National Adoption Day is not my holiday
And I’ll tell you why.
The whole point of National Adoption Month and National Adoption Day is to bring families to kids waiting in foster care.
National Adoption Day is a collective national effort to raise awareness of the 129,000 children in foster care waiting to find permanent, loving families. For the last eight years, National Adoption Day has made the dreams of thousands of children come true by working with courts, judges, attorneys, adoption professionals, child welfare agencies and advocates to finalize adoptions and find permanent, loving homes for children in foster care.
It’s not for folks like me who adopted an infant in a private domestic adoption; it’s for the kids who are waiting.
I feel like it’d be hypocritical to wax on about adoption on National Adoption Day (I’m looking at you, Sheryl Crow!) just because I adopted. I mean, my story is sort of anti-national adoption day, isn’t it? Because I didn’t open my home to a child in need. I wanted to be a parent again and I deliberately chose NOT to foster-to-adopt. I’m neither condemning or defending that as a choice; I’m just stating facts.
People conflate adoption stories and they confuse domestic infant adoption with foster-to-adopt, which doesn’t do my daughter or my daughter’s mom any favors (although it wins me undeserved and unwanted accolades). My daughter didn’t need a home when we adopted her. She wasn’t waiting. She wasn’t without parents. Her first mom wasn’t someone who had to have her child removed from her care although some folks will assume she would have been had she made the decision to keep Madison. Edited to add: What I mean here is that people assume Pennie would have been unfit by virtue of her decision when in fact, Pennie would have parented Madison well and I have no doubt that she will parent her future children well. She is a good mom.
I felt the need to be clear about this because I don’t think people outside the adoption world understand how very very different the three general types of adoption are to each other (domestic infant adoption, foster-to-adopt, international adoption). And see, this confusion, it doesn’t benefit Madison’s first mom.
I’m all for National Adoption Day. I think it represents an honorable effort on behalf of the many child advocates who want to find homes for waiting children. But it isn’t this adoptive mom’s holiday anymore than it was my holiday before Madison came into our lives.
Bless you.
This year it didn’t fall on BB’s birthday so I didn’t have to be sucked into thinking about it all on his special day.
Also? Aren’t you following them on twitter? natadoptionday? LIKE, TOTALLY! But not.
And then there is Identified Adoption where a baby broker attorney contacts or gets contacted by “Just found out she is pregnant” individual. This attorney [Trafficker] then barters a deal with “mom to be”, and has the perfect match of waiting adoptive parents, a baby with the right color of hair and eyes on order. Birthmom makes money, Attornney makes buku money, and the adoptive couple pay through the teeth, but are are as happy as can be!
everything you said is totally true. Adopting with the purpose to enhance your family is very different when opening your home to a disadvantaged child that has noone. Honestly alot of those children do end up in the foster care system because of parents who are unwilling or unable to care for their children. Birthmoms like myself and Madisons Pennie are nothing like those parents. Also adoptive parents who adopted an infant know nothing about the struggles of foster parents who care for children who are damaged. Also adoptive parents who adopt domestically know nothing about the challenges of international adoption with all its risks and stresses. Honestly I wish that their was more public education about what really happens in all kinds of adoptions. I think that because this day is focused on ‘waiting’ children they should re-name it ‘foster child day’ to show people the great need to love children no matter what has happen to them.
Thank you for writing this. There is such a varied experience in those who adopt either fost-adopt, privately or internationally. It usually ends up like the big elephant in the middle of the room.
Our experience is with fost-adopt of an infant so we don’t generally fit into any of those easy categories. While we did go through the “system” of social workers, court hearings, etc… we also parented an infant and so don’t know the struggles of parenting an older child who had experiences in the system. It puts us in the position to understand both experiences in a way.
Thank you, bravo, well said.
What upsets me is that both National Adoption Day and month - as well as tax benefits for adopters - fail to make any distinction between the three types of adoption. In effect, what winds up happening is the “promotion” and encouragement of ALL adopton - much of which supports baby brokers at the expense of coercing and exploiting poverty and ignorance worldwide.
What this National Adoption event and tax benefit promotion and encouragement winds up doing is using foster kids as a edge to increase the bottom line of baby brokers, many of whom are far less than reputable. Even people who are dealing with what they feel secure is an ethical agency state-side, that agency in turn is often dealing with orphanages in other parts of the world that knowingly or not are adopting out children who have been brought by kidnappers who traffic in children for adoption. One needs to read the works of David Smolin (google his name) to understand this phenomenon).
I agree, in your situation, your daughter likely would not have been removed involuntarily. Is your adoption open? But many other moms are pressured by baby brokers domestically because adoption is BIG BUSINESS with fees as you know of $40k plus. Also, states receive bonuses from the fed gvt to move kids quickly from foster care into adoption so the focus has shifted again back away from family reunification - and this is very sad.
What is needed is:
#1 - better sex education, not just to reduce unintended pregnancies, but also to include info on the many preventable causes of infertility so so many women do not wind up 40 and childless and unable to have one, thus creating a demand that creates the supply instead of vice versa.
#2 - a moratorium on international adoption and mass education to the fact that the children in foster care who COULD be adopted are no older or more “damaged” than many of the kids being adopted from overseas who suffer many disabilities from FAS and being institutionalized.
#3. Understanding that these suggestion are not a put-down of those who have already adopted int he past. They are suggestions for gong forward.
Mirah Riben, author, The Stork Market: America’s Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry
www.AdvocatePublcations.com
Reviewed in Adoption Today Oct/Nov. 08
PS It is also good to keep in mind that National Adoption Day not only doesn’t apply to all - for some it is a very UNHAPPY reminder of a tragic loss in their lives. Not everyone wins in adoption. Every adoption starts with a tragedy and loss is not really something to “celebrate” - that often gets lost in all the adoption day “stuff.”
Every child is born to a mother who somewhere mourns that loss.
Every adoptee - no mater how loved through adoption - feels a deep inner sense of rejection and abandonment.
International adoptees lose their culture along with their family.
American adoptees lose not only their family, but their identity and equal right to their own birth certificate.
These losses need to be remembered and recognized along with celebrating the good aspects of adoption.
Many adoptees as they grow up - with these “celebrations” and personal “Gotcha Day” celebrations - feel no sense of “entitlement’ to their own grief.
Ha. Just wrote a similar post, but you said it better. THANK YOU.
I’m going to go back and edit mine to add a link to you.
[...] to add: Dawn wrote about this too and said it much better, so go read her. Possibly related posts: (automatically [...]
Thanks, Dawn and Nic.
Very good. And quite right too
We may be wrting to the converted here, but please see the link >
http:/about-orphans.blogspot.com
Many thanks.
First I want to say thank you for speaking and writing about this issue! I am adopted- I also have three other adopted siblings. All but 1 (international adoption) were all domestic infant adoptions and were not in foster care so naturally we did not fall into the category of “available adoption”. I was a domestic adoption right out of the state of Texas. I find that any opportunities to speak or create awareness for the Orphan (international or locally) does and can stimulates debate as well as groupings. who is available to adopt? is she sick? is he the right color? who should be adopted first? Who’s paperwork goes faster? since its faster we should adopt from there. I for one say STOP IT! any child who needs a mother and father should be made available to be adopted. People individualize and categorize children like farms do with animals. People’s “good” intentions fall to the wayside and become corrupt when it suddenly seems to be a race to see which baby comes first and fastest and looks the best- how a baby will suite there immediate needs and not the other way around as it should be. I firmly believe that if my parents had taken the easy road (foster adoption), or even looked to their own timing and comfort in regards to adoption I and my siblings would not have been adopted.
I think the “National Adoption Awareness Month” should be just that
NATIONAL- self explanatory
ADOPTION- child of EVERY shape, color, age and size who needs a mother or father
AWARENESS- making people aware of every child that needs help not just a specific range or available child, and how, if some are not available, do we make them available?
MONTH-
I’ve written a whole book but your words are right on! Good for you!
[...] two interesting blog posts about adoption today. The first one is from a favorite blog of mine, This Woman’s Work, where Dawn, who is Jewish and adopted her daughter, writes: National Adoption Day Is Not My [...]
Trust me to be the odd one out.
In general, I agree with what Dawn wrote.
In California, there are private agencies who place infants who would have gone into the foster care system. From what I understand from talking to two of these agencies, the babies come in two categories. First, there are the babies who have been taken from neglectful parents. To reduce the caseload on the counties, the private agencies place the infants, the idea being that most people want infants anyway, so they’re easier to place, allowing the caseworker more time to work with the older children. Second, there are the babies from parents who would have their children taken, but are given the chance to choose an adoption plan instead. These specific agencies cost more than foster/adopt, but not as much as private adoption. (Don’t shoot the messenger please. I didn’t decide any of this.)
So, should parents who adopted via these agencies be allowed to celebrate National Adoption Day?
I think that any day that brings attention to adoption encourages the discussion of adoption, and that is, essentially, good.
While I think that adoption from foster care should be better understood, I think that outlawing other types of adoption - such as international adoptions - is, to be nice, not a good idea.
Robyn, there’s no outlawing going on — I’m talking specifically about my adoption and how when people confuse adoptions, they sometimes do so at the expense of my daughter and her first mom.
Dawn, I didn’t mean to imply that you were outlawing. Mirah calls for a moratorium on international adoptions, and many of the other comments struck me as anti-private adoption. As usual, I kind of agree with you and kind of don’t, but the comments prompted me to comment.
I appreciated your take on NAM. I had not thought of it that way and I appreciate your words. That’s all I wanted to say.
You know what else is big business? Bashing adoption to sell books.
Christina, I’m not sure what you’re getting at here.