The Legal Rights Of Siblings

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

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

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

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

Another woman shares her experiences –

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

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

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

A Disconnect

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Losing My Grandparents

My Granny, My Dad and My Granddaddy

Both of my parents were adopted. So the grandparents I grew up with in my childhood were never actually related to me. They were influential though. The two people shown above often cared for me and my sisters over weekends. I think mostly to get us into their church, the Church of Christ, as contrasted with the church our mom was raising us in, the Episcopal church. My dad didn’t go to church at the time. He worked shift work in a refinery, often double shifts, and so was mostly asleep when he wasn’t at work, except for meals. Maybe he would watch a little TV or read a news magazine or the local paper.

My mom conceived me while she was still in high school and my dad had just started at the university out of town. I think these two people shown above made certain my dad quit his dreams of a higher education and married my mom and went to work to support his young family. Not that he didn’t want to marry my mom. They were married over 50 years until death did them part and they died only 4 months apart. My dad’s adoptive parents insisted I have a biblical name to save my damaged soul because of my illegitimate conception.

All of my grandparents had already died – and in fact my parents had already died as well – when I went in search of my original grandparents. Though I doubted I would ever know who my dad’s father was because his mother was unwed and he was given her maiden name at birth. I do now know who ALL 4 of my original grandparents were, their names and their ancestry. I didn’t expect, that in learning who my original grandparents were, I would in effect “lose” my grandparents (those people who adopted my own parents as infants).

But I did.

Though I know I have a “history” with these people who adopted and raised my parents, they no longer feel like my grandparents. And my true biological and genetic grandparents have taken their place in my heart and imagination, even though I have scant knowledge (but some) of these people whose genes are in me and helped create who I am at the level of physicality. I have connected with some cousins who share the same original grandparents and what I know of my original grandparents is thanks to anything they have shared with me about these people.

I don’t love the people who raised my parents any the less but they are so far back in my own past now. Though I had occasional interactions with them up until their deaths, as living people they are receding for me. They are fading . . .

My original grandparents didn’t lose my parents due to anything worse than poverty and a lack of family support. That doesn’t say much for my parents own original grandparents, who did not seem to care about my parents very much. I’ve only heard that my mom mattered to her dad, which was a happy surprise for me and quickly warmed my heart towards that man. My dad’s father probably never even knew he existed. His mom was self-reliant and he was a married man, so she just handled it alone.

It is strange. I was robbed of my original grandparents by the Great Depression, Georgia Tann and the Salvation Army. Both of my grandmothers eventually re-married. If they could have been sustained somehow, I know they would have raised their children because every indication is that they loved their babies and mourned their loss until they died.

Nothing makes up for these losses really but at least, I do know where I came from – which is more than my parents knew. They died completely ignorant of who their own original parents were. And that is very sad.

My Only Objection

Back in November, during National Adoption Month, I wrote to Klobuchar that I had been supportive of her campaign for the Democratic nominee until I found out about her strong interest in promoting adoption. Her counterpart in the Senate is Roy Blunt who is from my state of Missouri but he is a Republican and close ally of our president Trump, so I did not bother to write him.

Yesterday, Klobuchar did better than expected in the New Hampshire primary. There is a section of the electorate who wants calm and someone they are not being fed a drama a day but can go about their business with some assurance of ethical behavior in the top official of the government. I get it. Klobuchar does not really excite. She is like the mom who you know you can depend upon not to embarrass you.

She was instrumental in smoothing the way for a number of transracial adoptions from Haiti as depicted in the photo above. On January 12 2010, a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, which is a very poor country. The earthquake affected an estimated three million people. Close to 230,000 people died, 300,000 were injured and one million were made homeless. An estimated 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings collapsed.

“It’s wonderful to see adoptive families, family members, friends and others who plan to adopt kids from Haiti here this evening,” Klobuchar said in a meeting in 2011. “We in Congress will work hard to continue to help you with adoption issues.”

Over the course of approximately two months following the earthquake, Klobuchar’s office worked with 25 families to help unite 39 Haitian children with their new families in Minnesota. A Congressional bill authored by Klobuchar later passed the House and Senate and was signed into law. One at least hopes all of the children are truly orphans and not simply taken from extended family who would raise them.

No doubt, her heart is in the right place even though she appears woefully ignorant about the wounds inflicted by adoption and even worse, the effects on children who are placed in families who bear no resemblance to their culture. I will vote for whoever the Democratic presidential nominee is in November 2020. I don’t know if I can get over my objection to Klobuchar’s very public role in promoting adoption.

What Is Wrong With This Picture ?

There was a time in my sons younger days when I worried that their behavior was going to result in unintended consequences. Sometimes well-meaning people insert themselves in ignorance into other people’s lives. Fortunately, we weathered those years without the worst happening to us. That is not always the case for some families.

In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler writes –

“The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.”

This is definitely a reason for concern as our government has been trending authoritarian.

In a YouTube titled “Legally Kidnapped: The Case Against Child Protective Services” the narrator says – “They don’t want you to know what is going on because if you did you’d rebel, you’d fight back.”

There is an agency that has ripped families apart for decades. In 2014, when that video was made there were 400,000 children in out-of-home care. That is a staggering number. It is true that 20% of Child Protective Services removals are for physical/sexual abuse.

With the ongoing legalization of marijuana in many states in this country, it may shock you to know that a vast percentage of child removals have been for the use by their parents of this substance.

The sad truth is that foster children are 6 times more likely to die of medical neglect, physical abuse and/or sexual abuse while in CPS care than a child suffering in poverty is.

You can learn more at https://stopcpslegallykidnappingchildren.org/

The Fallacy of Temporary Care

My maternal grandmother and I both share a sad fact – we sought temporary care for our daughter – only to see that need for financial support and an inability to provide adequately for the basic needs of our child turn into a permanent situation.

My grandmother walked into a trap when in total desperation she took my mom to Porter Leath Orphanage for temporary care. That is a staff member of the orphanage holding my mom in the photo above. Georgia Tann got her hooks into my mom and was never going to let her go until she was placed with a repeat, paying customer.

In my case, I took my daughter to her paternal grandmother for temporary care while I tried to boost my financial foundation. However, her dad remarried a woman with a child and then they had another child together. I was not inclined to interrupt a situation that I could not better in my own circumstances.

Do I regret leaving her ? Absolutely. I knew nothing about the trauma separating a child from their natural mother causes. My parents were both adoptees – that meant they had been separated from their own mothers. I simply lacked the knowledge or understanding to know that I might be causing any kind of harm to the child I loved more than anyone else in the world.

The reality is – for both my maternal grandmother and for my own self – we lost physical (in my grandmother’s case – legal) custody of our children. Nothing changes reality but I can and do share what I have learned about the implications.

#NotMyNAAM

It was almost two years ago now, that the door opened for me on my parents adoptions. I had already lived 6 decades of my life and both of my adoptee parents had passed away. In this brief amount of time, I have been able to become “whole” as regards my parents original parents – ie I now know who my grandparents were and something about each of their individual stories but thanks to adoption, I’ll never know them.

As I began to educate myself about all of the aspects related to adoption, I also truly began to understand there was something rotten in adoptionland. I have also begun to learn about better alternatives for seeing to the well being of children and hopefully to the healing and repair of their original families. Society has a long way to go. I digress and not really.

The paradox for my own self comes when I consider the reality of my own existence. Two major aspects of that have become crystal clear for me in the last two years. [1] I would not exist but for adoption – my parents would have never met. [2] It is a miracle that I was not given up for adoption as well. Conceived by an unwed teenage mother in the deepest part of the Baby Scoop Era, I believe it was my dad’s adoptive parents who insisted that he quit the university he had only started to study at and do the “right” thing, marry my mom and go to work.

So becoming aware of ALL of the problems with adoption presents quite a quandary for me personally. Even so, I am a #NeverAdoption convert now. November is National Adoption Awareness Month. It is NOT a time to celebrate the ripping apart of families to support a profit-driven and often ignorant practice but a month to begin to educate yourself if you believe adoption is all unicorns and rainbows, ie happy endings always.

#NotMyNAAM