Megan Pleva

Many adoptive parents also report feeling held to a standard of parenting that goes beyond what would ever be expected of a birth parent. The implication, sometimes explicit and sometimes not, is that because you chose this, because you were assessed and approved and matched, you should be able to manage whatever arises. The reality, of course, is that no amount of preparation fully equips a person for the lived experience of parenting a child with complex developmental trauma.

For many adopted children, the early experience of being separated from a birth family, regardless of the reasons, carries an implicit message. Not a rational one, not one that anyone intended, but one that the child's developing mind has constructed in the only way it can: I was left because I was not enough. Because I was too much. Because something about me made it impossible for the people who were supposed to keep me, to keep me.

Single adopters are one of the most quietly remarkable groups in UK adoption, and one of the least well supported.