Giving up your baby for adoption is a 'courageous decision.' NOT!

Jane

"A birth mother in Western Wisconsin made a courageous decision that enabled me and my wife to have a family of our own" began WEAU TV reporter's Bob Gallaher story about his own open adoption of a daughter.

"Adoption is a courageous decision" with "loving" often inserted after courageous is an oft-repeated phrase from the adoption industry's lexicon. The truth is, though, that adoption is never a courageous decision. Instead, it is a life-altering decision driven by fear and desperation.

Fifteen year old Sammie Pohle who "made the adoption plan" which enabled Bob Gallaher and his wife Colleen to become parents admitted "I was scared, I was disappointed in myself. I just wanted to shut myself out from the rest of the world and disappear." Her mother, Amy Veltus, added, "There was a little anger, scared for her, worried, a lot of stress."

The new adoption narrative: 'I love you so much I gave you away'

Lorraine

Have you seen the video of the woman who gave up her son in march of 2016? The handover is that day, and she videos her infant son telling him that she is making the video so that one day he will watch it and know that she loves him. She is weeping the whole 9 minutes and 36 seconds of the video. It is hard to watch. 

I had to force myself to see it all the way through, as I stopped a couple of times at a minute or two, as it is repetitious and in the category of "I loved you so much I gave you away." In today's zeitgeist, making such a video is the logical expression of this 18-year-old's pain as she prepares to give him up. The woman, Hannah Mongie, now 20, is a Mormon in Utah--she mentions her boyfriend's mission--and so to simply say that in today's world she would not have endured the severity of the opprobrium of women of earlier generations like my own is not appropriate. I assume that Mormon women, if they do not marry the fathers, are encouraged to give up their babies rather than keep them. From what she says, it appears that the couple would have gotten married; nothing is said about her parents, or if they were involved in her decision.

Should birth mothers shut up and stay in the closet?

Lorraine

Are birth mothers encouraged to stay in the closet?  

Damn straight they are. Coming off the philosophical pap of Professor Kimberly Leighton last week on the Diane Rehm show*, the other day at the "I Love Adoption" page on Facebook, I ran smack into a poem called Emotions. It is our understanding that the I Love Adoption page, with its more 4,972 "likers" at this writing is administrated by "The Adoption Center." A quick perusal of the website of The Adoption Center yielded no physical address, no last names of anyone, and only 800 phone numbers, so their location requires more digging but a source tells me they are situated in my least favorite state, Utah. Where signing away your baby can be done as quick as you can have 'em.

'Burger King Baby' is thrilled to meet her 'birth mom'

Lorraine

In contrast to the situation we have been discussing at the last post*--about a woman who wrote to us stating that she does not want to meet her first mother--is the Burger King Baby who actively searched for her mother, and was thrilled to meet her.

Katheryn Deprill, 27, who was left as a  newborn in the bathroom of a Burger King in Allentown, Pennsylvania, teared up this morning on the Today show as she recalled meeting her biological mother, Cathy Pochek, for the first time two weeks ago. 

“It’s so surreal; never in a million years did I think this was going to happen,” Deprill said.

How Do You Tell Your Family You Had a First Child?

So, you have a secret that needs to come out. How do you tell your family/husband/children? How do you tell them about the child they will be stunned to learn about?

It ain't easy. In my own case, I was able to keep my pregnancy secret from my family, and so I had to deal with coming out of the first/birth mother closet years later. I was living in another state, New York, quite far away from home in Michigan, when I became pregnant. I was twenty-three, less than a year out of college, and kept up the pretense that I was still working as a newspaper reporter in Rochester, when in fact, I had quit my job and was hiding in my apartment.

My window to the outside world was through the father of my child, Brian, who came every day (he worked) after he was done for the day. On a newspaper, the hour one leaves the office is often on a sliding scale--you might work through "lunch" on deadline, you might be filing a late story, you might be out on a long-term assignment. Thus he had a certain amount of leeway. Yes, he was married and had a family. I was the "other woman." Which is why I suppose I have a certain amount of sympathy for John Edwards' other woman, Rielle Hunter, and the father of his last child. Yes, I do, but that's another story.

Eventually my parents tried to call me at work and the operator told them I had not been there for months! But she put them through to the City Editor, a good man who knew about me and knew the secret I and his star political reporter were keeping. He told them I was working on a undercover operation.

Right. I sure was.

But I was able to get through this sticky situation without my having to fess up, and amazingly enough, I had the baby without my family back in Detroit knowing anything about it. Considering all the grief that would have entailed, it was easier to go it alone than have to look my parents in the eye and admit I was pregnant. The year was 1966. A few months after my daughter was born I found a job in Albany.

Two years later, my father died. He never knew. His death was a huge blow because I loved him intensely. We were alike in so many ways beyond the physical. But his death meant I would never have to tell him how I had screwed up. You see, he and I had fought for years over whether I should go college, and then over whether I would ever get a job as a reporter, because he did not believe girls needed to go to college because they were all going to get married and have children anyway. Old world, poor family, old school. After what had transpired between us, telling him that I had indeed become pregnant as a single woman would not have been, ah, easy. I threw two flowers in his grave over the casket--one for me, one for my daughter--but I was relieved of admitting what I had done, how I had failed him, myself, everyone. I was still stinking with shame.

At one time, my mother quizzed me about the "undercover" operation--what ever happened to that story you were supposedly working on, she wanted to know, what was it about?--and somehow the story morphed to me having mononucleosis during that period, I did not want to worry them, et cetera, and while she was doubtful, I kept to my story. Oh, a tissue of lies.

I married the same year my father died, and told my first husband my horrible secret with my heart palpitating, boom boom, feeling the hot flash of an anxiety attack, will he change his mind? when he asked me to marry him. Yes, it was not easy. Yes, I did not know what he would say. Yes, I was terrified, like jumping out of an airplane. But I got through it and we got married.

Fast forward seven years later. I was divorced, and had become involved in the movement to open records for--hell, everyone, not just adopted people, but mothers like me too! Why not? I had only agreed to the ridiculous and stupid "sealed forever" part of the contract because I had no choice. As I noted before, when I protested, Mrs. Helen Mura, my social worker, said, "Well, then we can't help you. You have to agree to this." The law that had sealed all the records from me had been in place in New York since 1935, and the agency, and Mrs. Mura, were not about to try any shenanigans getting around the law with anyone who balked at signing her child away. Northaven Terrace, the agency,  would not help me with the adoption unless it was according to the letter of the law, and that meant, she--and I--were doomed to a fate of anonymity. My child would get a new identity, and I was supposed to act as if I never had a daughter. Maybe this is why I do not flinch from comparing the current adoption model in most states to slavery, because I felt totally coerced into signing papers I did not agree with. I was alive and conscious, yes, but forced to enter into an ageement I did not agree with. The state had all the power as surely as if it held a gun to my head.

I had nowhere to turn. I remember going home from the agency that day full of even more tears and sorrow and telling Brian this latest and unbelievable insult being added to the injury of giving away a child in the first place. Left without a choice, I went through with surrendering my daughter knowing full well that the secrecy I was forced to agree to was further punishment for giving her up. What monster wrote this law? I wondered.

Yet because I could, I had kept this secret from my family for years. But after I had testified in court twice for adoptees hoping to get their original records in New York and New Jersey, I knew I had to spill the beans to all and everyone concerned. Now I had to tell my mother. I went home for a long weekend with this on the agenda. I took her to lunch at a nice place, we ordered gin and tonics and fish as the entree, but between the drinks and the main course, I told her. You just have to start saying the words and hope for the best. Somehow a version of I had a baby and gave her away gets the story across economically. You can fill in the details later.

My mother was absolutely great. Her first words were "Oh honey...." She first said that she was sorry that she had not been there to be a comfort to me, and then...after I told her about the fight to open the records and all, that I was going to be public and she might see my name in the paper and the neighbors would talk...she said, I think you are doing the right thing. I think everybody who is adopted must wonder who their real parents are--how could they not? I hope I live long enough to meet her.

We sent back the fish pretty much untouched. Then I had to tell my two brothers, one older, one younger, and since I did not see them together that weekend, I had to go through this twice more than weekend. They were cool about it too.

What a relief to not have this secret anymore! What a relief to share with my mother on Christmas why now I always got teary during the carols sung during Mass. Silent Night has such a mournful tune, and it seemed to be a dirge for the baby I did not have. Now we could talk about this huge thing that had occurred, and I did not have to pretend all was fine when my daughter's birthday rolled around. My mother, a Catholic who never missed mass on Sunday, started praying for this new granddaughter and our hoped-for reunion. 

And then I started writing about being a first mother--I didn't use that word, I did not even use birth mother then--I was a mother who had a baby and gave her away. The more I wrote about it, the easier it got. I've had people say nasty things--one psychiatrist who was dating a girl friend told her that she "didn't want to end up like me." And you know, he's right. No one should end up like us. It's a life of grief and tears and sorrow.

Most media interviewers have been understanding and sympathetic--Regis Philbin had me on his show in 1979 when other people wouldn't even touch the subject--but some have been incredibly nasty and accusatory, practically calling me a slut. Most of the criticism comes in the form of: HOW DARE YOU? Who do you think you are that you can disrupt the very very very happy adoption and family that I am utterly positive your daughter is situated in!

Nearly all of the criticism expresses sympathy for the saintly adoptive parents...who took in my poor child when I did not want her (wrong) and now, I'm coming along to bust up their Leave-It-To- Beaver-Cleaver-happy-intact-family existence. The critics  never stopped to consider that maybe the  adopted individual might have another take on the matter--that they might want to know from whence they came. That seems somehow to not be the concern of those throwing stones--then, or now. They assume that the adopted person is perfectly happy with the way things are. Period.

I still get brickbats thrown at me, as regular readers will remember, and wrote about it here and here. And here. Actually, I don't think it will ever end. Not in my lifetime. That's why I get so crazed when I read on some websites about the great "gift" that a wonderful selfless teen mother made in giving up her child, and go on to praise her, blah blah, blah. But they praise her in absentia. And as long as she remains in absentia.

But to get back to the point: telling someone your secret--if the relinquished child is a secret--is never easy. I was fortunate in that my family and husbands (two) were both supportive and understanding. I never had other children so telling other children was not an issue. Fellow blogger Jane has written about the difficulties of telling her other family.

I'm not saying that you have to tell everyone on every street corner, or everyone you date, or every casual friend you have, or every person in your office, and there are plenty of times when I keep my mouth shut about this issue because it's still a hot topic that inflames people. Whom you tell and whom you do not is a personal decision.

However telling at least those close to you--friends, lovers, husbands, family--sure does ease the mind. And so, if someday you are so fortunate that you receive a phone call that begins...Does fill-in-the-date mean anything to you...you can answer Yes! and simply be thrilled. And not worry about now having to reveal the painful secret you have buried so deep it hurts, hurts like hell.--lorraine

Trafficking reports raise heart-wrenching questions for adoptive parents

An adoptive mother who found First Mother Forum offensive posted some inflammatory comments to the previous post about the Women In Hiding website we wrote about the other day. She, as have others before her, said that we were a bunch of angry women with issues and that we could not call ourselves "mothers," because, well, because we were not. She also wrote:

There are such hateful references on this blog, accusing adoptive parents of stealing and buying babies. It's disgusting that a woman who regrets her decision not to parent then attacks the very people who gave the child a loving home and 24/7 care.

Her accusations have been gnawing at me since, and then came a news story (11/09/09) from the Los Angeles Times about people, including, Mark Brown and his wife, Nicki Genovese, who are plagued with the thought that their daughter from China might have been kidnapped:

They had just returned to Los Angeles in 2005 after adopting a Chinese foundling in south-central Hunan province when they read the news reports about trafficking. Police had arrested 27 members of a ring that since 2002 had abducted or bought as many as 1,000 children in Guangdong province and sold them to orphanages in Hunan.

The story makes clear what we have been trying, in our small way at First Mother Forum, to get out to the world, that child trafficking does exist, and it exists not only for sexual exploitation, but also simply to provide willing Westerners who want children to "complete their families," a phrase that always makes me sick in the knees because it almost always refers to adopting. The Times story notes that A U.S. congressional commission that monitors human rights in China said in a 2005 report that "trafficking of women and children in China remains pervasive," with many infants and young children abducted for adoption and household services. According to an estimate cited in the report, 250,000 women and children were sold in China during 2003. (Not all go to Westerners who get them "laundered" through seemingly legitimate agencies: some are sold for child labor, others to wealthy Chinese families who want a boy, or, in some cases, a girl to marry their son, because the Chinese one-child-per-family law and the adoption situation not surprisingly has led already to a shortage of marriageable young women. The message here? Mess with Mother Nature and you get a stiff kick in the behind.)

China has cracked down on many family-planning officials and orphanage workers found guilty of trafficking, with some violators sentenced to death or long prison terms, according to Chinese news agencies. But according to Jane Liedtke, founder of Our Chinese Daughters Foundation, a nonprofit organization that offers programs and tours for families with children from China, the United States has treated China differently from other countries. U.S. families, for instance, are not allowed to adopt from Cambodia, Vietnam and Guatemala because of evidence of trafficking or other corruption.

"As a country, we should come out and say the Chinese government has to demonstrate what it's doing to prevent" trafficking, she said. But she added that it would be tragic to close off adoptions from China because "there are still way too many children who need help."

The Canadian government opened an investigation in October after The Times documented numerous cases in which Chinese babies were confiscated from their parents by local government officials and sold for foreign adoption.

Some adoptive parents "looked the other way" when they heard reports about child trafficking in Hunan province years ago, said Liedtke. Now that trafficking cases have been documented not just in Hunan but also in Guizhou, Guangxi and other provinces, "people say, 'Oh, I didn't know. My agency didn't tell me. If I'd known, I wouldn't have adopted.' "

To that, Liedtke responds: "Oh, yes, you would have. You wanted a child." 

Do I wonder if any of the children whose parents I know who adopted from foreign countries (two from  Guatemala, three from China, one talking about adopting from Ethiopia) have children who were stolen? You bet I do. I think about it all the time when I see the kids, some of whom I've bought presents for.

What do I say to people who think we are accusing them of "stealing" children?  I'm repeating here what I wrote at the blog because we are First Mother Forum  need to make clear where we stand on issues (as so many accuse of what we are not):

Dear Anon:

While you may feel that we accuse adopting people of "stealing" or "buying" their children, we are not doing that directly because they are not telling someone to go out and, say, kidnap a young child for a fee. However, this does happen--and happen often--in poorer countries such as Vietnam (where women were told they could not leave the hospital with their babies unless they came up with an exorbitant amount of money) and Nepal and India, where cases of outright kidnapping have been proven, and in China, where government officials are now on trial for extorting children from their parents.

When the Guatemalan government investigated adoptions from a certain period of time in the Nineties, they discovered that over half of the more than 600 adoptions they looked occurred because the mother was killed for the purpose of taking the baby, or was kidnapped, to be sold to unscrupulous baby brokers who appear, to willing and anxious adoptive parents, as ethical adoption lawyers. Adoptive parents who willingly adopt from overseas without looking into why a country has so many children available then become part of the corrupt system, just as, say, people who collect stolen art without investigating its provenance.

Does that make the adopters liable? Yes. Yes. Yes. If you doubt this, simply do a search at firstmotherforum.com [it's it in upper right corner or the bottom of the blog] for "corruption in international adoption" or any of the countries mentioned, and you will be directed to the original source of these statements. You will find that you will end up reading publications such as Foreign Policy or Mother Jones, or directed to CNN and NPR. The stories do not get a lot of play in this country because the public does not want to know.

We have several adoptive mothers who regularly read this blog (see their posts above) and they know that we are not making this up, or accusing anyone directly of ordering someone to steal a child. But it happens. Adoption, particularly overseas adoption, is rife with corruption because there is a buck to be made by supplying the world with freshly-minted healthy babies.

As for adoptions in this country, religious organizations such as the Mormons and agencies with a strong Christian connection (such as Bethany) encourage women to give up their babies in large part simply to grease the wheels and keep the business of adoption going. You can even find websites that list adoption "situations" and show a price tag--white infants go for much more than African-American or mixed race babies.* Without "product," agencies would lose business and in fact, go out of business. And while you personally may be honoring your child's heritage and first/birth mother, many many adopting parents do not. In open adoption cases, they promise one thing and do another, and that is what happened to at least one of the people who has posted here. We do not hate those who adopt. We hate the system that takes babies from mothers and does not offer them the help they would need to keep and raise the child.

One last thought: you refer to the decision to relinquish a child as excruciating and selfless. Excruciating, right. Not selfless. And not "loving," as many adoptive parents like to say, and believe. If the most loving thing a mother could do was to give a child up for a better life, many, many poor mothers would be offering their babies freely. Giving up a child is totally an act of desperation, and surrender to what seems the obvious: that the mother does not have the money or the support system to raise that child. But she remains his or her mother for all her life. While you have been disturbed by much of what you read here, I hope this at least has made you rethink some of your assumptions. And if your son finds himself calling the other woman "mother," please accept that this does not diminish your role as "mom" and "mother" in his life. He knows he has two mothers, and I sincerely hope you can come to accept this with peace and equanimity.

peace to you--lorraine
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*With thanks to Osolomama for alerting us to this website.