this woman’s work

Ginger (a first mom) said:

I felt hurt when my daughter’s parents didn’t refer to her as theirs until they took her home.  They didn’t even get the nursery ready (she slept in their room) until she was home.  I just didn’t understand why they couldn’t believe that baby was theirs and the decision made.  I had some concern that NOT doing those things meant that they weren’t committed to her.  What if some better baby came along, one with a better family health history?  Perhaps silly fears on my part…

Honestly, Pennie likely could have written this. At one point during our match our social worker talked to Pennie’s social worker and found out that Pennie was worried that we weren’t excited enough about the prospect of having Madison. And she was annoyed that I would say IF she placed Madison with us, IF Madison came home, etc. Pennie felt like she’d made up her mind and that I wasn’t honoring this.

So our social worker, Denise, told us that we needed to tell Pennie what we were doing to get ready and assure her that we were indeed excited about her choosing us and thrilled at the idea of being Madison’s parents.

I had to think on this for awhile but the next time Pennie and I talked I told her that I would be happy to tell all about what we’d done to get ready with the caveat that she understand that I wasn’t being presumptuous and assuming that her daughter was already mine. I said something like, “I know you feel absolutely sure right now and I totally trust your feelings about that but I need you to hear me say that I also know that you have to meet Madison first and I want you to remember that we understand if you change your mind.”

It was important to me that she hear me say that I believed her now but would not in any way feel betrayed if she changed her mind; that we wouldn’t hold her to pre-baby promises. I remember, too, that I made her repeat this back to me. I wanted it to be very clear to her because once Madison was born, I didn’t want her to feel hemmed in by the plans that we — Brett and I — had made. I didn’t want her to feel like she owed us anything.

I think about Pennie when I read the “our baby is due” posts because Pennie was one of those absolutely sure expectant mothers and you know, Madison’s arrival changed things. I know you can point to Madison being here in our family to say, “See? She always knew she’d place!” but that’s far too simplistic. She had to make that decision all over again once Madison arrived and it was seven hundred million zillion trillion times harder than it was beforehand. Denise (our social worker) told us repeatedly that whatever a woman says when she’s pregnant is NOT a placement predictor — that there is always Always ALWAYS a 50/50 chance that a woman will leave the hospital with her baby no matter how sure she is before the baby arrives.

So see, I think that hopeful adoptive parents need to know this even if the expectant parents don’t. I don’t mean they should be dismissive or even as careful as we were not to step out of bounds (resulting in our needing to be reminded that we needed to engage more with Pennie around our parenting hopes) — but I do think that ethical professionals should remind us that we are not the stars of this particular show.

I’m sure there ARE some hopeful adoptive parents who say “our baby” and mean “the expectant parents’ and our baby” but c’mon, this is not what we tend to see on blogs or in the forums. We all know that lots and lots and lots of agencies/lawyers will practically guarantee that the baby is going to be placed. They’ll say, “this is a good sign” or “this is a great match” and they don’t add, “But having a baby changes everything including adoption plans.”

You see, I don’t blame hopeful adoptive parents who don’t have the benefit of ethical adoption professionals to lead them to understand that an adoption plan is just a plan and not a mandate to place. When the social workers and lawyers don’t prepare us for every possibility they set expectant parents up with guilt/pressure above and beyond what they might already be feeling; they set hopeful adoptive parents up with misplaced entitlement that can make it difficult to handle matches that unmatch; and they continue the myth that adoption is about getting babies to wannabe parents and not creating options for women struggling with the challenge of a crisis pregnancy.

I know that there are a lot of big things we can and should change about the way domestic infant adoption works but I also think that small, incremental change can help dismantle some of the ethical issues. Reminding potential adoptive parents that a match is just a possibility is one of these small things we can do that can ultimately have a larger impact.

But that’s just my take on things.

No, not mine. This is most decidedly not any kind of announcement.

I’ve read a couple of hopeful adoptive parent blogs and the hopeful parents have each matched with an expectant mother and they type this, “Our baby will be born in September.” “Our son is due on October 13th.” (I’m deliberately choosing dates that have passed recently to disguise these waiting hopeful parents.)

It frustrates me. I think their agency/lawyers must be doing a poor job of counseling them (and then I can’t help but assume that they’re also doing a poor job of counseling the expectant parents).

Our fabulous social worker, Denise, never encouraged this kind of entitlement before the baby arrived; in fact she actively but kindly discouraged it. She was very matter of fact that an adoption plan is not worth a dime until the baby has arrived. When our first match unmatched, she was sympathetic but practical. She made it easy for us to follow her lead and understand that this wasn’t about us at all — it had to do with the woman who decided to parent.

“But it’s hard!” we’d whine. “It’s hard living in limbo!”

“Parenting’s hard,” she’d say. “Why should this be easy?”

(OK, I don’t know if she said that exact quote but she said something pretty much like it.)

I get itchy fingers, wanting to comment on these blogs but I don’t think some stranger on the internet lecturing them about how adoption ought to work is really all that helpful or kind. So instead I’m ranting here a little bit.

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.

Madison was gluing sequins on leaf cut-outs to make our house more autumn-like and more gorgeous. She said, “Were you friends with Pennie after I was born?”

I put down my book to try to figure out what she was asking and then I told her how we met Pennie and how we became friends and how we are still friends. For the first time I told her that Pennie met us specifically to see if we would be a good mommy and daddy for Madison. I knew we were trudging into territory that I am totally unprepared for (and for which I believe I can’t ever be prepared): Why did Pennie place Madison for adoption? Sure enough:

“Why did Pennie choose you to be mommy and daddy?”

I told her because we had Noah and Pennie wanted Madison to have a brother because she has a much-loved brother (Madison’s namesake).

“Oh yeah,” says Madison. “I know him!”

“But why…” she hesitated, sprinkling her sequins. “Why did she want me to have a brother?”

I dove in.

“Madison, I think you’re asking me why Pennie chose not to be your mommy and chose me to be your mommy instead, is that right?”

She nodded, not looking at me.

This is a story that’s going to change as she grows up. This is a story that’s going to change in the telling and in the hearing (from me and from Pennie) and it’s going to change as she brings more of her own story to it. I don’t think I can ever answer why. But I have to answer why.

(I believe that my why is always inadequate to Pennie’s story. I believe that I have no right to guess why although I can’t help doing so. But I know, too, that my version of events is one I need to share with Madison although with such care and acknowledgment that it is very much my version. And that I am an unreliable narrator. Only she is just four right now and she’s asking me and somehow I have to answer)

And I fumble around. I say something like (and this isn’t all of it), “Pennie loves you so much and I think she was worried that she wasn’t ready to be your mommy and I think she worried that she would not do the right job of it.”

I want her to know that Pennie loves her without creating the “she loved you enough to give you up” heroic fable. And I want her to know that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Pennie (because unlike some adoption stories, there are no glaring addictions or scary behaviors that made her adoption such a clear decision). One day when Madison’s older and ready to contemplate the complexities of domestic infant adoption and of her adoption, I don’t want her starting out with the idea that Pennie was in some way broken and that adoption is always “right” in the presence of these outside circumstances. This is a big challenge for me. How do I put the locus of the adoption within Pennie’s person without somehow fixing Madison with the idea that her mother didn’t want her? Madison was not/is not unwanted.

How do I separate parenthood from the child who would be parented? How do I explain the daunting weight of cultural expectations, the stultifying absence of societal supports?

And how do I make it clear — is the insertion of “I think” enough — that I am an unreliable narrator?

It’s hard enough for great big grown-ups to understand let alone 4-year olds. There is nothing definitive to say, “Here is why.” It’s the glaring question she dares not ask directly: “Why am I not with her?”

Madison did ask, “Do you think she would do the right job of it?”

And I said, honestly, “Yes.” But then we talked more of things I won’t share here that are specific to this story but still, could not answer the “why” as well as I wish.

(Sooner or later Madison will ask me why I didn’t help Pennie and I hope she is old enough that I can tell her why in a way that she can understand — the complications of our particular adoption, the complications of choice within the context of a culture that does not truly honor choice. I hope by then I understand, too, because I think I will always wish I could have done things somehow better. I am always asking myself “why” too.)

Madison said, “I think she would do the right job of it, too.”

Then she asked me, and I can’t remember the wording, but she asked me if I was happy that Pennie chose us. I told her that I was very very very happy and grateful to be her mommy but I was sad that it meant that she and Pennie had to miss each other so much.

I said, “I know you miss her being your mommy and I know she misses being your mommy, too.”

Madison: But I can call her.

Me: Right.

Madison: And I can have playdates with her.

Me: And tea parties.

Madison: And I can say Macintosh. I can say Macintosh and Rome. Macintosh is a pretty big word! I don’t even know how I know it!

She is the queen of segues, this perfect little curly-haired child!

I write this stuff down for me as a baby book and also because I know you all wonder how other families do it. I wonder, too. I gobble your blog entries up, too. Frankly, this conversation — it’s not one I think I got right but I also don’t know if there’s a right way to get it. It’s the truth of our adoption, really, that there are no good answers. I think there is only an ongoing conversation that we need to be having and that I have to be willing to get it wrong because I have to say something and keep that conversation open.

I am also sorry if this entry — or any like it — hurt the first parents who read me. I know this isn’t an easy read and I apologize.

From Krississippi (dot) com » A Response to a Response of a Response

Adoptive parent loss is becoming taboo to even mention. Admitting one is an adoptive parent (ESPECIALLY on the net) is to say something shameful. To say “I adopted and something happened and now I grieve” is shunned. Tell me it’s not. I’ve been called a baby stealer, a raper of another culture, not a “real mother”, and a whole lot of other nasty things. But should I call my son’s mother or any other birth mother someone who can’t parent because of “x” reason, I AM THE ONE FLAMED.

You know, I’ve heard more than once that adoptive parents are feeling hemmed in by “political correctness” on the adoption front — at least on the internet. This hasn’t been my reality but since I’ve heard it in more than one corner it’s clear it’s an experience other people are having. I’m bothered by any us vs. them mentality and am unhappy that much of the adoption community has been so segregated but I do think that we need our own safe spaces. (Although off the internet? I see no political correctness. And also other spheres of the online adoption world seem to be havens from political correctness. I guess we’re a progressive bunch.)

Frankly (and I know this is unpopular to some) I think that we adoptive parents have more room to give here. I remember this atrocious flamewar (I’ve mentioned it before) that was on misc.kids.adoption between anti-adoption activists and pro-adoption adoptive parents. It was one of those schisms where everyone was executing black/white thinking — the kind that really only happen on the internet because people become so entrenched in arguing. Anyway, one of the adoptive parents typed something like, “Yeah, well we have your babies!” (I don’t remember exactly what she typed, just the “we have your babies” line at the end.) And that’s the thing — we adoptive parents have the babies. To me, forgetting that important fact is a little like a white person hollering defensively, “But I didn’t own slaves!” in the face of someone hurt by racism.

It’s a delicate balance — acknowledging privilege isn’t the same thing as admitting to wrong-doing we haven’t directly participated in. It may be that we had wonderful, totally ethical adoptions but still, we have the babies and we got our babies within a system that isn’t equitable. Even if we ourselves are absolutely swell people, for some other hurting people we may symbolize the oppression they’re fighting. I get that. Frankly I choose not to own other people’s judgment about my family and my adoption and I choose not to get defensive when I get confronted by people who are angry but don’t know me or the particulars of my life. (I’m not always good at this choosing — sometimes the choosing comes after some angry stomping around. Although frankly ugliest judgments I’ve received have come from other adoptive parents so you know, that’s where I’m coming from.)

Krissi also said:

I don’t doubt there is grief that I can’t begin to understand having not gone through it myself. I can’t assume how one would feel if I hadn’t experienced it.

But, based on that thought, how can anyone else who hasn’t been in MY SHOES assume to know how I WOULD FEEL?

I don’t assume on their behalf and I’d rather they not assume on mine. I guess that was one of my main points in my post. I can’t dismiss your grief any more than you can dismiss mine.

See, I haven’t yet read anyone dismissing your grief or any adoptive parent’s grief in this conversation. What I’ve read is that people feel the discussion in that newspaper article was one-sided.

Krissi added:

There are far more birth parent loss websites than there are adoptive parent loss sites.

Well, how could there NOT be? As Andy wrote, “Losing a potential placement is NOTHING like losing an actual child… it is losing a hope, a dream, a thought… all non-tangible things. A mother who has placed her child has lost a piece of HER. and it cannot be replaced. Not by her next child, not by anything. But potential adoptive parents can grieve (because yes, there is grief and it is hard) and then MOVE ON TO THE NEXT potential placement.”

Krissi finished with:

Hey, no one told me about the long-term repercussions about adopting. No one told me how I would struggle to answer my son’s questions, long for the ability to know his mother, deal with the guilt I always hold, understand how to help my son with his own journey, and be allowed to call myself a “mother” without remembering EVERY TIME that I wasn’t until someone else was.But I did have the ability to do my own research about adoption, talk to adopted people and adoptive parents alike, read books, and find resources to at least help myself do the best that I could. Why expect a birth parent to do any less?? Adoption, on either side, is a huge decision and commitment and I don’t believe it’s SOLELY up to any agency to do 100% of the educating. I believe it IS the SOLE responsibility of the agency to do as much educating that they can, but you can’t take away, for a second, the personal responsibility aspect. Unless you’re, say 11 and pregnant by incest (as mentioned in the original article), and/or you are a CHILD, then it’s not up to anyone other than YOURSELF to take that responsibility.

Krissi, the fact that we (adoptive parents) often feel ill-prepared to deal with the fall-out from adoption is something we should talk about when we talk about reform. I agree with you. As to the rest? That really gets my back up.

1. I was at two bookstores over the weekend and both had a shelf full of adoption books for adoptive parents. I didn’t see one for people contemplating placing their children. Same thing at my local library (although it’s interesting to note that in the poorer neighborhood by my daughter’s old preschool I did see two “so you’re unexpectedly pregnant” books for teenagers, both of which pushed adoption.) So I’d say it’s a little harder to do that research.

2. I counted on my agency to show me the way in a lot of things. That was a luxury that it’s clear expectant parents can’t afford since obviously the agencies show them even less than they show us adoptive parents.

3. Now try going to the search engines. Type in “adoption”, “choosing adoption” and “thinking of placing my baby for adoption.” Tell me how many non-biased sites (i.e., not related to the business of adoption) come up. Who do you think can afford better keyword placement — unbiased adoption sites or adoption businesses? No wonder the search engines are loaded.

4. Say you find a few voices in the wilderness. Say you find the blogs of first parents or some of the keep your baby sites. Now imagine the weight of the people who say that if you place you will be heroic, loving, unselfish, good versus the few small voices who say, “You will also be unbearably sad.”

Considering the way the cards are stacked I can’t condemn any woman who looks back and says, “I wish I had done it differently.” I do believe we are responsible for our choices but I also appreciate how the world sometimes (often) impacts our choices in ways we didn’t expect.

We women get trashed in our reproductive lives: having babies too late to make them without assistance; having them too young; having them with the wrong men; having them and putting them in daycare; having them and spoiling them by staying home; and having them but then giving them up. Yowza. A girl can’t win for trying.

It looks to me like first motherhood is a journey and some women end up in different places — happier or sadder or guiltier or more content. Like anything else, people have to make sense of their own lives and every woman who placed or lost a child through adoption is going to have a different story to tell. But I do know that this industry that gifted me my daughter doesn’t work in a fair and honest manner. I know that. Domestic infant adoption is about getting babies to us — like the lady said, we have the babies. And in that newspaper article, we also have the right to all the tears. Now that’s just getting greedy.