The fantastic video “Out Of The Fog: Mothers Speak About Adoption” by producer/director Suzie Kidnap has been released on Youtube. I strongly recommend it. This is a landmark video about the natural mother’s experience.
Adoption Critique
The blog of a natural mother, still a mother, but not a "birthmother"
Resources
- Adopting-Back Our Children
- Adoption: Legalized Lies
- Adoption: Mothers In Exile
- Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative (BSERI)
- In Memory Of Dian Wellfare
- International Adoption Facts
- Keep Your Baby
- Language of Adoption: Why "BIRTHMOTHER" Means "BREEDER"
- Language of Adoption: The Term "Birthmother"
- National Advocates for Pregnant Women
- Natural mothers: Were you coerced?
- Origins Canada: Supporting People Separated by Adoption
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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Interesting.
I had to give up my baby, Only to know that the one i wanted to adopt, her husband had domestic violence. The court did no background check. She leaves the state to protect the child.Iowa courts gives him the child all the way from Michigan. Now she has no job. How can she fight in court with no job. Why doesn’t the court over turn and let me have another family member adopt the child. The adopted mom is not knowing how to answer the child if she says, I told you about it. but you did not do nothing about it. The courts gave him his rights to the child
getting out the truth….at last. thanks for posting this.
Powerful film. Thanks for the posting. Hard to watch, but inspiring. I am a first mother who lost my daughter in 1971. We were reunited in 2000 and she quit speaking to me about a year ago. I’m hopeful that it won’t be forever, but we can never truly regain what we lost.
Very powerful film, and as others have said, hard to watch. I agree with a lot of your statements, but I think your anger against adoptive parents is somewhat misplaced, especially those who adopted in the 50′s, 60′s and 70′s. Those adoptive parents were as much victims as all the others involved in this practice. As an adoptee, I feel sorry, not only for my natural mother, but also for my adoptive mom and dad. They had no way of knowing that the reported circumstances of my relinquishment might not be true. My parents were also products of, and victims of, the societal values of their times, just like my natural mother was conditioned to obey those in authority. They’d all grown up in a time when the Catholic Church was all-powerful, and infallible, and no one questioned whether or not it was acting in everyone’s best interests. To blame adoptive parents is to hold them to a higher standard than everyone else. Why didn’t they question things they were told by authorities? For the same reasons that the natural mothers didn’t question what they were told. You just didn’t. Don’t make my mom and dad the scapegoats for what happened to you. It happened to me, too – I continue to suffer 50+ years later. I don’t blame my natural mother, and certainly not my adoptive family. And in Ontario in 1960, there was no money changing hands. My mom and dad didn’t “steal” anyone’s baby. But they did raise and stand by three children who had lots of problems that no one understood, and who acted out in ways that no one could have anticipated. One of my brothers developed multiple addictions in his early teens, yet my parents stood by him in every way until his death a few years ago. We were traumatized children, we adoptees, and the parents who raised us were bringing up traumatized children. But at that time, no one knew or recognized what had caused the trauma. We know that now. Hindsight is always 20/20, isn’t it? But you’re expecting my parents to have been clairvoyant, and to have recognized, 50 years ago, that adoption wasn’t quite as rosy a picture as it was made out to be. I am sorry for your pain, and I feel your anger, too. Please just make sure it is directed at the right place.