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,

The promise of 'openness' lures vulnerable mothers-to-be

Jane

Promises of openness is a common gambit used to separate a mother from her newborn.  We at First Mother Forum believe that if an adoption has to happen, a fully open adoption in most cases is better for all than a closed or semi-open adoption. Unfortunately, too often an open adoption is offered as a panacea to persuade a mother who would otherwise nurture her child to give her/him up.  Too late the mother learns that promises by prospective adoptive parents for openness are not enforceable.

In 2004 first mother Cindy Jordan killed herself after the woman who adopted her child, psychologist Susan Burns, wrote a book on how she and her husband Scott, had conned Jordan into giving up her child with false
promises of openness.

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.

Explaining Adoption Reform Issues to the Hip, Educated Masses

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the reaction I get as a birth/first mother from people who are not familiar with adoption as it is and what's wrong with it, (Telling a Stranger What It's Like to be a Birth Mother), and how I frequently avoid the issue because it is rather wearing to have to jump on a soapbox and educate against possibly hostile reaction when you'd rather just kick back and relax. So here we are, Labor Day weekend, and good friends have a party, but a party with a fair number of people I know only slightly, or not at all.

Dark Ages Adoption Spewing over at Huffington Post

While the adoptasphere is abuzz with reaction to ABC's Find My Family--some of this is bound to reach the ears of legislators, so right on, I say!--over at The Huffington Post, nasty business is afoot in the form on a noxious column by an assistant professor of psychology, no less at Cornell Medical School. It's yet another frothing at the mouth of an adoptive parent, one Ms. Peggy Drexler.

Ms. Drexler sounds like a clone of that other professor of adoption fairy tales, Elizabeth Bartholet of Harvard. (And people wonder why adoption reform, or birth mothers, does not get more support from the feminist community, or which I am most certainly a member. Ah, my dear, this is why. Feminists form a large group of adopters. But I digress.

"Adopting a New Attitude" could have been written in the darkest Dark Ages of adoption, anytime from the Forties onward. What was wrong with the piece? Let me count the ways:

1) To show that adoption is not, "second best," Ms. Drexler quotes another adoptive mother: a quick witted, vivacious forty-seven year old, "totally present," blond, fair-skinned, green-eyed woman who looks like she was a high school cheerleader. She is now an adoptive single mother by choice to three beautiful brown skinned boys she adopted from Guatemala ages four, four and a half, and seven.

Hmm. I guess both Drexler and the extremely cool blond, fair-skinned, green-eyed (so far, she is describing me) could have been a cheerleader (I didn't make the team) woman has three children from Guatemala. I guess Drexler has not read the stories about mothers who were killed in order to take their children to be sold to unscrupulous adoption brokers in Guatemala, or otherwise she might have chosen another blond, fair-skinned, green-eyed adopter. Or not come upon the story about the prospective adoptive mother who noticed that something was amiss with the papers the adoption lawyer in Guatemala presented her and called off the adoption. Now, that's a woman after my own heart. But I digress.

Yet what is going on here is that Ms. Drexler is making a saint of a woman who very likely has stolen children as the focal point of her story about how adoption is not Second Choice, which is the title of a very good memoir by adoptee Robert Andersen, M.D., that comes with blurbs from no less than Betty Jean Lifton, Joyce Maquire Pavao, and Annette Baran, good folks all, two of them adopted themselves.

2) I could hardly contain myself when I saw the "expert" she brought in to give gravitas to her piece: Mike McMahon, the director of the Gladney Center for Adoption. That's right, Drexler attempts to prove her point about how great adoption is and how we should "adopt a new attitude" about it by the director of the agency that has been a main proponent of sealed records and only reluctantly, when its business was going south because they were not doing open adoptions, did the agency change its tune, and yes, today, young maidens, you can have a open adoption at this nefarious agency. This is like asking the head of Goldman Sachs what's good about giving millions of dollars in bonuses to top performers with the government's bailout money. Really, Arianna, where is your critical ability? Not evident here.

Let's not forget that Gladney of Fort Worth is one of the leading adoption agencies in the country! It's where rich folk and movie stars have gone to get their American babies for generations! (Though today, they have a lucrative international market. From their website: The Gladney Center for Adoption is one of the oldest [Ed: 120  years!] and largest maternity homes and adoption agencies in the United States, placing more than 28,000 children in permanent homes and assisting more than 37,000 birth mothers. In addition to placing children born in the United States, Gladney's intercountry program is committed to finding permanent homes for children in other countries. Adoption opportunities are available in several countries around the world including Eastern European, Asian, African and Latin American countries.

Our guy Mike was recently nominated for an Angels in Adoption by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, whose child a few years ago came from...you got it, Gladney. Even the name kinda creeps me out--Gladney, it sounds sinister, but maybe that's just me. Rumor has it that Troy Dunn of The Locator, who is kind of a Bat Man for birth mothers, will not take on searches emanting from Gladney adoptions because they are so hard, so closed are those records at this infamous adoption bazaar. So, Mike, whose livelihood depends on a thriving adoption market, is the "expert" Ms. Drexler uses to show that adoption is so peachy-keen: "To the people who persist in assuming that adopted kids are somehow flawed," she writes, continuing, "Sure, adopted kids are over-represented in counseling," [McMahon] tells me. "But they are also over-represented at the orthodontist, the dermatologist, all those things, because we [adoptive parents] want to give them everything we can."

So adopted people are not over-represented among the troubled in our population, though numerous studies show that to be the case, even more likely to think about suicide as adolescents--only because their parents are such good parents they pay more attention and get their kids more therapy? Wait one moment--even adoptive parents, those without blinkers on--have done some of these studies. Seems that Ms. Drexler is probably too busy being her daughter's "true mom," as she puts it, to bother with petty details like that. I'm not going to argue about her comment thus makes me an "untrue" mother, because that kind of niggling is what adoptive parents are always doing--nearly passing out, it seems, when they hear the word "real" in front of a reference to we who carried them and gave birth to our children.  (Understand, please, I am not saying that adopted people come into the world with problems, but that adoption itself is the problem that manifests can lead to feelings of rejection that may cause psychological problems. As one psychiatrist said in court one day when I was there to testify for opening someone's birth records--and he was an adoptive father himself: Adoption is always painful.)

3) Back to Drexler. Her column ends with the same old chestnut about how the writer is not threatened by her daughter's curiosity about "her adoption status," because she, Ms. Drexler, knows that to be a "bona fide mother" you have to be there for every 2 a.m. bad dream, go to the soiree at school and hear your child sing, and listen to their complaints about who was not nice to them. Though she doesn't come out and actually say it that we who gave birth were no more than birth canals [which is how I have seen us referred to at RainbowKids], that is what she is implying. As well as, by omission, ignoring the pervasive influence of DNA. Wait til her daughter is a teenager. I hope Drexler checks back in with us again.

4) The frosting on the cake? The biographical note states that Ms. Drexler collected her "data" and "patterns" for her book, Raising Boys Without Men,  How Maverick Moms are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and a finalist for a "Better Life Award." (Feminism at work, again.) She is currently at work on a book about fathers and daughters. Sounds like it is permissible in her world to have a father if you are a girl, not so good if you are a boy--but then on this issue, I am so old school. Comments are still being posted over at the Huffington Post, so please add your two or four cents. (I am there, just incognito for a change.) Drexler and the her editor need to read them. This is one of my favorites: 

I worked with a professor at Stanford on a project with adoptive parents. We asked them to assign a reason for why the kid did well or failed a test. This is called attribution theory. Briefly, the results were: If they did well, it was because they, the adoptive parents, helped them study. If they did poorly it was because of genes! 

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Now I seriously have to get ready for tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day. Prepare that pie crust and cool it over night in the fridge! [I do make good crust, substituting a half cup of regular flour with Wondra.Which does wonders for flakiness.] Make that cranberry-lime-orange chutney! Make the pumpkin praline and pecan pie in the morning! Whip that cream with bourbon!
We are dining with friends, and those are my assignments. Ah, really, sometimes I wish I had a food blog. Since it would be nice to have a couple of adoption-free days, things might be quiet at the blog for a few days. Have a good day, y'all, and to those who are dreading it, remember, it's only one day.

Living in Interesting Times

Become a crusader and life never is boring...Today I'm thinking about that Arab curse that goes something like: May you live in interesting times.

A few months ago, as readers of Firstmotherforum know, I was scathingly attacked by a friend, a hot-shot bankruptcy lawyer and rainmaker, for having searched for my daughter and effecting a reunion with with her. Mind you, I've known "Aston" for nearly as long as I knew my daughter--since 1981. Aston started a cancer-care foundation for people who live on the East End of Long Island and my husband, Tony, is an active member of the board. We see Aston and his wife for dinner; we have mutual friends. Aston, incidentally, is godfather to the Chinese adoptee of mutual friends who have a home down the street. Aston and his wife,Marci, are childless; his mother argued against adoption and so they did not. I've known his wife for longer than I've been married, and I've been married 27 years. Shortly before this incident, she and I spent an afternoon together at a horse show. We're aren't, say, BFF, but we like each other.

Aston was not against adopted people searching and meeting their natural parents, but he was really against, really really against, first mothers searching. This would disrupt the adoptive family that has been getting on just fine, thank you, without interference, he insisted. He spoke of other mutual acquaintances who adopted from Gladney and then moved to Texas, where the wife was originally from, as really "taking a chance" because then the first mother might have an easier time finding them. (I don't know if this is one of Gladney's "open adoptions." Apparently the adoptive mother was worried about what the girl was eating during her pregnancy, and so at least knew something about her.) All of Aston's sympathy was for adoptive parents, who were there in the middle of the night, fixed the scraped elbow, read the nighttime stories, paid for orthodontics and SAT prep tests, et cetera. There was not an ounce of compassion for any first mother who searched. Marci, there at the dinner table also, said nothing. My husband felt she was anxious that Aston was going too far.

Finally, he asked: "What part of your pie chart in doing so is selfish? I just want to know." How do you answer that? The question was designed to make all first mothers who search look bad.

I have been quite torn up by this incident, for it made me acutely aware of how many people--including friends and acquaintances-- see me, a first mother who had the audacity to search, as well as the whole shebang of open records, particularly giving first mothers information about their children. We've got a lot of educating to do, and some people we will never reach. Aston represents legislators who will never vote for open records.

Except for answering the phone the time he called for my husband and I was curt, I have not spoken to him, or Marci. They have an annual party Thanksgiving weekend. I threw out the invitation. We did not RSVP. This morning I found an email from Marci asking if we are coming, that it's been too long since we've seen each other, signed "love." I have no hard feelings toward her at all.

In the larger world of searching and adoption reform, this incident is small potatoes. So what if my feelings are out of joint? Or even if this is the end of a friendship? This too will pass. I'm just venting today to friends who read this blog. You have to put aside the personal happenings and insults if you believe in a larger cause, one that you know is just and right, even when it seems everyone is against you. I know I sound hopelessly petty today, please forgive me, but I'm feeling blue.

Here is what I emailed Marci.

Dear Marci--

The conversation with Aston about adoption hurt deeply and has stayed with me and I would feel really uncomfortable coming to the party. Being a birth mother entails lifelong pain. It isn't something that happens once and you get over it. I have turned that into lifelong crusade both for opening sealed birth records for adopted people and the rights of mothers to find out what happened to the children they gave up. Aston's attack that night was therefore an attack on who I am so it is very hard for me now to know how to relate to him at all. It's also becoming increasingly awkward for Tony because of ------Foundation.

I tried to explain my feelings to Aston in a subsequent email but he never responded.

I'm very sorry because we have known each other for a long time--actually since before we had Tony or Aston in our lives. I don't know where we go from here.

This is one of those days I wish I didn't live in interesting times.
--lorraine

PS: In a day or two we'll be writing about international adoption.

Birth Mothers Attacked as Usual...or, Maybe I Need New Friends

I seem to be attracting fireballs lately--mainly because a) I'm writing about my daughter and telling people, so that brings up the whole idea that I found her, not the other way around; and b) I live in a world where adoptions are plentiful--everybody knows at least three people who have adopted and so far, so good. The kids are generally doing fine and so...the elephant in the room is the specter of the birth mother coming back.

That would be me.

So after just having had that horrible eruption with my close friend and neighbor, Yvonne, I got gob-smacked the other night by childless successful corporate attorney, also a friend. Call him Aston. He is godfather to one Chinese adoptee, who lives down the street from us, she's now fifteen; friend to another women who also has a Chinese girl, now fourteen; and one of his very best friends has a white son...from Gladney in Texas, one of the agencies that supports the National Council for Adoption.

Anyway, those are only the adoptions we know about that Aston is close to. God knows what started it, but he went on a long nasty harangue about how any birth mother coming back is always interfering, always upsetting this nice family, and after the parents have "invested" so much, both financially and emotionally, this WOMAN HAS NO RIGHT TO DO THAT!!!!

After I tried to make a case for the agony of not knowing, and gave him a brief history of sealed adoptions (Kansas and Alaska didn't count because they weren't big enough states) he came up with this question: What part of the pie chart of a birth mother who searches can be ascribed to self-interest? ....

Tell me, how do you answer that?

My husband Tony was there throughout and took Aston on as much as I did because that question left me speechless. The "discussion" might have taken place in a courtroom. Aston didn't know (why would he?) there was any research about birth mothers. Or the great mystery in the life of an adoptee. I did have him leave with both a copy of The Adoption Triangle and the Donaldson adoptee report. He's never had kids, when he and he wife wanted to adopt, his mother talked them out of it.

Damn, I can't even write about this without crying. All I know is that birth others are really seen as the pariahs by the elite class of adopters who have never been in the position of being poor, or feeling they had no options. Yvonne is one, Aston is another. Aston's wife, who did want to adopt quite badly, it came out, mostly said nothing but she at least got it that birth mothers would feel ...what is the word? Aston and I ended up using agony to refer to the pain birth mothers feel.

Here is what I emailed him the next day:

What I never got around to saying during your prosecutorial attack--the pie chart question seemed only designed to make birth mothers look bad and in doing so denigrate me--was that adoptees often want to be found because it indicates that their mothers do think about them, want to know them, want to know what happened, that the baby wasn't just dropped off and the woman/teenager went on with her life as if the child was a mere temporary inconvenience.

I'm just one person but I have had stacks of letters over the years thanking me for what I do from adopted people; what they want is for their mothers to find them. Adoption is painful, and keeping everything locked up--no matter who does the searching--does not make it less so. Only in the minds of people who have never walked the walk. Since you have such strong opinions that I'm in the wrong in such a major way, I hope you will take the time to read some of the material, including the birth mother survey that is at the site I sent yesterday. (you don't need to read it all, you can find the relevant sections from the TOC.

Unless you walked in my shoes, I don't think you can understand the depth of feeling that goes toward one's one flesh and blood. As someone one said, we can be casual about our own parents, but our kids always have us by the balls.

lorraine

In a message dated 09/07/08 10:10:49 Eastern Daylight Time, nccar@mindspring.com writes:

Lorraine,

I have given the following young lady your email and asked her to contact you, as her adoption was handled in New York. Please if you can pass her along to anyone who might be of assistance to her. She contacted me through the Care2 network.

Hello Ms. Roberta,

Thank you for responding to my inquiry. The main dilemma that I have been encountering is that I was born in Miami FL, but taken away from my mothers arms (when she moved up to NYC I might have been 1 yrs old) and put into foster care in Bronx, NY and that eventually led into an adoption by a family that was not well receiving of me as the adoptee. I somehow remembered from the time I was 4 1/2 yrs old that the foster care agency was located on 349 East 149th Street; Bronx, NY 10451 because of the building structure and the CitiBank logo on there; however, nobody knew the name of the agency that was once in the basement area of CitiBank back in 1984-1990's. I was told by CitiBank reps that that organization left during the 90's. This is the only detail I could recall of that has made me continue asking people if there's a way to get the agency's name during 1984. I even wrote Governor Pataki to please help me in this search and he replied with several agency's names in the Bronx and they claimed that I don't exist on their system.

I greatly appreciate your interest to assist me in any way, I hope to receive guidance if that's possible so that my life mystery can come to an end. Thank you so much for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Christina

Do you think this woman would feel that her birth mother was causing an unnecessary conflict in her life if she were to call upon her daughter?

One more thing, that I did not bring up that night: Aston's father was the guardian ad litem for the Schmidt/DeBoer child, Baby Anna/Jessica. Who argued in the Michigan court that the baby's best interests were with staying with the DeBoers....Who in my mind were nothing but baby snatchers as the real mother asked for the child back within the time limit but fought her for two years in the courts. Incidentally, the DeBoers later divorced.

Oh yeah, where did all this take place? At my dinner table, just the cozy four of us. I'd love to hear from other birth mothers about the reactions they get when it becomes clear they were the ones who did the searching.
--lorraine