Why did my mother keep me a secret?

Jane

“My mother kept me a secret; she betrayed me; she dishonored me with her silence,” cried an adoptee who found her mother in her 30’s .

The truth is that we mothers betrayed ourselves as well as our children.

Lorraine and I gave up our infant daughters in 1966. We and the other single mothers at that time were programmed by our families, religious authorities, social workers, advice columnists--indeed the entire culture, through and through--to try to forget and go one with our lives, to pretend our children did not exist. The message was crystal clear: Spare yourself and your family the SHAME that you had sex out of wedlock, SHAME that you opened up your body to a man who did not respect you (and in my case ignored the signs of his flawed character), SHAME that you were dumb enough not to take precautions or demand that he did.

Why is adoption reform ignored by The New York Times?

Jane and Lorraine, 1983**

This morning's New York Times carries the last column of Arthur S. Brisbane as The Public Editor,* who comments weekly about the paper's coverage, good and bad. In it, I found this nugget:

"I also noted two years ago that I had taken up the public editor duties believing 'there is no conspiracy' and that The Times’s output was too vast and complex to be dictated by any Wizard of Oz-like individual or cabal. I still believe that, but also see that the hive on Eighth Avenue is powerfully shaped by a culture of like minds — a phenomenon, I believe, that is more easily recognized from without than from within.

When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so. Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.(Emphasis added.)

Returning a child to her father is the right decision

Jane

Finally, a voice of sanity in a contested adoption case. South Carolina law professor Marcia Zug defends the decision of the South Carolina Supreme Court last month to return two-year old Veronica to her father, Dusten Brown, cancelling the adoption to Melanie and Matt Capobianco in a article in Slate.

Zug's August 23 article in Slate, "Two year old 'Baby Veronica' was ripped from the only home's she ever known. The court made the right decision"* is a welcome change from the media blizzard chastising the South Carolina Court. The popular refrains "ripped from the only family she has ever known and "what about the best interests of the child"? repeated endlessly in this and similar cases are simply wrong.

Akin, GOP to women: We are in charge of your bodies, no exceptions for rape

Lorraine

The current rage over rape and abortion set in motion by the incredibly inane comment of Todd Akin, GOP Senate candidate in Missouri, has set us to thinking about our own adamantly pro-choice position: a woman's body is her own and it is her own to decide if she will or will not carry a fertilized egg to term, that is, have the baby.

Akin's ignorance has upped the debate over whether abortion is ever palatable to some, because all he really did is state what true anti-choice zealots believe: that all and any abortion (and that includes the Morning-After Pill and IUDs) methods, regardless of the timing, are Go-directly-to-hell wrong.

How can first mothers talk to those who want to adopt?

Lorraine and reunited daughter, Jane

Dear FMF:

I am the anonymous poster who is the daughter of a very damaged adoptee. I am from Utah and I chose to parent as a single teen based on my mother's experience as an adoptee. I feel very confident discouraging any one from giving up their baby, but what do I say about adoption to friends that want to adopt?  I want them to know the true situation, but it is so hard when they feel like adoption will solve all their problems. And most of them believe that the mothers truly want to give up their children. Have you covered this before?
------------------------------
Let  us applaud you for dealing with the zeitgeist in Mormon-dominated Utah and keeping your baby. Yep, even for me it is very difficult to talk to people who are hell bent on adopting and telling them about birth-mother grief and the long-term impact on the adoptee. A friend wrote me about this very issue, and she remembers crying on the phone with her friend when adoption was being considered. After the adoption, they remained friends but drifted apart somewhat, as the other couple had a young child and she did not, adding however, "their adopting was a further wedge between us." She wrote, "They may not feel it but I certainly do, because today, twenty years later, adoption still finds its way into our conversation in ways that seem hurtful, or at least uncomfortable, for me."

But back to you. You can only save the world one person at a time, and you started out by keeping your child. By living in Utah, surrounded by people who think adoption is only wonderful, you are in a more difficult position than most. We have had an anonymous Mormon first mother commenting on another blog last week who wrote: "i love adoption and am SO grateful with my experience with it." Maybe what you will accomplish more than you realize is being an example to other women in Utah that it is possible to be a single mother; and you can talk to them about how damaged your own adoptee mother was by the fact of her not being raised in her family of origin.

The best thing would be to tell those who want to adopt about the difficulties of your own mother, and suggest that they read various blogs to learn how complicated it is for the adopted person to grow up among genetic strangers.

I've listed below a few of FMF posts that could be helpful. 

The longterm impact of giving up a child

An adoptive mother asks "How can adoption be less horrific on first mothers?"

The saddest story of all: Opting for adoption today

No Matter How Adoption is Done, Grief Remains for Mothers

 

Helen Gurley Brown Gave Early Ink to Adoption Reform

Helen Gurley Brown in 1964

Helen Gurley Brown was a friend of mine. She was one of the few editors back in the day when I was "coming out" of the birth mother closet who supported me, gave me a pat on the back, and gave me an assignment. It was for Cosmopolitan with Brown as editor-in-chief I wrote my first piece about adoption reform, after reading a story in The New York Times about this woman named Florence Fisher and how she was shaking up adoption and demanding that adopted individuals be given their original birth certificates.

When Birthmark came out in 1979, I happened by the office and gave Helen an autographed copy; she wrote me a nice note later that I must have somewhere in my files. Although she was reviled by some of the feminists for her stance on using sex as a means to security and a better life, Helen went her own way and was certainly a feminist in the Madonna mold.

Foreign Adoptions Aren't Plunging Fast Enough

Jane

“’The era of the boom time for international adoption, I think, has passed us by’” Adam Pertman, Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, told National Public Radio reporters Jennifer Ludden and Marosa Penaloza. To which First Mother Forum says: Good by and good riddence.

Since its peak in 2004, the number of foreign adoptions has plummeted from nearly 23,000 to less than 10,000 in 2010. Considering the known corruption in international adoption--and the 115,000 American children in foster care waiting to be placed--that figure is still obscenely high.

When adoptive parents meet the birth mother

Lorraine

"Untying a Birth Mother's Hands" yesterday in the Modern Love column in The New York Times was inadvertently a stealth argument against international adoption because it adeptly portrays the anguish and pain of a woman who surrendered her child because of poverty and shame. 

The writer/adoptive mother, Elizabeth Foy Larsen, and her family--who ups and visits Guatemala so that their daughter can visit her natural mother--clearly has the wherewithal to prevent at least that single adoption. The amount of money spent merely getting everyone down there and in a decent hotel--adoptive mother, adoptive father, their two biological children, the two adoptive grandmothers--(unless they used frequent flyer miles, of course) would have undoubtedly lifted the natural mother from the crushing poverty that kept her powerless to keep her daughter. The girl's birth mother, after all, "scrambles to find jobs that pay a living wage" while her replacement family lives in a four-bedroom with remodeled bathrooms. I'm guessing but there's probably lots of marble there.

Adoptive parents say the darnedest things. To their adopted children.

Jane

“What’s Jane’s agenda?” my surrendered daughter, Rebecca, told me her adoptive mother, Norma, had asked. After an eleven year search, Rebecca found me in 1997. In April of 1998, Rebecca let me know she was coming to the west coast from her home near Chicago to visit her adoptive parents who lived near San Francisco. She needed to reassure them, she explained. (No need to fill in what she was reassuring them about.) Would it be okay if she came to my home in Salem, Oregon for a couple of days while she was on the west coast? Of course I was delighted to say “yes.”

I picked her up at the Portland airport. It was a beautiful spring day and I suggested we do a quick tour of Portland before driving to Salem. After we walked around downtown, we stopped for lunch at a popular restaurant on the Willamette River which bisects Portland.

Adoptive parents say the darnedest things. To us.

How I feel today

People say the darnedest things, right?

Is it okay to be cranky about adopters who know you relinquished a child but can't seem to help themselves from saying mildly aggressive things, such as, "They (her adoptive parents) are not her adoptive parents, "they are her parents." Period.

Really? If they are not her adoptive parents, but just her parents, how come they had to "adopt" my daughter? I stand there with a mildly stunned look on my face, and think, Geeze, you sure are sensitive about being "adoptive parents," but you know, you really don't look Chinese...and your daughter does.

Feeling very irritated today about the adoptive-parent saints who say (and have said to me) the nastiest things:

Does one adoption spawn another? Too often for comfort.

Jane & I bought the same black stone washed jeans independentl

As many of the comments regarding the previous post about "I'm Having Their Baby" centered around whether or not adoptees are more likely to give up their babies than the non adopted, I wanted to follow up and am posting below a section of the memoir I'm working on that covers that very issue. The court case in which I first heard of any adoptee also being a mother who surrenders occurred in 1976, and that is where this section begins:

'I'm Having Their Baby' turns into 'I'm keeping MY baby'

Lorraine

I'm Having Their Baby is yet example of how a thriving business (adoption) can spawn one television show after another, especially when around every corner is someone searching for their 15 minutes of fame, even if 13 of them are spent in tears.

The Oxygen channel (started by Oprah, now owned by NBC Universal) features this latest weep-fest for the weary, and lord knows, I am tired of stupid television shows that appear to glorify or encourage adoption. I say "appear" to because I am not sure that this one does because the mothers-to-be spend a lot of time with the blues: Claudia hates her baby daddy--he has six other kids by four women, and he cavalierly indicates he might fight her for custody, which you know at the time he says it that he is just being a shit for the camera and his ex, who is only weeks away from giving birth.

An adoptive mother asks "How can adoption be less horrific on first mothers?"

Jane

An adoptive mother wrote to First Mother Forum apologizing for “intruding” and asking a series of questions, trying to get her head around first mothers’ pain and how it might be lessened. She has a fully open adoption with her daughter's first mother, who has told this adoptive mother repeatedly she is so glad her daughter is happy and safe. She closed by saying “I just want to commend you for speaking out so courageously about your grief.”

First Mother Forum thanks Anon for writing and assures her that in no way is she intruding; FMF welcomes all readers. Her questions are excellent and FMF appreciates the opportunity to respond. 

Those who have suffered so terribly, were your adoptions closed?

Fellow blogger Lorraine and my adoptions were closed. Knowing that my child was gone irrretrievably—and that I caused it-- made the pain almost unbearable. I consoled myself by telling myself I would find her someday.

Guatemalan mother loses son to American couple

Lorraine

A judge in Missouri ruled today that a mother from Guatemala who got caught up in a government raid of illegal immigrants will lose her son to the American couple who want to adopt him. Carlitos, the five-year-old at the center of a protracted legal battle, will stay with Seth and Melinda Moser of Carthage, Missouri.

Circuit Court Judge David Jones ruled that the mother, Encarnacion Bail Romero, had abandoned her son while she was in jail after the raid in 2007. After she was jailed, her six-month-old son was looked after by family members and then others, and arrived at the home of the Mosers when he was two. They proceeded to adopt him, even though his mother never gave her consent, and in fact, with limited resources from jail, made it clear that she did not want him to be adopted.

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.”

The longterm impact of giving up a child

Lorraine

Does relinquishing a child have long-term negative effects on a birth mother's life? In the previous blog we began exploring that question. Here is a run down of several studies that indicate the way to a healthy, happy life is not having a child and giving it up for adoption. Yet everywhere today we see adoption as only a good thing. Celebrities adopt and the media thrives on the stories: See Sandra Bullock on the cover of People! 

Anti-abortion groups and all sorts of churches--evangelical, Latter-Day Saints, Unitarian, Catholics, you name it--promote adoption not only to prevent abortion, but as a way to control population. Instead of further burdening the world with more children, adopt a needy baby! 

When the adoptee says: No Contact

Lorraine

"How is that granddaughter of yours we met?" a friend asks over a crowded table of others, some of whom met her, one new acquaintance sitting on one side of me having no idea whom he is asking about. We are at the beach with the sun going down, wine is flowing along with pleasant conversation. The friend asking had met her at a Sunday brunch two years ago, almost exactly to the date.

I remember precisely how the last minute invitation to brunch came--Come to brunch, Ted and Joanne are here this weekend, they'd love to see you, says Lynn on the phone. Lynn and Robert live a five-minute drive away, Ted and Joanne used to have a summer home here, and the six of us had been close. Ted and Joanne are hoping that we will come. It sounds like a pleasant time, a way to keep the bonds with old friends alive.

Natural parents have the natural right to nurture their children

Declaration of Independence

This Fourth of July will again celebrate liberty, one of the unalienable, natural rights with which we are endowed by our creator as declared by a small group of men in Philadelphia 236 years ago. This Declaration gave rise to the greatest nation the world has ever known. Subsequently the authors of the United States Constitution declared through the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments that liberty could not be taken away without due process of law, that is through fair procedures.

In a long series of cases, the United States Supreme Court has held that the right to liberty includes "the fundamental liberty interest of natural parents in the care, custody, and management of their child."

Bill of Rights

Nonetheless states  effectively abrogate this right through laws allowing natural parents to lose their children through procedures that are far from fair. States allow mothers to sign irrevocable consents to adoption, often within minutes of birth, or even worse, to sign consents before birth with only a short revocation period. States do not require any counseling for mothers about the effects of adoption on themselves or their children or about services which would help them nurture their children. States effectively deny fathers any process at all. Once children are adopted, most states deny them the right to know who their natural parents are.

On this Fourth of July, as we enjoy our hot dogs and beer and fireworks, let's dedicate ourselves to passing laws to protect parents' fundamental right to the care, custody, and management of their children and to the right of children to be raised by their human creators.

____________________
"The right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children is among the 'unalienable rights' with which the Declaration of Independence proclaims all men...are endowed by their creator." United State Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

"The birth family constitutes the preferred means of providing family life for children." Child Welfare League of America.

____________________
The Declaration of Independence
The United States Constitution

From FMF:
What We Think of Adoption

NOTA BENE:  I tried to fix the font of this post and ended up deleting some language. I've re-written it but unfortunately lost the original posting of the comments. We've reposted the comments, but of course the original time when they were posted has been lost and there are a few other idiosyncrasies you may see. Please excuse us lowly and lame bloggers. 

Tell Dear Abby: Birth mothers think of their children lost to adoption.

Jeanne Phillips ("Dear Abby")

In advising a brother not to talk to his sister about the baby she lost to adoption, Jeanne Phillips, aka Dear Abby, joins the sorry parade of media personalities whose ignorance about adoption is no barrier to giving advice on the subject. These charlatans include Marguerite Kelly, Carolyn Hax, Ann Landers, and deadly doctors Laura, Phil, and Drew. They mislead the earnest souls seeking help as well as perpetuate popular stereotypes about adoption.

Part two: Navigating the first meeting between birth mother and child

A continuation of Sunday's post (June 24, 2012) about how best to manage and survive a first-time meeting with your surrendered son or daughter.

Lorraine

MONEY AND GIFTS
As we noted in the first section of this double-post on reunions between mothers and their surrendered children, you may spend some time sight-seeing if either of you have come a long distance to see the other. But that can turn out to be expensive, and the question of who pays for what can be a tricky one. While you, the mother, may feel as if it is your job to pick up all the costs--event tickets, meals, transportation--just like a parent, that may not be the best course of action. Your newly found son or daughter may feel that taking gifts implies a continued relationship--just as in a courtship--and he or she may be not sure if that is how they want to proceed, and feel that the gifts of tickets, expensive meals, whatever, places him under more obligation than he feels comfortable with. 

Navigating the first meeting between birth mother and child

Jane

Jane and her surrendered daughter, Rebecca, connected soon after Rebecca's 31^st birthday in November, 1997. They corresponded via email and telephone and agreed to meet over the Martin Luther King holiday in January, 1998. At the time, Jane lived in Salem, Oregon and Rebecca in suburban Chicago. It seemed best that Jane come to Rebecca's home because, with a husband and three young children, it would be difficult for her to get away.

Jane was slow to exit the plane when it landed at O’Hare, her heart racing; her breathing labored, her legs unwilling to move. The crowd had cleared by the time Jane stepped into the waiting area. This was before the 9/11 security precautions when people meeting arriving passengers could still come to the gate. She searched for a familiar face although she did not know what Rebecca looked like; they had not exchanged photographs.

Father wins right to fight for his daughter in Michigan legislature

Fighting Father Daniel Quinn

On this Father’s Day, First Mother Forum again salutes a father who fought for the right to nurture his child. Michigan father Daniel Quinn Maeleigh sired a daughter, Maeleigh, with Candance Beckwith who was married to--but separated from--Adam Beckwith. He supported his daughter for two years until Candance and Adam reconciled and moved with Maeleigh to Kentucy.

Quinn sued asking a court to grant him paternal rights. Court ordered blood test showed Quinn was the Maeleigh's father. But that wasn't the end of it.

An adoptive mother speaks: Why adoptive parents resist reunions

Jane

"Raising an adopted child is not like raising a biological child" adoptive mother "Gale"  wrote to First Mother Forum. After years of infertility, Gale and her husband adopted domestically a girl, now 19, and a boy, now 17, as infants. Gale, a nurse and writer who lives in Atlanta, asked us at FMF for advice about her son who wanted to meet his birth mother. We suggested working with a counselor to contact the birth mother and, if she was agreeable to meeting the boy, to encourage the birth mother to put aside any issues she may have and work together as a team for the boy's benefit.

She thanked us and went on to write: "Also, since I know you and [fellow blogger]Lorraine are devoted to helping adoptees and birth mothers, I’d like to offer an adoptive parent perspective ... that may help you understand when adoptive parents are resistant [to reunions]." We eagerly accepted her offer and post her email here.

Two mothers. Birth and Adoptive

Две матери. Мать приемная и родная

COMMENTS REQUESTED

Readers, use your imagination and tell the story behind this picture. What happened? What's going to happen?

The title of the picture, painted in 1906 by Vladimir Makovsky, translates literally from the Russian to "Two of the mother. His mother and foster native." Others have called it "Two mothers. Native mother and stepmother" and "Two mothers. Birth and Adoptive."

Makovsky (1846-1920) was a critic of Russian aristocracy and "stood uncompromisingly on the side of oppressed people. After the October 1917 Revolution, Makovsky helped carry over the realist traditions to the early stages of Socialist Realism" the purpose of which was to further the goals of socialism and communism (Wikipedia).


Jane and Lorraine

Vladimir Makovsky
Wikipaintings

First Family Bashing: A sport for some adoptees

First Family Basher Lisa Lutz

Our mothers always said “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” It seems too often, though, that adoptees either didn't hear this or somehow internalized that the rule didn't apply to their first mothers, those selfless individuals who loved them so much that they – well you know.

Lisa Lutz joins a gaggle of literary adoptees, which includes B. J. Lifton, A. M. Homes, and Amy Dean, who find what they see as seriously deficient birth parents and feel free to tell the world of their sorry genetic origins.

Lutz, the author of a series of detective novels featuring a sleuthing family, writes about her reunion with her birth parents in the “Lives” section of the May 6 issue of The New York Times Magazine, “Where Did I Come From?" The online version adds the title "I Found My Biological [not natural, real, birth, first, but the icy biological] Parents and Wish I Hadn't."

Why Be Normal When You Could Be Jeanette Winterson?

Winterson in Warsaw, 2005

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal is the title of a scrupulously honest and soul-baring memoir by the acclaimed British writer, Jeanette Winterson, who was adopted not by a loving "forever family" but by a crazed, larger-than-life Pentecostal woman who hated sex, force-fed the Bible on her brilliant, rebellious daughter, and kept a gun in the dresser as she waited for Armageddon.

What about this daughter that seemed to have no earthly (or heavenly) relationship to the woman the world knew as her mum? Well, as her adoptive mother--almost always called the distancing Mrs. Winterson or Mrs. W.,--used to say when Jeanette angered her: "The Devil led us to the wrong crib." That's on the first page. Hold on, you're in for a bumpy ride.

Edwards Expresses love for 'love child' Quinn

WHY HE GOT MY APPROVING NOD THIS MORNING
John Edwards' mistrial may seem a bit off topic but there is that baby, Quinn, who looms behind it all. And that kid--conceived out of marriage, conceived in "sin"--grabs at my heart. No baby, no problem this size of this doozy that has been in the national spotlight for months. And while you may disparage John Edwards, I found reason to feel good about the statement he made yesterday to the press after the mistrial was announced. As The New York Times put it:

"And to the surprise of many, he expressed his love for the daughter he had with Ms. [Rielle] Hunter, 'my precious Quinn,' whom 'I love more than any of you could ever imagine.'"

Well, damn. Good for you, John Edwards. You didn't forget her in this most public of moments.

I have been more interested than most in the vicissitudes of this story as, in my day, I could be compared to Rielle in the broadest of ways: I was the younger woman who had an affair with a married man I worked alongside, and "got caught," in the language of the times back then.

Crittenton today: Serving marginalized teens

Florence Crittenton moms and babies today

Last month fellow blogger Lorraine wrote about the responses of the Crittenton Foundation, Catholic Charities, and the Salvation Army to Dan Rather Report: Adopted or Abducted. The program was critical of the role these agencies played in the Baby Scoop Era (1945 to 1973) in seducing young mothers to relinquish their infants for adoption. In their responses, only the Crittenton Foundation acknowledged the pain caused by the past practices of its affiliated agencies. Crittenton, it should be noted, operated about one-third of the approximately 200 confidential maternity homes which existed during that sad period.

Normal in one family may be seen as abnormal in another

Jane and Lorraine,

Disparate thoughts about adoption creeping in today, based on comments. A adoptive mother writes about the problems her adopted daughter has (ADHD, OCD, god-knows-what-else) and and I immediately remember my daughter whom I relinquished had epilepsy, and the social problems that stem from that. But what I did not expect is that when I met her adoptive parents, her adoptive mother would ask if there was mental illness in my family. This was after I had assured them that there was no history of epilepsy either. Here I am, the "New York Career Woman, "as she told me she had described me to her friends...being asked about mental illness. Heritable mental illness. 

I was like, What? What gave you that idea? And of course it was daughter Jane's epilepsy, and her other mother had wondered then if--since they knew so little about me, nothing other than I was Polish--if maybe...since Jane had seizures...maybe there was a history of mental illness. She said that for a while they thought that I might have been in a mental hospital when I had...our daughter. You just sit there and listen, stunned, but betray nothing. I suppose it's not an unreasonable assumption.

American Dilemma: What happened to one's right to know one's birth parents?

Lorraine

The Irish are considering insisting that fathers be named on the birth certificates of children born to unwed mothers. Those backing the new legislation believe that the inclusion of the father’s name would help to reinforce a child’s right to know who their parents are.

The push for the new legislation comes following a report by the Law Reform Commission which found that having both the mother and father’s name on a birth certificate could help reinforce a child’s right to know their parents. The Law Reform Commission also warned that without knowledge of who their father is, children could run the risk of “striking up relationships” with people they are unknowingly related to. [Emphasis added.]

Kidnapped in Guatemala, 'adopted' in America

Lorraine

Guatemala Mother Searched for 5 Years for Adopted Girl the head reads at Huff Po. It ought to read: Guatemala Mother Searched for 5 Years for Kidnapped Daughter and found her alive and adopted in America, because that is the whole story. We have written about the terrible corruption involved in Guatemalan adoptions several times before, but this one is different in that this is the first time the Guatemalan government has ordered a child returned to her mother, Lodya Rodriguez Morales. 

The girl was two at the time of the abduction, she spent a year under a different name in an adoption mill before she was adopted by an American couple, Timothy and Jennifer Monahan of Liberty, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas City.

Utah's anti-father policies an offshoot of Mormon agenda

Jane

Wes Hutchins, a Utah adoption attorney wants to change Utah’s laws which allow a mother “to travel from any state to Utah and be in Utah for two or three days and then give birth to a child with the sole purpose of cutting off the right of the biological father.”

David Hardy, a Utah adoption attorney affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), asserts the laws are fine the way they are. “The Utah laws may be harsh but they are looking at what’s best for the child: stable families and two parent families, ” he told The Washington Post. Hardy’s claim supports an agenda to abet and encourage Mormon practices in the state. Is he attempting to make Utah a theocracy? There is supposed to be separation of church and state in the United States of America.

Utah adoption attorney exposes corruption in Utah adoption agencies

Wes Hutchins

Wes Hutchins, a Utah attorney who has done more than a thousand  adoptions, decided to follow up on an “unsettling hunch” that “the way some adoption agencies handle birth mothers …‘is an invitation for birth mothers to lie, cheat and defraud birth fathers into thinking they don’t have anything to worry about’” according to a May 9 report on Denver TV station, 9News.*

"'The idea that the birth mother can travel from any state to Utah and be in Utah for two or three days and then give birth to a child and then leave the state with the sole purpose of cutting off the rights of the biological father has to stop,’ Hutchins said.”

Does Mother's Day make birth mothers blue? YES.

Lorraine

Mother's Day, that extra holiday from hell for many of us, is Sunday. And in some cities and places a new holiday the day before has sprung up: BIRTHmothers Day. (BTW, when is Adoptivemothers Day? We are waiting.)

I've made myself pretty clear about how I feel about "birth mother * celebrations" and "birth mother" cards (nix to both, see links below) partially because they are generally the misguided concoction of adoption agencies to "give back" to the wholesale suppliers (that would be mothers) of the commodity they deal in, babies. I say this with the understanding that the Birthmother Day to be observed the day before Mother's Day was the brainchild of birth mothers in Seattle in 1990.

When your adopted child wants to visit her birth mother....

Marguerite Kelly

Washington Post columnist Marguerite Kelly’s advice to adoptive parents whose nine-year-old daughter wants to live with her birth parents is among the worst advice that fellow blogger Lorraine and I have read about adoption since we lost our daughters 46 years ago.

At one time we thought nobody could be worse than the late Ann Landers and Dr. Laura, both staunch opponents of open records and reunions. But then along came Washington Post writer, Carolyn Hax. She published a guest opinion by a grandma who regretted that her daughter had kept her child, the writer’s grandchild, totally oblivious to the pain and loss that adoption brings to mothers, children and grandparents.

Deconstructing the responses to Adopted or Abducted with kudos to the Crittenton Foundation

Lorraine, recently in DC

The morning started out with a bang with the first clue in the New York Times crossword puzzle today was: 2007 Ellen Page movie. Answer: JUNO, the most irritating movie about adoption known to woman or beast.

Then I moved onto trying to download the Dan Rather Report: Adopted or Abducted from iTunes for $1.99 and after giving Apple my name, my birthdate, answering security questions such as what was your first car (answer for anybody who wants to know my deep secrets, Karmann Ghia); your favorite car (MG); and where I had my least favorite job (ah! at that hash house where the owner drove me home one night and wanted me to put out, and when I didn't, fired me the next day, but there wasn't room for all that), my billing address, telephone number, a user name and a password with at least 8 characters, one Capital letter and at least two numbers! and no two of the same characters in a row, and my credit card number...I had to go back and re-register and ah ha! I kept getting error messages. Kinda like what I was hearing from my daughter's father when I tried to talk about keeping our baby...but then he would have had to get off his duff and leave his wife like he said he was going to. By the time he did, it was too late. Way too late.

In the Sixties: Was I 'forced' to give up my baby?

Lorraine at work, 2 years later. I was engaged to be married.

Was I "forced" to give up my baby? The question lingers in the air today because Dan Rather Reports produced a documentary, “Adopted or Abducted,” about forced adoption that will be aired tonight. Bloggers we know, such as Claudia, of Musings of the Lame, are included, and while Jane and I can't wait to see it, neither cable company that we use, on opposite ends of the country, me on the East Coast, she on the West, carry it, and so alas, we will have to see it later somehow.

But of course I've thought back about that time in the Sixties when I felt I had no choice other than to relinquish. My baby's father was a married man--and not married to me; I was so embarrassed that though I was less than a year out of college, I did not tell my parents, back in Michigan, while I hide in secrecy in Rochester, New York. Who even knew I was pregnant? Only a few: Patrick, the father, my lover; eventually our boss, the

Talking about ancestry to an adoptee, Part 2

Path to the family tree...or trees?                         photo by Ken Robbins

What's the best way for a birth mother to talk about ancestors to the adoptee? What does "kinning" mean? There are two discussions going on under the last two posts, but they are about the same thing: family connections, whether adopted or biological.

Commenter Maryanne suggested that when birth mothers begin talking about the family ancestors to a relinquished child in reunion, one could use the word "my," if they appear to be uncomfortable with "your" ancestor, as this seemingly disavows the adopted family and ancestral line the individual has heard about, and accepted, growing up. We agree.

What does "ancestry" mean to an adoptee?

Jane and Family on White House Lawn

On April 9, my grandchildren, ages six and nine, my daughter (their aunt) who lives in Washington and I participated in the White House Easter Egg Roll. About 35,000 people attended the event which has been held annually since 1878.  Easter Egg Roll participants come in groups of several thousand and stay for two hours. Because our tickets were for the late afternoon, we did not see the President or the First Lady, who were there in the morning.

The event was much like a neighborhood festival held in a local park.

Adoption in the Netherlands is "undutch" while America's love affair with it continues

The Netherlands

Relinquishing a child for adoption in the Netherlands is considered "inhumane, unwomanly, undutch, not done," according to Theodore, one of First Mother Forum’s regular readers who comments frequently from across the pond.

As in Australia, England and Wales, adoption rates in the Netherlands are dramatically lower than in the US.* With a population of 16.7 million, one eighteenth that of the United States, the Netherlands has approximately 20 domestic infant adoptions each year compared to 15,000 domestic infant adoptions in the US. If Americans were relinquishing at the same rate as in the Netherlands, they would have given up a fraction of the babies relinquished today--a mere 360 babies, not 15,000.  Why the discrepancy, we wanted to know. Theodore filled us in.

How adoption agencies 'turn' vulnerable women into spokespeople for relinquishing

Catelynn and Tyler, spokespeople for Bethany

Is adoption in America a business? Yes, it is a billion-dollar a year business. How do you get more babies to satisfy the customers, the prospective adoptive parents? How do you get other women to give up their babies? 

You get still-stunned mothers who have relinquished their children recently--brand new birth mothers to jump in and convince others that they too can do the "right" thing by giving up their children to better fixed folks. Catelynn and Tyler of Sixteen and Pregnant and Teen Mom

Shining the light on 'forced' adoption at home and elsewhere

Adoption or Abduction May 1

Spurred by recent events in Australia, Canada, and Spain, Dan Rather Reports produced a documentary, “Adopted or Abducted,” about forced adoption. Rather, a former CBS news anchor, and his staff interviewed first mothers women from around the world including Americans Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy (Faux Claud), Carol Schaefer, Karen Wilson Butterbaugh, and mothers featured in Ann Fessler’s The Girls Who Went Away.

“Adopted or Abducted” airs Tuesday, May 1 at 8 p.m. ET on HDnet. Readers can find their local channel by going to Dan Rather Reports, hitting subscribe and entering their zip code and selecting their cable provider.

Would-be Egg 'Donor' imagines a child growing up with genetic strangers

Lorraine

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST
Why would you not donate your eggs?  The profit is great--$10,000!--the risk seems at first blush small (if inconvenient), and you seem... magnanimous. So why not do it?

An awareness of what is lost when there is not shared blood led one young woman, Simi Lampert,  to change her mind about selling her eggs. Calling her a donor is such BS the head spins. Yet what she became aware of as she considered marketing her eggs is exactly what is ignored in adoption: how being with genetic strangers marks one as different. The other. Not from the same stock. Together but separate. From "Why I Couldn’t Donate My Eggs" on Tablet, A New Read on Jewish Life:

"My siblings and I were raised by my mother, who was an only child, and my stepfather. One of the things about my childhood that’s always bothered me, something I wish could be different, is that my step-cousins never really felt like my cousins. (Emphasis added.)

How a birth mother's No to adoption turned into a Yes

There is more yesterday regarding Bethany Christian Services (cough, cough)  and others who turn dazed new mothers who relinquished into recruiters, and so I am reposting her comment again for those who do not read the comments. See below the wonderful graphics---lorraine  

 

 From another give-up-your-baby-site...but guess what keeping your baby aka "youth parenting" looks like? Mopping the floor while clutching your child. Give him up and you are the happy college or high school grad. What me worry?

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).

Joyce Maynard's adoption "disruption"

Lorraine

Joyce Maynard’s writing—and thus her, because her writing is her—has always irritated me, perhaps irrationally. She was too famous for celebrating the banal. But when the news that she disrupted her adoption of two sisters from Ethiopia became public the other day, my reaction was not to rub my hands gleefully and think Aha! The great comeuppance for that navel gazer! Instead I hoped that her celebrity and this public admission about a disrupted adoption would help stem what often seems like the wholesale exportation of children from one part of the world to another by do-gooders of all political and religious stripes simply because they have more money.

Far too many of them think that they are doing something noble by taking these poor children from the over-crowded orphanage where they find them. People in my large social net have adopted from Guatemala, China, India, Nepal, Romania, and Russia. In truth, I am not close to many of them. And it is undoubtedly true that in many cases, they are saving a child from an uncertain and perilous future and giving them a home in which to flourish.

After the birth mother/adoptee reunion: Dealing with rejection all over again

Jane and Lorraine in Sag Harbor, circa 1996

The reaction to the post about my daughter that have stayed with me were with ones from first mothers whose children, now found, are not speaking to them. I mentioned the lapses in my relationship with my  own daughter's at the end of the previous post, Remembering my daughter on her birthday.

I usually don't write about her not talking to me much now because it's obviously no longer an issue. She is gone. I don't cry anymore because she won't speak to me; I have cried plenty, but now she cannot speak to me, except in dreams.

Remembering my daughter on her birthday

Jane and Lorraine, 7/25/83  NYTimes photo

Today is my daughter's birthday, but of course the correct syntax is "would have been" her birthday if she had not died in 2007. What runs through my mind in crazy seemingly random fashion are images of the two of us together: the second time you came off the plane to visit Tony, my husband, and me in New York. You were planning to spend the summer with us. What a surprise to see that you had lightened your mousy blond hair (that was so like my mousy blond) to look a lot more like mine! Highlighted! Yes, I was thrilled to see that. You were my daughter, through and through. Was that the visit that we went to the Statue of Liberty and were the first off the boat from Manhattan and first up the stairs as we scrambled up to the crown? We both enjoyed that, and joked about it over the years.

I see us hanging out downtown in Sag Harbor, at the pier, with our first dog, Fred, a friendly female lab, and just, well, just enjoying the view with the water, the boats, the sunshine and reveling in being with each other, after so many years apart.

What can you write about adoption? And what is off limits?

Lorraine and her new accessory

What are the limits of what one can write about in regards to adoption personally, since after all, in writing anything at all, you are writing about at least one other person, possibly more. It's an issue that has come up not only at First Mother Forum but other blogs--and now The Huffington Post.

Last week a brave adoptive mother, Dina McQueen, wrote a revealing post about her four-year-old daughter from Ethiopia. In it she wrote of how, since McQueen had video of the girl's birth mother bringing the daughter, now named Aster, to the drop off, the little girl wanted to watch the video over and over and over again, and how she became inconsolable for a brief time after--though it seemed long to Mother McQueen. I forget exactly what the girl, Aster, called her video but it had some version of "birth mother" in it. Eventually, with time, love and patience, McQueen was able to calm the girl down and the post ended with the girl, at least for the time being, able to move on with her American mother to a sweet resolution.