When Genetic Family Won’t

There are times and situations when it seems that adoption is the only answer. The mother dies and the genetic family does not volunteer to step in and care for the child. Or a father is overwhelmed. That happened in my father in law’s family. His grandmother died young after giving birth to her 3rd child. There were two older children to care for, so the baby was given to and adopted by a childless couple.

In my own family’s circumstances, my parents (both adoptees) were never willing to take on that responsibility for their grandchildren. With one sister, they led her down the path of surrender. The daughter seems to do as well with the situation as any adoptee can be expected to – issues of concern about the feelings of her adoptive mother if any attention is given to her genetic family.

The other sister does have a debilitating mental health illness – paranoid schizophrenia – and is prone to irrational responses. In that case, I am grateful she gave up my nephew and he is a high quality person. There are probably issues related to having been adopted for him and we aren’t close, though I have been warmly welcoming and answer any questions he or his adoptive mother have asked of me.

There is no simple answer to children needing care and each person/family has to make their own decisions for their own reasons. I understand that. I do try to share some of the impacts and implications because there have been more adoptions and related issues in my family than most people experience. About the only blessing for me is that I wasn’t given up when my unwed teenage mom discovered I had taken up residence in her womb. I consider that a minor miracle for which I am deeply grateful.

In the case of mothers who die after giving birth – realistically and ideally – the mother intended and wanted to raise her baby. She most likely did not want to die (unless it was a suicide which is complicated regardless). The mother would not have planned for her family to raise her baby, if she had survived.

It seems a little unfair to put that expectation of taking responsibility on the genetic extended family. Those who do are heroic in my own perspective.

Where Does The Fear Come From ?

When my sons were very young and often difficult, so instinctual they were not ready for rational logic and I had to somehow stop whatever, I used to worry a lot that some well-meaning person, or some surveillance camera or simply because we made the choice to educate our sons at home, would cause us to loose custody of them. Thankfully, they are both almost grown now and have never been away and there has been at least one parent present with them at all times.

Former foster youth sometimes live in constant fear of their children being taken away from them for no good reason. They may also fear that for some reason they are incapable of properly raising their children. Fears might swing between “they will get taken because the system knows I was a foster kid and is already looking down on me” to “I think I actually am a crap mom.”

I actually thought I was a crap mom for not raising my daughter. Then many years later, I had an opportunity in a new marriage to have two sons. Now I know that maybe I’m not the greatest mom but I do love ALL of my children and am always doing the best I can. I always hope my best is good enough.

I beat myself up over any poor parenting choice. I spoil my kids – that is sort of true but maybe not too much.

Children do not come with care manuals. Every child is different in temperament and personality. What works with one does not work with the other. One son is persistent and defiant. The other is passive and emotional. The first could not be disciplined with any amount of physical effort. The second one we had to tread carefully not to set him off because he cried so easily for a very long time and could not be soothed.

Whether we were adopted or taken from our parents and placed in foster care – I believe every parent faults their skills in raising children. Some people make it look so easy. It could be that if you asked them, they would have the same doubts and fears you do.

Helping Families Stay Together

We’d be better off spending the money upfront, whether that’s in the form of early childhood education, preventative healthcare, or helping families get the support they need to stay together. It would cost less overall and be more beneficial to those who truly need it. There will always be cases where throwing more money at a scenario doesn’t help, but overall, it makes more sense financially and emotionally.

If we really cared about children, we would want to do everything in our power to keep them out of the foster care system.

I am so grateful no one ever reported us as having children out of control. There was a time in our lives when I worried about that. I even cautioned my children to try to be on their best behavior out in public or they could end up like that episode of The Simpsons when the children are taken away.

I was happy to read that there are efforts underway to totally rewrite how child welfare works.

As a society, we should be helping children BEFORE a caseworker shows up at their house. We should be supporting that family BEFORE anyone feels inclined to call a child abuse and neglect hotline on them.

As a society, we can be spending taxpayer funds more effectively by spending them on prevention. Many believe it would be cheaper to intervene earlier. It would be less traumatic for the children and their parents. Therapists, parenting coaches (children do not arrive with an operating manual) and mental health professionals could help families avoid bad outcomes.

A good goal to begin with is to find families at risk but not over the edge yet. Families that lack secure food and housing because of poverty. Those young parents who grew up without good attachment to their own parents (in my case, my parents were adoptees and I can see now that they were strangely detached as parents, though overall good parents who did love and care about us).

I remember my mom telling me how she didn’t know how to cook or clean house when she first married my dad because her mother lacked the patience or tolerance for flaws to teach her. My mom made certain her daughters had such skills.

Here is the shocking statistic for only ONE of these 50 United States –

In 2019, in the state of Colorado there was a $558 MILLION dollar budget and 8,820 children were taken out of their family homes and placed in foster care.

I find that staggering and very very sad.

Motherhood Erased

There is a dirty little secret about the concept of “Open Adoption” and that is it is often not what it was purported to be. The wall was so thick the adoptive parents never knew the original mother would have wanted to know her child.

I think about how Lizzie Lou must have been hurt by never hearing from my mom, from my mom’s total absence from her life. The parties to adoption have often NOT been given the whole story about the situation, so that they could make informed choices.

The “story” about the original mother wanting to move on with her life in most cases was never true. Some original parents may have thought they had an open
adoption. They may have expected their children to reach out to them “someday”. I know that my youngest sister signed up for an adoption registry for just that purpose because she put my name on it as a contact that might help her son find her someday. She also told the adoptive mother how to locate us through our business. She wasn’t taking any chances he would be entirely cut off unless that was his own desire.

The adoptive parents may have been told that they could have no contact with the original family and that the original family didn’t want that. Some adoptive parents renege on their promise to stay in contact with the original parents.

This may have been how my mom felt – I didn’t know your name. Your name was hidden away in my adoption files, so was the name you gave me at the time of my birth. My birth certificate has my adoptive parents’ names on it as though they gave birth to me, your motherhood of me was erased by the system that has been adoption.

My mom could not find her mother because her records were amended and
sealed, so were my dad’s – he was also adopted. This falsifying of their identity is what many adoptees must overcome if they want to find their original parents.

It is wrong for a mother considering adoption not to be told about what will happen to her child’s original birth information. She should have this clearly explained to her before she consents to the adoption.

The original mother may not have anticipated that her motherhood was about to be erased as soon as she signed the consent papers.

Blame

I recently read an essay about “blame” in adoption. Many adoptees struggle with the realities of their childhood. It is not only the adoptee or their original parents who suffer but the people who adopt these children sometimes suffer as well.

Adoptive parents may feel they should be able to take the grief of adoption away for their adopted child or may even wrongly believe they could have somehow prevented it in the first place.

When I met my nephew’s adoptive mother (who is a loving, caring and supportive person in his life), she expressed that she had had such feelings as well. Learning about my youngest sister’s reality, helped lessen her feelings of guilt.

I am able to see how in the case of all of the adoptions in my own family, thankfully, the outcomes have been good. We’ve been extraordinarily lucky that all of the people involved have been good people.

Goodness does not alleviate the suffering. It does not worsen the suffering and that is a kind of blessing under the various circumstances.

Demeaned, Diminished, Dismissed

I signed a petition related to an effort in New York state – even though my issues are with Virginia, Arizona and California. Please consider signing the petition at http://nyadopteerights.org/no-more/ since changing laws in any state may have the effect of encouraging other states to do so.

It seems that sealed records related to adoption are ETERNAL, even when the adoptees are dead, the adoptive parents are dead and the original parents are dead.

It makes no sense to me that the descendants of adoptees should be denied the honest information related to their parents and those adoptions. I can only believe it is simply laziness on the part of the bureaucracies that would have to hunt down the information. The laws intend to prevent the flood of requests that would follow a Right to Know access. Tennessee experienced that in the 1990s. Eventually, they instituted a fee to cover the costs of the staff and the work involved. I’ve paid such fees (including to the Salvation Army who delivered something meaningful, even though it wasn’t much – it did help).

It’s time to throw open the prisons into which these records have been relegated.

Reform

Late last night I waded into a lengthy thread in a private group here at Facebook related to adoption. More specifically, they are on a mission to mostly, if not completely, end adoption. The most compelling and highlighted “voices” are those of adoptees with the mothers who lost a child to adoption given the next highest priority. Adoptive Parents (or those who hope to) can find themselves under heavy fire and not all of them can cope with that.

I do believe the voices in this group speak honestly a perspective that really needs to be seriously considered.

Other than financial inheritance questions which primarily affect wealthy adoptive parents and the children they adopt (I am familiar with that from my own family’s dynamics), there really is NO good argument for ever adopting a child.

There are alternatives – taking in a foster care child who really needs a home and providing for it (not adopting it and accordingly to my understanding, foster care is generally considered temporary and reunification with the natural family is the goal). Another alternative is guardianship and NOT changing the child’s identity at all (no name change, falsified identity, birth certificate tampering). When the child (who generally has no say in the adoption process) becomes an adult, then they can decide what kind of formal or informal relationships they want going forward.

One other suggestion would be for a couple who believes they want to adopt to basically become a kind of loving aunt and uncle to a mother and her child. Provide the support that the mother’s own family and society may not be willing to give to her.

Though not all adoptees admit to being harmed by having been adopted, the majority have wounds, may be in therapy or commit suicide at a higher rate than the general population.

ALL adoptions require the separation of a child from its natural mother and all children would chose the natural mother if financial support and mental health requirements could be met to allow them to stay together.

Infertility and Adoption

Rock Needs River: A Memoir About a Very Open Adoption
by Vanessa McGrady

At this point in my own journey, I know quite a bit about adoptees, their issues and wounds. I know a bit about birth parents. I have learned less about the adoptive parent.

Of course, I had four of them – my grandparents – but they weren’t adoptive parents to me, they were my grandparents. It is interesting though, how now when I think about grandparents, it is the original grandparents that I have come to know, that I think of as “my grandparents”.

The issues related to adoption are complex and diverse. I’ve seen letters from my mom’s adoptive mother about how happy she was to receive my mom, for her to become her daughter. I believe it was my dad’s adoptive parents love for him that kept me in the family, instead of being given up for adoption myself.

In the excellent book, The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier, one learns about a lot of the issues. Nothing I have read yet, touches on the issue of infertility that begins the journey of most adoptive parents, like the book I am reading now – Rock Needs River. This book covers the issue well. She also touches on the powerful feelings that an adoptive parent feels towards the child they raise.

I listened to an interview with McGrady today. Here’s a few takeaways.

“Where do I come from?” and “Where do I belong?”
are questions that confound and comfort us
from the time we are tiny until we take our final breath.

Birth parents are marginalized. The decision not to be a parent.
Feminist parenting – about non-gendered opportunities.
Small aggressions are the things we need to stop.