Farmed Out

I chose this photo because my cousin told me her mother (the half-sibling closest in age to my mom) had picked cotton to earn money for school clothes. A friend was sharing a sad story of his childhood with me. He told me that his mother had been overwhelmed and so he had been farmed out to relatives. That reminded me that my mom’s half-siblings (the children of her father’s left after their mother died) had been farmed out to relatives as well. The two boys were actually put on farms. My cousin’s mother was sent to wealthy relatives who bought things for her she never had before or after. Another sister was working and had an apartment in a nearby town, if memory serves me accurately.

I can’t help but believe when children are sent away from the family of their birth, there follows some sense of abandonment. My friend did not have a happy experience when he was in his childhood family home. Maybe it was the times. People were not quite as gentle when punishing their children as they have become in modern times. Since my friend also brought up that much later his family took in foster kids, he shared that he was able to see a broad diversity of outcomes. From a very young baby who quickly went back to its mother to a teenager. He notes that teenagers seldom find parents because people want very young children. He mentioned that he came to know many foster kids from visiting a group home and that boys and girls react differently to those circumstances. He also felt that the foster scene is not good for any of them. From what little I know – and none of it from direct experience – I would still agree.

I brought up feelings of abandonment with him and he said that he was not sure if he felt unwanted back then, more like unwelcomed. I’m not certain there is much difference.

In looking for an image, I found one that linked back to a JSTOR article – LINK>When Foster Care Meant Farm Labor. The subtitle read “Before current foster care programs were in place, Americans depended on farmers to take care of kids in exchange for hard labor.” Really, back in the day, it was normal for children to be expected to work hard for their family. Modern foster families get a small payment to offset the cost of caring for children. The article notes that has been a central part of child welfare programs for the past century.

Back in the day, authorities viewed the farm placements as a win for everyone involved. Farmers got affordable labor. Governments and philanthropic organizations were relieved of the expense of running orphanages. And children got the chance to learn valuable work skills while living in a rural setting, widely seen as the ideal place for an American upbringing. Even though the children worked hard on the farms, that was no different from what farmers expected of their own kids. But sadly as well, some farmers exploited the child laborers, beating them, denying them schooling or medical care, and sometimes overworking them for a season before sending them back to an institution.

The Simpsons had a similar episode that my family re-watched recently. It is from Season 1 Episode 11 and is titled “The Crepes of Wrath.” Maybe there is no actual point to today’s blog and maybe it is that progress continues to occur. Maybe it is just the meandering rambles of my mind this afternoon.

Not A Celebration

One adoptee’s story –

I was 1 year old, when my mother was convinced to give up her rights to parent me. I was 2 years old, when I was ripped away from my father who asked everyone for help, even social services. After that, I spent 3 years as a medically complex ADHD autistic child (without even a diagnosis of autism until I was 30!) I was bounced between 6 foster care homes before I was adopted at age 5.

I didn’t want to bang that gavel but the judge, the social worker and the woman who raised me – all made it seem like such a party, a good thing, a reward even.

Fast forward 25 years.

My dad’s parents passed in 2020 and 2021. My parents have been gone for over a decade. The woman who raised me passed in May of this year.

I have never EVER felt more unloved, unwanted, and alone.

I’m not included in anyone’s end of life plans, not provided for, not even mentioned.

Because of adoption, my own and my birth mom’s, I will never know her side of the family. I’ve tried everything, Ancestry, Genome Link, I’ve tried it all. Even asked for assistance from angels in the search groups. There’s nothing.

I have two children, who I cling to for dear life. But I have no family outside of them.

Adoption is trauma. Now with the overturning of Roe v Wade, there will be many more generations of adoptees with trauma to come, maybe for decades.

Chosen ? Special ? Really ?

In my adoption group, one woman wrote –

How are adoptees “chosen” and “special” and “soooo wanted” when hopeful adoptive parents would literally pick ANY baby under the sun?

Partially prompted by A Million Little Things when their adoption agency offers a replacement baby the *same day* they learn the natural mom they had bought decided to parent.

I only watched one episode. The natural mom decides to keep her baby, hopeful adoptive parents are upset, next thing the adoption agency calls saying another woman is in labor and they got “bumped to the front of the line” which sounds like a McDonald’s drive-through lane that dispenses babies. Thankfully, the woman says no… for that episode…

This same woman goes on to explain –

I’m French and was relinquished at birth. I went to an orphanage, for 2 months the birth mom has the right to come back for her baby, and nothing can happen, then legal initiates. I was legally free around 6 months by then they put me in a family that had paid $0 (adoption is always free) and vetted by social services for months.

Now they provide even more help for birth moms to parent, so the number of babies like me is only 700 per year, which discourages adoption as a way around fertility. That would be around 3,500 babies for the whole US, 50 per state.

And instead of foster homes we have a paid social worker taking kids in his home with a stipend on top of salary going to the kid’s needs. It doesn’t prevent hopeful adoptive parents from shopping for a kid abroad and is far from perfect but there is no commercialization of domestic babies, and even surrogacy is illegal.

An adoptive parent shared her perspective –

I am an adoptive parent that is still constantly learning and working through my own insecurities, I believe it all stems from the “meant to be” or “God’s plan” narrative that many/most adoptive parents feed into.

Like any disrupted match (in the eyes of the adoptive parent) is just not the child God has waiting for you. The one that worked out was the one all along. When one really thinks about it, it’s like the adoptee stated – any baby will do and becomes “chosen”. This group has helped me see the issues and concerns with this way of thinking. I am still always reading and learning though.

Another adoptee added –

As an adoptee I never felt chosen or special I felt sadness and confusion. When we were forced to adopt our foster baby we didn’t do any celebration and we didn’t announce it on Facebook etc. we didn’t start a Go Fund Me or beg for money on TikTok or share his journey. Only immediate family know.

Thank god it’s an open adoption and for the first year it was much like a divorced couple but the last year since his mom got married and has a new baby, visits and time with her have been less and less – at her request. My hope is once she settles into a new normal, she will spend more time with him. But I’ve never used those words with him.

And this came from South Africa –

I totally agree an adopted child should never be burdened with the “chosen”, “special” etc narrative. I had a domestic infant adoption with a private social worker. At the time I adopted, I tried to make sure I did NOT “choose” a specific child. The first child I was matched with luckily went home with his aunt. I was so happy for that child.

I was then matched with a different child, and again I tried to keep my heart from attaching to this specific child, in case his parents were able to parent. I was trying to keep in mind that what is best for the child is their family. I felt I was trying to offer a home for a child who needed it, and not attach and try to hold on to a child that could go to their family.

So many hopeful adoptive parents mourn the parents changing their mind – but surely that is the ideal situation.

Finally, this question – what birth mother actually doesn’t “want” her baby?

And this response – they exist but they are FEW and FAR between. The narrative of the droves and droves of unwanted babies in the US that are languishing away for help really burns me. (And I was one of those few, actual unwanted babies).

So what do adoptees actually feel ? We are not chosen. Quite the opposite. We’re discarded.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

When a woman intentionally becomes pregnant and is happy and excited when she finds out that she is, if she is informed at all, she will do everything she can to be a nurturing gestating mother. That includes abstaining from alcoholic consumption.

But what about the unhappy woman who wasn’t trying to get pregnant ? Maybe she was in an abusive relationship, whether married or not. Maybe it was a one night stand with someone she has no desire to tie herself in marriage to. What if she has long medicated her sorrows by drinking too much alcohol ? What if she actually is a full-blown alcoholic ?

And it doesn’t stretch my imaginative capabilities to consider that such a woman as I have just described might give her baby up for adoption. A baby that she maybe never actually wanted anyway. And what happens within the adoptive family as that baby, subjected to too much alcoholic influence in utero, begins to mature. Sadly, this is NOT a rare situation nor are the behavioral aspects unknown in our modern society.

If you are an adoptee and wonder if your life may have been impacted, this woman’s article may be of some usefulness to you. She is an adult adoptee who wrote a doctor for help. “Do I Have Fetal Alcohol Effects?”

Whose Perspective ?

She wonders – “Who explained adoption to my peers ?”

Her adoptive parents always told her she was chosen and special.

Yet her peers thought of her as something that someone bad had discarded.

What had their parents taught them about adoption ?

It could have been not their parents but messages about adoption
and pregnancy in the world surrounding them all.

Really great adoptive parents are NOT all an adoptee needs.

A great deal of the grief an adoptee experiences is the result of
the societal shame associated with being adopted.

It is painful to be seen as unwanted, almost aborted, and needing
to be grateful just because one has been adopted.

~ from The Declassified Adoptee

I know my mom’s adoptive parents felt likewise. They were over the moon happy with their two children – thought them brilliant and attractive. They were selected by gender and “supposed” traits (though Georgia Tann played them on that one).

Later in life, my mom had a tense relationship with her mother. She never felt as though she lived up to her mother’s expectations regarding her life and it was probably actually true. My mom got pregnant out of wedlock, therefore, she was never the debutante my grandmother probably hoped for.

Societies perspectives on women and chastity and who’s responsible (hint, it’s never the men who impregnate them) all add up to an adoptee’s whose origin story is founded in rape or incest being automatically impure. What did that baby ever do to deserve such a judgement ?