Catelynn and Tyler's "semi-open" adoption closed!

When teens Catelynn and Tyler placed their newborn daughter Carly for adoption with Brandon and Teresa Davis on MTV's 16 and Pregnant in 2009, it was all that adoption was supposed to be and more. Catelynn and Tyler made the "loving" decision to give their baby a better life. Brandon and Teresa were the dream parents--attractive, professionals who wanted for nothing except a baby they could call their own. The facade began to crack early as Catelynn and Tyler continued to grieve from their loss of their daughter, and their relationship with Brandon and Teresa began to deteriorate. Last year Brandon and Teresa threatened to cut off contact because Tyler posted pictures of Carly on the internet contrary to their instructions.

'X' instead of a name on a birth certificate is just plain wrong

Lorraine and Jane at Rockefeller Center, 1982

A few days ago I read a story about Missouri adoptees born before 1941 being able to actually get their birth certificates, and dammit by the time I got to the end I was just furious that states are so slow to realize what sealed records have done to people!  Yes, they go about their lives and grow up, go the school, have jobs, get married, have children and all the rest, but in most states they still are unable to have that piece of paper that might unlock--most likely would unlock--the key to their identities: original birth certificates with the names of the parents.

How to arrange an ethical adoption

Dear First Mother Forum:

My spouse and I are moving forward with plans to adopt in the U.S. We are hoping for an infant adoption, using a non-profit agency with many years of experience. The agency only does open adoptions, which is what we want. The open adoption agreement would be legally enforceable, and we have no intention of betraying it in any event.

I am looking for resources/information that will help us ensure, to the fullest extent possible, that we (and our agency) are respecting the rights, concerns, perspectives, and needs of the birthparents and adopted children. And I want to make sure we solicit those resources not just from people who are cheerleaders for adoption, but also from people who are critics of the adoption system. That's why I'm writing you.

Also I noticed that you used the word "real" in the tagline for First Mother Forum.  Does that necessarily mean, in your view,

Catelynn and Tyler face reality

Lorraine

Natural mother Catelynn of the TV show Teen Mom was a sad person to watch last night as she sat talking to Teresa and Brandon Davis, the adoptive parents of her and Tyler's daughter, Carly. As you know, we have been quite critical of both Catelynn and Tyler for turning themselves into advocates for adoption.

But last night in the episode of Teen Mom OG where they meet Teresa and Brandon after a year they came across as merely young natural parents coming to terms with the reality of giving up a child: They are and will be the underdogs in the parenting equation. Their contact with daughter Carly is dependent on the permission of Brandon and Teresa.

Tyler Baltierra's adoption regrets

Jane

"This whole adoption thing was supposed to be a lot different in my opinion," said an angry Tyler Baltierra on MTV's Teen Mom OG (Original Girls) aired Tuesday night. He had just posted a video on Fan.com of the daughter he and his girlfriend Catelynn Lowell relinquished for adoption five years earlier, named Carly. Catelynn cautioned Tyler that Carly's adoptive parents had warned them not to post pictures of Carly. "What happens if they get mad and say you're not going to see her any more?" she asked. Then, if she were talking to someone considering giving up a child, she added, "You have to make sure you pick the right people for you."

Tyler exploded: "That's a huge thing--if any pregnant woman is watching this, pick the right couple and make sure you go over everything."

Embryo 'adoption' just creeps us out

Jane

 A reader asked us what we think about embryo adoption. She and her husband have nine embryos left over after creating a baby through in vitro fertilization. She cannot carry another child, but she and her husband do not want to destroy the frozen embryos or donate them to science, which is basically the same thing.

The idea of creating a child to be raised by genetic strangers is just wrong. Child adoption at least has a socially valuable underpinning--to provide a home for a child who needs one. Embryo adoption exists solely to meet the needs of adults, those who believe life begins at conception and those who want children.

How the Internet is changing adoption

Jane

"One of the most disquieting aspects of adoption on the Internet (as well as through other venues) is the way services are sometimes marketed. ...Some [sites] commodify children and/or women, essentially describing them as products to be marketed, others provide only partial or questionable information," according to a new report, Untangling the Web, from the Donaldson Adoption Institute, a progressive adoption think tank.

We first mothers know this to be true, but to read it from a source that cannot be dismissed as another "bitter birth mother" is encouraging. Infant adoption has become a profitable business for many, providing children to those who can pay large sums rather than a method of providing families for children who need them.

The Lost Post regarding the issues of Tyler and Catelynn, reconstructed

Carly, Brandon and Teresa Davis and new baby in Bethany ad

In a series of unfortunate events last night I inadvertently erased the whole post here. I had wrapped up the current commotion with Tyler Baltierra of Tyler and Catelynn of 16 and Pregnant and of late, Teen Mom. Having relinquished their daughter, they have become spokesteens for Bethany Christian Services. They give talks at colleges and high schools, showing how well their "adoption plan" worked out for them. Talks, in other words, that can only encourage other teens to give up their babies. Tyler prefers that I use the language, "made an adoption plan" in reference to them, as if that made a difference to what happens to a child borne of one mother and given to another woman to raise.

I am recreating some of what was lost with new material.

Not being a frequent watcher of Teen Mom, yet trying to keep up with the breathless adventures of this couple--he's sleeping outside overnight to raise money for charity, she's gone to the East Coast to

Tyler of 16 and Pregnant Tells FMF Off!

Tyler and Catelynn

Tyler Baltierra, of Sixteen and Pregnant fame, of Tyler and Catelynn, has found First Mother Forum, and basically told us we are full of it: for criticizing them for making an adoption plan for their daughter, whom he says isn't his daughter any more. He left us a comment which we're copied below.

Tyler is upset with what he calls Lorraine's incorrect information regarding the degree of openness that their "adoption plan" has, and that she used harsh language in reference to giving up a baby. But, Tyler, no matter what you call it, a child who is adopted is likely to grow up with abandonment issues, no matter how you paper over the decision not to raise your own child and give her up to a "better life," no matter how much you "researched" adoption beforehand.

International Adoption: The Abuse Continues

Jane

Just after I wrote the previous post, "Utah agency places cast-off international adoptees" about Wasatch International, which places, or attempts to place, foreign adoptees who have been rejected by their adoptive families, one of our readers, Sara, sent us a link to a horrific case of abuse of foreign adopted children by their adopters.

According to reporters Molly Born and Paula Reed Ward of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Kristen and Douglas Barbour adopted two Ethiopian children in March. By October--five months later--the Barbours were in court, charged with "starving their six-year-old son and leaving him with lesions from being kept in urine-soaked clothing for long periods of time." As for the girl, the charge read, "The 18-month-old girl will likely be blinded in one eye and paralyzed after suffering head trauma."

Catelynn and Tyler--still grieving over the loss of their daughter

Catelynn and Tyler talk to Carly on her birthday

When Catelynn and Tyler relinquished their newborn daughter Carly to Brandon and Teresa Davis on the reality show 16 and Pregnant, Catelynn said as she left the hospital, “I’m at peace with my decision.”

That peace was short-lived. As they are preparing for Carly’s second birthday, presented on Teen Mom, Catelynn tells Dawn, their counselor at Bethany Christian Services, “I’m definitely more at peace than I was a year ago [on Carly’s first birthday].” Tyler blurts out the hard truth, “Adoption is a constantly coping process. I don’t know when you fully cope with it” Catelynn adds “I think it goes on for your whole life.”

How adoption agencies 'turn' vulnerable women into spokespeople for relinquishing

Catelynn and Tyler, spokespeople for Bethany

Is adoption in America a business? Yes, it is a billion-dollar a year business. How do you get more babies to satisfy the customers, the prospective adoptive parents? How do you get other women to give up their babies? 

You get still-stunned mothers who have relinquished their children recently--brand new birth mothers to jump in and convince others that they too can do the "right" thing by giving up their children to better fixed folks. Catelynn and Tyler of Sixteen and Pregnant and Teen Mom

Former Bethany "recruiter" speaks up

First Mother Forum received this anonymous comment today, but it is too heart-breaking and revealing to leave to a comment that few will ever find. As I can hardly type for the time being* I thought I would post it because what this first mother writes about that occurred in the Eighties--when she relinquished--is still certainly happening today, as we have learned from following the Catelynn and Tyler story. So I am just posting this here today:

I relinquished through Bethany's "counselor" in the 80s. Just weeks later, I was recruited to speak on their behalf (on Q&A panels for potential adoptive couples).

No Matter How Adoption is Done, Grief Remains for Mothers

“Putting an end to secrecy in adoption does not erase the grief or loss embedded in the adoption experience” according to the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute March, 2012 report, Openness in Adoption: From Secrecy and Stigma to Knowledge and Connections. With that caveat, the institute strongly endorses openness in adoption because "ending secrecy empower(s) participants by providing them with information and access so they can face and deal with facts instead of fantasies.”

IF adoption is necessary, we at First Mother Forum concur that openness is not only better but essential in voluntary infant adoptions.

Cultivating a Culture of Adoption

Jane

“Adoption is the natural result of our redemption.” I came across these words when I Googled “Culture of Adoption” looking for follow-up materials to my article “Does Adoption Run in Families?. The words came from an article by Carolyn Curtis, “Cultivating a Culture of Adoption”* in the Presbyterian Church in America’s web magazine.

BUYER BEWARE: Bethany 'Christian' Services scams customers and steals identities from the (adopted) infants

Want to know how much adoption agencies reveal about the children they "offer"? The New York Times has a not very nice story about Bethany Christian Services: In Lawsuit on Adoption, Focus Is on Disclosure.

Yes, it's another Russain adoptee story with a child with serious alcohol fetal syndrome. The parents were assured he was a normal "on target" child and did not reveal all that they knew, until years later when someone at this "Christian" organization came up with a ten-page (ten page!) medical and psychological report on the boy. 

Georges de la Tour (1593-1652), The Newborn, 1640s

I do not want to rail against these poor children, what I want to point out is that Bethany "Christian" Services is anything but Christian in the sense the word implies. The agency sucks big time. Let us not forget while this slimeball of an agency--perhaps the largest in the country, with outlets everywhere--is also among the leaders against giving adopted people their unamended, original birth records, no matter when, no matter how. I hope more lawsuits bankrupt this awful agency, one of the biggest supporters of the National Council for Adoption [check out the list of member agencies if you doubt, at NCFA's website], also adamantly against giving adopted people any rights. It's all about the adoptive parents and their ability to bankroll the agency, and NCFA. 

And do take a look at the story up on the sidebar from Atlanta, about non-profit adoption agencies: Nonprofit adoption agencies often profit someone other than children, families. Yeah, I'm feeling pissed off today at the adoption racket.--lorraine 
___________________
Without a Map (at right) is one of the best birthmother/first mother memoirs I've ever read. Highly recommended. See also: Swimming Up the Sun: A Memoir of Adoption, Love Child: A Memoir of Adoption, Reunion, Loss and Love, Lucky Girl: A Memoir and, er, my own memoir: Birthmark.

What Rights do First/Birth Mothers Have? Not many in the US

Allowing first/birth mothers access to the names of their children after being adopted is an issue that does not come up in the United States in the battle to give adoptees their original birth certificates. Given the way some legislators act about first mothers--that most of us are all still cowering in the closet and fear contact from our children--a lot of them would keel over if we started lobbying to be included in the legislation.

After all, what rights do we have? We are the poor women who had the babies we couldn't care for, and we ought to thank our lucky stars that someone else came along and took over.

Yet there is enlightenment across the border in Canada. In Ontario as of June 1, first mothers are able to get their children's new names--unless the individual has filed a disclosure veto, and vice versa. Yes, it's true! Here's how the official Canadian website outlines the law:

Adopted adults and birth parents also have the option to protect the privacy of their post-adoption birth information. Adopted adults and birth parents can:

• file a notice of contact preference to specify how they would like to be contacted
  
• file a no contact notice if they do not want to be contacted, but are willing to have their identifying information released
  
• file a disclosure veto if the adoption was finalized before September 1, 2008. This will prevent identifying post-adoption birth information from being released.

As of June 1, approximately 1,100 people--closely divided between adoptees and first parents--had asked that identifying information NOT be released to the other party, according to Canada's premier newspaper, the Globe and Mail. That's less than half a percent of the estimated 250,000 adoptions since 1921 the new law covers. Since this law was hotly contested in Ontario, one assumes that most people became aware of this provision through the many stories in the media. Another 1,400 filed affidavits indicating the identifying information can be released but they wish no contact, or how they might like to be contacted, such as by email. The "no-contact" preference includes a steep penalty if it is violated.

The Canadian law makes me want to stand up and cheer.

While any rights for first mothers are not even whispered as we work for adoptee access to their original identities, it was not always so in the U.S. of A. As one of the old war horses involved in adoption reform for a long time, I remember that back in 1980 when the then U.S. Health and Human Services Department proposed changes in the adoption law, giving first mothers the new names of their children upon reaching adulthood (can't remember if it was 18 or 21) was amazingly enough included. Before the proposed legislation was written, hearings were held all over the country. Florence Fisher, B.J. Lifton, and I were among the many many people who testified at Columbia University to testify for such openness in adoption. Lee Campbell, founder of Concerned United Birthparents, served on the advisory committee (and was the only first mother who was) which wrote the legislation. Here is the wording from that long-forgotten Model Adoption Act:

“There can be no legally protected interest in keeping one’s identity secret from one’s biological offspring; parents and child are considered co-owners of the information regarding the event of birth….The birth parents’ interest in reputation is not alone deserving of constitutional protection.”

We did have some support in Congress, but we also had a strong foe in the late Senator John Tower of Texas, adoptive father, known drunk and womanizer in DC, as well as the National Council of Adoption. To those who do not know, NCFA is a consortium of adoptive agencies (including Mormon [LDS] and Bethany Christian Services) who have been opposed to openness in adoption from their origin. In fact, NCFA is a direct outgrowth of the movement for open adoptions. The Gladney agency in Texas is a founding member.

Somewhere in my voluminous files I have the original 1980 bill, and when I can fish it out I will post the wording that speaks more directly to first mothers and their rights.

In the meantime, what do First Mother Forum readers think? Adopted people, first mothers, adoptive parents, let us know. --lorraine