[Birth Mother,] First Mother Forum

Crittenton today: Serving marginalized teens

2012-05-31T13:24:00.000-04:00

Florence Crittenton moms and babies today

Last month fellow blogger Lorraine wrote about the responses of the Crittenton Foundation, Catholic Charities, and the Salvation Army to Dan Rather Report: Adopted or Abducted. The program was critical of the role these agencies played in the Baby Scoop Era (1945 to 1973) in seducing young mothers to relinquish their infants for adoption. In their responses, only the Crittenton Foundation acknowledged the pain caused by the past practices of its affiliated agencies. Crittenton, it should be noted, operated about one-third of the approximately 200 confidential maternity homes which existed during that sad period.

In putting together the post, Lorraine noticed that the Crittenton Foundation was located in Portland, Oregon where I live. Curious about what Crittenton is doing now, I contacted the President Jeannette Pai-Espinsosa and we met for lunch last week.

CRITTENTON TODAY: SERVING MARGINALIZED GIRLS

It turns out that Jeannette and I both worked for state government during Gov. Barbara Roberts' administration (1991-1995). In an interesting coincidence, Gov. Roberts, had been a teen mother herself, and was thus committed to helping pregnant teens. She knew the need. The Salem, Oregon High School for teen parents is named after her.

Jane

Today there are still 27 Crittenton agencies around the country. Some of them, like the San Francisco agency I visited briefly when I was pregnant, are no longer residential. Though all operate as separate entities under a Crittenton umbrella, their mission is the same: “to support the empowerment, self-sufficiency, and the end of cycles of destructive behaviors and relationships for girls, young women and their families who live at the margin of the American dream.” Many still are residential homes for young women; others are not, but provide in-home care, education and parenting classes to pregnant teens and teen mothers. The focus is on teens in foster care, as they have few resources, are poorly informed about their rights, and are often subject to pressures from child welfare agencies to relinquish their babies. Additionally, Crittenton agencies serve girls who have been sexually abused or trafficked for sex, who are addicted to drugs, and others who simply need help.

The Foundation operates a search service to help former residents and adult adoptees whose mothers were confined at Crittenton homes to connect. At its website, you can see the names of the people who have registered, and the information they provided, state by state. Former Crittenton residents also operate a reunion registry, Florence Crittenton Home Reunion Registry.

HOW DIFFERENT FROM CRITTENTON IN THE 1960'S
When I became pregnant in 1966, I was living in Fairbanks, Alaska. I was from a prominent family in town, and it was unquestionable that I had to go somewhere else. I decided upon San Francisco, where I had been as a tourist and knew was a hip place, but also where I knew no one. I didn't know anything about how adoption worked, but I had heard of Crittenton. I knew it was associated with young women "in trouble" and that pregnant girls stayed there before surrendering their babies. In fact, a woman in my dorm who had confided in me that she had given up a child for adoption had stayed at the Crittenton home in Seattle. Assuming that "Crittenton" was the gateway for all things single pregnant women needed, I headed to the Florence Crittenton home. It was a two-story building which could have been mistaken for an ordinary office building, I saw two young women coming out the front door in long coats, walking in tandem, heads held high, hands folded in front of them. Ironically, they reminded me of the nuns I used to see when I was a girl in Chicago.

Charles Crittenton

I entered the building into a small reception area. In front of me was a locked door. To my left was a counter opening into an office. A candy bowl filled with rings--they appeared to be made of copper wire--sat on the counter, clearly there for residents to wear on their outings, giving them that all important indicator of marriage. I explained my "situation" to a pleasant middle-aged who came to the counter. She called someone on the phone and pushed a button to open the door. I went through a short hallway into a large, comfortable living room, where I was met by a woman in her 30’s who told me that Crittenton was not an adoption agency, that San Francisco was swamped with single pregnant women wanting to place their babies for adoption, and that I should go to a county adoption agency, preferably in the suburbs. Eventually, however, I gave up my daughter through the San Francisco County agency.

ORIGINALLY DEDICATED TO KEEPING MOTHERS AND BABIES TOGETHER

Years later I learned that contrary to what I knew in 1966--that Crittenton groomed mothers to give up their babies--Crittenton had not always been about separating mothers and babies. Charles Crittenton, who made a fortune in the wholesale drug business, founded Crittenton Homes as refuges for “lost and fallen women,” opening the first home in New York City in 1883. The San Francisco Home was opened a few years later as the Florence Crittenton Home Association for Erring Women. [Emphasis ours.] Within a few years, he teamed up with a physician, Kate Waller Barrett, and opened more homes, all “engaged in the work of reclaiming unfortunate women.” At its height, there were 76 homes in five countries. Among other services, the homes provided maternity services for poor single pregnant women, giving them a safe place to nurture their babies, often for several years, and training them to provide for their children in the future. Until the 1940's, Crittenton homes required mothers keep their babies at least for six months. Then they reversed their position, adopting the views of social "reformers" that adoption was the answer to white unwed pregnancy.

The demand for Crittenton's services declined in the late sixties as mores relaxed, and women began keeping their babies. Roe v. Wade sealed the fate of confidential maternity homes. In 1955, 90,000 infants were placed for adoption, 50 years later the number was closer to 15,000.

Kate Waller Barrett

ADOPTION REMAINS A SOLUTION FOR SOME

Besides assisting the Crittenton agencies, the foundation lobbies Congress for funds to sustain “practices to that will break cycles of destructive behavior and attack root causes like poverty, racism, and sexism.” I asked Jeannette if legislators ever told her that these girls should just give their babies up for adoption rather than receive public resources. “Yes,” she answered, “I hear that all the time.”

Maternity homes continue to exist, now called “Birthmother Housing,” operated by adoption agencies and free for those who give up their babies. No longer hidden in spartan inner-city buildings, mothers-to-be may enjoy spa-like facilities. Edna Gladney, a Texas agency advertises a free dorm “in a park-like setting with a beautiful swimming pool, a cozy fireplace in the living room, beautiful and charming bedrooms, a fitness center, [and] exciting activities such as shopping trips, eating out, sports events, movies, museums trips and other special events going on in the Fort Worth/Dallas area.” A far cry from the SF Flo Crit which offered only secrecy--and use of a copper wire ring.

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We would love to hear from first mothers who stayed at Crittenton homes, or otherwise had contact with Crittenton during their pregnancy. What was your experience like?

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From FMF:
Deconstructing the Responses to Adoption or Abducted
For more information:
The National Crittenton Foundation
Florence Crittenton Homes Reunion Registry
Gladney Center

Wake Up Little Susie by historian Rickie Solinger is an excellent and illuminating look at the times and the influences on young women to surrender their babies. Highly recommended.

Normal in one family may be seen as abnormal in another

2012-05-24T22:01:00.001-04:00

Jane and Lorraine,

Disparate thoughts about adoption creeping in today, based on comments. A adoptive mother writes about the problems her adopted daughter has (ADHD, OCD, god-knows-what-else) and and I immediately remember my daughter whom I relinquished had epilepsy, and the social problems that stem from that. But what I did not expect is that when I met her adoptive parents, her adoptive mother would ask if there was mental illness in my family. This was after I had assured them that there was no history of epilepsy either. Here I am, the "New York Career Woman, "as she told me she had described me to her friends...being asked about mental illness. Heritable mental illness.

I was like, What? What gave you that idea? And of course it was daughter Jane's epilepsy, and her other mother had wondered then if--since they knew so little about me, nothing other than I was Polish--if maybe...since Jane had seizures...maybe there was a history of mental illness. She said that for a while they thought that I might have been in a mental hospital when I had...our daughter. You just sit there and listen, stunned, but betray nothing. I suppose it's not an unreasonable assumption.

Jane was in special ed classes at the time, or LD for Learning Disabled, when I first met her in 1981, and I came to know how she hated school because of the numerous seizures when she was young, and she had to wear a hockey helmet to school for years. That alone certainly is going to make anyone feel weird, and prone to social maladjustments, which she was. I know her adoptive family certainly had their hands full--there was an adopted older brother, and then two biological children, but the LD classes...always bothered Jane. She bore them like a crown of thorns. She knew she wasn't stupid, or even slow, even though let's grant that the strong meds (Depakane, and later, Depakote) she took to control her seizures did slow down the brain firings and drop some I.Q. points. I think she hated that as much as anything about her epilepsy. It was something she couldn't do anything about. She had to take the meds to control the seizures. The meds dropped I.Q. points. There are studies, she knew that.

FROM LEARNING DISABLED TO COLLEGE MATERIAL
Later, many years later, after she was married, after she had children, still on the meds, she got an associate's degree with honors from a local community college, and she joined Toastmaster's to learn how to get up in front of a group of people and give a talk. She won a trophy for one of her humorous speeches. It was an amazing turn around for a girl who had once been painfully shy. She was so proud of herself, so pleased to show others what she and I knew--that she was smarter than they thought. That she could do it. College. It meant so much to her, to prove herself. She then took an on-line literature course from another school, had to write a lot of papers, I helped with her grammar, nothing else. She got an A, and the teacher told her that she ought to find a way to get a four-year degree. Jane was elated, thrilled to tell me the news. She was smart.

The point is, Jane never should have been classified as "slow." She never should have been in LD classes to begin with. And that brings me back to: Would she ever have been there if I had raised her? Since seizures are unquestionably neurological, yes, she would have still had seizures, but if there had never been a whiff of my mental incompetence--the proof of which was that I had produced a child with epilepsy--would her parents have done all they could have to keep her out of the LD classes, which further branded her as different? Even with the epilepsy, would I have been able to keep her mainstreamed in school? I sure would have tried. I knew there was no mental incompetence in the family line. I knew her father was an extremely good political reporter, and a graceful writer to boot.

We'll never know. But we do know that adoptees are more likely to be diagnosed with all sorts of psychological problems. The eternal argument is whether they are more likely to be diagnosed because their parents are more likely to seek counseling and testing, et cetera, or do they really have the problems because of bad genes like I was suspected of passing along? Or do they not have the problems at all, it's just that they are so unlike the people they are living with, who can't understand why...someone is so forgetful about stuff (like me, like my niece, who visited this weekend) or somewhat dyslexic, also like me, like my brother? What is normal in one family can easily been seen as abnormal in another. When my brother mentioned how one niece always forgets stuff she should have with her as she walks out the door, my husband chimed in immediately about how that was like me; and I said, Yeah, right, that's a Dusky thing. And my typing--what a mess! my fingers don't obey my brain and I transpose letters like nobody's business; my brother has a stronger type of dyslexia. But he's a hell of an art director.

IS THE 'DIAGNOSIS' BASED ON A FLAWED ASSUMPTION?
Inherited traits aside, a singular question remains: Is the diagnosis, and maybe an underlying real problem, the psychological toll of simply being relinquished and adopted into a family of genetic strangers? My daughter had real problems, I know that, but she wasn't stupid, she was a good writer, she had a strong sense of irony, which takes intelligence. And there she was in LD classes.

I'm not writing this to bash Ginger, the adoptive mother whose comment at an earlier post got me thinking along these lines, but to ask adoptive parents to consider the individual talents and foibles of their adopted children when thinking about therapy for this or that. I heard a teenager, the son of a close friend, talk about an adoptee he and his mother knew; the adoptive parents were sending the adoptee to therapy. The teenage observer said: There's nothing wrong with Johnny--he's just not like them. Shared traits may occur in adoptive relationships, but when they occur, they are, for both family and child, a happy accident. But when there is a marked difference, let the individual have some room. Let her be different. And don't assume the worst about her background.

The problem child may not need anything, but for the adoptive parents to see her or him as an individual, different, yes, but just as valid and not outside the norm. Maybe she--and her adoptive mother--just needs to see how she fits into her family of origin, how much she is like someone to whom she is related by blood. She may simply be quite different from the family in which she is growing up. Yes, there may be real issues that need dealing with, but maybe not. Maybe there's just a--difference.
--lorraine
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The bittersweet reality of being adopted

American Dilemma: What happened to one's right to know one's birth parents?

2012-05-20T13:32:00.001-04:00

Lorraine

The Irish are considering insisting that fathers be named on the birth certificates of children born to unwed mothers. Those backing the new legislation believe that the inclusion of the father’s name would help to reinforce a child’s right to know who their parents are.

The push for the new legislation comes following a report by the Law Reform Commission which found that having both the mother and father’s name on a birth certificate could help reinforce a child’s right to know their parents. The Law Reform Commission also warned that without knowledge of who their father is, children could run the risk of “striking up relationships” with people they are unknowingly related to. [Emphasis added.]

While this is happening across the Atlantic, here in America we can't get the legislators in charge in, say, my home state of New York, to understand that knowing your true identity should be a right without question. As the days tick down to the end of yet another legislative year across the country, we have not one more state to add to those where the legislature saw the light and gave adoptees the right to their original birth certificates, and to do with the information on them as they chose. It's really very simple: Give to the adult what he could not know as a child because he was too young to grasp and hold the information.

Because of legislation passed last session, those adopted individuals born in Rhode Island 25 years of age and over will be able request their original unamended birth certificates on July 1st.

A CLEAN REFORM BILL IN NY
But this year, efforts in several states so far have gone nowhere, and for many states, time has run out for another year. In New York, we get our hopes up--we have good solid backers of a clean bill--that is, one without the poison pill of a birth parent veto--in both houses, the Assembly and the Senate, but it appears without the strong push of Governor Andrew Cuomo, our bill will once again fall between the cracks. Gay marriage was the social issue which Gov. Cuomo used his clout on this session; so far we do not hear that he will take up the legislative cudgel he has and use his clout to end the tyranny of the genealogical void of most adoptees born in New York state.

What do we hear? That certain important legislators (Sen. Tom Duane, Assemblywoman Helene Weinstein) will go on opposing our bill as long as they see themselves "protecting" even a single birth mother from the shame of exposure. That is the kind of thinking that is impossible to combat; there will always be birth mothers imprisoned by shame and unconcerned for the well-being of their offspring. I do not know how to reach them, or how to help them open their hearts. What we must do instead is convince legislators that the rights of the individual to know their place in the tree of life supersedes any supposed right to birth mother privacy, a right that many--if not most--of us did not ask for, nor did not want when we relinquished our children. Maybe we wanted our shame hidden at the time, but not forever did we want to be unknown to our children.

In Ireland and other places in the world people understand that one needs to know one's heritage, if only so as not to unknowingly enter into intimate relations with one's siblings--or parent! But in America a willful blindness to this need has descended on far too many legislators.

What the movement needs is a huge wellspring of action from the first mothers and adopted individuals acting up and speaking out for their rights to rip those scales off. Without action, there will be no reaction from the legislators. Another year will go by without even one more more state on the tally sheet states that have brought their legislation into the modern era. Rhode Island will make the number of states with unrestricted access to original birth certificates for adopted individuals a mere seven. Numerous other states have a crazy quilt of laws that give some adoptees, but not all, the right to their original birth certificates. Several states allow birth parents to file a veto, thereby leaving in their hands total power over another class of people.

It is a shameful situation. And it is peculiarly American, this notion that roots do not count for all, while television reality shows and websites such as ancestry.com by their very popularity show this to be a sham.

NEEDED ASAP: PHONE CALLS, ONLY TAKES A FEW MINUTES
Right now we could use help in New York before the legislature comes to an end. If you were born and adopted in New York State, if you relinquished in New York state, or are a current resident of New York, please take a moment to call the office of the leader of the NY Senate, Dean Skelos and ask that ADOPTEE EQUAL RIGHTS BILL S7286, be brought to the floor for a vote. Call 518-455-3171.

Then call Kemp Hannon, chair of the Senate Health Committee, where the bill is currently sitting, and ask that the bill be released from committee for a floor vote. Call 518-455-2200.

And lastly, call the office of the chair of the Assembly Codes Committee, Joseph Lentol, and ask that the ADOPTEE EQUAL RIGHTS BILL A8910 be put on the committee agenda for a vote. Call 518-455-4477. All three calls should take less than 10 minutes. You will speak to an aide and they are polite and only talking down number of calls. One does not need to be a member of the triad to lobby. Ask your partner, siblings, parents, friends to phone also. Numbers count.

We have dozens of sponsors and supporters of our bills but because a few powerful people are holding back the tide, our bills stagnate and die in committee. To make a difference, to do something useful with your passion and pain, speak up, act up, pick up the phone. If not you, who? If not now, when?--lorraine

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Source:
New Irish law could force single mothers to name the child’s father on birth certificate

for more on the New York situation, see: UPDATE: NY Adoptee Rights

Kidnapped in Guatemala, 'adopted' in America

2012-05-17T16:02:00.000-04:00

Lorraine

Guatemala Mother Searched for 5 Years for Adopted Girl the head reads at Huff Po. It ought to read: Guatemala Mother Searched for 5 Years for Kidnapped Daughter and found her alive and adopted in America, because that is the whole story. We have written about the terrible corruption involved in Guatemalan adoptions several times before, but this one is different in that this is the first time the Guatemalan government has ordered a child returned to her mother, Lodya Rodriguez Morales.

The girl was two at the time of the abduction, she spent a year under a different name in an adoption mill before she was adopted by an American couple, Timothy and Jennifer Monahan of Liberty, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas City.
The girl left the country with forged papers on Dec. 9, 2008. The U.S. ratified the Hague Abduction Convention in January of that year, but the case was filed with the girl's original abduction date in 2006--when the U.S. and Guatemala did not have an agreement. Because of this technicality, the U.S. government has told Guatemalan officials it will not order the return of the girl, now named Karen.

THE INSANITY OF A TECHNICALITY
Supporters of Rodríguez argue that the U.S. government is obliged under international treaties to return victims of human trafficking or irregular adoptions that have occurred within the past five years. That date--and not her abduction date--should be taken into account, insists the Survivors Foundation, a human rights group that filed the court case on behalf of the child's biological mother. Their argument is so far falling on deaf ears in this country.

"We're obviously deeply concerned about allegations regarding stolen children and inter-country adoptions wherever these cases come up," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement. "We consider the appropriate venue in the United States for pursuing this case is in the state courts. They're the competent organ for holding a full hearing on the merits and the best interests of the child." Rodriguez is looking for a law firm in the U.S. to handle the case.

We have seen these cases in the U.S. drag on for years as the child gets older, and then the argument for not returning her to her mother becomes ever stronger. If a child had been abducted in America at two, and then found to be living in a middle-class life in Guatemala five years later, would U.S. officials would be demanding the child be returned, and not passively let the Guatemalan courts handle the matter. The press would be demanding the return of the child immediately. Yet in reading numerous stories about this case, we came across this at Cafe Mom (bold is Cafe Mom's):

"Biology can't simply trump the love and care that adoptive parents give a child.
And since 2008, Timothy and Jennifer Monahan have been loving and caring for "their daughter," a little girl ABC News reports they thought they'd legally adopted through an agency here in the United States. They've been her parents for four years! And they don't seem like bad people. Although the adoption is considered illegal in Guatemala because the little girl was kidnapped, Guatemalan officials have reportedly cleared the Monahans of any wrongdoing."

Let us also note that the child was correctly identified in March of 2009, three years ago; she had only left Guatemala in 2008; since at that time who she was adopted by would have been clear, it appears that the Monahans have been stonewalling the mother for years. DNA testing has confirmed what the mother knew when she found he picture: this is her daughter. I could not determine when the Monahans first were informed they had an abducted child.

THE 'BEST INTERESTS' OF THE CHILD
If the past is a guide to what will happen here, the American couple and their lawyers will delay proceedings as long as possible, so-called child experts will testify that it would be damaging to the girl to return her to her mother, the "best interests of the child" will be argued, and god knows what the outcome will be. Despite such legal wrangling and foot-dragging, often the child is eventually returned to the biological parents--think Baby He, Baby Anna/Jessica DeBoer, the recent Wyrembek boy, and Baby Richard in Chicago. But this is the first case we know of where another sovereign state has asked for the return of a child who had been kidnapped.

While the Monahans claim to have known nothing of the abduction, at the time they adopted Guatemalan adoptions were already highly suspect, and many known to be the result of kidnappings and unscrupulous criminals who were trafficking in children. Some adoption advocates, such as Elizabeth Bartholet, who never heard of an intentional adoption she did not approve of, have disputed the use of the word "trafficking" when the children are adopted. But this case clearly proves that a little girl was stolen from her mother for the sole purpose of child trafficking.

Anyeli disappeared in November 2006, as her mother was distracted while opening the door to their house in San Miguel Petapa, a working-class suburb of Guatemala City. She turned to see a woman whisk the girl, then two years old, away in a taxi. Lodya Rodreguez did everything right--she contacted the local and federal authorities immediately, including authorities in charge of human right violations and missing children, she searched for her daughter on her own at adoption agencies, and after staging a hunger strike with the founder of Survivors Foundation, gained access to government adoption records. It still took nearly a year to find her photo at the National Adoptions Council, where Rodriguez and her brothers sifted through photographs for four straight days in 2009. The mother immediately recognized her daughter; a DNA test established her as the mother.

Anyeli--her original name--should be returned to her mother immediately. It is the moral thing to do. It is the right thing to do. Will it happen? Unfortunately, we doubt it.

GUATEMALA'S TROUBLED RECORD IN ADOPTIONS
Guatemala's quick adoptions once made it a top source of children for the U.S., second only to China with about 4,000 adoptions a year. But the Guatemalan government suspended adoptions in late 2007 after widespread cases of fraud, including falsified paperwork, fake birth certificates and charges of baby theft--though it still allowed many adoptions already in progress to go ahead. Such as this one. The State Department is currently assisting with 397 children whose adoptions were in process at the time of the ban.

The International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, a UN-created agency prosecuting organized crime cases in the country, has reviewed more than 3,000 adoptions completed or in process and found nearly 100 serious irregularities. As we have noted earlier, the Guatemalan army stole at least 333 children and sold them for adoption in other countries during the Central American nation's 36-year civil war, a government report has concluded. Many of those children ended up in the United States, as well as Sweden, Italy and France. The number of corrupt adoptions--333--involving stolen children in the government report came from examining a mere 672 adoptions between between 1977-89,the years of peak adoption from Guatemala.

When Anyeli came to this country, she had a falsified passport listing her birthday as January 14, 2005; she was actually born on October 1, 2004. When a woman claiming to be her mother failed a DNA test, the girl was left with an adoption agency, Spring Association, which had the girl declared as abandoned. Guatemala's solicitor general approved the adoption in July, 2008, despite the fact that his office had already received a missing person's report on the girl with photographs as early as February of that year, according to the corruption commission.

Anyone considering adoption from a country with a suspicious history in adoption should be dubious that any child being presented as available actually is without a family. There is much money to be made in the trafficking of children, and so unfortunately it will continue, as long as "good" people look the other way when they are determined to get a child. --lorraine
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Sources: Guatemala Mother Searched 5 Years For Adopted Girl
Guatemalan Mother to Ask US Court to Return Adopted Daughter
US tells Guatemala it will not return adopted girl

From FMF:
Guatemalan Army Stole Kids for Adoption
Abuse in International Adoption, Part 2 with new commentary
UN finds irregularities in Guatemalan adoptions--no surprise there
May the Richest Parents Win--The DeBoer Case
Have Christy and Jason Vaughn No Morals?
Adoptive Parents Decry UNICEF's Humanitarian Position about Adopting Overseas

Utah's anti-father policies an offshoot of Mormon agenda

2012-05-15T21:32:00.001-04:00

Jane

Wes Hutchins, a Utah adoption attorney wants to change Utah’s laws which allow a mother “to travel from any state to Utah and be in Utah for two or three days and then give birth to a child with the sole purpose of cutting off the right of the biological father.”

David Hardy, a Utah adoption attorney affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), asserts the laws are fine the way they are. “The Utah laws may be harsh but they are looking at what’s best for the child: stable families and two parent families, ” he told The Washington Post. Hardy’s claim supports an agenda to abet and encourage Mormon practices in the state. Is he attempting to make Utah a theocracy? There is supposed to be separation of church and state in the United States of America.

Hardy's views are reflected in an official LDS document, The Family: A Proclamation to the World, which rejects the notion popular with many today that a family can be anything as long as there is love. “Children are entitled to birth within the bounds of matrimony and to be reared by a father and mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity," the document states. If this "ideal" family does not occur naturally, it should be created through adoption, according to "Why Adoption," a 2008 article in the LDS Ensign magazine. Rebecca Taylor, who wrote the piece, also argues that adoption provides spiritual benefits as well:

"Children who are adopted by temple-worthy Latter-day Saint couples can be sealed to their adoptive parents. The sealing ordinance in the Church, and its blessings are present in this life as well as in the next. As President Joseph Fielding (1876-1972) declared, children who are born in the covenant—and by extension, those who are sealed to their parents in the temple--'have claims upon the blessings of the gospel beyond what those not so born are entitled to receive. They may receive a greater guidance, a greater protection, a greater inspiration from the Spirit of the Lord; and then there is no power that can take them away from their parents.'”

IGNORES THE IMPACT OF ADOPTION

The Ensign article goes far beyond theology in making the case for adoption, however. “Numerous studies have shown that children are better off when raised by both a mother and father," Taylor writes. "These children are less likely to drop out of school, have behavioral problems, participate in delinquent behavior, become single mothers themselves, and live in poverty.”

These are arguments for the unmarried not having children, not arguments for adoption. It is unlikely that any responsible social scientist would advocate that all children born to unmarried parents are better off adopted than raised by single fathers. As a practical matter, it’s impossible. About 1.2 million children are born each year to unmarried parents in the U.S.--and only 15,000 of these are adopted. There’s no way that 1.1 million plus couples would step up and take the children who are not now placed for adoption. But that's only part of the problem. Adoption is no guarantee that children will be raised in stable families. Adoptive families divorce, adoptive parents became alcoholics and child abusers like the rest of the population.

Lorraine

Comparing the statistical fate of children raised by single parents with the statistical fate of children raised by married biological parents is a false comparison because it omits the impact of adoption on children. Plenty of literature and personal accounts clearly demonstrate that being surrendered to the state for the purpose of adoption has a searing and critical effect upon the adopted individual. For many years, adoption advocates claimed that adoptive families were just like biological families. Interestingly, though, they also tried to match the anticipated physical characteristics of the child and adoptive parents to assure the child would fit in. Today, adoption professionals acknowledge the differences.

Children raised in adoptive families, while they may have financial advantages over children raised by single parents, endure the "otherness" of being in a family where no one looks like them, or shares their interests and talents. They may also have deep-seated feelings of abandonment and distrust, emotions that are on display at numerous blogs written by adoptees--and first mothers such as ourselves.

The following comment is typical of many FMF has received from individuals adopted as infants.

“Adoption does not only damage mothers, it damages the children, the babies, as well and the trauma is lifelong. …I did not grow up in a wonderful home, either, and have scars from that. I fail to see the ‘benefit’ I received from adoption. …What happened to me and my mother and father in the 60’s was a nightmare and that it continues to happen is a tragedy.”

ADOPTION CREATES NEW TRAUMA

The Ensign article also claims that “studies have shown that single mothers have higher rate of illness and have less social involvement” citing a study reported in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, “Distress, Social Support, and Depression in Single Mothers” (August 2003) which found single mothers were more likely to be more stressed and depressed than married mothers. No surprise there, as many single mothers may not have the financial resources that would give them the backup and aid not to feel overwhelmed and stressed out. But that does not mean that adoption is the magical solution, devoid of problems for the relinquishing mother and relinquished child. Adoption is the beginning of a new set of lifelong problems.

The authors of the psychological study, however, don’t recommend taking children from single mothers to “de-mother single women” as the LDS Church promotes. And, as we first mothers know too well, stress and depression do not disappear when we give up our children.

Hardy and the LDS Church are either unaware of these facts (which seems unlikely) or ignore them in order to advance their theological agenda in the secular arena. The result is a state where it is extremely difficult for an unmarried father to gain custody of his child and to prevent the adoption of that child, even if the mother is not a legal resident of that state, and lies to the father about her intentions. All that she need to is send a vague text to the father about visiting the state of Utah for an agency to pounce and make it nearly impossible for him to retain his rights as a father. The child may even be born in another state, but if he is taken to Utah while the father is being deceived, adoption agencies--as well as state law--will conspire to strip a father of any rights to his child. It is a appalling, deceitful practice, but one that fulfills the Mormon agenda of ensuring that single parents do not raise their children. If it does not fulfill the legal requirement of fraud, it comes exceedingly close.

While some social workers at LDS agencies contend that they do not urge women to trick birth fathers, the laws in Utah are written to make that possible. We know--from several court cases--that this chicanery happens. While we do not claim that the LDS Church advocates such overt dishonesty, we note that it has not taken steps to reform the law in the Utah legislature, and that unscrupulous adoption agencies, such as A (sic) Act of Love, continue to profit from it.

THE MODERN FAMILY IS IN FLUX

The LDS family model described in the 1995 Proclamation ("Fathers ... are responsible to provide the necessities of life .... Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children") accounts for only seven percent of American households. This family, celebrated by LDS today, was not the norm during the church's first fifty years, but is actually a recent invention, developed when the United States ceased to be primarily an agrarian society. Today the model of a typical family is in flux, despite the pushback from the Evangelical movement and Mormonism. The percentage of unmarried parents continues to rise, and nearly four out of every 10 births in the U.S. are now to unmarried women. Gay and lesbian couples are having children and adopting in record numbers. Deliberate biological parenthood and adoption by singles is also common. The most popular sit-com on television, Modern Family, displays the variety in American families: a stereotypical 50’s family, a man with a much younger Colombian wife with a child from a previous liaison, and a gay male couple with one child who are in the process of adopting a second.

The LDS Church has the right to urge its members eschew single parenthood in favor of constructing families artificially through adoption in order for children to “receive the blessings of the gospel.” But when these religious beliefs and policies are turned into the laws of the state, as they have been in Utah, something has gone awry. The Utah legislature should not be in the business of aiding and abetting these religious beliefs with laws that deny fathers the right to raise and cherish their own children. Mormons who are appalled at the current situation in Utah should contact church officials and demand that they take steps to reform the law. Additionally, they should ask the LDS hierarchy to insist that church families who have adopted children through such trickery return the children to their fathers whenever possible.

Recent newspaper accounts of hood-winked fathers fighting for their rights, several court cases that showed the state in an unfavorable light, and brave men like attorney Wes Hutchins are a good sign that Utah's anti-father policies are on the way out. We can only hope so.--Jane and Lorraine

______________________________

Sources
Washington Post: "Baby Emma" case puts state adoption laws between father/child, April 14, 2010

The Family: A Proclamation to the World

Why Adoption" Ensign January, 2008
Population Reference Bureau, 2002

Huffington Post: "Number of Gay Couples Adopting Has Skyrocketed in Past Decade, October 21, 2011

See Sunday's post: Utah adoption attorney exposes corruption in Utah adoption agencies
Also at FMF: Utah rules against natural father. Again. And again.
Utah to Birth Fathers: Go Back to the Grave!
What Ever Happened to Baby Emma? and good news on the Wyrembek boy

Utah adoption attorney exposes corruption in Utah adoption agencies

2012-05-13T20:13:00.001-04:00

Wes Hutchins

Wes Hutchins, a Utah attorney who has done more than a thousand adoptions, decided to follow up on an “unsettling hunch” that “the way some adoption agencies handle birth mothers …‘is an invitation for birth mothers to lie, cheat and defraud birth fathers into thinking they don’t have anything to worry about’” according to a May 9 report on Denver TV station, 9News.*

"'The idea that the birth mother can travel from any state to Utah and be in Utah for two or three days and then give birth to a child and then leave the state with the sole purpose of cutting off the rights of the biological father has to stop,’ Hutchins said.”

Hutchins had employees from his law firm call adoption agencies at random posing as a woman whose unmarried sister was pregnant and wanted to place the child for adoption although the child’s father was opposed. Here’s what the agencies told these women:

“’If he’s going to just be a total pain in the butt, then we can definitely just not have him involved at all.'

“’I’d say literally over 99 percent of the time the guys just get caught up in it and everything, and then they find out they’re gonna have to pay $30,000 in legal fees, they’re just like, “Whatever, never mind.'

“’You can tell the birth father anything after you give birth; might be easier to tell the birth father that you were in an accident, and the baby died.

“…Three agencies promised to pay airline tickets, travel expenses and put the woman in a furnished apartment until the baby was born.

“One offered what they called ‘final placement money. It’s usually about $3,000’ a woman with an agency said.

“Another said, ‘We will give you an envelope of cash when you place, and you can spend that however you want.’”

Jane

Hutchins brought his concerns to the Utah Adoption Council (UAC) where he had been president. UAC is made up of adoption agencies, attorneys, adoptive parents, and birth parents. He told Salt Lake TV station KSL “’Fraud [should be] no longer acceptable as a method of taking a child from one home, destroying a family, and placing (the child) in another home to create another family.’”**

Salt Lake City attorney David Hardy, who represents LDS Family Services, the adoption arm of the Mormon Church, responded : “‘Wes has taken more of the approach of some of the rights of fathers that are, in many ways, inconsistent with Utah code.”

As we're written here,*** the Utah code is designed to deny fathers their constitutional right to nurture their child. An unmarried father’s consent to adoption is not required unless the father files a paternity action in Utah before the mother executes her consent and within 20 days of learning that she resides in Utah, intends to give birth in the state, that the child was born in the state, or that the mother intends to execute her consent in the state. A cryptic text message from the mother-to-be that she is in Utah is sufficient to put a father on notice to file his action, never mind that he may be thousands of miles away, and has no way of knowing she plans to give up the baby, and no knowledge of the situation in Utah.

Fathers and Children at play

Hardy added "Wes has had a different vision of what’s best for children in the state of Utah." … Fathers aren’t best for children? This would be news to a lot of men. On Mother’s Day I spent the day at the Portland, Oregon Zoo with my husband, daughter, son-in-law, two grandchildren, and another daughter. I saw a zillion fathers of all kinds, dark, light, thin, heavy, young, old --well the old ones might be grandfathers. I saw the same thing at the Washington DC Zoo on Easter. Lots of dads, pushing strollers, carrying toddlers on their shoulders, wiping messy faces, leading youngsters up to the window to see the pandas.

Hutchins resigned in protest as president of UAC. He is founding a new organization to work in the best interests of all parties to adoptions.

Next we’ll write about Mormon practices on which the Draconian Utah law is based.

_____________________________________

*9News.com

**KSL.com

From FMF

***Utah adoption laws becoming more hostile to birth fathers?

Does Mother's Day make birth mothers blue? YES.

2012-05-09T19:15:00.000-04:00

Lorraine

Mother's Day, that extra holiday from hell for many of us, is Sunday. And in some cities and places a new holiday the day before has sprung up: BIRTHmothers Day. (BTW, when is Adoptivemothers Day? We are waiting.)

I've made myself pretty clear about how I feel about "birth mother * celebrations" and "birth mother" cards (nix to both, see links below) partially because they are generally the misguided concoction of adoption agencies to "give back" to the wholesale suppliers (that would be mothers) of the commodity they deal in, babies. I say this with the understanding that the Birthmother Day to be observed the day before Mother's Day was the brainchild of birth mothers in Seattle in 1990.

And I do understand the impulse to meet with other first mothers--I myself am trying to find a few out here on the eastern end of Long Island--and just let your hair down and tears out, if they will, and simply share an hour or two of understanding and acceptance over a glass of wine or two. Some have written to us that they have found some agency-sponsored celebrations pleasant and comforting.

But my main beef about "birth mother" holidays, is that they attempt to normalize the situation of giving up a child, when "normal" for that act is merely sad acceptance. I am not a "proud" birth mother and I do not want to "celebrate" my fate, no matter how the event is handled. If I am a voice crying out in the wilderness, so be it.

Today I discovered that in Rochester, New York, the Hillside Children's Center will host a gala Birthmother's Day celebration on Saturday, along with god knows how many other agencies across the land. The driving force behind this event was Casi Picow, who as the writer in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle tells us, "let the woman who gave birth to the baby live in her Greece home."

Casi Picow, 53, saddles up as her daughter, Shaylee, holds her horse.

Excuse me? That's in the first paragraph. I almost choked when I read that. After "letting" the, er, hand-maiden who is fertile and pregnant live in your home for months, all I could thing was: the poor teen/woman never had a chance to keep her baby. By the time he or she was born, the mother undoubtedly felt incredibly indebted to these nice people, and almost certainly would not have had the courage to stand up and say, I can't do this, I'm keeping my baby. Images running through my mind are Hagar (the handmaiden) and the elderly Sarah of the Bible, and how later Hagar, the mother who bore Abraham's first son was cast out--after elderly Sarah herself miraculously gave birth. (Isn't that often the way with so many adoptive parents, they adopt because they are not producing on their own, and then, a few years later, whoops! they get pregnant.) However, the unfortunate phrasing in the story (let the woman) must be credited to the writer of the piece, Robin. L. Falnigan; who knows what the situation actually was--maybe the woman desperately needed a home. But I digress.

Now this modern day Sarah (above on horse), instead of casting out her Hagar, however is celebrating her: “It’s a way to honor where your children come from, to step back and be so extra grateful for the opportunity and the privilege of being a mom,” says Picow, who was present at her daughter’s birth and has an open adoption. Ah yes, present at the birth. Another goad to implanting in the pregnant woman's mind that she really must relinquish, that she has no choice...otherwise she will disappoint these terribly nice people.

THE DOUBLE-BIND OF OPEN ADOPTION

Expulsion of Hagar, by Claude Lorrain

Ever since I relinquished my daughter in 1966 I have been a proponent of open adoption if there must be an adoption, and wrote about it as a birth mother's right in Birthmark in 1979, when open adoptions did not exist. But today I understand they come with a double bind: yes, you know where your child is going, but getting to know these nice people and letting them be present at the birth itself is a consequence that I never would have imagined. Frankly, I am appalled. Birth should be a moment between mother and child--but not the parents who will be taking the child from that mother. Their presence at the birth itself, and what's worse, even symbolically cutting the cord, can only serve to further make the mother feel obligated to turn over her child. It is sickening that this has been the result of many an open adoption plan. What's even worse is that many of such "open adoptions," are shams: the mother doesn't even know the real names and addresses and all the contact information she needs to keep track of them, and her baby. It's all done through the agency, and if the adoptive parents want to shut down contact, they do. They hold all the power, as well as the child.

But I digress. Co-organizer of the Rochester event, social worker/adoptive mother Karen Rabish, makes the point that the event provides a safe place for adoptees to release their feelings within the protective umbrella of others in the same situation:

“It’s an interesting dynamic,” says the adoption social worker, facilitator of a local birthmothers support group and adoptive mom of two daughters. “Adoption is a journey; it’s not an event. You can’t shield your child from the sadness and loss of adoption, and this provides a nice segue to talk about it. There has been a lot of healing that’s happened because of the celebration.”

But then alarm bells went off when I read that graf: she facilities a birth mother support group and she is the adoptive mother of two? Now I'm speechless. Can we imagine, in our wildest dreams, a first mother hosting and facilitating a support group for adoptive mothers? Who are currently upset (and apparently are lighting up the adoptive mother blogs and boards) because the character Thor in The Avengers explains his brother Loki's violent killing spree with the flip comment: "He's adopted."

Personal ironies abound in the Rochester story. The upcoming event that caught my eye is in the city of my downfall, at the very agency though which I relinquished my much-wanted daughter, and the story is the Rochester D&C, the very place I was working when I became pregnant with the child of the political columnist who sat across the aisle from me.

LAST YEAR WAS FAR DIFFERENT FROM THIS YEAR
But yes, Mother's Day is Sunday, no way getting around that. Last year, weirdly enough, I got such a beautiful email from my found granddaughter that I did not share that here because it seemed too boastful. I knew many reading FMF would not be having a good day when the phone did not ring, or the child was still an unknown. But last year, I personally was flying high. That was in May. In the summer, said granddaughter met her biological father. I do not know what occurred. But I do know that my daughter and I were estranged when she was pregnant, and I did not know that she was pregnant until she had given birth. Though I understood the father wanted to raise the child with his mother--a plan I wholeheartedly supported--my daughter would not hear of it. To convince me he should not be allowed anywhere near their daughter, she said not nice things about the father. I did not know what to believe, dear reader, I admit that I doubted what she said, but I was powerless to do anything but accept her words at face value.

After the birth, my daughter and I reconnected on a very close level, and that year the gushiest, floweriest, biggest Mother's Day card arrived. No mention of "birth mother" on the card. Soon after she came for a visit. She was more understanding of me then she had ever been; it was as if she had been determined to find out for herself what relinquishment of one's own flesh and blood was like, to repeat history. Yes, it's sick, yet there it is. But going back to before...when we were apart and she was a couple with my granddaughter's father...I can only imagine what she said about me to him about me.

Not nice things.

Immediately after meeting her father, my granddaughter began drifting away--the phone calls were stilted, the emails were cool and short, the planned visit was cancelled--and finally in the late fall she wrote that she was in a good place now and wanted "no contact." I was dropped like a lover you are done with.

So here I sit this year. Oddly enough, after all these months, I don't feel much anymore about her. I feel rather numb. I am not hoping that she will change her mind, and want me in her life; I feel that would only lead to more disappointment down the line. And if she did want to resume a relationship, after I opened my home and my heart to her once, could I trust her to not leave me out in the cold again?

I've already gotten a funny card from my very ironic step-son, who never forgets. And he will probably phone. Always does.

Sunday will be another day. Though my husband and I often go out to brunch on Sundays, we will avoid the restaurants this day, as they will be wall to wall with adult children entertaining their mothers, as I once did mine. If it's nice, we'll garden--pull up weeds and those darned maple seedlings that sprout everywhere, trim the edges around the garden, put in the ornamental grasses we've bought to plant alongside the shed. Maybe we'll take in a movie--The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel got good reviews and looks like it will be amusing, and not a tear-jerker or a violent movie about the end of the world. The finale of Survivor is on that night--and yes, I am an old and avid Survivor fan and for those of you who are also, I'm rooting for Kim. And tick-tock, the day will be over.

And Monday it will not be Mother's Day anywhere for another year. --lorraine
______________

* Others may use birth mother as one word, but for me it will always be two, so that that MOTHER stands alone. Why not adoptivemother as a single word--English has long words, the meaning would be clear, and the adoptive mother would never be able to escape the adoptive part, just as we are not allowed to escape our lowly status as long as birthmother is a fucking single word. If you want to know how I really feel.

Source: Birthmother's Day a source of healing

From FMF:
How Birth Mothers Survive 'Mother's Day'

Why I'm not celebrating "Birth Mother's Day"

Mother's Day: The Holiday from Hell, Part 2

What’s Wrong with Birthmother Events on Mother’s Day? Just about EVERYTHING

When your adopted child wants to visit her birth mother....

2012-05-06T18:31:00.000-04:00

Marguerite Kelly

Washington Post columnist Marguerite Kelly’s advice to adoptive parents whose nine-year-old daughter wants to live with her birth parents is among the worst advice that fellow blogger Lorraine and I have read about adoption since we lost our daughters 46 years ago.

At one time we thought nobody could be worse than the late Ann Landers and Dr. Laura, both staunch opponents of open records and reunions. But then along came Washington Post writer, Carolyn Hax. She published a guest opinion by a grandma who regretted that her daughter had kept her child, the writer’s grandchild, totally oblivious to the pain and loss that adoption brings to mothers, children and grandparents.

The honors for speaking about something you know nothing about now goes to Marguerite Kelly, also of the Washington Post, whose counsel puts both Landers and Hax to shame.* Kelly has made a career on guiding anxious parents since 1975. She seems to have learned nothing since that dark era of closed adoption where self-proclaimed child welfare experts told adoptive parents that adopting a child was "as if" the child was born to them. Kelly seems to view adopted children as objects to be controlled by adoptive parents rather than sentient human beings to be nurtured. Kelly's advice in this case goes beyond wrong. It’s scary because someone might actually follow it.

ADOPTED CHILD WANTS TO LIVE WITH HER ORIGINAL PARENTS

Adoptive parents write that their nine-year-old daughter, whom they adopted as an infant, recently made her first visit to her birth parents at her request. The birth family has children both older and younger than the adopted child, and the birth mother is pregnant. The adopted child “pines for the family” and “is obsessed with this new baby.” She wants to live with her birth family, the letter writer states, and hates her six-year-old adopted brother.

The adoptive parents write “[we] have a hard time making her understand that we are the right parents for her and we always were.” Kelly should have told these deluded adopters that the act of adoption doesn’t automatically make them the right parents, then or now.

The a-parents don’t indicate any problems with the birth family, such as violence or drug abuse, from which they need to protect the girl. The birth mother is not faultless, however. She refuses “to honor certain [unspecified] requests [we've] made and she calls [our] child by the name she gave her instead of her legal name.” (Of course it's possible the daughter wants to be called by her birth name; some adoptees do.) Because the birth family had children both before and after the adoption, there's a suggestion that they are irresponsible when it comes to family planning. (You know what these breeders are like.) FMF doesn’t know the situation, of course, but we suspect that the birth parents may have had financial problems and adoption was offered as the solution. When times got better, the couple had more children, perhaps, in part, to replace their lost daughter. Sadly, today about half the mothers giving up babies already have children. We attribute this to the ever-present mantra today that "adoption is a good thing."

What advice does family advice columnist Kelly give? She praises the adoptive parents with faint damnation, telling them: “There is such a thing as being too understanding, too kind, too magnanimous. And this may be one of those times.” Kelly compliments the parents for being “open–minded–and openhearted enough to let your daughter meet her birth parents, because some adoptees really need to do that.”

Jane

Kelly notes that “an open relationship doesn’t always work [for children].” Me thinks in this case it’s the possessive adoptive parents for whom the open relationship is not working.

SUFFERING FROM “MAGICAL THINKING”

Kelly goes on to say: “Your little girl still has to learn we must work with who we are, not what we wish we were.” Truer words were never spoken. And the truth is that this girl is the child of the birth parents.

Kelly accuses the girl of suffering from “magical thinking” in her desire to be with her birth family. The magical thinkers here are Kelly and the adoptors who believe that the adoption decree magically transformed the girl into the daughter the adopters wished she were.

Teach the girl “that life is what she makes of it” admonishes Kelly. Translation: Teach her to accept the life her adoptive parents have made and want to continue to make for her.

BRAINWASHING, AKA COUNSELING

Kelly recommends counseling “to help [the] daughter understand her birth mother better and appreciate her [adopted] brother more.” Counseling may help the girl come to terms with being abandoned at birth but what Kelly is recommending is not counseling; it’s brainwashing to make the girl think as the a-parents would like her to think (birth mother deficient; brother good).

Kelly also plugs the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys (Quad A) in case the adoptive parents need legal protection, suggesting that there’s something dangerous about birth parents welcoming their daughter lost to adoption. Kelly says that Quad A as well as an adoption agency can "probably recommend a family therapist." Quad A members are not, for the most part, experts on the effect that adoption has on adopted persons. As attorneys, Quad A members represent the interests solely of their clients, here the adoptive parents. Further, although individual members have varying opinions, Quad A attorneys have testified in legislative hearings against opening records which would facilitate reunions between adoptees and birth families. Counselors these attorneys might recommend might well be opposed to contact between adopted children and their birth parents.

Kelly (magnanimously) approves future visits with conditions. “Ideally, you can let your daughter visit her bonus [!] mom for a week once or twice a year, but only if you can afford airplane tickets and a hotel room so all of you can go. If she wants to go without you, say no, because you are a family [so the court papers say] and families do things together, and also you love her too much to let her go alone.” This is maintaining control, not love.

ADOPTED CHILDREN MUST EARN THEIR ADOPTED PARENTS’ LOVE

And how, according to Kelly, will this all play out in the end? “After a while she’ll accept this decision, not because she agrees with you but because she knows that this is the price she pays for being loved.” Kelly needs a refresher course on love. St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians would be a good place to start.**

Paul writing his Epistles

FMF’S ADVICE

Although you are your child’s legal parents, she has another set of parents who will always be a presence in her life, regardless of what you do. Adopted persons have a need to know their origins, although for some “waking up from the great sleep” as adoptee and author Betty Jean Lifton put it, may not come until later in life.

Accept your daughter’s birth parents as equals in the creation of whom your daughter is. Her longing for them is natural; it’s not something she will get over like a teen crush. If you try to suppress her need, she may become angry and turn that anger towards you--and her brother. Alternatively, she may become passive, afraid to express herself. You may be able to brainwash her into submission, but your refusal to respect your daughter's desire for a meaningful relationship with her birth family may tarnish her relationship with you, as well as damage her self-esteem and confidence. Worse, when she is old enough to stand by a road with her thumb out, she may go to the people she considers her real family. You can pay big bucks to a Quad A attorney to force her to return, but she may also walk when she is 18--and cut you off entirely.

Unless there are sound reasons for keeping your child from her birth family, let her visit, accompanied with just one parent rather than bringing the whole family, avoiding the confusion and distraction of a large group. As time goes on, if she wants to, allow her to visit alone and allow extended visits--a month in the summer—may be appropriate. Meanwhile, try to get to know your daughter’s birth parents. If possible, develop a relationship with them which goes beyond simply arranging visits. Like you, they want the best for your shared daughter. As many adopted persons have attested, developing a relationship with their birth parents often improves their relationship with their adoptive parents.

Get counseling to understand what’s going on with your daughter and how you can overcome your resistance to what is the most natural thing in the world: her wish to be with people who look like her and share her personality, interests, and talents.

Don't take advice from your adoption agency. It flubbed the adoption from the start. Competent agency staff would have arranged for contacts between you, your daughter, and her birth family the first year of her life; they would have told you that allowing visits is not a gift from a magnanimous adoptive parent but an adopted child’s birthright.

Attend an American Adoption Congress conference or a workshop sponsored by a progressive adoption agency. You’ll meet adoptive parents in successful, rewarding open adoptions. You can likely find a competent counselor at these events as well.

Join a support group of adoptive parents, adoptees, and birth parents and encourage your daughter’s birth parents to do the same. Stop reading hack columnists and read books by those who live with adoption. Books by B. J. Lifton are a good place to start. Follow up with fellow blogger Lorraine’s Birthmark to learn about the birth mother experience. Then check out what adoptive parent Adam Pertman says about openness in Adoption Nation.

Adoptive parenting must accept that raising an adopted child is different from raising a natural child, just as birth parents reuniting with their child must accept that their child has another family. Both adoptive and birth parents should work to ensure their children have healthy relationships with both families. This can be done as long as parents--both adoptive and birth--respect their children's right to establish relationships on their terms.

_______________________________

*Marguerite Kelly: Good relationship between your child and her birth parents.

Marguerite Kelly Online
American Adoption Congress

From FMF:
On grieving for a grandchild NOT placed for adoption.
How to make an Open Adoption work.
Talking about ancestry to an adoptee, Part 2

**1 Corinthians 13:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge,and if I have a faith that can move mountains,but do not have love, I am nothing.If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evilbut rejoices with the truth.It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; hen we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Deconstructing the responses to Adopted or Abducted with kudos to the Crittenton Foundation

2012-05-03T16:48:00.000-04:00

Lorraine, recently in DC

The morning started out with a bang with the first clue in the New York Times crossword puzzle today was: 2007 Ellen Page movie. Answer: JUNO, the most irritating movie about adoption known to woman or beast.

Then I moved onto trying to download the Dan Rather Report: Adopted or Abducted from iTunes for $1.99 and after giving Apple my name, my birthdate, answering security questions such as what was your first car (answer for anybody who wants to know my deep secrets, Karmann Ghia); your favorite car (MG); and where I had my least favorite job (ah! at that hash house where the owner drove me home one night and wanted me to put out, and when I didn't, fired me the next day, but there wasn't room for all that), my billing address, telephone number, a user name and a password with at least 8 characters, one Capital letter and at least two numbers! and no two of the same characters in a row, and my credit card number...I had to go back and re-register and ah ha! I kept getting error messages. Kinda like what I was hearing from my daughter's father when I tried to talk about keeping our baby...but then he would have had to get off his duff and leave his wife like he said he was going to. By the time he did, it was too late. Way too late.

I didn't want a permanent lifetime account at iTunes, I just wanted one damn show! After a couple of tries, and resetting my password, and being told that someone already has the same one I tried to re-register...(that would be me) I gave up. I have not seen Adopted or Abducted and most likely won't. Anyway, the reviews I've read were that the show was somewhat disappointing. If anybody does have a DVD of the show, I will gladly accept it.

WHO NEEDS ALL THE FACTS WHEN I HAVE LIVED THEM
However, not seeing the show itself is not going to keep me from commenting on the official responses to Adopted or Abducted from agencies that apparently come in for some criticism--Catholic Charities, the Salvation Army, the National Association of Social Workers and the National Crittenton Foundation. No siree!

Catholic Charities' response is blah, saying that some of the stories of mothers from the Fifties and Sixties are heart-breaking, but adoption has changed and so have they.

Here's what Rev. Larry Snyder, President of Catholic Charities USA felt necessary to add:

“We must not lose track of the tens of thousands of adoptive parents who will be forever grateful to birth parents for the sacrifices they make to ensure that their children’s lives will be filled with the love and opportunity they may otherwise not have received.”

Excuse me, that sounds like f*&k the first mothers and the children they gave up, our main concern will continue to be "tens of thousands of adoptive parents who will be forever grateful"...that we continue to oppose adoptee rights....but let us thank those poor women...who clearly were incapable of loving their children and giving them the "opportunities" that money can buy. As one of our commentors, maybe, noted: isn't that special. Really, Father Larry, you should have quit before you added that second graf and displayed your true feelings. *

The Social Worker's statement is defensive, an itemized list (10) of all the great stuff they have done, including saving thousands of children from Nazi death camps, which seems a tad off message here, and also that a social worker was the object of the movie Oranges and Sunshine, about a woman who helped reunite families, and if that isn't swell enough, their magazine, Adoptions Today and Fostering Families magazine, just won awards from...NASW. What is the NASW? The National Association of Social Workers. Seriously, you are bragging about the awards to magazines that you yourself gave to the magazines, which you yourself publish? Incidentally, the magazine seems to be called Adoption Today, without the s, or is there another magazine we can't find on line? Really, you folks need a new press officer.

The Salvation Army is terse in its response, only talking about the homes they ran for unmarried women: These homes were operational during a time when significant social pressures were placed upon pregnant, unmarried girls, and a majority of the young girls came to the homes after being guided by their own families. Okay, not your fault, you say, but "guided"? Guided? More like friggen' forced them into the shoots like cattle on the way to the slaughter. Guided like with a gun to your head, or you'll be on the street. But okay. Your parents didn't want you at home with a bulging belly and baby on the way. The Salvation Army ran homes for poor wretches like you. That's what it was like then.

Only The Crittenton Foundation wrote a statement that even I could love: after noting they were "saddened by and regret the experience of mothers who were forced or coerced into placing their children in adoptive homes and the impact on their children many of whom continue to search for their birth parents," adding that these practices were never endorsed by the national organization...even if the troops (aka social workers) were running amuck--but hey! I wasn't there. But then we get to the best part: "...not a week goes by that we don’t hear from someone searching for a family member and we are acutely aware of the pain and damage done by the past practices....Today at the national level we do everything possible to provide information and support to family members searching for one another."

Real sympathy and reality! Thank you Jeannette Pai-Espinosa, president, who signed the response. I had no truck with a maternity home for wayward girls like myself back in the Sixties, so I can't comment about what went on there, but that statement indicates that at least the Crittenton folks of today understand what's what, and for that I salute them.--lorraine
--------------------------
* NOTE: In 1992, the executive directors of Maternity And Adoption Services of Catholic Charities in all five dioceses of New Jersey recommended to the NJ Catholic Conference of Bishops that adult adoptees be allowed access to their OBCs with no strings attached. The Bishops got their knickers in a twist over this insurrection (how many children are they hiding?) rejected the recommendation then, and this past June, urged Governor Chris Christie to reject the access bill (strings were attached) that had passed in both the Senate and Assembly. (Thanks to Barbara Thavis and Maryanne, who noted this in their comments.)

the exec directors of
Source : Adopted or Abducted

See also:
In the Sixties: Was I 'forced' to give up my baby?
Shining the light on 'forced' adoption at home and elsewhere

In the Sixties: Was I 'forced' to give up my baby?

2012-05-01T16:37:00.001-04:00

Lorraine at work, 2 years later. I was engaged to be married.

Was I "forced" to give up my baby? The question lingers in the air today because Dan Rather Reports produced a documentary, “Adopted or Abducted,” about forced adoption that will be aired tonight. Bloggers we know, such as Claudia, of Musings of the Lame, are included, and while Jane and I can't wait to see it, neither cable company that we use, on opposite ends of the country, me on the East Coast, she on the West, carry it, and so alas, we will have to see it later somehow.

But of course I've thought back about that time in the Sixties when I felt I had no choice other than to relinquish. My baby's father was a married man--and not married to me; I was so embarrassed that though I was less than a year out of college, I did not tell my parents, back in Michigan, while I hide in secrecy in Rochester, New York. Who even knew I was pregnant? Only a few: Patrick, the father, my lover; eventually our boss, the
metropolitan editor of The Democrat & Chronicle, the newspaper where I had worked and Patrick still did; two girlfriends, one in Rochester, one in Michigan; and eventually, Mrs. Helen Mura, the social worker.

Was I forced? Well, a gun wasn't held to my head, but I felt I had no choice. I seem to have no pictures of myself from that time; they must exist somewhere, but few were ever taken of me in Rochester, and certainly none while I knew I was pregnant. The closest picture I have of that time is the one above, taken two years later when I was engaged to be married to someone other than Patrick. I had been an emotional wreck, and then, a physical one for a while, with a red rash that would not go away, but here I am smiling at work. Like a lot of other women have stated, more years needed to pass before the whole impact of relinquishing my daughter to hit me. I had not written a word about the baby or adoption, save what I wrote to her when I was pregnant; I lied to doctors about whether I had ever been pregnant, and certainly told no one. I had buried the secret within me. Still, one does laugh and smile now and then; otherwise we'd all be in a looney bin. This shot was taken shortly after I had torn ligaments in my knee, and that is the reason for the full leg cast, and probably why a staff photographer at The Knickerbocker News, where I worked after the baby, snapped the shot.

Here is how I remember that era, from a work in progress, That Hole in My Heart:

copyright (c) Lorraine Dusky 2012

The mores of the times kept a’changin’ with the music, but no cultural shift happens all at once. While the sexual strictures were loosening, and hip young women like myself were supposed to be sophisticated about sex—not only having sex but wildly enjoying it—the heart-breaking irony was that being caught “in a family way” without someone to marry you revealed a society still stuck in the constraints of Fifties. Good girl still didn’t do it. Smart girls didn’t get caught. The lucky girls who did were the ones with boyfriends who married them; it’s estimated that close to a third (27 percent) of all children born to women between 15 and 29 in the decade between 1960 and 1970 were conceived before marriage.[1] That’s a lot of people having sex outside of marriage but it was, at least in my world, all sub rosa. Even among my girlfriends. If any of them were sleeping with their boyfriends, I did not know about it.

But to be pregnant and unwed was the cause of high shame and family humiliation. From the women I have talked to, it was the rare parent who was sympathetic to a pregnant daughter’s plight. Girls not so lucky to have someone who was willin’ were sent to live with relatives in another town, shipped off to homes for “unwed mothers,” where they sometimes were encouraged not to use their real names, even with each other, or hid at home and bore the ignominy of their parent’s scornful, hurt, why-did-you-do-this-to-me? gaze. Neighbors whispered, fathers held their heads down, and you, the sinner, prayed for this purgatory to be over.

Teenagers who wanted to keep their babies were offered zero support and otherwise threatened if they did not give up their babies. Some teenagers had their babies taken from them in the hospitals; their parents did all the arranging and the young teenager realistically had no choice. If her parents were going to kick a fifteen-year-old out on the street—with her baby—if she did not sign the consent papers, what alternative did she have? What other life plan could she have made for herself and her baby? Some sociologist called surrendering a child during that era was called a “white woman’s disease” as the number of white unmarried mothers who gave up their children is thought to be around 70 percent[2]—some estimates put it at 80 percent, and some as high as 95 percent.[3]

The pressure to relinquish a child was enormous: single women didn’t have babies, or at least, didn’t keep them; every child had a “right” to two parents, who could supply a better layette, and the life that went with that, than you, poor wretch, could. After World War II and right up thought the Cold War era that I knew, the recurrent message in the media emphasized the nuclear family. Motherhood was idealized, fatherhood was a sign of virility and all were signs of solid citizenship. Though the sexual mores were shifting like the ground below, the image of two-parent family was still paramount, and that is what I held in my weary breast as I faced the reality of being a single mother. As such, I would be a pariah. Who was I to stand up to that? A shaft of wheat in a field being whipped down by the wind does not have a chance to stand straight and strong. I was just another shaft brought low by the winds of the times. My baby would have to be adopted.

No consideration was given at all that a child might prefer to grow up with people who looked and acted like her. Nurture trumped nature, if nature meant a single mother. At the same time, the demand for babies kept rising as “adopting” became increasingly acceptable. Did I doubt it? I did not have the courage to doubt it. I just knew that I was supposed to do the right thing, and the right thing was giving up my baby. What I regret today is that I was not more of a rebel, that I was not stronger, that I did not find a way to keep her. I have accepted it, yes, but this is a regret I will take to my grave.

No matter how wrong relinquishing her felt, no matter that my very being was recoiling at the idea.

no matter what I knew in her heart, women like myself who had no one to marry them felt we had no choice other than adoption for our children. It was doing the right thing.

This was the Sixties I knew. It was far removed than the pungent aroma of weed and the vision of nearly naked flower children who would be singing in the mud at Woodstock by 1969. The Sixties that I knew was a time of Playtex rubber girdles and roles for the women as constricting as those girdles. International air travel was opening up, but women didn’t fly the planes, now did they? They served up coffee, tea or me, a catch phrase that became a naughty anthem of the generation that came just a few years after me when The Pill was popped by legions of young women. But that would be later.--lorraine

[1] Ellison, M. (2003). "Authoritative Knowledge and Single Women's Unintentional Pregnancies, Abortions, Adoption and Single Motherhood: Social Stigma and Structural Violence," in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Vol 17(3), 2003, page 326.

[2] Mink, Gwendolyn and Solinger, eds., Welfare: A Documentary of History of U.S. Policy and Politics, from Bureau of Public Assistance, Illegitimacy and Its Impact on the Aid To Dependent Children Program, Washington, D.C., 2003, p. 177.

[3] Ellison, M., ibid. Authoritative Knowledge and Single Women's Unintentional Pregnancies, Abortions, Adoption, and Single Motherhood: Social Stigma and Structural Violence, 2003, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 17(3): p. 326.

PS: On another note: my arm is still recovering, and during the process (possibly from being at the computer too much without proper support under my arm, I tore my bicep on that arm; and so now the whole healing process is taking a much more circuitous and lengthy route. Damn.

For more on the Dan Rather program see: Shining the light on 'forced' adoption at home and elsewhere

Amanda at Declassifed Adoptee has also written about the program: Adopted or Abducted? Things to Keep in Mind Before Getting Upset at Dan Rather's Report

Musings of the Lame

Never Imagined This
If anybody else would like to be listed, email me at forumfirstmother@gmail.com with the title and link to that particular post.

Talking about ancestry to an adoptee, Part 2

2012-04-28T14:45:00.000-04:00

Path to the family tree...or trees? photo by Ken Robbins

What's the best way for a birth mother to talk about ancestors to the adoptee? What does "kinning" mean? There are two discussions going on under the last two posts, but they are about the same thing: family connections, whether adopted or biological.

Commenter Maryanne suggested that when birth mothers begin talking about the family ancestors to a relinquished child in reunion, one could use the word "my," if they appear to be uncomfortable with "your" ancestor, as this seemingly disavows the adopted family and ancestral line the individual has heard about, and accepted, growing up. We agree.

Yet we can understand the emotional quandary of some adoptees, who have grown up making a family history that is not really their own by any stretch of biology, theirs, but now they are supposed to suddenly adopt a new persona in their family tree in the persona of a biological grandfather who emigrated in the early 1900s, as mine did, or an earlier ancestor who fought in the Revolutionary War, as Jane's did, can seem strange, and invoke a feeling of Hey, wait a minute, not so fast....I've got other "relatives" of my own, and by the way, where we you when I was getting them? You gave me up for adoption.

Lorraine

BIRTH MOTHERS CANNOT ERASE THE MEMORY OF BIRTH
But as birth mothers who did give birth to the next generation, whether adopted or not, we have a innate and sense that our reunited child is an authentic part of his first family--we gave birth, after all; we know in the deepest possible way, a child is related to us. We nurtured them for nine months in our bodies, we endured the agonizing pains of childbirth, and we produced a body who came out of us. There is no way we can erase our sense that our ancestors are also the child's ancestors, whether adopted or not, because we have produced the next generation. We understand them in the context of generations in our family, no matter how or where they grew up. Yes, some birth families do excise the adopted out, but in a very real sense, they cannot be totally diminished to the status of non-existence, whether or not they are listed in the family tree. Think of this as a variation on Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am.

The adoptee, not having had the experience of birth of a lost child, cannot quite grasp that connection in the same visceral way that birth mothers do. Perhaps after the adopted give birth themselves they can understand the emotional link of the biological better.

All of my grandparents were deceased by the time I reunited with my relinquished daughter, Jane. She was interested in our shared background, at the same time I knew she felt very connected to some members of her adoptive family beyond the immediate. As she got older--we reunited when she was 15--she became more curious, and felt somewhat more comfortable with my family. She came to know not only my mother, but my two brothers, and her first cousins, a few relations by marriage, and at least to my eyes, accepted them as her relatives. But that did not negate or disqualify the cousins and aunts and uncles of her adoptive family as also her family.

Four generations

BE ACCEPTING OF THE OTHER'S NEEDS
If anything is called for during the early stages of a relationship it is understanding and a lack of defensiveness, both on the first mothers and adoptees. Birth parents could proceed cautiously and find out what the adoptee wants to know, and when, and find out how the adoptee wants to proceed linguistically. Some will appreciate being included right from the get-go; others might be put off and feel defensive of their learned, adopted heritage; and still others will feel both ways--glad to be included yet protective of their adoptive family history and heritage. There is no right or wrong way to feel here, but speaking up here early on can make the reunion experience better for both sides of the equation, mother and child. Adoptees could say, You know, I feel uncomfortable with you talking about ancestors in that way, this is all so new to me, maybe I'll feel different later. This can get tricky because sometimes the adoptees feel uncomfortable asking about ancestors, afraid of speaking their true minds, wondering if they are overstepping bounds....yikes, reunion is a road full of potholes to avoid.

On the other hand, having been at a conference chock full of adoptive parents who are also academics, they pretty much recoiled in silent horror--at least that is how they made me feel--when I read from my memoir, Birthmark, which ends before I found my daughter and has these words:

"You have two uncles and three first cousins, and a whole bunch of other relatives who already know about you. I sometimes imagine flying home to Detroit with you to meet my mother. She'd be at the airport, make no mistake.

...You're part of our family too, right now. Your grandmother said she was going to change her will and leave you, in a trust, the same she is leaving her three other grandchildren. It's not much, but we want you to know that we think of you. And one time, she told me that when she dies, she wants on her gravestone four grandchildren, no matter who knows and who doesn't and who asks questions."

The room was as still as that grave, and only one adoptive mother had the courage to talk to me at the following reception. She asked how I felt when I heard adoptive parents say, "This child was meant to be a part of our family...." I was grateful to talk to her because she did want genuine conversation with a living, breathing first mother. There were a few other birth mothers there--including Maryanne--but I certainly felt like an "outlier."

DOES 'KINNING' REPLACE AUTHENTIC HERITAGE?
Present also was Signe Howell, the imposing Norwegian lady who proposed the theory of "kinning," a kind of emotional twining in of the individual to the adoptive family, which someone has brought up in the comment section about the Dutch adoption situation. From the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, an abstract of Howell's paper:

"With empirical material obtained from a study of transnational adoption in Norway, an argument is made for the concept of kinning. By this is meant a process by which a foetus, new-born child, or any previously unconnected person, is brought into a significant and permanent relationship that is expressed in a kin idiom. Through a focus on adoption within a cultural setting that emphasizes the flesh and blood metaphor as central for kinship, the ambiguities and contradictions embedded in the relationship between biological and social relatedness are thrown into sharp relief. Questions of race and ethnicity also become pertinent to the kinning drama of adoptive parents which involves, it is argued, a process of transubstantiation of the adopted child."

Got that? Transubstantiation is the name given to the concept in Catholicism that bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ--not a mere representation, but in reality. This always gave me pause in my religious belief--how could it be, the communion wafer was still a wafer. This is also similar to a Mormon idea of a blood transfer that is apparently not taken any more seriously today than I take the body-and-blood concept of transubstantiation.

Of course some of the "kinning" concept makes sense--the child does feel a part of his new family--yet at the same time the original family must then be de-emphasized. As far as I recall Howell made no reference to including the natural family's story into the adoptee's heritage. The original family counted for nothing; their story was simply erased. Howell's lecture made me want to walk out; I felt she was spouting malarkey under the guise of academia. I had few doubts about how she dealt with her own adopted children. I believe she said she had more than one. I also remember feeling--before I knew who she was--that she was particularly unreceptive and angry when I gave my reading. I wanted to duck from the vibes I felt coming from her.

Later quite by accident I found myself walking alongside Howell to another lecture. No one else was around to diffuse the chill between us, as frosty as the nip in the air that day. I was the birth mother she did not want coming back, whom she had relegated to non-status, non-mother, non. She was someone who did not understand how I could possibly feel about my surrendered, and now reunited, child. Jane had not yet died; we were close at this time. We were talking a few times a week. Howell and I had nothing to say to each other. I was relieved when we reached our destination and went our separate ways.--lorraine
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Sources: Kinning: the Creation of Life Trajectories in Transnational Adoptive Families
THE KINNING OF FOREIGNERS

Previous posts related to this one:
What does "ancestry" mean to an adoptee?
Adoption in the Netherlands is "undutch" while America's love affair with it continues

What does "ancestry" mean to an adoptee?

2012-04-27T08:19:00.000-04:00

Jane and Family on White House Lawn

On April 9, my grandchildren, ages six and nine, my daughter (their aunt) who lives in Washington and I participated in the White House Easter Egg Roll. About 35,000 people attended the event which has been held annually since 1878. Easter Egg Roll participants come in groups of several thousand and stay for two hours. Because our tickets were for the late afternoon, we did not see the President or the First Lady, who were there in the morning.

The event was much like a neighborhood festival held in a local park.
After going through security, we were entertained by a high school band. Then volunteers directed us to the various activities, an egg hunt, egg dying, picture painting, and the event’s namesake, the Easter Egg Roll. At the Roll the children lined up in groups of about ten and were given an egg and a wooden paddle which they used to guide their egg down a short incline. Wandering through the crowd were Snurfs, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, Dora the Explorer, the Cat in the Hat and other characters popular with children. As we left, the children were given a commemorative wooden egg with Bo’s picture etched on it. Children and grown-ups were given jelly beans and Peeps.

FAMILY HISTORY

While in DC, I visited a cousin from my mother’s side of the family who has done a fair amount of genealogy. During our visit she showed me a copy of my (seven greats) grandfather’s James Johnston’s 1826 petition to the Virginia legislature for a pension for his service during the Revolutionary War. Johnston stated he was a member of the Virginia militia and, among his many exploits, he fought the British in Yorktown, Virginia, the decisive battle of the War, and was shot in the knee. Growing up, I had heard about Johnston but this was the first time I saw documentation.

During my first visit with my surrendered daughter, Rebecca I told her that an ancestor served in the Revolutionary War, thinking that she would be pleased, perhaps proud, to know of this connection. I added offhandedly that she could join the Daughters of the American Revolution. She gave me a cold stare and said, “my ancestors came up the Mormon trail,” referring to the forebears of her adoptive parents. I was stunned but quickly apologized for my arrogance, and we discussed ancestry no more. (According to Rebecca, her adoptive mother believed that when Rebecca was baptized in the LDS Church, her DNA changed to that of her adoptive parents.)

(I’ve wondered whether adoptees like Rebecca are actually eligible to join the DAR) According to its website “Any woman 18 years or older who can prove lineal, bloodline descent from an ancestor who aided in achieving American independence is eligible to join the DAR. She must provide documentation of each statement of birth, marriage and death.…” This would bar adoptees born in states which do not allow adoptees access to their original birth certificate from even applying.)

WHAT DOES ANCESTRY MEAN TO A PERSON ADOPTED AS AN INFANT?

Americans eschew the idea that ancestry determines our status in society; we are created equal. Our Constitution prohibits Congress and states from granting Titles of Nobility.

Even though our status is not—or should not—be determined by our pedigree, Americans love genealogy. We flock to websites such as Ancestry.com and tune in to NBC’s Who Do You Think you Are? where experts help celebrities explore their origins. Both Edie Falco and Rosie O’Donnell have been featured celebrities; both are adoptive parents. On a show several weeks ago, Falco learned that one of her ancestors in England was orphaned as a girl of ten and taken in by another family. While Falco clearly was fascinated by her sea captain ancestor--part of the story takes place on a boat similar to the one he would have captained--and this young girl, the captain's daughter, Falco did not register that her adopted children might wonder about their own natural ancestors--not hers. Instead, she related the orphaned ancestor to her bringing other children into her family.

On the February, 2011 show, Rosie ODonnell learned of a branch of her family she knew nothing about and had a “wonderful reunion” with them. She also learned that one of her forebears and his family immigrated from Ireland during the potato famine in 1854. Rosie visited the dismal workhouse where the family stayed before embarking. Being there brought tears of emotion to her eyes. She was deeply moved. The promo for the show tolds us:

“Imagining the suffering of her forebears is horribly sad but it’s also given Rosie a brand-new perspective. She always felt that her mother’s death [when she was 10] was an unlivable tragedy, but now she realizes that the reason her mother was alive in the first place is owed to the suffering and pain of the family who came before her. The journey has been a life-changing gift. …Rosie can’t wait to get home to share the story with her kids—about the fragility and impermanence of life. The Murtagh side of the family is alive and well in Rosie, and their gift includes the choice to leave suffering behind and focus on redemption.”

“Wait a minute, Rosie” I wanted to shout as I watched the show. “Three of your kids are adopted and the fourth other was born to your then lover through artificial insemination. The Murtagh family may be alive and well in you but there’s not a spec of Murtagh DNA in your kids. Your ancestry cannot be grafted on to them.”

On the other hand, perhaps they, like Rebecca, consider their adoptive parents’ ancestors as their ancestors.

Still, shouldn’t Rosie’s kids have the right to decide for themselves whether to find their blood kin and fashion their own meaning from what they find? Rosie’s answer is apparently “no.” She has never supported the right of adoptees to learn their ancestry. Her brother, Daniel O’Donnell, a New York legislator, has been an outspoken opponent of legislation which would allow adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates.

President Obama and his Kenyan relatives

Thinking of ancestry took me back to the White House. President Obama’s father, who was born in Kenya, left the family when Obama was two and Obama never really knew him. Obama has sought out his Kenyan relatives even though as New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote in 2008 “Enemies of Senator Obama [may] seize upon details like his grandfather’s Islamic faith or his father’s polygamy to portray him as an alien or a threat to American values.” Clearly in spite of the possible fallout, the President needed a connection to the paternal side of his family.

Kristof went on to write: “But snobbishness and paranoia ill become a nation of immigrants, where one of our truest values is to judge people by their own merits, not their pedigrees.”

Yes, we must be judged on our own merits. But knowing our history through the generations gives us a sense of connection to the tree of life and a piece of ourselves that we can gain though no other means. If our true heritage were not so intrinsically important in a way that cannot be explained logically, genealogy and these shows would not be so popular today. To borrow from The Locator Troy Dunn: you can't find peace until you find all the pieces.

Genetic ancestors may help us know where those merits (and demerits) come from.

___________________________

White House Easter Egg Roll

Who Do You Think You Are?

Obama's Kenyan Roots

Who Do You Think You Are? is on Friday night, 8 p.m., EST.

Adoption in the Netherlands is "undutch" while America's love affair with it continues

2012-04-25T18:18:00.000-04:00

The Netherlands

Relinquishing a child for adoption in the Netherlands is considered "inhumane, unwomanly, undutch, not done," according to Theodore, one of First Mother Forum’s regular readers who comments frequently from across the pond.

As in Australia, England and Wales, adoption rates in the Netherlands are dramatically lower than in the US.* With a population of 16.7 million, one eighteenth that of the United States, the Netherlands has approximately 20 domestic infant adoptions each year compared to 15,000 domestic infant adoptions in the US. If Americans were relinquishing at the same rate as in the Netherlands, they would have given up a fraction of the babies relinquished today--a mere 360 babies, not 15,000. Why the discrepancy, we wanted to know. Theodore filled us in.

A Dutch native, he is familiar with the effects of adoption in his own family, due to what he refers to as an illegal grandparent adoption. He is currently working on a translation of a book about Jewish parents who were separated from their children in WW II, but got them back after the war.

RECOGNIZING LOSS TO MOTHER AND CHILD
As in the U.S., unmarried Dutch mothers suffered through a Baby Scoop Era. The high point was 1970 when about a thousand babies were relinquished. The reasons for the decline in adoptions after that was multifaceted, as in America, but a less prudish attitude throughout the country allowed for good sex education, readily available contraceptives, accessible and abortion. At the same time, welfare benefits improved. "Unmarried mothers are common and widely accepted, while public perception a woman who relinquishes her child is quite negative," he writes. "Surrendering one’s child became something simply “not done.” At the same time, quasi-official support for adoption declined as professionals recognized the loss to mother and child. Today adoption decisions are met with opprobrium; women who give up their babies are not looked upon favorably. (As they seem to be in America, we inject, given the kudos given to Catelynn and Tyler of Sixteen and Pregnant celebrity.) About 50 percent of babies are born to unmarried mothers in the Netherlands, compared to 40 percent in the U.S. Today in the U.S. more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage--a reality that neither Lorraine or I could have imagined when our children were born in 1966 and we felt only deep shame and societal censure.

Unlike in the U.S.. Dutch law allows adoption only by those who already have a parent relationship with the child, i.e. step- and foster children. There is no immediate handing over of a baby to a waiting couple or single adopter.

Jane

Mothers considering adoption initially place their child in neutral grounds, i. e. foster care, buying time to consider their options and find the resources they need. They have about two weeks when they can claim their child back. After two weeks, mothers must appear in court and sign a revocable declaration of relinquishment. How different here in the United States! Our mothers typically give irrevocable consent to adoption of their babies within a few days of birth--some even sign consent before birth--and have little or no chance of getting their child back, even if they were coerced by extreme pressure or biased information.

Three months after birth, during which time the Child Protection Council, a government agency, has selected three potential adoptive families (PAPS) based on the needs of the child and the wishes of the mother, mothers must decide from among adoption, raising the child, or long-term foster care. PAPS pay about 4,000 Euros (about $5252) for expenses related to adoption compared to $30,000 in the U.S. Thus, the profit motive that drives the adoption industry in the U.S. is non-existent. If mothers choose adoption, the child is placed with the PAPS who learn about the baby only after mothers select them. The child remains with the PAPS for up to a year before they can adopt the child. If a mother changes her mind about adoption within the year the child will remain with the PAPS--unless the mother can convince a judge she is able to care for the child. The longer a woman waits before seeking return of their child, the less likely she will be successful, because courts do weigh the rights of mothers against the rights of PAPS who have been caring for the child. While the process to get back one's child is not easy, it is at least possible.

Dutch law does not specifically allow open adoptions but adoptive and natural families may keep in contact if they choose to do so. Mothers who wish to stay in contact with their children are advised to keep them in foster care instead of relinquishing the child for adoption. Not only does this permit continuing contact between mother and child, it also allows mothers to retain the possibility of raising their child. Mothers who opt for foster care remain the child’s mother rather than relegated to mere "birth mother" status.

NO PHONY AMENDED BIRTH CERTIFICATES

Dutch law does not allow amended or false birth certificates, as does the U.S. When a child is adopted, the adoptive parents’ names are simply added to the birth certificate. Birth certificates, and often all relevant court records, are accessible to the adoptee. We cannot read this without thinking how much grief and aggravation would not occur in this country if we had the same sane, humane policy here.

Our policies regarding adoption in the United States are positively barbaric, when compared with adoption in other Westernized countries, such as the Netherlands, as well as Australia, England, and many other nations. The more we learn, the more we understand that the American way of adoption is determined by the desires of the people who are the paying customers that is, the prospective adoptive parents. The more we learn about the American way of adoption, the more we see it as a money-making business designed to provide babies for the burgeoning market of men and women who decide they wish to become parents past their most fertile years. The more we learn about the American way of adoption, the more we understand how it brutally encourages the separation of mothers and their children. In the Netherlands, Catelynn and Tyler would not be hailed as generous and smart young people who made the right choice to opt for adoption of their daughter, but as young people who went against the social mores and gave their children to someone else.

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*Domestic adoptions in Australia are near zero. England and Wales with about one-fifth the population of the US do about 5,000 adoptions each year compared to 136,000 in the US. The difference in domestic infant adoptions is even starker, 125 in England and Wales compared to 15,000 in the US.

_______________________
From FMF:
High number of adoptions in the US is a national disgrace
Adoption: Aussies and US
State adoption laws

How adoption agencies 'turn' vulnerable women into spokespeople for relinquishing

2012-04-22T22:02:00.000-04:00

Catelynn and Tyler, spokespeople for Bethany

Is adoption in America a business? Yes, it is a billion-dollar a year business. How do you get more babies to satisfy the customers, the prospective adoptive parents? How do you get other women to give up their babies?

You get still-stunned mothers who have relinquished their children recently--brand new birth mothers to jump in and convince others that they too can do the "right" thing by giving up their children to better fixed folks. Catelynn and Tyler of Sixteen and Pregnant and Teen Mom
fame are Bethany Christian Services' most visible new recruits who help convince other young couples to give up their babies to strangers. That is the kind of marketing tool used by the unscrupulous but ever present Bethany, an adoption and family service agency, with over 70 sites in 30 states and 13 other countries.*

I just picked up this tweet from the Bethany website: RT @TylerBaltierra: @Bethany Cate and I will be speaking next week @ Penn state!!! Come c us #uwontbedissapointed

Sickening.

Lorraine

But before reality TV, before the Internet was the tool it is today, Bethany used recent birth/first mothers the same way. Earlier in the month we featured two posts that arrived at First Mother Forum as comments. The writer has since been in touch with us privately, and we are today sharing more of what occurred when she--more than two decades ago--was blindly led into being a poster birth mother for Bethany. She relinquished in the late Eighties via through what Bethany then called "an extremely open adoption. Today it would be described as "semi-open,"--annual visits, letters, gift exchange. It evolved into a fully open, then completely closed, adoption.

We hope this post will serve as a wake-up call to women who recently gave up their children, whether through Bethany or some other adoption facilitator, to not turn into first mothers who urge others to take the same path.--lorraine

THOSE PROUD BIRTH MOTHER BLOGS...

A phenomenon I’ve found especially troublesome are agencies encouraging newly-counseled, newly-relinquishing/placing mothers to erect and write blogs on “the birth mother experience”--blogs that tend to lean toward, or stop just short of, advising pregnant mothers to place their children. Not all blogs are the product of this encouragement, but bear with me.

Before the Internet, newly-relinquishing moms were recruited to write for their Crises Pregnancy Centers’s (CPC) newsletters, and to speak on agency panels to couples hoping to adopt, "mentor" pregnant mothers, as a part of CPC-sponsored “counsel.” As I've revealed here earlier, I was one of them, and I admit I sounded a lot like the newer birth mom bloggers, "proud" to be a birth mother.

I wrote and said what I’d been counseled to write/say, using words and ideals I’d been spoon fed--words forged by others to define an experience I couldn't yet wrap my mind around; one that my own words could not then--so early on--begin to convey. Would not, fully, for decades. But to go back to the beginning, before I gave birth, a horrific night I remember as clearly as if it happened yesterday. The sound of squeaking chairs, the murmurs and nervous laughter of hopeful couples, the butterflies ascending from my solar plexus, my pregnancy counselor's announcement to the assembled group, the strange new name with which she introduced me:

"This is Alicia" she said, "one of our 'birth mothers.'" [Ed: she was still simply a pregnant young woman, not a "mother."]

I was around seven-and-half-months pregnant, my belly swollen beneath a maroon tent of a dress. During the previous week's counseling session, my counselor had made a request of me. Something important, she'd said. She asked me to talk to prospective adoptive parents--an "opportunity to educate...to make birth mothers more real to them." I'd been hand selected as I was "especially mature and responsible."

And it was good to feel valued--by anyone--after my family, and my child's father, had abandoned me. She wanted the people hoping to adopt to know that birth mothers were not merely careless derelicts, devoid of maternal love. She knew I wanted to parent. She knew I was actively seeking resources to do so, but she'd told me she was not allowed to help me locate said resources. I'd grown to like her, to believe she had my and my child's best interests at heart. I believe, even now, that she was as naive as I was at the time. I trusted her. I felt beholden to her. But I didn't understand that she was, first and foremost, a facilitator on the path to adoption of my baby.

So when she asked me to speak to people looking to adopt, I agreed. I sat alone, a one-woman panel, poured awkwardly into a stiff chair. The couples addressed me as a kind of composite. To them, I was a learning tool, a guide book of sorts. I was all "pregnant birth mothers."

They asked me questions like:

"Do birth mothers prefer parents with a college degree?"

"Do birth mothers have a problem with homeschooling?"

"Do birth mothers change their mind?"

When I returned home, I drew in my journal. A huge belly, hands reaching for it. A barely visible, faintly-sketched woman behind it. The group's collective view of me, at least the view that had come across in their questions and responses, had sifted into me.

I'd never heard the term "birth mother" before I darkened my counselor's door but, as a writer, I know language is a powerful thing. That one little word inserted before "mother," when assigned to me, while pregnant, was a wedge...and that night it insinuated itself into my consciousness, helped to groom me toward relinquishment. Toward what would come to be a koan -- a mother, but not a mother.

It would be years before I realized it had not been "an opportunity to educate," a way to "make birth mothers more real." I had been merely a living, breathing "how-to-gain-a-pregnant-woman's-favor" manual. It was the most humiliating night of my life.

And the social worker? Some years later, she confided that I'd tried harder than anyone she'd ever worked with to find ways to parent. A couple of years after my eleventh-hour relinquishment/entrustment, she left the agency unwilling to play God anymore.

WHEN STILL STUNNED BY LOSS OF MY BABY....
In that state, I truly believed the love I had for my child was so permanently bound to another’s through relinquishment and placement (including an entrustment ceremony), was so vulnerably encompassing and obvious to everyone involved...that it alone would surely see all of us through. To see it otherwise, when it was too late to alter the course, would have been devastating.

Typically, the writing/speaking/mentoring invitations were first issued when we were mere weeks or months post-placement, still in degrees of shock, still in the earlier stages of grief. We continued to be asked until we lost interest in speaking, or simply could no longer tow the agency-endorsed line.

A birth mother mentor I met while I was pregnant spoke of the whole thing with such confidence and bravado that she nearly glowed. She’d made a plan. It hurt at first, but the plan was working the way she’d hoped it would. She had no regrets. She had served God. A couple of years later, I am sure I appeared to be somewhat like her to a new mother I mentored. The doubts I had I kept to myself when speaking to other prospective "birth mothers."

Still unaware that open adoption agreements weren’t a legal aspect of the adoption, I assured the new mom that open adoption guaranteed ongoing contact with one’s child, I assured her that a forever-extended family would form and bond in the wake. I assured her that children were naturally grateful to be relinquished/placed/adopted.

When it didn’t turn out that way for her and her son, I figured she just hadn’t chosen well, she just hadn’t done it right, she was just unlucky. I assured her that God would open a window where the door to her child was clearly closing.

THE NIGHTMARE OF THE PANELS

And the agency orchestrated panels?

We moms (anywhere from weeks to two years post-placement) would file into a room, take our seats, and try not to look too deeply into the assembled crowd. The feeling that comes to me now, remembering those times, is emotional nakedness; an attempt to keep my hands over my most private parts. We used words terms like “adoption plan” and “God’s plan for families” and “surrender” and “sacrificial love.” And we’d do our damnedest to keep from breaking down. Polite tears were fine, but nothing guttural.

Some of us saved that for after, when we confided to one another that we’d felt just a little bit like carnival attractions. That we had a collective gut feeling, based on the Q/A period, that we hadn’t quite gotten through. Some of us kept our lips stiff until we got home. Some of us managed to get through with only a few whimpers.

One mother (who had relinquished only a few months before participating on her first panel) stands out in my memory. She would eke out a few words, tremble, and start to cry. Hard. Her head falling into her hands. Then she’d muster her courage and try again. In the end, she couldn’t continue, and I thought maybe she wasn’t as strong as the rest of us. Not as brave, somehow. But that wasn’t it at all. I now believe she’d been strong enough to defy polite stoicism we were supposed to show. Despite the admiration she’d stood to gain in that room, she was courageous enough to forgo the agency-endorsed words.

But she shouldn’t have been there. I shouldn’t have been there. None of us should have been there. Not only because we were vulnerable and grieving, but because we didn’t yet know what “the birth mother experience” was, let alone what adoption really would come to mean.

Most of us didn’t yet know that our children’s birth certificates were sealed. Most of us didn’t know open adoption agreements weren’t a part of the adoption, itself, endowed with all the attendant legalities. Not one of us had ever been privy to an adult adoptee’s perspective.

WHEN THE FOG CLEARS, THE IMPACT BECOMES REAL…

We knew the force of a new mother's love, the heartbreak of finding ourselves at our hospital's curb with empty arms, the bitter-sweetness of those early photos or visits (if it is an "open" adoption), but as epic as those sacredly or horrifically-perceived hours are, they are but page one, volume one in the veritable library that holds “the birth mother experience.” I know that they still tell pregnant mothers that, if they relinquish, the void will automatically be filled, and I want to say, “I know many loving mothers for whom it was not. I know of many adult adoptees for whom it was not.”

We had no business representing the "birth mother experience." And just as we new birth moms did not know then, agency-encouraged or relatively-new birth mother bloggers don’t know now. They don’t know, yet some assure pregnant moms who find or are directed to their blogs (at an exponentially higher volume than we reached) that they and their children will automatically, through the act of relinquishment and adoption alone, be blessed. There is no way to know that.

No new mother (and by new I mean anywhere from weeks to three, four, five years post-relinquishment) should be offering definitive advice on an experience they’ve yet to live out. We cannot begin to fathom the “birth mother experience” until our children begin to articulate their thoughts on the matter. A large part of the “birth mother experience” is directly linked to whether or not our children wind up well-served by placement/adoption. And we can’t begin to know that until they are, at the very least, able to comprehend cause and effect, their place in the world. We can’t possibly begin to know until they become able to articulate their particular thoughts and feelings regarding their adoptedness.

It’s easy to get swept up in the innocence of babyhood, the appropriately sweet metaphor of “angels” and “gifts” and “blessings.” Indeed, the mothers I’ve known view their children in all of these ways. But inside of those angels and blessings are increasingly autonomous people who grow into totally autonomous people--autonomous people who may one day say something along the lines of, “I cannot see how loving means letting go.”--Alicia, a
pseudonym

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*Bethany and the agencies sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (LDFS) are the two largest member blocks of the National Association for Adoption, a staunch opponent of revoking the state laws that seal original birth certificates of adopted people.

From FMF:

Cultivating a Culture of Adoption

Shotgun Adoptions via Crises Pregnancy Centers

BUYER BEWARE: Bethany 'Christian' Services scams customers and steals identities from the (adopted) infants

Former Bethany "recruiter" speaks up

How a birth mother's No to adoption turned into a Yes

Shining the light on 'forced' adoption at home and elsewhere

2012-04-19T17:38:00.000-04:00

Adoption or Abduction May 1

Spurred by recent events in Australia, Canada, and Spain, Dan Rather Reports produced a documentary, “Adopted or Abducted,” about forced adoption. Rather, a former CBS news anchor, and his staff interviewed first mothers women from around the world including Americans Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy (Faux Claud), Carol Schaefer, Karen Wilson Butterbaugh, and mothers featured in Ann Fessler’s The Girls Who Went Away.

“Adopted or Abducted” airs Tuesday, May 1 at 8 p.m. ET on HDnet. Readers can find their local channel by going to Dan Rather Reports, hitting subscribe and entering their zip code and selecting their cable provider.

Jane

The inspiration for this program began with the work of first mother and author Evelyn Robinson and her fellow Aussies to obtain apologies from government and religious authorities responsible for mothers losing their children. The South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, announced that he will officially apologize on behalf of the South Australian government to those who have been affected by past adoption practices in June 13. This follows apologies by the Western Australian Parliament and Catholic Health, the largest non-goverment hospital operator in Australia.

Evelyn Robinson

Activists in Canada are pushing for an apology as well. A prominent Canadian law firm announced it would file a class action against Quebec’s Catholic Church for using fraud, and coercion to get mothers to give up their babies. The Presbyterian Church in Canada is conducting a review of its historic maternity home practices. A Spanish nun, Sister Maria Gomez, has been charged with trafficking over 1,500 newborns over four decades.

AN APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN MOTHERS?

Although Karen Wilson Butterbaugh and other mothers of the Baby Scoop Era are demanding recognition for the millions of American women systematically denied the right to raise their infants, it's unlikely that apologies will be forthcoming. Adoption critic and writer Jessica Delbalzo points out that unlike Australia, infant adoption in US is a big business, bringing in an estimated $1.4 billion a year. She writes in the Daily Kos:

“Admitting that mothers and their children were wrongly separated in the decades preceding Roe v. Wade could, conceivably, open up modern adoption practices for criticism.

...In addition to false promises [of open adoption] other coericive tactics are alive as well. ...Young women are still told that if they love their babies they will give them away. Prospective adopters advertise for babies in magazines and online and expectant mothers are encouraged to “make an adoption plan” and meet the would-be adopters before the baby is born. In some cases the adopters even join them in the delivery room. None of this is done in Australia.

...If Americans admit that adoptions were conducted unethically or illegally in the 1950’s to the 1970’s, they may just have to admit that the industry is still as rife with corruption as it ever was. The numbers may be lower but if anti-choice, anti-contraception politicians have their way, they will be on the rise again soon. An apology for past practices is warranted, but what we need even more than that are safeguards for the future.”

We at FMF whole-heartedly agree. We would add, though, that it is not only the “anti-choice, anti-contraception politicians”, we need to be wary of, but liberals as well like the Center for American Progress which promote adoption as an option along with abortion and “parenting.”

LET US SEIZE THE MOMENT

“Adoption or Abduction” promises to bring adoption corruption—and by extension the need for reform--into the public consciousness. We can expect the adoption industry to respond with something like this: since most adoptions are open, it a different situation today than when you [old, irrelevant first mothers] relinquished--decisions to give up one's baby are made freely. Because this is the message we hear now, it is important that post-Roe v. Wade mothers (1973) tell their stories. One way to do this is to post them on Origins-USA.

Beyond that, first mothers need to join together and work with their legislators for laws which assure mothers have the time and information to make informed decisions.

Would-be Egg 'Donor' imagines a child growing up with genetic strangers

2012-04-16T20:05:00.001-04:00

Lorraine

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST
Why would you not donate your eggs? The profit is great--$10,000!--the risk seems at first blush small (if inconvenient), and you seem... magnanimous. So why not do it?

An awareness of what is lost when there is not shared blood led one young woman, Simi Lampert, to change her mind about selling her eggs. Calling her a donor is such BS the head spins. Yet what she became aware of as she considered marketing her eggs is exactly what is ignored in adoption: how being with genetic strangers marks one as different. The other. Not from the same stock. Together but separate. From "Why I Couldn’t Donate My Eggs" on Tablet, A New Read on Jewish Life:

"My siblings and I were raised by my mother, who was an only child, and my stepfather. One of the things about my childhood that’s always bothered me, something I wish could be different, is that my step-cousins never really felt like my cousins. (Emphasis added.)

"I’d go to family reunions and feel like the outsider. They shared something deeper than I did; they understood each other in some indescribable way. I came into the family when I was already 4 and I didn’t have the same nose, hair, or personality quirks that they did.

"The contrast with my father’s family is stark. My father died when I was 3, and his only brother lives in Israel. When I make my trips to see my cousins there, I finally understand what having an extended family felt like. My siblings and I were raised together; it makes sense that we share a sense of humor and a love for nerdy things. But six boys and girls halfway across the world, getting our jokes and having our orthodontist’s dream teeth? That was pure genetics. I felt at home in their house like nowhere else, except for my own home.

"Thinking about my family, I realized that I’d be taking away from that egg—that future child, even future adult—what I missed so much in my life. Suddenly, I felt protective over that person; I felt the need to keep it safe from harm and hurt. I felt the connection everyone else assumed I’d have all along. And once those emotions were involved, I couldn’t take them back."

Jane

We suppose the fertility industry would respond with something like: "The child won't know all his genetic relatives (he might know the half that came from his father, though) but without the egg Lambert generously provided (at risk to her health, even her life), he wouldn't have life itself. Unlike placing a child for adoption, the egg she donates is not a child. It's just a bit of tissue which is replaced every month." The industry might even hint of the possibility that Lambert and the DNA carrier might connect--after all it's not uncommon today for those born through artificial insemination to find their sperm donor. That was the scenario in the movie The Kids Are All Right. The clinic might even allow Lambert to give permission for it to disclose her name if the adult child requests it.

However, elsewhere in the world saner minds prevail, and children are not so willy-nilly created with an ova here and a sperm there. The United Kingdom has outlawed anonymous donations, and a judge in British Columbia ruled anonymous donations unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the UK law has not had the intended result according to an April 16 article in Time, "Frozen Assets." Donations in the UK have fallen far below the demand, spurring the American sperm industry to plug the gap. We hope that the US will eventually outlaw anonymous donations as well and other countries will follow suit. We suspect, though, that India, where there are wombs for rent, won't be one of them.

Lambert came to her decision after a great deal of push back from friends and family who instinctively knew that egg donation is freaky, and would surely have unwanted consequences. Her concern about the child carrying her DNA goes beyond wanting the child to know his cousins or to be sure the kid is "all right." It's similar to emotion mothers who lose their children to adoption experience. It is allowing a human being to be created without exercising the right, and accepting the responsibility, to nurture him. It's knowing that she didn't just sell an interchangeable and expendable body part, but a slice of her soul and DNA into future generations. That knowledge would remain long after the money she received is long gone.--Lorraine and Jane

UPDATE
This morning (4/17/12) on the Today Show: The twin babies of an American woman, born in Israel through in-vitro fertilization, are being denied U.S. citizenship because there is no proof that either the egg donor or sperm donor is American. From Today.com:

Ellie Lavi, an American citizen living in Israel, wanted her children to be American as well, despite the fact that they were born in Israel. But her twin daughters, Maya and Shira, now 2 ½ years old, are unable to gain status as U.S. citizens. Lavi, a single mother in her 40s, used a donor sperm and egg from a clinic in Israel to conceive her children through in-vitro fertilization. Now, the U.S. State Department is refusing to grant citizenship to her children because she is unable to prove that any of the donors are American citizens.

NBC’s Martin Fletcher reports....Born to American mom, in-vitro twins denied citizenship

______________________
From FMF:
Egg Donor or Egg Seller? Fulfilling Another Woman's Dream or Filling Your Pockets
Creating children, no matter how in the quest to have a family
Egg donations on the Rise in Tough Times
When Daddy's Name is Donor...
Anonymous baby making in British Columbia is outlawed
________________________
Source: Why I Couldn’t Donate My Eggs
Time: "Frozen Assets"

How a birth mother's No to adoption turned into a Yes

2012-04-14T12:16:00.000-04:00

There is more yesterday regarding Bethany Christian Services (cough, cough) and others who turn dazed new mothers who relinquished into recruiters, and so I am reposting her comment again for those who do not read the comments. See below the wonderful graphics---lorraine

From another give-up-your-baby-site...but guess what keeping your baby aka "youth parenting" looks like? Mopping the floor while clutching your child. Give him up and you are the happy college or high school grad. What me worry?

Oh, gosh. I'm the anonymous commenter.

To answer Robin's question, I was involved with a church that put me in touch with a "crisis pregnancy counselor" at a "Christian Services" organization.

I knew adoption was part of what they did, but I didn't think it was all they did. I thought "counselor" meant counselor. I thought they were a charitable organization, like The Salvation Army, etc. And, yes, during my counseling sessions, I did opt to heed the "explore adoption" counsel. I agreed to meet with a couple while pregnant on the condition that they were told that I was uncommitted to adoption.

In the hospital, to the frustration of some, I still wouldn't commit. After giving birth, seeing my child's face, I called and told my counselor "no."

My no was not accepted. Instead, phone calls began to come late into the night ... my counselor, offering "more contact than we usually offer birth mothers" (if I "followed through" and relinquished.) She suggested I let the hopeful couple just come to my hospital room to "visit."

And I trusted my counselor. I liked her.

There is so much more, but I don't want to write a novel here.

In the end, something in me began to fissure. I finally believed I wasn't good enough for my child. That he deserved better than me, a single mother without family support. That it would be "selfish" to disappoint a "deserving" couple. That a father was an imperative part of "God's plan." And I did not have one to offer.

There's much more, of course. Yes, the final decision was mine. Naivete, ignorance, the belief system I held at a moment in time, perhaps even what some call weakness, were all factors. But, in that final hour in the hospital, I viewed relinquishment the way they hoped I would: as strength, as courage, as "an act of self sacrificial love" -- much the same way the newer birth mom bloggers do.

I understand that mind set. How it comes about. Why one holds on to it. I also understand the utter groundlessness when that belief system is called into question years later.

As for the original comment, I could add a great deal to it. As, I'm sure, others can.

_______________________
I am really operating with limited power here. More tomorrow or later about how adoption is a billion dollar business in America. Recruiting vulnerable new mothers who have relinquished is how the business succeeds. For many the scales fall from the eyes later. Years later.

see earlier post
Former Bethany "recruiter" speaks up

Former Bethany "recruiter" speaks up

2012-04-12T22:27:00.002-04:00

First Mother Forum received this anonymous comment today, but it is too heart-breaking and revealing to leave to a comment that few will ever find. As I can hardly type for the time being* I thought I would post it because what this first mother writes about that occurred in the Eighties--when she relinquished--is still certainly happening today, as we have learned from following the Catelynn and Tyler story. So I am just posting this here today:

I relinquished through Bethany's "counselor" in the 80s. Just weeks later, I was recruited to speak on their behalf (on Q&A panels for potential adoptive couples).

They chose mothers who were only weeks to months post partum. The last time I spoke, I was the veteran at about two years into an open adoption that would later close. Though I spoke for them three times, never during these times did I know open adoption wasn't legally enforceable. They'd lead me to believe it was simply part of the adoption, with all the legalities as such. I didn't question it any more than I questioned the components of any legal process. (I also didn't know birth certificates were altered and sealed, another little omitted detail).

My counsel had been religiously based, and I was ripe for it at the time. Though I continually rejected the notion that I was a vessel to deliver a baby intended for someone else, I bought enough of their "act of redemptive love" feed to be a poster birth mom for a time. For a time.

I had said no to adoption. Had said no to them after giving birth, etc. They knew full well that I wanted to raise my child, but brought the big guns in after I delivered.

That was a long time ago. Looking back, I probably survived the first several years by believing it had been some divinely orchestrated plan.

I worry about some of the newer blogging birth moms. I worry about how this kind of belief system will hold up if an adoption closes or if a child doesn't perceive it the way the adults were counseled to. (I'm certain these moms were told by counselors, to greater or lesser degrees, that their children would be "grateful" for their "self sacrifice.")

I've seen that the age of 7 or 8 is a pivotal one in open adoptions. As the child seeks to forge his or her own relationship with his or her birth mother and begins to ask difficult questions of both birth and adoptive parents, this is where I've seen many open adoptions begin to close down.

Bethany prepares nobody for these questions. At least in the 80s and 90s, they fostered the archaic belief that there would be no need for such questions if a child was "well adjusted."

Some articles suggest that their core agenda is spreading the gospel via adoption into Christian families. I don't know that individual counselors operate with that belief, but the evidence is mounting against their tactics.

As for the bloggers you've mentioned, most are relatively newly into this. Time and experience will likely reinforce the beliefs of some and, sadly, shatter the beliefs of others.

I suspect, so long as Bethany views children as "angels" and relinquishing mothers as "redeemed" (rather than viewing all involved as merely human), the latter will occur more than the former.

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*Overdoing everything [including writing] the doctor suspects led to a setback in the recovery of my shoulder surgery, and I have a bicep in spasm.

See also: Inconsolable grief
Catelynn & Tyler's open adoption will stay open; for other first mothers, not so much
(Pro) Adoption Special: Dr. Drew encourages teen moms to give up their babies

Joyce Maynard's adoption "disruption"

2012-04-10T13:56:00.000-04:00

Lorraine

Joyce Maynard’s writing—and thus her, because her writing is her—has always irritated me, perhaps irrationally. She was too famous for celebrating the banal. But when the news that she disrupted her adoption of two sisters from Ethiopia became public the other day, my reaction was not to rub my hands gleefully and think Aha! The great comeuppance for that navel gazer! Instead I hoped that her celebrity and this public admission about a disrupted adoption would help stem what often seems like the wholesale exportation of children from one part of the world to another by do-gooders of all political and religious stripes simply because they have more money.

Far too many of them think that they are doing something noble by taking these poor children from the over-crowded orphanage where they find them. People in my large social net have adopted from Guatemala, China, India, Nepal, Romania, and Russia. In truth, I am not close to many of them. And it is undoubtedly true that in many cases, they are saving a child from an uncertain and perilous future and giving them a home in which to flourish.

Joyce Maynard

But when you dig deeper you find that it is impossible to know if the children would have been available to be adopted if there were not such a hungry market for children. In all of the countries mentioned above great crimes have been committed in order to supply the world market for children. Children have been stolen from their parents, ended up in crowded and nasty orphanages, displayed as hungry and dirty (which they are) and been offered, basically, for sale in the marketplace. Of course it is not called that; international adoption is scrubbed of dirty dealings and most people who adopt are oblivious to the reality of the system. Why don’t they do some research first? is a question of its own; they don’t because more than anything, they want a child to raise as their own.

We have become a culture that generally sees adoption of children from around the world as merely a good thing, not the complicated, difficult, painful, wrenching reality that it is. The two sisters Maynard temporarily adopted were 6 and 10 at the time she brought them from Ethiopia to California; had she looked into the facts, she would have learned that it is older children—just as those were--whose adoptions are the most difficult, and most often disrupted.

DISRUPTED ADOPTIONS--MORE OFTEN THAN PEOPLE KNOW

Disrupted is a nice word that means the adoption is “undone,” that the children end up somewhere else, sometimes back at the place they started. Maynard announced the failure of her adoption in a letter on her website, and stated she found another family for them in another city, with other children also from Ethiopia. I give her credit for not sending them on a plane back to Africa, as some distraught parents have famously done with their Russian adoptees.

How often are adoptions disrupted? More than most people realize. A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review of what was known as of 2004 suggests that overall, 10-25 percent of adoptions are disrupted or dissolved, and that the rate tends to rise with the age of the child at adoption. According to the paper from the Donaldson Institute: researchers found that for children between 6 and 8, the disruption rate was over 10 percent, and correspondingly went up with age: for children between the ages of 9 and 11, it was over 17 percent; between the ages of 12 and 14, it was over a whopping 22 percent.

As she chronicled in a lengthy magazine piece in More, when she adopted the two girls, Maynard was 55, without a partner to share in their raising, and with three grown children. While she obviously has made a decent living from her writing, she is far from wealthy. The girls spoke only a few words of English; she spoke no Amharic, their native language. By the time they were launched, she would be 70. The was going to be hard, and she knew it. Yet Maynard got caught up in the current cultural mantra that "all adoption is good, you are saving the world one child at a time" and went ahead anyway, writing that “there was no experience in life I’d loved more than raising children. I had love enough for more, and a blind faith that love was sufficient to get us all through the challenges I knew would lie ahead.” (The piece has since been scrubbed from the Internet but one of our readers sent it to me.)

"Blind faith" is the problem here. Apparently what started out beautifully ended up a dastardly. There is no point in being harshly judgmental and piling on criticism of Maynard; I live in too much of a glass house to do that. I have not walked in her shoes. And I begin where I started: I hope news of her failure makes other people who think that adoption is a simple, loving act dig deep, do the research, and instead of adopting someone else’s child from a foreign environment, instead consider supporting a family to let them raise their own children, in their own culture.--lorraine
________________________

From FMF: Harvesting Children from Ethiopia for Families in America
Guatemalan Army Stole Kids for Adoption
One Woman's Struggle with Adopting from Ethiopia
Madonna's Malawi charity fails and Ethiopian adoptions shut down to a trickle: Could there be abuse in the system?
More Stench Coming from Ethiopian Adoptions through Christian World Adoptions
West Not Impressed by Adoption Practices in Nepal
Returning a Child: It happens More than You Think

After the birth mother/adoptee reunion: Dealing with rejection all over again

2012-04-07T22:29:00.000-04:00

Jane and Lorraine in Sag Harbor, circa 1996

The reaction to the post about my daughter that have stayed with me were with ones from first mothers whose children, now found, are not speaking to them. I mentioned the lapses in my relationship with my own daughter's at the end of the previous post, Remembering my daughter on her birthday.

I usually don't write about her not talking to me much now because it's obviously no longer an issue. She is gone. I don't cry anymore because she won't speak to me; I have cried plenty, but now she cannot speak to me, except in dreams.

But the silences, oh the silences were terrible. Her birthday was the worst: did I send a card or call when she had rebuffed me for so long? When I felt that calling would only reach a answering machine? When leaving a message felt like it was going into a black hole? So I did not.

Adoption reunions are so complicated. What starts in joy and relief--as ours did--by turns was up and down and sometimes felt gone for good. One time Jane stayed away for more than a year; that was when her first daughter was born, and given up for adoption.

Then we were close again. For years.

Then, nearly a decade later, after she married a good man, after I had a reading in that ceremony, after years of smooth sailing, after I thought she would never distance herself again, her younger brother died in a skiing accident. He was not an adopted son, but the biological issue of her adoptive parents. She called me crying, I tried to comfort her; the memorial service, as I understand it, was disturbing to both her and her adopted brother because of a casual remark by their mother. The adopted son did not speak to their mother for nearly a year.

Jane took the opposite track: she got rid of me. She would prove to her adoptive mother she was a good daughter and she could do that by pushing me--only the birth mother!--away, far away. When Jane left for the memorial service in another state, we had been close; when she returned, the distance in her grew greater by the day, and within a couple of weeks, it was as if I did not exist. We did not have words; we had no disagreement; she was just gone. She was not going to answer my phone calls, or respond to any letter. She didn't have email then. I retreated. At the time, I had no idea why this had happened.

I saw her once when I went to Wisconsin to pick up her second daughter, who would spend a good part of the summer with us. Jane and I spoke, but never alone, and in the presence of her parents--we all hand lunch after mass--she was surly to me. After that summer was over I went to a CUB (Concerned United Birthparents) retreat and heard Nancy Verrier say that at least once we ought to tell our children that we were sorry they had to be adopted--no tacking on excuses, or blame, just a simple, I'm sorry. I screwed up my courage and called a month later, her husband answered, and she came to the phone. I said, I'm sorry. We talked for about an hour. But that was it. There was no change in the relationship. She did not call back.

FEELING LIKE A MAGNET
Then, miraculously, months later, she called one day and we were back on, as if nothing had been in our way. She ultimately let me know that she had pushed me away to prove to her other mother that she was a good daughter, and the way to do that was to show her other mother that I did not count much. Another time she told me she felt like a magnet--if she moved towards one, she had to move away from the other, that she constantly felt pushed and pulled in different directions. When she committed suicide, we were at a good place--after a summer when she cut me off again. It was always like that, up and down. Over all the years, however, we were in touch much more than not, and we had a lot of good years. She'd answer my phone calls as soon as she could. One Thanksgiving when we couldn't be together, she called our house four times throughout the day. She returned phone calls as soon as she could. For long stretches of time, our relationship actually felt normal.

Yet I think of a good friend, a birth mother, who has a daughter who hasn't spoken to her in five or six years. I read the blogs of mothers whose tears could fill a small lake. I sometimes think adoptees can never understand how deep the pain they inflict when they walk away; but it has to be the same for them when first mothers distance themselves when they, the adopted, want desperately to have a relationship. I think often it is the husband who doesn't want this reminder of another relationship around; like lions who kill the cubs of another father if they take over the pride, the fathers do not want the individual from other time, issue of another man, around either, disturbing everyday life as they know it. It is easy to accept someone when he or she isn't around, but when she or he pops up, that's another story. I know wives of birth fathers who are just as rejecting of their husband's children from another time, and as cruel. A child is proof of something; someone perhaps to be counted in the will, or to claim objects when the heirlooms are divided up, or to claim a grandparent's affection, and when that someone is not related by blood or kinship or friendship to them, some individuals revert to basic animalistic urges and motives that go back to the beginning of time.

ACCEPTING WHAT IS, NOT ALWAYS WAITING FOR WHAT ISN'T
I started this post hoping to find some words of comfort for those first mothers still bravely going through the silences that are so deep, and the same for the adoptees feeling the same despair and rejection, but I seem to be unable to find any words that sound comforting. Ultimately, we all have to recognize that the choice another makes is not our doing, and nothing we can do will change her unless she wants to be changed. We have to live our lives finding joy where we can, in our families, in our pastimes and careers, in a church, with our friends. We have to release those who do not want us in their lives. We can feel sad, but we have to see that sometimes a broken relationship is beyond our ability to repair. Relationships take two people. We have to accept what is, and stop waiting for what is not. This is hard to do, and full of sorrow, but ultimately leads to serenity. We have to make the best of the hand that's dealt us, and we all don't get a Royal Flush. --lorraine
_______________________

From FMF: Valentine's Day Message: I'm sorry without caveats
Does surrender (for the birth/first mother) and adoption (for the child) lead to PTSD?

Nancy Verrier's second book about adoptee trauma and its lifelong effects.

Remembering my daughter on her birthday

2012-04-05T13:06:00.000-04:00

Jane and Lorraine, 7/25/83 NYTimes photo

Today is my daughter's birthday, but of course the correct syntax is "would have been" her birthday if she had not died in 2007. What runs through my mind in crazy seemingly random fashion are images of the two of us together: the second time you came off the plane to visit Tony, my husband, and me in New York. You were planning to spend the summer with us. What a surprise to see that you had lightened your mousy blond hair (that was so like my mousy blond) to look a lot more like mine! Highlighted! Yes, I was thrilled to see that. You were my daughter, through and through. Was that the visit that we went to the Statue of Liberty and were the first off the boat from Manhattan and first up the stairs as we scrambled up to the crown? We both enjoyed that, and joked about it over the years.

I see us hanging out downtown in Sag Harbor, at the pier, with our first dog, Fred, a friendly female lab, and just, well, just enjoying the view with the water, the boats, the sunshine and reveling in being with each other, after so many years apart.

We had lots of fun shopping for clothes for you--remember that black pin-striped suit we found for you at Loehmann's? I remember taking in the joy in your face in the mirror as we stood there admiring the person you were that day. I would have bought the same suit for myself if there had been another; we wore the same size, we like the same styles. You had just turned sixteen. We stopped at a Pizza Hut on the way home. I don't know what we talked about but I do know we had a great time. I remember lots of other shopping excursions, buying you clothes, seeing what went with what. You often used the word, "sharp," describing clothes you liked. And I remember you saying that shopping with with me was something you were aware of missing because your other mother didn't have time (she had three boys to look after) but really, you and I knew that she didn't enjoy taking the care you and I did with what we wore. (What tense to use? Present or past, I am still here.)

Hearing stuff like that was always bittersweet--sweet because it made me feel closer to you, because it reminded me of how you were like me, despite the adoption, despite us being apart after you were born--but bitter because our separation denied us both safety, sanity, a sense of belonging to each other.

Forsythia for Jane, 2012

There are so many other things: you and I loving restaurants on the top floor of skyscrapers--who cares if they are full of tourists and the food is not great--because we liked the view; sitting outside on top of the World Trade Center one balmy afternoon for a half hour when you could do that; learning we had both been painting benches for our own back yards at about the same time; discovering that just like me you can't snap your fingers on your left hand, no matter how hard you try. One day you told me that you understood how difficult it would have been for me to keep you, how hard it would have been with your epilepsy and my lack of a large bank account--Sweetie, that was a precious moment, it seemed to me that you did understand and accept what happened, how it happened, without censoring me, yet expressing a certain sorrow at what was--for both of us. Your words felt like redemption. And always I recall your reaction when Tony remarked to you--after climbing the stairs at our house--"You walk just like Lorraine." You said that his offhand observation made you feel that you had really come home. Your adoptive father was always asking, you said--"Couldn't you have a lighter step, Jane?" Well, no, it turns out you couldn't. In so many ways that seem inexplicable to those who deny biology, we were alike. And of course, I recognized your biological father in you too. As e.e. cummings wrote...Jesus he was a handsome man....

My mother, Jane, her daughter, and Lorraine April 1995

I miss being able to call you and find out what you are doing tonight, to celebrate with your husband. Or what you made for dinner last night, or how you are doing in the darts league or how the planning for the epilepsy foundation benefit is going this year, or god knows, the millions of tiny little things--recognitions and murmurs of the heart--that made up our relationship over the more than quarter of a century we had with each other.

Today's a regular lava flow of memories, Honey. The forsythia bush in the back yard planted for you is in full blazing bloom, just as forsythia was when you were born 46 years ago. My friend, Christy Bulkeley, sped me to the hospital just around now as I had contractions. Christ they hurt! She was hoping that I didn't give birth in the car, and as I looked out the window I remember seeing rows of bright yellow forsythia along the roadside. You were born two hours later.

Of course we had our differences, your inchoate anger that came out every now and then when you would just back away for long months of silences. That hurt too, as much as the physical pain, but in a different way. Then you would be back with the ring of a phone call. You had a troubled life, being given up and being adopted, having epilepsy, and the attendant psychological difficulties that came with them all. But today, let us not dwell on that. Let us keep the good parts in our heart and, though aware, release the sadness of our separation. --lorraine

What can you write about adoption? And what is off limits?

2012-04-02T22:11:00.000-04:00

Lorraine and her new accessory

What are the limits of what one can write about in regards to adoption personally, since after all, in writing anything at all, you are writing about at least one other person, possibly more. It's an issue that has come up not only at First Mother Forum but other blogs--and now The Huffington Post.

Last week a brave adoptive mother, Dina McQueen, wrote a revealing post about her four-year-old daughter from Ethiopia. In it she wrote of how, since McQueen had video of the girl's birth mother bringing the daughter, now named Aster, to the drop off, the little girl wanted to watch the video over and over and over again, and how she became inconsolable for a brief time after--though it seemed long to Mother McQueen. I forget exactly what the girl, Aster, called her video but it had some version of "birth mother" in it. Eventually, with time, love and patience, McQueen was able to calm the girl down and the post ended with the girl, at least for the time being, able to move on with her American mother to a sweet resolution.

Wow! I thought, here's a post that eloquently speaks to the real sense of loss and dislocation this four-year-old is experiencing. Here's a post from an adoptive mother not afraid to be honest about the difficulties of not only adopting, but adopting from another culture and continent. How often can you read and honest essay like that? It was a first for me. To be honest, I hoped that some prospective adopters reading might be turned off to the whole idea of adoption, and thus reduce the world wide market for adoptable children. The girl wanted to see the video of the mommy whose tummy she came out of again and again, and that would have to be disturbing to some.

REVEALING POST IS GONE FROM HUFF PO
I meant to write about the post this week. I had bookmarked it. But this morning it was gone, taken down at the request of the writer, apparently because she got so many drubbings for writing publicly about the girl. And this week we have Public Apology To My Daughter with snippets of a few comments, such as:

Furthermore, why are adoptive parents discussing their children's private moments in public settings? Please, I urge you to respect your child's privacy and stop telling their stories for your own personal profit.

Let us ignore that McQueen may or may not get paid for her blog--Huff Po doesn't have to pay its writers. The bigger issue is that writing about one's life entails writing about interactions with other people. There's no way around it. Should my husband, at his blog, discuss the abortion he and his first wife had due to her receiving a full body x-ray when she was two weeks along, and the risk of abnormalities caused by that around 50 percent? Should anyone write a memoir? And especially, should anyone write an adoption memoir? Judging from the above comment McQueen quoted, the answer would be an emphatic no.

In publishing Birthmark in 1979, the first to reveal the agonies of relinquishing a child, I had to write about my parents, my college romance that ended, the father of my baby, Patrick Brasley; his crumbling marriage and thus his wife; my bosses at the newspaper where Patrick and I worked; the unmarried teenager I shared a room with at the hospital; the social worker, Helen Mura; Florence Fisher; Robert Jay Lifton; attorney Gertrude Mainzer, an adoptee named Ann Smith who had gone to court to get her records unsealed, and others in more minor roles. The book ends before I found my daughter so she is not a "live" character, though the book is about her and dedicated to her. The point it, you can't write anything personal without talking about someone else and your interaction with them, and how it affects you. I wrote the book because I felt it was time for mothers like myself to emerge from the closet and because I knew I could withstand the screaming hot criticism--anger--that I knew would follow and be directed at me. It did and it was.

WRITING IS THE BUSINESS OF WRITERS
Adoptees write adoption memoirs, birth mothers write their stories, and so do adoptive parents. I do not read adoptive parent blogs in any number--the few I do are listed in the sidebar, and I respect the writers for their openness in dealing with hard questions about being second mothers. Sometimes they write about their children involved; other time they write about the issues. I am aware that adoptees are very critical of anything written about them, more so, it seems to me, than people not adopted, because it is yet another example of something over which they have no control. But family members in any family where a writer pops up have to deal with being used as models in fiction, or as actual characters in any memoir. My friend Emily Prager wrote a sensitive memoir, Wuhu Diary, about taking her adopted daughter back to China when she was five to see if they could learn more about Lulu's original family, and I've heard her be roundly criticized. Writers write about life, about themselves. They have for all time and will in the future. To criticize McQueen because she writes for a living makes no sense. I was told repeatedly I only wrote Birthmark for the money. Believe me, there were a lot of subjects that would have made a lot more money. Writing is the occupation of writers, and the nay-sayers often forget that.

Though I did not see the barrage of comments that McQueen's post generated, I'm going to venture a guess that many came from people who did not want to see the hard truth of adoption in the mind of a four-year-old expressed so vividly, so raw. So they attacked her, and were outraged--outraged--because she wrote about how she dealt with a daughter having a difficult time. McQueen is the author of a book, Finding Aster: Our Ethiopian Adoption Story, about how she made the decision to adopt after major surgery. McQueen is in her late 40s now; and the daughter is four, as I recall. The book description at Amazon says: In the end, Dina openly expresses with a clear and focused voice that choosing adoption to grow a family need not be a last resort.

If only providing that child were not a last resort for the mother.

I'm getting off the track here. The point is, you can't write about adoption with any force without writing about it personally. Adoptees, adoptive parents and first mothers all write blogs from their personal experiences--and interactions with the major people in their lives--the adoptee in question, the adoptive parents, the natural parents, the siblings, adopted and natural. At FMF, we do that plus try to keep up with trends and news in adoption. Mothers, both biological and adoptive, are frequently excoriated for writing about their personal experiences--but that is what people want to read, and what they best learn about the experience from, not a dry pile of statistics and generalities. McQueen's original post--that she was bullied into taking down--was a true gift.

When I wrote about my grief at the beginning of the year, revealing that my adopted-out granddaughter--after what seemed like a great beginning to a relationship--had chosen to have no contact, adoptees began writing comments about how she must be feeling and why. Since that was all speculation, I took them down, but not before I received a nasty comment (not published) from a friend of hers. Yet my granddaughter had written about her visit to our home portraying it rather negatively. Knock me over with a spoon! I had no idea I was being overbearing when I opened my heart and our home; I thought we were having a great time. But yes, I did recognize the visit was too long. I let her writing stand without commenting, or complaining. It was how she felt at the time she wrote it. And I learned from it. We--in the larger sense of the word--need to give each other room to write about our experiences and how they affect us.

TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY

However, the same pushback is not leveled against adoptees for writing about their birth parents in often unflattering terms. Sarah Saffian's book, Ithaka, was such a demeaning diatribe against her hippie, pottery-making birth parents in Vermont I wanted to throw the book against the wall. The book itself would not have been the good read it was without her father's eloquent letters to Saffian, a fact nowhere noted by the ungracious author. Yet everywhere I read (except here by Jane) Saffian received flattering, even gushing, reviews. The same was true of A. M. Holmes's The Mistress's Daughter. Her mother sounded like a lowlife in need of an education. Holmes made no bones about being embarrassed to be her mother's daughter. An adoptive mother encouraged me to read the lengthy piece Holmes first published on the same subject in the New Yorker. Yikes, I thought, no wonder this adoptive mother wanted me to read it, the real mother is so damn needy and uneducated! Her father is a weak shit. Thank god I escaped was the message Holmes conveyed in no uncertain terms.

If there is to be honest writing about adoption, it has to come from all quarters--including adoptive parents talking about the difficulties of raising someone else's child. McQueen's post did not reflect negatively on her daughter at all. I thought, McQueen is raising a child without teaching her what is off-limits regarding her own origins--what a great thing! The piece unflinchingly demonstrated how a four-year-old understood her life, and how she missed her real mother. McQueen came across as sensitive but real. We read little about this side of adoption, especially from adoptive parents. I'm sorry McQueen took down her piece, and instead wrote an apology. The world need more of the kind of honesty McQueen showed us. --lorraine

_______________________

Source: Public Apology To My Daughter

From FMF: Harvesting Children from Ethiopia for Families in America
Why Reunions Go Awry: What Memoirs of Adopted Daughters Tell Birthmothers

From Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform:
2009 Ethiopia Adoption Program Suspensions and Investigations

What are the happy birth moms celebrating?

2012-03-29T22:53:00.001-04:00

Lorraine

Open adoption or keeping the baby? We know that while overall very few teens--around one percent*--give up their babies for adoption anywhere anymore, the United States is far ahead of other developed nations in this regard. This is not a statistic to be cheering about--even if the impact of giving up a child in a fully open adoption does not lead to the depth of sorrow that we mothers from closed adoptions have dealt with. This is the perceived wisdom of those who compare the effect of closed adoptions versus open adoptions on the mothers who relinquish their children.

In the recent Donaldson report, Openness in Adoption, the authors state that the degree of openness generally does not affect their level of behavioral or socio-emotional adjustment [to being adopted]. The Minnesota-Texas Adoption Research Project study found, however, that higher degrees of collaboration in the adoptive kinship network [emphasis added] were associated with better
adjustment during middle years, and that adolescents in open adoptions reported a somewhat lower level of acting out than did those in confidential adoptions. All that is a good sign, but hardly enough to push adoption on teens and women who are able to care for their babies, given the right encouragement and support.

A HIGHER RATE OF SUICIDE AMONG ADOPTEES
We have seen in earlier studies that adopted children and teens generally have higher levels of psychological and emotional problems, though adoption "experts" such as Elizabeth Bartholet have tired to discount them entirely as dismiss them as "garbage." However, studies have found a higher rate, for instance, of suicide, or thoughts of suicide among adoptees. From the Journal of Mental Health Counseling, one can find this in a 2007 article:

Because of their struggles with a variety of emotional issues and biological and genetic concerns, adoptees may face intimacy with trepidation. They may avoid closeness and commitment with others or may, consciously or unconsciously, sabotage or restrain emotion in relationships (Common Clinical Issues Among Adoptees, 1995; Silverstein & Kaplan, 1982). Many never feel close to anyone. Struggles with intimacy may result in depression, alcohol abuse or drug abuse, marital troubles, or problems with family and children (Issues Facing Adult Adoptees, n.d.).

I couldn't help but note that 2007 was the year my daughter committed suicide. An adopted young woman I know has suggested she struggles with closeness and commitment issues.

HAPPY DAPPY BIRTHMOM BLOGS
Yet on the happy birth mother blogs, which often celebrate "openness," you find no references to these unpleasant realities. The birth mom buds, or whatever cheery name they call themselves, think we are drones from another era, swopping in to burst their blissful state of mind. They often shill for adoption agencies, as reality stars Catelynn and Tyler are doing for Bethany Christian Services. Catelynn and Tyler's website now features not only their picture, but links to hiring them to speak for the glories of giving away your children.

The website also features an old photo of the adoptive parents, Teresa and Brandon Davis. Davis? More digging reveals that not only is that name a fake one, but on Catelynn and Tyler's Facebook information page, you learn that Catelynn does not even know the couples real name or where they live! other than North Carolina, if that is true. This is a "semi-open" adoption, and the couple had no idea what that meant, apparently at the time they relinquished. According to the page, Catelynn visited her daughter, Carly with her social worker, Dawn (a real name or a pseudonym?) on Feb. 15 this year. The adoptive parents did not allow more recent pictures of them. Whenever the picture below was taken, baby Carly sure doesn't look happy here.

While comments on blogs and in magazine articles praise Catelynn and Tyler for being "wise beyond their years," and that they "made the loving decision," we do not applaud them here. We do not wish them harm, but we think their turning themselves into shills for adoption--at the same time they profess grief for having giving up their daughter--is crass.

Here's an example of the laudatory press they get:

When Teen Mom stars Catelynn Lowell and Tyler Baltierra placed their daughter Carly for adoption in May of 2009 it was one of the most heart-breaking moments in television history. For the two youngsters it was a terribly painful moment that nearly tore them both apart – and a moment neither have regretted, thanks in large part to Bethany Christian Services, the adoption agency that not only found a wonderful home for their daughter, but also helped the both of them through the struggles of dealing with the inevitable emotional trauma of giving a child up for adoption. (Emphasis added.)

Now Catelynn and Tyler are helping to repay the debt they feel towards Bethany Christian Services by appearing in one of their commercials! Catelynn talks about how fearful she was in the initial stages of the adoption process and how Bethany Christian Services works with the birth mothers closely to help guide them through the decision making process and then the adoption, if that’s what the mother decides.

IN ADOPTION--PROVIDER OF BABY BEWARE
A little caveat at the end--if that’s what the mother decides--but it is hard to imagine that with this kind of advertising, Bethany is doing much to encourage young women to keep their babies. Working closely with the birth mothers seemingly does not include a frank discussion of what a "semi-open" adoption is to two young green teens--how it actually means "semi-closed," with the adoptive parents' real names and location not revealed. We'd call that scamming the birth mother to get the baby. Although the adoptive parents are photographed, theoretically they could still disappear at any time, and Catelynn and Tyler would not be able to find their daughter. When does the contact end? When social-worker Dawn no longer makes the trip with them? And what happens to young mothers without a TV show picking up the travel expenses to visit a distant state? Catelynn and Tyler are in Michigan; supposedly the adoptive parents are in North Carolina. These are the loopholes in a "semi-open" adoption that are big enough to drive an elephant through. Pregnant women need to beware of agency promises and agreeable prospective adopters before the surrender is signed. One can--and should--always opt for a fully open adoption with everyone's complete contact information known, and then choose parents who live nearby so that visiting is not costly and out of reach. As readers here know, it is possible, and there are adoptive parents who not only keep their promises, but go beyond and keep both families close.

Despite how Catelynn and Tyler were apparently snookered, they have been turned into poster birth parents to convince others to likewise give up their babies. We understand that the home lives of Catelynn and Tyler were not ideal, but as I recall, Catelynn's mother was against the adoption. However, circumstances change and one's baby is gone. What the positive press on them neglects to mention that adoption still hurts the child relinquished, even for such a wonderful and "open" adoption as Bethany was able to provide.--lorraine
------------------------
*According a recent report of the Children’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services, data on voluntary domestic infant adoptions is not collected systematically. A 2003 study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention put the number at close to 14,000, about one percent of children born to never married women. The percentage for single white women surrendering was 1.7 percent; for black women it is near zero. We have no reason to suspect this number has changed. We suspect that it does vary widely in different areas of the country.

From FMF: Catelynn & Tyler's open adoption will stay open; for other first mothers, not so much
Inconsolable grief
No Matter How Adoption is Done, Grief Remains for Mothers

Sources: Suicide, psychiatric illness, and social maladjustment in intercountry adoptees in Sweden: a cohort study. Finding: Adoptees in Sweden have a high risk for severe mental health problems and social maladjustment in adolescence and young adulthood. We advise professionals to give appropriate consideration to the high risk of suicide in patients who are intercountry adoptees. (Only intercountry adoptees were studied.)
Use of mental health services by adults who were adopted as infants
OPENNESS IN ADOPTION:FROM SECRECY AND STIGMA TO KNOWLEDGE AND CONNECTIONS

VIDEOS Catelynn Lowell and Tyler Baltierra star in commercials for Bethany Christian Services...

No Matter How Adoption is Done, Grief Remains for Mothers

2012-03-26T22:17:00.000-04:00

“Putting an end to secrecy in adoption does not erase the grief or loss embedded in the adoption experience” according to the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute March, 2012 report, Openness in Adoption: From Secrecy and Stigma to Knowledge and Connections. With that caveat, the institute strongly endorses openness in adoption because "ending secrecy empower(s) participants by providing them with information and access so they can face and deal with facts instead of fantasies.”

IF adoption is necessary, we at First Mother Forum concur that openness is not only better but essential in voluntary infant adoptions.

WHAT MAKES A SUCCESSFUL OPEN ADOPTION

The number of completely closed infant adoptions (once considered necessary to create “forever” families) has shrunk to a tiny minority. Degrees of openness, however, are on a continuum from semi-open adoptions (mediated adoptions) where communications are through the adoption agency to completely open (fully disclosed) adoptions where the parties and their extended families interact at will. Adoptions that start as closed may become open while adoptions that begin with high expectations of continuing contact become closed.

The Institute listed these factors as important to achieving successful open adoption relationships:

“Shared understanding by birth parents and adoptive parents about what open adoption is and is not
"Empathy, respect, honesty, trust and a commitment to maintaining the connection
"Ability of all parties to exercise self-determination in choosing and shaping open relationships
"Development by all parties of ‘collaborative’ communication in planning for contact and in conveying needs”

Easier said than done, however.

OPENNESS PRIMARILY BENEFITS ADOPTEES AND ADOPTIVE PARENTS

Jane

“The primary benefit of openness is access by adopted persons--as children and continuing later in life--to birth relatives, as well as their own medical, genealogical and family histories," according to the report. Adoptive parents say there are benefits in their relationships with their adopted children, and reduced fear of, and greater empathy towards birth parents.

But when we survey agency websites, we see that open adoption is a marketing took to induce mothers into giving up their babies. Open adoption is touted as a benefit primarily to the mother as a kind of shared parenting, and that it will eliminate or at least reduce their pain. During counseling sessions before the child is born, agencies may convey a subtle message that if would be best for their child if they would forgo the privilege of contact, just “butt out.” Some mothers do just that, finding contact painful and unaware of the loss to their child because they have not been counseled about the long-term effects of adoption on the children themselves.

HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER CALLS THE TUNE

Mothers considering adoption are labeled “birth mothers” from the get go, implanting the belief that they are carrying the child for someone else and have little say in what happens after the relinquishment papers are signed. At the agency sites, we have found no use of the term "first mother" anywhere.

Mothers are unaware that they can negotiate the terms of open adoptions. Agencies or attorneys give them a canned form with an implicit “take it or leave it" message. Bethany Christian Services, for example, offered Catelynn and Tyler of 16 and Pregnant fame a semi-open adoption, never telling them they could have direct contact with the adoptive parents of their daughter, Carly. The producers of the show have arranged reunions between Catelynn and Tyler and their daughter; the tearful hugs make for great TV. Catelynn and Tyler have gone on to become spokespersons for Bethany, perhaps part of their continuing effort to convince themselves they did the right thing. Of course money may play a part.

Adoption agency staff represent both mothers and prospective adoptors in developing the agreement, and are likely to be more supportive of the prospective adopters who are paying the bill. In independent or attorney-arranged adoptions, the same attorney may represent both parties. If the mother has her own attorney, the attorney is paid by the prospective adopters, calling into question who he or she may actually feel loyalty towards.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Mothers may not question the document put before them because they believe that those “nice people” will certainly agree to more contact after the baby comes. The agreement Gina Crotts entered into, prepared by the infamous Demon in Adoption, LDS Family Services, provided for photos and letters for the first three years, then an annual update until her daughter turned five. At that time, Crotts asked for the communications to continue. The adopters agreed to send an annual letter, but added they no longer wanted Crotts to write to her daughter. The same peculiar thinking that afflicted Tyler and Catelyn seems to have infected Crotts as well: She founded a non-profit company that sends gift baskets loaded with “comfort” items to new birth mothers, such as body lotions and fancy soaps, with a note praising them for their "courageous" decision. We fail to see how a nice-smelling bottle of anything provides much comfort for losing a child, and find the whole idea rather revolting. Crotts' website says: bmb (birth mother baskets) provides a loving voice saying, "you are not alone, you are loved, you are brave and yes someone has felt this unbearable pain before." At least she acknowledges the pain of giving up one's child is unbearable.

ETCH-A-SKETCH AGREEMENTS

Etch-A-Sketch

First mothers may be unaware that open adoption agreements are not enforceable under the laws of their state and, that in all states, the failure of adopters to comply with the agreement does not nullify the adoption. Even if agreements are enforceable, mothers have to go through mediation with the agency before going to court. Agency social workers may “out talk” her, tipping the proceedings in favor of the adoptive parents who may be a future source of business, and who were a source of previous income to the agency. Court action is often an illusion because most first mothers lack the funds to hire an attorney. And of course, the adoptive parents may simply move and leave no forwarding address.

Mothers may even learn that the open adoption agreement never existed. Carla Moquin and her husband selected a couple to be parents for their soon-to-be born daughter that they thought they could not raise. They sat down with the agency representative and the prospective adopters, worked out an agreement, and signed the document. When the adoptive parents refused to honor the agreement, Moquin learned the agency had never filed it with the court, making it unenforceable.

Mothers “who have the highest grief levels are those who placed their children with the understanding that they would have ongoing information, but the arrangement was cut off” according to an earlier Institute report.*

AD TERROREM CLAUSES

Open adoption agreements may contain an “ad terrorem” clause providing that if the mother challenges the adoption, she will have no further contact with her child. This happened in Janette Barcenas' case; the adopters in effect punishing her son by denying him contact with his mother because Janette had the audacity to claim that her consent was coerced.

OPEN ADOPTION DEPENDS ON THE GOOD FAITH OF THE ADOPTIVE AND BIRTH FAMILIES

What it really all comes down to is the good faith of the adoptive and birth families. With that, written agreements may not even be necessary. In 1992 Linda Schellentrager and her husband, Marty, adopted their son, Eric. Before the adoption, the parties connected through an 800 number supplied by the agency. During the phone call, the parties agreed to meet. After the adoption, Eric's mother and the Schellentrager's met at a hotel, and the parties developed a relationship which grew to include Eric's father and paternal grandparents. Linda reports that Eric is going fine. He just completed basic training in the Marine Corps.

Good faith like this can’t be legislated, but states can put laws in place that make it more likely to happen. Open adoption agreements must be legally enforceable, and all parties should be required to have adequate counseling about the merits of openness for the child, as well as the adults involved. Open adoption should not be used simply as a marketing tool to help convince mothers-to-be to give up their children, when they might instead find a way to keep them. The Institute could help by developing model legislation that states could adopt.

Additionally publicizing the benefits of openness will build public support, and more importantly, make both first mothers and the adoptive parents aware that openness is not just a way to transfer a child, but the way to raise a healthy adopted individual. We applaud both the Institute and the American Adoption Congress which has begun an "Adoption: No Secrets. No Fear" campaign for spreading this message.

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*Safeguarding the Rights and Well-Being of Birthparents (November 2006)

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E. B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints recipient of Demons in Adoption Award
A gift of comfort, from one birth mother to another
'I want my daughter back'

From FMF:
Catelynn & Tyler's open adoption will stay open; for other first mothers, not so much
Doubly Damned by Adoption Turns Victim into a Fighter

How to make An Open Adoption work

Update on state bills and meet my new constant companion

2012-03-23T09:26:00.000-04:00


Lorraine yesterday in her sling, named Herman the Terminator

To update on all the noxious state bills regarding contraception and abortion that I wrote about in the last post: Some--if not most--of them have been tabled as women like us have pushed backed---in the state legislatures, on television, on Facebook, and on blogs. Many of the governors and legislators do have Facebook pages that were pretty lame until this got started; women have burned up some of the pages and the legislators have either taken theirs down or not let others comment.

Meanwhile, in New York, we may actually be making progress on our clean bill this year. By clean I mean that it would give all adult adoptees their original birth certificates upon request. No birth parent veto. When I get back from my "therapy evaluation" this morning, I'll be pecking out a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, explaining why pushing our bill (and without him, we can't get traction) is good politics across the nation. Cuomo wants to be president, make no mistake--and I want to let him know that backing our bill would be noticed by the adoptee constituency throughout America. If you have a connection to adoption in New York, please write to Cuomo, your local legislators, or Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. We need letters from first mothers, adoptees, adoptive parents. This is an equal opportunity effort. For more on the bill, see Unsealed Initiative, led by the tireless Joyce Bahr, a first mother. The letter you write might make the difference.

Well, above is how I look these days. Not photoshopped, no skill with blow dryer, no makeup. Au naturel. (And have you seen the ridiculous phot-shopped pix of Demi Moore for Helena Rubinstein? She's pushing 50, right? but looks 20. ) As for news of the limb in question, it will be months before it's up and running, good as can be. But I can nearly dress myself--but closing the bra strap is quite a while away. Apparently recovery will be months long, and how quickly I gain use of my limb again depends on how faithfully I do the exercises. So far, so good. Can't even drive, obviously, like this!

Jane is working on a new post reacting to the Donaldson report on open adoption and will be here soon.

So it goes.--lorraine

[Birth Mother,] First Mother Forum

Crittenton today: Serving marginalized teens

Normal in one family may be seen as abnormal in another

See also: The Trauma of Being Adopted

Adoption Trauma: Real or Not?

Adoption and Mental Illness: The facts ain't pretty

The bittersweet reality of being adopted

American Dilemma: What happened to one's right to know one's birth parents?

Kidnapped in Guatemala, 'adopted' in America

Utah's anti-father policies an offshoot of Mormon agenda

Utah adoption attorney exposes corruption in Utah adoption agencies

Does Mother's Day make birth mothers blue? YES.

Casi Picow, 53, saddles up as her daughter, Shaylee, holds her horse.

Why I'm not celebrating "Birth Mother's Day"

Mother's Day: The Holiday from Hell, Part 2

What’s Wrong with Birthmother Events on Mother’s Day? Just about EVERYTHING

When your adopted child wants to visit her birth mother....

Deconstructing the responses to Adopted or Abducted with kudos to the Crittenton Foundation

In the Sixties: Was I 'forced' to give up my baby?

Talking about ancestry to an adoptee, Part 2

What does "ancestry" mean to an adoptee?

Adoption in the Netherlands is "undutch" while America's love affair with it continues

How adoption agencies 'turn' vulnerable women into spokespeople for relinquishing

Shining the light on 'forced' adoption at home and elsewhere

Would-be Egg 'Donor' imagines a child growing up with genetic strangers

How a birth mother's No to adoption turned into a Yes

Former Bethany "recruiter" speaks up

Joyce Maynard's adoption "disruption"

After the birth mother/adoptee reunion: Dealing with rejection all over again

Remembering my daughter on her birthday

What can you write about adoption? And what is off limits?

What are the happy birth moms celebrating?

No Matter How Adoption is Done, Grief Remains for Mothers

Update on state bills and meet my new constant companion