Stuff Happens And It Goes Horribly Wrong

Today’s story is so long, I will NOT try to convey it all. If I do this well, I can summarize it to make the relevant point.

There is a mom with 2 children at home ages 9 and 3. There is a 15 month old boy at the center of a custody battle. He was NOT removed by child welfare authorities. The circumstances of the pregnancy are complicated. This child’s father is a married man with a wife and newborn (she was pregnant at the same time this woman was). Paternity was assessed during the pregnancy which led to her separation from the older children’s father.

All of this turmoil, left the expectant mother vulnerable to a coercive adoption agency that stands to make $35,000 if the adoption can be finalized. The biological father will not relinquish, which is the obstacle for the hopeful adoptive parents who have had custody of the boy almost continuously since birth.

Though heroic for a husband faced with these circumstances, he came to the hospital when she went into labor. The baby arrived at a time that there was NO hospital staff in the room. Her husband caught baby, otherwise he would have ended up on the floor. Her daughter was instantly in love with the baby and wanted to hold him every second. The biological father, while remaining with his wife and newborn, offered to financially support the mother.

She is dealing with so many emotional issues, she has been on anti-depressants the whole pregnancy. Her therapist asked her what is she going to do about her situation ? She tells him she is thinking about adoption because she doesn’t feel she can raise another baby without help. He wants her to call and talk to 2 agencies before their next session. She admits that she was clueless and had NOOOO idea about adoption or agency red flags etc.

So she meets with a social worker (who actually was the Director of the agency). For the first time, she felt like she was able to share her story without the other person judging her or making her feel worse for what she had done. Talking to her felt like such a relief. So, they agree that she’ll contact their available families and see if any are comfortable with her situation. At the time, there were only 2 families waiting and 1 was not comfortable with her situation.

So, she looks at the profile of this couple, and she sees how important family is to them. She cries reading about their issues and many attempts to carry a pregnancy, even with adopted eggs. It makes her even feel so guilty. Here she is with an unplanned pregnancy, and not even science can help this couple. 3 weeks later, they meet for the first time over dinner. Long story shorter, that couple leaves the hospital with her baby and she goes home without him.

However . . . bear with me, I am trying to get to the heart of this story as it stands now.

She made it very clear that first night that she was going to be very involved in her son’s life. Openness was a must and the couple agreed to it. I cannot relate how many “open” adoptions go bad once the adoption is finalized. No expectant mother relinquishing custody of her newborn should ever rely upon it. It is never legally enforceable and the adoption parents will have all of the leverage. They treated her like an outsider, like she was no more than a surrogate.

When her son was 1 week old, the social worker insisted that the hopeful adoptive parents allow her to visit. By that weekend, she told her social worker that she wanted to regain custody of her son and she didn’t want to proceed with the adoption. The hopeful adoptive parents begged her not to take him away but later that day, she picked her son up from the agency and brought him home. Her son’s biological father was saying he would leave his wife and come back
to help her raise the baby. Then admitted he couldn’t do it. Conflicted parents all the way around.

She was coerced into signing the termination of parental rights by the hopeful adoptive parents, when she decided again to give up the idea she could raise the baby based on her current circumstances. Yet, there was a sticking point when a letter from her psychiatrist was required to prove that she was mentally capable of understanding the adoption plan. The psychiatrist refused – twice. So often an agency will exploit the post-partum period of a new mother. She wants her baby back now and she is fighting to achieve that. The biological father won’t consent, so that is in her favor. She’s concerned about causing trauma for her son by uprooting him.

The most reassuring, personal experience response was this – “As a child that was with the same caregiver from birth to 2 years and then moved. That experience was not horribly traumatic for me. The trauma for me was losing my mother in the first place. I don’t call what I had a transition because it was less than a handful of quick visits. I have zero recollection of the family I spent those 2 years with. The bond is not your child to the hopeful adoptive parents, it is the hopeful adoptive parents who are bonded to your child. Please don’t let anyone’s words about trauma change your course. There may be a slight adjustment period – or none – since your son will be back with the person who’s loss initially was experienced as trauma. Mother/child separation is the true wound. My suggestion is listen to those that have lived it, not those speculating about its effects.”

So this has been today’s cautionary tale. The all things adoption group I belong to always counsels expectant mothers to try raising their newborn babies for an extended period of time. The hormones and emotions are wacked out and many a natural mother regrets for the rest of her life giving her baby up too quickly. It is a permanent solution to what is often a temporary problem.

The all things adoption group I belong to always counsels expectant mother to try raising their newborn babies for an extended period of time. The hormones and emotions are wacked out and many a natural mother regrets giving her baby up too quickly for the rest of h

Before Surrendering to Adoption

Along with other reform efforts, this idea really appeals to me. A mom who is thinking about placing her child for adoption, should have real unbiased counseling beforehand. Especially if the mom is a teen or young adult. A mom shouldn’t feel pressured to place. She should know her rights. This is her baby. She doesn’t owe anyone her baby.

If she does decide to place she needs to know everything. Especially about open adoption not being legally enforceable. This is rarely, if ever, mentioned to the mom. She doesn’t have to sign at the 72 or 48 hour mark. She can change her mind anytime. She can take her time. She can take her baby home, if she chooses to.

This is what happens all too often. An expectant mom is thinking about adoption but she isn’t really sure yet that she wants to give up her child. At the same time, there are hopeful adoptive parents getting their hopes up and the agency, who has a profit motive in the game, puts a lot of pressure on the young mom to place. Especially, when it comes to teens whose brains are still maturing. The brain doesn’t finish developing until 25-30 years old.

I think requiring expectant mothers to go through unbiased counseling would help the expectant mother make a choice without the interference of money motivated bias. Some of the language used with these young women suggests to them that they have nothing to offer their baby. These young women are told that not placing their child is a selfish decision. She may be further encouraged by dreams she had at the time she conceived of going to college and becoming successful in a profession. She is told that if she doesn’t surrender her child, she’ll fail in life.

She may also be suggested as a heroine, making a couple’s dream of becoming parents come true. Furthermore, if she decides not to places and so changes her mind – she will be breaking the hearts of some hopeful adoptive parents who have so very much more to offer her child than she does.

Young, expectant mothers should NOT have that kind of pressure put upon them. Real unbiased counseling can help these young women weigh their options more honestly and accurately. The sessions would allow the expectant mother to explore ALL if her feelings about pregnancy and not only dwell on her doubts and fears.

Sure, adoption agencies offer provide a kind of counseling. But really ? One cannot judge it to be un-baised when money is the motivator for the agency. The expectant mother has a “product” to offer and adoption is presented as the only fair, reasonable and practical choice she truly has.

Chosen ? Special ? Really ?

In my adoption group, one woman wrote –

How are adoptees “chosen” and “special” and “soooo wanted” when hopeful adoptive parents would literally pick ANY baby under the sun?

Partially prompted by A Million Little Things when their adoption agency offers a replacement baby the *same day* they learn the natural mom they had bought decided to parent.

I only watched one episode. The natural mom decides to keep her baby, hopeful adoptive parents are upset, next thing the adoption agency calls saying another woman is in labor and they got “bumped to the front of the line” which sounds like a McDonald’s drive-through lane that dispenses babies. Thankfully, the woman says no… for that episode…

This same woman goes on to explain –

I’m French and was relinquished at birth. I went to an orphanage, for 2 months the birth mom has the right to come back for her baby, and nothing can happen, then legal initiates. I was legally free around 6 months by then they put me in a family that had paid $0 (adoption is always free) and vetted by social services for months.

Now they provide even more help for birth moms to parent, so the number of babies like me is only 700 per year, which discourages adoption as a way around fertility. That would be around 3,500 babies for the whole US, 50 per state.

And instead of foster homes we have a paid social worker taking kids in his home with a stipend on top of salary going to the kid’s needs. It doesn’t prevent hopeful adoptive parents from shopping for a kid abroad and is far from perfect but there is no commercialization of domestic babies, and even surrogacy is illegal.

An adoptive parent shared her perspective –

I am an adoptive parent that is still constantly learning and working through my own insecurities, I believe it all stems from the “meant to be” or “God’s plan” narrative that many/most adoptive parents feed into.

Like any disrupted match (in the eyes of the adoptive parent) is just not the child God has waiting for you. The one that worked out was the one all along. When one really thinks about it, it’s like the adoptee stated – any baby will do and becomes “chosen”. This group has helped me see the issues and concerns with this way of thinking. I am still always reading and learning though.

Another adoptee added –

As an adoptee I never felt chosen or special I felt sadness and confusion. When we were forced to adopt our foster baby we didn’t do any celebration and we didn’t announce it on Facebook etc. we didn’t start a Go Fund Me or beg for money on TikTok or share his journey. Only immediate family know.

Thank god it’s an open adoption and for the first year it was much like a divorced couple but the last year since his mom got married and has a new baby, visits and time with her have been less and less – at her request. My hope is once she settles into a new normal, she will spend more time with him. But I’ve never used those words with him.

And this came from South Africa –

I totally agree an adopted child should never be burdened with the “chosen”, “special” etc narrative. I had a domestic infant adoption with a private social worker. At the time I adopted, I tried to make sure I did NOT “choose” a specific child. The first child I was matched with luckily went home with his aunt. I was so happy for that child.

I was then matched with a different child, and again I tried to keep my heart from attaching to this specific child, in case his parents were able to parent. I was trying to keep in mind that what is best for the child is their family. I felt I was trying to offer a home for a child who needed it, and not attach and try to hold on to a child that could go to their family.

So many hopeful adoptive parents mourn the parents changing their mind – but surely that is the ideal situation.

Finally, this question – what birth mother actually doesn’t “want” her baby?

And this response – they exist but they are FEW and FAR between. The narrative of the droves and droves of unwanted babies in the US that are languishing away for help really burns me. (And I was one of those few, actual unwanted babies).

So what do adoptees actually feel ? We are not chosen. Quite the opposite. We’re discarded.

DNA and Facebook – Hope for Adoptees

For the last 24 hours, I’ve been absorbed in an adoptee search story going viral on Facebook. My friend in The Netherlands alerted me, knowing it would be of interest. I can’t keep up – at the time I am writing this – there have been 3,000 comments and 60,000 shares.

It is the story of a coach and a cheerleader, never married. She went out of state to her aunt’s when she learned she was pregnant. As an adoptee, she was comfortable surrendering her child to adoption and the father was not ready to take on raising a child himself. I joined the thread when it was still early enough to connect with the adoptee doing the search.

Like my mom and my self, Ancestry isn’t always helpful, at least not quickly and not until one has more complete information (names and locations) than the minimal information the agency in California was willing to give this woman. Also, Ancestry does not have a lot of records newer than the 1940s. This woman was born in 1977. We are becoming friends because, though our stories are different, we have a lot in common.

Already, there seems to be strong evidence that the father has been identified and may have lived out his life in Eldon, MO. This is particularly interesting to me because my adoptive maternal grandmother’s family originated in that geographical area, so I do have some sense of the place. My grandmother’s father founded the town of Eugene, which is located nearby. My adoptive maternal grandmother was a double cousin to Maudie, who lived in Eldon at the time I met her. Their parents were brothers and sisters who married brothers and sisters and they grew up on farms walking distance apart.

If this man (who seems quite likely to be the father) is indeed the father, the sad news is that he has died. However, he did have another daughter during his life. A good friend of mine got a big surprise when her mother died and she found out that the man she had been told was her father – wasn’t. She has since located and reunited with a half sister and they are so much alike. This is a joy that softens the shock of her own discovery.

Like the adoptee doing this search, my mom wanted to find her own mother. By the time she made the effort with the state of Tennessee, her mother had died. That devastated my mom. Tennessee denied her the adoption file but the law had changed by the time I tried and I now have that treasure trove of information. After my mom and dad (both adoptees) died, I went on my own journey of reunion because my family still knew next to nothing about our origins. Ancestry helped me with some background information about my mom’s dad. By then, I had learned from exploring Ancestry about his children by his first wife. I visited his grave in Pine Bluff, Arkansas only to discover my mom’s youngest half-sister buried nearby. I had only missed meeting my aunt alive by 2 months.

This led me to an Ancestry page for my aunt. I sent a private message and the surprise was that it was answered by the best friend of this woman’s daughter. She put me in touch with my cousin. I did spend an entire afternoon with her. She had all of her mom’s photo albums and by the time the afternoon had ended, I felt like I had lived decades within the family.

23 and Me eventually led me to discover who my dad’s father was. His mother was unwed, he was given her surname at birth. I thought it would be impossible to ever know who he was. A cousin did 23 and Me, which put me in touch with another cousin who had my paternal grandmother’s photo albums. She had left breadcrumbs as to my grandfather’s identity there that did end up being the lucky break that revealed him.

Never think it is impossible to re-connect the threads of your identity, even when states seal adoption files and the agencies involved refuse to give you identifying information. Not all searches are successful or happy, however, reading through some of the entries on this woman’s now viral search thread on Facebook, I have been heartened to see so many adoptees have shared their own stories of how DNA brought them success with their own searches.

Dear Adopted Child

Dear Adopted Child,

I see so many letters addressed to birth parents and hopeful/ adoptive parents. Again you’re left out. The most import part of this equation and yet you’re continuously left out.

I really fucked up, I went against nature, I altered your brain chemistry, and I’d go as far to say committed and act against humanity. Yet I am the one likely to get sympathy. While you internally struggle. People will mourn for me and chastise you for being “ungrateful.”

I reached out to the agency, I allowed them to strip your birth father of his rights, and I chose your parents. I allowed the opinions of strangers to seep in and convince me that I was not good enough. I knew in my gut that I was making the wrong decision, that this didn’t feel right. I selfishly thought of myself. How could I possibly be a single mother of two if your father left me? How could I provide the life you should have? As if the quality of life is measured in what physical possessions one owns. At the end of the day I selfishly said I was putting you first, when really cowardly I was putting myself.

When we found out your gender, I felt ecstatic and devastated. A girl, what I had always wanted. Yet I couldn’t find the courage to keep. I knew it was wrong when your adoptive parents did a gender reveal. I chose not to speak up, as if offending them would suddenly make myself undesirable. I broke down at home and doctors appointments. Instead of viewing that as a sign that I was making the wrong choice I got prescribed anti depressants.

At your birth I asked your adoptive parents to be there. When I checked in I begrudgingly asked if the hospital had my adoption plan. There were so many times I could of said no. I could of not chose this path to take. I let them whisk you away after birth, I let your adoptive parents keep you in their room. I could’ve demanded you be brought back to me, thrown a fit that this wasn’t right or acceptable. I chose to selfishly crumple into myself, to say that our pain was worth it so two strangers could be happy. I didn’t advocate for us, for you.

I signed the paperwork, I didn’t make a peep during my revocation period, I congratulated your adoptive parents on the down fall of our family. I let them strip you of your names. I let you become a legal stranger to us.

Nothing can undo what I’ve done, or the choices I made. At the end of the day I’ve caused your pain. Your trauma was hand delivered to you by me. I’m sorry.

I can’t rectify this wrong, nothing I say or do can fully heal it. I can promise I won’t leave you again, and that everyday I’m learning, I’m listening to grown adoptees so I can be the me you will need.

With Regrets,

The Furious First Mom

Questionable Motives

The problem with adoption agencies is their motive to promote their business. It is always about the money though they will market their services in emotional, heart wrenching ways.

Adoption IS giving your baby away and it is about the agency SELLING your baby to someone who has the financial resources to pay for that baby.

Instead of posting on social media that you are praying to God for this desperate young mother to CALL you and give HER baby to you, it would be more altruistic to pray for support so that this mom could successfully parent her child. People who work for adoption agencies think it is okay to pray to God for a mom’s downfall so that she will ultimately chose to relinquish her baby to THEM.

Sadly, both the people working for an adoption agency and prospective adoptive parents all too often USE religion to coerce vulnerable people into doing what is to the benefit of these motivated people.

If you are a believer, then here is the truth – God did choose parents for that baby which is fully within the Christian viewpoint. Here’s a relevant example for you – wasn’t Mary only 13 years old and unmarried when she conceived Jesus ? And possibly homeless ? I don’t remember the part where God sent an adoption agency over to make things “right” for her.

And if anyone ever wonders why an adoptee would turn away from Christianity, here are your examples. Adoption agency workers and prospective adoptive parents literally praying for the trauma and separation in a genetic family to fulfill their own selfish desires.

Just A Fact

Adoption is taking a mother’s child from her. You cannot argue this fact. You may seek to be an exception but you are not. You are really just the same as every other person who has ever adopted a baby.

How do you go to the hospital and walk out with someone else’s baby ? Their BABY ! Someone’s baby she spent 9 months with.

Why is the suicide rate so high for adoptees and also for natural mothers and never discussed ?

It is true that sometimes caring for a child outside her primary family is necessary. It should be rare.

Some answers to the above from a “woke” adoptive mother –

You basically delude yourself into believing the lie that this is a “good” thing.

It starts with the narrative from adoption agencies. They parade “first moms” into the orientation meetings to tell you how choosing adoption for their babies was the best decision they ever made. They believe the lie, too.

You listen to your friends and family members who have adopted children. You see the beautiful families they built. They all seem so happy. You want that for yourself.

You are chosen by an expectant mom. She tells you how grateful she is to have found you. You tell her how brave she is. You really feel like you’re a team doing this together.

Here comes the hard part. The birth. I have never felt more uncomfortable as when I was in the labor room with my son’s mother. She was alone and asked me to be with her during her planned c section. If not for her being alone, I wouldn’t have gone in with her. I felt like a total intruder.

Our minds are powerful. We can convince ourselves of just about anything. Even justifying taking someone else’s baby. That’s my cross to bear. Now that I’ve acknowledged the cold hard truth of it, I can do my best to help our kids understand it.

What Is Wrong About Adoption ?

As a society, we don’t really take care of one another. Lately, it may seem to people hoping to adopt that the whole possibility has been hijacked and beaten up. Adoptees and their original family feel they were sold out and ripped to shreds by those who’s financial interests took their parents or children away from each other.

The methods by which adoption has been practiced in this country are a shackle upon the most vulnerable members of the triad. Sealed adoption records, hidden indentities, have kept people genetically related apart and have treated adoptees like second-class citizens who are denied the same basic civil rights so many people without adoption in their family history take for granted.

The rainbows and unicorns IDEAL of the adoptive experience is scarred now by battles waged by those who the practice has hurt the most. Families formed by adoption are only seen through the smoke of lies and deception. But that is changing and in no small part because of adult adoptees who are speaking out about the damage and about their rights to a genuine and authentic identity, even if it is a sorrowful and tragic beginning to their own life.

Back in the late 1980s, the origins of an adoption story may have started this way – An 18 year old girl becomes pregnant from an affair with her employer. She denies she is pregnant until it is too evident to conceal. Maybe she looked in the Yellow Pages, where she found what looked like help for her situation. She moves to a large city and lives with a “host family” (strangers who she’ll lose contact with once her baby is born). At birth, her child is handed over to a couple she knows only as a photograph.

By moving this young woman to a different state, she was isolated away from family and friends – those who cared about her and may have allowed her a different outcome. Though she knew who her baby’s father was, the agency may have advised her not to tell him about his child. She was encouraged to surrender her child by being told how deficit she was to raise that child. This kind of practice went on for many decades, certainly in the 1930s when my parents were surrendered to adoption and as recently as the late 1980s, when Roe v Wade and the emergence of single mothers as an accepted aspect of society reduced the number of babies available for adoption.

So if you have begun to sense that there is simmering an anti-adoption movement you are not mis-interpreting the noise. One could even call this the next frontier for reproductive justice.

Why Did You Adopt ?

My husband and I made a conscious decision not to adopt when we had been trying unsuccessfully to conceive. I believe our main concern was that uncertainty factor. We decided that we preferred to start “fresh” using an alternative form of medicine (obviously the main response to the question in the survey above).

Many adoptive parents are driven by altruistic reasons – it is not because of infertility – but they truly would like to be there in a positive way for a child who they believe needs them. It is a form of rescuer or savior motivation.

DIA is not through an agency but is a disclosed identified party adoption aka an open adoption. The inconvenient truth is that regardless of the type of adoption – agencies are manipulative, hopeful adoptive parents are clueless and often blinded by their own wants, expectant mothers are coerced into giving up their babies because they are led to the false belief it will be better for their infant, and infants experience tremendous trauma when they are separated from their original mother. The whole system of adoption is sadly a mess.

Hopeful adoptive parents usually have good intentions, even if they are blinded to more selfish and personally oriented reasons for adopting. Wanting to be a parent and acting on that is a selfish decision via adoption, regardless of how you get there. These adoptive parents may have more than they need for just their own selves. They want to share from their abundance because for some people sharing feels good.

Many original mothers were forced. One example that I read about – she was told either she place her son for adoption or they were going to report her to Child Protective Services – she was in extreme poverty, she did not have a job, she was depressed, unmarried and her my son was originally conceived through a man no longer in the picture. She was told she wasn’t good enough to raise her own son and that he deserved better.

It is important to change the narrative about adoption – it is not a beautiful circumstance. It is damaging and painful and should only happen in the very rarest of circumstances, and then it should be within the family, if possible (and honestly, it usually is possible). I am pro-reunification. It is important that the pain of separation is not permanent if at all possible. My perspectives on adoption, I will admit, have gone 180 and mostly against. There are exceptions, of course, and good ones.

It Is Always Rigged

Money drives adoption and the poor are unsupported. I believe society should fully support mothers until the children reach maturity so that they have the means to raise them. Too often mothers lose custody of their children for no other reason than poverty.

The adoption laws are skewed to support adoptive parents – because they have the money. The laws are skewed to support the industry – agencies, social workers and lawyers – because they are profiting from it. No one seems to truly care about the child or the child’s original mother. This is just so very wrong and contributes to damaged individuals that become a burden, though not intending to, upon society.

American domestic infant and international adoption has become privatized and entrepreneurial. Only adoption from foster care remains in the hands of the state and unfortunately represents its own set of failures, abuses and funding driven corruption.

The difference between for- and not-for-profit adoption agencies is merely a tax status, though the later gives an illusion of a charitable organization. Coupled with warm, fuzzy, cutesy names that tug at the heartstrings, clients are deluded into a false sense of propriety, oversight and security. The fact is that both types of agencies are commercial businesses that rely on the fees of a completed transaction to pay their overhead and salaries which is less glamorous and far less altruistic than the public perception of adoption. All vetting and home studies are paid for by the clients seeking a child. Basically, anyone who can afford the fees, which average about $40,000, can adopt, including pedophiles and abusers of all kinds. Pay the fee and get the goods. It’s a supply and demand business in a mega-billion dollar a year industry.

In addition to businesses that fill a demand for children to adopt, there is also the Do-It-Yourself type of adoption that is legally permitted in the U.S. Those seeking to find an infant to adopt, as well as anyone seeking to place a child for adoption, can find one another through newspaper advertisements, and online via Craig’s List or social media such as Facebook, and have their attorney handle necessary filings to make the adoption legal. Just like a “For Sale by Owner” house listing, middlemen “finder” fees are avoided by the DIY method. But, so too are any protections and any professional advice said fees may offer.

In either case – on your own or with the assistance of an adoption agency – the process winds up resulting in prospective couples matched with expectant mothers which, opens the door to unhealthy, unequal relationships.