Adoption Or Foster Care

I’ve been reading a book about one girl’s experiences in foster care to better inform myself about a system I have no experience with. Adoption ? Though not adopted myself nor have I given up a child to adoption, I have LOTS of experience – both parents were adoptees and both sisters gave up a child to adoption. I also spend significant time each day within a private Facebook group that includes original parents, adoptees and former foster youth, and adoptive (or hopeful) parents. I learn a lot there that broadens my perspectives.

Some of the major differences I am understanding – foster care does not alter the child’s identity (doesn’t change their name or birth certificate). Foster care is less permanent or certain. The goal in a lot of foster care is eventual reunification of the family unit. The quality of foster care varies but a bad placement can be gotten out of. Not all foster parents treat the foster child well nor do they really care about what is happening to the child. Some actually do it for the money (NOT saying most or all do it for that reason).

Adoption is a PERMANENT solution to what is a temporary problem when talking about an unwed mother or a poverty situation. Adoption does provide a more certain home environment than foster care does but the double edge sword is that if it is an awful placement, most of the time the child is simply trapped there (I’ve read enough nightmare stories to believe this). That said, there are also “second chance” adoptions where the adoptive parents want to be rid of a troublesome child. This is very sad for the child as it sends a debilitating message about the worth of that child.

Most of the time, adoptive parents change the child’s name and to some extent their cultural identity if it is a transracial adoption. Some adoptive parents hide the date and/or location of the child’s birth to place an obstacle in the way of the parent/child unit reuniting. Genetic family bonds are broken or permanently lost. Even when such direct family is recovered later in life, so much life experience and inter-relationship is lost that it is nearly impossible to rebuild. I understand this as I have been able to learn what my own parents could not – who my original grandparents were. Along with learning that, I have acquired new family relationships with genetically related aunts and cousins.

I acknowledge that not all children are going to be parented by the people who gave birth to them. This is a reality. I would also argue that as a society we do NOT do enough to keep families intact and could do much better. I would further add that MONEY plays a HUGE role in perpetuating the separation of mothers from their children. That money could be better spent with less traumatic outcomes on the natural family and its supports.

Judgment of Solomon

It’s a story as old as the bible. Two women fighting for the love of one child. It is the child who actually suffers. Often the original mother will surrender for the good of the child. It happens when one woman was the first mother and then another woman steps in and the first mother becomes marginalized. Whether by adoption or divorce, it is hard to live that reality. I know, I have.

I was reading the sad story of a woman who was adopted at the age of 4. Got along well with the adoptive father, not so much with the adoptive mother. The couple divorced and for whatever reason the girl went with the mom. This adoptive mother spent years breaking down this poor woman’s confidence by telling her she was going to end up like her birth mother among countless other verbal and emotional jabs at her.

Time passed, she grew up. In a sense the predictions came true. She had a son who she breast fed and took care of everyday for 20 months. Then she had to ask for help. Her son already knew her as mom. Now she has a power struggle with her adoptive mom about who actually is the mother of her son. That is because she went through a rough part of her life and had to ask her adoptive mom to keep her son while she figured things out.

The adoptive mother agreed. Then, less than 3 weeks later, she called the woman and asked if she can give her a certain amount of money per month in return for adopting this woman’s son. She declined. As an adoptee herself, she said she wasn’t giving him up and that with another 2 weeks, she could be ready for him to come back to living with her.

Only a week later, the adoptive mother called again and said according to her lawyer the woman will be charged with neglect if she doesn’t sign over the rights to her son. Oh, this does remind me of what happened to my maternal grandmother !!

Anyway, fearing she might never see her son again, she consulted with a lawyer at a women’s shelter where she was living and had to face the reality that this was going to happen and it did. The adoptive mother changed the woman’s son’s name, just like happens so often in adoptions. While the original mother still has some access to her son, I know, just as the reader probably knows by now – this will not turn out well and the child will be the one who suffers.

What Is Enough ?

My mother doubted her worth as a human and as a mother. She never believed she was good enough. Adoption did that to her. She felt broken and torn.

My mom tried very hard to know her roots. She appealed to the state of Tennessee for her adoption file. Though her father was twenty years older than her mother and her mother had already died, she was denied because the state didn’t really try too hard to determine her father’s status. He had been dead for 30 years, when she made her attempt.

She did an Ancestry DNA test and had a profile, hoping against hope to learn some truth. At least, she had some idea of her ethnicity from that effort. She tried to complete family trees but since they were based on persons who adopted her and adopted my dad, she quit and said to me, “It just didn’t feel real.” Of course it didn’t. From a genealogy perspective – it wasn’t the truth.

I now have the complete story for both – my mom and my dad. I wrote everything up in a limited edition book given to family, so that what I worked so hard to learn would not be lost with me, if I died.

There is no risk-free exposure for the children of adopted parents. I know. The wounds and damage passed down my family line and other children ended up adopted too.

Second Chance

One of the saddest situations in adoptionland is a child that was adopted and the adoptive family seeks to be rid of that child and it does happen.

In one case, an adopted child had been through four failed adoptions. This child had been renamed each time and didn’t even know their real name.

Or a child adopted internationally when they were 2 years old now up for re-adoption at the age of 8-1/2. The advertisement for this child is full of glowing attributes – why then is the need to be rid of the child ? It is beyond sad that people adopt without understanding the trauma and wounds that come from separating the child from their original family.

Between 1 and 5 percent of U.S. adoptions get legally dissolved each year. Some children are put up for “second-chance adoptions.” Second-chance adoptions are children who were already adopted and whose adoptive family no longer wishes to parent them.

Accurate statistics are not available for how commonplace second adoptions are, due to a wide variety of factors that include the closed nature of some adoptions, changed names on Social Security cards and birth certificates, and other paperwork issues.

Legally speaking, adopted children are recognized as no different from biological children. And for this reason, parents who opt to put a child up for re-adoption are doing nothing more legally complicated than any parent who puts a child up for adoption in the first place.

Children who end up in need of adoption a second time have lives that are deeply disrupted and end up with lifelong doubts about their worth. Most adoptees, even when their first adoption does not end up dissolved, suffer from similar issues.

Adoption is a complicated situation that is fraught with problems. That is why many adoptees are now speaking out against the process and looking for better alternatives for cases where a child’s welfare requires a more stable situation.

Hard Questions

Adoption makes this true.

The questions carry a completely different weight than they did just months ago before we adopted. A place where my heart screams that he is mine forever but that same heart plummets into a deep ache knowing the gravity of loss he has already faced. The loss of the mother in whose womb he grew.

He will always know he’s adopted. I tell his story to him every night at bedtime. I ask all the normal questions.

I wonder about the day he will ask about his birth parents. Will there be a constant ringing in his ears to know them? Will he feel the guilt of reassuring us, as the adoptive parents, that the ringing has nothing to do with us?

Will I be able to honestly, deeply, and fully lock arms with him while he searches for answers?

I can wait for the hard questions but know when you start to ask, your worth is immense, your value is priceless, and I will always and forever, be right by your side.

A true story. One worth pondering if you are planning to adopt. Someday, that child will want to know where they come from and why they are not being raised by the people who conceived them.

Difficult Mother Daughter Relationships

Having been able to obtain my mother’s adoption file, I know how over the moon happy her adoptive mother was when my mom was a baby and a toddler. Having seen a photo of my mom’s original mother holding her, I also know where our big boned skeletons came from.

When I was growing up, I knew my mom had a difficult relationship with her adoptive mother. What changed ? I believe my adoptive grandmother was very hard on my mom due to her body size – not that she was fat. Later in life, she may have been overweight and she struggled with that and was always dieting, but she was never obese.

I believe part of the explanation is the common issue that many adoptees struggle with – not feeling like they are good enough. From my mom, I know that she described her adoptive mother as a perfectionist. Since I knew this woman from childhood, I understand. She was a perfectionist. And she was extraordinarily accomplished at a lot of things.

My mom struggled with body image issues. My grandmother’s own mother and sister were portly. My grandmother was clearly determined to remain thin her whole life. I remember when I was in England with her and sitting in a restaurant in our upscale hotel, The Dorchester across the street from Hyde Park in London. In public view, she loudly admonished me for eating a dinner roll with butter. I was so humiliated and angry at her that I wouldn’t speak to her until the next morning. I was decidedly not fat at that age. My grandmother feared I would become fat.

Mostly, I had a good relationship with my mom. We had our moments but it would be remarkable if there had been none. She really wasn’t wrong in those moments. The issues were my privacy (she opened one of my personal letters) and a disagreement about a choice I made which she would not have (letting my daughter go and live with her father and step-mother when I could not support her financially and he refused to pay child support).

Yet, my mom had a terrible relationship with my youngest sister that came back to haunt me after my mom died and I had to assume control of my birth family’s finances. My sister transferred those feelings onto me, once accusing me of hating her. It is painful even now to consider that, for when this sister was homeless and when she was going through an unwed pregnancy, I was the only family member steadfastly at her side (and mostly, that was her choice).

I don’t have any answers to these situations but I do see how, even though they really were “good enough” parents, with both of my parents being adoptees, that a result was what I now describe as having been “weirdly detached”.

Words Matter

I hadn’t fully realized until just the other day what the phrase often encountered in adoption issues – “given away” – indicates. The truth is most original mothers did NOT give their child away.

Many were coerced in some manner. My maternal grandmother was definitely pressured by Georgia Tann after falling into a trap. I’m fairly certain my paternal grandmother was pressured by the Salvation Army. I know one of my sisters was influenced by our own adoptee mom as unbelievable as that seems now that I know more about the emotional wounds most adoptees suffer to some degree or another, even when they end up in a “good” adoptive family (which I can say about all of the adoptees in my own family).

The truth is, however, in all of these cases the babies were “taken away” from their original mothers for some “reason” or other. That has a very different connotation from a mother actually, willingly, consciously, wanting to “give away” her baby.

When a child ends up being raised by anyone who is not their original parents, they have been separated from family. It is true that some children end up abandoned and that is a truly sad state of affairs when it happens. And some mothers simply do not believe they are good enough, worthy or deserve to have the child they birthed, for whatever reason.

Anyway, I realize better now that words matter.

Forbidden Words

One can be human and do really bad/evil things. This is a sad truth of reality and society. There is a sickness in men, sadly. It is as old as humankind and it takes what it wants whether the object of its passion is willing or not. We give that behavior names, rape, incest.

It becomes complicated when that bad behavior results in the conception of a child. In abortion language there is often an exception for this situation that allows a women to take away the physical memory embodied as a fetus and go on with her life. Of course, she will never forget regardless.

Some of these “results” end up being adopted. Some adoptees have such an unfortunate experience that they wish they had been aborted but not all adoptees feel that way. In fact, there is no one size fits all when it comes to adoption experiences.

Perpetrators are real people with real problems who do something that healthy people cannot justify. They may have stressors in their life. These may cause them to act out in inappropriate and inexcusable ways. Pretending that men who commit rape are born broken and inhuman takes away the responsibility they should still bear for their actions.

Anyone conceived in rape or incest must embrace their own inherent self-worth and insist upon their human rights. Know this – what any ancestor did whenever they did that whether it is directly related to a subsequent person or not – this is not who we are individually.

At one time, such an event would have labeled the result a bad seed with flawed genes. While it is true, we inherit much from our genetic foundation, we also have the free will to make of our own selves what we will.

The #MeToo movement is an effort to bring sexual violence out into the light of awareness so that we can begin to understand how such things happen and why such behavior is wrong and how all of us can do better.

This is not a blog for or against abortion. It is a plea to give all people, including adoptees regardless of their origin story, human rights – dignity, heritage, truth.

Special ?

A child that has been told he is “special”
will feel that he has to be perfect
in order to retain the love and acceptance
of his adoptive parents.

Whether or not the adoptive parents exert any pressure,
the child may feel a need to live up to unattainable expectations.

Unable to do so, the child may feel inadequate and worthless.

~ The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier

Sadly, some of those children will end up in need of adoption a second time. It is easy to understand how deeply disrupted this will be for their lives. Such an experience could leave the child with lifelong doubts about their worth.

To be separated from one’s original mother is always traumatic. But an adoption dissolution carries a significant risk of additional trauma to the child.

Such a child is at high risk for forming insecure attachments and will have difficulty trusting adult caregivers. May have difficulty maintaining any caring relationship once they are mature.

Is it any wonder ?