96-year-old mother meets adopted daughter--after 82 years!

Lorraine at work

Reunion stories are becoming more and more common, the news media loves them, and each one should be celebrated because each is another nail in the coffin of sealed records as A Good Thing. Instead of that, sealed birth records represent social engineering run amuck.

We don't write about them often at FMF, but every now and then one tugs at one's heart strings more than usual, or has a message beyond simple reunion relief. That is the case today.

An 96-year-old mother was found and reunited with her daughter of 82! And in the Very Sealed Records State of New York.

Lena Pierce was only 14 when she had a child in 1933 in Utica. She cared for her baby, whom she named Eva May, for six months until the state of New York intervened,

Is LDS Family Services getting out of the adoption business?

Lorraine

According to a source that seems to have the juice, LDS Family Services will be getting out of the adoption business ENTIRELY at the end of 2013. My source says that the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints will no longer be doing adoptions, and they are letting go all of their adoption-related staff prior to Christmas. They also say they will continue to offer their "free lifelong counseling" to the women who have already lost a child to their system.

The source, who says that this was confirmed by a friend who is a social worker for LDS Family Services, says this had been rumored to be in the works for about two years. While there is likely to be no official reason given by the LDS church as to why it is getting out of the adoption business, "but within the rank and file workers, it is thought to be because of the pending lawsuits against LDSFS in relation to father's rights, as well as the "gay adoption issue."

'Re-Homing': Dumping unwanted adopted kids

Nicole Eason "Big Momma" 

Nicole Eason took six children from adoptive parents, anxious to rid themselves of the children they had "rescued." Eason, who calls herself "Big Momma," told adoptive parents she was "awesome with kids" and presented them with a letter of recommendation she claimed came from a social worker. In truth, she wrote it herself using a form she found on the Internet. Yet it was enough for desperate adoptive parents unable to cope with the children they adopted to give Eason custody of the children. Unknowingly, the parents placed the children in a house of horrors.

Spence-Chapin out of the infant adoption business

Is that Grandpa or Dad on the right?

One of the best known and biggest adoption agencies in New York City, Spence-Chapin, is stopping infant adoptions which it has been doing for over a century. This change, not yet reported on S-C's website, is explained in an August, 2013 letter to the "Spence-Chapin Community," which a reader shared with First Mother Forum. Maud Welles, the Board Chair and Emily Forhman, the Executive Director, explained that the declining number of infants and young children available for adoption due to the "reduced stigma of single parent households, increased access to birth control, family unification programs, in-country adoption programs, and difficult bureaucratic or political policies" necessitated this change.

President Obama's mother making an adoption plan? Unthinkable.

President Obama

Before President Barack Obama was born, his parents may have considered putting him up for adoption reports Sally Jacobs, author of The Other Barack, The Bold and Reckless Life of President Obama’s Father. The senior Obama told immigration officials that he and his wife, Ann Dunham, would “’make arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away.'”

Is there a universal right to know one's heritage? Part 2

Lorraine

Whether or not there is a universal "need" to know one's specific origins, or an inborn natural curiosity that we all carry within our breast, has been the subject of an ongoing debate at the previous blog,* The universal need to know who you are. 

Little children--before they know they are not supposed to ask--all ask the question about the beginning of their lives. How did I get here? Where did I

The Latest Craze: Giving Away Baby

Unlike fellow blogger Linda, I was not stunned at reading what was purported to be a response to a request for feedback from birthmothers on the online adoption agency, AdoptHelp.

“I am not aware of any birth mothers who regret their decision” claims the unidentified writer. I saw this as a marketing gimmick, probably coming from an employee of AdoptHelp’s PR department. Testimonials from apparently satisfied customers is a time honored way to snare in innocents whether you’re talking about Wall Street (think Bernie Madoff) or the Stork Market.

Birthmother Melissa Busch, who also goes by Melissa Valencia-Manerini, takes it a step farther, exulting her adoption experience on the Huffington Post as “amazing, positive, and has continued to feel like the best possible choice I could have made at the time” just as her decision “to have an abortion many years later” was. Busch is a board member of Portland’s largest domestic adoption agency, Open Adoption & Family Services, a fact she does not disclose on Huff Po.

Busch notes that it is difficult to answer the question “Do you have any children?” because of society’s negative view of the type of woman who would give her baby away and a lack of public understanding of “genuinely open adoption which has revolutionized adoption practices and the experiences of all parties involved.” Busch argues that adoption ”is a legitimate pregnancy option for all women faced with a pregnancy decision” and there is “nothing strange, scary, secretive or shameful about it.”

We at First Mother Forum agree that openness in adoption is a positive step and that women who lost their child to adoption should not be shamed but beyond that Busch loses us. Treating adoption as just another consumer choice (do you want fries, coleslaw, or fruit with your burger?) or worse, as a matter of pride, is baffling. This is, after all, a child, not a choice.

The birthmothers that we know and who post on this blog had few options. In fact, many had no option but surrender. Busch, however, was in a relatively comfortable position. She tells us that she and her daughter’s father were very much in love and, until her eighth month of pregnancy, they were going to “parent.” However, she continuously felt “that what I could give emotionally, physically and financially was not enough to be the kind of parent I wanted to be.” (It crosses my mind that her feelings of inadequacy may come from reading too many books on child-rearing which make the most natural of acts incredibly complex while promoting zillions of expensive baby gadgets.)

Although Busch tell us that her relationship with her daughter has "grown over the years," Busch does not tell us how her daughter feels about her mother's unwillingness to “parent” her. It may be that Busch has never thought to ask her.

What’s really scary is that we may be seeing the beginnings of a new craze. Just as adopting has become fashionable in many communities so may be surrendering. Instead of boasting about where your child is going to college (my son planned to go to State U until Harvard gave him a full scholarship), mothers may jump for joy when that thick envelope arrives accepting their unborn child into Spence-Chapin.