affected by maternal alcohol or drug abuse is rising. Not all of these babies need adopting at birth, although a good case could be made for automatically declaring them in need of care orders, since most of them will eventually need adopting or long-term fostering. By the time their mothers finally succumb to the effects of continued abuse and the prostitution and crime which generally provide the income to feed their addictions, many of these children will have been irretrievably damaged through maltreatment and neglect.
Another kind of HIV-affected child is one born into a family which is otherwise functioning well, and the child himself is not infected but the parents are. The parents may be injecting drug addicts but still able to provide a satisfactory and loving home for the child, or they may have acquired HIV through blood transfusions, etc. For these families the adoption of their children after their parents’ deaths may be part of a long-term planning process in co-operation with the social and health services. The children involved will not be babies and the placement or at least the introduction period may begin well before the parents become incapacitated, with the families gradually transferring care of the child from one to the other. These children will go through very distressing times and need help in their grieving process and in keeping the memory of their parents alive. The children may also be HIV+ themselves and facing the possibility of their own premature deaths. Adoptive parents for these children will have to be very strong and compassionate and able to share their children with their birth families on a much more intimate level than usual.
© Roger Ridley Fenton
