Seven Core Issues

I’ve not actually read this book but learned about it today. It comes highly recommended by many and who have actually read it and is rated right up there with The Primal Wound and Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew. Also Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self. So, I thought I should share it. I was happy to see that the book also covers Third Party Reproduction (in fact the book includes donor insemination and surrogacy).

Originally published in the 1980s, it was ahead of it’s time. One adoptee says, it is something that I wish my adoptive parents had read. The new edition has been updated and was released in 2019. The seven core issues are loss, rejection, guilt and shame, grief, identity, intimacy, and mastery/control.

One person familiar with this book said it was “A classic and foundational to the way I think about these issues and the importance of reform in adoption practices.”

At Amazon it is said – “the first conceptual framework of its kind to offer a unifying lens that was inclusive of all individuals touched by the adoption experience.” It is further noted that – “Attachment and trauma are integrated with the Seven Core Issues model to address and normalize the additional tasks individuals and families will encounter.” The book also claims to access “a range of perspectives including: multi-racial, LGBTQ, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, African-American, International,” as well as those that cover openness, search and reunion.

Penny Callan Partridge, Co-founder in 1973 of the Adoption Forum of Philadelphia, wrote – “For decades, I have been responding to these ‘seven core issues’ as an adopted person, as a parent by adoption, as a poet. Now I imagine myself as a therapist trying to help someone in the adoption constellation. I would definitely want this book close at hand.”

Another, Keith Silverstein, a voice actor and adoption advocate, noted – “As an adopted person, I’m very familiar with the seven core issues, both comprehensively and experientially. Yet even with my prior knowledge, there was a deeper understanding to be attained through the pages of this book. Having had the pleasure to work with and consider both Sharon and Allison my friends, I’ve seen first hand the passion they have for adoption and helping children find permanence. Their collective expertise, contained here, is, in my opinion, the gold standard for understanding and working towards permanence in adoption.”

Unexpectedly Complicated

I can’t even imagine . . . a sister dies leaving one’s self a 1 yr old to care for. Further complicating the situation, no one knows who this child’s father is. She notes – “my family doesn’t have a filter and I know they will talk crap about my sister and I don’t want her to hear that.”

She adds, “My Mom keeps telling her I’m her new Mama and I keep correcting her to not say that to her, if she wants to call me Mom one day she can but that should be her natural choice.” blogger’s note – why not just Auntie, since that is what she is. However, she goes on to note – “she already calls my husband Dada but I think that is because she never had one to call Dada.”

She adds a basis for her worries – “I honestly only want her to know all the good about my sister and not the bad things, am I wrong for that? I don’t want her to worry that she will be like her one day, I struggled with that as a young adult, worrying I would be like my Mom, and I just don’t want that for her.”

A social worker who is also an adoptive parent answers – My daughter’s birth mother did not know the identity of the father. It really hit home for her in kindergarten when her class was making Father’s Day gifts and she asked me where her daddy was from, when she was born. I had to be honest with her and tell her I just didn’t know. Since that time I have registered her with 23andMe and Ancestry, but no close relatives have been found yet. You sound like a very caring person and who will work hard to provide a loving and safe environment for your niece.

One woman adopted as infant (but not through kinship) said, “I want to address some points/ language, as it is important.”

1. Babies remember their mothers. Implicit memory does this. Babies also grieve the loss of their mothers. This is lifelong.

2. Normalize allowing her to grieve and explore this out loud. Speak openly and frequently about her mom. Good memories, funny stories, similarities.

3. Come up with another name she can call you, like a derivative of your name that is easy for a baby to say. Note – She already has a Mom, and that is not you.

4. Please also normalize that your husband is not her biological father. Weave it into her life story.

5. If you don’t know who her biological father is, then be honest. Don’t ever lie, even by omission.

6. Challenge your own black and white thinking in terms of good/bad. Was your sister struggling with mental health / substance abuse, etc? These are reasons to be compassionate, and there are age appropriate ways to address this.

You cannot erase her loss, or her truth. You can be the safe place for her to explore and question it, without fear of offending the adults.

The Goal Is Reunification

Officially it is. However, too many foster parents do it as a means of adopting a child in a market with limited availability. As one former foster care youth notes – “I keep telling everyone reunification is lip service and the younger kids never get reunited.”

The New Yorker has an article out in collaboration with ProPublica – When Foster Parents Don’t Want to Give Back the Baby by Eli Hager. The subtitle reads – In many states, lawyers are pushing a new legal strategy that forces biological parents to compete for custody of their children.

In this story, a typical couple who’s infant ends up in foster care, actually decided to do the “hard work” to get their baby returned to them (the infant had been placed with foster parents). The couple had met every one of the judge’s requirements, and then some. They’d tested negative on more than thirty consecutive drug screens between them, including hair-follicle tests that indicated how long they’d been clean. They had continued to visit their son weekly, even when due to the pandemic that meant Zoom. The father took a job as a maintenance man for the county, installing plumbing in low-income housing and mowing the fairgrounds. The mother quit working in a bar and began delivering mail for the U.S. Postal Service plus manning the deli counter at a grocery store on her days off. They spent much of what they earned replacing carpets, repainting walls, and fogging air ducts to remove any lingering trace of meth from their one-story house. They had completed parenting lessons and were in therapy, getting support for their sobriety and learning how to be better partners to each other. In other words, the foster-care system, whose goal under federal law is to be temporary, in service of a family reuniting, seemed to be working.

Then, after being sober for 6 months, another requirement was added – an expert evaluation of how well they interacted with their son. What they didn’t know was that they would be competing for him. His foster parents, hoping to adopt him, had just weeks earlier embraced an increasingly popular legal strategy, known as foster-parent intervening, that significantly improved their odds of winning the child.

The background is this – it has become harder and harder to adopt a child, especially an infant, in the United States. Adoptions from abroad plummeted from twenty-three thousand in 2004 to fifteen hundred last year, largely owing to stricter policies in Asia and elsewhere, and to a 2008 Hague Convention treaty designed to encourage adoptions within the country of origin and to reduce child trafficking. Domestically, as the stigma of single motherhood continues to wane, fewer young moms are voluntarily giving up their babies, and private adoption has, as a result, turned into an expensive waiting game. Fostering to adopt is now Plan C, but it, too, can be a long process, because the law requires that nearly all birth parents be given a chance before their rights are terminated. Intervening has emerged as a way for aspiring adopters to move things along and have more of a say in whether the birth family should be reunified.

Intervenors can file motions, enter evidence, and call and cross-examine witnesses to argue that a child would be better off staying with them permanently, even if the birth parents—or other family members, such as grandparents—have fulfilled all their legal obligations to provide the child with a safe home. Regarding our unfortunate couple, the evaluator who is a social worker reported “Neither parent has the kind of relationship with (their son) that will help him feel safe in a new situation.” The mother was bewildered when she read the report. Didn’t the evaluator understand how hard it is to bond with a baby you’ve only been allowed to see a few hours a week. Why was the baby’s eye contact with her described as lacking “affective involvement”? She also opposed the baby being returned to his parents on the grounds that the foster-parent intervenors had reported that he pitched fits and struggled to eat and sleep after seeing them.

It turned out this social worker had a long-standing independent agenda: helping foster parents succeed in intervening and permanently claiming the children they care for. No wonder some people feel the system is rigged against them. Relying heavily on this expert assessment, the county moved to permanently terminate the parents parental rights. In the 1950’s, the British psychoanalyst John Bowlby posited that being separated from a maternal figure in the first years of life warps a child’s future ability to form close relationships. The the American Academy of Pediatrics has concluded that kids who grow up with their birth family or kin are less likely than those who are adopted or are raised in non-kinship foster care to experience long-term separation trauma, behavioral and mental-health problems, and questions of identity. It’s not acceptable in most family courts to explicitly argue that, if you have more material (financial) advantages to provide for a child, you should get to adopt him or her.

Ultimately, even though the couple had complied with their treatment plans, the filing concluded, their son had been in foster care for three years and needed “the permanence that only adoption can afford him.” However, his parents fought back. They filed an Open Records Act request, and soon received dozens of invoices. In all, their tiny, unaffluent county had spent more than three hundred and ten thousand dollars on their son’s case. An internal investigation found improprieties in the handling of the case. The trial was cancelled, and, the county finally dropped its case. Then, his mother joined other birth families in testifying in favor of new state legislation that would give biological relatives more priority in foster-care cases and prevent foster parents from intervening, until they had cared for a child for a year. In August, that law went into effect.

There are a lot more details in the article, if you are further interested. PS it is possible to get around the paywall with a bit of persistence and read the article in full.

Support Without Preference

An adoptive parent who wants to be child centered in an awkward situation writes –

So our daughter is 12. I have had conversations with her about if/when she wants to talk to mom, that I’m completely open to that and I will support her in that choice, whatever that choice is. She doesn’t remember much about mom and was raised by her oldest sister.

Should I leave it at that? That it’s open when she’s ready? Allow her complete control? Should I reach out to her mom and contact her to let her know how our daughter is doing, updates, etc? Should I ask our daughter what she would like to me to do?

I found her mom on Facebook, but I haven’t friend requested her yet, as I really want to be sensitive to our daughter’s wants in contact or no contact with her. Our daughter helped search for her mom, and it took us forever because she wasn’t under her actual name, she used her youngest daughter’s name.

She has seen her mom twice since she was adopted, and both times she didn’t acknowledge mom, and I didn’t push. The one time I asked if she wanted to say hi, she said no, and I said okay, it’s your choice. We live in the same small town as mom, so visits could happen consistently if our daughter is open and willing to it, but it also means we could run into mom on any given day.

Should I reach out to mom? I have ways of getting her number, but I also want to honor the process of contact that my daughter may or may not want to have with her. Should I ask her? Should I wait, since she is 12 and is still going through so much already, adding this may overwhelm her? I just want to do my best by our girl, and would appreciate any insight other adoptee’s have on this situation. Thanks.

Some responses –

An adoptee notes – I tend to be of the opinion that less is more. You don’t want to accidentally make her feel pressured or like there’s an option you’d prefer. When I was young, my adoptive mother made a comment she didn’t think through, that made me avoid seeking my biological family for decades because I didn’t want to hurt her. I brought it up with her a couple of years ago, and she was horrified she’d left that impression, apologized, and encouraged me to do what I wanted. Leaving it supportive but open-ended gives her the space to make her own choices without guilt either way.

Another adoptee said – I’d give you daughter time to process and go at her pace. Don’t reach out to anyone. Don’t push. Just support her decisions, even if that decision is to remain detached.

An adoptive parent shares – I wouldn’t push it with mom. I have twins and one has wanted everything birth family since he was 8. He want’s everything – birth father and siblings. The other enjoys time with them but it’s not a priority, they are 17 now. My daughter has had a relationship with grandparents since day one. They adopted one of her younger sisters. We see them often. When it was safe, she was able to meet birth mom. I would encourage a sibling relationship, if mom has custody of younger siblings, and has to bring siblings. It will fall into place. One adoptee counters – “What do you mean when it was safe? Do you mean when you decided it was okay with you?” And it didn’t go well from there as the original commenter asked for ADOPTEE perspectives.

Another adoptee did have a good suggestion that comes up over and over again – Is your daughter in therapy? If not, this sounds like a great time to get her a therapist that she can have a relationship with that makes her safe to open up about the complex feelings that come along with these issues. No matter how wonderful and supportive you are, she may still hold back because she doesn’t want to upset you. Not saying that’s the case here, just saying that it’s something that might result in you being the only trusted person she has conversations about this topic with.

Another adoptee added – I second this recommendation. Seeing as she’s only 12 years old (and still figuring out emotional regulation, processing emotions, etc.) a therapist could be helpful in guiding her through her thoughts and feelings about contact. It may take time to find the right therapist and form of therapy that works for her-and that’s completely normal. You clearly respect and value her choices, so keep instilling her with that confidence as she figures out what works best for her-and remind her it’s completely ok if that changes. If you wish to reach out to her mom as a way to keep her updated/check in/etc, you should definitely ask your daughter first.

Thankfully, these were answered with the best possible response – yes she is in therapy and I have also branched out and recently was in contact with an adoption trauma therapist who is actually an adoptee and may start making the transition from her current therapist to the adoption one if our daughter feels comfortable with it.

An obvious question – Where is the sibling who ‘took care of her’? She needs to have a relationship w/them. And the response – she’s currently close and our daughter has complete contact with her. Her sister is also expecting her own child, so I’m sure there is a lot going on for that sister but our daughter has an Apple Watch and has full contact with her as she chooses.

Can’t Force Relationships

It really can be heartbreaking but there really is no way to force a relationship or even communication.

One adoptee writes about meeting her biological sibling but it has not gone very well “she will be in my life for a good 1 or 2 months, then totally cut me off, and then come back…”

Another adoptee writes – “My full sister (a year older) and I met when in college. That is when she first learned about me. All was well until she stopped talking to me. Found out later that my first mom told her that she either has a sister or a mother but not both.” She adds, “Wish I could have more communication but I can’t force her.”

Someone else wisely notes – “Everyone has emotions. We can’t assume our siblings understand the void of wanting that bond, just because we feel it.” She added (which I understand from personal experience with my own relatives) “we have our own lives and I’m not mentally over thinking, just got tired asking what if’s. I know I didn’t do anything wrong, it’s ok they don’t wanna call.” Lastly, she adds – “What’s the worst that can happen? She rejects you …then you can lift the weight and move on. Or she can tell you her side and you tell your side. Then, you grow your relationship and understand one another …” It takes time and maybe sometimes time doesn’t resolve it. It just is and we have to come to accept that.

Yet another responded to the full post of the first one with – “I felt like I could have written this. I’m 39 and my sister is 40 (she was adopted) and we JUST met last month. Have been talking for several months. We seemed like instant sisters and best friends. Neither of us have any other true siblings in our lives. On text she will go several days chatting and disappear for weeks. I’m having such a hard time navigating this. I wanted so badly to have a sister and I’m trying really hard to meet her where she’s at and appreciate the smallest amount she will give me but I’m just having a hard time.”

Another adoptee writes – “I have a similar story with a brother who initially reached out to me. I wish I could say it gets easier – well. It does. But it takes a while. I’ll never know the reasons why he stepped away from me, but I’ve learned to just accept that he has his own way of processing.”

Though I’m not an adoptee, I am the child of 2 adoptees who has located my extended genetic family for all 4 lines (the children or relatives of my 2 grandmothers and 2 grandfathers). It isn’t easy when decades of each other’s lives do not overlap, when you do not share those familial commonalities and histories. All we can do is be available and willing . . . with no small amount of patience for the processes of time and the occasional contact.

An Adoptee’s Story

I learned about this book, when I saw a poem posted by the author, Diane McConnell. She gave permission to share the poem saying – “you can do that (share the poem). Please use my name as I’m the author. It is also a copyrighted part in my book, so there’s that. It’s called No Returns Without Original Receipt (image above).

At Amazon, she writes regarding the book – Renewed courage after learning the final piece of my true heritage has overcome my life-long fear of telling my story. Every adoptee has the right, and many the need, to discover her or his true history, ancestry and identity. Knowledge gives power and confidence. With our truths, we can recover and grow stronger.

blogger’s note – I understand. While not an adoptee, as the child of 2 adoptees who died knowing next to nothing about their origins, I had a NEED to know our family’s true history, our ancestry and recover my own genetic identity.

Diane’s poem is below.

Like An Avalanche

“The point was, I didn’t deserve my son to be taken.”

When my two sons were young, I had a constant fear of losing them to the state without cause. Thankfully, they are 19 and 22 and have never spent a day without at least one of their parents. Others are not so lucky. Today, I read a story in The Guardian about a mother who could not believe how fast the tables turned on her. LINK>’No matter what I do, I’m not in control’: what happens when the state takes your child.

All she wanted was change for bus fare but the store clerk copped an attitude, so she left (that’s her side of the story and I’m not here to question it). I do find what happened next tragic. The clerk made a “keep the peace” call to the police. When the police confronted her, she was on her way to work, pushing her young son’s stroller across the street. They arrested her for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and obstruction. Basically, they didn’t appreciate her challenging their authority. In their report, they indicated that they would have let her go, if she had not protested.

It could have been worse, since Child Protective Services (CPS) initially placed her son with her brother. However, not informally as a temporary caregiver while she was locked up but formally, with the intention of allowing the state to take legal custody. This was even though, the doctor who examined the little boy wrote that he showed no concerns for neglect or injury. Nevertheless, the doctor authorized CPS to hold him for 72 hours, while the agency prepared to petition the court for custody. That’s how fast it happened. CPS hadn’t been in her life that morning but the situation didn’t just snowball; it came down on her like an avalanche.

From jail, her phoned her brother only to discover it was worse than at first believed. He told her that CPS had taken her son. “They said I couldn’t see him,” she later recalled. “I don’t have custody. I don’t have rights. Nothing.” So even though her criminal case was closed when the charges were dropped, the involvement of CPS wasn’t so easy to leave behind.

Forcible family separation – among the most extreme and intrusive of government actions – occurs much more often than many realize, particularly among Black and Native American families. One in eleven Black children and one in nine Native American children will be placed in foster care by the age of 18. Families come to CPS’s attention due to issues such as substance misuse, domestic violence, mental health needs, and homelessness. Most lack sufficient resources to address their challenges. Family separation essentially punishes parents and children for their poverty and adversity.

Foster care traumatizes children; forcible family separation generates immense pain and trauma for their parents. People’s everyday experiences as they interact with the state – whether public benefits programs, police, and schools, etc – fundamentally shapes what they know and think about government, inequality, and justice. Taking children has always been a political act that targets marginalized racial/ethnic groups to maintain power over them. Family separation teaches affected mothers that the state is an adversary, working against them, given their marginal social positions. CPS gives parents, especially mothers, first-hand experience with an antagonistic, controlling government. Caseworkers, attorneys, and judges claim to help, but in most of these mothers’ experiences, those officials are working against their interests. Mothers don’t see anyone on their side.

For the woman in this story, the path for get her son home became long and arduous, with CPS repeatedly adding obstacles. CPS wanted her to demonstrate “progress” – as they defined it – in her ability to parent. The clock was ticking: per federal law, once children have spent 15 of the last 22 months in foster care, states are supposed to start the process of terminating parental rights permanently. Parents with limited resources face substantial, often essentially insurmountable, burdens to meet CPS’s requirements. It felt like as soon as mothers met one request, CPS added another. Their cases kept getting continued in court. Meanwhile, their kids were growing up.

Finally, a judge ordered that her son could go home – even though as far as she could tell, her situation hadn’t changed. What had changed was she had simply been assigned to a different judge, one who saw no reason her son couldn’t go home. And she figured her caseworker had grown tired of dealing with her. “I can’t even believe they took two years of my life,” she sighed. “They took two years of my son’s life that I can’t get back.”

In the US, CPS puts hundreds of thousands of parents each year through this devastating experience. Certainly, these parents are often experiencing substantial adversity; they cannot always meet children’s needs in their current circumstances. Nevertheless, all deserve to be treated with dignity; all ought to have a say.

A Multi-Generational Journey

A woman wrote on a page I follow that adoption is “a multi-generational journey. It is a stone thrown into the familial pond that ripples outward ad infinitum.”

She went on to share – Today my grandson-lost-to-adoption turns 34. My son-lost-to-adoption, along with his girlfriend, surrendered him when my son was just 18. My grandson found me last December and so far, I am his only connection to his family of origin. He has experienced “abandonment” by both of his birth parents twice: at 6 months of age when they terminated their parental rights and then recently when he learned of his father’s suicide and his mother’s reunion refusal.

Another woman commented – Four generations and counting for me.

blogger’s note – In my family too. Both parents were adoptees. Both of my sisters gave up babies to adoption. One also lost custody to her son’s grandparents (she also gave up my niece with coercion from our adoptee mom – unbelievable but true) and I physically lost custody to my ex-husband and his second wife (though my parental rights were never terminated, he ended up raising her – would not agree to paying child support and so, I found another way to get that financial support but at great cost to me). Thankfully, my grown daughter and I are very close, even though. So far, our children are not losing their own children.

With all of this in mind, I went looking. It is hard to find anything related among the numerous pro-adoption links.

At the American Adoption Congress, I found an article by Deborah Silverstein and Sharon Kaplan about the LINK>Lifelong Issues in Adoption. From that article –

Before the recent advent of open and cooperative practices, adoption – had been practiced as a win/lose or adversarial process. In such an approach, birth families lose their child in order for the adoptive family to gain a child. The adoptee was transposed from one family to another with time-limited and, at times, short-sighted consideration of the child’s long-term needs. Indeed, the emphasis has been on the needs of the adults–on the needs of the birth family not to parent and on the needs of the adoptive family to parent. The ramifications of this attitude can be seen in the number of difficulties experienced by adoptees and their families over their lifetimes.

blogger’s note – Certainly, both of my parents adoptions in the 1930s were NOT open adoptions.

The authors article above goes on to note – Adoption is created through loss; without loss there would be no adoption. Loss, then, is at the hub of the wheel. All birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees share in having experienced at least one major, life-altering loss before becoming involved in adoption. In adoption, in order to gain anything, one must first lose–a family, a child, a dream. It is these losses and the way they are accepted and, hopefully, resolved which set the tone for the lifelong process of adoption.

The grief process in adoption, so necessary for healthy functioning, is further complicated by the fact that there is no end to the losses, no closure to the loss experience. Loss in adoption is not a single occurrence. There is the initial, identifiable loss and innumerable secondary sub-losses. Loss becomes an evolving process, creating a theme of loss in both the individual’s and family’s development. Those losses affect all subsequent development.

blogger’s concluding notes – I found no resolution to this whole subject but at least people are reflecting and contemplating upon the issues.

For my own self, my feelings about adoption are complicated by the fact that – if there had not been adoption in my parents lives – I simply would not have existed. I am left with no choice but to accept this as best I can. I am not a fan of adoption. Recently I connected with a woman who knows quite a bit about adoption in general – she said, “I’ve never met anyone with so much adoption in their family.”

I did like the image I posted for this blog today. I do feel like I was preserved within my family (not given up for adoption when my teenage mom discovered she was pregnant before marriage) so that I could fulfill my own Life’s Purpose – knitting back together the fragments of my parents’ original birth parents’ families, so that our identity is now more whole.

Policing Unethical Agencies

I read about this effort today, LINK>New Bill Introduces Federal Oversight Over Private Adoption Agencies, which seems like a step in the right direction (if the House can get it’s act together, which is a big IF at the moment) –

Congressmembers Doug Lamborn (R CO-05) and Annie Kuster (D NH-02) introduced the In Good Standing Adoption Agencies Act of 2023 (LINK>HR 5540) in the House of Representatives last week, a bill that would require the federal government to publish a list of licensed, private, 501(c)(3) adoption agencies in each state.

While private adoption agencies can provide wonderful services for families frustrated by overwhelmed, slow-moving or unresponsive public systems, unethical agencies can manipulate birth parents, adoptees and adoptive parents for personal gain. Private businesses — both for- and non-profit — need money to stay afloat. When successful adoptions are a company’s primary source of income, workers can become incentivized to force adoptions through. These bad actors can sometimes call themselves contractors or consultants to get around state laws, or they might meet licensing requirements in only one or two states.

HR 5540 would require states to tell the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which private, non-profit adoption agencies are licensed in their jurisdiction, and which have been disciplined or sanctioned for not following the laws.

In looking for an image to illustrate today’s blog, I stumbled on this woman – LINK>Kirsta Bowman.

Kirsta is an activist for adoptees, foster children and reproductive rights. An adoptee herself, Bowman has been using her social media platforms to educate folks about the right-wing influence that runs rampant in the adoption industry as well as how said influence uses adoptees and foster children as pawns for their pro-life, for-profit agenda.

She writes – “When you grow up with pieces of paper showing how much your parents paid for you, it does make you feel like they should have a return on your investment,” Bowman said. “I grew up feeling like I had to prove my parents’ money’s worth.”

Four years ago, Bowman found her birth parents through Facebook, and that moment became the catalyst for her activism. “I started reaching out to other adoptees and realized that I’m not the only one who’s had issues with it,” she explains. “I learned that my birth mom actually did really want to keep me but was heavily pressured by my adoptive parents, and you learn how baby-hungry some of these people are who cannot physically have one.”

blogger’s note – maybe the only point I am trying to make today (I already write a lot about all that is wrong with adoption as it is practiced today and yesterday) is that there are GOOD people out there trying to make it all “better.”

Photos on Social Media

I will admit that I have not been overly cautious about my privacy on social media. I’m a bit more cautious about my husband and children. I rarely mention names but on occasion have posted photos of my sons – but not frequently. Things become a bit more controversial when adoptees (especially young ones) are the focus.

I read this today and thought it was worth sharing here – Is it okay to share pictures of adopted children on secure/controlled social media, that’s managed by me until they are old enough to do it themselves, with only their biological family added to the account to view the pictures.

I’ve asked this question in other groups and the majority answer given by adoptees was NO, it’s not okay to share pictures of children on Social Media without their consent. I fully understand this and don’t want to do anything without the children giving consent. That said it did kind of turn into a lot of mixed things being said that I’ve been thinking about over the past few months.

The main rebuttals to not doing it were:

1. Children shouldn’t have their pictures shared without their consent. So much has already been done to adoptees without their consent and adoptive parents shouldn’t add to that.

2. Social Media is scary and can be used by malicious people for predatory reasons.

3. Once it’s on the internet it’s always there and the children might feel like they’ve been violated by so much being shared.

4. Some technology advice was given.

5. Social Media can easily lead to oversharing the adoptees story.

6. Many adoptive parents use their adoptive stories as click bait to get likes/self validation.

That said the majority of adoptees seemed to appreciate my rationale and saw that I was trying to build/maintain family connections. Because of that many gave suggestions for picture sharing such as:

1. Continue to text/email pictures

2. Continue to develop pictures and put them into photo albums and give them in person during meetups/etc.

I appreciate all the feedback I was given and have taken a few months to think it over. I’m still torn if I’m being honest and was hoping by providing clarification on my thoughts it might add insight and promote further discussion to aid my understanding/decision.

If I were to share on Social Media, it would be a locked account that everyone involved knows I’m managing until the children are old enough to take it over themselves. It would never be my personal social media. I’ve never shared anything on my personal social media aside from private groups and even then, I try my best to keep it vague because the entire world doesn’t need to know – not just my life, but so many other people’s personal business, especially the children involved.

My reasoning for still considering this is:

1. There are barriers to texting/emailing pictures such as data limits on phones, phone numbers changing, me never knowing if – me texting pictures when it’s a convenient time for me – might not be a convenient time for the person on the receiving side. I worry that therefore I might be causing harm despite having good intentions. Also, with email limits on how many pictures can be sent, even then, my program struggles to go through – no matter if I try on my phone or computer. With emails it forces me to use Dropbox at times and the pictures expire in 30 days. Also the second I send a text or email it can easily be uploaded to Social Media. Which I don’t mind, I don’t feel that it’s my place to try and set limits on what others do with pictures of their family. (I’m mindful of the pictures being sent and don’t send weird bathtub pictures or things like that.)

2. There are also barriers to sharing physical pictures. Anytime I’ve shared a picture by either text/email, I also get a physical copy made and do my best to get them to as many people as I can, when I can. Despite my best efforts there are some people who end up with a lot more than others. Asking family to meet up with an adoptive parent to see their family either in person or on calls isn’t an easy ask. Although it’s easy to assume that it’s good for them because at least they get something, it’s also very hard. I can’t imagine seeing your family, loving them, then seeing them cry when it’s time to go because they don’t get to go with you and have to go with their adoptive parent, or just having to see them leave with essentially a stranger, with or without tears. There are many reasons/possibilities but the fact is, I’m able to see conflicts with some more than others, therefore some get a lot of pictures and others don’t. Another barrier to physical pictures are that they can be lost. Also physical pictures can easily be scanned by any phone and shared to social media. If pictures are lost, there’s not much I can do other than reprint them. With scanned pictures there’s not much I can do, and again I don’t think it’s my place to try to tell someone what to do with pictures of their family.

3. There is also a huge bonus for me with sharing on Social Media. It would make it a lot easier for me to upload multiple pictures and share it with multiple people. Like everyone, I’ve got a lot going on. It’s easy for me to forget who got what pictures and accidentally leave someone out. If I could streamline my picture sharing process, it would give me more time to be present with the children, or not stay up late trying to do it all. I also wouldn’t have the worry/guilt of possibly forgetting someone. I’m fearful that I might say/do something to offend someone, therefore making it harder for them to want to deal with me in order to see the children while they are young and still need my help with facilitating all of this. I also think by sharing pictures with some of the people who haven’t been able to meetup with me and the children, for whatever reason, these would benefit too, and if their situation changes it might make it easier for them to contact me, therefore the children could possibly get more of their family.

With how fortunate we’ve been with having so many people who are willing to work with us, despite this being something no one involved wanted, I truly believe that my/our children will always have their family. I know as they get older they might feel differently about things. I don’t believe they would be upset about their pictures being shared with people they love, just like other non-adoptive kids don’t think much of their pictures being shared with their family & people they love. I could be wrong with that assumption though. I’ve involved them with picking out pictures, and who they are going to. They definitely don’t understand Social Media or the internet fully but they know their situation. They know when they were in foster care, the plan changed from reunification to adoption, that only changes things legally and no matter what – their family will always be exactly that, their family. When we think of things and explain them to the children it’s explained as there is my side of the family, my husband’s side of the family and their side of the family. They know their mom is their mom and I’m their adoptive mom, they know their aunts/uncles/grandparents and how they are related via Moms/Dads side. My intentions are to be as open, painfully honest and as factual as possible with them, always – even when I make mistakes and am wrong.

I’ve got some lived experiences being the daughter of an adoptee, who was forced to give her first child up to adoption in the Baby Scoop Era. I’m a former foster care young and now an adoptive parent. At times, all of this has given me insight/perspective but also it might hinder my current situation due to my own past. When I’ve asked this question in other adoptee led groups. The majority answer was no, don’t do it without consent, so I’ve respected their advice and haven’t done it. But there’s still a part of me that wants to. I’m not sure, if this is me challenging the status quo’s or if it’s really about me and my ego? I definitely like the idea of challenging the status quo because that’s what I’m always trying to do, but am not sure?

If you’ve made it through all of this I really appreciate the time it took you to read through all of this. Thank you for attempting to understand my perspective and offering any help.

One adoptee commented with this – Your assertion that your adopted children won’t mind their photos being shared because natural children don’t mind is weird. You have literally no way of knowing how they will feel as adults. We’ve made the choice not to share our recent child on social media and to stop posting our older child as well.

And she also offered this suggestion – We use a shared digital photo album. I have an iPhone and set up the album to share with all of our close friends and family. They can react the photos and leave comments, you can write captions on the photos too.