Can babies be placed for adoption without a father’s consent?

Whether a father’s consent was/is required for a baby to be placed for adoption depends on whether the situation is a closed adoption or an open adoption. Closed adoptions were popular through the 1980s, and since then open adoptions have become the preferred adoption experience.

Between the 1930s and 1980s, the practice of disregarding paternal rights was entirely legal. This time period is known as the Baby Scoop Era. Because of inadequate sexual education, the absence of birth control and safe abortion clinics, there was an abundance of babies being surrendered. (For a closer look at this historical period, pick up Ann Fessler’s book The Girls Who Went Away, The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade. It’s an excellent read even if you are not part of the adoption triad.)

In the Baby Scoop Era, adoption agencies were allowed to speed an adoption through the system without worrying about securing a father’s permission. On my original birth record (OBR)–which only became available to me when the adoption statutes in Illinois changed in 2011–in the space where my birth father’s name should have been are the words: legally omitted. In the post adoption support group that I attend through Catholic Charities, I joke with fellow adoptees that we all have the same father. His name is Legally Omitted (a bit of adoption humor–if you can’t laugh, then you will absolutely cry).

While the practice of leaving off a birth father’s name from a closed adoption birth record was an acceptable practice, it poses problems for a maturing adoptee who requires family medical history. The blank spot where a father’s name should be means an adoptee must go through the birth mom (who may have used an alias–also legal in the Baby Scoop Era) to find the birth dad. These are complicated steps that often lead to roadblocks and dead ends. In my adoption search journey, I experienced all of these happenstances: a birth mother alias and a no-name birth dad. I share these experiences in my debut memoir Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging, which comes out in May 2021 with She Writes Press. (Spoiler alert: my saga has a happy ending.)

It’s important to note that a closed adoption birth mother did not have to provide the name of her baby’s father. Sometimes she was asked and sometimes she wasn’t. Back then adoptions proceeded faster through the court approval process, without the birth father involved. It also meant that the birth dad was not asked to surrender his parental rights. So, a closed adoption could legally proceed without a birth father’s consent.

Since the advent of open adoption in the early 1980s, birth mothers and fathers share the same set of parental rights. Both of them have the right to parent their child and to consent to adoption. Adoption law provides the means for either parent to terminate their parental rights. The specifics of informing a birth father of his paternity can vary by state. Some states require substantive efforts to locate the birth father and serve him notice. If a birth mother claims the father is unknown, the law may require her to prove this.

Ultimately, for an expectant father to prevent an open adoption from taking place, several items must be determined. The father must prove his paternity either by the birth mother’s admission or by a paternity test. He should file for custody and provide child support. If all these conditions are met, then a birth father has the right to refuse consent to adoption. Experts agree that if a birth mother talks openly and honestly with her baby’s birth father and includes him in the adoption plan, she may convince him to consent to an open adoption.

Whether a baby can be placed for adoption without a birth father’s consent can be summarized as follows:

– If the birth father does not provide child support to the birth mother, then he can’t stop her from proceeding with an open adoption. 

– If the birth father was part of a closed adoption before the 1980s, then the answer is yes. Babies could be and were placed for adoption without the father’s consent.

Babies are gifts, wherever they come from.
-Anon

“Between the 1930s and 1980s, the practice of disregarding paternal rights was entirely legal.“

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