Letters to the Editor
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LSophia
The theory is that the father's consent is required. When the parents are married, a court will usually require a finding of consent by the father before the adoption can occur. That's because marriage records exist, so it's harder for a woman to place the child on the sly.
But when the parents are single, there is nothing a father can do to prevent his child's adoption, for the reasons I outlined.
And once a child is placed, even temporarily, with potential adoptive parents, the chance that a father will lose his rights increases to about 100%. If he finds out that the adoption process has started and tries to assert his rights, he will be out of luck almost invariably. I urge you to read "In re Baby Girl Dockery," 495 SE 2nd, 417 (1998) in which the highly-qualified father went to court 2 days after his daughter's birth to get custody and lost. Courts routinely find that the "best interests of the child" are served by denying the father his parental rights even if the child has been placed for a matter of days.
Again, the fact that this effectively denies another child, with no father to care for it, qualified adoptive parents just doubles the outrage.