Disgusting !! Bluntly predatory. Like “We wish to manipulate a vulnerable, young unexpectedly pregnant woman into thinking we care about her, then snatch what we need and discard her immediately.” or “I don’t want to post this on my personal page out of fear of being called out for what I really am.”
One foster mother writes – I foster teen moms. My foster daughter almost lost her son due to people like this. My current placement was separated from her daughter after birth. Fostering isn’t about adopting. Taking in teens to get their babies is disgusting. Teens need support.
This one from direct experience – and they don’t vaccinate – so they need to buy a baby, um I mean… save a baby… I mean steal a baby that will be under the medical radar, because you know… we deserve our freedom of belief. So the child better be healthy & needy too. I found out that my adoptive parents for some crazy reason did not vaccinate their youngest biological daughter. Because I was foster to forced adoption at the age of 10 – they did not have a choice with me. The agency made sure that all of my personal medical records reflected doctor visits (even if they lied about the “clumsy” bruises I often displayed).
Reality – messing with the biological attachment process, when they actually could have had a positive experience in spite of the circumstances (teen pregnancy). So, they further traumatize the mother and the baby AND mess with the natural hormonal bonding process. If it was about the baby, they would teach that teen mom how to do skin-to-skin, breastfeed the baby (helps with so many things, if you can manage it with hormones/bonding/chemical hormonal processes) and help her co-parent. NOT STEAL the baby and say how much better of a life it’ll have and tell the teen mom, now you can still be a kid and ‘achieve your goals’. These lies hurt so many people. Yes, they can have good lives. And yes, maybe the mom will achieve her dreams, if that route is taken but that isn’t to say, if the mom had been supported, those things also could have still occurred. And better, no primal wound and years wondering why you were ‘given up’ or for the teen mom, “will they share pictures with you”, etc.
People with money will buy a baby. A wealthy couple suffering infertility will find a young woman who is expecting and offer to trade support during the pregnancy for the baby at the end. One of their conditions was that they be present at all of her doctor’s appointments. In the case of today’s story, they also offered a sympathetic “support” person. This was the man’s sister who had gone through a teen pregnancy when she was 17. She is now 24 years old and raising her 7 year old son.
This sister never had to consider giving up her baby. Her parents supported her so well, she didn’t even have to think about going to work after her baby’s birth. So this support person asked the pregnant young lady how much money she would need to keep and raise her baby. She did the math. It was very conservative and even included a schedule for repayment. Then this support person said I will give you everything you are asking for and then some – more baby supplies and more rent money. She offered to pay for vocational training for this young expectant mother after delivery. And she would not have to pay anything back, though she insisted that she would.
Long story short – she backed out of her adoption agreement with the couple. Of course, they are not only heartbroken but mad at his sister for her intervention. The young woman had to block the couple and the sister had to move away to stop their harassment. The sister simply could not allow this young woman who wanted to keep her baby to loose it. She asks, Am I the asshole for screwing up my brother’s adoption ? Of course not.
It is so wrong that hopeful adoptive parents are able to be given rights to view medical records and allowed at doctor’s appointments. It is a violation of HIPAA and the right to privacy, even if the mom signs a waiver. Being present for these visits is so coercive. Income shouldn’t be a determining factor in parenthood. So many mothers who lose their children had no option to keep them and no one to help them keep their baby.
One comment asked – When a human is in need, but gives no sign of not wanting their child, how does anyone deliberately separate them from their child and still sleep at night ? This couple found the expectant mother in a Facebook Buy Nothing group. These are often referred to as grey market adoptions.
There are so many hopeful adoptive parents, adoption lawyers, baby brokers etc all focused solely on getting babies. Not one of these ever bothers to ask the mother if they *want* their child or inquire how little the financial cost would be, to actually to keep the mother and child together.
An adoption agency connects hopeful adoptive parents with expectant mothers in crisis who may wish to relinquish their child for adoption. In the process of negotiating, the adoption agency receives money from the hopeful adoptive parents (in most cases), and sometimes (rarely) from expectant mothers. The money is used to pay for the associated legal fees, the matching service, and sometimes for care for the expectant mother. This money also pays the salaries of the agency employees. This is true even if the agency is listed as a “not for profit” agency. The employees, social workers, and directors are not working for free.
Hopeful adoptive parents reach out to agencies for help in finding an available child (usually an infant) to adopt. There are 40 hopeful adoptive parents (couples/families) for every infant available for adoption. That is an estimate, some say it may be as high as 1,000 hopeful adoptive parents for every infant who becomes available for adoption.
If you look on websites and in social media, an expectant mother who indicates anywhere that she is considering adoption, will receive hundreds, often thousands, of responses from people who would like to adopt her baby. The demand far exceeds the supply of infants available for adoption. In the leaked Supreme Court draft written by Alito he makes a note of that lack of supply.
So, let’s apply the law of supply and demand –
In order for an agency (which, whether for profit or not for profit, stands to make money from the transaction) to keep itself in business, the agency must provide a certain percentage of infants for the demand. When supply is low and demand is high, coercion enters into these transactions. Agencies must obtain children for their market and are willing to do whatever it takes to supply that market. Social workers and agency contacts do whatever it takes to convince an expectant mother that one of their adoptive couples is better for her child, than she could ever be.
If she receives any money from the agency to cover her expenses but then decides she wants to parent, they will call her a “scammer” or a “fraud.” In many states there is no revocation period during which a woman who has given birth but indicated she is willing to give up her baby can change her mind. Those are considered “adoption-friendly” states Some have short revocation periods. In many cases, social workers pressure expectant mothers to hand their babies over and sign their termination of parental rights, while the new mother is still within the first 48 hours after birth.
Coercive tactics are part and parcel of domestic infant adoption. International infant adoption is even more coercive and heinous because some parents are not even told that their legal rights to their child are being severed.
So, what about the children in foster care ? They’ve already had their parental rights severed. Some hopeful adoptive parents believe they are only motivated to help these unfortunate children. But there’s an economy at work there too. You can be forgiven for not knowing that, thanks to the many promotions of this method of adoption by various states. A federal stipend is paid to foster parents for children of all ages, from under a year old until they age out of the foster care system at 18.
In 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) went into effect. Its purpose was to achieve permanency for children who had been in foster care for a long period of time by having them adopted. The intent of the law was good: permanent placements for children who had been abused, neglected, or abandoned. Its implementation, however, has proven faulty. It has amplified the corruption that has always been endemic within the Child Protective Services system.
The ASFA provides federal stipends to state agencies for each adoption they process out of foster care. Because the states receive money for having children adopted out of foster care, they now have a financial incentive to take children from actually SAFE families and place them into foster homes, so that they can be adopted. The more recent Family First Prevention Services Act includes federal funds to pay for services aimed at preventing the use of foster care by providing better support to parents at risk of losing custody of their children.
Regarding the current concept of “Foster to Adopt” –
Foster parents already receive a generous stipend from the state for caring for the state’s ward. Often, a foster parent will even receive an infant fresh from the hospital due to “risk of future harm” from their parents. These infants are placed with foster parents whose aim is to adopt. Both the foster parents (who wanted to adopt an infant) and the state child protection agency (which receives federal monies for every adoption from foster care) stand to gain from the adoption of this infant “out of foster care.”
The economic implications of adoption are the most straightforward and fact-based way to address whether ethical adoption is even possible. To whatever degree this all matters to you personally – consider the social impact of adoption and the reasons why adoption is considered unethical based upon social reasons.
Include in your considerations why children are removed by protective agencies simply due to perceived neglect caused only by poverty. Consider how it is possible that stipend money paid to them somehow makes foster caregivers more fit to parent than the biological parents. Look into the statistics for suicide and mental health issues among adoptees. Contemplate why laws promote adoption rather than legal guardianship.
Adoption is a contract made between two people – in which a third person is subjected to its ramifications – without their consent. Thank you for contemplating the ethical ramifications of adoption and the use by the state of foster care to increase adoptions.
The Baby Scoop Era is considered to be the time frame between 1945 and 1972 (before Roe v Wade) when many many young women lost their babies due to heavy pressure from other people in their lives to give their baby up for adoption.
With the overturning of Roe v Wade at the federal level is sending the legality of abortion back to the individual states to legislate, many people expect a bumper crop of adoptable babies as soon as 9 months from now. Though not directly expressed by the Supreme Court in their decision last week, Justice Alito referred to the lack of adoptable baby stock in the footnotes of his leaked draft opinion. The note was drawn from a 2008 CDC document (2008 regarding some adoption data) however . . . we may just be entering a totally new kind of Baby Scoop Era. Thankfully, less shame in being an unwed pregnant mother now or even a single woman parenting her child but still . . .
So, I found this thoughtful article by Jessica DelBalzo posted through The Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative website titled – The Case Against Adoption: Research and Alternatives for Concerned Citizens. I have posted the link above and will add some excerpts below. About Jessica, she introduces herself thusly – “I am a mother, a lover, and a friend. I am a breastfeeder, a homeschooler, and an instinctive parent. I am an atheist, an advocate of reproductive freedom, and a liberal. I am also an anti-adoption activist.”
She thought it important to add regarding that last line – “When people discover that I am against adoption, they often assume that I am adopted. I am not, nor have I lost a child to adoption. In fact, I grew up believing that adoption was perfectly acceptable.” DelBalzo has a BA in Political Science with a minor in Psychology from Rutgers University. She has a daughter Rylie with partner Mike Kukal. Her family is supportive of her efforts to promote natural family preservation.
I resonated with this because both of my parents were adoptees and both of my sisters gave up a baby to adoption. Until I joined a large group made up of the entire triad – including expectant/birth parents, hopeful adoptive parents/adoptive parents, and adoptees – I thought adoption was the most natural thing in the world – how could I not ? The group I joined encourages education and ethical adoption practices but it proved to be a real eye opener for me and although I am not in the triad, I was honestly in the adoption fog (believing in the false narrative many people are fed). Now I am “woke.”
The 1950s brought the professionalization of social work and at the same time, the media began promoting adoption. The previous standard of care, which embraced both mother and child, was replaced by the idea of the unwed mother as a “social problem” that could be remedied, if the baby was removed and placed in an adoptive home.
From Social Work and Social Problems, a publication of the National Association of Social Workers, copyrighted in 1964 and now out of print – “Because there are many more married couples wanting to adopt newborn white babies than there are babies, it may almost be said that they rather than out of wedlock babies are a social problem. (Sometimes social workers in adoption agencies have facetiously suggested setting up social provisions for more ‘babybreeding’.)” Which particularly resonates with Justice Alito’s footnote in the leaked draft opinion.
We may be entering a period of forced birthing leading effectively to a baby breeding situation for couples wanting to adopt. Time will prove it out or not. Women (for the most part) are not going to go willingly back to the original Baby Scoop Era regarding rights they have come to appreciate.
I am short on time today but if you are intrigued, by all means read her entire article at the link.
“I still think if I was given the choice to be aborted or grow up adopted, I’d choose abortion.” Those are the words of one adoptee.
The pain of having to live under the lies of adoption was just so great that never being born still seems like the better option. I loved my parents. I am forever grateful for the care and love they gave me with the best of intention. I knew they loved me but I knew they were also lying to me and that confused me. I’m grateful to be alive today but it’s not always been that way.
Now I know the TRUTH and I’m free to be me. And I think it’s marvelous. I just might be a superhero and neurodiversity is my superpower. Level up????
Many adoptees, but not all of course, feel the same way . . . Don’t believe it. Overturning Roe v Wade and creating more babies for hopeful adoptive parents will shatter the lives of those adoptees by the trauma they experience in the process.
I am short on time today and if things go as planned, there won’t be another blog here until Friday. This is an important issue and so I want to give it some space. Very often money in adoption causes problems. It is not only the direct expenses related to adopting a baby that cause the problem, it is money passing from hopeful adoptive parents to expectant mothers that causes many problems. Sometimes, it is the hopeful adoptive parents that have been scammed by a woman pretending to be pregnant who then goes silent and disappears about the time the baby is due to be born. Of greater concern to me and many people within the adoption community is the coercive effect adoptive parents giving money directly to a pregnant woman who may be in difficult circumstances to make her obligated to turn her baby over to the hopeful adoptive parents.
This is becoming an issue in the awareness of legislators in some states. In my example here today – Louisiana House Bill 568. Present law provides for the crime of adoption deception and defines the crime as being committed by any person who is a birth mother, or who holds herself out to be a birth mother, who is interested in making an adoption plan and who knowingly or intentionally benefits from payment of adoption-related expenses in connection with that adoption plan if any of the following occur: (1) The person knows or should have known that she is not pregnant at the time the payments were requested or received. (2) The person accepts assistance for living expenses from a prospective adoptive parent or adoption entity without disclosing that she is receiving such assistance from another prospective adoptive parent or adoption entity at the same time in an effort to adopt the same child. Proposed law amends present law to include when a person has the specific intent to make false representations to induce the payment of living expenses or other benefits in connection with a purported adoption placement. Proposed law does not apply to a person who agrees to an adoption plan agreement and subsequently, in good faith, declines to proceed with the prospective adoption in favor of parenting the child.
Amendments Adopted by House –
1. Specify that the person needs specific intent to make false representations to induce the payment of living expenses or other benefits in connection with a purported adoption placement. 2. Provide an exception for persons who do not agree to an adoption plan agreement and subsequently, in good faith, decline to proceed with the prospective adoption in favor of parenting the child.
A women concerned with the reform of Ethics in Adoption is proposing this – eliminate direct payments from hopeful adoptive parents to expectant mothers. Vulnerable women/parents should be able to change their minds at ANY point without penalty. Exchange of money and threat of prosecution should not be leveraged against vulnerable women/parents who want to parent their own children and change their minds. The proposal would move all payments for medical, etc… to social services instead of “direct payments” from hopeful adoptive parents, and make such transfers of money, “direct payments,” illegal.
A young woman shares this story – hi. I don’t really have a point to this, maybe someone else has gone thru something similar. My sister is fostering my baby right now. I named him *William* *dad’s last name.* My sister doesn’t like his dad. (I’m guessing that’s the reason idk???) but she calls him, and everyone knows him by William *M* (our last name). It really irks me. I find it totally disrespectful. His dad’s name is what is on his birth certificate. I just find this disrespectful. !!! Do other foster parents do this??? I don’t think so.
Without knowing more about this specific situation, one foster parent explains the circumstances from their general point of view – I know this isn’t your situation but whenever we received children into our care – [1] They couldn’t talk clearly due to age and [2] They came with very little information because they were removed in the middle of a crisis, obviously. So there were times, we knew the child’s legal name but not the name the family called them by… Or didn’t know what nicknames the family used… Maybe for months at a time, depending on the case. So I guess #notall but also just #itscomplicated. And after adoption, the issue becomes a whole other story because sometimes everyone just wants to do what feels like fitting in. It seems to me the key is keeping an open mind and an open communication line, as much as possible. The adults hold so much power in the household… I’ve heard “a name is a gift” and isn’t meant to be a burden… Keep it for as long as it is useful, treasured, wanted, etc. But don’t owe it any debts. Idk if any of that rings true…
This answer reflects how most adoptees feel about the issue of their name having been changed . . . I care what’s on a birth certificate. I care that people think nothing of changing a child’s identity. I care that someone is creating a false identity for a child who isn’t competent to agree.
Another one writes – Some fosters (#notall) particularly F2Adopt (foster to adopt) HAP’S (hopeful adoptive parents) ….. will call themselves mom/dad with other people’s babies. And they will call the babies by the name they plan to rename them, if they ‘get lucky.’ This undermine the original mom’s self confidence and make reunification attempts difficult but sadly is common. Making mom feel as though she isn’t ‘enough’ and that her baby is thriving and better off with the fosters…
(BTW This is totally untrue! Fight for the return of your child, request they refer to your baby by name. And affirm that the only mom he has is you!)
And it is common as this example confirms – my nephew’s adoptive parents called him a different name before their adoption was finalized, they were foster to adopt as well. We also asked that they at least keep his middle name because it was our dad’s name. He had just passed away. Nope they changed his entire name. I know they will have to answer for it later with him but I just feel so bad for him not being able to keep any of his original identity.
Only adoptees, and sometimes infants in a foster care situation, are forced to live a false identity.
Someone was asking adoptees if it’s OK to identify as “half adopted.” They were raised by their biological mom but their biological dad was absent. Then they were later legally adopted by mom’s next husband.
She goes on to note – The amount of tone deaf, “Of course, you were adopted” by non-adopted people and one adopted person was really irritating. They have their own loss and trauma, but they had their mother and only learned their father’s name when they were already in their teens.
The responses in my all things adoption group were interesting and somewhat surprising. The points chosen seem valid. I think what might be different is the degree of trauma that accompanies an infant or young child being separated from their mother.
If you were legally adopted, you’re an adoptee. I was adopted twice (blogger’s note – so was my adoptee dad) and not raised by birth parents, but it feels weird to tell someone who was legally adopted that they can’t call themselves adopted.
The person who was adopted gets to identity however they want to, in my opinion. Your identity is valid.
They were adopted, so they could decide – adoptee, half adoptee or not as an adoptee. It is their choice.
Half of their stuff was still changed. They are still not involved with the family of half of them.
Step-parent adoption or kinship adoption – I do see them as different than a stranger adopting an infant. (Same as the point I made above – less trauma effects in these situations.) Another one added – I’m a kinship adoptee (adopted by maternal grandma) and I identify as a kinship adoptee.
Yet another response – Step parent adoptions are in no way equal to full adoptees. In most cases, step parent adoptees got to stay with their biological mother – therefore not experiencing the “primal wound’ trauma that connects so many adoptees or the trauma of being completely separated from your biological family.
Sure they are “technically” adopted – but not at all in the same way.
The issue arises when they try to say they’ve experienced the trauma discussed by full adoptees or try to say they are privileged voices in spaces where they really are not because they don’t have that shared life experience. Some of these “half” adoptees have even misrepresented themselves in order to dupe hopeful adoptive parents and profit financially as “consultants” or the like.
It really bugs me when those who were adopted by a step parent try to say they are “adoptees” in the same way that I am. Because they just aren’t. Full stop. I’m pretty surprised by the other responses here so far actually.
And a last valid point – Part of me wants to know to what purpose, to what end? A lot of people are just trying to find their identity, to explain some of their trauma responses, to understand how to describe their situation to other people.
But if the purpose is that they want to come into adoptee spaces and converse about adoption as a privileged voice to elevate their own opinions–which has happened before in the adoptee community on TikTok–they most likely will be schooled on that before too long.
I see it as a facet of adoption just like any other. There is a LOT of intersectionality here. People can be adoptees but not infant adoptees, or transracial adoptees, or late-discovery adoptees, all of which come with unique sets of issues. No two experiences will be identical. I recognize I cannot speak for transracial adoptees, for example, and so, I know not to minimize their experiences by pretending mine is just like theirs. I don’t have x, y, or z issues.
Many hopeful adoptive parents experience the uncertainty of whether that unwed young mother they have matched up with to take her newborn after birth will back out. And some do experience that outcome after spending tons of money on baby stuff in anticipation. Many of these are angry. Why are your family’s hopes so high that another family must fail to satisfy their hopes ? Me. Me. Me. My family. My family.
Because newborns are a scarce commodity bringing in huge profits for adoption agencies and lawyers, the field is competitive and the effort expensive. Here’s one example of the perspective of a whole family of hopeful adopters.
First comment on the above – Your family needs to change their expectations, and their expectations are not your responsibility. Its NOT your baby. Even if you get the placement. If Dad steps up that would be the BEST thing for that baby ♡ if dad can’t and you get the placement then that’s great that you are so well prepared and your heart and your families hearts are so open for that baby! ♡
It should be the reality that the father has to be PROVEN UNFIT before that child is taken into care. The father should NOT have to prove he is FIT to get his own child back! The child shouldn’t be with the woman complaining AT ALL, if there is a dad coming forward. I don’t care what his legal record is, as long as he isn’t a child abuser.
The hopeful adoptive mother is already feeling this way, before she has the baby ? What about the father ? He has to get a lawyer to even get this child back-during FORMATIVE BONDING MOMENTS that no amount of money can bring back. She gets those moments – but why? WHY!?
If there are concerns the father can’t parent, then society should support him with the resources they would have sent the foster parents – parenting classes, therapy, any assistance for supplies/etc. There should be no need for him to have to fight for HIS baby, the fact this is even a thing is appalling, and sadly, this is not a one off circumstance.
One adoptee shared this sad story – My poor sister had her 3rd child stolen out of her arms in the hospital and had to go to court postpartum (like that is on any woman’s to do list after delivering a baby and should be bonding) to get her baby back. The effects of this on her mental and emotional health was awful to watch-and triggering (cuz you know, she didn’t have the support she needed already). I was an adult by this time and had been removed/adopted into another states system and seeing them steal my nieces and nephew and have our family have to deal with all the lies of the courts again, well it just sent many of us into dark holes for many years.
Another comment – Personally, I don’t believe that anybody should get into fostering with the sole intention of potentially adopting a child. From everything that I learned in my classes and have read, the goal should always be to have a child return to their biological family if possible. In the event that is not a reality, then bringing a child into your life is the most beautiful thing that you can do for them. I’m a little concerned that this person may have been one of those people who is only interested in fostering newborns/babies…because they hope to adopt one.
Sharing the attitudes, language and culture surrounding the adoption industry are a primary purpose of my own in conveying information like this.
I am constantly amazed at how many people have some connection to adoption or foster care. It isn’t much talked about. I am proud of an all things adoption group I belong to on Facebook because they do some really good work.
Some examples –
We (as a group) helped mom financially with legal fees to revoke consent and get her daughter home. Because of this, several members of this group had to testify in court. We were accused of “child trafficking” and only helping get “O” home, so we could “sell her.” Clearly, DSS and the judge thankfully could see through that BS and “O” was returned home to her mother. Months later, the hopeful adoptive parents are still periodically calling Dept of Social Services DSS. They even created a TikTok and Instagram to slander her parents – months after she went home to her original family.
Every single mom with or without agency involvement has had Child Protective Services CPS called – out of spite. Hopeful adoptive parents HAPs have even told CPS “if you remove the baby, I’ll take her/him.”
Moms have received numerous text messages, phone calls, emails etc from HAPs. When mom blocks them, HAP’s family members continue the harassment.
The online adoption community is a small, small world. We’ve had HAPs find out that we have assisted moms with legal fees, baby registries and it is used against them because “they can’t afford” a baby. Obviously, when a mom has planned adoption for 9 months – she only has days or even less to get everything her baby needs. This is why we do baby registries. It’s also why we now do them anonymously. We will not let it be used against a mom because she simply doesn’t have everything her baby needs, when CPS comes knocking. And they always do, thanks to spiteful HAPs.
Shaming mom online because she has ruined their entire life, comparing their loss to a stillbirth. Yet, they miraculously recover, when the next baby comes along. Because the truth is – any baby will do.
Not only are some of the things above, what the community I am a part of has done but also what we have seen. When a hopeful adoptive parent enters the community, they often don’t stay long because this community’s mission is original family preservation. No rah rah rahs for the whole industry of adoption – though it is acknowledged that sometimes adoption cannot be avoided. Many HAP leave this community angry. Adoptees and former foster care youth are privileged voices in the community and speak their trauma and pain and what it is like to come out of the fog of believing adoption is a beautiful thing. I was in that fog when I first arrived there and quickly learned my place and then, by reading and considering the point of view there, they won me over to their side of the mission – hence this blog.
Missing Mom 