What Would Help ?

A question was asked – what would have helped you to parent? I’ve seen statistics that a very small financial amount was the barrier that kept most women who chose adoption from parenting. As I look around my community at single mothers, though, it seems that their struggle is more a concern of being able to coordinate a combination of a job, a budget and childcare.

Some responses –

Money. Assuming the same lack of family support that caused the coerced adoption, having my own financial security would have meant them never even having a chance to suggest. much less force it. Asked to elaborate, she added – they could have been financially supportive or even emotionally supportive but both families (the father’s and mine) chose not to; my parents basically abdicated. That had always been the case. His family, though well off enough to help a young family get established, instead chose to coerce me into adoption to protect their precious baby boy’s future.

blogger’s note – it is true that it is often the parents, even adoptee parents like my own who coerced my sister into giving up her baby. Truly, in their heart of hearts, they believe this is best – not for the baby – but for their own children. They don’t know that baby yet.

Another one shared – For me, it was lack of “support system” and with that, childcare. 1) I can’t afford childcare since I only work part time and 2) my hours are “outside” the “daycare hours”, so finding daycare, even if I was given the “financial stability” (aka, “paid”) to do so, I still would have the barrier to actually find a daycare that would offer services after 3/4/5 pm when I could drop them off until 8/9/10 pm when I could come pick them up. I live in a fairly small town (pop. 10,000 ish). Everything is limited here. Most of the stores/shops even close around 5/6 pm, but I’m one of many that work at one of 2 places that either close at 12 am (major chain grocery store) or never close (tribal casino).

The one who first asked the question wanted to know – so if you had had a “grandparent” that would care for your child just for the sake of spending time with them, or a babysitting co-op where you watch someone’s child 5 days a week, while she works her 7-2 shift, in exchange for her watching your child 5 days a week while you work your 3-10, that would have made an actual difference, in whether or not you felt equipped to parent ? (No response yet, at the time of writing this blog.)

In first researching for this blog at sources not limited to adoption issues, I read two that discuss the challenges or myths about single moms. Without a doubt, an unwed mother considering parenting her unborn child, will have encountered similar arguments about trying to give it a go.

[1] LINK>Your Tango – a single mom shared that she was battling a litany of problems that will likely sound very familiar to most single moms out there, from a punishing schedule to a lack of space for self-care and sleep deprivation. At just 26, she was struggling. “I work full time, clean, cook, grocery shop, take care of the kids, etc. all on my own,” she wrote. “I have no time for myself and what little time I do I have I try to spend it with the kids.”

[2] LINK>Slate – 4 long-standing myths about single mothers. The article elaborates on each but here are the 4 – Myth 1: You can’t generalize about single mothers Myth 2: Single mothers get pregnant by men with whom they have casual sex Myth 3: Single mothers get pregnant because they were ignorant about, couldn’t afford, or didn’t have access to birth control. Myth 4: If unmarried couples would just get married, they would be a lot better off.

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Today’s story – The fact that my own family is willing to take me to court just so my child won’t be raised in a gay household feels triggering and judgmental to me.

There’s more – I went from being pregnant and planning to place for adoption, to revoking the agreement on the 29th day (my last day to change my mind), to seeing and connecting with my baby (she’s 3 months old), to now – re-doing the adoption agreement. Blogger’s note – So, such a conflicted mom with a very complicated situation !!

My family is threatening to file for custody to prevent me from placing baby girl for adoption and I keep trying to communicate how HARD it is to make the decision to place for adoption at all. Yet, it’s equally hard to raise a child when you don’t WANT to – [1] The lack of love and [2] The lack of connection and support is…serious. I would love to understand why my biological family members feels it’s soooo vital the child remains with their family.

I don’t want the usual fear-based thoughts such as “They’ll wonder why their parents gave them up“ or “They’ll resent their biological parents” or you as the biological mom may not have contact in the future. What I would like is suggestions that are soul/loving based reasons.

Blogger’s note – I clearly did not entirely understand the original comment – it seems the “gay” household is the hopeful adoptive parents and not the woman who gave birth. Someone responding noted that this person is asking for an answer as to why adoption to strangers would be a negative for their child and for help seeing past their trigger about the hopeful adoptive families’ orientation.

Another notes – It’s not about her “needs”, it’s about what is best for the child. That’s what you do when you have a baby, what’s best for the child. It may be best for her not to raise it, if she’s too selfish to put the child first but that doesn’t mean she should rob this child of a real family. She adds, Please learn about birth control, ABSTINENCE, and abortions. Stop birthing babies and letting them be sold because you don’t “feel like” being a parent.

Another said this – I see you have another child also. If you allow this younger child to be adopted by non-family, your first child will always wonder if she is next. She also seems to have a bond with her sister. Are you willing to break that bond – traumatizing both of them?

Some other responses –

One adoptee – don’t birth kids you don’t want. I for one would have rather been aborted than given up for adoption and I have seen many other adoptees agree with this statement. Then this, you have already set this child up for feelings of being unwanted by its creator, you. You kept a child you birthed already but want nothing to do with this one, who will grow up to be a fully functioning adult human, who will fully understand that you chose to keep one kid but not them. Are you 100% done with having kids? If not, think about how you would feel if the person who created you kept the kids they birthed before and after you; but not you. Please just put yourself in the shoes of your baby and try to empathize with the heartache you are creating for their entire life. I have absolutely no problems with queer couples adopting kids; but if there is ever a chance for family to adopt, even if it is a 3rd cousin you have never met, it is always better to have some kind of familial connection associated with adoption than no familial connection at all. Period.

Another woman said – The TRUTH is scary. You’re going to have to face the fear-based answers to your question, if you’re going to ask questions like this. Adoptees are 4x more likely to attempt suicide than our kept peers. And that’s statistical truth. I know, I was recently hospitalized for suicidal ideation. I’m an adoptee (and mother of loss via Child Protective Services). The truth IS scary. There’s no sugar coating it. Did you also know that adoption changes our DNA ? It’s called epigenetics and it makes us more prone to catastrophic illnesses like cancer or autoimmune disorders. Keeping your child within the family will go a distance to prevent many of these problems for that child. Giving that baby up to strangers is a selfish decision.

Why Is It Different Here ?

How come infant adoption doesn’t exist in countries with social safety nets??

Because women don’t willingly give up babies without coercion and desperate circumstances.

The point above is that many countries outside the US have less than 200 adoptions annually…some only a handful. WHY?

Because they don’t allow it to be a multi billion dollar industry
It is NOT privatized
It is illegal to adopt on your own – no internet/friend matches
They have a social support system to help families stay together.

Some additional comments –

The social nets in the US need serious overhaul. I work in a hospital and some of the situations I’ve seen people in are heartbreaking, infuriating, sickening. It makes sense that countries with ACTUAL support see fewer broken families all around.

It was sad to see this one – I wish it was like this everywhere. I’m from Ukraine and it’s a sh*tshow – lots of kids abandoned, horrific dysfunction, zero support. It’s terrible.

Safety nets include but are not limited to: proper science based sex ed, access to birth control of the patients choice, access to medical care, plus abortion accessibility. Access to housing and therapy. I have found a lot of people assume support is $$$ and while that is true to a degree, it is not the whole picture. Building community is the best thing we can do. To which someone else noted – but realistically money solves a ton of issues.

From an adoptee – Safety nets and social resources are so important. It is deeply disturbing that we pay so much lip service to “children are our greatest resource” and pretending that we are all about “family values,” but when push comes to shove, it’s really about greed and selfishness. We need to elect politicians who are more interested in people than money and power.

A transracial adoptee notes – I hate it when they try to make it seem like there are soooo many abandoned babies. Even if there is an expectant mom who wants to give birth (which how many pregnant people are truly willing to give birth, especially in a country with a high mortality rate, to just relinquish the baby) but does not want to parent (as in they have the ability/support/the means to parent but truly do not want to & wouldn’t/couldn’t abort), then what about the father? And if he really absolutely does not want to parent, do they really not have a single family member or honestly even close family friend who would take in the baby? Like the leap to having absolute strangers adopt the baby is just too much for me honestly. I frankly find it a bit hard to believe that there are so many situations where there are 2 capable expectant parents who simply don’t want parent and for not a single family member be capable/willing to take care of the child.

Another explains – it’s the private adoption industry taking the foster care statistic of approximately 100,000 post-Termination of Parental Rights youth in this country, and just conveniently not mentioning that almost none of them are babies or toddlers. And then, if challenged, they will say ‘but this prevents them from ending up in foster care, aging out without a family,’ although I imagine that would not be relevant to the majority of parents who relinquish privately.

Which brought this recognition – I’ve actually found it incredibly bizarre how some very educated and intelligent people in my life, people who understand systems of oppression in regards to other demographics, a) don’t seem to get that no one gets pregnant to happily turn around and relinquish and b) refuse to understand that different age groups in the foster care system likely have different needs and require different approaches.

And this story from an expectant mother – I’m 42, expecting my 4th. My 1st, I was a single mother when her father left when she was 15 months old. I was a single mother for 10 years when I met my husband. But I thrived. I had a career, bought my own house, could afford a comfortable life. When I married, we had 2 boys over 8 years of marriage. My husband comes from a long line of mental illnesses, which he inherited. Both our boys are special needs, ASD among others. I’m in the middle of a long divorce as my husband is dragging it out and controlling it all as long as he can. I’m now a single mother for a second time. Eventually started casually seeing someone and got pregnant the second time we were together. He immediately jumped ship and was adamant he doesn’t want anything to do with it. Doesn’t want to be on the birth certificate. Nothing. This pregnancy will make me a single mother for essentially a 3rd time, at the age of 43. I am over being a single mother. I don’t want to do this for 40 years straight. I am older. I have no family that would take a baby. I had zero interest in abortion, I live in a state where it’s still legal, but that’s not something I agree with and I couldn’t live with myself. So, yes, I’m the mom that would carry to term just so I wasn’t killing the baby. I also couldn’t live with the what if’s with adoption. So I’m simply left with parenting. Do I want to? No. It’s simply the only option that doesn’t leave me with what ifs for the rest of my life. I fit everything you said is a far stretch. Father does not want, I would not abort, I have already been a single mother most of my entire adult life, so I know I CAN do it, but I don’t want to anymore. I’ve lived that phase of my life. I’m currently reliving that phase of my life with 2 challenging kiddos. And now, my awful luck has me starting all over again a 3rd time. And being in this position, I’ve come to realize there are lots of older women in my position for different reasons. Thought they went through menopause, Birth Control failed, whatever. Married, divorced, there are lots of us. So many people think this is a “young mom” issue, but there is an older crowd no one considers because we aren’t the norm.

Another agreed – the majority from the statistics I’ve seen who are getting abortions are married or divorced older women. I don’t see many choosing adoption at that age.

And a perspective from the United Kingdom – The UK has plenty of adoption, largely because our social services and safety net are so full of holes, struggling families don’t get help and their kids get taken away. What we don’t have is abandoned babies or people voluntarily giving up their infants. Because we have free, readily available abortion for people who really don’t want a kid, free healthcare (even if the government is currently running the service into the ground) and enough of a basic safety net (however fraying) that is usually sufficient that people who choose to give birth don’t feel they have to then give away their children due to poverty. I have a mountain of criticism for the ways our society is failing families, and letting them fall apart, but I still look at the United States in horror at how much worse it is.

No Big Deal ?

Because LINK> Rebecca Solnit says it so well in her essay in The Guardian . . .

Being a parent is expensive. Being a criminal is also expensive, whether you lose economic opportunities to avoid apprehension or spend money on your defense if apprehended or go to prison and lose everything and, marked as a felon, emerge unemployable. Abortion is an economic issue, because when it’s not legal, those are the two remaining options, leaving out being dead, which you could argue is either very expensive or absolutely beyond the realms of money and price. And being dead is also on the table because women have all too often died from lack of access to reproductive healthcare, including abortions (to say nothing of being unable to leave an abuser, to whom pregnancy and children can bind you more tightly). They are facing more of that now.

Having no options but to be dead, criminal or a parent is not a sane or moral argument for parenthood, and it’s also pretty different than having certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Also, now that abortion is unavailable under almost all circumstances in Texas and other states, it’s an economic justice issue in that those with the financial capacity to take time off, travel in search of care and pay for it out of pocket are not affected the way those who cannot do so are. And those who can afford to get an abortion under these circumstances are also those who can afford to defend themselves against possible criminal charges.

All of which is to say, abortion is an economic issue and a labor issue, as well as a human rights and healthcare issue, as the AFL-CIO and other labor unions have recognized. So it’s been confounding to see some supposedly progressive men say that people should talk about economics instead of abortion, as if the loss of reproductive rights isn’t a huge economic blow to anyone facing the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy. The last days before the midterm elections should include robust Democratic conversations about defending rights and pursuing economic justice, with access to abortion central to both.

Access to birth control and abortion laid the groundwork for US women to begin to claim financial, professional and educational equality – a goal still far from realized, overall, but reproductive rights flattened the mountains and filled in the chasms a little. Taking that away pushes women back into the grim era when an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy could upend a life, stop an education, stymie a career, force unwanted dependency on the person who caused that pregnancy – an era when self-determination was an aspiration, not a given.

The Dobbs decision striking down Roe v Wade on 24 June was cavalier about all this. The majority opinion pretends that bearing a child no longer has significant social and economic impact. It cites among its justifications that “attitudes about the pregnancy of unmarried women have changed drastically; that federal and state laws ban discrimination on the basis of pregnancy; that leave for pregnancy and childbirth are now guaranteed by law in many cases; that the costs of medical care associated with pregnancy are covered by insurance or government assistance; that states have increasingly adopted “safe haven” laws, which generally allow women to drop off babies anonymously; and that a woman who puts her newborn up for adoption today has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home”. In other words, there is no reason not to have an unplanned or unwanted child; doing so is no big deal.

All of which are callous lies. The right not to bear children isn’t just about respectability for the unmarried, and to frame it that way while ignoring the profound and lasting emotional, psychological and physical as well as financial impact of carrying a pregnancy for nine months and giving birth is outrageous. Discrimination against people who may get pregnant or are pregnant continues despite those laws; many pregnant people continue to lack access to healthcare; and the fact that a baby can be handed over is no justification for being forced to bear it. Furthermore, as another branch of the US government that the supreme court could have consulted reports: “The number of children waiting to be adopted also fell in fiscal year 2020 to 117,000”; the number in foster care was over 400,000.

One of the striking things about the conversation in defense of abortion rights in recent months is the testimony by those who’ve undergone pregnancy, miscarriage and childbirth about how physically grueling and even life-threatening they can be. Pregnancy can incapacitate women for months, which is obviously economically devastating to a poor person working in the gig economy or, say, in a nail salon or a fast-food restaurant. It can be an overwhelming experience, interfering particularly in the ability to perform physical labor: the judge may be able to toil on when the janitor cannot. And a lot of people are making a living through work that is physically demanding.

Another striking new note has been the insistence that we need to stop defining abortion as a stand-alone right and look at the criminalization of pregnancy and motherhood, especially for poor and nonwhite women. “More than 50 women have been prosecuted for child neglect or manslaughter in the United States since 1999 because they tested positive for drug use after a miscarriage or stillbirth,” reported the Marshall Project, while noting that miscarriages are common under all circumstances. “Sentences have ranged from probation to 20 years in prison. Women prosecuted after pregnancy loss are often those least able to defend themselves, the investigation found. They typically work low-paying jobs, are often victims of domestic abuse, have little access to healthcare or drug treatment and rely on court-appointed lawyers who advise them that pleading guilty is their best option.” Too, some women die from pregnancy and childbirth, and thanks to unequal medical care, Black women have the highest incidence of such deaths. Pregnancy and childbirth can also cause permanent physical changes, including lasting pain and disability.

The laws making the most intimate conditions of a body and life subject to legal intrusion are reportedly already preventing pregnant people from seeking healthcare and spreading well-founded fear. Making the administration of an abortion a crime is frightening medical caregivers and interfering with their ability to provide care. Some of the proposed abortion bans would include life-saving abortions, and we have already seen cases in which medical care was withheld until a woman’s life was actively in danger. Women are already being denied prescriptions when those drugs can be used in abortions, another way that taking away abortion rights is turning into a broader loss of rights.

The financial and professional impact of parenting in heterosexual relationships still mostly falls on women. The majority of women who have abortions are already mothers raising kids; we are in a childcare crisis that has, along with the long months schools were shut during the pandemic, crushed a lot of women’s working lives and financial independence.

As Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez noted in late September, “When the powerful force people to give birth against their will, they trap millions in cycles of economic setback and desperation. Especially in a country without guaranteed healthcare. And desperate workers are easier to exploit.” The supreme court majority pretended it was undermining access to reproductive rights because they have no significant impact, but of course the court’s agenda was the opposite: to impose the conditions that make women subordinate in rights and economic status.

An Acceptance Of Being Childless

One of the facts of misogynist mindsets is that women are judged differently than men. Within communities that make adoptee voices the privileged commenters, it is often pointed out that having children really is not a necessity (and given the world’s population and issues of sustainable resources and quality climate factors, I do agree). It is often suggested that infertility should be as accepted by those who find themselves unable to procreate as the sun coming up every morning.

Yesterday, I stumbled on a reference to an article that Rebecca Solnit wrote, which was published in Harper’s Magazine titled – The Mother of All Questions. She had given a lecture on Virginia Woolf. The subject that seemed to most interest a number of people was whether Woolf should have had children. I answered the question dutifully, noting that Woolf apparently considered having children early in her marriage. Over time Woolf came to see reproduction as unwise for whatever her reasons were. She quoted Woolf’s description of murdering “the angel of the house,” that inner voice that tells many women to be self-sacrificing handmaidens to domesticity and male vanity.

Solnit writes, that the line of questioning was familiar enough to her. A British man interviewing her had hounded her about “why I didn’t have children. No answer I gave could satisfy him. His position seemed to be that I must have children, that it was incomprehensible that I did not, and so we had to talk about why I didn’t, rather than about the books I did have.”

She notes “there are many reasons why I don’t have children: I am very good at birth control; though I love children and adore aunthood, I also love solitude; I was raised by unhappy, unkind people, and I wanted neither to replicate their form of parenting nor to create human beings who might feel about me the way that I felt about my begetters; I really wanted to write books, which as I’ve done it is a fairly consuming vocation. I’m not dogmatic about not having kids. I might have had them under other circumstances and been fine — as I am now.”

Solnit goes on to say, “The interviewer’s question was indecent, because it presumed that women should have children, and that a woman’s reproductive activities were naturally public business. More fundamentally, the question assumed that there was only one proper way for a woman to live.”

She goes on to say, “. . . mothers are consistently found wanting, too. A mother may be treated like a criminal for leaving her child alone for five minutes, even a child whose father has left it alone for several years. Some mothers have told me that having children caused them to be treated as bovine non-intellects who should be disregarded. Other women have been told that they cannot be taken seriously professionally because they will go off and reproduce at some point. And many mothers who do succeed professionally are presumed to be neglecting someone. There is no good answer to being a woman; the art may instead lie in how we refuse the question. . . . These are questions that push you into the herd or nip at you for diverging from it, questions that contain their own answers and whose aim is enforcement and punishment.”

“Questions about happiness generally assume that we know what a happy life looks like. Happiness is understood to be a matter of having a great many ducks lined up in a row — spouse, offspring, private property, erotic experiences — even though a millisecond of reflection will bring to mind countless people who have all those things and are still miserable. We are constantly given one-size-fits-all recipes, but those recipes fail, often and hard.” And adds, “There are entirely different criteria for a good life that might matter more to a person — honor, meaning, depth, engagement, hope.”

“The conservative ‘defense of marriage,’ which is really nothing more than a defense of the old hierarchical arrangement that straight marriage was before feminists began to reform it, has bled over into the general culture, entrenching the devout belief that there is something magically awesome for children about the heterosexual two-parent household, which leads many people to stay in miserable marriages.”

Solnit points out – “I have done what I set out to do in my life, and what I set out to do was not what the interviewer presumed. I set out to write books, to be surrounded by generous, brilliant people, and to have great adventures. Men — romances, flings, and long-term relationships — have been some of those adventures, and so have remote deserts, arctic seas, mountaintops, uprisings and disasters, and the exploration of ideas, archives, records, and lives.”

“Society’s recipes for fulfillment cause a great deal of unhappiness, both in those who are stigmatized for being unable or unwilling to carry them out and in those who obey but don’t find happiness.” She notes, “People lock onto motherhood as a key to feminine identity in part from the belief that children are the best way to fulfill your capacity to love, even though the list of monstrous, ice-hearted mothers is extensive. But there are so many things to love besides one’s own offspring, so many things that need love, so much other work love has to do in the world.”

“. . . all the ways of tending to the world that are less easily validated than parenting, but which are just as fundamentally necessary for children to flourish. I mean here the writing and inventing and the politics and the activism; the reading and the public speaking and the protesting and the teaching and the filmmaking. . . . Most of the things I value most, and from which I trust any improvements in the human condition will come, are violently incompatible with the actual and imaginative work of childcare.” ~ Christina Lupton

Solnit recognizes that “Other eras and cultures often asked other questions than the ones we ask now: What is the most meaningful thing you can do with your life? What is your contribution to the world or your community? Do you live according to your principles? What will your legacy be? What does your life mean?”

Shame

We feel shame when we violate the social norms we believe in. At such moments we feel humiliated, exposed and small and are unable to look another person straight in the eye. We want to sink into the ground and disappear. Shame makes us direct our focus inward and view our entire self in a negative light.

I came upon the powerful graphic above yesterday and felt there was more that I could personally say about it. On my Facebook profile page yesterday, I shared – I have owned up to this before. I had an abortion at the age of 23 or so – mid 1970s. I am glad it was safe and legal. I was not being reckless. I was driving an 18-wheeler with a partner. Our dispatcher didn’t get us home to where my pharmacy was in time and I ended up pregnant. Neither he nor his family were the kind of people I would be glad to have been tied to through a child today. At the time, I had breakthrough bleeding. My ex-SIL and ex-BIL had a child with serious birth defects. I just felt the pregnancy was not progressing normally. Also, to be honest – I didn’t want to commit my life to 7 more months of going it alone with no financial support. I’ve never regretted it but pro-Life propaganda has definitely haunted me. In writing this, I searched my memory for all of the reasons why I chose that course of action.

The mothers and women in my family, and to whom I am genetically related, chose other courses of action. Back in the 1930s, the mothers of both of my own parents, chose to carry their pregnancies, spent the first few precious months with their babies, and one way or another lost that first child to adoption. I wrote, and it was true, “I didn’t want to commit my life to 7 more months of going it alone with no financial support.” In some people’s minds I was simply being selfish and I will accept that judgment, though in truth I have no regrets about doing what I did and for the reasons I did it at the time.

Yet, I felt enough shame for having chosen a different path (both of my sisters carried unplanned pregnancies to term but also gave their babies up for adoption) that it was a long time before I admitted to anyone what I did earlier in life. It was my private decision which no one but the circumstances influenced. Maybe influenced in no small measure by the legality and safety of the choice at the time. Only as Roe v Wade has come under increasing opposition have I started sharing my own story of what it was like to have made that choice and my gratitude that I had it available to my own self when I felt I needed that.

The father of my own conception made it clear he would not stand by me if I chose otherwise but I don’t think that was my major motivation. In reflecting on my statement that I would have had to “go it alone” above, I also know my parents supported one of my sisters throughout the pregnancy and then, remarkable to me now that I know more about adoption in general, my own adoptee mom coerced my sister into giving up the baby she wanted to keep and then, encouraged a lie to me that the baby had died. Intuitively, I knew it had not and concocted fantastical stories about what had actually happened to the baby believing it had been stolen and taken into Mexico (my sister had delivered at a hospital in El Paso TX very near the national border). Because of this, my mom finally admitted her truth regarding the whole situation to me.

Many women bear a cross – maybe they suffer their whole lives knowing their child is out there somewhere out of their own reach. Many of these original mothers suffer a secondary infertility and never have another child. Many struggle as single mothers to keep and raise their child. Our society does nothing to help them. My sister actually sought financial support during her pregnancy but was denied it based upon our parents financial condition. It was not my parents seeking financial support but my sister and not in increase my parents financial condition either.

After I divorced the father of my first child, I had to go to work and that meant child care. When one “family style” child care that she loved at first became a tearful battle, I left work to check on her and discovered through the window of a half door, an older child bullying her and no adults in sight. I pulled her out that day. I often had to go to my mother to beg $20 to make it through to payday. She never denied me but financially it was always difficult. At the time I divorced her father, he told me he would never pay me one cent of child support because I would just party with the money. Such a horrible perception he had of my own integrity and ethics. I didn’t want to spend my life in court fighting him for it even though the judge insisted in awarding me $25/mo “in case” I changed my mind and wanted to seek an increase. I never did. Instead, I left my daughter with her paternal grandmother while I tried to build a financial nest egg for the two of us by seeing if I was capable of driving an 18 wheel truck cross-country.

I always intended to return for her and would have never given her to her father to raise but his mother did that. He remarried a woman with a child and then they had a child together. Unintended consequences of financial desperation. And now, in a sense my story has come full circle, my shame – not even listed above – is that I gave up raising my child for financial reasons. Back when she was in day care, I couldn’t hardly answer the pediatrician’s questions, because she was away from me all day. After her father and step-mother raised her, I struggled to find birthday cards for her that reflected the lack of a daily, physical relationship I had with her. There were no role models for an absentee mother back in the mid-1970s, even though the absentee father was a standard reality.

Shame. Oh yes, I am well acquainted with it. As my daughter knows, I have struggled to find peace with not having “stuck it out,” as my own mother said to me that she would have done, to do the right thing by my daughter. It is a work in process. Recently, I reflected on all the things I did right by her in the brief early years she was physically under my care. I told her, I realize that when I was mother to you, I was a good one. And the abortion ? I atoned for it, by giving up my own genetic connection to have two egg donor conceived sons (same donor both times), that my husband might be able to have the children he desired, even as we both realized I had gotten too old to conceive naturally. Even so, they are now almost 18 and 21 years old. They have proven to me that I can “mother” children 24/7 throughout their own childhoods. At least I have no shame in that. I even breastfed both until they were just over 1 year old. I also have the knowledge that I didn’t put adoption trauma onto the fetus I aborted early in that pregnancy.

Related Issues

Two articles came to my attention yesterday that I believe are related. One was titled The Baby Bust: Why Are There No Infants to Adopt? The subtitle was – Declining birth rates and other factors make it difficult for hopeful adoptive parents to create their forever families. In my all things adoption group, it has become obvious to me that many prospective adoptive parents have become more than a bit desperate.

I actually do believe that the Pro-Life movement is driven by the sharp decline in women either not carrying a pregnancy or choosing to be single parents. Our society’s norms have changed since the 1930s when my parents were adopted.

The other article was Why is the US right suddenly interested in Native American adoption law? In this situation, laws meant to protect Native Americans who have been exploited and cheated out of so much, including their own children, is being challenged by white couples wanting to adopt as being a kind of reverse discrimination against them.

So back to the first article –

The number of adoptions in general has been steadily declining over the years. U.S. adoptions reached their peak in 1970 with 175,000 adoptions tallied. That number had fallen to 133,737 by 2007. Seven years later, the total sank further to 110,373, a 17% decrease.

Reports of a 50% or more decrease in available birth mothers are coming from adoption agencies all over. As a result, some agencies have folded. Those still in operation are compiling long waiting lists of hopeful adoptive parents.

Even so, the demand for infants to adopt remains high. The good news is also that fewer teenagers are becoming pregnant. Teen birth rates peaked at 96.3 per 1,000 in 1957 during the post-war baby boom. However, with the widespread acceptance and use of birth control, there has been a dramatic decline in the teenage pregnancy rate. This rapid decline in teenage birth rates was seen across all major racial and ethnic groups.

Estimates indicate that approximately half of the pregnancies in the United States were not planned. Of those unintended pregnancies, about 43% end in abortion; less than 1% of such pregnancies end in adoption. Adoption is a rare choice. The pandemic shut-down also reduced places where meetings could occur that tend to lead to casual encounters, which often result in unplanned pregnancies.

On to that second article –

A 1978 law known as the Indian Child Welfare Act or ICWA tried to remedy adoption practices that were created to forcibly assimilate Native children. Last April, an appeals court upheld parts of a federal district court decision, in a case called Brackeen v Haaland, that found parts of ICWA “unconstitutional”. The non-Indian plaintiffs (mostly white families wanting to foster and adopt Native children) contend that federal protections to keep Native children with Native families constitute illegal racial discrimination, and that ICWA’s federal standards “commandeer” state courts and agencies to act on behalf of a federal agenda.

The thinking that non-Indians adopting Native children is as old as the “civilizing” mission of colonialism – saving brown children from brown parents. In fact, among prospective adoptive parents there is a dominant belief that they are actually saving children. Native families, particularly poor ones, are always the real victims. A high number, 25-35%, of all Native children have been separated from their families. They are placed in foster homes or adoptive homes or institutions. Ninety percent are placed in non-Indian homes. Native children are four times more likely to be removed from their families than white children are from theirs. Native family separation has surpassed rates prior to ICWA according to a 2020 study.

The fact is that there is a dark side to foster care. Some state statutes may provide up to several thousands of dollars a child per month to foster parents, depending on the number of children in their care and a child’s special needs. Why doesn’t that money go towards keeping families together by providing homes instead of tearing them apart?

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.

Limited Perspectives

I was thinking yesterday evening that the same mindset causes both adoptions and abortions. It is the limited perspective of the pregnant woman about what she believes she is capable of. In my adoption group there comes occasionally a pregnant woman who is trying to decide whether or not to surrender her baby to adoption. Not all adoptees say they are happy their mother didn’t abort them. It is a sad commentary on the experience of some adoptees and others feel they had a good enough life and accept that their mothers did the best they could in that moment for the higher good of all concerned.

So in the adoption group, when a pregnant mother shows up and hasn’t made a decision, the group always recommends several courses of action to her. The main one is – don’t decide right away. Don’t allow prospective adoptive parents to be at the hospital with you. Don’t sign the papers in advance. Spend some time with your infant. You can always make that choice – weeks, months later. Hopefully not years later when it may be even more traumatic. Give your infant some time with you. In these modern times, there are groups who will try to help you with the necessaries, at least in the short term.

I was reflecting recently on the fact that each of my parents were with their original mothers for about 6 to 8 months as infants. I take some comfort in knowing they had that forward development time not separated from the woman who gave birth to them. All a baby knows at birth is that mother who birthed them. I do know my dad’s mom breastfed him. I don’t know about my mom’s mom. Certainly once she was taken to Porter-Leath orphanage in Memphis, she would have been fed a bottle of formula (what was considered a formula at the time).

Most of the women who chose adoption or abortion do not believe they are capable of raising a child. Society’s willingness to financially help such women does not have a good track record. When I ran out of birth control while driving an 18-wheel truck cross county and quickly became pregnant, I knew that if I went through with that pregnancy, my partner was not going to be there for me. He said as much but he left my decisions up to me, if it can be called solely my decision under the circumstances. I already had struggled to raise my daughter following a divorce when I received no child support. Her father and a step-mother were raising her by this point. I chose an abortion. It was early in the pregnancy, the procedure was safe and legal and I’ve not regretted not being tied to that family by a child. I have struggled with the morality of it thanks to the vocal efforts of the Pro-Life contingent but it is a done deal.

As I have learned more about the subconscious trauma of babies being separated from their mothers for adoption, I am also glad I didn’t inflict that on my unrealized baby. I already had done enough damage to my daughter, though at the time I thought her circumstances were better than they were. Both of my sisters gave up babies to adoption. One always knew she was going to do that and went about it rather methodically. The other explored abortion but was too far along. She tried to get government assistance but was rejected because she was living with our parents and their financial resources were the grounds upon which she was denied (which I will always judge as very wrong of the system). Our mother, an adoptee herself, coerced my sister into choosing adoption. My parents were unwilling to take on the financial responsibility that potentially would have fallen upon them. We’ll never know what the alternatives would have yielded.

The point is that in my adoption group, time and again, I’ve seen a variety of outcomes. In some the young mother does wait and finds resources and decides without regret and great joy to try and parent her baby. Some make some other arrangements, either for temporary help or for an open adoption, that fail in some manner and it becomes a legal battle to get their child back or to know how the child is developing when as often happens, the adoptive parents renege on the open part.

It is said in a song – you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need. And I think generally speaking whatever we get, actually is what we needed, because the reality is, that is what we got. Hasty decisions can lead to a lifetime of regrets. I’ve seen that too in women who relinquished their child. I’ve been told that was the case for both of my own original grandmothers. Both remarried. One went on to have other children.

Skewing The Narrative

It is a fact that many adoptees will actually say they wish their natural, genetic, biological mother had aborted them. It is also a fact that the government does NOT fund abortions, contrary to the messaging that comes out of evangelical, pro-Life and conservative interests with the hidden agenda of triggering people’s emotions in order to get their vote. It is also true that the government is already funding some adoptions through a huge tax credit for the single adoptive person or couple. The government also funds adoptions from foster care paying court expenses. Many of these adoptions also receive an adoption subsidy, Medicaid and free tuition for the child.

And finally, I do speak from experience on this issue. I am grateful for access to a safe, legal abortion back in the early 1970s. That is a blessing that is increasingly hard to get access to. This planet actually already has enough people and truth be told, more than is sustainable.

I do believe in letting nature take it’s course. I believe that purging events such as the COVID 19 pandemic is an activity of this Earth. I believe that predators cull out the weak. Not that I wish to be a victim of either. I believe in the kind of God that always knows what each of that God’s individual expressions will do in any given situation. I believe in a life that is meant to teach our soul important lessons, make us more empathetic and give us a more tolerant perspective on human behavior. I also believe there is never anything wrong going on, even if we are unable to truly comprehend what we are seeing. And I do believe that humanity evolves and progresses and that includes what medical science advances including safe abortions and reproductive assistance. Finally, I believe that death is only an experience in our human lives but personally, I believe in eternal souls living more than one incarnation. We cannot kill a soul though we can kill the body that the soul moves about the planet with.

An image like the one above is offensive. Abortion and adoption have nothing to do with each other. Speaking of government funding – why not help families stay together, fund the help that struggling families actually need and support them through a financial crisis ? What if government funded birth control ? What if society supported struggling mothers ? What if society held fathers to higher standards ?

While I’m at it – what about free health care ? Mental health intervention ? How about the government starts caring about drug addicts and puts more funding into rehabs and counseling ?

Some of these people who think like the image above should have to spend at least 9 months forced to serve as a walking incubator for someone they’ll never be allowed to meet again, and then have all proof that they gave birth to a child erased by changed birth certificates and sealed adoption records. Yes, think about all of those mothers who have had that very experience. One can get over a conception and abortion quickly. One lives with the pain of having been separated from their child for a lifetime.