Family Preservation

This is the topic my heart wanted to write about yesterday but I just didn’t have time to do it justice. Then, today I saw a post by a FB adoptee friend on the topic and thought I really need to address this today. These kinds of coincidences always have an impact on me.

After sharing that she still struggles to heal the deep seated abandonment wound within her. She ends her story with “Family preservation. Even if that family is just a mother and her baby. These are the seeds we should be planting today if we want a better future for our children and grandchildren. We can find a better way to care for children whose family won’t or can’t.”

In googling around on the topic, yesterday, I found what is usually the argument against LINK>Fatal Preservation in something called the City Journal. The author, Dennis Saffran is a Queens-based appellate attorney, writer, and former GOP candidate for the New York City Council. Okay, I know. There are situations where the parents are so damaged themselves that they are not good for their own children. No one who cares about kids would suggest that there are not some situations where the children do need to be removed for their own safety. It is true that any good thing can be taken to extremes.

Dennis notes – “It is hard to imagine a more conservative-sounding name for a social policy than family preservation. But in fact, those on the Left who are usually the most hostile to ‘family values’ and parental rights have shaped the policy into its present form and are its most vehement and dogmatic advocates. Family preservation is a classic example of a seemingly sensible and humane liberal reform gone awry because of the ideological single-mindedness of its supporters. The policy now badly hurts those it was meant to help.”

Even so, a rational application of family preservation and reunification efforts by the child welfare agencies in our states has merit. It is true, sometimes parents are not given the time they truly need to address their various issues. A rush to move cases through the courts does cause a miscarriage of what really does need to happen to keep families together.

As a movement, LINK>Family Preservation is actually fairly old (dating back to the 1890s) but has been poorly and improperly applied at times. Family preservation was the movement to help keep children at home with their families rather than in foster homes or institutions. This movement was a reaction to the earlier policy of family breakup, which pulled children out of unfit homes. Extreme poverty alone was seen as a justified reason to remove children.

And that still happens today – poverty is often the main reason that children are removed from their biological, genetic parents. I did like this article in Huffington Post on the topic – LINK>Lifting Families Out of Poverty, One Crib at a Time by Katherine Snider.

She notes – “There are too many stories of need in this country. And nearly all of them start the same way — with the unspeakable stress endured by families in poverty. They tell of parents who reuse disposable diapers; children who are sent home from school for hygiene issues because shampoo and soap are luxury items for a poor family; parents who can’t afford a crib so they put their newborn babies to sleep in a dresser drawer, a hamper, or in a cardboard box. These are the everyday, constant challenges for families in poverty.” Blogger’s note – I was originally put to sleep in a dresser drawer after I was born. That is not abuse, just necessity. I will also note, that although we did use a bassinette, my children never slept in a crib but that is another story for some other day.

One final observation – this country really does not care about families as much as it pretends to. There is a severe lack of resources and the will to supply them does not exist. Money still talks, profit in the adoption industry motivates and adoptive parents still rule over the lives of many children, especially babies, that could have been raised, given adequate supports, by the mothers who gave birth to them (with or without a father present in that household).

What Child Is This ?

The Christmas story, is to me, a story of mothers. It is the story of a man caring for a pregnant woman and finding her a comfortable place to birth her baby. It is about protecting the mother and child from political danger and about immigrants. Christians make it about much more than that but to me, that is really what the Christmas story is about.

It is about a Census that required the pregnant woman to ride a long distance on a donkey to be counted in the birthplace of the man. It is about a town so crowded there was no room in a decent inn. It is about being forced to birth a child in a stable full of animals.

It is about hearts drawn to the baby and the wonder of birth that keeps the human race going – whether lowly shepherds sensing a significant event or kings traveling with expensive gifts from afar. It is about the Star of illumination shining for all to see.

It is about a narcistic and power hungry king who feared a little child could unseat him from his throne and so proceeded to kill many young children trying to protect his own self. The grief in the mothers of these children (if they weren’t killed along with them trying to stop the slaughter) had to be enormous.

What child is this ? It is every child. Every child should have their own mother who gave birth to them and then raises them with love in her heart. Every family should be supported and helped with the challenges of parenting and providing for the basic needs of their family.

These are what this season reminds me about.

Is It Really Necessary ?

So is adoption really necessary ?

One could conclude that an orphan should ideally be adopted by the guardians assigned before the parent‘s demise. For foster kids, who would like to be adopted, after parental rights were terminated. Guardianship or temporary fostering could suffice to serve the needs of children in most cases.

It may be that the only time adoption is “necessary” (and one could always argue that word) would be for an older child or teen, whose parents have already signed termination of parental rights. But only if the child has asked for that without prompting. And the child’s name should never be changed unless the child wants their name changed to feel more in harmony with the rest of the family. And go slowly on that one because it could be only a temporary phase that won’t be as lasting as changing the child’s name. The child does need to be empowered in a situation in which they don’t have a lot of control otherwise.

There are very sad and difficult cases. For example, cases of extreme abuse and neglect where the mother refuses all offers of assistance. Where there is no other family able or willing to help. There could be no way that this child could ever be safe with their original family. Counseling will be required for every person involved. Some contact with the original family should be maintained if at all possible, if nothing more than knowing how to reach them. In the best cases, monitoring for a changed status. There is always the possibility of change because change is a constant.

Regarding guardianship, some judges and courts may have concerns that the guardianship could too easily be terminated and the child would lose a sense of permanency. However, a child’s sense of attachment was destroyed the minute their family of origin was severed from them.

Still the question remains – to fully love, protect and be a family is adoption necessary ? Full custody as an alternative to adoption can accomplish the same legal requirements. The system has been an enabler for white saviorism and has made adoption like a free for all. It’s unethical that so often the natural family is not allowed to give any input and the lack of effort put into connecting these kids to their kin just is mind boggling.

The best adoptive families, upon becoming more enlightened about the impacts of adoption, will make attempts to mitigate the inevitable difficulties for the child (some of these can include not changing the child’s name, learning about the child’s original mother and if possible opening up contact with her and with any other related siblings). Though most adoptive parents genuinely feel they are doing the right thing . . . when we know better, we do better.

It’s Complicated

I find myself in conversation with a diversity of people about a diversity of issues related to adoption and mother/child separations. I am always amazed at how many people have some such issue in their family and friend’s lives.

Even though I have had a radical change of heart about adoption due to learning about the wounds that causes, I also acknowledge that the issue is not simple but very complicated. There are times when children definitely need a safe and loving space to exist in. There are times, when knowing the circumstances, we can admit that adoption was better than the alternative.

But there always are alternatives and some are less damaging than others. Harder to arrive at is why people become wounded and messed up. Why they don’t do better. Why the children are often the ones to suffer the most.

Learning about all of the circumstances at play in my own family’s lives has given me an appreciation for the big picture and how things progress over time. I am in the midst of editing a new manuscript that I actually wrote the rough draft for six years ago and then events delayed my return to it.

At this point in the story, I am in heaven. And the topic of predestination and free will comes up between me and a trusted friend of the heart there. I think this perspective may be close to the truth of the matter and so, I share –

“Are you telling me that everything is preordained and that I had no choice in how my life unfolded?”

“Absolutely not. The nature of reality in this realm is that everything is adjusting instantaneously to every choice and circumstance that happens.”

What happens if different choices are made ?

“It would have all morphed and changed to suit new circumstances. In fact, there are layers upon layers of redundancies. There are trajectories and unfoldings that are the natural outcomes of current events and like your own micro circumstances it is all morphing and adjusting continuously. There are situations that, if they don’t occur, could delay your next lifetime. Other situations could speed up your return to Earth in another incarnation. We really don’t know the hour of our birth, just as we really don’t know the hour of our death; and yet, it is all completely natural.”

Though Life is so very complicated that any action we may take could be beneficial or detrimental regardless of the best of intentions, even knowing all that could possibly happen that we never considered, we act anyway – for not to act might bring some irreversible harm that could have been prevented.

I Go Back To May 1937

In Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird near the end she shares this poem that makes me think so much about my grandparents. My mom was born in 1937. My grandfather certainly was not the young man portrayed in the poem, though Georgia Tann made both of them young college students. My grandmother, though never a college student, was that naive. I can’t regret what happened because my very existence depended upon it but I am left still with way too many questions that I’ll never be able to answer.

Here is Sharon Olds poem –

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books on her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it – she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot image you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.