' [Birth Mother] First Mother Forum: March 2011

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Kidnapping and Corruption in Chinese Adoptions

Jane
China, long thought to be squeaky clean in international adoptions turns out to have a history of corruption, according to David Smolin, one of the world's leading experts on international adoption scandals. According to Smolin, the decline in the number of Chinese infants arriving on U.S. shores since the Nineties as adoptees was largely due to the Chinese government’s curtailment of baby buying--

Monday, March 28, 2011

When Disaster Strikes, Adoption is Sure to Follow, Part II (and III)


Would-be adopters have begun circling Japan in the wake of the tragic earthquake and tsunami earlier this month. First Mother Forum readers may recall that after the January 11, 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Catholic Charities and other south Florida groups planned a massive airlift of perhaps several thousand of children thought to have been orphaned (When Disaster Strikes, Adoption is Sure to Follow).

Friday, March 25, 2011

Madonna's Malawi charity fails and Ethiopian adoptions shut down to a trickle: Could there be abuse in the system?

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Baby Vanessa: The law worked; no need to change it

Would-be adoptive parent Stacey Doss, has vowed to go to “Capitol Hill and elevate children’s rights so they are equal to parental rights.”

Doss who sought to adopt Vanessa over the objections of the child’s father Benjamin Mills, Jr. has been appointed Vanessa’s permanent guardian with visitation rights granted to Mills, his mother, Rena Jordan, and Vanessa’s biological sisters in a settlement reached by the parties this month after nearly three years of litigation, according to the Dayton Daily News

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Do birth mothers have the right to know who their children became?

Lorraine
It's legislation time in all of the states and provinces where there is any activity regarding changing the laws. A partial list includes Rhode Island, Missouri, Montana, and of course New Jersey and New York, two states were we've been involved in the process.

But as an adoptee (Robert Wilson) wrote to me recently, why aren't we working for access to the new name and identity

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

State adoption consent laws: the ugly, the bad, the better, and the GOOD

Jane
The loss of a child to adoption can be a blessing according to a social worker with the Mormon-affiliated adoption agency, LDS Family Services, who has commented on First Mother Forum recentlyShe says this is true of many of her clients. I have to admit this seems far-fetched to those of us, both baby-swoop era mothers and recent mothers, still grieving from our loss, as many of the comments on the last post indicate and birth mother memoirs and blogs attest to. We also know that birth mothers' feelings may change over time.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Are we bitter birth mothers?

Lorraine
Bitter.

It's a word bandied about about birth mothers who are not content with their situation as mothers without children to mother. Call me bitter, and it gives you an excuse to dismiss me, because, y'all know that I haven't accepted reality and made peace with the fact that I relinquished my daughter to an uncertain future.  And we birth mothers who relinquished in the Mesozoic Age of shame, shunning and closed adoptions,

Friday, March 11, 2011

Thursday, March 10, 2011

An LDS birth mother talks about her church, search and reunion, and the LDS position on such matters

Lorraine
During the last skirmish at the blog, we came across a blog that we check into now and then, Letters to Mrs. Feverfew, and we discovered that the author, a first/birth mother and also a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (LDS) , was writing about recent posts at First Mother Forum. Melynda, author of the Letters to Mrs. Feverfew, was miffed because we had not posted her comments, but neither Jane nor I saw

Monday, March 7, 2011

Would I have found my daughter if I had married her father?

Jane and Lorraine in 1983
Just an add to yesterday's blog about a confidential intermediary's comment about married birth/first parents who reject contact and reunion when sought by the individual who had been relinquished: I hope it is a reflection of adoptions back several decades, and not recent ones, as a great many adoptions today are open (though we know many close), and the first mother is NOT promised anonymity and so there is no thought of her disappearing into the woodwork forever.

But what of closed adoptions today?

Sunday, March 6, 2011

When you find birth/first parents who have married

Lorraine
I heard something that other day that has been gnawing at me because it is the opposite of what I thought would be the case: biological parents who marry after relinquishing a child...are less likely to want a reunion, agree to contact and a reunion than birth mothers and birth fathers who do not.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

16 and Pregnant encourages the teen-mom trend

Lorraine
Teens having babies to get on television. That's what one of the former "stars" of MTV's hit reality series, "16 and Pregnant" says. I gagged when the upcoming story was promoted this morning on Good Morning America as I was walking out the door for my morning java at Starbucks with husband Tony and The New York Times.

According to the report at ABC--and there will be more on Nightline tonight at 11:35 p.m.--one of teens featured on "16 and Pregnant," Whitney Purvis said that her turn on the show turned her into a celebrity in her town of Rome, Georgia.  Purvis said that the movie, Juno, our least favorite movie of all time, make pregnancy look "cute." Right, she said, cute, and that made her want to participate in the original show on MTV.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

HB 2904 is targeted at LDS Family Services! Absolutely Untrue

MEGAN
As suggested by her
and with permission
I've written on First Mother Forum several time about my surrendered daughter, Megan, and  difficulties in our relationship. As many with a surrendered child or a birth parent have experienced, the course of reunion never does run smooth. Megan has been following FMF for several months, posting under a pseudonym. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints and is conflicted over our posts and comments on the Church's position on adoption.