Not Actually An Orphan

War is hell but imagine being sent far away from your native home and told you are an orphan but you are not. That is the story in The Guardian about 1,400 still seeking to learn who their parents were. LINK>‘I couldn’t love her’: the last UK child migrants to Australia on the long, lonely search for their mothers by Susan Chenery.

Michael Lachmann had always believed he was an orphan. There was no childcare during WWII, unless you were rich. Much like my own maternal grandmother, his mother was doing what she could to provide care for him, while his father was away fighting in the war and she was working. Instead of being available for her to pick him up at a residential nursery, he was shipped to Australia at the age of 5 and placed in the Castledare Boys Home, run by the Christian Brothers, where numerous boys were starved, beaten and subjected to sexual abuse.

Between the 1910s and 1970, 7,000 children aged between three and 14 were transported to Australia as part of Britain’s child migrant program. Promised a better life and loving families waiting to adopt, most were instead delivered into institutions where large numbers suffered abuse. Often their names or birth dates were changed, erasing their links to their families of origin. Very few were adopted or fostered.

Even in their 70s and 80s all these people want is to find their mother, to know who she was. Two years after he was sent to Australia, Lachmann was adopted by a middle-aged Catholic couple, making his situation better than it was for some. Now 80 and living in Perth, after reading a newspaper article 10 years ago, he contacted the Child Migrants Trust. “I had no identity for my own children. It is terrible not having a family history, it is like being in the universe alone.” Thirteen years ago then British prime minister Gordon Brown gave a heartfelt apology to the former child migrants. “Your cries for help were not heeded.”

That apology came after decades of work by Margaret Humphreys, the founder and director of the Child Migrants Trust, who advocates for and seeks to reunite family members after a lifetime of separation. In addition to forensic work in finding mothers who had often kept illegitimate births secret, she took on governments, the power of churches and the establishment to uncover the injustice suffered by these children.

Humphreys had been a social worker in child protection in Nottingham in 1986 when she received a letter from a woman in Australia. “She said that at four years old she was put on a boat with lots of other children. She said ‘my parents are dead, I have no birth certificate, I don’t know who I am. Can you help me find my mother?’” Humphreys thought it was “preposterous” but investigated it, “as social workers should do”. She found the mother was “very much alive” and had been told her child was dead. Very similar to how Georgia Tann operated (she ran the agency my mother was adopted from), many of the children came from single mothers who had put their children into care, until they could get back on their feet. That is how my maternal grandmother lost my mom and my grandmother was married but for reasons I’ll never know, my mom’s father had abandoned them before her birth. So often, when the mother arrived to collect her child where they had been left for care, the child was gone.

There is much more to this heartbreaking story at the link in the opening paragraph.

Adoption Disenfranchisement

I was attracted to a Medium article today with the title LINK>Understanding Adoption – Epistemological Implications by Shane Bouel today. The image hits a deep place. It was created by Thoughtless Delineation – AI ART. Just today, I posted “There are 2 good things in life – Freedom of Thought and Freedom of Action.” I am borrowing from and adding my own insights and understandings to the article linked above.

However in reading the linked article I find reason for deeper contemplation – “All social behavior is guided by values. Thus the study of social behavior can never be value-free if value freedom is interpreted in the sense of the absence of values because the values of the society under investigation form a part of the social facts to be studied by sociology.”

He goes on to say – “Knowledge and power are linked. In order to reveal the nature of the knowledge/power nexus and its relationship to the process of adoption we must not only ask what we know about adoption but more importantly, ask how we come to know what we know about adoption.” He is actually talking about adoption in Australia but I expect what he has to say applies here in the United States as well.

Adoption is a social construct. The understanding of adoption by those considered experts – social workers, mental health professionals and policymakers – places them in a powerful position as the creators and arbiters of knowledge related to adoption. Their understanding of adoption has a particular influence on the way it is presented and represented both theoretically and as practice. Therefore, some understandings are a result of distortions of the knowledge process. These distortions are products of validating certain kinds of knowledge by promoting certain narratives and silencing others.

Statements about the real nature of adoption become everyday knowledge for most people, especially those with no direct experience of the practice. The habit of understanding social phenomena like adoption with our personally unquestioned beliefs (because they are scientifically legitimate) instead of first attempting to understand the nature and origin of those beliefs is especially evident when we take a holistic view of the experience of being adopted as expressed by many adoptees.

Some would have us believe that the primary motivating force behind much excluding, value-free social research has been conspiratorial, that it has been little more than a premeditated and conscious desire by the powerful to control the less powerful. However worse is the acceptance, legitimization and application of objectified, positivistic notions about the real nature of adoption. These deny us access to the multi-level experiences of those (adoptees and birth parents) who have been subjected to it. Moreover, blind faith in the power of positivistic social science has further resulted in the institutionalized devaluing and belittling of those suffering its effects. Those individuals who have been, in some way, consumed by the process and who have spoken out loudly about their experiences have been viewed as little more than emotionally charged, angry and therefore irrational persons out of touch with reality.

Not only has the individual affected been blamed for the socially created, contradictory, unintended and unwanted effects of the adoption process but they have also been systematically alienated, ridiculed and stigmatized. Adoption has been portrayed and presented as given, unalterable and self-evident and as a consequence, it confronts the individual as a historically and scientifically justified, objective and benign process and therefore, it is undeniable fact. The biography of those consumed by the process is apprehended merely as a reactive, subjective personal episode, separate and distanced from the institution of adoption. Many affected persons experience adoption objectively as coercion and in many cases worse, as an oppressive force.

He has much more to say. It is time well spent to read his worthwhile essay.

Anthony Albanese

It is interesting that I had queried a friend in Australia about him being elected prime minister without knowing how she felt about the man and her response was very positive. “I am glad this happened and am excited at the results of the Greens and the Independents. The Independents who got in were all women. Some were given funding to run by an Australian billionaire, on the condition that they supported climate change action and making the government accountable.” and much more.

Then running late today and looking for a topic for this blog in my all things adoption group, I read this – “Australia’s new prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is the son of Maryanne, a woman who as a single mother in 1963, was strongly pressured to give him up for adoption. She resisted and raised him herself. He is a strong proponent of social justice and I’m so excited to see a new future for our country under his leadership.”

So I went looking for more and found this article in The Australian from 2021 titled – ‘Something wasn’t right’: Anthony Albanese’s heartbreaking Mother’s Day tribute. He said, she “sacrificed so much” for him. She had rheumatoid arthritis that “crippled her joints” and meant she couldn’t work. “She lived on a disability pension. Life wasn’t easy, and her health made things even harder but we got through because of her,” he said.

“We lived in council housing, which gave us a sense of security and stability. It was our home.” His mother taught him how to save money but the most valuable life lesson she passed on was to leave no one behind. “Truth is, mum was left behind by people who counted her out, and by governments who cut back support,” he said. “The cutbacks that happened in mum’s lifetime meant she had to justify the support she was receiving. When health funding was cut, the quality of mum’s care was cut too.”

“When they tried to sell our council house, it felt like our home was being taken from us.” It was his mother’s influence and challenge to make ends meet that inspired the Labor leader to get into politics. “Mum always gave me unconditional love. And I feel very privileged to have had that. Mums really are special,” he wrote.

A Necessity ?

Over time, I have come to understand that there are so many problems with adoption that generally speaking I am not in favor of the practice. I am pro-family preservation and anti-unnecessary adoption. I believe that most adoptions are not necessary.

What are the answers to such questions as – “what would happen if there weren’t adoptive parents?” and “what if no one adopted.”

Babies are highly in demand and sought after. There are 40 waiting hopeful adoptive parents to every ONE expectant mother/baby.

Looking at it as a business person, I know the dynamics of supply vs demand. This is real reason a domestic infant costs so much to adopt. This is why, if you are wanting to adopt, you often have to wait YEARS for a baby.

The honest truth is – these babies aren’t “in need.” They won’t age out of foster care. They won’t grow up with “nowhere to go.”

Adopting these babies isn’t helping anyone except the couple wanting a baby to adopt. Seeking to adopt an infant in the United States is always a 100% selfish desire.

Most of these original mothers relinquish their babies for purely FINANCIAL reasons. If they had more money/support/resources they would keep their child.

A woman who simply doesn’t want her baby is RARE.

The babies you are seeking to “save” don’t need to be adopted. They have a mom and extended family. These family only need financial support (and sometimes treatment for emotional issues and even professional services) and they could stay together.

Most newborns end up placed for adoption because of a TEMPORARY situation that feels like a permanent obstacle.

In Australia, where women (and families generally) are supported. Overall adoption numbers have declined 50% over the past 25 years— from 668 in 1995–96 to 334 in 2019–20. Adoption rates have steadily declined since 2004–05, with 2019–20 marking the 15th consecutive year of decline.

Compare this to adoption in the US where it is a major industry. About 135,000 children are adopted in the United States each year. 62% of babies in domestic infant adoptions were placed with their adoptive families within a month of birth.

While there truly isn’t a shortage of children to adopt (if someone is determined to do so), there is an acknowledged shortage of babies/toddlers available for adoption. With reproductive freedom for women (yes, the availability of birth control and abortion) and the end of social stigma for single mothers (I know more than one), this is the cause of a shortage of infants available for adoption. A large supply is never coming back. When I was seeking to know more about my dad’s adoption, the Salvation Army told me they had closed their unwed mother’s homes because there wasn’t enough demand to sustain them.

There are over 100,000 children currently in foster care right now, who are available for adoption. Their parents’ rights have already been terminated. Those kids NEED homes but many will age out of foster care because most prospective adoptive parents want babies. Many children in foster care actually do WANT to be adopted. They seek stability, which they will never have in foster care.

Why Is Adoption So Common Here ?

It’s a known fact that other countries have very few adoptions annually. Some as few as 100-300. This is vastly lower than the US obviously. One of the main contributing factors is the better social programs in those countries. We don’t have that in the US. Other countries focus on helping families stay together.

I do believe that if we provided families with what they needed, like some of these other countries do, the percentage of parents losing their children would be significantly lower. Domestic infant adoption would basically cease to exist.

What needs to change for there to be fewer adoptions overall ?

Some thoughts in answer to that question . . .

Universal healthcare and an adequate minimum wage. Readily available, affordable childcare for working families. Both generous paid maternity and paternity leave. Paid vacation time which allows for families to create happy memories (I had that in my 50s and 60s era childhood). A good educational system. Just the basic stuff I grew up believing this country provided (even if it wasn’t actually the truth, which I now understand in maturity).

I do believe that if we actually supported families, the adoption rate might drop 80%. I do believe the vast majority of adoptions are caused by poverty or I would imagine if we actually supported all moms, it would reduce it by at least 80%. I do believe the vast majority of adoptions are caused by poverty or religion based coercion utilizing shame to get young women to give up their child.

The nature of capitalism is such, that society won’t do these things to keep families thriving. It isn’t that we can’t, if the tax structures were in place to raise taxes on the wealthy. Many people in our society have bought the Republican line about Trickle Down Economics. The belief that if we help the 1% have more, they will help the rest of us do better too. That has never proven a reality – plain and simple.

Until we as a society decide that every citizen is worthy of a good quality of life, broken families will continue to be way too common.

Case in point – Australia. They don’t have an exorbitant income tax, but they do have universal health care, subsidized childcare, parental leave, sick leave, a minimum wage etc. Support payments are available to family members who take on caring roles. So do the UK and New Zealand.

If one looks at the number of children adopted each year in Australia, the number is about 300. That’s ALL children who are adopted from infants to teens. They do not have an adoption “market” (yes, it is a BIG $$$ business in the US). Taxes in Australia may be higher than in the US but they know that they are getting plenty of services in return.

Sadly, the problem here in the US is entrenched inequality and cultural bigotry. Many countries outside of the US have much better social programs – most EU countries, Canada, Switzerland and Australia. Knowing this, it is pretty amazing that this country won’t do better. We are the richest nation in the world, but most of our money goes into the pockets of our richest citizens. America is the country with the most billionaires in the world.

It is way past time for a change. That change requires accessible, affordable family planning (birth control and terminations), no private for profit adoption agencies and an end to the manipulation and coercion (Christian) of expectant mothers.

Sadly, adoption has become so ingrained in the American worldview as a means to getting a child that our society is hostile to the idea of children staying with who they were born to. It is all about who has money and who doesn’t. Anyone with the financial means who wants a child is basically able to, in effect, buy one from someone who doesn’t have the financial means to help their family stay together. Money is the driver of the for profit adoption complex. Sadly, given all I have shared above, I don’t see any of it changing any time soon. I wish I could be more optimistic about it.