Adoption: “Studies on How to Take Babies”

November 17, 2010

A literature review was recently done on a collection of peer-reviewed journal articles on natural mothers published between 1978 and 2008. The results of this literature review were published as part of a masters thesis on trauma and are reprinted here with permission of the author.

In this literature review, 98 articles were identified, and 91 of them obtained.  The author did a thematic analysis of the articles, using grounded theory to identify the themes present in these articles.  Nine themes were identified, including search and reunion, the surrender experience, open adoption relationships, and advice for professionals.  But there were two main themes in this literature that were found to be above and beyond all others in terms of frequency. I am going to quote directly from the thesis:

” There were found to be two main themes in literature on natural mothers.  These can be viewed as two “streams” of research, as the articles within a stream mainly refer to other work and prior research within that one stream.  The first stream (43 articles) examines the consequences of surrender on the mother. The second stream (32 articles) examines factors that may predict and/or influence rates of surrender, often stating with concern that surrender rates have declined significantly and should be increased.  The latter stream contains three main sub-themes: factors (socio-demographic, educational, attitudinal, familial, or economic) that distinguish mothers who surrender their babies from mothers who keep their babies, surveys to determine what would encourage expectant mothers to consider adoption, and comparisons of differing agency practices and their effects on surrender rates.”

Let’s come to the point and put it into more concrete terms:  These 32 articles are on how to take babies.

The author of this thesis provides a list of some of these articles (below, reprinted with  permission).   So, seeing these, how can anyone believe that a “decision” about adoption is free from influence, coercion, or manipulation?   When agencies have 30 years worth of research on how to increase the likelihood a mother will surrender her child, is she really making an informed decision completely of her own free will?

Article

Summary
Bachrach, Stolley, & London (1992) Analysis – how demographic/economic/social trends affect and predict future surrender rates, plus factors distinguishing mothers who surrender from those who don’t.
Baran, Pannor, & Sorosky (1976) Results from a focus group on how to increase adoption:  Open adoption can persuade single mothers to surrender.
Barth (1987) Research on adolescent girls and mothers: how to make adoption more appealing. Recommends open adoption as a way to encourage more adolescent mothers to surrender.
Berry (1991, 1993) Study on effects of open adoption on family members and relationships.  Suggests that open adoption can benefit adoptive parents by enticing more mothers to surrender.
Caragata (1999) Examines teen pregnancy as an economic problem.’  Suggests open adoption to entice more mothers to surrender, that adoption should be “restructured,” and that meeting with prospective adopters might prevent a mother from “changing her mind”
Chippendale-Bakker & Foster (1996) Studies of what demographic/economic/social factors distinguish mothers who surrender from those who don’t.
Cocozelli (1989) Research – what situational variables predict surrender rates.  plus factors distinguishing mothers who surrender from those who don’t (life plans, social worker visits, sign consent before delivery)
Custer (1993) Research on influencing attitudes, beliefs and decision-making about adoption among pregnant adolescents.  Found that deterrents to surrender include:  fear of harm to baby, social disapproval, feeling that it shows lack of responsibility, lack of knowledge of benefits, “failure of professionals to actively initiate discussion of adoption with clients,” and anticipated psychological discomfort.  Suggests that these issues be actively addressed in “social programs and political interventions.”
Daly (1994) Research on adolescents to find out what keeps them from considering adoption.  Recommends agencies do educational and public relations programs to explain the benefits of adoption, promote open adoption, and conduct face-to-face outreach programs to adolescents.
Donnelly & Voydanoff (1991) Research on pregnant adolescents and new mothers: attitudes, demographics, relationships, experiences, and perceptions of early pregnancy distinguishing mothers who surrender from those who don’t.   Suggests programs to present benefits and “promote positive attitudes towards adoption” as those who surrender have more positive attitudes than those who don’t.
Dworkin, Harding, & Schreiber (1993) Research on pregnant adolescents, regarding how adoption knowledge, social/psychological functioning, familial influences (grandmother and father of baby), and demographics correlate with surrender rates.
Geber & Resnick (1988) Research on family functioning, cohesion and adaptability differences between parenters vs. surrenderers using “FACES II” questionnaire.
Hanson (1990) Research on factors distinguishing mothers who surrender from those who don’t, to recommend early intervention based on those figures, especially to get mothers “who might exhibit poor parenting styles” to surrender.
Herr (1989) Research study on maternity home inmates to examine what affected their decision most:  parents, “decision counseling,” and peer role models who are parenting.
Kallen, Griffore, Popovich, & Powell (1990) Research study on attitudes towards adoption and open adoption in mothers who surrendered, mothers who don’t, and their own mothers. .
Kalmuss, Namerow, & Bauer (1992) Research study on socio-demographics, family, education differences of mothers who surrender vs. those who don’t.   Plus 6-month outcomes on life satisfaction, outlook, relationships, etc.
Leon (1999) Instructions to physicians on treating surrendering mothers, including how to promote adoption to pregnant mothers.
Low, Moely, & Willis (1989) Research factors distinguishing mothers who surrender from those who do not, in terms of parental influence and vocational goals.
Miller & Coyl (2000) Analysis of how demographic/economic/social trends affect and predict future surrender rates, plus factors distinguishing mothers who surrender from those who don’t.
Moore & Davidson (2002) Socio-psychological influences (family background, peers), cognitive functions, beliefs, and decision-making in pregnant adolescents, to determine how to best influence decision-making processes as part of “adoption education” of adolescents and promoting “more reasoned choices” (i.e. adoption) for pregnant teens
Namerow, Kalmuss, & Cushman (1993) Research on what social, demographic, beliefs, and attitudinal factors influenced the pregnancy decision.
Resnick (1984) Overview/analysis of research on decision-making and what distinguishes mothers who surrender from those who keep. Mentions sociological, psychological, factors.
Resnick, Blum, Bose, Smith, & Toogood (1990) Studies of demographic/economic/social factors distinguishing mothers who surrender from those who don’t, including their views on adoption vs. parenting vs. abortion.
Sobol & Daly (1992) Overview and summary of the literature and findings: Factors influencing adolescents’ decisions about adoption.  How to get more babies surrendered:  Promote open adoption; make surrender easier; encourage pregnancy counsellors to suggest adoption; and present more “options” to make adoption more attractive.
Warren & Johnson (1989) Research on factors distinguishing mothers who surrender from those who don’t.
Weinman, Robinson, Simmons, Schreiber, & Stafford (1989) Research on mothers who initially planned to surrender but then decided to keep their babies: decision-making process, demographic/psycho-social and health differences, and treatment plans.
Weir (2000) Research on what familial, developmental and peer barriers might prevent mothers from surrendering, and suggests how to remove them through group and family therapy.

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“Dear Incubator”

October 24, 2010

An analysis of what is REALLY behind “Dear Birthmother Letters”

Dear Incubator

We want you to give us your baby. We know that by meeting us and seeing just how perfect we would be for your child, you will gladly do this.

Why do we know this?

Because you are young, vulnerable, and don’t feel confident about your ability to be a mother. We know that we will appear mature, confident, capable, and will make you feel like we could take care of your baby better than you can. We may even remind you of your own parents.

Because we know that the reason you are considering adoption is out of fear and guilt. Guilt that you have disappointed your parents by irresponsibly getting pregnant.  Fear because you do not know what to do and you don’t know if you’ll be a good parent or not.  We can take advantage of your fear and your guilt, and we don’t have any qualms about doing it.

We know that research shows that mothers who “meet” and “choose” prospective adopters during their pregnancies will give up their babies out of guilt and obligation.  Especially if we are in the delivery room with you, or “bonding with” OUR newborn in the hospital with our family and friends congratulating us.  How would you DARE think of keeping our darling newborn from us? Giving us a “failed adoption” by “not carrying through with your adoption plan.”  We are scared that if you take your baby home first before deciding, that you likely wouldn’t give her to us, so our agency’s “birthmother counsellor” will ensure that won’t happen.

We know that if we befriend you while you’re still pregnant, you won’t have a choice. In fact, we’re happy to take that choice (and all choice) away from you, because we are desperate and we know we deserve your baby more than you do. After all, we’ve paid thousands to the agency – you just had a broken condom.

We also know that our promises of open adoption will sounds great, and the same pregnancy hormones that make you feel trusting of others and insecure about yourself will make you believe us, and WANT to believe us. And we also know that these promises have NO basis in law, that we can close the adoption any time we want. And we will close it, especially if it looks like OUR baby loves you when you visit (as many adopted children do with their natural mothers). We’ll just crush that pesky blood-bond by stopping those upsetting visits. They will only “confuse” our child.

If need be, we can get you a counsellor at an adoption agency. We know that the more visits you have with agency staff, the more likely you will be to surrender your baby.  They will have lots of time to work on you and convince you how expensive and difficult it would be to raise a child at your age.  Can you actually afford it?  Like any other luxury commodity, only the rich should be allowed to obtain (and keep) a child.  Poor?  Too bad.  You should have kept your legs crossed.

We promise we will treat you like a queen while you are gestating our baby, while we are “Paper Pregnant” and counting down the days until we get our freshly made bundle of joy from you. We’ll praise you and call you things like our “heaven sent angel” and “God’s gift” to boost your ego and make you feel valued and incredible and loved during your pregnancy — the love and support that your parents and those around you don’t show.

We’ll even give you flowers and a “birthmother gift” when you hand over OUR baby to us — a reasonable exchange, right?  If you’re lucky, the hospital will give you a teddy bear to take home with you – standard practice now, right?

And of course we or our paid agency worker will be right there with you in the delivery room, to make certain you don’t try to “bond” with our baby. We’re paying too much money to the agency/lawyer/facilitator for this baby to allow THAT to happen.

Speaking of money, we offer to pay your medical and hospital expenses.  This will make you feel like you “owe” us that baby.

But frankly we don’t care what we do to you — how we will manipulate you, exploit you, and then cast you aside like a used container (and that’s what you are, right?) — because we’ll be better parents than you will ever be.  That’s why we’re writing you this letter:  We know we deserve that baby more than you do.   We pay more in taxes than you earn in a year (but we’re sure looking forward to that $10,000 adoption income-tax credit that we’ll get!).

Contact us at our 1-800 number, and check out our “profile page” to see how good-looking we are and how confidant and mature we look compared to you.

Signed,

Two “Waiting Parents”
Praying that God will bring us Our Little Angel

~

shortlink:  http://wp.me/p9tLn-k1

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What Adoption Dismisses: The Importance of Being Related

September 29, 2010

Being related to someone, having that natural connection of a mother giving birth to you and this event of creation and nurturance being your connection to the human race through millions of years of evolution, having the innate and emotional blood-bond and instinctive mother-child bond and biological/genetic connection to a family, to mother and father,  is highly important in the rest of society.   EVERYWHERE other than adoption.

In legal child adoption, invented only in 1851 as a social experiment, it is dismissed.

It shows how we in modern society put adoption upon a pedestal, one built on artificial and discredited notions such that infants are “blank slates” and that “environment is everything.”

In the rest of society, outside the adoption realm, being actually related to someone IS important.    If it were not so, then women giving birth in hospitals would not care which baby they brought home with them.  Push out a baby, then choose whichever one you want to take home with you.   Or, be handed the “next one up in the rotation.” And why on earth should it matter? Why in heaven’s name would it matter?  If we were to use the make-believe logic of adoption, it wouldn’t matter.   But we all know it does.

I think that adoption as an institution is based on lies, fabrications, and the financial/social power and emotional “needs” of those who can afford to buy a baby.    Reality has nothing to do with it.  Instead, we are pressured believe that parents are replaceable and interchangeable, that children will “get over it,” that natural mothers are nothing more than heartless abandoners and willing incubators.

None of this is the truth, but it is a direct result of the legal principles underlying the first child adoption act, passed in 1851 and copied throughout the Western world.   Terminate all parental rights AND all filiation.   Permanently and without revoke.  That is what differentiated this law from ALL others that preceded it.   As long as adoption exists, it will be based on these lies, and will assume that biological connections, relatedness, are irrelevant.

~~~

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“Adoption Ethics” is a Contradiction in Terms

September 20, 2010

This  post was prompted by a thread on an adoption-related discussion board this morning.  I wanted to share it here, because even though my thoughts on adoption and ethics might be known by my regular readers, some of my new readers may appreciate a summary.

“Adoption ethics” is a contradiction in terms.

Why?  Because as long as adoption contains falsified birth records, coercion, reproductive exploitation, human rights abuse, and fraud, it is NOT ethical in the slightest.   But one has to back up and examine the elements which constitute child adoption in order to see this.   The only reason that most people accept modern day adoption and so few have questioned it is because or a long time it has been all around us as an accepted part of society.   But, the same once held with domestic violence and child abuse (anyone else remember “Spare the rod and spoil the child’?).   And, just like these ethically unacceptable acts, reproductive exploitation and coercion happens behind closed doors.  But society can change.

Adoption, as it was invented in 1851 and practised ever since, has been institutionalized in Western nations in such a way that these following elements are inherent to it:

  1. Falsified birth records: Fabrication of a legal lie that the people who are adopting gave birth to the child.  Forbidding the mother from filling out a birth record.  In any other situation, intentional fabrication of a federal or state government record is a felony offence.
  2. Coercion — See the “Coercion checklist,” “Open Adoption:  They knew it would work,”  “Proof of Coercion in the Industry’s Own Words“, etc.”   Coercion is ANY method that is intentionally employed in order to increase the percentage chance that the mother will surrender her baby.  Includes pre-birth matching, separation of mother and baby at or near birth.  To get an idea of what constitutes coercion, compare practices pre-adoption industry (1930s, 1940s) to practices once the Post-WWII adoption industry arose.  Compare to practices in the U.K. (e.g. mother has 6 wks protection post-birth to recover and experience motherhood before signing) and Australia.  The Trackers International survey of 1000 natural mothers found that 98% had been pressured to surrender their babies.  That means only 2% who were NOT coerced!
  3. Fraud: Withholding vital information from the mother regarding social services and financial support that would have enabled her to keep her baby, withholding information or blatantly lying to her about the devastating emotional consequences of surrender for most mothers, convincing her that she is unworthy of keeping her baby and that the adoptive family are perfect and almost “heaven-sent.”  Convincing her that parenting is overwhelming and that she is emotionally or financially  incapable of doing it.
  4. Human Rights Abuse: Many articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but especially Article 25, which guarantees mothers the support and resources they need to keep their babies, and in effect guarantees babies the support and resources they need to keep their mothers! Also the recent guidelines for substitute care of the child published by the General Assembly in 2009..  We are ALL human beings. We are not dogs or pond scum.  To treat us like animals, like livestock, is act of violence aganst the inherent dignity and personhood of each one of us.
  5. Reproductive exploitation : Just as bad as sexual exploitaiton.  Why should it be considered any better, any more excusable?
  6. Human Trafficking (Baby Selling):   Adoption is an industry that thrives because baby brokers profit from the exchange in human flesh.  This is no different from slavery, where people “paid for” human beings to work as labourers for them.  Similarly, in adoption, people “pay for” human beings to act as “offspring”  for them.  Children sell up for $50,000 or more, and this pricing does depend on race:  white children are “worth more” than children of colour.   Check out an online price-list (there are many) for buying yourself a child, where babies are euphemistically called “situations”:

“The following are a few situations available to our clients from the agencies we work with:
“African American baby boy due Oct. 5 in UT. Agency fees are 16K plus medical.
“Caucasian/African American baby girl due Oct. 17 in UT. Agency fees are 22,500 plus medical.
“Caucasian/African American baby boy due in Oct. Agency fees are 26,500 plus 4K in assistance to mom.
” Caucasian baby boy due Jan. 11 Agency fees are 30,500 plus medical”

Gee, in case #4 the mother even gets a cut of the profits!

The United Nations has even reacted with alarm over the sale of babies:

“During the course of 2002, the Special Rapporteur received many complaints relating to allegedly fraudulent adoption practices. Where such practices have the effect that the child becomes the object of a commercial transaction, the Special Rapporteur, like his predecessor, considers that such cases fall within the “sale” element of his mandate. The Special Rapporteur was shocked to learn of the plethora of human rights abuses which appear to permeate the adoption systems of many countries” (p. 25, “Rights of the Child:  Report submitted by Mr. Juan Miguel Petit, Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution 2002/92.“).

It is my serious opinion that adoption is SO flawed that it is impossible to reform.  That is why I do not believe in “adoption reform.”   What we need, instead, are laws that protect mothers and children from exploitation and coercion, from babies being sold like loaves of bread.   We need provisions that are based on ethics, not on exploitation for profit.

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They admit it was illegal!

September 2, 2010

I have always said that the theft of my baby was an illegal adoption.  No adoption could be legal when it begins with an abduction, a baby being taken from a tied-down mother against her will, withheld from her forever more from that point, the choice to keep her baby robbed from her, the “decision” of adoption made by others but not herself.

So, in Western Australia, exiled mothers are going to receive an apology from the government for exactly the same practices that myself and tens of thousands of young and unwed Canadian mothers endured!

I will include the full article here, because I do not want readers to have to surf over to second site to see what I am talking about.

Of course, an apology does not make up for the fact that criminal acts and human rights violations were committed. For that, IMHO, the perpetrators should be brought to justice.  There should be recompense for the victims, and the people who illegally obtained children for adoption purposes (the sole reason WHY these crimes were committed, to supply the market for healthy white infants wanted by infertile people who were deemed to deserve our children more than WE were!) should be treated in the exact same way as anyone in possession of stolen property.  But an apology if it is actually an admission of guilt, is a good first step.

Unmarried mums get State apology

DANIEL EMERSON, The West Australian September 1, 2010, 6:32 am

The State’s apology to unmarried mothers illegally separated from their babies under harsh adoption practices is set to happen within weeks.

WA is to become the first State or Federal government worldwide to admit hospital and welfare authorities were wrong to immediately separate mothers from their babies after giving birth out of wedlock. Mothers from around Australia keen to hear the apology have been told it will be delivered in Parliament on October 19.

Experts say tens of thousands of WA babies were adopted illegally when their unmarried mothers were prevented from seeing, touching, naming or bonding with their children immediately after birth between the 1940s and the early 1980s.

Health Minister Kim Hames said the exact format of the apology was still being finalised but it would be “to unmarried mothers of adopted children who were adversely affected by past adoption practices”.

Christine Cole, of the NSW-based Apology Alliance, said it was also important for the Government to say sorry to the children taken. “They were denied their family of origin and the culture of that family,” she said.

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Adoption Loss: About “Closure”

August 31, 2010

This post was inspired by Mei-Ling’s recent post on her blog, where she spoke of a person who adopted who hoped that Mei-Ling would “find closure.”   One more adoptee gets patronizingly fed this line, once more.

How many times have we heard that, over and over again?

This continual reiteration to adoptees and natural parents about closure, when i hear it, admittedly pisses me off.  it invariably is from someone who has never experienced adoption separation/trauma/loss.   someone whose only connection with adoption has been GAIN.

“Closure” is a word thrown around a lot in “adopto-land,” and I sometimes wonder if it is such for one reason:   Because if adoptees or natural moms get “closure” then maybe the two parties in the adoption transaction that “gain” from adoption do not have to feel guilty as they would feel if the “losers” in adoption are “still hurting”?   No-one with any conscience wants their joy to come at the lifelong expense/pain/torture of another person.   So, there is the hope out there that we will get “closure” somehow.

The problem that this ignores is that “closure” is closely tied to such factors as whether a loss is finite or ongoing, simple or complex, ambiguous or complete, sudden or expected, traumatic or voluntary, etc..   I held my father’s hand in the hospital as he died peacefully in his old age — that was a nontraumatic, unambiguous and completed loss with closure, finality, resolution, completeness.   But adoption loss is ONGOING and overwhelming.   If a loss is continually compounding, how can there be closure?  It hasn’t ended yet!   Every compounded loss of a day in life lived “elsewhere,”  every birthday apart, every moment separated, all the years and minutes apart … and the ties that are not ties, family that is not family, ambiguity of family boundaries in our society that only recognizes “what is on paper” as being valid … and always the hope/chance/dream of eventual “having my child/parent back again” because after all they are still breathing … no closure means unresolved grief, ongoing pain, ongoing loss.

But, if you’re not there in the middle of it, if you’ve never experienced it, then can you truly understand it?   That glib line about closure, I just wish they would stop trying to foist it onto us, and then imply that we’ve somehow got some psychopathology if we don’t achieve it. 

~~

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More on Pre-birth Matching: Assumptions Some People Make

July 5, 2010

My previous post on pre-birth matching was inspired by a question asked in a forum that is supposedly to support everyone who has been touched/torched by adoption.

I received a response from another member of this group, who had adopted, and she displayed some assumptions in her response that are very common in society.  I am glad she responded as she did, so that maybe another point of view could be provided, by a mother who has actually been there and has lost a baby against her will.

This is what this woman who had adopted said:

“Obviously, for an expectant mother to see these profiles, they must be looking for families to adopt their babies.  I’m not sure – what do you think would be a better thing for an expectant mother who thinks she wants to place her baby to do?  We don’t want her to leave the baby on a doorstep.  So what should she do, if we lived in a world where no one wrote ‘dear birth mother’ letters?”

Reading this, the first question that came to my mind is:   No it is NOT obvious.  Why do people think that a mother looking at prospective adopters’ profiles is REALLY, concretely, at the stage of looking for a family to adopt here baby?  Is this expectant mother really 100% at that point yet and never going back to the question “Should I, can I, keep my baby?”?

So this, the rest of my post here, is my response to her:

Actually, I think that it’s possible that for many mothers, they are not looking for a family to adopt their babies, they are still deciding “Should I surrender or keep my baby?”  The mother is still making up her mind, and these profiles can influence this decision.

I know mothers who read these online profiles during their pregnancies and it made them feel they had no right to keep their babies, that they would be selfish and greedy and “unchristian,” as they are made to feel that there are these wonderful people out there who deserved to be parents much more than the mothers did. It was one more nail in their coffin of insecurity and lack of self-esteem. Worse yet if an adoption agency is coaching them that parenthood would be too much of a struggle for them and that their babies “deserve more.”

If you are a woman who has given birth, a mother, you know the emotional changes that come with late pregnancy, labour, and birth. This can be a shock to new moms, how much they may want their babies once their babies are in their arms.  And many moms separated from children by adoption feel, from experience, that the final decision about this should (or must) be made post-birth once the mother has her baby in her arms and knows her emotions, preferably given a few weeks so she can recover from birth first.

Viewing profiles of course leads to forming a relationship with someone hoping to adopt — later on — BUT how much pressure does this relationship put on her to “not change her mind” and cause a “failed adoption” –  in many cases, lots. (i.e.

“Paul Meding, a Columbia attorney who has been taking adoption cases for 12 years [says] “In my opinion, when the birth mother has  more input and can see first hand how important the adoption is to the family, it is more difficult for her to back out and disappoint them.” (“Open Doors,” The Columbia Star, April 29, 2005)”.

What Meding talks about here is also called “emotional coercion.”

So, another person who had adopted responded and asked me what an mother should do instead (i guess, instead of boarding the adoption bandwagon while her child is not yet born).  I responded:

I think that the supports are in place already that expectant mothers can obtain necessary prebirth and post-birth counselling and get care and resources such that she can make this decision once recovered from birth, without the decision being influenced by relationships with or expectations from people hoping to adopt.

A good example is South Australia: Adoption offices are ready with substitute care for the baby if the mother wants this while the mother makes up her mind, and she is encouraged to have visits, given parenting mentorship, and to bring her baby home overnight. Various public service agencies have programs providing this type of “cradle care” already in place.  After the mom recovers from birth, then an adoption agency (or child welfare office) can provide her with profiles of couples she can interview and choose, *if* she then finds first-hand that she doesn’t want [to raise] her baby.  I corresponded with adoption workers in the state of South Australia, who confirmed this information.  Evelyn Robinson also has written about it, and she can be contacted through Clova Publications at http://www.clovapublications.com.  In Australia, an adoption workers’ paycheque does not depend on the sales she or her agency makes per year, on how many babies they can broker for $25,000 and up.

There is no reason to fear that children will be “left on doorsteps” if there is no pre-birth matching. And there is no need for mothers to be pressured to make decisions about adoption pre-birth, or even soon post-birth.   Pre-birth matching is just another tactic that agencies use in order to obtain more babies for the market.

I seriously do not think that any person who adopts can claim that the mother was not coerced, if they have engaged in pre-birth or even pre-surrender matching.  How can they guarantee that they did not affect the mother’s decision?  Do they even care how they obtained the baby?  Several people in the same group, when asked, said that they felt that the mother’s reasons for surrendering “were her own,” indicating that they did not care if she was coerced or not, or whether they themselves had pers0nally engaged in coercion.  I find this to be very sad that anyone would s0 blinded by “baby hunger” that they would put this ahead of having ethics, did not care how or why that baby was being surrendered for adoption.

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The basic facts of pre-birth adoption matching

June 14, 2010

Unfortunately, due to it increasing the chance that a mother will surrender her baby*, the practice has grown in North America to allow prospective adoptive parents to track down and try to convince expectant mothers (whom they call ‘birthmothers”) to give up their babies.

Or, at least that is what it looks like.  A “Dear Birthmother” letter could be seen as saying “Choose us over other people hoping to adopt!“, but, unfortunately, first and foremost the message it gives is “Choose us over yourself! We are better for your baby than YOU are! See how loving and perfect we are?  We have everything your baby needs.”  Whether the prospective adoptive parents mean to give this message or not, it is there.

So, unfortunately, the whole issue of “profiles” and “dear birthmother letters” is rife with ethical land mines

An expectant mother who is considering adoption and is feeling very emotionally insecure, inadequate, and scared may — instead of getting support and counselling to help her overcome these problems — may see the prospective adoptive couple’s “Profile” and think “Wow, they’d be better parents than i would.” or “My baby doesn’t deserve me, he deserves a family like this.” or “They want a baby so badly, I shouldn’t be selfish.”  So, reading “dear birthmother” letters and seeing profiles combined with raging pregnancy hormones can actually influence a mother’s decision regarding adoption.  This is where it gets ethically sticky.

Plus, can the mother really recover from birth first before deciding on adoption if she has formed a loving bond with people hoping to adopt her child?

Paul Meding, a Columbia attorney who has been taking adoption cases for 12 years, works as a medium to match birth mothers with adoptive parents. For Meding, this process has been successful. “In my opinion, when the birth mother has more input and can see first hand how important the adoption is to the family, it is more difficult for her to back out and disappoint them.” (“Open Doors,” The Columbia Star, April 29, 2005)

I think that these are questions to be considered by anyone who is hoping to adopt, plus by natural mothers who found that this tactic worked on them to get them to surrender their babies.  (Would you have surrendered if the alternative was a closed adoption?  If not, then you were coerced by adoptive parents using this practice).

Another reason why this is ethically problematic is that women most often surrender babies to adoption because of lack of support, resources, finances, etc.  A woman is hence being made vulnerable to exploitation because society and government has put her into a position where she can be exploited, removing protections (such as human rights in the form of a guaranteed income sufficient for her to raise her baby) that would protect her from predation.

To try to find a woman who is in a vulnerable position, so you can obtain her baby from her, is reproductive exploitation, and the people committing it are, by definition, reproductive predators.  This is why prospective adoptive parents are handing out “adoption networking cards” at teen activity centres, in Walmart, to high school guidance counsellors, in poor areas of town, to pregnant waitresses – women who look vulnerable due to youth or possible financial stress.  This unfortunately resembles to some degree what sexual predators do to find vulnerable women and youth to exploit.  Removing power and protection from socially vulnerable groups leaves them open to being exploited by those with more power, money, and social status. No-one wants to be a predator, but many prospective adoptive parents blunder into this practice without realizing what they are doing.

There are many reasons why women surrender their babies for adoption, but some of them involve influence or pressure from other people, even adoptive parents who have NO idea that they are affecting a mothers’ decision (i.e. coercion), or that reproductive exploitation is what they are engaging in.

Fuelling this is desperation: Unfortunately, as we all know, adoption is market driven. There is a huge demand for babies:

“For every healthy newborn available, there are now almost forty potential parents searching.” – (“Love for Sale” Adoptive Families Magazine, 2000).

But I encourage all adoptive parents and prospective adoptive parents to get educated about this issue, so they have enough information that, if practising this type of coercion falls outside their ethical framework (and it should — do you really want in on your conscience that you made a mother give up her baby?), they know how to avoid it.

Related Posts:

*Meeting prospective adopters increases surrender rates (Chippendale-Bakker & Foster, 1996) and prevents mothers from “changing their minds” (Caragata, 1999). Choosing them increases surrender rates (Barth, 1987; Chippendale-Bakker & Foster, 1996).The infant going directly from the hospital to the adoptive parents increases surrender rates (Barth, 1987)

Also see this follow-up post: “More on Pre-birth Matching: Assumptions Some People Make”

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Lies the Adoption Industry Tells …

June 5, 2010

This is a little list i first began drafting a few years ago which has been sitting on my hard drive ever since.   These are the promises, guarantees, and blanket statements that the adoption industry (comprised of baby brokers such as adoption agencies, lawyers, and facilitators) routinely promote as being the gospel truth.  And they work — the industry now makes over $3 billion a year in profit.  Don’t let it fool you.

Lies the Industry tells to Prospective Adopters:

  1. All families, both adoptive and natural, are the exact same.
  2. The bond between parents and children in all families are the same.  The amended birth certificate will say that you gave birth, so act as though you did. You are now the only mother.
  3. The child needs only you and not the love of their natural parents.
  4. Environment is everything – the child is a blank slate (“tabula rasa”) – all the chid’s skills and aspirations will be yours.
  5. Rest assured that the natural family can never search because the records are sealed tight.
  6. The natural mom is just an incubator, a “b—-mother” and thus her only purpose is to gestate that child and then hand it over.
  7. This child is unwanted, the mother will never return.
  8. If loved enough, this child will never want to search.
  9. Adoptees will never feel hurt by being taken from their natural parents; love from adoptive parents will solve everything.
  10. “The Primal Wound” is a myth.
  11. This is a lifetime guarantee.

Lies the Industry tells to Expectant Mothers:

  1. Your child will be grateful to be adopted and won’t be angry at you for it. Your child will not be damaged by adoption
  2. Adoption shows you loved your child enough to give him/her two parents.
  3. You are not giving him away, you are giving him “more.”
  4. Children need two married parents.
  5. You will get over it and forget your child.
  6. You may feel “a type of grief’ but it will go away.
  7. Young and Unwed = unfit.
  8. The grief is resolvable.  Only flawed women or those who “cling to the past” can’t resolve the grief.
  9. It won’t hurt, or won’t hurt for long. The satisfaction of providing a wonderful future for your child will make any “regret” go away.
  10. Keeping your child will involve more pain, struggle, and sacrifice than surrendering him/her.

Lies that the industry tells to adoptees:

  1. Your mother chose adoption.
  2. Your mother “gave you away.”
  3. Your mother does not love you.
  4. You only need your adoptive parents.
  5. You should be loyal and grateful to your adoptive parents for raising you as your natural mother dumped you and who know where you’d be if your adoptive parents weren’t heroes for rescuing you.
  6. Searching is disloyal and will hurt your adoptive parents

Lies that the industry tells to society:

  1. Infant adoption is natural (false. it’s a relative recent (last 150 years) social experiment)
  2. Adoptive families are exactly like natural families, with no problems at all specific to adoption.
  3. Raising an adopted child is like raising a child of your own.
  4. Infant adoption has been common since Babylonian types (false. adult adoption was common but NOT infant adoption – infants were fostered but seldom legally adopted)
  5. Adoption is about finding homes for unwanted babies.

What is is all about? Filling post-WWII consumer demand for infants.

“Because there are many more married couples wanting to adopt newborn white babies than there are babies, it may almost be said that they rather than out of wedlock babies are a social problem. (Sometimes social workers in adoption agencies have facetiously suggested setting up social provisions for more ‘babybreeding’.)” SOCIAL WORK AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS, National Association of Social Workers, (Out-of-print) copyright 1964 (quote provided courtesy of BSERI).

The broker (agency, lawyer, social worker, doctor, or whomever else took the baby for adoption) made promises to the adoptive parents that permeate the entire adoptive relationship and even impact upon reunion.   And the promises are lies, nothing but a sales pitch.  Brokers knew there was a consumer demand out there from people who wanted newborn babies to adopt.  Brokers knew they could make money by meeting this demand — now $25,000 or more per infant.  So the brokers give promises that these  infants neither knew about nor could keep.  And adoptees are expected to live up to these promises, which they had no part in making in the first place!  It is all done for money’s sake.  It is time to take the profit motive out of adoption.

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A Mothers’ Bill of Rights

June 1, 2010

A Mothers’ Bill of Rights


Expecting? Considering adoption? The adoption agency may not have told you all your rights!

If you are considering surrendering your baby for adoption, remember that you are still the only mother that baby has until you have signed the surrender papers and until any revocation periods have passed (this varies from within 30 days of birth in British Columbia, to no revocation period at all in some states such as Florida and Illinois). Some adoption agencies publish “Birthmother Bills of Rights,” which invariably neglect to inform the “birthmother” that she has rights that every other mother takes for granted – including the right to change her mind.

This list below is provided so that expectant mothers considering adoption can take this to adoption agencies and potential adopters and ask right-off-the-bat if they’ll honour these rights. And if they refuse to, then mothers go to a different agency or different potential adopters that will. According to an article (“Love for Sale”) in Adoptive Families Magazine, there may be up to forty couples vying for every baby available, so there is no lack of choice if one couple says “no” to you. And in fact, the best parent for your baby may well be you!

As a mother, maybe being called a “birthmother,” these are your rights.

~ Your Rights as an Expectant and New Mother ~

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO:

  • … see your baby after he/she is born.
  • … choose to hold, nurse, and care for your baby in the hospital.
  • … decide if the potential adopters can be in the labour or delivery room, and the right to change your mind and ask them to leave at any time.
  • … have independent legal counsel (i.e not also representing the potential adopters, known as “dual-representation”) to explain the surrender papers and to be present when you sign them.
  • … choose to care for your baby without feeling pressured to decide about adoption within ANY certain time period.
  • … choose to take your baby home from the hospital if that is what you want to do.
  • … say “No” to adoption at any point before or after the birth without fear of hurting or disappointing the potential adopters.
  • … adequate financial support from the state which would enable you to keep and raise your baby.
  • … expect child support from the father of your baby, and take him to court for enforcement if this is not provided.
  • … be free of any monetary obligation, such as repaying living or medical expenses, should you choose to keep your baby (potential adopters can buy insurance to cover all costs if a mother changes her mind, it is a risk they knowingly take).
  • … choose to decide on adoption after recovering from birth and any post-partum depression.
  • … be treated as the mother and a parent of your baby until and unless papers are signed, and to be thus treated with the respect granted any other mother.
  • … be a mother. No matter if you’re unmarried, young, or financially strained, you still have the right to be a mother.

These rights come from the application of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (at http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html), which since 1948 has guaranteed these protections to ALL citizens of the U.S., Canada and all other nations that signed it. Articles 12, 16 and 25 of the Declaration specifically guarantee protection and social support to mothers and families:

  • Article 12. – No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, FAMILY, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
  • Article 16(3) – The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
  • Article 25(1) – Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Copyright © B. Lake 2004.  This article may be reprinted on other not-for-profit websites as long as it is reprinted in its entirety with copyright statement included.

Reprinted with Permission of the Author

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