Is it true that children are resilient and will always adjust to a new home in time? Can babies be depressed? Is it true that most infertile couples have what it takes to be an ideal adoptive parent? Do children remember those early days before they were moved to a new home? Are people accepting of the fact a child is adopted?

Few know the answers to these questions. Experts have studied these questions and found very surprising results.

Separation from parents, sometimes sudden and usually traumatic, coupled with the difficult experiences that have precipitated out-of-home placement, can leave infants and toddlers dramatically impaired in their emotional, social, physical, and cognitive development... (Cohen)

Babies grieve when their relationships are disrupted and this sadness adversely effects their development.

Those who do not have an opportunity to form a secure attachment with a trusted adult (i.e. infants and toddlers who experience multiple foster homes) suffer grave consequences. Their development can deteriorate resulting in delays in cognition and learning, relationship dysfunction, difficulty expressing emotions, and future mental health disorders.
[Zero To Three]

"Infants and toddlers do experience mental health issues. They do experience stress and emotional pain in response to separations… experiencing neglect, or being denied the stability of a primary caregiver... (Hill, 2005)

In our experience, expert witnesses frequently introduce the idea that very young children will not be able to recall trauma suffered in their early years. This belief is often extended to suggest that early attachment relationships are forgotten and thus should not be taken into consideration when making permanency decisions. Infants are capable of recalling experiences from the first days of life. (Siegel,1999)

The memories are largely perceptual and are encoded through touch and sound. By the child’s second birthday, as language skills are developing, the memory is explicit and involves the ability to actually recall an event verbally (Siegel, 1999). Although the child’s early memory skills are obviously not fully developed, research demonstrates that even years following an event, though inaccessible to consciousness, the memory may still influence the child’s behavior and physiological responses." [Zero To Three]

Psychological research amassed over seventy years indicates that adoption is inherently and profoundly, and often incurably, wounding to the adoptee and his birth family and should be the solution of last resort. [Adoption: When Psychology and Law Collide]

"Children who were adopted can be made to feel isolated at school, and their unique life experiences often are characterized as abnormal." Responding to the needs of the Adopted Child. Kappa Delta Pi Record 40 no4 160-4 Summ 2004

"And if parent alienation is going on here, that is dangerous because it will backlash. I can't tell you how many times I've seen kids when they get 18, 20 years old that... said, "Why did you take my mother or father away from me?"" [CNN.com]

Although it is true that a parent's rights are important, so are the child's rights. As our supreme court said in Padgett v. Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, 577 So.2d 565, 570 (Fla.1991), a child also has a fundamental liberty interest in being free from physical and emotional violence, and being given away to strangers is a pretty emotionally violent act. It might not be such a bad thing if the courts of this state let parents know that children are not just property to which parents have rights, but persons to whom they owe a sacred trust. (641 So.2d 84)