Adoption in Missouri When the Birth Father is Unsupportive
Every adoption story is different. Some couples come to the decision to put their baby up for adoption together, but others don’t quite have the luxury. It can be difficult to tackle adoption alone, and difficult legal issues can arise from attempting to do so without your partner’s consent. However, sometimes you have to decide what is the right one for you and your baby. At Adoption Choices of Missouri, we want to make sure you get the help you need to sort out difficult questions like this. An unsupportive or absent birth father can make things more complicated, but not impossible. Here are just a few steps you can take to work through an adoption with that situation.
Contact Adoption Choices of Missouri For Adoption Help
Contacting an adoption agency is important for a variety of reasons. Between our staff, we have many years of experience with the adoption process and have seen many different cases with birth fathers as well. Also, we can make sure you understand the options you have in your current situation. Plus, our services will always be free to any birth mother in need. While you can find some information about making an adoption plan with an unsupportive birth father online, many factors can influence your choices. Your best option is to contact an adoption agency before moving forward with the adoption process.
What Happens When the Birth Father is Absent During the Adoption Process?
If the birth father is not married to you or out of your life entirely, there are a couple of options. Missouri has a putative father registry. This allows for someone to acknowledge their biological parenthood of children outside of marriage. If they did register with that system, they would be notified by law if you wish to put your baby up for adoption. However, if the birth father hasn’t provided support, communication, and/or never visited the child for a period of at least six months, their parental rights may be terminated by law. If the birth father is still in your life to some extent, we can help you communicate with him and counsel you.
Our adoption caseworkers have years of experience and knowledge to help sort out more specific details and answer your questions.
What To Do If the Birth Father Doesn’t Want You to Put Your Baby up for Adoption
If the birth father is still involved in the life of the child and helps support that child, then courts require the consent of both parents to relinquish their parental rights to put a child up for adoption.
This can make the task of putting your baby up for adoption even more challenging. One important thing to remember is that, for many fathers, putting their baby up for adoption is a tough decision to make. Just like you, they wrestle with some difficult feelings. Even if you have determined that adoption is the best choice for you, the birth father has to go through much of the same emotional processing.
Tips for Communicating About Adoption
You and your adoption caseworker can work together to talk about adoption to your partner and/or the birth father. Sometimes learning more about the adoption process and making an adoption plan can make someone more willing to trust the adoption process. If the father is worried about where the baby will go afterward, we can explain the in-depth interviews and requirements for all adoptive parents. If they’re worried about being able to support the pregnancy financially, we have plenty of financial resources for housing, transportation, and healthcare.
We want to help you communicate about adoption in a comfortable way. Putting your baby up for adoption, going through an unplanned pregnancy, and trying to communicate about difficult topics are all tasks that can weigh heavily on you. Let us take some of that weight off your shoulders and make things easier.
Unplanned Pregnancy Options When the Birth Father is Unsupportive or Absent
You finally have decided on adoption. After looking at your options and learning about adoption agencies and resources, you know it’s the best option for you and your child. It can be a scary thing to do, but you’ve made up your mind. But there’s just one problem: how do you tell your partner about this? How will they respond? Are they in the picture at all?
If your story sounds anything like this, we want to help you communicate and come to an agreement with the birth father. It’s important to remember empathy sometimes. Giving a baby up for adoption is hard for fathers too. Just know that Adoption Choices of Missouri will be with you every step of the way.
Adoption Choices of Missouri serves birth parents statewide and beyond, please call us or text us to learn more! Call us toll-free at 877-903-4488 or, in Missouri call or text us at 1-816-527-9800
Meet the author: Joshua Boulet is an aspiring journalist and writer with a particular fondness for research and social sciences. He loves music, writing, reading, video games and most art, and anything creative he can get his hands on. Boulet believes that there’s too much good stuff out there and not enough time to see it all. He grew up on video games: the classic Sonic the Hedgehog games, Mario Kart, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and Legend of Zelda. The music of rhythm games led him to an interest in that, and the investigative journalism of Jason Schreier inspired him to discover the importance of journalism as an industry. That interest in developers’ lives led him to an interest in social justice and how the world could maybe be made into a better place. “All this to say, there is certainly a line I can draw between me obsessively playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and me interviewing my sociology professor about how to read academic articles. Those surprising through lines fascinate me all the same. At my best, I’m a person who gets to be constantly fascinated by the lives and work of other people.” His favorite quote is from his favorite jazz musician: “A genius is the one most like himself” – Thelonious Monk.