After reunion, birth father rejects returning daughter

Lorraine

Dear FMF: 

I am a 44-year-old adoptee who found my birth parents this year. My birth father had listed himself in a mutual consent registry in California 15 years ago, but I didn't find out until I spent a year getting my non-identifying information. He stayed with his teenage girlfriend while she was pregnant with me, and when he married (someone else), he told his wife he had a child who might show up one day. Through him I was able to meet my mother, and that is going well. 

My birth father and I had a warm and emotional first meeting in a local park, and met there again two weeks later with my two-year-old daughter. He did not invite me to meet his family, he said, because of upcoming surgery.

Hearing from the (birth) father of a relinquished child

Linda 

What about the fathers of our children? Or, as they are called today, baby daddies? When we don't marry them and they drop out of the lives of first mothers, what happens? Today we know of fathers who fight to keep the children the mothers insist on relinquishing, but those stories from an earlier era have not surfaced, though some children must have been brought into the father's family.

But for the rest of us, do we ever hear from the men who impregnated us again? Do we want to hear from them again? Were you in love with him and has that colored how you feel about him now? How would we act if they simply popped up again? Do we feel a bond with them because of the child lost to adoption? Did you marry the father after relinquishment?

Fathers: Are they necessary?

Jane

The adoption industry uses fathers--or the absence of them--as a wedge to convince mothers to give up their babies. Fathers who stick around, create a problem for the industry. The industry characterizes them as an obstacle to the best interests of a child. The adoption industry's message to single pregnant women: your baby needs a father, but not the bum who got you pregnant.

LOSING A MOTHER TO GAIN A FATHER
"A child needs a mother...and a father." I'm sure I heard these words more than once in a TV show, spoken by an all-knowing social worker (or parent, teacher, clergyman) to a scared single woman who wanted to keep her baby: The words repeated endlessly in my mind when I was faced with having a child without a husband.

Adoption Nation is No Country for Birth Mothers

Jane

Adam Pertman’s Adoption Nation: (second edition) is a grateful adoptive parent’s accolade to adoption disguised as a treatise. Pertman is the often quoted Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute,
but he doesn’t get it when it comes to birth mothers. As in the first edition, Pertman gives lip service to first/birth mothers’ pain but quickly diverts the readers’ attention to the stories of a handful of women who become “true believers in adoption” with “no regrets.” As a first mother reading this book, I could not forget that Pertman is an adoptive father of two.

Pertman minimizes the pressures and in some cases the outright corruption which cause mothers in the United States and abroad to lose their children. In his zest for all things adoption, he ignores the opinion of recognized child welfare experts--including that of his employer, the Donaldson Institute, that “”Every society, including our own, accepts that it is generally in the best interests of children to be raised by their biological parents unless they cannot or do not wish to.“*

Would I have found my daughter if I had married her father?

Jane and Lorraine in 1983

Just an add to yesterday's blog about a confidential intermediary's comment about married birth/first parents who reject contact and reunion when sought by the individual who had been relinquished: I hope it is a reflection of adoptions back several decades, and not recent ones, as a great many adoptions today are open (though we know many close), and the first mother is NOT promised anonymity and so there is no thought of her disappearing into the woodwork forever.

But what of closed adoptions today?

Biological Dad Seeks Return of His Son; Adopters Resist, Claiming: Best Interests

Sellersburg family continues fight for adopted son
Talk about courts that delay and laws that are stacked against natural parents of children! This is another case of what is out-and-out child snatching passively approved by our slow-moving legal system in America. But at least in this case an Ohio judge saw the light of right and has ordered that the three-year-old in question, now called Grayson Vaughn, be returned in 48 hours to his rightful, natural father. However, since the prospective adopters live in Indiana, they have been fighting the return of the child to his father in both states.

Utah to Birth Fathers: Go Back to the Grave!

Until 1972, laws governing fathers were simple: “unless you’re wed, you’re dead.” Utah like other states, would like to keep fathers entombed. Twenty-one year old single father John Wyatt is very much alive, however, and wants to raise his baby daughter, Emma. With help from his mother, Jeri, and Emma’s mother, Emily Colleen Fahland, he should have no problem. Wyatt deserves accolades for stepping up to the plate when other unmarried fathers would have hidden in the dugout. Instead the State of Utah threw him a curve ball and called him out.

Wyatt’s story is just one in a string of cases that began when the US Supreme Court held in 1972 that state laws could not obliterate fathers. Back to that in a minute. First a recap of Wyatt’s struggle.

When Fahland of Woodbridge, Virginia learned she was pregnant, she began discussions with A (sic) Act of Love, a Utah adoption agency. According to Wyatt, however, she told him they would raise the baby together. When Wyatt learned of Emma’s birth, he rushed to the hospital where the officials lied to him, telling him Fahland and the baby were not there. Shortly after the birth, an employee of A (sic) Act of Love took Fahland and Emma to a nearby hotel where Fahland signed a consent to adoption. The prospective adoptive parents, Chandra and Thomas Zarembinski, who were at the hotel as well, took Emma to Utah two days later and filed a petition to adopt her.

Wyatt filed for custody in Virginia, six days after Emma’s birth and three days before the Zarembinski’s filed their petition for the adoption. The Virginia trial court ruled that the adoption could not proceed without Wyatt’s consent. A Utah trial court refused to honor the Virginia decision, ruling that Wyatt had waited too long to file his Virginia action under Utah law. Wyatt has appealed to the Utah Court of Appeals. Since Wyatt, Fahland, and Emma were all residents of Virgina, the Utah trial court should have honored the Virginia decision. If the Utah Court of Appeals upholds the adoption, as is likely, in spite of constitutional provisions requiring states to give credit to the judgments of other states, the case could be headed to the federal courts to resolve the conflict.

Meanwhile, the Zarembinski‘s attorney chants the tired mantra that “they’re the only parents this child has ever known” ignoring the nine months Emma spent with her natural mother, Fahland. In cases where children have been returned to their natural and rightful parents after time spent with impostors, the children have not been shown to have suffered psychological damage. For a court to accept “the only parents she has ever known” argument would be to condone kidnapping. (I always wonder how adoptive parents in these contested cases reconcile themselves to keeping a child away from loving parents, particularly when so many children do need homes.

Adoption-friendly Utah

The adoption business in Utah is thriving, thanks to laws influenced by the Mormon Church which favors breaking up natural families in the name of family values. According to the Washington Post, “Baby Emma case puts state adoption laws between father, child,” there have been “at least 10 recent cases in which babies were taken to or born in Utah and adopted without an out-of-state father's consent.”

I have to admit, though, that my own state, liberal unchurched Oregon, is no better when it comes to father-friendliness, requiring single fathers to initiate paternity proceedings before their child is placed with the prospective adoptive parents. As a practical matter fathers must start paternity actions prior to the child’s birth because mothers sign irrevocable surrenders and children are placed with the adoptive parents within a day of birth.

Far from valuing families, Utah and Oregon are pimping for the adoption industry.

Ironically, if Fahland had kept Emma and Wyatt had pulled a John Edwards, denying paternity and refusing to support his child, the State of Utah would have been all over him, threatening to throw his butt in jail if he did not pay up.

Now, here’s the legal stuff. Prior to 1972, state laws declared that the guy who provided bastards half their DNA was dead, mort, nada, non-existent. Oregon’s statute, for example, read:

“The consent [to adoption] of the mother of the child is sufficient … and for all purposes relating to the adoption of the child, the father of the child shall be disregarded just as if he were dead, when it is shown … that the mother of the child was unmarried at the time of conception of the child to be adopted and remained unmarried at the time of the birth of the child.”

Birth Father Rights

These laws served the adoption industry well until Thomas Stanley threw a wrench into the works. Stanley lived with Joan Stanley intermittently for 18 years during which time they had three children. When Joan died, the State of Illinois made the children wards of the state, declaring that they had no living parents. Stanley sued and in 1972 the US Supreme Court ruled for him, holding that fathers had the same right as mothers to nurture their children, Stanley v. Illinois. In a truly inspirational opinion, Justice Byron White wrote:

“The Court has frequently emphasized the importance of the family. The rights to conceive and to raise one's children have been deemed 'essential, 'basic civil rights of man, and rights far more precious than property rights. 'It is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder.' The integrity of the family unit has found protection in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Ninth Amendment.” (Citations omitted.)

Chief Justice Warren Burger dissented:

“Furthermore, I believe that a State is fully justified in concluding, on the basis of common human experience, that the biological role of the mother in carrying and nursing an infant creates stronger bonds between her and the child than the bonds resulting from the male's often casual encounter. This view is reinforced by the observable fact that most unwed mothers exhibit a concern for their offspring either permanently or at least until they are safely placed for adoption, while unwed fathers rarely burden either the mother or the child with their attentions or loyalties. Centuries of human experience buttress this view of the realities of human conditions and suggest that unwed mothers of illegitimate children are generally more dependable protectors of their children than are unwed fathers. While these, like most generalizations, are not without exceptions, they nevertheless provide a sufficient basis to sustain a statutory classification whose objective is not to penalize unwed parents but to further the welfare of illegitimate children in fulfillment of the State's obligations as parens patriae.”

While Justice White won the battle, it seems that Justice Burger won the war. States scrambled to amend their laws to meet the twin goals of complying with Stanley in theory while preventing unmarried fathers from nurturing their children in fact. States enacted laws with arcane provisions that assured that pesky poppas would not be more than minor inconveniences to the adoption business. These laws included “putative father registries” requiring men to file a notice with their state that they might have fathered a child and ridiculously short time periods for fathers to assert their rights.

We can only hope that the courts recognize the cruelty and injustice done to Wyatt, Emma, and Fahland and allow Emma to re-join her parents. For updates on the case, see Baby Emma.

A First Father's Story: Surrendering our child (Final)

This is the first of three parts by birth father Joe Sanchez. The next two installments will be published tomorrow and Thursday (2/17/10).


SURRENDER
Charlotte, the woman who would later become my wife, and I were sophomores in a Pennsylvania college when she became pregnant in 1964. From the outset, her family took over the decision-making and she was placed in the Florence Crittenton Home, an institution for unwed mothers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Charlotte and I had recognized that in order to keep the baby both of us would have had to drop out of school, moved in with one of our families and rely on extensive help in order to raise the baby. We did not feel we were in a position to give the child a proper home environment. However, keeping the child was largely a moot point; Charlotte’s parents were adamantly opposed to our marriage, and she accepted their decision. They had hoped that their daughter’s relationship with me would end with the pregnancy. Our letters show that abortion was never an option; not only was it illegal in 1964, but neither Charlotte nor her family would have considered it.

I tried to keep the pregnancy a secret from my family. My mother and stepfather opened one of Charlotte’s letters and became aware of the situation. Both of them, as well as my older brother, assumed that we would be married and keep the baby. Of course, the family would help us. Understandably for a Latino-Catholic family, they stressed that the only thing for me to do was to own up to my "mistake" and make amends by marrying the mother of my child. They did not understand how Charlotte’s parents would simply "give away" their grandchild. It was hard for them to accept that the matter was completely out of my hands. When my family realized that there would be no marriage, the subject was dropped and, except for my announcement of the baby’s birth, it never came up again. After my mother died at age 92 in 2006, I was told that she always made a point of remembering my daughter’s birthday. She never said anything to me, but apparently mentioned to my siblings how much she regretted not knowing what had happened to her granddaughter.

To be fair, I was hardly the most suitable candidate for inclusion in Charlotte’s family. I was born in Cuba, had lived in Spain where I had to drop out of school at age 11, and as of 1964, had only been in the United States for seven years. Nor did my family represent anything that approximated the socio-economic status of Charlotte’s parents. They were both college graduates, and her father was an editor at Philadelphia’s biggest newspaper. By contrast, my mother and stepfather had never made it to high school. My stepfather loaded car batteries on trucks, my mother sewed in a textile factory, and my brother was a steelworker. Why would Charlotte’s parents want her adult life to start out with a baby, a foreign-born husband, and a motley crew of in-laws?

Although Charlotte and I had no way of knowing for certain, we believed that the baby would be placed in a safe and loving home, and receive all of the advantages we could not give her. We never regretted the decision and rarely even mentioned it. To us, there was no point in discussing something that was out of our hands.

Except for filling out a questionnaire, I was never consulted about anything. In fact, Crittenton had specific rules prohibiting contact between the expecting mothers and their boyfriends, the prospective fathers. Charlotte and I managed to stay in contact on a daily basis through letters. We still have all the correspondence from those months and the letters include numerous exchanges about the adoption. We were told that the adoptive parents would be fairly young, college educated, and Catholic–the preferences Charlotte had listed.

She gave birth to a baby girl who was named Margaret, my mother’s name. and she relinquished all legal right within 24 hours. Once the adoption took place, Charlotte and I never discussed our daughter. We hoped that our daughter was with people who loved her, and gave her the kind of life we were in no position to offer her.

Last year we learned that our daughter's adoptive parents were in their 40s at the time of the adoption,  not Catholic, and did not even live in Pennsylvania. I guess the child of two college students is more "attractive" to adoptive parents.　I should also note that race seemed to be a big factor. As the result of my Latin surname, they requested a picture of me--I suppose they wanted to ascertain that I was Caucasian!


Charlotte and I were married two years later, shortly after graduating from college; we enjoyed a very happy life for 18 years. By choice, we never had children. When we were married in 1966, we had expected to have children. However, after postponing the decision for years (graduate school, Peace Corps service, starting new jobs) we came to the conclusion that we wanted to maintain a lifestyle without children. As with many other choices in life, we were well aware of the trade-offs. We simply thought that remaining childless was right for us and never regretted it. The fact that Charlotte had given birth to Margaret was not a factor. When our lives took different paths, we were divorced in 1988. As painful as the divorce was, we remain very good friends to this day. Charlotte remarried and her second husband did not approve of her staying in touch with me. Our contacts became more sporadic, but the link was never broken.

Tomorrow: THE SEARCH