Mandated counseling for mothers-to-be

Jane

As I was reading Montana's new law allowing adoptees access to their original birth certificates,* I came across its law mandating counseling for mothers prior to relinquishing their parental rights. I was blown away!

For starters, the law mandates that mothers must have a minimum of three hours of counseling that includes information about keeping the baby, resources to help them keep their baby, options for continuing contact between the birth and adoptive families, and post-adoption grief and loss.

This is information that segments of the adoption industry don't want parents to know. For a close up view of what happens when adoption decisions are made without full information, just watch Catelynn Lowell

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."

Second daughter brings joy to Catelynn, Tyler

Happy mom Catelynn

"I actually get to feel happy about leaving the hospital," Tyler Baltierra tweeted as he prepared to take his new daughter, Novalee, and her mother, long time girl friend, Catelynn Lowell, home from the hospital last month according to E News. "Crying happy tears instead of sad ones feels amazing! I don't have to be heart broken this time."

Tyler, you didn't have to heart-broken when you left the hospital after Catelynn gave birth to your baby five years ago. Then Tyler and Catelynn handed their daughter, Carly, to adoptive parents Brandon and Teresa Davis, an affluent couple who lived in North Carolina, far from Catelynn and Tyler's home in rural Michigan, making visits difficult and costly. Surely there were willing parents not several states away.

Considering an open adoption? What you should know

Jane

Although we at First Mother Forum don't think of ourselves as the Suzy Orman of the adoption world, we recognize that much of what takes place in this world is similar to financial transactions. We've written the following piece to help mothers who have decided on adoption protect their and their child's rights to the openness they need and deserve.

This is a draft. We ask our readers to add their thoughts. We'll incorporate their ideas and post this as a permanent page.

About 14,000 to 18,000 voluntary infant adoptions take place each year and virtually all of them have some degree of openness. We at FMF have learned, however, that mothers surrendering their infants often have little idea of the different kind of open adoptions and are unaware that they can negotiate the terms of open adoption agreements. Often mothers are

The lie behind the question: Aren't those kids better off adopted?

Jane

Aren't kids better off adopted? That's the underlying argument of adoption apologists who feel the answer is an obvious yes. "Maybe mothers were misled about adoption or fathers were tricked by Utah's laws into losing their rights, but at the end of the day, aren't the kids better off with living in an intact family with more money who can give them better opportunities?"

Now that shame no longer propels young women to give their babies to strangers, the adoption industry relies on "better off" to acquire children. Mothers aren't giving up their babies; they are giving them more. American Adoptions, for example, claims that: "...birth mothers are choosing life for their child--a life complete with all of the hugs, laughter and lullabies that they desire for them.... Birth mothers place their babies into the arms of eternally grateful

How does a baby feel about being a "gift"?

Lorraine and her daughter, 1982

Catelynn and Tyler continue on as stars of TV trash...or "America's sweethearts." After their star turn on Sixteen and Pregnant in which they give the "gift" of their baby to an infertile but stable and older couple in a "semi-open" adoption, they went on to be featured in Teen Mom. We saw her in labor, heard her express dismay that the adoption was not more "open," heard about the house they bought, Catelynn's weight gain and Catelynn's weight loss, their shilling for Bethany Adoption Services and promoting adoption at high schools and colleges around the country, and now--weeks away from their July 15 wedding, they are in another reality TV series, Couples Therapy on VH1.

Well, last night in the opening moments of the show Catelynn and Tyler came smack up against some hard reality from one of the other people on this show, Flava Flav, whose own really tacky reality show seemed to be about him finding a girlfriend. Now here he is with his own real life girlfriend, the mother of his son, who has been there all the time. What happened when Flava Flav and Catelynn and Tyler meet is priceless. He wonders why they could be in couple therapy--they are young and in love, right?

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.

When an agency promises 'semi-open' adoption, look elsewhere

Lorraine

What is wrong with a "semi-open" adoption?

Just about everything.

As a birth mother, you are at the mercy not only of the agency, and its commitment to keeping the adoption semi-closed--let's be frank, that's what it is--but also at the mercy of the adoptive parents to keep up contact. If they do not want to, birth/first parents have no recourse through the legal system in most states to keep the information channels open. Whenever we write about this travesty, we get more comments from first mothers who were lied to by adopters, and whose contact with them ended without warning.

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.”

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).

What are the happy birth moms celebrating?

Note: For those coming here from Tyler Baltierra's Tweet, we have answered his rant against us and published it at a current post:   Tyler of 16 and Pregnant Tells FMF Off!

 (Below is the original post that he first responded to)

 November 18, 2012 8:39 AM

Lorraine

Open adoption or keeping the baby? We know that while overall very few teens--around one percent*--give up their babies for adoption anywhere anymore, the United States is far ahead of other developed nations in this regard. This is not a statistic to be cheering about--even if the impact of giving up a child in a fully open adoption does not lead to the depth of sorrow that we mothers from closed adoptions have dealt with. This is the perceived wisdom of those who compare the effect of closed adoptions versus open adoptions on the mothers who relinquish their children.

In the recent Donaldson report, Openness in Adoption, the authors state that the degree of openness generally does not affect their level of behavioral or socio-emotional adjustment [to being adopted]. The Minnesota-Texas Adoption Research Project study found, however, that higher degrees of collaboration in the adoptive kinship network [emphasis added] were associated with better

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.

Choice is largely a myth when it comes to relinquishing a child

Jane

SURRENDERS BASED ON MISINFORMATION ARE NOT CHOICES

"Julia,"* a 30-year-old married professional woman who learned her husband was having an affair gave up her new born son for adoption, a story that we have been writing about in the last two posts.  We wrote critically of her decision, but back tracked somewhat, recognizing that Julia was more sinned against than sinning. “Anonymous” commented that Julia was “a woman who has freely chosen to surrender, evidently was not forced to this choice. … Whatever happened to the concept of informed choice, even when another person's choice is not the one you wish you had made?” (Emphasis added.)

Since the infant adoption system in the U.S. does little to assure that mothers surrendering their babies are informed about the consequences, it's almost certain that Julia did not make an informed choice as Barbara Thavis, one of First Mother Forum readers, commented:

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.

Open or closed: Losing a child to adoption is painful

An adoptive mother asked recently whether those of us in the Baby Scope Era would have had less pain if we had had an open adoption. (The Baby Scoop Era is the period between World War II and Roe v. Wade when a large number of single middle class white women lost their infants to adoption because of the stigmas placed on unwed mothers and their children.

When my relinquished daughter was born in 1966, I thought that it would be wonderful if  I could have some continuing contact with her. I envisioned a secret child whom I would communicate with through a trusted friend.  I fancied myself like the Bette Davis character, Apple Annie, in the 1961 film Pocketful of Miracles. Annie, a disheveled old woman sold apples on a street corner  to support her daughter hidden in a Spanish convent. 

Catelynn & Tyler's open adoption will stay open; for other first mothers, not so much

 Lorraine

Breaking News: First Mother Carla Moquin lost her case to have the adoption of her daughter overturned because the adopters, Susan Englert and Demyn Platenberg, went back on their open adoption promises. Carla is planning to appeal to the California Supreme Court.  Now back to the regular programming:

Before we leave Catelynn and Tyler, America's most celebrated birth/first parents, it's obvious that their decision to relinquish their

Should the Goverment Encourage Women to Choose: The Adoption Option, Part Two

Jane

"Birth mothers who participated in more recent open adoptions... found that approximately two-thirds reported a feeling of peace about their decision and were very certain they would make the same decision again." This data, reported in The Adoption Option, a report from the Center for American Progress, is from a 1997 study in Marriage and Family Review, and we do not know more about the first mothers who participated in the survey, or the number of them, or how soon after relinquishment did they participate, and if the study was under the auspices of an adoption agency, where the outcome would be influenced by the survey taker.*

Lorraine

We suspect many of those "at peace" were like Catelynn, a young first mother featured in People, struggling not to cry as she insisted she and Tyler, the baby’s father, did the right thing. When last heard from, the Catelynn and Tyler were planning their nuptials and were hoping that their daughter, now being raised by a North Carolina couple, could be their flower girl.