Comments again
Jen said:
While I appreciate how you address the birth parent’s position here, at the same time, the baby is the one with the most at stake. Sure, we can be romantic and say having no money doesn’t mean the child will suffer. Just having a parent who loves him/her is all that’s needed. Yeah, right. If we’re realistic about it, the mother having no money puts the child at an instant disadvantage. If the mother can’t afford to pay the doctor/hospital bills, and if she already has two at home that she is caring for, who need food, clothes, housing, child care, etc., how is she going to be able to pull all of that off? She won’t. Who suffers? The kids.
I say kudos to the lawyer who played hardball when it was needed. We can reduce the issue to a matter of power all we want, but in the end, the child is the one with the least amount of power and the one who needs someone with some power to step up to bat. The lawyer did just that.
First of all, poverty does not necessarily predict a horrible life just as having money doesn’t guarantee a good one.
Secondly, when women are forced to place babies they want to parent, something is deeply wrong with our system. If we all agree that children deserve to have their basic needs meet — food, loving care, and shelter — then we should all focus on how we can do that without forcing their parents to place them for adoption. The adoptive couple in that scenario is not more deserving just because they have more money. That’s not a romantic notion, that’s quite simply true. Being poor is not a death sentence although it would be nice if our country would do the goddamn right thing and make sure that every child had access to safe housing, nutritious food, and adequate healthcare.
Finally, if the woman with the three children hadn’t agreed to an adoption plan, would you still think someone should be able to enter her hospital room and bully her into placing? By responsibly exploring her options — because an adoption plan is just that, a woman’s right to consider an option, not a contract to give her child to other people — this woman’s baby was taken from her. In a legitimate adoption scenario with an ethical agency or lawyer, the woman would not have been coerced into having a c-section and she would also have been given information about programs that would have supported her in her parenting decision.
I just don’t believe that anyone reading this blog, including Jen the author of the above comments, would argue that a policy forcing parents living below a certain income level to give up their children is a good idea. The presence of an adoption plan shouldn’t force any woman’s decision.
Dawn, I keep coming back here because of your love & beauty for children. This post and the one that Jen was commenting on proves that you have only love for your future child. I do wish that every adoptive parent thought the same way you did.
Have you seen “Casa de los Babies” yet? It’s a bittersweet, pretty sad actually movie about adoption. The parents who used the icky lawyer reminds me of the Marsha Gay Harden character. *eck*
What you write about mothering, about children, is beautiful and gives me hope. I don’t have children, except that we all have children, as citizens of the world. I think you’re right on the truth here.
Thanks for the response. I appreciate your thoughtful comments, the raising of ideas that sometimes get pushed aside when the issue is complex, as this one certainly is.
First, I agree that poverty doesn’t mean ending up with a horrible life, just as having money doesn’t mean having a great life. We’ve all known people in both categories who run counter to those ideas. However, when it comes to single moms raising kids, the studies and stats show that life is difficult, mostly due to living in poverty. If these difficulties can be lessened for all through offering the child for adoption, that’s a good thing.
Second, I’m not in any way advocating that parents who live below a certain income level be forced to give up their children. I didn’t say this anywhere in my comment. I was only referring to the woman whom you profiled. The woman had agreed to let the couple adopt her child. There was an agreement, so to say that it all boils down to her not having any money is erroneous. She had obviously considered her situation and upon that consideration came to the conclusion that the child would fare better with adoptive parents.
I’m sorry that this woman was placed into the position she was. No woman should have to wake up to the order of the day being trying to figure out how to make it through the day with her children. But it happens, and sometimes, for the best interest of all, adoption is the best decision.
Amen to that, Dawn. Thinking of that other story you posted about the birthmom who wanted to keep the baby but couldn’t afford the medical bills and so was basically coerced into going through with the adoption…well that just makes me really nauseous. I think she should have had the choice to parent, and had the parents not essentially tied her hands by insisting on a C-section for their convenience, she probably would have been able to.
Sure, the mother (and maybe the father) made an agreement to place her not yet born child for adoption. However, what is important to understand is that because of the nature of adoption, this agreement is not a “one time” decision. According to adoption experts, the woman *has to* make the decision all over again once she gives birth. It’s one thing to decide to place before birth, another after birth. Regardless of one’s circumstances. Regardless of what the mother has “promised” or agreed to with a lawyer or prospective adoptive parents. Not only that, it is her right. My son’s birth mother had 4 opportunities to change her mind after he was born. I am glad she did.
The best decision in this case is one that is considered over and over again - not because the mother is going to be happy about it, but because she knows it is the right choice for her and her child. This is why counseling is so important.
Coercion in any form in this situation is abhorrent. If coercion is the reason a mother “decides” to place, then how is adoption different from baby selling?
Dawn, I love your writing.
I don’t know so much about this, and I have a question: Need adoption be from birth? A birthmom should be able to change her mind about giving up her child for adoption, face the realities of life with a baby, and then determine whether giving up the baby is in the best interests of those whose interests matter to her.
If she will be seriously depressed because of coercion (which I can easily imagine), I can’t see how that would be good for her, or her older kids. The baby is not the only little human being in this particular equation.
couldn’t have said it better. In our first adoption, the mother changed her mind 3 weeks -after- the baby was born, and though it was emotionally draining and painful, we understood perfectly well that before and after birth are two very different things and she should have the right to make that choice again after birth.
this isn’t some rational, cut and dried contractual agreement like buying a car, this is a woman and a child. She should every right to reconsider and the lawyer (don’t get me started on adoption lawyers) should have respected that. period.
WOW! That was a seriously materialistic comment if I ever saw one.
-d
But Jen, the point isn’t whether the baby would have been better off adopted or not (although NONE of us can know as we don’t know either of the parties involved), it was about whether a woman should be strong-armed into giving up her baby. Sure, sometimes adoption is the best option. Sometimes it’s not. How do we know that in *this* case, an aggressive lawyer deserved “kudos” for intimidating the birth mom? Money isn’t the ONLY factor. I’d go so far as to say it’s not even a very big one. Statistics, shmastistics. (good thing I was never on the debate team)
Y’know, it seems to me that you have to have money to get decent housing, to get an education, for clothes to get a decent job– poor is becoming a moral judgement in our society . . as in, if you are poor, it must be because you are immoral. And that sentiment bothers me. And the idea that you have to have $$$$$ to get infertility treatment, to adopt, and now apparently to *keep* the child you have concieved. WTF?
Yes, raising children while poor is harder. That does not mean that the ability to raise them while rich makes one more worthy of raising the child. It just means you have money.
It’s nothing new that being poor has been looked upon disfavorably; it always has been, right on back to the beginning. Those who have must have done something “right” while those who don’t have must have done something “wrong.” This kind of thinking may be distasteful, but that’s the way it is. It’s misleading to make it out like being poor equals being immoral is a new idea. And, to make it out like it’s a new concept that you have to have money to have decent anything is nothing new, either. That’s life and that’s how it’s always been.
With this woman, who was left holding the bag by a man who folded under pressure, life is going to be difficult. Sure, there are lots of programs out there where she can get help, but even then, and even with a college degree, solid work experience, and a network system amongst family and friends, she’s going to find the going rough. These issues adversely affect the children. We can discount the stats all we want, and in doing so we’re putting the children at risk. That’s a shame.
Jen, you say that you are not arguing that people
who are poor don’t have a right to have children. And that’s true–in fact, Dawn specifically said in her post that she didn’t think that’s what you meant to imply. But I think what I find troubling about what you’ve said is that it wouldn’t be such a huge leap from your point of view to that very idea.
You keep bringing up the negative impact that the birth mother’s poverty would have had on the child who was wrangled away from her. You place such a focus on it in your comments that you seem to think it’s the central issue. But in a strange way, for this particular moral question, that’s irrelevant (and anyway, as Meagan rightly points out, there’s no real way for us to know which outcome is better for the child anyway). What if the birth mother wasn’t just poor? Let’s say she was a drug addict and a criminal who couldn’t hold down a job to save her life. And what if the adoptive parents were some unheard-of combination of billionaires and saints? If the birth mother wanted to parent and the adoption lawyer strong-armed her into it, it would still be wrong. Because no one has the right to take someone’s baby away unless they consent. And as people have established firmly in this thread, consent doesn’t mean anything if it only happens before birth.
If you don’t place this high importance on consent, you’ll find yourself on a slippery slope. It’s OK to force a woman to adopt who has already indicated a willingness but who later changes her mind. Is it OK to force a woman to adopt who expressed an interest in doing so in her first trimester, but changed her mind in her seventh month? If it is, is it OK to force a woman who went to an adoption agency to look into the possibility but who left without agreeing to anything? And so on…so if the central issue is how the child could be supplied with the most financial resources (vs. the consent of the birth mother or the lack thereof), if you slid far enough down the slope you could advocate taking babies away from people who don’t meet a certain income quota. Certainly you wouldn’t do that, I have no doubt of that. But where can you draw a hard line if not at the mother’s consent, including consent after birth?
Anyway, I have some pretty big doubts about whether the child in this case would be better off with the adoptive parents.
On one hand we have the birth mother. The only strike against her is that she doesn’t have much money. But we do know that she was concerned enough about her child’s future to explore adoption, a step that was probably difficult for her (since her desire to parent after birth suggests she would have liked to keep the baby under ideal circumstances).
On the other hand we have the adoptive parents. These are people who: 1) think it’s OK to expect the birth mother to schedule the birth for their convenience; 2) think it’s OK to have a lawyer strong-arm her into deciding to let them adopt after wanting to parent; 3) actually brag about said lawyer (saying he’s “fabulous”) and recommend him to others. Three extremely bad indications of their moral standards and ability to empathize with others. BUT! They are rich, obviously, or they wouldn’t be able to afford the fancy lawyer. (And they probably wouldn’t have such an inflated sense of entitlement, either.) That is in their favor. Money can’t guarantee happiness but being rich is preferable to struggling for necessities.
Well, now this kid is with the adoptive parents. People who think money entitles them to moral laziness. Let’s say the kid grows up and wants to learn about his or her birth parents (I wouldn’t expect the adoptive parents in this case to have the kind of open adoption where the birth mother is already a small but significant part of the child’s life). My understanding is that in such cases this is the most common outcome. I don’t know much about the legalities but I was also under the impression that there is very little, legally, that the adoptive parents could do to prevent the kid from learning more once they became a legal adult.
What will happen when the kid meets the birth mother and hears how he or she came to be placed with the adoptive parents? They’ll learn that the decision was coerced, that they had a loving parent who wanted them but was prevented from being a part of their life. Even if the adoptive parents were perfect otherwise, it would be quite a blow. And if they weren’t, if their selfishness extended to their parenting as well, the kid might feel terribly bitter about having been raised by them instead of the birth parent.
But that is a completely hypothetical situation. The important thing is the privilege of wealth can be abused, as it was in this case. That’s something that every adoptive parent has to be aware of and think critically about (without letting their desire for a child cloud their judgement when it comes to how they pursue that goal).
Which (as other people have already said) makes me think that you, Dawn, will be a great adoptive mom and a great person to work with for any birth mother. It’s really good that you are exploring these questions and making a real effort to be aware of these issues as you go through this process–and even better that you are sharing these thoughts with others.
“And, to make it out like it’s a new concept that you have to have money to have decent anything is nothing new, either. That’s life and that’s how it’s always been.”
This “poor” mama’s hackles are going up. Jen, I guess I just don’t see your point. Nobody’s discounting that this woman **might** have a harder life. She may or she may not. Her kids may or may not be better off with her. We just. don’t. know. How is a sweeping generalization that poor kids are USUALLY better off with a parent who has more money, fair or accurate?
I refuse to accept the idea that my kids are “at risk” because of my economic status. I think a whole lotta other factors come into play–that economic status is not causal but correlational. (is that a word)? My kids have plenty of “decent” and even more of “great”.