It Is NOT The Easy Answer

I don’t know who Megan Devine is but her words seemed perfect for a Huffington Post personal essay I read today by Joanna Good – LINK>At 17, I Gave My Baby Up.

She was scrolling through her social media and came upon a mother asking for advice. She had just found out she was pregnant, and because she and her husband already had several children, he didn’t want any more. Though he was sure of his decision, she wasn’t, and wanted help figuring out what to do. She writes – “I was feeling so many emotions at once that I wasn’t sure I could even identify them all, but I definitely felt frustration, anger, and yearning swirling through my body.”

She goes on to note – “People who have never been touched by adoption always seem to think of it as easy, but as a mother who placed her child for adoption, struggled through the chaotic emotional aftermath of the separation, and then reconnected with my child later on, I know the truth. Even though it was the right choice for me at the time, adoption is anything but easy.”

She admits – “I had never stopped thinking about Hanna (blogger’s note – the adopted name of the baby girl she gave up to adoption) — never. But the adoption had forced me to grow up quickly, and I did. I had come out stronger. Sturdier. Wiser. I continued to feel so many emotions, but now I was able to handle most of them. The guilt was a different story.”

No one really talks about what follows you through life after adoption. There is no such thing as a clean break. She realized that “I knew my little girl might never know me, yet I saw her face everywhere — in the photographs her adoptive parents continued to send me, but also in other children’s faces at the grocery store, at library story time . . . I often wondered if Hanna ever thought she saw my face in a crowd.”

She saw her daughter again when the little girl turned 6. Joanna shares – that her daughter poked her in the stomach and said, “Mommy said God put me in your belly because she couldn’t have me in hers.” Then, when Hanna was 13, she got a message from Hanna that hit her like a train going full speed. They had begun chatting almost daily via Facebook messenger — something she always looked forward to — but she never expected to see these two words pop up on her screen – “I’m trans.” (A person whose gender identity does not correspond with the sex registered for them at birth.)

Typical of an Evangelical Christian response – “Hanna’s adoptive parents offered no support and referred to his brave coming out as ‘a phase’. They refused to use any other name but the one they bestowed upon him and would not allow him to seek counseling or see a doctor for potential hormone blockers. Instead they looked to religion and prayed this phase would end.”

Joanna shares that she – “decided to become the solution. I would be there for my birth son no matter what and I promised to be the parent I couldn’t be at 17. . . . I was there every step of the way as Hanna slowly transitioned to Aarron.”

She concludes her essay – “Adoption. It might seem easy — the perfect solution for an unexpected child and an unprepared mom. But too often we don’t talk about the messiness. The trauma. The endless questioning. Or that there really is no such thing as a truly severed connection.”

What response could she possibly offer this pregnant woman in need of support when there is no one true answer? “Then I realized the one thing I most needed to hear when I was in her place all of those years ago. I typed, Hey, I understand. I’m here if you need to talk, and hit post.”

What Can Happen

Today’s story (and not mine, which is usually the case with the stories I share but which I ALWAYS feel have an important point to make). The woman is both an adoptee herself and a mother of loss (meaning no longer has physical custody of her children).

Basically, my rights were violated (I know, everyone who is a mother who lost custody of her child/children had that happen) and I didn’t even sign a Termination of Parental Rights (TPR). No, the State didn’t take my children; my sister was my guardian, co-guardian with my parents and SHE signed the TPR paperwork; I didn’t even see it – to allow my parents to adopt my children.

Both my children are under 18 years old, the oldest is only a few years away, but she’s “incapacitated” and wouldn’t be able to make the decision to come find me, which I’m not even sure they’re even being told that they were adopted. The youngest is under10 years old and was still a toddler when COVID happened (the Christmas before is when I spent longer than 5 minutes with her). I doubt she would remember me.

I’ve been told I could adopt them back but being an adopted child myself, I hesitate to do something traumatizing to my children like what happened to me. Being that my parents are the ones that raised my children and the only ones they know as “parents”, would it be selfish of me to move forward with this ?

I just hope one day that the right questions get asked and the youngest starts looking for me. Then I can address whether it’s best to keep my children with my parents. The adoption took place in late 2018, early 2019 (the time it probably took for finalization). I wasn’t ever told the exact date; but I know that a court hearing took place in 2018.

When a commenter said – “pretty sure that’s illegal!! And I’m pretty sure all parties have to be notified and served for a court date! Your children deserve to have their mother and I mean their real mother, not some wanna be, in their lives. Are these the people that adopted you ?” The woman clarifies – “I was there at all court dates, but my sister insisted on being my “voice” and of course, I didn’t want to be held in contempt – so I kept my mouth shut except to say to the judge, ‘this is what they want, I don’t really have a say.’ The sister that signed is my biological half sister (I didn’t know that she was only a half sister until adulthood). She was adopted at the same time I was. She worships the ground the adoptive parents walk on.”

The commenter makes a guess – “They threw you away the moment they had your precious babies in their clutches ! Was there ever an access order put in place when the adoption was finalized ?” She responds – “They ‘promised’ to keep me ‘in the loop’, but then COVID happened and they used that as an excuse to cut me out completely. They were technically still my guardians until June of 2022, but they never came to actually see me; it was all done over the phone.” The commenter answers – “I’d be finding a way to sue these people ! I know it’s probably not possible but what they’ve done to you is wrong !! And they need to be stopped from doing it again. The children will have trauma – no matter what – and quite frankly being with their mommy is what’s best for them !”

Another commenter asked an obvious question – “What was the reason for the guardianship, I am not judging.” The woman’s reply was – “I consented to a temporary guardianship when they sat at my kitchen table and I let them (adoptive mother and sister) take care of all the paperwork. When I got to the court hearing, suddenly it was a permanent guardianship and I had no idea how to object at the time. I was 23, in an abusive relationship, and pregnant (even though they’ll argue that the pregnancy should have no bearing on my consent). Some background – I graduated at 19 from high school, moved 3+ counties away for “independent living” care help when I was 20, moved to where I currently live when I was 21 for a job (which I’ve had going on 16 years), and basically got “ghosted” by them from then on, until suddenly they reappeared in November when I was 23, in order to petition for guardianship.”

Some advice about smoothing a transition came – “I would definitely accept the opportunity to get them back. You can do a transition to minimize damage and increase visits over time and perhaps some therapeutic visits or therapy for them with someone who would help them navigate the transition back to you as smoothly as possible.”

The History of Adoption

She explains in LINK>Dame how the historical traumas of family separation have shaped contemporary adoption in the US. How infants and children are valued and for what purposes. And since I don’t believe in burying this country’s history of slavery, I was happy to see her highlight that “Many of America’s earliest relinquishing mothers were enslaved Black women whose children were often sold away from them.”

Or how about this history ? Native American mothers fled to the hills with their children and grandchildren to hide from government officials intent on sending the children to military-run boarding schools. Also in the 19th century, poor white mothers in eastern cities, many of them immigrants, struggled to care for their children due to poverty, widowhood, illness, or simply having more children than they had the capacity to parent. They surrendered them to foundling homes or institutions that labeled the children “orphans” despite the fact they had living parents.

Of course, Gretchen Sisson doesn’t neglect to mention the scandal of Georgia Tann of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis (from whom my own mother was adopted).

A favorite adoptee writer, Tony Corsentino knows Sisson and by chance I received a notification – Relinquished, 1: The Adopter Hustle – from him about the book yesterday. He writes about the title of her book, that it is a verbal adjective for adoptees like him. He also notes that “In another sense, relinquishing parents are themselves relinquished: relegated, marginalized, generally voiceless in the joyful clamor that attends every new adoption.” He writes that – Gretchen notes in her book that “it is adopted and displaced people who have led movements for abolishing adoption as it is currently practiced.” He says further that “The book’s aim is to present the authentic voices of parents who have lost their children to adoption.”

Corsentino goes on to say – “. . . because its arguments are a crucial part of the case for reform and abolition of adoption, I regard this book as a landmark in the history of research on adoption, and one of the most valuable scholarly contributions to the struggle for adoptee justice in the entire history of that struggle.” In his essay, he shares an excerpt that makes the case that it is NOT either adoption or abortion. From pgs 63-64 of Sisson’s book – “women who’d recently had abortions found that none of them seriously considered adoption, mostly because they believed it would be too emotionally traumatic.”

“These feelings about adoption were equally held by focus groups of both “pro-choice” and “anti-abortion” women, all of whom considered adoption to be emotionally painful not just for mothers, but for the children who would be relinquished. In another study examining the decision-making of women who’d had an abortion, most of them were unequivocal in ruling out adoption, with one participant alluding to the flawed reasoning of anti-abortion advocates: I don’t want to give my child away to nobody, and I’m not … and that’s the part they don’t understand. I can’t just be bearing a child for 9 months, going through the sickness and then giving my child [away]. I can’t.“

Tony adds – “Our social world involves . . . Adoption agencies and hopeful adoptive parents (that )have become entrepreneurial; they hustle for birthparents.” “chasing pregnant people, luring them, seducing them.” They “use the techniques of search engine optimization to ensure that a wide range of phrases a person with an unplanned pregnancy might Google will call forth ads promoting relinquishment for adoption.”

Please DO read his entire essay !!

Beware Of Offers Like This

It doesn’t only happen in adoptionland. We’ve had offers to “go around” the middle man regarding hunting leases and real estate. Those in the middle have the ability to protect BOTH sides in a variety of transactions. One of my sisters did her adoption through an attorney. The other one through a Catholic charity. Both of my parents adoptions had “middles” too – Tennessee Children’s Home and The Salvation Army.

Something like this was sent to an expectant mother who had already said she wants to parent her baby – “We are looking to do a private adoption. You do not have to go through an adoption agency. We can give you $3,000 and that is the same amount of money you would get through any agency.”

Offering to pay an expectant mother for her baby is actually a form of human trafficking.

Bias Towards Adoptive Parents

Image from “Nature vs Nurture“

Some adoptees will tell you it is people pleasing. My adoptee mom was very good at that. Anyway, on see this, I went looking and found these –

From LINK>Science Direct – Related to nonbiologically related siblings reared together – 5 basic dimensions of personality. [1] Extraversion, [2] Neuroticism, [3] Agreeableness, [4] Conscientiousness and [5] Openness. Adoption studies have consistently found little or no personality similarity among adoptive relatives, confirming that growing up in the same home has little impact on personality similarity.

And this from a LINK>Psychology Quizlet – There appears to be little parental influence on adopted children’s personalities. Adopted children’s personalities are not similar to those of the parents who adopt and raise them. The correlations of personality traits between identical twins are higher than the correlations for fraternal twins.

Always double and triple check Google results !!

Making Restitution

From the blog yesterday asking adoptive parents how they were complicit in a toxic industry, came some ideas from an adoptee on how adoptive parents might make restitution to adoptees –

– Go to adoption informed counseling.

– Grieve your own infertility losses.

– Fully recognize that pretending the adoptee’s are your children is sick. You’re raising them and it is a PRIVILEGE to do so.

– Facilitate ANY and all (safe) birthfamily relationships. If visits need to be supervised, then fully commit to that and the supervisor isn’t you, unless the child requests that. (I only used that caveat because someone always asks, “But what if it’s not saaaafe?” Safe does not equate with personal comfort.)

– Do whatever you can to obtain the adoptee’s original birth certificate.

– Embrace and celebrate the adoptee’s race/culture/heritage. Just because you may be or may appear to be the same race doesn’t mean you have the same culture.

– Refer to the adoptee’s birthparents as parents. Recognize that while you may deeply love them and are raising them, they come from another family first.

– Continue to offer therapy for the adoptee and make certain to offer racially and culturally sensitive adoption trauma informed sources.

– Have books written by adoptees in your personal library and in your home for the children.

– Create and be a safe place for the adoptees.

– Check your hurt feelings at the door and always follow the adoptees lead.

– Do they want to talk? Your job is to listen. LISTEN.

– Do they want to be quiet? Your job is to also be quiet.

– ALWAYS follow the adoptee’s lead and trust their intuition.

– Listen to adult adoptees FIRST.

– Advocate for adoptees and first families.

– In your home.

– In your place of worship (if applicable) and remind people that their “answered prayer” came at the greatest cost a woman could pay (the loss of her child).

– Amongst adopter friends and family.

– FINANCIALLY. Give to Go Fund Me’s for women who want to parent their babies.

AND EMPHASIZING THIS AGAIN – LISTEN TO ADULT ADOPTEE VOICES.

Is Your Behavior Unethical

Questions to consider, if you want to take responsibility for unintended but unethical behavior –

Did you use an adoption agency that has consistently unethical practices?

Did you pay tens of thousands of dollars?

Did you participate in pre-birth matching?

Were you in the delivery room/at hospital?

Did you seek out states without a revocation period?

Did you troll Facebook groups looking for expectant mothers?

Did you send your profile to Obstetrician offices and leave “business cards” on college campuses?

Did you aggressively advertise on social media and Craigslist?

Did you fight the parents, if they tried to revoke?

For foster to adopt parents:

Did you support reunification?

Did you sabotage reunification?

Do you realize you chose to also participate in a corrupt system?

The Answer

Legal guardianship is the answer. Adoption erases one’s entire identity — changes their birth certificate, their name, their culture, severs their ability to find/know their family as well as family medical history.

Legal guardianship provides a path where the child is in a safe environment while also retaining their autonomy over their identity. It isn’t necessary to steal someone’s identity in order to provide a home for them.

Let’s talk responsibility. Ignorance is not an excuse. So you’re an adoptive parent and you conveniently didn’t realize the adoption industry is corrupt and the trauma associated with it until your family was “complete.” You are still responsible for it. So you’re a natural mom who was coerced. While that is horrible, you are still responsible for signing on the dotted line.

What does this say though about kids who aren’t wanted by family? Shouldn’t someone take them in and give them in a chance? What about someone who didn’t want their kids?

Why not choose guardianship?

Adoptees are the only ones in the adoption triad who had no right at all to consent. Even in the case of a truly forced termination of parental rights, most of these parents had some responsibility for the reasons why their rights were terminated. When we make natural mother’s the victims, we once again erase adopted people. It’s not healthy for adopted people. when their natural mothers make themselves the victim.

Who Is Really Responsible

Sharing some intelligent and knowledgeable thoughts today (no, not my own but so good, I had to share) –

Responsibility In Adoption

WHO IS REALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR FORCED ADOPTIONS?

A few people make the point that sometimes foster parents are forced by the state to adopt their foster children. Since there was some demand for a topic addressing forced adoptions from foster care, I thought this topic was important. Let’s start with some language.

ARE FOSTER PARENTS FORCED OR ARE THEY COERCED?

According to the Oxford Dictionary, “force” includes situations where a person may be threatened into cooperating with an action they would prefer not to perform. In this way, you can say that adoptive parents are “forced” to adopt from foster care under some circumstances. But I think the word “coerced” is better because it is a more nuanced word that conveys the fact that while there were no good choices, adoptive parents still made a choice.

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THESE FORCED ADOPTIONS?

There’s a who and there’s a what. Let’s start with the “what.”

What we’re talking about is the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), a Clinton-era law intended to encourage state agencies to find and secure permanent homes for children waiting in foster care following the termination of parental rights. This act provides Federal monies for state agencies for each child adopted out of foster care in a given fiscal year. In order to continue to receive this stipend, the state agencies must increase the number of adoptions compared to the previous year. Agencies, therefore, train their caseworkers to push for (or coerce) adoptions so that they continue to receive these federal funds for their services. The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) is largely responsible for the number of children in foster care waiting to be adopted as well as the coercion in adoption.

The “who” is the adoptive parent.

I know you don’t want to hear this. It is so much easier to blame someone else for your involvement in a system of oppression. But let me put this simply: You would not have been forced to adopt, if you had not been involved in foster care as a foster parent in the first place.

Leaving aside any feelings many of us have about adoption and foster care in the first place, this is factually true. The caseworker could not have coerced you to adopt, if you had not already been fostering, which most of you signed up for in the first place.

THE REALITY OF FORCED ADOPTIONS

They do happen. Period. But when we put the emphasis on adoptive parents, we shift the tragedy of forced adoptions away from the helpless party: The adoptee. We also shift the emphasis from the party who truly had no choice and was literally forced: The natural family. Because the adoptee didn’t choose to be in foster care — the adoptive (formerly foster) parent did. Because biological parents didn’t choose to engage with the system — the adoptive (formerly foster) parent did.

Before you argue that biological parents chose to engage with the system, sit down and listen. Please.

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) demands a supply of children to be adopted out of foster care, and Child Protective Services uses increasingly aggressive techniques to source these children. Many children in the system, even post-Termination of Parental Rights, are in the system because their parents were facing temporary situations and then the system saddled them with requirements they simply could not complete. When parents don’t complete the objectives of their case plan, their rights are terminated. Their children may be adopted “for the sake of permanency.”

ADOPTIVE PARENTS AREN’T VICTIMS

It is harmful to adoptees and their original families when adoptive parents make themselves out to be the victims in adoption. Not only does this potentially (likely) harm the adopted child and/or their first family, but it prevents the adoptive parent from healing the parts of them that are wounded by whatever causes led them to adoption. You have to be responsible for your choices. Period. As a first mother who lost her children to CPS and is now in reunion, I strive to recognize that whatever I may feel, I am not the victim. My children were. For the sake of your child, keep things in perspective. In the long run, it will also help you.

BUT WHAT ABOUT KINSHIP ADOPTION?

Kinship adoption is a true tragedy. The majority of kinship adopters didn’t set out to foster or adopt in the first place and accept responsibility for a relative’s children to keep them out of the system. In many states, they are then threatened with stranger placement, if they don’t adopt their kinship child. Adoption isn’t the right answer, but keeping children with family has to come first whenever possible. No adopter gets a free pass, but if there is an argument that can be made that kinship adopters have almost no choice because they didn’t choose to participate in the system apart from the pressure applied by the need for care inside the family.

YOU CAN DO THE WRONG THING WHILE TRYING TO DO THE RIGHT THING

It’s easy for those suffering cognitive distortions (often as a result of childhood abuse and trauma) to believe that participating in a broken system makes them a bad person.

Nobody’s saying that. We recognize the choicelessness you felt when confronted with the option to either adopt or allow a child you care deeply for to be removed from your home to be adopted by strangers — and you may never see them again.

But it is important, for the sake of your adopted child — that you not make yourself the victim of some third party — especially when that third party is faceless and nameless (“the system”).

LET’S GET VISIBLE!

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Committing Fraud

Not my thoughts but I understand how this person feels and agree with the sentiments –

I would like to see further restorative action to press criminal charges against every state in the US that has and continues to withhold birth records, as well as for falsifying these official documents. IMHO these documents post-adoption aren’t your “original” birth certificates, these that are being withheld are your real, actual birth records. The “amended” or adoption certificates are not valid documents of your birth.

In fact, the state goes so far as to commit both birth certificate fraud and human trafficking by falsifying your birth records. Human trafficking involves deception and the falsification of official documents. The UN considers falsifying documents in their definition of “illegal adoption”. As investigations are uncovering falsifying documents in international adoption and governments are having to issue public apologies for their actions, where International Christian Adoptions adoptees are holding these countries accountable for their crimes, the US is not any different in falsifying these official documents.

It’s not just about restoring human rights to an entire population that has deliberately and systematically been commodified and dehumanized by these same states. Adopted people are not seen as human beings, we are commodities. These states have committed crimes and rather than being accountable, they have written and passed their own laws in order to legally protect themselves from being held accountable for their crimes. Falsifying documents is more than a violation of human rights, it’s a crime. It’s time the US is held to the same standard of accountability as other countries for committing such crimes as falsifying documents to conduct human trafficking through adoption.

Now a couple of thoughts from your blogger here –

Finally, this is a good question – Why are the original birth certificates are not being provided once an adopted person is an adult ? I believed when I tried for my dad’s with California – they just don’t want to do so much work. They don’t want to open those floodgates.

Also brought up – issues of inheritance. That was a factor for my adoptee mom and her adoptee brother when their adoptive parents died. Not that they were harmed but I understand there were laws specific to Texas regarding their circumstance of being adopted persons and that their adoptive parents could NOT disinherit them.