Not ignoring you, I'm just overwhelmed right now!

East Hampton Main Beach yesterday morning. 

Yo!  I'm in a time-crunch right now and have had to be occupied with projects other than First Mother Forum. My husband and I had a busy time last week getting ready for a 35th wedding anniversary luncheon

Coming out as a mother who relinquished a child in the Sixties

In hiding.

Lorraine 

That's the how most of us lived when we got pregnant. In shame, hiding our pregnancies, lying to neighbors and even people we called friends. For us, it was the worst of times.

So many of us with adult children searching and/or reuniting for their natural parents today cannot understand what it was like in the decades when they were born. The shame might have been lessening after the Seventies, but it didn't happen all at once, and it was different in different places, with different religions and in individual families. No matter what, we hid our burgeoning bellies; some of us were sent away to god-awful homes for "unwed mothers" or to live relatives in a distant town. Some of us

Hillary wrong on adoption, but Trump/Pence ticket threatens women's rights

                            --Courtesy of Lisa Roberts

Adoption came up last night in the second debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as she spoke of her 30 years in public life. After noting that eight million kids every year have health insurance because of her work to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program, she said:  "Hundreds of thousands of kids now have a chance to be adopted because I worked to change our adoption and foster care system."

Ouch, we collectively sighed. The law that she helped push through Congress in 1997, the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), was passed to address what child welfare experts claimed were the failings of an approach that kept families together. The claims were that children were kept in, or returned to, precarious family situations where the children were in actual danger of being injured or killed. The new law urged a get-tough approach to parents. 

The overall effect was to sometimes take children from mothers and families when unnecessary, and make it impossible for

'Pro-Life' equals 'pro-adoption' in Pence's punishing choice

Lorraine 

"I think if you are pro-life you should be pro-adoption," was one of the nuggets Mike Pence said during last night's debate. He went on: 

"The state of Indiana has also made sure that we expand health-care counseling for women, non-abortion alternatives. I'm very pleased that in Indiana that we are well on our way to becoming the most pro-adoption state in America." 

Therefore his answer to women who get pregnant when they can't find a way to keep their babies is just put the child up for adoption. Not one mention of giving those women the kind of aid that would allow keeping their babies as the humane alternative to abortion. No, instead, it's always: adoption.

Bill's affairs don't make Hillary less a feminist

Lorraine

Bill Clinton was a philander. Old news. Now the news is that his wife Hillary is anti-feminist because she a) did stand by her man and b) wasn't nice to the women Bill was fooling around with. Because Hillary wasn't nice to them during the election campaigns and his presidency, Trump's surrogates are trying to shame her into not being a feminist.

Please. Don't insult my intelligence. Trump spokesman Rudy Giuliani and others of the Trump campaign who are trying to make an issue of Hillary's behavior toward other woman who slept with her husband may speak to the audience who already hate Hillary, but the argument is falling flat.

Not being nice to the woman who is sleeping with your husband--no matter how it was initiated--is what we humans do. We protect our own interests, our own marriages, our men from rivals. Instinctively, we pounce to trash the

'X' instead of a name on a birth certificate is just plain wrong

Lorraine and Jane at Rockefeller Center, 1982

A few days ago I read a story about Missouri adoptees born before 1941 being able to actually get their birth certificates, and dammit by the time I got to the end I was just furious that states are so slow to realize what sealed records have done to people!  Yes, they go about their lives and grow up, go the school, have jobs, get married, have children and all the rest, but in most states they still are unable to have that piece of paper that might unlock--most likely would unlock--the key to their identities: original birth certificates with the names of the parents.

ACLU: Right on Kaepernick, wrong on adoptee and first mother rights

Lorraine

"We support Colin Kaepernick and every other American who has defended an unpopular opinion." So tweets ACLU National. (And we do too, see our current sidebar.)

The ACLU National support 49ers quarterback Kaepernick's kneel-down during the singing of the national anthem to protest racial injustice and police brutality, but they also support injustice against adoptees. They say they do this for those birth/first mothers who wish to remain secret from their children. Baloney. If that is their argument for being such a stand-up partner to adoptee injustice, they are ignoring what they actually support.

DNA reveals a mother who rejected contact. Maybe.

Lorraine

Dear Lorraine:

"Through DNA I have a close 2nd cousin match and with help from a search angel, I found my first mother. I have a younger brother from her. My problem is she said no contact when the Children's Home Society in Florida found her back in 2007. At that point I learned that she had not disclosed my existence to her family, but now with the DNA tests results and my tree on ancestry I won't be a secret any more for long.

"Trying to figure out what to do next--should I try to contact her again through a direct letter to her, with a few pictures? We look a lot a like.

The Light Between Oceans: Bloated melodrama defies your sympathy

The book, the movie poster

As soon as I learned that The Light Between Oceans was about the tug-of-war over a child between a mother and one who pretends to be the real mother (as was evident in the pre-release TV commercials) I knew I would see it. I took plenty of tissues; I wanted to go alone.

Since I found the story of The Place Beyond the Pines, one of the director Derek Cianfrance's earlier films, devastating and compelling from the first frame, I expected the same. After that story of a child the father did not know his short-term girlfriend had, and its the tragic end, I was an emotional mess. I know too many stories about guys who don't know they left behind a child.

So I was set up to like this movie.  I excepted my own personal waterworks.

Yet I didn't even need the tissues. The story is way too preposterous, the filming veers to high melodrama, the moral question at the heart of the story

Catelynn and Tyler face the hard realities of adoption--again

Birth mother Catelynn Lowell Baltierra

An anguished Catelynn Lowell Baltierra listens while her husband Tyler denounces Brandon and Teresa Davis, the adoptive parents of their first daughter, Carly.  Seven years ago, as teen parents, their surrender of their daughter was featured on MTV's reality soap opera 16 and Pregnant. MTV has followed Catelynn and three other teen moms who kept their babies, Amber, Staci, and Farrah, as they moved from adolescence into adulthood in a show now called "Teen Mom OG" (original girls).

On the latest episode, Teresa tells Catelynn in a telephone call that she does not want their

Adoption never strays far from my life

Kate and Geoff leaving the ceremony 

You just never know what's going to happen when you are as public as I am about my daughter lost to adoption and my passion for changing adoption, and Facebook.

Case A) A lawyer in my village of Sag Harbor of friendly but usually only a passing acquaintance told me one day that years ago he handled an adoption and he has kept all the papers with the names intact IN CASE someone (as in the mother or the grown-up child) returns asking for information.

He will give it to whomever arrives, no questions asked (as long as no one is an axe-murderer).  He understands that it is absurd that mother and child are not allowed to know one another under current laws. I have no more

'Our Little Sister' a tender study of family and kinship

Sisters greeting an unknown sibling who shares one parent is the subject of Our Little Sister, a Japanese film now in art theaters. Adoption is not part of this story, yet the issues were close enough to the bone I was glad to be sitting in the dark, alone, with no one near me. They would have wondered how this deeply charming and quietly moving film would have elicited deep feelings in me. Some people might simply get misty eyed as the film ends, but I slipped my sunglasses on as I left to hide the outright tears.

Let's get on with the story: Three sisters, now grown and working, were left by their father 15 years earlier when he had an affair that produced a daughter, Suzu, now an adolescent. Suzu was living with the father, and a new wife in a distant village when he died. The three sisters travel by train to funeral, and Suzu, the little sister, meets them at the station, walks them to their hotel, and quietly says goodbye.

Genetic mother denied visitation with son conceived in vitro

Jordan Schnitzer, father of the year. NOT. 

Jordan Schnitzer wanted a son without the bother of a mother. After two attempts using "donated" eggs, Schnitzer, 65, the divorced father of two teenage daughters turned to his 37-year-old girlfriend Cory Sause. She happened to have some eggs frozen just in case... and she agreed to share them with Schnitzer. After a surrogate became pregnant from Schnitzer's/Sause's embryo/DNA, their relationship soured.

Their son was born in December and they are now embroiled in litigation on whether egg mother Sause can have visitation with her biological son. Schnitzer's position is absolute: He is the sole and exclusive parent. His name alone is on the birth certificate. Biology be damned.

Simone Biles' commotion over her (adoptive) parents

Simone at work

Simone Biles, one of the stars of the Olympics, is at the source of a huge kerfuffle regarding what adoptive parents deem as acceptable language when it comes to them. Al Trautwig, a NBC commentator, referred to her briefly by saying she was raised by her grandfather and his wife and she calls them mom and dad. He also said that she was adopted by them. He also tweeted: “They may be mom and dad but they are NOT her parents,” he wrote in a since-deleted tweet.

Well, you'd think that he had thrown out a bomb. It was bold, I'll admit and I wonder what prompted him to go that far--that is, CAP the NOT. Maybe he was being nudged to diminish or hide her back story, and he said, Wait a minute, that's not the true story. Maybe he is the biological father of a child who was adopted. Maybe he wanted to raise his own child and was denied that. Or maybe, he had already been criticized for acknowledging that she was adopted by her grandfather and step-grandmother and he was irritated by the sensitive souls who had taken offense and were already complaining about hearing the truth, a prospect that I as a journalist find plausible. Who knows?

DMC: Room for two mothers in his life

Jane, DMC, and Jeanette Roberts at AAC 3-8-07

I met the rapper, Darryl McDaniels ( DMC)  in 2007 when I attended the annual conference of the American Adoption Congress in Boston with my good friend and fellow first mother Jeanette Roberts. In truth I had never heard of DMC and knew nothing about rap music. I learned he was a late discovery adoptee and an advocate for opening records.

I bought his just published book Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide: A Memoir because I wanted to learn more about his adoption experience and as way of thanking him for standing up for adoption reform and taking the time to pose with me and Jeanette in a picture. I'm glad I did.

When death reveals a secret child

Full moon.

Thursday and Friday I helped clean out the home of a neighbor and friend who died in December.

With the emptying of the house, my husband and I are also losing a family that became a stand-in for my own distant family, and for Tony's too. And the neighbor--the grande dame of her family--was my friend, but a friend who I discovered shortly before she died, was a mother like me. A mother who gave up a child.

I've written about Yvonne several times before, for we had legendary arguments about whether someone who is relinquished and adopted should find their biological family. We wrote

Advertising for a baby and other gripes

Lorraine

It's hot outside. Really hot. I'm watching the conventions and the convention analysis, but still adoption goes on. Still we get comments here and messages on Facebook asking us to advertise a couple who are hoping to adopt your lovely baby.

The other day, I was asked, along with 24 others, in a message on Facebook, if I would please post their story because they were going to be "featured" soon by their adoption agency. So thus their "featured" post (which agency was not included) would be repeated on 25 other Facebook pages (assuming we all were invested in spreading their ad for a baby) and thus hopefully reach some woman/teen in dire straits who cannot figure out how to keep her baby.

Adoption and Lying: Adopted Syndrome or not?

Lorraine

Due to the stories of reunion troubles that emerged from the last blog, I am reposting one that I wrote in 2010.--lorraine

Over the weekend I met up with an old friend, a therapist who facilitates groups of parents of troubled children, and while some of them are children of divorce, she added that a fair number of them are adoptive parents. A friend of ours sent their teenage son for a year to a school for problem kids, and the son reported that many, if not most of the kids there were adopted, or children of divorce. I won't go into the children of divorce issue here, but the statistics of trouble are there, among the adopted:

"The number of Adoptees in the adolescent and young-adult clinics and residential treatment centers is strikingly high. Doctors from the Yale Psychiatric Institute and other

What do mothers owe their children lost to adoption?

Lorraine

Not every mother, we know, welcomes her lost son or daughter back with warmth and motherly feelings. Not every family does either. Jealousies erupt, feelings are hurt, adoptees are rejected. Some of the problems stem directly from the secrecy many mothers assumed, and did not tell their spouses or other children. Not every adoptee who comes back is a stable person. Some are angry. Studies and statistics show adoptees show up in greater numbers than the norm in numbers among addicts, criminals, and other troubled populations. Adoptees are more likely to attempt suicide or have suicidal thoughts.*

We know this from the research, the people who write here, and other social media. We hear from mothers who feel used and mistreated by their reunited children, now adults. We hear from adoptees who have been rejected for no good reason other than they were given up for adoption and the original mothers and families cannot accommodate their children's return.

A rationale for adoptee access to original birth certificates

From the Albany Times-Union

As we celebrate Hawaii's ground-breaking law, we must remember that many states (13 at this point) have passed laws that give some--but not all--adopted people access to their original birth records. These laws are wrong every which way. There should be no restrictions to anyone's access to their birth records or any source that would give individuals the names of their natural biological parents. However, when there is no possibility of complete access--due to a legislator's intransigence on the noxious issue of birth mother vetoes--we have not opposed such legislation. We did, however, oppose the truly awful bill in New York state recently. But just as the military went from President Bill Clinton's tepid "Don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding gays to full acceptance, so will we move to full access for all adoptees to their original birth certificates without exceptions, or those damn birth mother/first mother vetoes.