this woman’s work

Someone who worked for This American Life came by Open Adoption Support looking to hook up with someone for a story. This was our exchange (somewhat edited for length):

[W]e’re working on an episode called, “You can choose your family,” and we’d really like to interview a birthmother who is going through the process of choosing a family for her child in an open adoption. I know that there would be all sorts of issues to work out, especially regarding confidentiality. But I think it’d be worthwhile to try  because birthmothers’ voices don’t tend to get aired when we talk about adoption. And the few times you do hear about birthmothers, they’re either only discussed years after adoption (in stories about reunions) or as stock characters instead of real people. So, I wanted to post a message asking if anybody’s out there who’d be willing to talk to us.

And from me:

We don’t have any women on the site right now who are looking for families. But I also wanted to give you a heads up about some stuff.

The biggest issue isn’t confidentiality it’s that it’s really easy to sway a woman’s decision one way or another re., choosing adoption and one of the challenges for journalists is that sometimes involvement in the beginning can do this. Even use of the term “birth mother” for an expectant mother can be subtly coercive. Although folks outside the adoption community don’t know this, it’s one of those hotly discussed topics inside it.

Actually other outlets have done stories like this, most notably 20/20 did a story that was HUGELY controversial in the adoption world. I think it was called “Be My Baby” and they promoted it like the ultimate reality show. ONE birth mother! FIVE desperate families! Who will WIN THE ULTIMATE PRIZE! The agency that participated in that story was A Child is Waiting, here in Ohio. They’re known around the ethical adoption world as a pretty lousy, pretty coercive agency.

See, if a journalist is working with a woman before the adoption and helping her see herself as a birth mother before she gives birth, it can cloud her decisions. If she goes back on her decision, there’s a lot of fall-out form the people who have been helping her see herself that way. Not just the hopeful adoptive family, or the agency (an ethical agency will help her NOT see herself that way) but then, too, the journalists who are working on a story. A woman is an expectant mother up to and until she signs surrenders, period.

A lot of the time the women who are choosing adoption will be adamant that they will NOT change their minds but until that baby arrives and they hold that baby in their arms, how can they know? (Our agency used to say, “A woman can’t know if she can say good-bye until she says hello.”)

So all of this to say that I can see why this seems like a great story idea but when journalists have done this, it’s not left the adoption world happy and it hasn’t done so great by birth moms either.

I would love to see more adoption stories on This American Life and I would love to see more birth mom/birth dad stories, (which is also why I forward your pitch lists to all the writing first moms I know!) but this one, eh, I’m not so hepped up about. I think there are other ways you could do it — like interview a social worker who’s meeting with a woman to look at the family books and even listening in on a woman who’s choosing without focusing on HER story (and perhaps unintentionally influencing it). Or interviewing parents who did choose to place their children about their choices, especially because some of those choices — like placing your child because you want them to be raised with two parents and then those parents divorce — sometimes turn out to be not such great ideas. Or there are agencies that choose FOR women because the women feel unable to make a decision themselves. (Sometimes they just pick the couple who’s been waiting the longest but sometimes they go through and try to make a match that will make sense.)

Anyway, I hope you’ll consider what I’m sharing here. I can shoot you some links w/commentary about the “Be My Baby” 20/20 debacle. I can also hook you up with some very smart, very thoughtful women who did place their children and have a different perspective in hindsight. And if you want to talk via phone about any of this, we can do that, too.

Back from them:

Thanks you so much for the heads up. It’s hard for me to even imagine the minefield of issues in front of reporters writing on adoption, so the primer was much appreciated. The 20/20 story is pretty abhorrent, although I guess not super surprising. As for the ideas you suggested, here’s what I’m thinking. The social worker story is interesting, but I don’t think it works as well because we really want to get at the idea of a person whose choosing their family. While social worker facilitates that choice, they’re kind of one step removed from the person I find most interesting in the story. And the idea about coercive agencies sounds like it needs reporting, but it’ll require more time and attention than we have slotted for this segment. What we’re looking for is going to end up being the introduction of the show, which as you probably know tends to be short and more general.

The idea that grabbed me was interviewing parents who did choose to place their children about their choices. I think that gets to the idea we’re looking for. It also might be easier to find parents who chose to place their children then parents who are in the midst of doing so. If it’s OK by you, I want to make a post looking for those parents on the forum. I’d also still like to put out the call for people who are looking at profiles, just in case there’s someone out there who feels comfortable talking. But could you help me phrase that in a way that it might not be so problematic? Perhaps, maybe, some phrasing that asks for “women who are considering adoption, who’ve begun to look at profiles” rather than using the term birthmother.

And from me:

For an expectant mom, I’d hit up these folks:
http://www.openadopt.org/
Good, ethical agency in Portland OR — they’re the folks who facilitated Dan Savage’s adoption. I think they’d be totally game AND you could trust them to help you avoid any minefields. Plus they’re nice, which is always good.

Thanks for being open to my suggestions. I feel very protective of that Open Adoption Suppport community — there are very few places online (or off, actually) where 1) the benefits to openness are assumed; and 2) first and adoptive parents can both participate and relate to each other without one group getting slammed by the other. Adoption is some tricky stuff.

The results. (Third story) Thanks to Vicki C. for the heads up. (I listen via podcast and I’m way behind.) I got a thanks at the end!

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