PACT (Pre/Post Adoption Consulting and Training)

07/23/2025

We’re now accepting speaker proposals for the 2026 Untangling Our Roots Summit. If your work or experience intersects with ambiguous loss, disenfranchised grief, or complicated grief, this is your moment.

Submit your proposal now: https://untanglingourroots.org/speaker-propsal/.

Request for Speaker Proposals - Submissions close September 14, 2025 The purpose of Untangling Our Roots is to provide a warm, friendly, inclusive environment where all attendees feel safe to engage with other attendees, speak freely, to grow, and learn in a supportive community. This year our theme...

07/23/2025

07/15/2025

Would you be surprised to learn that su***de rates among adoptees are comparable to su***de rates of Veterans who have fought in active combat?

A Swedish national cohort study in 2017 reported that international adoptees were approximately 3.6 times more likely to die by su***de than non-adoptees, while domestic adoptees were at 2.84 times greater risk than their non-adopted peers. JAMA Psychiatry published a study in 2019, which found that adolescent adoptees were 2.05 times more likely to die by su***de compared to non-adopted teenagers. In comparison, Veterans who have experienced active combat are 2.3 times more likely to die by su***de than their non-deployed counterparts.

Fairy tales do not result in this level of suicidality. Adoption is not a universal good, and is in fact, all too often psychological warfare. Enough is enough. Listening to adoptees and advocating for adoption reform and systemic change is upstream su***de prevention.

07/12/2025

For those who don’t know what the adoption tax credit is about:

“When people adopt a child in the USA, they have five years to claim now over 21k in adoption related expenses on their taxes returns. (Lots of info here: https://wearefamiliesrising.org/adoption-tax-credit/)

So say they had 40k in various fees; over a 5 year period they would recoup that through a reduction in their owed taxes.
Essentially is is government bailouts to adoptive parents.
Now you might think “well that’s ok because adoption is so lovely and too expensive anyway” but here’s the thing..

The majority of mothers who relinquish voluntarily ( basic newborn adoption) or mothers who have their children taken into foster care do so due to financial issues. IE: they are too poor ( (which equals “neglect” and child removal).

It’s the same as cutting snap and Medicare to give the big corporations and top 1% a tax break.

More detail on a piece I wrote many years back for the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/10/29/should-the-adoption-tax-credit-be-renewed/why-not-a-tax-credit-so-mothers-can-afford-to-keep-children

Do note that now the adoption industry is estimated to be something like a 30.5 billion dollar industry. (I did double check that number and the 2025 estimates ste even bigger thsn i thought. Holy s**t!)

So a natural mother gets no support but the more privileged adoptive parents do. On top of the credit, if one adopts from foster care, then often there is also an adoption stipend that gets paid monthly. I know one family that will bank over a million dollars during a single childhood.

Yes, I’m mad about it. You should be too. 1 in 5 adoption fail and the su***de risk for both adopted people and mothers like myself that list our children is much much higher than the general population. But our freaking government supports it financially with your tax dollars. Your taxes are used to traumatize mothers and children “
Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy

The current credit is a form of parental discrimination based on class and economics.