Learning About One's Birth Family at the Kitchen Table

My husband's son and his family are visiting and last night as we sat around the dinner table, my husband, Tony, told stories of his mischievous youth to his grandson, who is ten-going-on-eleven.

There was the story about being found out playing with kids in houses under construction. His mother happened to drive by and catch him hanging from second-story rafters. She used a yard-stick on his behind afterward and grounded him for two weeks. (Corporal punishment! I can imagine that's how that would be interpreted--because, yes it technically is--by a social worker, but that sounds so much worse than the story in context.) Earlier in the day, the grandson mentioned to me and Tony that he was related to Franklin D. Roosevelt on his mother's side, a fact we had not known. Later in the evening, Tony and his son were reading side by side, and their common love of history and lifetime learning was evident, while grandson Dylan watched a science show on television.

I remember how pleased I was when my eleven-year-old granddaughter mentioned that she was determined to learn French when she could take a language--rather than Spanish. I don't think there was any way she knew then that I was a Francophile pretty much from the age of reason. She's seventeen now, and called the other day to say that next year she would go to France with her fourth year French class. And by now she does know, yes, I am a lifelong Francophile. Her prom pictures show her wearing long white gloves, just like the ones I wore to the prom, while the other girls in the picture have forgone the gloves. Yes! I said, she's my granddaughter all right! Jane has written before about hearing Megan, her daughter who was adopted, talk about how different she was from her sisters...while they all sat there in the Birkenstocks.

Though I never met her, I know that my father's mother was well educated in Poland, and came to this country at a young woman by herself--a rather daring feat. Here she was a bit of a rabble-rouser as she wrote letters to the newspaper in her small town in Pennsylvania (though I'm not sure which town the newspaper was in--Jenners, or Boswell, or an even larger town farther away) and for extra money (my grandparents were very poor, with six kids) made bathtub moonshine she sold for 50 cents a bottle. When she was caught, my grandfather took the rap and spent a night in jail. Cool grandma, I thought, but...handed down from a social worker that probably would have been translated into: Criminal activity--even imprisonment--in your family.

What does all this have to do with the resolution--A Right to Human Identity--that Jane wrote about in Wednesday's post, (6/16/09) and the author (Rev. Mark Diebel) of the resolution commented on? Just this: if we are not adopted, we learn a great deal about who we are from our ancestors and people who are genetically related to us in the daily course of our lives. Denying anyone the right to know whatever is possible to know about him or herself is so grievously wrong that the mind boggles at even trying to explain why. It simply is.

I'm bringing up Rev. Diebel's comments here because readers might otherwise miss them:

...the real point of the resolution is to assert that a person has a right to their history...in the case of birth it means knowing the identities of the parties involved. In the old times that meant parents. Today it means donors, surrogate mothers...commissiong parents...first mothers and fathers.

The means for passing on this information must be examined. I certainly hope that the resolution in the Episcopal Church can help put the discussion of this important subject in another forum.

The EP has no pull in the legislature. Statements like this serve to indicate how a group of people are coming to think. It has an indirect value (we hope!)--Mark Diebel

We need more adoptees making noise like this. We need more adoptees demanding their birth identities. We need change in our lifetimes. Act up and make it happen! --lorraine

Corruption in International Adoption? Highly Over-rated.

Rev. Mark H. Diebel of East Greenbush, NY, attended the 2009 Adoption Policy Conference on International Adoption, The United States, and the Reality of the Hague System, presented by the Center for Adoption Policy, The Child Advocacy Program of Harvard Law School, and The Justice Action Center at New York Law School on March 6 at the New York Law School. We met Mark a year ago when we were in Albany to lobby for open records; he’s a cool guy and an Episcopalian minister. An adoptee, he found his mother in Hawaii, and connected with a large family.

We asked him to share his impressions and thoughts about the conference. The keynote speaker was Elizabeth Bartholet, Harvard adopter of two from Peru and adoption-corruption enabler and author of Family Bonds, about the glories and rewards of international adoption. She told me when we appeared on PBS together the day Anna Schmidt was returned to her rightful parents from the DeBoers that her children were meant for her. In the introduction to Family Bonds, she reveals her underlying thesis that would lead to a Brave New World of adoption:

“It would be liberating for women and for their children if we were to enable birth parents to think more positively about giving their children to those who cannot bear children but who want to provide the nurturing piece of parenting.”

Why doesn’t she just come out and write: Hey, we’re rich, we want kids, let us have yours! She is a completely heartless on what it is like to relinquish your own flesh and blood.

So…without further ado, here are Mark’s impressions of the Conference:

What is the impact to International Adoptions of America's signing on to the Hague Convention?

William Bistransky, Chief of the Adoption Unity, Office of Children's Issues, Department of State; Anna Mary Coburn (DOS) attorney-advisor, Miki Stebbing (DOS); Richard Klarberg (Council on Accrediation); USCIS -- immigration services people explained details, answered questions from the audience, many of whom seemed to be adoption agencies and adopting moms, law students...representatives from Ethica, PEAR, NY Statewide Adoption Reform and one embassy representative from Kyrgyzstan.

Who was not on the panel? Not one international adoptee.

Things overheard during the meeting: an adoptive mom's thirty-something daughter is getting married. "Things do settle down," she said to the gathered adoptive parents. I thought, "Do adoptees have problems?"

Someone on a panel asked quite seriously, "Is poverty a reason to separate a child from their family?" Silence. The subject changed. I had the feeling that children from poor countries and their families had better be watching for well-meaning rescuers. This is another potential pool of ungrateful adoptees.

One howler from Dr. Bartholet was the statement that "heritage is over-rated." This was said in respect of the millions of children who are left to languish in appalling conditions because some people think that it would be better for them to remain in those conditions "with their heritage" than be "set-free" for international adoption. A response came from Karen Moline (member of PEAR) who called her out. "This sounds racist," says Moline, especially as she herself considered her adopted child who was from Vietnam.

Dr. B replied that she has been involved in civil rights in America all her life, and figures that one just has to take comments like this for standing up and saying challenging things...second, that her two adopted "children" were from Peru and wants them to think well of their heritage. She is concerned that the heritage argument is used to manipulate international adoption and reduce its attractiveness (my word.) (I think her "children" are in their twenties.) —True, they must be by now because the are pasts toddler stage when her book was published in 1993--FMF.

Corruption is important. A woman in the audiences talks about corruption in a Guatemalan adoption that she is directly involved with. Another woman trying to adopt from Guatemala tells the story that "her child" came with what turned out to be falsified DNA records. Apparently, doctors were colluding to falsify these records. The adoption faltered, the child remains in Guatemala. She wondered what could still be done to get the child to America. Someone I don't know, who runs an adoption agency that is involved with Guatemalan adoption, stood up shortly afterwards and complained that the Hague shut-down adoptions from Guatemala. Was it the Hague (Convention) that shut it down? Or was it the corruption? Her point was the corruption is minor, exceptional; and that adoptions from Guatemala should continue. (See Firstmother’s previous posts on the corruption in international adoption.)

I asked, can the Hague Convention provide a foundation for opening a new discussion in America for opening records? The reply came from Dr. B, who said how encouraged she is to see that records are getting opened across the country. Apart from that, not one word from the panel, but there were a few words of support from the audience. Someone said to me after, "what world is she from?"

The conference had good parts. There was food and refreshment; registration was free. There was opportunity to ask questions. The panels were informed about certain things, especially if you wanted to adopt a child internationally. A professor of social work from Virginia Commonwealth University complained that the conference design lacked any real engagement with adoption fraud, and no social workers who conduct home studies. Who designed this? How can one get international adoptees involved with policy discussions like this?

My final story is a personal one. After the conference I spoke to Dr. Bartholet. My adoptive uncle taught at Harvard Law and I wondered if she knew him. Yes, for many years. And she explained something I didn't know about how he got there. Then, she said, "I'm sorry about his death." I hadn't heard. When I told my wife that I had the "adoptee experience", she replied, "my family is screwed-up too. It's not just adoptee's." I said, "but I bet no one is looking to tell me."

How did I feel about the conference?

How did I feel? Hey I'm an adoptee. I'm still figuring it out. Am still getting over the fact there were no adoptees speaking at all. I thought...I should stand up and say thank you for all your hard work. But I am not grateful.

The passion exhibited on the panelist's part was all pro-adoption, about getting children to America. Very little self-criticism. No deconstruction going on, which was all strange since that is very "in-school" these days. Old school human rights talk...fifty years old. I did say to the group..."You all sound like my parents fifty years ago." I am too indirect perhaps?

[Self: Keep a low profile. Don't draw fire more than need be to survive.]

Was it a up or down for the overall conference?

Definite down in that it did fail to come to grips with the larger picture. Furthermore no discussion of things like family formation; gay/lesbian adoption; surrogacy.

For those interested, the conference was videotaped, and will posted on the NY Law School web site sometime in the next few months.

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New Post on adoptamania in the media coming Tuesday evening. --lorraine