Who serves 'Adoptees' Best Interests'?

Lorraine 

You couldn't pick them out of a crowd, but adopted people are different. Two traits set them apart: a vague sense of disconnection of dislocation, and difficulty forming a strong sense of self. The lack of a specific heritage, which tells them how and where they fit into the cycle of life, is thought to be the root of the problem. To be missing a past might not seem like much, but that's because the rest of us have always known where we came from. "My Mom has really gotten interested in genealogy in the last few years," one 16-year-old wrote me, "and it's fine for her, but it doesn't do anything for me."

Adoption by Gentle Care: FMF's pick for the 2014 Demon in Adoption award

Jane

This year we are having no trouble selecting Adoption by Gentle care (AGC) an Ohio adoption agency, as our choice for the Demon in Adoption award, given annually by Pound Puppy Legacy. The award is given to an adoption agency, adoption practitioner, advocate, or politician instrumental in promoting adoption at the expense of natural families. PPL started this award eight years ago to "raise more awareness of the dark side of adoption and the negligent and corrupt practices we often encounter."

As in past years, PPL's followers have nominated exceptionally deserving candidates, Adoption by Gentle Care (AGC), however, shines above the others. AGC epitomizes the greed and utter disregard for the best interests of children ingrained in large segments of the adoption industry.

You can't deny DNA--it shapes who we are today

Lorraine

"It's easier to embrace a thief than a phantom." That's sentence that stopped me cold today as I read yesterday's New York Times review of a new book, The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape our Identities and Our Futures.

Biology and culture, nature versus nurture. We know both are important, we really do, but with the adoption-is-the-cure-for-so-damn-much culture that we are in today, that sentence: It's easier to embrace a thief than a phantom stopped me cold. Americans like to pretend that DNA and ancestry do not matter; we can make ourselves up new here in America. But. Biology matters. DNA is the raw material out of which we came.

Cheerios video promotes gay equality but smacks of racism

Jane

There's a dark side to the Cheerios ad featuring a white gay Canadian couple with a darling little black girl, likely an American child, beyond the loss inherent in adoption. The ad smacks of colonialism, promoting the superiority of white homes as it promotes gay adoption.

The nearly three-minute video is of course intended to make us feel positive about Cheerios, manufactured by General Mills. While others have praised the ad for its positive image of gay men, how would the world feel about two gay black men raising a white baby? We seriously doubt it would have the same wide acceptance and elicit huzzahs from liberals. 

I'm not feeling my Cheerios in watching this ad, Actually I'm downright uncomfortable how the ad portrays adoption as sugar and spice and everything nice just like Cheerios.

Cheerios Commercial: Gay dads adopt and sell cereal

Lorraine

Cringe making: A new feel-good Cherrios on-line commercial for the Canadian audience as two white gay dads talk about how they met, fell in love and decided to be a family by adopting a little black girl during a three-minute video. No doubt that Raphaelle she is being treated well, and that these two dads love her. 

We are supposed to feel all gooey-gooey about the fact that these two handsome, appealing men with charming French accents have been allowed to adopt. Problem Number One. We are all for gay acceptance, gay rights, gay marriage, but indisputable is the reality that gay and lesbian adoption will increase the number of people looking to adoption to build families. The unwitting result is more pressure on the adoption industry to find more babies from a dwindling market so that gay and lesbian couples can adopt somebody else's child. 

Jennifer Aniston to adopt! At last! It's a Girl!

Jennifer Aniston--Adoptive Mom to Be? 

Update on 10/9:  Jennifer Aniston is not pregnant and she is not considering adoption, at least not right now. That is the message that was delivered this week by her publicist Stephen Huvane. Recent rumored started by Life & Style have suggested that Aniston and fiancé Justin Theroux are thinking about adopting. In a statement to Page Six, Huvane said in no uncertain terms that Aniston is not planning to adopt or have a child in the near future.
                                      * * * 

"Jen's Adoption Surpise" and "A BABY AT LAST" read the headlines at the supermarket checkout, and I thought, Who is surprised? Not I. Ever since Jen did not get hitched and/or get pregnant during her fecund years, I have been waiting for this piece of news--that she is going to adopt! Well, folks it apparently has happened, if Life & Style magazine is to be believed. "Jen & Justin's Baby Secret: They're Adopting" read the headline inside.

Oh! $@#!

Finding Your Roots: Bastards show up in all family trees

Henry Louis Gates

How many of us have ancestors who were born outside of marriage? Plenty it would seem. Last week's episode of Henry Louis Gates, Jr's Finding Your Roots on PBS, found that the three athletic greats the program featured all had ancestors born under less than auspicious circumstances. Tennis legend and feminist Billie Jean King, Yankee all star Derrick Jeter, and women's basketball pioneer Rebecca Lobo each had an ancestor born--outside of marriage. Gates is a warm and engaging host, and the show never fails to emphasize the connection of natural families. Guests are likely to find surprises in the family background.

'Open' adoption letters released in Texas...with redactions

Protesting at a Gladney event--in Texas 

Boxes and boxes of letters from first mothers to the adoptive families and vice versa that were left unattended when a major San Antonio agency shut down in 2012 will be forwarded to the people to whom they were intended, the state of Texas announced yesterday. However, though the agency, Adoption Services Associates, had promised "open adoption" to the unsuspecting and naive women who gave up their babies through ASA, all the identifying information in the letters will be blacked out.

We reported earlier a reputable agency in San Antonio, Abrazo (that only handles fully open adoptions), had stepped in and tried to help the first mothers who counted on continuing

First mother reappears after 12 years--after a 'happy' reunion

Jane

When a first mother wants to resume contact--after cutting off the relationship 12 years earlier following reunion, how can an adoptee protect herself from rejection again? One of our readers, Nicole, wrote us saying she found her mother in 2002. But after several visits, including meeting her extended family, Nicole's mother asked "that we not continue having contact." Nicole's email went on:

"She wrote to me this July hoping to start a 'conversation' and we've exchanged a couple of letters. We've both lifted burdens of guilt and shame for each other and on balance, finding each other benefited us greatly....My dilemma is making sense of her recent contact and protecting myself from feeling rejected a third time....I've done a lot of therapy and healing, and realize I can't be hurt unless I allow it. But therapy is one thing. and her writing is reality and bewildering."

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?

Marriage after relinquishing a child--a good man helps

Celebrating our 25th anniversary 

Today is our 33rd wedding anniversary and after we did a quick stop at a church yard sale this morning and had coffee downtown outdoors--I thought about how my unknown daughter--unknown when we married--was a part of our lives from the very first time Tony and I met. Some of you know the story because I've told it before but today it's much on my mind.

We met at a Sunday brunch in February, introduced by a mutual friend, Gael McCarthy. We had both been on The Daily Collegian at Wayne State University in Detroit, and we both ended up in

Open adoption--does it really solve all the problems?

Lorraine

When I gave my daughter up in 1966 all I really wanted—or thought I could ask for—was to be able to know her one day. That bare concession to the mother and child bond would not have made leaving her behind any easier, but it would have calmed my mind about the future. As I write today, open adoption is touted as the panacea for the pain of a closed adoption., or at least mute the anguish of mothers like me. Perhaps it would have been so—to know that she was safe and protected. But I don’t know how I would have reacted to other people being there for her, to be present but unable to make the decisions I thought best for a child of mine, a child related to me by blood, a child who shared my genetic makeup and family history.

Pregnancy before Roe: I thought I was alone...but I wasn't

Lorraine

How many of us got pregnant during the years when mores were changing in fact but not in public acceptance--the years after World War 2 and before abortion became legal? When I read about the various states--North Dakota, Texas, Missouri, to name a few--which are making abortion increasingly difficult and expensive, I am reminded of the time back when...I got pregnant. This is a excerpt from my memoir, hole in my heart:

While I felt completely alone in my catastrophe, I actually had a lot of company. We women who got pregnant when we weren't supposed to in the Fifties, Sixties and early Seventies were trapped in the transition era that has come to be known as the Baby Scoop Era, a period that began after World War II and continued on through the Seventies. [1] 

Wrong name on birth certificate?

Jane

Just when we thought we heard it all, Jane read about a new twist in the make-believe world of birth certificates. A Portland, Oregon lawyer wrote recently about a case where:

"Bio mother had child and her girl friend was at the hospital. The hospital checked the box as thought the girlfriend was a registered domestic partner and put girlfriend as parent on birth certificate. Parties were not registered domestic partners. Vital Stats says they will not correct the hospital error without a court order."

'CERTIFICATE OF TITLE' 
Once upon a time, birth certificates contained the child's name, date and place of birth, and the names of the child's biological parents. Then the

Political commercial leaves First Mother Forum speechless. Almost.

Is there anything about this commercial that bothers you? Bothers me. Quite a bit.

How much do genes count in who we become?

 

Lorraine and Jane, 1983

The full answer to the question posed in the title is still being debated and studied, because of course environment plays an enormous part in who we become. But consider:

When I found my daughter, she was writing poetry for the high school magazine and wanted to be a writer--as were both her father and I. He was also a major jazz buff with a huge collection of jazz recordings, and he helped me learn to appreciate it. Her adoptive parents were an insurance adjuster and a nurse.

My daughter had two daughters. One (who was relinquished and adopted) is a poet who performs spoken word with a jazz group. The other is an art major, choosing between teaching or art history. One of my uncles went to art school in California, but was never able to make a career in art. However, my brother was only ever interested in such a career, and began pursing it in high school. He went to art school, and became an art director before he graduated. One of his daughters, my

I will always be a woman who gave up a child

Lorraine

The other day I was reading a new book, Soldier Girls: the Battles of Three Women at Home and at War, and I came to the section at the end where a therapist is helping one of the women get over the effects of two deployments, one in Afghanistan, one in Iraq. The woman, called Desma in the book, was injured when the supply truck she was driving in Iraq hit a roadside bomb. She ended up with a traumatic brain injury, although she had not been compensated for that disability. The doctor treating her also believed she was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which she was also not being compensated for either.

Desma had a troubled childhood and had been removed from her mother and put into foster care. One of her therapists wanted her to probe into her past but Desma did not want to talk about it because it flooded her with emotion--namely anger. Now that she as back home, she felt a "snarly, pissy kind of rage."

Thailand's booming business in surrogacy is an ethical swamp

Lorraine

A surrogate has twins. One of them has Down Syndrome. The biological parents only want the perfect child, and leave the Down Syndrome baby with the surrogate. Later it emerges, the father, David John Farnell, was convicted of 22 charges of child sex abuse in the 1990s in Australia. He met his current wife via a matchmaking agency. The child with Down Syndrome remains in Thailand with the surrogate mother, Farnell and his wife have the "healthy" twin. 

A Japanese businessman, multimillionaire Mitsutoki Shigeta, has had at least 15 children with surrogates whose births were weeks or months apart, and were all living in one house. The 24-year-old says his motives are pure; a large family is all he wants. He broke no law;

A father grieves his troubled adopted son

Edwards Hirsch

Although I have compassion for Edward Hirsch and Janet Landay, I have to believe that if they had known something about the effects of adoption, their son might be alive today. Instead he died of an overdose in 2011 at age 22. The elegy Hirsch wrote for him is the subject of a New Yorker article "Finding the Words" by Alec Wilkinson.

Hirsch and Landay adopted their son, whom they named Gabriel after the Biblical Gabriel, at six days. Although Gabriel was born in 1988, when open adoptions were advocated by adoption professionals and were becoming commonplace, Gabriel was adopted in a closed adoption, arranged by attorneys. The parents' ignorance about adoption--admittedly this is a harsh word--is sorely evident throughout

Help for a mother-to be to keep her baby

Jane

NOTE: WE ARE UPDATING "SOURCES" AS READERS PASS THEM ALONG.

We can preach all day about why mothers should keep their babies, but the realities are some just can't see a way to do it. Their families won't help them and they don't know where to turn. One of these women, Morgan, who lives in the Houston area commented on our post "If you're uncertain about adoption, keep your baby":

"I don't want to give up my baby but I feel like I don't have a choice. I'm 19 years old and truly have NO support. I'm three months pregnant, the dad left for good. I told my mom, thinking I could at least get emotional support, but I got the exact opposite. I need to move out of my grandfather's house before the baby is born and I just got fired from my job, no income. I have six months or less.