this woman’s work

I tried to comment on Krississippi’s blog but my comment got eaten somehow so I’m bringing it over here. (I’m rushing — I have an 11am meeting across town and it’s seven ’til ten but I will try my bestest to make sense.)

Krissi was talking about an article about Bethany Christian Services in Modesto, CA, specifically about a first mom’s unhappiness with this part of the article:

“One of the things that needs to be said is it’s very rare (for a birth mom to change her mind about adoption). But for those who go through it, it’s one of the most painful experiences they’ve every had. It’s like a death in the family when that happens. It takes a toll on us as staff members, too.

“But assuming that the birth mother is making a choice that she can raise the child with the support of the family or a boyfriend, that’s still positive.”

The original post that called my (and I believe, Krissi’s) attention is not available for public consumption so I’ll try to fill y’all in. A first mom was bothered by the emphasis on adoptive parent loss and the complete neglect of first parent loss. Krissi responded with:

I don’t understand why adoptive parents aren’t allowed to have the same feelings about an adopted child who is removed and returned, as the birth mother/family has in surrendering a child?

I wanted to talk about that, as an adoptive parent, and about some of my other issues with the article.

Now I’m not crazy about Bethany and wasn’t crazy about them before I really started thinking on ethics. I need to say that upfront. Their worldview is not mine, obviously, since I’m a feminist Jew and they’re coming from a place of conservative Christianity. Their beliefs — as they appear to practice them in the agency — run right up against my own from their emphasis on adoption over other choices to their bias against unmarried parenting.

But in this article I had two big concerns: One, that they believe that their push towards adoption is appropriate in their counseling:

“One thing that is true is that while we promote adoption, we’re helping her make an informed choice. We’re not about persuading them one way or the other. We provide counseling for (a woman) regardless of her decision.”

Looking at their web site, I see a lot of promotion of adoption but very little of that information one would need to make an informed choice. Which leads me to my next concern, the “death in the family” for wannabe adoptive parents when the mom decides she’ll parent after all.

If you look on their site, you can see a whole page devoted to “disrupted adoption“.  (They’re using the term wrong because there is no adoption when this happens — it’s an adoption plan turned into a parenting plan.) There’s a whole lot of sympathy there for adoptive parents just like there is in the article. This although they say, “it’s very rare.” By their own admission, adoptive parents rarely have to face this pain (if they’re using Bethany because I learned early on in my adoption journey that when an agency says “it’s rare” it can be code for “we are coercive” but there, that’s my bias showing again).

What we do know, because research tells us this, is that first parents definitely feel grief. Best practices (as set out here by the Donaldson institute) can help but there’s no way around it: “grief … invariably accompanies such a profound loss.”

Thing is, in the popular understanding of adoption most of what we hear about is the loss of the potential adoptive parents when an expectant mother changes her mind. I’m not downplaying this. I’m not arguing that it doesn’t hurt when an adoption plan doesn’t happen. But it’s almost a legendary part of our understanding of domestic infant adoption. And — at least over at Bethany — it happens rarely.

First parent grief? It happens every time an adoption happens. Every. Time. It “invariably accompanies such a profound loss.” It’s documented. We’ve got smart folks crunching numbers to back it up. Only we rarely hear about it. (Ironic that — we hear a whole lot about a rare thing and rarely hear about a thing that happens a whole lot.)

We hear about first parent grief when we talk about reunion. We hear about it as if it happened only way back when in the baby scoop era. We hear about it when we want to talk heroics (in another coercive strategy) but somehow we never hear it in those counseling sessions where we help women make “informed decisions.”

Back to the Bethany site, here’s the “unplanned pregnancy” list of resources. Do you see anything like the “disrupted adoption” page for adoptive parents? Wait, we’ll dig deeper — it’ll be on the “adoption” page, right? Because that’s where they explain the pros and cons, right? I’ll check so you don’t have to click through. Let’s see, I learning that Bethany will take care of legal arrangements. I see they’ll help you with living and medical expenses. I see (with an enthusiastic Yes!) that you can choose your baby’s family. I see that you can visit with your baby in the hospital “as much … as you want” and can arrange a open (or semi-open) adoption. I’m seeing that you can choose an adoption that dictates how much your child knows about you (no mention of how all of that is actually out of your control), that birth father’s have rights and that state laws dictate your (and your child’s) right to search. Nope, nothing about the long-term repercussions in choosing adoption.

This bias is evidenced in the article in The Modesto Bee as well.

I have to run to my meeting but that’s my argument against this article.

And quickly, I wanted to share this post from Seeking God Knows What about her last meeting with a Bethany agency.