Adoptive families are quietly struggling. Here’s how to ensure your church isn't part of the problem

It’s coffee after church on Sunday.

I’m holding a paper cup and keeping one eye on my children, who are circling the room with a glint in their eyes, laughing a little too loud, moving a little too fast.

An older woman smiles warmly.

“They’re so lovely. I can’t imagine why their parents could give them up.”

I look down at the coffee in my hands and feel the familiar calculation begin. How much truth fits here? Modern adoption is different. Children are usually taken into care because of neglect or abuse, often after long periods of instability. There’s no version of this that can be said lightly, and no version that won’t invite more questions.

I try to smile and say, “They didn’t give them up.”

I regret it immediately.

“Oh. What happened?”

Around us, people are chatting about their Sunday plans. I’m running on empty, aware of the way my children are tipping closer to the edge. I don’t have the energy to translate their lives into something digestible.

“That’s their story to tell when they’re older, if they want to,” I quip.

Just as I’m about to leave, the children’s pastor and the vicar join us, so I stay a moment longer to be polite. Someone adds, kindly, “At least they won’t remember what happened to them.”

I feel the familiar tightness in my chest. I don’t correct them. I don’t explain that trauma doesn’t need conscious memory to leave a mark. I simply nod, already planning our exit.

Walking away, I realise this is the moment I keep circling back to. Not because anyone has been unkind, but because there isn’t a shared understanding of what many adopters are carrying while trying to show up to church.

When theology meets real life

For many Christian families, adoption doesn’t begin in isolation. It is encouraged, explicitly or implicitly, in church settings that speak passionately about caring for vulnerable children.

Adoptive parents need the church to be a place where we can breathe and be spiritually replenished

For many of us, it also includes infertility, loss, and unanswered prayer. Stories like Abraham and Sarah, often held up as hopeful, can be complicated and painful rather than comforting.

And yet, while I stood there with a cup cooling in my hand, I was struck by how little understanding there is of what modern adoption actually involves. Without lived experience in church leadership, there’s often very little sense of how trauma and attachment difficulties, rooted in a child’s earliest experiences, play out day-after-day at home.

Most churches are kind and welcoming. But many church leaders haven’t been equipped to understand what it means to parent children shaped by Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), and there’s little pastoral curiosity either.

Parenting adopted children is different

Around 80% of adopted children in the UK have experienced abuse, neglect or violence before being adopted. For many, those early experiences are linked to developmental trauma, shaping how they experience the world.

It isn’t only about what happened to them. It’s also about what didn’t happen. A baby’s brain develops through repeated experiences of being soothed when distressed, having needs noticed and met, and learning that adults are reliable and the world is predictable. When those experiences are missing or inconsistent, because of neglect, abuse, repeated separations, chaotic caregiving, or even stress and fear in utero, the brain adapts for survival rather than connection.

That early adaptation doesn’t simply switch off because a child is now safe. Many children are emotionally much younger than their chronological age and still need the kind of reassurance and co-regulation we usually associate with much younger children. Sleep can be fragile. Big emotions can arrive quickly and linger. Even good days can feel unsafe, so a child may sabotage birthdays, holidays, or calm moments, not out of defiance or ingratitude, but self-protection.

Parenting that calmly, day after day, takes a huge amount of energy.

There’s a saying that a parent is only as happy as their saddest child, and that feels painfully true much of the time.

For children shaped by trauma, feeling safe with people has to come before joining in. Without that, church becomes another place they’re trying to manage and mask, rather than a place where they can settle.

What can churches do differently?

To support our children well, we, the parents, need oxygen first. We need the church to be a place where we can breathe and be spiritually replenished, not just another place where we’re managing and coping.

If you’re a church leader reading this and thinking, I honestly didn’t realise, please know this. This is not criticism. We just want you to understand that we need.

Around 80% of adopted children in the UK have experienced abuse, neglect or violence before being adopted.

And most of the time, we’re too busy firefighting. Managing crises as they arise. Playing whack-a-mole with behaviour, sleep, school, and services. Spending an inordinate amount of time advocating for our children to get therapy, filling forms, attending meetings, and trying to hold everything together. In all honesty, there’s very little space left to explain ourselves, or to think strategically about what support might look like.

What helps most isn’t expertise or perfect answers. It’s consistency. Understanding. Support that stays when things get messy. The kind of practical, alongside-you support Jesus modelled.

Adoption isn’t a moment. It’s a long, demanding journey. And the church can be a place that walks it with families, kindly and faithfully.