Institute Update Issue 2 - May 2002

Back-benchers push for unmarried adoption

The Government’s Adoption and Children Bill is currently in the House of Commons. Back-bench MPs have put down amendments to the Bill which would legalise adoption by homosexuals and cohabiting heterosexual couples.

The Government’s own Adoption Law Review recommended that the law should stay as it is.(1) At one stage it looked as though the Government would stand by the review’s findings. Now it seems the Government has backed down and is to permit a free vote.(2) At the moment only married couples can jointly adopt children. Some 95% of all adoptions are with married couples, with 5% by single people (who are also legally permitted to adopt).(3) Most European Countries have the same law as the UK permitting only married couples and single people to adopt.

Research shows that the average length of cohabitation is two years at which point the couple tend to marry or split up.(4) Cohabitation is essentially a transient state. Adults who want to commit themselves to a child for life by adoption should be willing to commit themselves to each other for life. They should get married.

The Christian Institute has published a briefing Sidelining Stability and Security – The Case Against Abandoning the Current Grounds for Adoption. The briefing is available from the Institute.

1 House of Commons Special Standing Committee – Adoption and Children Bill, Hansard, 20 November 2001, col. 31
2 The Independent, 20 April 2002
3 Surveying Adoption : A comprehensive analysis of local authority adoptions
1998/1999, BAAF, 2000, page 88
4 Berthoud, R and Gershuny, J (Eds.), Seven Years in the Lives of British Families, Policy Press, 2000, page 39

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