The Legal Rights Of Siblings

This from someone with experience – If you are adopting a child or children in who have siblings being adopted into other homes, make sure you have a quality attorney, NOT one of the ones that are contracted with through the state. Know the laws in your state in regards to sibling rights post adoption. Your attorney needs to go over this in great detail. Sibling separation agreements, continued contact agreements, etc are just RECOMMENDATIONS and not legally binding, unless they are worded in a certain way. This means that even though they are telling you these things will have to be agreed to and take place in order to adopt, any adoptive parent can choose to cut contact without punishment – at any time – and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Don’t be like me. Don’t think that just because the agreements are there and someone is verbally telling you this has to be done is going to mean that it will prove legally binding. It may not. Don’t be ignorant like me. KNOW THE LAWS. Have an attorney who is well versed in these matters. And make sure that continued sibling contact is legally required and can be enforced. I learned a valuable lesson about this, but it may be too late and sadly at the expense of 3 children who shouldn’t have to be denied contact. 3 children who will carry scars and wounds because of my ignorance in this area. I don’t know – what the fuck was I thinking ? But undeniably, I fucked up. I preach and preach about us being educated and I failed to educate myself in regard what may possibly be the most important aspect of adoption. Don’t be like me. Don’t fuck this up. Make sure your kids and their siblings if they have been separated by adoption have legal rights to remain in contact with each other. Please. Don’t put your kids and their siblings in the situation my stupidity put mine in.

The truth is the best intentions in adoption often fall through. Adoptive parents can just say “it is not in best interests of our child” and get judge and court order to close contact. A common tactic is to move so far away, it’s no longer feasible to have physical contact. Even in the case of agreed to open adoptions, the intentions are often not followed through. Then, there is the less visible problem – if an adoptive parent does not want contact, the child is placed into an impossible situation. The child has to choose between loyalty to their adoptive parents or to their separated siblings – it’s a no win situation. When I became a non-custodial mother and my daughter was older, I provided her with a calling card so that she could call me at no charge, when doing so was not going to complicate her life with a step-mother and half and step siblings. She was in control.

These kids are human beings and should have the right to maintain contact with their siblings, at the very least, after adoption. It is increasingly known that genetic connections are better for the child than the loss of them.

Another woman shares her experiences –

I have played this game for 25 years with my daughter’s adoptive parents. I would suggest not pushing back at them at full force. The more you push the more they will close down. Tt’s not about twiddling your thumbs ….. it’s about playing the long game. Sigh. And I understand this as regards my daughter. It was very hard to be an absentee mother but now that she is in her mid-forties and her step-mother died quite a few years ago now, I am grateful I have managed to retain a good relationship, a loving relationship, with her. She often mourns her mom who died. I would never ever criticize the woman who raised her. That is totally misguided for anyone caught on the outside.

Reform work currently taking place in the state of Ohio seeks to establish the lawful connection for siblings in foster care. There is more work that needs to be done, so that the right to maintaining a connection isn’t terminated, if an adoption occurs.

Here is the view from a person who became separated – I read my sibling agreement contract. I was supposed to see three of my older siblings (the ones I lived in the house with before foster care) 3 times a year. I have no clue how it fell apart, but I never saw my siblings again – until I found my biological family at 17. We were all able to get together once last year after 15 years apart. Then again, I read the open adoption contract too and that also fell apart. I was supposed to know my family but it seems like nobody cared enough.

Adoption Can’t Give This

Dr Nelson, in his book – Healing the Split, suggests the ideal gestation, birth and infancy circumstances for healthy development in a child. This goes beyond the obvious and unavoidable trauma of separating an infant from their natural mother or any emotional distress that mother feels while pregnant and planning to surrender her baby to adoption.

Here is what he suggests – some of the best pregnancy, birth and infant care advice I have already encountered during my own last two pregnancies and baby care days, beginning in the early 2000s.

In pregnancy, this mother might be treated as special by her own loving selfobjects, so that she finds it easy to maintain a placid inner state. Her pregnancy would allow her extra time to meditate regularly and through this practice she establishes an unspoken communion with her unborn fetus with the subconscious residues of her own early life experiences resolved.

As the time of her child’s birth nears, the mother rehearses breathing and pelvic exercise to facilitate her natural delivery. As the child enters the world, he is welcomed into a softly lit room, the predominant feature of which is his mother’s warm skin and breast as she gently bathes and massages him.

The synapses that are rapidly proliferating within his still unfinished brain form a physical supporting grid for a psychic self that is primed to accept soothing, is ready to trust and can intuit a sense of belongingness.

As the newborn’s psyche begins to construct holographic patterns of the consensual world, his empathic parents instinctively anticipate his needs, neither overstimulating him nor leaving him wanting. Wordless harmonies resonate between him and his caretakers and condition his own fundamental vibrational patterns. These harmonies are periodically broken by inevitable frustrations and deprivations but timely reunions with empathic parents quickly restore synchronous patterns within his psychic field.

As the child grows into a toddler, empathic mirroring enlivens his tentative explorations of a world apart from mother, followed by just a little extra soothing that directs his psychic energies along navigable neural pathways. This compensates for his inborn exaggerated stress reaction and enables him to incorporate his mother’s self within his own without fear of engulfment. His self-secure mother joyfully encourages his wary independence and offers a fresh measure of support during what is a particularly lengthy rapprochement period. This insures that his slowly forming self-boundaries can withstand the social challenges that this unusual child will later endure.

As the child learns to communicate, his parents take pains to be consistent in their rewards and punishments. When he is excited and hyperaroused, they set firm limits on his behavior and they teach him to cope with this and similar altered states of consciousness by monitoring his breathing and concentrating on his inner awareness, especially his feelings. They teach him to ask for a massage and also to give one back. Both calm a turbulent arousal. Kindly, they teach him to laugh at them, and at himself.

Dr Nelson believes that as many as half of all permanently disabling psychotic altered states of consciousness could be prevented or diverted into a favorable life pathway if given the right start in life.

A Disconnect

I’ve been reading about infant development lately in a book titled Healing the Split – Integrating Spirit Into Our Understanding of the Mentally Ill by John E Nelson MD. I often reflect on my own mothering of my daughter at the age of 19. Though the love was never lacking, I was not as good of a mother for her as I might have been, had I know how to be a good mother.

I believe some of that comes of the slight disconnect in my own parents as regards their parenting of us. It is not their fault, they were both adopted. Oh, they were good parents, not abusive, and we knew they loved us but there was something missing in them and it affected their parenting of us.

What was missing in my parents were their natural mothers, who carried them in their wombs and gave birth to them, may have breastfed them. I know that was true with my dad. I don’t have a record of that for my mom. She was taken to an orphanage for temporary care by her own financially desperate mother and put on a formula. My dad was allowed to stay with his mother and continue to nurse for some months as he accompanied her when she was employed by the Salvation Army, through who’s home for unwed mothers she had given birth to him.

I was reflecting on this as I sat out on the deck overlooking the field at my writer’s retreat. I was bundled up in a cozy jacket as the temperature is not more than the mid-30s and drinking warm tea.

I was thinking about how my mom took my bottle from me at 13 months to give to my newborn younger sister. My mom intended no harm, she didn’t know better. We can’t do better than we know how.

So, as I was drinking the warm tea, I imagined mothering myself. I imagined being warm and cozy in the soft embrace of my mother, drinking in the warm, nourishing liquid.

In that moment, I forgave my mom and had to extend that forgiveness to myself. I can acknowledge that I might have done better if I had know how to do better and in realizing that, I can acknowledge that my own mother would have done better had she known how to do better.

My late life sons (born when I was 47 and 50 years old) have benefitted from having a better mother in me. Certainly, I did have previous experience when the first boy was born and I had a huge amount of support from my in-laws who came every day for the first 4 months and only stopped when my husband begged me to ask them to back off.

My husband was always a good and nurturing co-parent as he did not become a father until he was personally ready to commit to that responsibility. When the second boy was born, he doubled down on the attention he gave the older boy, that he suffer less from the loss of attention of his mother, due to a newborn in the house.

It was a situation that I had to rectify when the younger boy was about 2 or 3 and the older one about 6 as he was acting out a lot to get my attention. With sufficient attention from me, that behavior quickly ceased and the younger boy benefitted from having more dad time.

Hindsight doesn’t replace ignorance but ignorance is not willful neglect.

It’s A Woman’s Prerogative

So the question is asked –

Should a woman that has planned on giving her baby up for adoption, with a family for the baby chosen, details worked out, etc, be able to change her mind after the baby is born ?

This started as a situation where the hopeful adoptive couple helped the expectant mother get back into school and away from an abusive ex. The couple got to hold and name the baby but then she took it away from them. She said they had helped her reach a point of stability, where she no longer needed to put her baby up for adoption.

The kicker is that this was a fictional TV drama but it upset hopeful prospective parents in a support group that this could actually happen in real life.

One comment in that group was – “make a decision, no take backs.”

To which members of my adoption group said – “no take backs.” We are not seven years old trading Pokemon cards on the playground, lady. Good grief.

Another said – This isn’t trading Twinkies at the lunch table.

More realistically though, This is a HUGE decision. 100% she should have however long she needs to decide. There is no reason to rush into a permanent decision, when the problem that is motivating that may prove temporary. Many a birth mom has realized this too late and carried a lifelong sorrow because she acted too hastily.

The hopeful adoptive parent perspective is generally along these lines – She’s selfless and brave to give up her baby but deciding to parent makes her cruel and a mooch.

Another honest perspective is this – If its a mothers choice to go the adoption route, then she should have the right to change her mind and she deserves enough time for her hormones to regulate, before any choice is made permanent.

As to reforms – Moms should have at least the first 4-6 weeks with the child. This allows them to judge how they truly feel. There are so many feelings plus hormones while pregnant and immediately after giving birth. These can cloud a woman’s decision making. Let new moms have the chance to experience motherhood first. Then, if after a settling period, a mom is still feeling it’s too much for her to handle, at least she’s had some actual experience with her baby. A bonus is that the baby is able to spend time with the mom the infant grew within.

One mom who surrendered her baby notes – Pre birth matching is mentally manipulative and really I think its abusive. In hindsight, she says, this situation encouraged me to “follow through” on giving my baby up. I now believe that if they had not been allowed in at the hospital, I wouldn’t have signed the papers. If I had been able to take my baby home, she would be here with me today.

And I do agree with this perspective – Yes, they should be able to change their mind and shouldn’t be forced to pay or give back anything that the potential adopters paid out!

Many mothers don’t comprehend how strongly they will love for their newborn child, until the minute the baby is laid in their arms. Honestly, only then, can a mother even begin to make a sound decision regarding what she wants for her child.

Every expectant mom should be offered unbiased therapy to assist her in making the choice that’s right for her, not anyone else’s decision on her behalf. She doesn’t owe anyone her baby.

And from an adoptee’s perspective – Since adoption is supposed to be about the child, ALL newborns would respond YES (let my mom change her mind !!). Adoption isn’t the first choice of most adoptive parents and is certainly would never be a newborn’s choice. All newborn’s (including those adopted) are predisposed as humans and by nature to crave their own mother’s voice, smell, breast and heartbeat – not a stranger’s.

As adoptees we had no choice but to learn to live without our true mother, and learn and be conditioned to call another woman “mother”, but at birth SHE (the mother we grew within) is our universe. A woman choosing to parent her own child isn’t a failed adoption but a failed assumption on the adoptive parents part. It is a chance adoptive parents take, when they try to groom a (likely desperate) expectant mother with the intention of procuring her newborn for themselves.

Thank You For Choosing Life

Some questions were posed – How many pregnant women do you thank for “choosing life?” Why say it to the woman who is a birth mom? You don’t know that was even an option she considered. Yet, you want to blast it off social media thanking your kid’s birth moms for “choosing life.”

Until you start saying it to the preacher’s wife, stop saying it to expectant moms considering adoption or first moms. Stop blasting that crap on social media. It’s so incredibly disrespectful. Have you ever told someone “thank you for choosing life?” Have you ever given credit to your children’s birth moms on social media for “choosing life?”

An adoptee comments – I have not. I have forgiven her for the decision she made to give me away without a legal adoption but I don’t see her not having an abortion in 1961 as some great thing.

Another adoptee perspective – I may sound dramatic but since my own adoption is closed and no information provided and lots of lying surrounding my adoption (Connecticut is one of the worst states for coverups in adoption). As much as I may love my life at this moment, I would rather have not been born. Then I wouldn’t have be abused and suffered pain and trauma. So those words thank you for choosing life wouldn’t ever come out of my mouth. I find it very problematic and just adds to the fake rainbow of adoption world.

Yet another adoptee says – If I’d been aborted, I wouldn’t know it. If my birth mom had chosen and been able to abort, I hypothetically support her, as I do anyone seeking abortion. If we want to end trauma, forced birth is not the way.

One woman shares – When my husband and I were first dating, I got pregnant and miscarried. A trusted adult who I told (not a parent) said “at least you didn’t murder it” because we weren’t in a position to have a child. That’s forever bothered me.

An adoptive parent adds – In many cases, being backed into a corner is not really choice, regardless of “choosing” abortion or parenting vs adoptions. In far too many cases, women are in crisis situations and are not helped so that they can make a decision free from fear or coercion. I also think the lifelong trauma connected to being adopted isn’t something I can be dismissive of in these conversations because I can’t possibly know how it feels to be adopted. I’ve read adoptees who say they would rather have not been born, and I think that feeling needs to be given space and consideration.

Some more reasons that it may be inappropriate to say thank you for choosing life. It could be inappropriate because she may not have had a choice. The pregnancy could have been a result of sexual assault, incest, statutory rape, or some combination thereof. The pregnancy may not have been discovered early on, and if it had, the birth mom may have aborted rather than carry to term. Maybe birth mom wanted to terminate the pregnancy but wasn’t able to do so. How many states require a parent’s permission if it’s a pregnant minor? Maybe the birth mom misses her baby so badly that she wishes she had killed herself while pregnant, so they could be together forever.

A mature perspective adds – because they (the adoptive parents) got what they wanted. It’s always all about what they seek to gain, a child they cannot have on their own. Are they grateful someone else made them parents? Sure they are. It’s sick to be grateful for someone else giving you their kid. If they actually tried to break down the actual act of adoption, without their feelings, they would understand that.

Some additional thoughts – We don’t generally say thank you for choosing life to an expectant mother who is not in crisis. We assume the child is wanted, accident or not. And an alternate choice would not be obvious ie morning after pill or termination. Pregnancies are generally pretty easy to spot at some stage and strangers love to comment, so it is only those people who know the expectant mother or the plethora of manipulative pro-adoption information that push the “choose life” guilt trip to mothers both before and after birth or relinquishment. The people who benefit most promote it and have indoctrinated and manipulated society to believe this dross. The privileged customers need for it to be this way to soothe and convince themselves that they have done a good deed, rather than participate in a cruel trauma.

Is Guardianship Enough ?

As prospective adoptive and foster parents find the all things adoption group I belong to, some of their perspectives truly do begin to change. Same for expectant mothers thinking about surrendering their child for adoption, then changing their mind and deciding that they may actually be capable of raising their own child. Always a happy outcome.

Unfortunately, many Division of Children and Families agencies at the state level still operate from an obsolete point of view. Here’s a story from one foster mother who is facing that dilemma.

We have a 7 year old pre-adoptive foster son that has lived with us for 21+ months. I always had the intention of adopting (until I joined this group), but we were only regular foster parents until this boy moved in. Everything was going “well” and mom was going to sign an open adoption agreement. Then the pandemic hit and we had to supervise their video visits, which ended up being good because we got to know each other. Then we offered to supervise the monthly in-person visits. I joined this group and now I’m trying to help mom to get her son back. She is working on her plan and I’m so proud of her, but I am not sure it will be enough for Division of Children and Families. We have a permanency meeting in a month, so I need some help.

I have 2 questions about our situation:

For the adoptive parents/foster parents in the group: How do you navigate changing a goal of adoption to guardianship, when the department has said in the past that doesn’t offer enough permanency for the child and they would move him. Is a 7-8 year old listened to, if the child says he wants to live here forever but only if his mom can’t get better?

For the adoptees/former foster youth in the group: Let’s assume mom’s rights are terminated. There is no dad involved and there literally is no family that could take this boy in and raise him. How do we know if this boy really wants to be adopted by us or not? How do we know if guardianship is or isn’t enough for him? We have a biological child who is only 6 months, in case that matters. How old is old enough for us to follow what the boy requests? We have heard so many adoptive parents talk about how their children’s behaviors changed after adoption because they felt “secure”, but after reading so much stuff in this group, I have a whole different view about adoption. Yet I don’t know how to figure out what our foster son would really want or if he would think we love him less, if we don’t adopt him.

Only one response, from an adoptive/foster parent so far but it could be helpful to others in a similar situation –

Does he have a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) or GAL (Guardian ad Litem) ? I am not sure what state he is in but in Indiana, the guardianship petitions are heard in a separate court outside of the Child Protective Services court. Child Protective Services is notified that a guardianship petition has been filed and they can come and object, if they want but sometimes they don’t.

So I would think, if you get an attorney and just file it – with mom being in agreement, then they would have to come and object, explaining why adoption is better. I think if mom is making some efforts, then that would be a bonus towards guardianship.

Guardianship is always an option. I haven’t figured out why they don’t push more for guardianship for very young children and what the age is that it suddenly becomes an option but I have seen our state grant guardianship with a Child Protective Services case for kids as young as 2 years old.

Also, I don’t think it is ethical for the department to threaten you with moving him. So I would ask for a supervisor or above to sit in on your next meeting and just ask for them to explain why this is happening and why adoption is the only option. I would personally tell you that we have custody/guardianship for our two youngest and it has been good.

The Handmaid’s Tale

Not to mention the maternal mortality rate in the US. Why do I have to put my body and life at risk. And it’s ESPECIALLY high for women of color.

Forcing women to breed (this word is deliberate) is so disgusting!!! We are not livestock! What happens in any womb except your own should be of exactly zero concern to you!!!

A woman should be allowed to CHOOSE adoption — armed with all of the information she can possibly have at her disposal. She should be allowed to CHOOSE adoption with the support she needs to parent her baby.

It should never be coerced or forced. Adoption agencies have a stake in taking her baby for adoption because they receive money from the adoptive parents for her child. This leads to coercive tactics which entirely remove her choice in the matter.

Or what about a woman whose choice is raising a child in poverty and being told she’s a terrible mother and that the child’s better off with someone else? Not really much of a choice, is it?

So I believe in the CHOICE, but that in order to make any choice about this matter, we must be fully informed on what’s happening and given all options possible. Most women who surrender a child to adoption regret their decision, or wish they had been given the choice to parent.

The money adoptive parents spend to take a child from its natural mother could better be used to help support that mother in caring for her child. Then, the child’s identity doesn’t need to be altered in order to support the needs of the adoptive parents (because that doesn’t provide for the needs of the child or natural parents, only the adoptive parents).

Very few women giving their child up for adoption really have a choice. There is a TON of coercion in adoption, not to mention the mother child separation trauma an adoptee will have to deal with the rest of their lives.

Regarding abortion – a group of cells will not survive outside the human that is hosting them. There’s no killing of any healthy baby, ever, in most abortions. Every person who has a late term abortion (which is the only time it’s possible to kill an actual baby) has it done to protect their own life or save the baby from a horrendous existence. If the woman’s doctor must know the baby will not survive long and will not suffer while dying, or that doctor would not perform a late term abortion. It’s literally not possible to kill something that doesn’t exist.

Here’s one adoptee’s story – I’m not only an adoptee but a former foster youth. I was adopted when I was 3. All my life I’ve never felt a connection with my adoptive mother, like I see my friends have with their moms. When I was younger I think I did (but have no memories from childhood). As I got older, any connection I may have had has faded. Sometimes her presence makes me angry or even how she talks or does things. I feel bad that I feel this way. I do have love for her but I don’t know … I just don’t feel that connection that everyone else does with their mother.

Adoption is generally not a good solution for most of the people involved, even the adoptive parents suffer in many cases.

Just Babysitting ?

An adoptee wrote – for Christmas, I would just love for an adoptive parent to honestly say that they just feel like they are babysitting someone else’s child. I feel like that’s how I would feel if I were an adoptive parent and I wonder if they really think they are that child’s parents…

I thought this was a rather novel perspective and will share with you a few responses to this.

From an adoptive parent –

I did feel that way and my husband did too. It took time for us to become a family. We became a family when our daughter was just shy of 5. It took time, attachment takes time. Earning trust takes time. My daughter has expressed she was scared when she met us. TOTALLY FAIR! I would have been worried if she wasn’t to be honest.

Adoption is so awful, and so hard, and I more than anything wish that her birth parents were known and could be involved. Heck! Would have been great for our daughter to be known and loved and cherished by her birth family. We don’t know why she needed adoption in her life. Likely poverty.

And it’s so so sad and disheartening to know that was likely their reality. One day hopefully sooner rather than later (with the help of a lot of technology) we will find them and she can know what it is like to have those relationships and call them “home” too.

Another adoptive parent said – while I love my adopted daughters, I know that I’m just caring for them, and loving them until they are able to leave and search out the rest of their birth family. I try to connect with various members of their birth families but no one responds to my efforts. I’ve told them that they may respond to them when they are adults and ask about them and if that’s something they want to pursue in years to come I will support them. They are still quite young to have that responsibility, but when they are ready, I’ll be there to help.

I believe they love me, and they are happy with me. But I know it’s not their first or even second choice. It was just the only one. I’m preparing myself already for all the many scenarios that may play out in the coming years. I am not and will never be their mother. They have a mother, and she’s passed all too recently. I am a motherly figure in their lives but I will never be their mom, and I will never try to take her place.

Yet another adoptive parent writes – Adoption was simply a last resort for these kids to give them some stability in life. It was not something that was planned, or desired on my part. These girls along with my biological daughter are my whole entire world. I live and breathe for them. I am a better person because of them. But I know they aren’t mine. They will forever and always be my girls, they will forever and always be our family. No matter what happens, my door will always be open for them. They can always come back.

I know my place in their lives. I know that while they were happy to be adopted to have a home they don’t have to leave, it’s not what they wanted. I know that they want their family, whatever family they can find. And I know that there’s a huge possibility that as soon as they turn 18 they will leave and search out their family. And I’m okay with that. I’m here to support them. I will drive them, pack their things, whatever they need. That’s my job. Loving them unconditionally means supporting them, even when it destroys me.

And now for balance perhaps, an adoptee’s voice –

My adoptive parents were my parents. They loved my brother and I. They worked hard for us, provided for us, loved us, taught us, nurtured us, instilled goodness in us and sacrificed for us.

They were not mere babysitters to us.

They were parents and family to us and responsible for us.

My birth mother has been a curse for me, a rotten haggard hypocrite to me, a liar and manipulator to me, a shameful and shamefilled harbinger of sorrow for me and I wouldn’t let her babysit my soiled laundry for me. I’m not in the fog. I’m not blinded by the adoption narrative. I’m not naive, grateful or meek. I hate the adoption system. I hate that my rights are superseded and ignored and that my personal information, identity and birth certificate are denied to me. I hate what adoption does and that the general belief is that it is inherently and unquestionably good, despite the evidence of Adoptees lived experiences, but I won’t allow the other extreme you put forward be my truth.

I’ve had enough people…stranger’s opinions be expressed on my behalf, silencing me and my truth, to let this post go unchallenged. Adoption has too many faults and many adopters have too many faults for anybody’s liking. Standards, policies and procedures are severely lacking. The system is not fit for purpose. No arguments here. But it is unfortunately, necessary in some cases.

My birth mother was 30 years old when she had me…her second mistake…that we know of. I hate her AND I hate the adoption system. Full blown despise them. My adoptive parents were not perfect, I don’t think they ever claimed to be, nor are biological parents. I’m a biological parent, I’m in no way perfect.

To which this blog author can honestly say – me too, sister.

Why So Fragile ?

I belong to an all things adoption Facebook group. So birth mothers, adoptive mothers and adoptees are all member and there is also the former foster young and issues of foster care which are tangent to adoption if one understands how the system works or fails to, all too often.

Yesterday, I learned that the majority of members are actually adoptive parents. Many have spoken out how considering the thoughts and feelings of adoptees has changed their perspective on what they have involved themselves in. No one is saying that anyone should undo what has already been done. The group only encourages doing it better.

Some adoptive parents are so fragile that hearing the truth will actually drive them right out of this group. Sometimes the group is accused of being hateful and cruel but adoptees carry wounds, many times wounds so deep and unconscious within them, they don’t know they are there. Others have worked long and hard, sometimes through therapy to open up those places that were hurt and if not heal, at least begin to understand them.

Truth is adoption is a bad practice and many adoptive parents adopted children believing they were doing a good deed in the world. It hurts to hear that maybe you were wrong about that, or that you lack some really important knowledge about the impacts of adoption that only an adoptee can provide to you as the one who experienced it.

At the root of many adoptions is an infertile couple. In the most enlightened situations, the couple embarks upon a journey to find peace with the reality. The couple will seek some way other than raising children to find fulfillment in their lives. Infertility is a health issue and it should be discussed openly, to remove the stigma. Everyone does not need to have children. The world has plenty of people to support already. One could look at it as doing their part to create a balance in global population.

If as a society, we can teach the public that couples don’t need adoption to “fix” their infertility, then maybe society can put a real effort behind supporting families so that they can stay together. A random discussion about infertility almost always leads to advice that includes alternative methods of creating a family – like adoption, surrogacy, etc – many of which harm other people. We can’t change a narrative when people are being continuously convinced to seek alternative methods to have kids. The alternatives discussed are never about remaining childless.

Being infertile is not a death sentence. In some instances, the message becomes panic stricken, desperate – which encourages the listener to say, “well, just adopt”. That fuels the “must have a child to parent” flurry. Hearing an enlightened couple share their journey of infertility with a composed and educated message can begin the process of stopping the “I HAVE TO HAVE A BABY” narrative.

The couple needs to “process” their reality – the harsh reality – to gain the emotional balance needed to meet the next phase of their life’s journey with compassion and self love. Generally, we are not called upon to be the social educator of the world. Our real job is to care for our self, so we are the best self for whatever life will bring next for us.

Barefoot & Pregnant in the Kitchen

Someone in my all things adoption group shared –

So I am in a tag group (about men) and someone posted a meme of some guy spouting off about how as women our goal should be to have and care for kids etc…

Well, I wrote that attitudes like that make infertile people feel as though kids are the be all and end all and can end up negatively impacting families.

And, of course I got comments saying let’s not judge infertile women and how there is nothing wrong if someone can’t/doesn’t want to raise a child because there is always someone else who would love to adopt them.

I’m sorry but I disagree.

Very rarely does it happen that a woman carries a child for 9 months, delivers that baby and then is like “naw, just kidding, I don’t want you.”

More often, mothers are separated from their babies due to poverty.

Now that I’ve become enlightened, I am always going to judge people who know they have a scared poor pregnant person up against the wall.

In contract law, if there is unequal bargaining power, the contract may be voided. So why are adoption contracts even allowed to stand? My desperate maternal grandmother never intended to give my mom up. Georgia Tann exploited her with threats that her good friend, the Juvenile Court Judge Camille Kelley, would declare my grandmother an unfit mother – which she in no way was. She tried to get my mom back 4 days after she was coerced into signing the Surrender Papers but no way were they going to let go of my mom – an adoptive mother was on her way from Nogales Arizona to Memphis Tennessee to pick her up.

There is a clear imbalance of power when a woman or couple are poor, or homeless, or addicted to some maladaptive substance. And to have any woman sign Surrender Papers right after giving birth is clearly criminal.

It leaves many of us honestly wondering why our society always paints adoptive parents as knights in shining armor. Most people in modern society think adoptive parents are saints.