I can’t figure out the race stuff here
Go watch this incredibly offensive video created by the (who else) National Council for Adoption as part of their ichoseadoption.org campaign. (Tagline: Sometimes being a good mother means choosing adoption.)
The NCA is pushing this media onslaught now because of Juno and Bella:
“We see (the movies) as an opportunity to promote adoption awareness,” says the group’s president, Thomas Atwood. He says the award-winning films, both of them about women who consider adoption for their babies, have given the issue visibility.
The ads are part of a larger government and private effort to reverse the decrease in the number of single women who place infants for adoption.
…
Atwood says his group’s ads “are not trying to persuade anyone or twist anyone’s arms. We’re trying to get them to consider adoption. Infant adoption is ripe for growth, for revival.”
(hat tip to Marley!)
I love that — “Infant adoption is ripe for growth, for revival.” Yeah, let’s make that our message for this campaign: BRING BACK THE SHAME!
We need to note here that according to the USA Today article from which I’m quoting the abortion rate has declined along with the adoption rate. (So says a consultant to the NCA so this isn’t some wild liberal claim.) In other words, the issue isn’t a pro-life one; it’s about separating women from their babies to keep the adoption industry alive.
Back to the film clip. Most of it is typical propaganda: Single motherhood is a dark, cloistered place, hidden in shadows. Adoption is a bright, wonderful celebration full of color and birthday cakes! But the race stuff confuses me. Mom looks African American/biracial. Adoptive mom could be Asian or Latina. Adoptive dad could be Hispanic, too. But it looks like adoption turned the kid white. Since no one said the people at NCA are stupid (too wily to be stupid) I’m thinking the casting is no accident. So maybe what they’re trying to do is target those darn African American communities who insist on supporting single motherhood while not scaring away potential adopters who only want white babies.
What say you, oh fond peanut gallery?
I guess the ONLY thing I would say in favor of this video is that at least the birthmother looked sad at the end and not all happy-guitar-playing like Juno. The “life in the shadows” vs happy-bright-birthday cake scenes were so …. ugh.
But that race thing is weird. Yeah, the kid turned white!!
Hey Susan — thanks be to the power of the credit card, I think I am going to make it the first two days of the conference. Do you think they’d let us do some kind of blogger meet up or something? Officially or unofficially? Because that would be nifty-cool.
The little girl looks multiracial to me, definitely light-skinned but not white. Sort of TRA Lite — and I agree with Dawn that it’s no accident.
And I initially read the ending shot to show that the mother had other children, the two boys playing soccer. But now that I look again, I think she was just reading a book and watching them. I wonder if that was meant to be ambiguous as well.
Shame? Don’t you know there is no more shame that causes women to become birth parents? At least that is what a commenter on my blog says today. She is an adoption lawyer and she has never seen anyone feeling any shame. They are just women! Who want to go on with their lives without the inconvenience of crying babies! No one is shamed anymore! You are just imagining that.
AmFam, it is awesome that the brilliance of your commenter has shined her bright light into the dark corners of our ignorance! It’s just the way adoption turns dark rooms into happy birthday celebrations! Adoption is teh awesome!
oh, that wistful look while she pretends to read her book at the park…
this PSA made me nauseous. especially the tagline.
I saw the little girl as being biracial, either done deliberately by casting or by inference.
Wow. That PSA makes me want to take a hot shower. IMO, very sleazy.
Saying bravo to you from my dark cloistered place in the shadows.
TRA lite! Yes, exactly! (Heh — TRA Lite — I’m so stealing that!)
The shameing of a mother is not always overt. It is not like the Amish and their shunning or putting people in Bann (Although in some cases it is exactly like that). It is the looks, the comments, the sideways glances, the lack of help, the fact that no one is excited you are pregnant, no one welcomes your child, you have created a problem for all concerned, you violated your churches teachings, you inconvenienced your mother who just raised her own children and has no desire to raise yours, and you must be punished.
It is seen in faces, in body language, and hushed tones. It is seen in friends who suddenly dont call (or boys who suddenly do).
A young girl who experiences an unexpected pregnancy KNOWS she did something wrong, something unplanned happened. As long as society continues to view a single female (of any age or educational background) as lesser than a married female, shame will be there. It violates the rules and tears at the fabric of society. It is not supposed to be that way.
As long as our daughters continue to get the message that the only “proper” way to have a child is to be married, doing anything but that can induce shame. I know 30 something lawyers, single women, whohad children and were asked by their lawyer peers “What is wrong with you? Didnt you use birth control? Are you going to give IT up for adoptin?” This to a woman who PLANNED her pregnancy.
Shame exists. Dont doubt it for a second.
Walk a mile in my shoes or in the shoes of any teenage pregnant girl today and I am quite confident there will be a bit of it. It is there. Dont let the experts fool you. They likely are profitting off of the sale of children and may be related to Tom Atwood.
This seems so relevant for me today after reading (and responding) to someone on AmFam’s blog claiming there is no shaming of teenage mothers anymore. I mean…maybe she doesn’t have cable. Cuz, man, it’s RIGHT THERE.
Suz, I used to manage the ePregnancy message boards and young, single women were ALWAYS being encouraged to think about adoption if they were at all worried about parenting. (I’d send ‘em to http://www.girl-mom.com and tell them to hang in there.)
Ahhh, I think the images are meant to reassure prospective adoptive parents — “Fear not! Some biracial kids don’t even LOOK black!”
Holy Mackeral…..
What’s shame? You don’t mean like when I was a waitress and a regular said, “Well you better not be pregnant, what are you? Just getting fat?” Why “better I” not be??? Because I was ONLY 24 or because I ONLY had a Masters degree? Hmmm….
Suz is right, for me it was all in the looks, the side comments, the shaking head.
And
Infant adoption is ripe for growth? For revival?
What is this? Carol Channing is deciding to do one last tour of Hello Dolly? I just don’t get it….
the video is gross and weird- and i agree with the comments about race- but the revival bit gets me even more. in what way would it be a good thing to revive or grow such a difficult and painful thing?
I wasn’t a teenage mom (purely by chance not because I was careful!LOL) but I used to take my little cousin out a lot and everyone assumed she was mine and the dissaproving looks and comments I got were horrible…can’t even imagine what they would have been had I been pregnant….yeah..no shame..sure…I’ll buy that “ocean front property in Arizona!”LOL
Anyway…I followed the link and then made the mistake of watching a TLC Adoption story and it all feels so insurmountable…but hey…maybe one voice at a time right?
In the Adoption story the adoptive family was very involved and resolved the main reason preventing the birth mom from parenting(homelessness) but I think that much involvement mader her (birthmom) feel guilty…it was palpable…like she had “promised” and how could she back out now…ugh…so sad…can’t do it justice…just didn’t feel right. And the whole time the narrator had this ickly, oily way of doing the story that focused more on the couple and the fear of the mom backing out. Double Ugh…
By the way Dawn….I still can’t get the image of that strapped 3 year old turning and smiling….I think I’m still hysterical!LOL
the race thing is just weird. i’d assume it was well thought out. trying to allay all fears, i assume. and put a happy face on adoption.
i also think the kids at the end are meant to show - ‘look, i can see other kids in the park and not be too sad!’
do they want to ‘revive’ adoption as opposed to abortion? is this a ‘pro-life’ thing? or revive to ‘help’ all the infertiles? why exactly?
Yeah, whoever said it above is right: First think audience, then think message.
The NCA’s paying customers want to see, Hey, the baby might look white! So that’s the message. Whatever the pregnant woman feels is not their concern.
I used to take my little cousin out a lot and everyone assumed she was mine and the dissaproving looks and comments I got were horrible.
I was a mere pup when we adopted. The stigma and attempts to convey shame on me–which never works, I get it a few weeks later that I was supposed to be embarrassed ’cause I’m
a little Aspie-spectrumfar too independent-minded to care what anyone thinks of me–were astonishing.It was all about the miscegenation, folks. Young mom, racially ambiguous child, oh my goodness that girl must have gotten herself pregnant by a…by one of THOSE people!
What was silly was that my cousin got the same thing when she chose to raise her child. She was 23! and a college graduate! But somehow the deficit of an Official Penis-Bearing American in her home made her unfit to parent. And also, she’s lucky he came out so light.
Grr.
This whole thing reminds me of something I read from, of all people, an Australian social worker. She said something along the lines of, “The adoption industry has become more about helping needy adults than helping needy kids.”
Once again, that phrase rings true.
Food for thought, definitely.
I found the PSA totally off the wall. So far, I’ve only watched it once, but the race thing struck me, too, I just hadn’t articulated it. You did a splendid job, Dawn!
I like to call NCFA Trotskyte. That would have driven that old leftie Bill Pierce nuts. (and Bill was indeed an old leftie). Adoption to NCFA and to the Donaldson as well, is about globalism. Adam writes something in Adoption Natoin about how we can have world piece through adoption. How can we hate the parents of our children. Hmm…easy.
Anyway, they see adoption as part of a US globalist scheme to bring US culture to the rest of the poor stupid world while saving ibabies at the same time. Sort of perpetual adoption for perpetual something or other. There’s a direct line between the Iraq War and international adoption, which I don’t have time to get in to now.
On the domestic front, it’s no longer about their phony war against abortion They are horrified that women are keeping their babies. NCFA, under Tom Atwood, who isn’t as dumb as he sometimes acts, has developed a full marketing plan. The PSA is only part of it. Their whole Birth Mother Good Mother project is marketing adoption as a feel good alternative to a life of poverty and “other bad choices.” Tom was very eager last year for me to give the project a thumbs up! He asked me to critique their GMBM book which I didn’t yet. Does her really want me to.? To accompany all this they have an intneractive propaganda program. I have a copy of it, but they still don’t have the funds to release it to the public. I expect they’ll release it next November for National Adoption Month. Last year they were still raising funds for its completion.
I notice the new website and the propaganda video features ex-NCFA droid Courtney Lewis. She testified against records access in Maine in 2006 without mentioning that she worked for NCFA. She claimed to “speak for birthmothers.” Well, Courtney had “no issues with her adoption, yet broke down in tears in the middle fo the testimony. A total meltdown. It was really quite horrible. She told me later that she didn’t agree with everything NCFA preached. I found her on MySpace a few months ago. She left WDC and NCFA and is now a massage therapist.
You can order the GMBM booklet from NCFA. I believe you can also download it from the Family Research Council’s webpage for free. The book was co-sponsored by them, so that gives you an idea of what’s behind this.
I’ve gotta go, but there’s more to say about this book. It’s very dangerous.
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Hmmm, on the race topic…in 1986 Kurtz ran a home for expectant mothers in GA. A friend of mine was there. One of the other girls was visited by a black man regularly. She was white. She insisted he was not the father and that the child she was carrying would be white. When she delivered, the baby was indeed biracial. The agency abandoned her and her child in the hospital, and demanded payment for all the monies that had spent on her during her stay in their home. Hospital bills were hers to pay as they were not interested in her biracial child. There was no market for such “product”.
Go ahead, throw up. I did when I heard the story. I wonde what happened to that mom and her child? Did another agency help her out?