This is a good way to start
Feb 10, 2006 Adoption
FauxClaud wrote an entry that movingly tells the stories of three women who were abused by adoption system. She ends the entry with this:
“None of these mothers really needed to have their children taken from them
All had the ability and support to keep their children.“
I started to write in her comments but then I realized that what I wanted to say had a lot to do with things I’d been wanting to say for about a week so I came back over here to scrabble it all down.
We enlightened members of the triad can all agree that when mothers do not need to have their children taken from them and when they have “the ability and support” to raise them, that losing them to an unethical adoption system is tragic. But what about the woman who hasn’t yet proved her motherhood? Or hasn’t proved her motherhood with this particular child (in other words, a woman whose other children have been removed from her care)? Or who does not appear to have the ability and support to raise them? Are the ethics different for her?
I’m going to make generalizations here and I want to say that at the outset because I know there are exceptions. I know there are special circumstances. But let’s talk generalities because policies are based on generalities.
The reason I think we need to talk about this is that many adoption policies are predicated on the idea that adoptive parents can be better parents than natural parents, right? We know that teen moms make easy targets and poor people make easy targets. (I have to pull a quote from that last link there, Martin Guggenheim, a NYU law professor, says, “The majority of cases that come into any child protection system involve what is technically called neglect. Neglect is, in the United States, almost invariably associated with poverty.”)
Foster-to-adopt isn’t perfect; the foster care system is rife with -isms. But adoptive parents who go through the system have a pretty clear idea that in most cases (we’re making generalities remember) the natural parents have been given opportunities to retain custody of their children. When a child becomes legally free, usually it means that the parents have failed to meet certain reasonable standards to ensure the safety of their children.
However when we talk about women who are making adoption plans themselves and we’re talking about a individual woman’s ability to parent the child for whom she’s making the plan, we’re setting ourselves up to be fortune tellers. If ANY woman has the right to change her mind when making a voluntary adoption plan then ALL women have the right to change their minds when making voluntary adoption plans. Because if we can’t say that, if we say instead that some women have the ability to intelligently assess their options and other women don’t, we’re on the wrong side of ethical adoption reform.
Let’s take this out of the United States entirely. Let’s talk about China’s “one child” policy. (You can head over to read American Family’s excellent “To Eat Bitterness posts to learn more about this policy.) Let’s say there’s a woman and she already has a child and she gets pregnant again. This woman, let’s say, is a terrible mother. She’s abusive. She’s neglectful. Then let’s say this woman has her baby and it’s a girl. Because of China’s one child policy, she doesn’t even think twice about it — her daughter is abandoned, placed in an orphanage and eventually is adopted by loving, kind, thoughtful parents and she has a long, happy life.
Ok, so that’s a happy ending (for that child) but does it excuse China’s one child policy? Do the ends in this story justify the means? Do they excuse the havoc that the policy makes on other families? Does it make — in hindsight — that policy ethical?
Of course not. Likewise what’s wrong with infant adoption in America remains wrong; fraudulent policies used to “save” children from parents who truly are not capable of raising their kids do not become justifiable in light of the outcome.
Ideally domestic infant adoption is not about bringing children to wannabe parents or even giving families to children; ideally domestic infant adoption through agencies or lawyers is about giving women choices when faced with a crisis pregnancy. When we take the focus off of the woman trying to make sense of her future and instead place it on the wannabe parents or the unborn child, we lose sight of the fact that domestic infant adoption is ultimately supposed to be voluntary.
We’re not supposed to be talking about what’s best for a child here because that’s a different sort of policy discussion. If a woman is truly not capable of taking care of her child, this is an issue for the state (i.e, social services).
Let’s go down another slippery slope to illustrate this. Let’s make up another imaginary woman with an imaginary adoption decision. Let’s make her poor, young (20 with two kids already). Let’s make her at risk — she lives with an abusive partner, she is struggling to stay sober. She finds herself pregnant and she makes an adoption plan. Then she changes her mind. If she’s NOT allowed to change her mind then how is this different than forcing another woman in similar straits to place her child? A woman who has NOT considered adoption as a reasonable choice? If the “voluntary” goes out of domestic infant adoption, then how is it different than taking the baby of any woman who is in an “at risk” situation? Does making an adoption plan mean that we have a right to interfere in her life? Should we then target any woman in similar straits who finds herself pregnant? (Oh wait, we already do that — oh yeah, we’ve got a long way to go, people.)
I wanted to say, too, that Sster’s grief this week is, I hope, in some way mitigated by the knowledge that she is indeed working with an ethical agency. Because Daisy was able to change her mind about her adoption plan despite having challenges (that Sster has respectfully been vague about) shows that this is an agency that is interested in giving women options. That they are a social service agency first and foremost gives me hope that Daisy will be able to get access to programs that will help her succeed in her parenting decision. And Sster can take comfort in knowing that when Boomer comes, s/he will come with the blessing of his/her first mom. I hope s/he arrives soon!!!
February 10th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Yes but you are friends with a woman who got her baby through coercing a young poor mother. She took the pregnant woman and her young child to Disneyland, she was her only friend throughout the pregnancy and built up a relationship of dependance. She threatened to withdraw the friendship and support if it looked like she might not go ahead with her adoption plan. She paid for her to be in hotel style accomodation which basically kept her homeless. Where do you stand with a situation like that?
Now this woman who spent money and time on the pregnant mother has her baby. Friendship is over, there is no need for Disneyland or helping out and to her relief she doesn’t have to drive her to the doctor’s appointments anymore. She is going to get a certificate that pretends she gave birth to the boy rather than his mother who she now calls the birthmother.
They used a very expensive lawyer, they had a fine team with the agency and the social worker all working together to help her and her husband get their hands on this baby. They almost got their hands on his older brother but thankfully didn’t. So what do you think of this situation? I really want to know where you stand.
February 10th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
Thank you for this post.
I am so sick of hearing about how adoption should be “child-centered” when it comes to voluntary domestic infant adoption. It shouldn’t be: it should be MOTHER centered. Because if other people start trying to determine what is in the best interest of the child, when there’s no proof that the mom will be a bad parent, we do indeed embark on a slippery slope. …Who, then, gets to decide what’s in the “best interests” of a child? It’s scary.
I think this is a HUGE problem in domestic infant adoption. When agencies consider the client to be the unborn baby, it rather than the mother, it opens the door for that agency to impose their own beliefs about parenthood on the mother, which opens the door for pressure and coercion.
February 10th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
I feel like I’ve been sounding too pro-adoption lately here. I think I should mention that I’m 100% against false birth certificates (I’m trying to get my maternal grandmother to adopt me since bio mom is dead so that my birth certificate reads something resembling my true parentage -bio dad is accurate as mine was a step adoption). I also think it’s very rare that domestic adoption is necessary. I think a lot of adoption is coercive. I also really resent how entitled a lot of couples act who, I’m sorry, I’ll say it, waited until they were 35 and rich to try to breed and ended up not being able to do so. Boo hoo. This is what happens. Now of course I understand one still wants to parent but that doesn’t mean anyone more economically disadvantaged somehow “ought” to just hand over their baby.
I plan to adopt from China. Yes, their policy sucks. And do you know what I personally can do about it? Nothing. Oh wait, we can all stop adopting their children and force China to deal with it. Yes and this helps the actual girls who are alive right now how exactly?
Sometimes the birth grandparents are the coercive force. My husband’s bio mom was told she would be disowned (think like the movie The Magdalen Sisters) if she did not give her baby up for adoption. Her father did not speak to her, as in not once ever even to say “pass the butter” for THREE YEARS. She was a sixteen year old little girl who was brutally dominated. Her boyfriend once he was told begged her to run away (he was 19) and they’d get married and keep the baby. Unfortunately he was 300 miles away (they had moved when she was about 4 months along) and had no car to come get her. And Biomom was too scared.
When DH was born his mother did not tell the hospital he was being surrendered because if she did she’d never have been allowed to hold him or see him. Oh yeah, her parents DROPPED HER OFF at the ER. In labour. She stayed for three days and when they asked her if she was ready to go, she called the caseworker and told her DH had been born. She was lectured for not telling the hospital to begin with “so we could keep you from seeing him!” She “stole” his footprints and bracelet, and walked out never to see him again for 25 years.
She returned the bracelet and footprints to him then. He told her to keep them. When he met his grandfather, now reduced to a frail old man in a wheelchair, his grandfather simply sobbed and sobbed and kept saying “I’m so sorry” over and over.
Basically… bio mom had absolutely no choices here, unless society is willing to step in and stop her parents. You grow up in a “do as what we say” culture, well, she won’t weave from that. It doesn’t matter HOW pro mom an agency is if her parents are authoritarian fascists. At the end of the day, she’s a 14/15/16 yr old minor woman who needs somewhere to live.
DH is grateful he was adopted. He is furious what his mom went through but releived he had such good parents. His first mom was relieved as well. Because of this, DH insists on adopting (to give back, so to speak, as he was given to… he says it was either that or his mom would have been ostracized from her family so he sees it as best of a bad situation). Due to ethics, the only place either of us feel comfortable adopting from is China. I still wish we could get “adoption certificates.”
February 10th, 2006 at 11:07 pm
You make more excellent points and raise so many questions. N also makes a good point … one I haven’t thought of in the manner she articulated it. True enough, the “child centered” angle is too often turned against a pregnant mom, leaving people who (too often) benefit from their separation to decide what equates the child’s best interests. I think I just had an “ah ha” moment … because I think my generation of open adoption moms (late 80’s) were lead to X ourselves/our motherhood out of the entire equation. There was still a great deal of the “non-motherness” leftover from the closed system … and any contact at all was presented as “luck/benevolence.” Thus, the notion of mother-centeredness (or even mother inclusion) was a “selfish” one (for me and other moms who surrendered back then) to consider.
Wow. This really gives me something to ponder.
Thank you.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:02 pm
I hate anything to do with adoption.. period.
I was only 19 years old. I was a prostitute and vunerable. My family did not care. I became pregnant and cared for my baby for 4 months until his babysitter seduced me into the adoption. She told me more lies and I believed them. Where were the social workers and agencies? NO WHERE. Today I have gotten my life to gether and been out of the business for 19 years. She has brainwashed him so that he won’t have anything to do with me.
For 19 years I suffered in pain and post traumatic stress disorder. I still hear him cry in my sleep.
The truth needs to be heard. Adoption isn’t the answer.
http://www.sexindustrysurvivor.com