The Now Way

LINK>Adoption Birth Vlog example
MaryJane Lance – once again in pursuit of a child

Blogger’s note – This post is from an adoptee and is about children who are adopted and exploited on social media. The adoptee’s post is below –

Documenting the adoption journey has been an integral part of the overall adoption story. At one time the creation of lifebooks was meant to be a way of helping the child understand what it meant to be adopted. It served an important purpose to ensure that the child’s sense of self was rooted in their adoption..

Once social media became the established way of capturing our lives, lifebooks became obsolete in favor of blogs and vlogs. We now live in the age in which people make a living as content creators, much to the thanks of YouTube. From traditional profile books and listings with adoption agencies, to creating their own websites, featured news coverage and social media hashtags, prospective adoptive parents sought out every possible way to let the world know their story in the hopes of being matched with a child for adoption.

Posting one’s life on social media is native in today’s culture. And because it has well-established ways to monetize online content, these prospective adoptive parents have learned the business. So what is the big deal? It’s normal to post content about your family, right? Many family-run Youtube channels get views in the hundreds of thousands and millions. Everyone loves feel-good reality content.

Right now, the media is shedding light on the failings of the adoption industry. The Netherlands, home to the Hague Adoption Convention, has officially closed its international adoption program (again). South Korea is undergoing a comprehensive investigation revealing hundreds of adoptions involving the falsification of records. Holt International is linked to many of these cases. Dillon International has shut down. The Russian president was accused of committing war crimes by kidnapping Ukrainian children and adopting them into Russian families.

The Asunta Case was in the top 10 Netflix series based on the true story of Asunta Fong Yang. In the U.S. the media is putting a spotlight on the Stauffer Family scandal (2020) involving the rehoming of the boy they had adopted from China. The Stauffers became a YouTube sensation story having monetized their adoption journey. So, what is the scandal exactly?

Tik Root wrote an eye-opening Time magazine article, “The Baby Brokers: Inside America’s Murky Private-Adoption Industry” published in 2021. Prior to that was the Reuters report, “The Child Exchange” exposing the Yahoo child rehoming groups published in 2015. Last year, the media descended on the issues and ethics of child influencers. The Stauffers are one of countless adoptive families who have taken to social media monetizing their adoption journeys effectively exploiting Huxley for profit.

Exploiting children is nothing new, neither is adoption. So, where does the Stauffer Family fit into this picture? Why is this a big deal?

Here’s the adoptee’s perspective:
The adoption industry has reached critical mass and has been developing new ways to sustain it’s multi-billion dollar operation. No longer a taboo subject conducted through back doors held in secrecy only priests could hear, adoption has saturated virtually every level of society. In the confusion and chaos of a divided media, social opinion, subplots found in the DC and Marvel universes, K-Dramas, and TV shows, sports, gold-winning olympiads, tech leaders, musicians saying they will adopt a child, and celebrated family reunions on Good Morning America, the adoption industry is free to carefully and gradually change its course with little attention or resistance.

Issues from the current adoption system become course correction for the industry’s next leap forward into the already multi-billion dollar surrogacy market. With all of this attention on the adoption side of the industry, the surrogacy market grows virtually unnoticed. Children like Asunta Basterra and Huxley Stauffer (formerly known as), are victims of a known corrupt, exploitative industry. They are commodified and dehumanized in the name of adoption. They are bought and sold in a child trafficking scheme to later be disposed of or “rehomed” once their use has run out.

Despite the ongoing efforts of investigative journalists to expose these truths, the adoption industry has proven its power of propaganda ensuring people remain ignorant, confused and brainwashed at the expense of children’s lives. We must continue making every effort to send a clear and unified message to stop this crime. Stop commodifying and exploiting women and their children for profit. There are now 9 million adopted people in the U.S today. Our numbers are going to grow exponentially in the coming years. We have taken a stand against violating our rights. We have taken a stand against being stolen, kidnapped, and trafficked. And now we are taking a stand against being made into disposable people.

It Was Not What You Think

A Facebook acquaintance of mine, who is also an adoptee, delivered a made for Sunday sermon –

Here’s a serious question. Why is it so many couples who have experienced issues with infertility or unable to keep a fetus viable in utero, believe God is or has called them to adopt, only after they’ve spent thousands of dollars, spent years of time trying to have their own baby.

Seriously, if God was really calling you to adopt why didn’t he/she/they call you before wasting the time and money?

Also why do you think telling an adopted child about how much time and money you spent trying to get and maintain a pregnancy will translate to them how God chose you to be their parents when clearly if you had been successful you never would have adopted?

And how do you justify telling an adopted child it was God’s will for you to be their parents? Like isn’t this God powerful enough to put a baby in your barren womb?

Why is it not gods will for you to accept your struggle to conceive as god telling you you shouldn’t have children? But it’s the adopted child’s responsibility to believe it was gods will for them to leave their family of origin and become the child you couldn’t create or deliver?

100 years of propaganda, and Indoctrination.

Has convinced you that adoption is a way to build a family.

This is commodifying children.

Adoption was never suppose to be about finding infants for infertile couples. Adoption prior to Georgia Tann was about finding homes for orphaned children. (Blogger’s note – my own mother was a victim of Georgia Tann’s practices.)

Inquiring minds want to know.

Blogger’s note – searching for an image for today’s blog led me to this LINK>How Do I Know If I’m Called to Adopt? by Lauren Elizabeth Miller. Which led me to look at her “About” page. She says “My next greatest calling is writing and speaking about faith, motherhood, and adoption.” She is an adoptive mother of children from China. In her blog, I appreciate this line – “While all of us can do something, not everyone is called to adopt.”

Yet she also writes – Our family has always landed in churches full of adoptive families that have affirmed our family’s call to adopt. We temporarily moved to Franklin, TN right before we were old enough to start the adoption process for China. (China requires both parents to be 30 years old.) The first church we visited was filled with adoptive families and stories that re-affirmed our calling. However – You will have family members or friends who will question your call to adopt.

Blogger’s note – partly in answer to my FB acquaintance – Evangelical Christian churches play an outsized role in promoting adoption.

Like A Sick Joke

Some adoptive parents want to celebrate what is generally a sad day for most adoptees. I read this comment from one adoptee – People are just out of touch with reality. Why would an adoptive parent send treats to school, so their adopted child can celebrate “Gotcha Day,” even after the child has beg them not to ?

From a mother who surrendered a child to adoption and also adopted one – This poor child. I never use that term with my daughter and honestly that is because I know the pain and trauma of being coerced into giving my baby away. In my home, we acknowledge the pain and trauma of adoption, the reasoning behind her adoption (ours was private with acquaintances) and I’m happy to give her compassion and hugs and a lot of love. I also am happy that the people who adopted my daughter never celebrated the “gotcha” day. That would be extremely painful for me as well.

On a website titled LINK> Considering Adoption, I found an article titled The Controversy of ‘Gotcha Day’.

How do you feel right now after seeing “Happy Gotcha Day” in my blog photo ? The debate is contentious, and it can get heated. Reactions vary wildly across the adoption community. For some, the language is highly problematic. For others, the entire concept is an issue. Still others have only good feelings about “gotcha day” and celebrate it annually with their children.

The goal in my blog today, is not to ignite a fiery debate, but rather to share a better understanding of the positions some hold. Gotcha Day is believed to be a celebration of the day a family adopted a child. Some families decide to mark this anniversary on the day of placement; others celebrate on the day the adoption was finalized in court. The name of this day and even the existence of the celebration has become a point of controversy for several different reasons. Let’s look at the most common positions.

The language we use when we discuss adoption must be sensitive and respectful. We’re talking about an adoptive family, the original mother and the adoptee. We have to choose our words carefully to ensure we respect the full dignity and autonomy of everyone involved in the process. Language that commodifies the adoption process is a problem. Adoption is not buying children. Children are not the product.

“The most basic aspect of it — its name — is also the disturbing aspect of it… There is also the fact that G-Day, like re-homing, has its origins in the pet rescue lexicon because it implies caught or trapped. Is this really what we want to model?” ~ author Mirah Riben

The other side of every adoption story is that an adoptee “lost everything” connected to their family of origin. From Sophie, who was born in China and adopted by an American family when she was 5 years old: “It’s been said that adoption loss is the only trauma in the world where everyone expects the victims be grateful and appreciative… Gotcha day feels like a day of fake smiles if we don’t acknowledge that it’s also about loss, not just gain.” Having a celebration intentionally denies that loss.

Adoption is acknowledged to involve loss at some level for every adoptee. The felt impact is understandably different for each. There are often confusing questions about heritage and identity for many adoptees. It is important to allow space for both any joy in general and any felt loss when it comes to an adoptee’s day of having become adopted.

Every person is inherently, and without qualification, deserving of respect. Each member of the adoption triad is living a unique story. Each has their own struggles and challenges.

One adoptee shares – I hate the phrase gotcha day. It feels patronizing and inhumane. It’s also not ok if the child is embarrassed or doesn’t want to. My adoptive parents celebrated my Adoption Birthday. Kids were jealous of me that I had 2 birthdays. I just laughed and rolled my eyes – No one wants to be adopted. I enjoyed my 2 “birthdays” and knew that other people really didn’t understand. Gotcha days and whether the adoptee consents are huge issues.

Another adoptee admits – I HATE “Gotcha-day” if you want to celebrate the day you became a family, I think that’s great, but should be family, you should discuss adoption and how the process went (similar to a mom who tells her child about their birth). It should not be a day to praise these “wonderful” people for taking in this child that “no one wanted”. And it sure as hell shouldn’t be gotcha day. That’s what they say at the animal shelter !!!

Yet another said bluntly – I was forced to have this. It embarrassed me and I hated it.

Tony Corsentino

I only just became aware of this person and thought I’d share that awareness. It was said “His posts critical of the adoption industry are thoughtful and should be amplified.” So, my first awareness was this graphic.

Finding him on Twitter, I found this LINK> Substack post – titled “Why Is That Controversial?” with a subtitle “Adoptees have a stake in the fight to protect abortion rights” by him which I will give you below some excerpts from.

He writes – “adoption services in the United States and other industrialized countries commodify children, treating them as social wealth that is transferred from the less resourced to the more resourced.” That is certainly the truth of the matter. Exploitation of the poor.

He goes on to note – I am a product of a closed domestic adoption, for which the reigning justification remains, even now, the idea, developed during the “Baby Scoop Era” (1945-1973), that relinquishing an infant under circumstances of secrecy solves several problems at once: a child gets a loving home; hopeful parents get a child to raise; and a “mistake” is “erased,” allowing the birth parent another start at making a better life.

I totally agree with him on this point – “There is an enormous moral difference, however, between relinquishment and adoption as intervening in a crisis situation for which there is no better alternative, versus instituting a de facto social system in which people are coerced into producing children for transferal to other, unrelated families.” The first responds to the death of the child’s parents (growing up, I actually did think my parents were both orphans – had no idea there were people out there that we were genetically related to) or in serious parental circumstances like unrelenting drug addiction. The social system we could find ourselves in now looks like it could become a regime of forced birth and subsequent child trafficking.

Women who relinquish children carry a lifetime of emotional impact. I read about that time and again. Here’s one comparison of both having an abortion and relinquishing a child to adoption – “It’s hard to convince others about the depth of it. You know, a few years after I was married I became pregnant and had an abortion. It was not a wonderful experience, but every time I hear stories or articles or essays about the recurring trauma of abortion, I want to say, ‘You don’t have a clue.’ I’ve experienced both and I’d have an abortion any day of the week before I would ever have another adoption—or lose a kid in the woods, which is basically what it is. You know your child is out there somewhere, you just don’t know where. It’s bad enough as a mother to know he might need you, but to complicate that they make a law that says even if he does need you we’re not going to tell him where you are.” ~ Ann Fessler from an interview for The Girls Who Went Away.

As adoptees, we simply cannot accept Amy Coney Barrett’s proposition (who is herself an adoptive parent) that relinquishment reduces “the consequences of parenting and the obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy.” It shifts the consequences, transforms them. To invoke the desires of hopeful adoptive parents, to say that forced birth-plus-relinquishment meets an unmet demand for the opportunity to parent, is to say that pregnant people, and the offspring they create, are to be pressed into a social experiment of incubating and transferring the raw materials for making families. Clearly, hopeful, affluent adoptive parents are a powerful political constituency.

Relinquishment is catastrophic. It is a failure to preserve the bond between a parent and their child.

Fundraising To Facilitate Adoption

Until my FB friend, Laureen Pittman, author of The Lies That Bind (a book I’ve read and reviewed in this blog), posted about this, I was unaware of an adoption agency known as The Cradle. It turns out they have existed longer (since 1923) than Georgia Tann did and have facilitated more adoptions than she did (having placed more than 16,000 children), including internationally and including celebrities (just as Tann did).

As my friend points out in her blog, the film related to the trailer above – is NOT only a Hollywood produced film about adoption meant “to capture 99 years of [The Cradle’s] work through emotional, inspiring stories of adoption.” It’s a polished, obviously professionally produced and edited documentary-style film. But to say it’s “about adoption” is terribly misleading. What it’s really about is fundraising – to facilitate adoption.

The Cradle is a private adoption agency that’s been around for nearly a hundred years. The film is presented and stylized as a celebration of The Cradle’s work by showcasing several “successful” adoption stories from the perspective of the heroic savior adoptive parents and the counselors employed by The Cradle. The fairy tale-like stories portray adoption as something “magical,” and The Cradle as someplace where “dreams come true.” Lofty words and phrases describing The Cradle and its work, such as “destiny,” “meant to be,” “special place,” and even “divine intervention,” are sprinkled throughout the forty-five minute campaign.

She asks – What’s missing? It’s obvious to adoptees. Whether we’re “well-adjusted” or struggling, in the fog or out, wrestling with identity issues, facing secondary rejection, muddling through a reunion, or fighting against the powers-that-be in a closed records nightmare, the emotional turmoil of the adoptee is sorely missing from The Cradle’s fables of the adoptive family.

Laureen caught my attention, and caused me to go looking yesterday, when she wrote –

I’m so proud of my peers and friends in the adoption community: adoptees and many birth mothers who are brave enough to share their voices in the face of the evil, backwards for-profit adoption industry. We recognize that the adoption industry continues to commodify children and when we are witness to such blatant money-grabbing emotional-pandering as seen in the documentary-cum-fundraising film, “Stories From the Red Couch,” we band together. The 45 minute video is here – https://youtu.be/Gze92CxOOEA.

Laureen writes – This video comes on the heels of my last blog post, written as a review or reaction to the film. Apparently, and thankfully, I wasn’t the only one offended by the film and the continued, age-old tactics of The Cradle to promote and facilitate adoption and discourage (putting it mildly) family preservation. The voices in this rebuttal video are only a handful of the brave adoptee-voices (and one lovely birthmother) who had something to say regarding the “Stories From the Red Couch” video regarding the questionable practices of The Cradle. Be certain to read some of the comments below the YouTube video.

Laureen adds that you can tune in to the National Association of Adoptees and Parents‘ Adoption Happy Hour on Friday, April 15, 2022, to join in the discussion. Their happy hour is every Friday at 7pm Eastern. Replays of their interviews are also posted on YouTube.