Dear America,
I spent the first 16 years of my adoption experience as a “birth” mother in complete isolation. It was preceded by the nearly 10 months of family-conducted isolation during my pregnancy. Such is the life of a shamed pregnant teenager. I had personally never known either an adopted person or a natural mother. I thought my mother and the adoption agent, with whom she colluded, sounded like they were full of shite, but how was I to know any different? By the time I delivered my precious girl, my efforts to keep her via parenting classes at a local pregnancy center and accumulation of baby necessities (all returned by my mother) only proved my selfishness. I would be selfish having only love to offer a child. Ultimately, it was the threat of homelessness by my parents that definitively made my adoption “choice”. My greatest fear at the time was my daughter being placed in foster care due to my temporary lack of an address.
America, if I could relive that day again, I would run from that hospital with her in my arms and never look back. I would take my chances with being homeless and the foster care system.
Here I am 18 years later with 2 years behind me in virtual Adoptionland. A place I found out of desperation after learning that this “better” life for my daughter was nothing more than a different life. My instincts as a teen were on point. I wish I had never doubted myself. The realization that an adoption agent and my very own mother reduced me to a bodily function for total strangers has landed me in trauma therapy for the last year. I never received counseling before or after the adoption by the agency. I’ve secretly held myself together somehow all these years only to find out I’ve been suffering with PTSD stemming directly from the adoption. In the creation of a family of total strangers, my very real existent family was destroyed. I haven’t spoken to my mother in a number of years now. I respect my lost daughter so I cannot tell her story, but its one that angers me in a visceral way. I’m grateful that I found a validating world full of adoptees and moms in Adoptionland. No thanks to you America, we are a sisterhood that has survived in spite of adoption not because of it.
All these years, I thought I was alone. I thought somehow I was the one that fell through the cracks. Of course, all birth moms are abusive crackheads, right? They’re all infanticidal maniacs who need their children wrested from them immediately post-birth because of their emotional instability, right? Hell no. Hell.No.
America, you’re a liar.
After speaking with countless moms who had my very story, I began to look at studies. I was expecting to find that the majority of newborn adoptions occur as a direct alternative to abortion. We always hear people say “thanks for choosing life!” I was expecting to find that the moms I had met online and myself (who never considered abortion) were the outliers among the real “selfless” and “brave” birth moms. These “selfless” moms who sacrificed their bodies and their motherhood to create families for total strangers. These “brave” moms who chose not to murder their babies at birth, but instead chose to quickly hand them over to strangers before they changed their minds and strangled their little ones. I’ve been confused as to why we’re praised as “brave” while simultaneously equated to baby-killers. But, I digress. As we all know “adoption saves lives” and the very people that those lives are saved from are “brave” and “selfless” and promised “open” adoptions that close more often than not.
America, you’re a damned liar.
Crazy. I haven’t found a study yet that shows “abortion alternative” as the reason why a mother places her baby for adoption. Depending on the study, I have found that POVERTY and ISOLATION are the overwhelming reasons for adoption ranging anywhere from 70-85% of mothers.
America, you’re redistributing babies.
America, you’re waging class warfare.
America, you’re practicing eugenics.
America, you’re exploiting the vulnerable.
America, you’re implementing misogyny.
Enough about you for now, America. Let’s see what some of your neighbors are doing. We need some perspective to show how serious a problem you have. In an effort to convince you to put down the bottle. Perhaps, we could look at your neighbors who participated in similar practices such as the forced adoptions of the mid-20th century; Ireland, the UK, and Australia. These countries, including you America, perpetrated a great evil on an entire generation of young women during what is now called The Baby Scoop Era. You and your counterparts deemed young, unwed mothers unworthy of raising their own babies. So, you sent them off to maternity homes and took their children by force. There have been apologies offered by your neighbors, but America, you’ve swept these egregious acts under the rug. All that has been offered from you since is a collective yawn and look of confusion. Baby Scoop Era? What’s that?
Quick reminder:
Let’s compare numbers with your former partners in crime.
First, we travel to the United Kingdom. According to Adoption UK, “Today, very few babies are ‘given up’ for adoption in the UK.” Private adoptions are unlawful. Adoption UK shows that 230 children under the age of 1 were adopted in 2015. These numbers don’t differentiate newborn adoption from children removed by the State. I’m going to assume the majority were removed by the State due to the former statement about babies rarely being “given up”. But let’s say 230 children…like its going to even matter when we get to your numbers, America.
Next, let’s head to Ireland. Recently, the country has been in the news with the discovery of a mass grave where nearly 800 children were buried in a sewage hold. The Tuam Mother and Baby Home should serve as a reminder of what horrors can be committed against those most vulnerable in society; mother and infant.
Today, in Ireland newborn adoption is as rare as in the United Kingdom. Private adoptions are unlawful. According to the Adoption Authority of Ireland, there were 7 domestic infant adoptions in 2015. That was preceded by 6 in 2014, 10 in 2013, and 3 in 2012. Also, keep in mind, abortion on demand is illegal in Ireland.
Now to Australia. Personally, I’m incredibly fond of their adoption laws compared to the lack thereof in you, America. In Australia, private adoptions are unlawful. They have a 30 day wait before TPR (termination of parental rights) can be signed by the natural mother. They actually acknowledge “open adoptions” by requiring that a plan be presented in Family Court and penalizing those who betray them. It costs on average $2,000 to adopt domestically in Australia. Shaming of single moms in Australia has pretty much gone by the wayside. And best of all? Australia has issued an apology for their participation in forced adoptions as well as created memorials like the one above. So how many domestic infant adoptions were there in Australia in 2015? 45.
Let’s do a recap…
2015 Domestic Infant Adoptions:
United Kingdom- 230
Ireland- 7
Australia- 45
Ok, America, your turn. I know you like to bring in God when we talk about adoption. I’m truly hoping that you might question God after these numbers I reveal to you. Better yet, I’d really like for you to question yourself, America. Are you getting adoption right? Are you hearing God clearly? Are you misinterpreting the message?
I shouldn’t even bother with population comparison to the 3 aforementioned countries. But, for the sake of argument….let’s compare Australia to America. In population, America has 350 million compared to Australia’s 24 million. Australia is 14% America’s population. Abortion rates average in America 1 million per year (Guttmacher) compared to Australia’s 83,000 (Children By Choice) per year. Australia has 12% America’s abortion rate. Those seems like reasonable numbers. The population compared to the abortion rate is on par. Now, let’s move to domestic infant adoption.
America, you have some pretty skeezy adoption laws. I know, I keep stringing you along. But the number is so absurd. I’m really trying to drive it home if you can’t tell. I’m also questioning myself because of the disparity. I’ve gone over these numbers for hours. I’m honestly in shock. Have I missed something? Can you truly be this far gone?
America, the majority of states allow mothers, weakened by labor and under the influence of opioid epidurals and pain medications, to sign within 12-72 hours after birth. Irrevocable. That means no opportunity to realize a terrible mistake has been made after an extended time of high stress and 9 months of hormonal chaos. America, you allow private adoptions where prospective adoptive parents can pile their emotional needs on top of an already stressed expectant mother. You praise birth moms with all kinds of platitudes, but have so little respect for her that you don’t recognize, much less, enforce open adoptions. This isn’t the place I want to recount all of your abuses to mother and child, but suffice it to say, much of what you’ve done to natural families isn’t “of God.” With domestic infant adoptions averaging around $40,000, your deeds are more likely that of mammon.
So, how many domestic infant adoptions did you have in 2015? Actually, 2015 doesn’t even matter because you’ve averaged the same rate for the last 25 years.
18,000
18,000
18,000
That’s 400 times the rate of Australia. It’s 78 times the rate of the UK. It’s 2,571 times the rate of Ireland. It’s insane is what it is!
America, you have an adoption problem. This can’t be God putting babies in the wrong wombs this many times. It just can’t! I know you keep “getting called by God” to adopt babies, but are you sure? America, I just can’t keep falling for your unfounded biblical nonsense. Does God truly put 63 times more babies in the wrong American wombs than Australian, British, and Irish wombs combined? Is adoption really “saving lives” when we look at these numbers? Are American mothers 400 times less bonded to their newborns than Australian mothers?
America, you’re playing dumb.
America, you’re plugging your ears.
America, you’re looking the other way.
I know in the evangelical and prolife communities there’s a lot of talk about adopting. There’s a lot of talk about adoption vs abortion. There’s a lot of talk about healing the infertile. But, c’mon now. Adoption is a serious matter- it is literally the separation of a mother from her child. Have we lost that sobering perspective? It isn’t a win-win-win like some would have us believe. It isn’t a cure for infertility. It isn’t a passing religious fad. Its a separation of two people, I believe because of His Word, that God put together to be mother and child. My daughter was meant for me. She was my blessing. I will now live a lifetime without her. My subsequent children will live a lifetime without their big sister. Why? Because, as a pregnant teen, I was told that God meant her for others. I was merely a vessel and should have found pride in that. Everything was done through the power of others to separate us. My story is an American story.
America, you have an adoption problem. And the first step is being able to admit it.
**end note**
Reader- please tell me I’m wrong. Please find statistics on newborn adoption that would prove me wrong. Because realizing I was part of a machine, one that systematically rips mothers and babies apart from one another, is just too much to bear.
velvet bocephus 
I’m so sorry for your loss 😔 Thank you for sharing your story and truth. I wish the statistics weren’t real, I wish mothers were supported and encouraged to be mamas, I wish I hadn’t been seperated from my mom because of lack of support. I am a Baby Scoop baby. While I do believe God made the provision of a loving family for me because He is sovereign and knew the choice she would make or feel she had to make, shame and lack of support separated us, not Him. The gift you are giving your daughter now, will be able to give her when you meet her one day, is that you’ve spoken out, you realized the wrong and she will see from your writings how you wished it had been different, what you went through and how much you did and do love her. That is a gift many adoptees don’t get, either because they find a gravestone, or they face rejection a second time because of shame. Thank you for your voice. I love to read your stuff 💞
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Thank you Jamie for your kind words. I truly hope one day she will have a small inkling of my love for her. It’s hard to stay positive some days.
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I rejoice in your writing only because it is truth. I too lost my baby just like you and it is the worst thing that ever happened to me.
We met 8 years ago when she was 29. I hadn’t done any work beforehand so I almost was crushed under the weight of sorrow and grief all the while being giddy with joy having my daughter in my life. We have come to a new normal of love and respect. We are fierce for one another. And we are fundamentally very much alike.
I tell you this as a beacon of light that one day you too may be blessed with the type of reunion I have experienced. Not perfect – we lost 28 years and 5 months , but as good as any reunion could possibly be.
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Oh, thank you for the hope. People seem to think reunion is the be-all end-all. But that’s when many emotions arise. The grief of so many years and memories lost.
My daughter came to me at 15. And I was completely unaware of her trauma. I was still functioning under the delusion that adoptees are “lucky” to have 2 moms who love them. I had plenty of trauma from the adoption, but believed she had been spared.
She is still young. She is out on her own for the first time. I hope that maybe by the time she’s 30, she may want more. In the meantime, it’s hard knowing that I may have even more years and memories to miss with her.
I’m so happy you’ve had reunion. It gives me hope.
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I thank you for sharing your story, and am so sorry for your experiences. I am sorry you do not approve of adoption. I have 3 beautiful children through adoption. And am very thankful for the gifts our birth mom gave to us. Without their decision, I would have not have been able to be a mom. Our birth moms are an extension of our family and we are in communication and visit. My kids are now 23, 15 and 14. I pray you find peace and healing.
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They are “your” birth mom OR your children’s birth mom? I think that language is illustrative of the point the post is making.
Did the children’s birth mother place a child out of financial and/or social crisis…or were they placed due to abuse? If it was crisis, were they offered encouragement and empowerment to parent their children? If not, Why?
My daughter was not a gift for anyone. She was my blessing from God. Not to be regifted to strangers. I’m sorry that your children’s morhers were incapable in raising their children for whatever reason. Obviously, it wasn’t a lack of love if they are still involved in their child’s life.
There’s no healing from losing your child.
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Val,
To respond to two of your posts
1. It is not a creator -call him what you will-who causes hurt and pain to children, but adults who a society enables to do so AND the choices made by those adults. The Creator ( I call him Allah, others use another name or names) has provided rules which protect children and adults. It is adults who choose to ignore those rules, and in consequence it is the child who suffers. As adults, we are accountable for our own choices; a child is innocent and is not responsible for his/her actions until he/she reaches an age of being able to reason-not an age per se but a maturational point in which one fully understands an action of either omission or commission.
2. Many of us abhor adoptions and the agents who enable and promote them. Velvet is a mother who was coerced to relinquish her daughter because she was a minor child, one whom her own parents would not absorb her daughter into the family (as others have done) to be raised as a sister.
Velvet, even after she became an adult, was treated just as we adoptees are-as a minor in need of a minder to tell us what we may and may not and can and cannot do, too often with court-ordered identity theft which is sealed in some locked cabinet drawer and a closed adoption which separates us from our biological/genetic ties-sibs, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and yes, parents.
Velvet was told she was an extended family member and not a mother, thus deprived of developing a relationship with her own child, the very child who grew up as all adoptees do, feeling abandoned and anything but ‘special’ or ‘chosen’ or even with worth to self or society.
Velvet was shamed because she was too young to understand the urges of adolescence are not love but raging hormones (with the aid of Hollywood), and then denied her right to her own flesh and blood-And YOU DARE throw in her face that you are an adoptive parent with 3 adult children and that all is wonderful?! Fie! (In the usual manner of court ordered papers in which the child(ren) had no say, and probably told the lie about being special, chosen, and oh so lucky–and of course that ‘God wanted you to be their ‘mother’. Sweetie, if God had wanted you to be the mother to those children, you would have given birth to them!)
There is nothing worse than a pretentious deluded and selfish person who self-righteously takes something that does not in fact belong to them. In your case, the somethings are 3 adults who grew up with your and society’s lie about being adopted by you… (Because you are superior? Elite? Above the law of nature and biology? ) The truth is that you share no centiMorgans with those children-not one strand of DNA- and are the cause of a rift between them their genetic relatives. You are no more mother to those three now-adults than I am! As Charles Dickens remarked in his David Copperfield the Law ..is and Ass -to which I add ‘in creating the monstrous and reprehensible system called adoption.’
It wasn’t ‘God’ to all but destroy me or Velvet, but agents who promote unnatural lives for the vulnerable, be they abandoned or relinquished child, or adolescents who made errors in judgement, or women who are conditioned by 21st century norms to either have an abortion because the child in her womb is inconvenient or to have the baby and put it into the arms of some agent who already has someone like you to take it away from its own inheritance.
(And you will not be grandmother to any children those adoptees birth!)
The hypocrisy of people like you made me renounce Christianity at age 12; my own pluck enabled me to fight the system who swore that I would never know from whence I came or who my ancestors might be-not to have my own birth certificate with original information and my own sense of what is unjust helped me to ‘divorce’ brutal adoptive ‘parents’. And DNA helped me find my genetic heritage -unfortunately I have not located my younger sister ,, but did locate my brother in a grave ….
I detest adoption and adoptive parents! And your ounce of pretention is worth no more or less than a pound of manure!
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So God put all the abused adoptees into homes to be raped & beaten?
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I’m not following. Can you elaborate?
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Velvet – Lisa’s comment is a sarcastic reply to Val. Christians believe that God willed the child of another woman to be available for them to adopt: “you were born to a woman so that I could adopt you; it is God’s will”.
Since God willed Val’s adoptees to be available for her to adopt, then, by that logic, God also willed for other adoptees to be raped by pedophile adopters, and to be murdered by their adopters. It is all God’s plan and God’s will.
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Thank you. Oh, the mental gymnastics of assuming God’s Will. Adoption has to be one of the greatest destroyers of faith.
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I am a therapist who deals EVERY DAY with people who were abused, beaten, degraded, and molested by their biological parents. Abusive parents come in many forms.
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So naturally, exploit a young poor pregnant woman out of her baby and say it was “God’s Plan”.
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To Jamie –
I think you are missing the point of what transpires in the adoption process as far as a mother losing her child is concerned. As the author stated, her baby was meant for her, not a stranger. God doesn’t create babies in wombs of mothers that they’re not meant for. Also, more than lack of support being a reason for adoption which could be overcome with some assistance, adoption loss is often the result of a system that has perfected propaganda, coercion, persuasion and lies designed to remove a baby from a young, distraught and confused mother in order to place that baby with strangers for a profit. This is reality & doesn’t even come close to God’s design.
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As an adoptee, I want to applaud your sharing a birth mother’s perspective highlighting how the system dupes young girls/women in typical American fashion-one that enriches their own agendas, be they agencies of state, county, or privately run. You are one of the few to step to the spot pointed out by a official to score a goal to the back of the net.
Having spent most of my life in search (for more than 6 decades), I have empathy for your wish to find your daughter. I gather from your narrative that the state of her adoption is one of the 36 who hold with iron fist to the archaic practice of closed adoptions-sealed documents which makes it all but impossible for her to find you or you her; however, there are a few these states that allowed the birth parent to elect the relinquished child access to records or even to the parent. This, however, is not even close to the norm.
Have you considered DNA analysis as way to find your daughter? She is of the era to be aware of the benefits of this technology, one you might seriously consider using. There are several respected sites which market these tests. If you choose this avenue, and can afford it, have your DNA samples in as many databases you can which will enhance your possibility to re-unite with your daughter. Reliable labs are 23 and Me, AncestryDNA (child of Ancestry.com), FTDNA, and MyHeritage, all of whom have methods to advise you of those who share segments of your DNA with you. To have a match, both you and your daughter must be in the same database. Caveat; only 2% of adoptees will obtain a direct parent-child or other close family matches; ironically the same percentage as there are adoptees domestically and internationally. It may be even less chance for the birth mother searching for the child she relinquished-even those which were, in reality, involuntary or coerced.
Adoption was not customary until the early 20th century. Before that children without parent(s) were given a guardian which maintained their original identities and their heritage as well as inheritance. Re-read Dickens’ David Copperfield and Oliver Twist. And many children born ‘out of wedlock’ were absorbed as child of their grandparents or to an aunt/uncle.
You have mentioned religion in your essay, but only western religions seem to encourage the practice of what I call identity theft. Other religions do not ascribe to this method of (supposedly) child ‘ protection’ (The latter which is too often anything but protection!).
I would like to share what Islam teaches about bringing into your homes children who are not your DNA relatives. Its importance is that it preserves the integrity and birthrights of the child and forbids taking a child’s heritage and identity from them. Above all, no child-natural or not-is to be abused or abandoned:
Quran Surah 33 Al Ahzab (The Parties Ayats) 33:4 -5
[33:4] GOD did not give any man two hearts in his chest. Nor did He turn your wives whom you estrange (according to your custom) into your mothers. * Nor did He turn your adopted children into genetic offspring. All these are mere utterances that you have invented. …
Do Not Change Your Names
[33:5] You shall give your adopted children names that preserve their relationship to their genetic parents. This is more equitable in the sight of GOD. If you do not know their parents, then, as your brethren in religion, you shall treat them as members of your family. … you are responsible for your purposeful intentions. …
(translation of the classical Arabic)
In closing, I want to wish you all the best in locating your daughter. Vaya con dios and barakallahfik.
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Thank you gazelles.
Lots of great info.
I am actually the era of “open” adoption. It was explained to me as being like “extended family”. I would get holidays with her (Has never happened). Of course, my teenage self couldn’t understand why I was acceptable to be like my daughter’s extended family, but not really her mother. In what I felt was an inescapable fate, open adoption seemed my only hope. Of course, the hope open adoptions offer is used to ensure the adoption transaction. After our child is gone, we “selfless” moms aren’t given the decency or respect of legal protection for what we were promised. I was never told this “contract” wasn’t recognized by my State. I count myself fortunate, my open turned semi-open. Many if not most just close.
But we’ve lost so much. She is now a young woman and we love one another. I just gave to be patient as she figures out how her siblings and I fit into her world. None of these complex emotions or scenarios are covered in counseling if there’s counseling at all.
It’s bait and switch on one of the most vulnerable demographics. I wish the US could get past adoption industry propaganda and have a real discussion.
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Hello, Velvet.
I am elated for you that you and your daughter have been re-united. I can understand her confusion about now because she and I are the former children who were separated from our parents and siblings, etc., and who always asked why were not kept by the relinquishing parent. Even with an open adoption, there is lingering hurt… You are wise to maintain your patience as your daughter works through her feelings about you and her siblings of whom she knew nothing about.
As for the rules of adoption, they are, tragically, exclusive and brutal, and never on either the adoptee’s or the relinquishing parent(s) side, but only for their own agenda. For one such as yourself, this is beyond cruel because you were coerced or perhaps forced to relinquish your child-or worse, seduced. And I applaud your insistance that your are your daughter’s mother. Identity cannot be erased by a court or an individual; DNA protects that identity even when a state does not. No one chooses his or her genepool or birth parent and certainly never to be adopted and separated from those integral parts of themselves. No child asks to be born! Nor does poverty or wealth make more or less adoptions (or even abortions) increased or decreased) Many wealthy have abandoned or relinquished children, and many impoverished -or close to it-have taken vulnerable children into their lives and protected them far better than those who have better financial means.
The system known as adoption-on no matter which side of the fence we may sit -is very much like a now outdated advertisement for a certain perfume: Promise her (him/them) any thing but give them Arpegge (or in this case what the agency/authority chooses/dictates and the court enables.
My situation is entirely opposite to yours. I was abandoned -along with my younger sister-by both parents in 1948. We were separated from one another and a brother, adopted separately in a closed adoption with sealed documents. My adoptive parents were brutal, the husband enabled by his wife and the court and social services standing by the old myth that adoptees are liars and ingrates. It took me 30 years to locate and retrieve my own birth certificate, and another 30 to find a DNA relative.
Each time my adoptive parents used the court ordered name and called me daughter I raged in fury-the same fury I directed at a judge in the final adoption procedures of 1950 in the month of August. When they insisted that their son-born just before the final adoption orders, I screamed in fury that he was not my brother. Well into adulthood I was the ungrateful adoptee who did not see how fortunate she was to have been ‘chosen’…(for abuse? for separation from true family and culture and religion with an identity stolen? etc.)
The most abominable phrase in the English language is … ‘in the best interest of the child’ …
Unfortunately no counselor can help because they have no relationship or knowledge of out circumstances-not yours, not mine or of your daughter’s -or my younger sister who may not realize that she was adopted-although physicality is a red flag.
Once my parents dropped my sister and I at a dog pound, they never looked back … both are deceased.. perhaps lucky for them …
I hope that your daughter comes to realize how fortunate she is … Her mother searched and found her again.
My best wishes to you both!
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This reader is American. And I am adopted. And I agree with you and am proud to stand with a courageous Mother who’s bringing the change I want to see in this world. No more shall government, not any person put assunder what God brought together. We are always our Mamas children. Adoption has brainwashed many. We must unit and educate. Thank you for showing up Mama!! The truth will set us free.
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Thank you for stopping by. I’m so thankful to those every day who are speaking up. The validation has been literally life-saving for me.
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Reblogged this on One Woman's Choice.
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Ahhh. Don’t give Australia too much credit. Yes, adoption numbers are low. Yes, it’s easy to apply to find your biological family.
But!
Recently our foster system has been out of control.
Infants will be pre-emptively taken from their young mothers *before* there is a problem, and put into the system. The current trend is “This young parent is not emotionally capable of nurturing an infant because she/he was bought up in the foster system, so therefore we will take his/her child in put it in the foster system.”
It’s just a new work-around for “deserving people” to get freshly minted babies.
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Uh oh…sounds like they’ve been talking to the American foster system. Tsk tsk.
Thank you for your insight.
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In Australia in 2015 there were about 210 adoptions. But there are 40,000 children in foster care, waiting for permanent homes.
In fact, Australia is taking steps to ease the adoption process. Otherwise, those 40,000 kids in foster care today and the future children in foster care will remain without families, in many cases, growing up in institutions.
In the US, there are about 50,000 adoptions per year. More than 50 percent of the adopted kids were foster children first. The foster families then adopted them.
Of the 50,000, about 13 percent — 6,500 — were adopted by non-relatives, non-foster families.
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Thank you for your numbers on Australian foster care.
In the US, 50,000 would be a number to aim for, but on average it’s closer to 500,000. In 2015, it was estimated 670,000 kids in the had gone through the foster care system.(according to childrensrights.org) Again, leaving Australia close to 10% of American statistics.
Which leads me to believe that if population, abortion, and foster care are all represented in Australia at roughly 10-15% of American statistics- then it’s certainly of concern when domestic infant adoption is at such an extreme representation. The US having 400 times more DIAs.
I think much is culture. Our culture is awash in adoption propaganda. It’s religion. Adoption is encouraged in even the most fixable temporary circumstances for a mother. It’s socioeconomic. In pockets of the US, there is real disdain for poor single mothers. There are a lot of elements that have led to this perfect storm of destroying one family to create another.
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Foster kids waiting for a permanent home… and waiting for their birth certificates to be revoked and sealed and falsified. Waiting for their names to be changed for the sake the most holy sacrament of adoption. Bullshit. Change the foster care system! What about guardianship? Does anyone care about the child’s right to identity? Must a child give up their natural-born identity to be loved and cared for?
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I would love to dig into these stats. Can you reference where you got these numbers? I have found that getting real numbers around adoptions is infuriating. Not surprising though I guess.
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Each stat should have a highlighted link in the post. Yes, it is infuriating that good records aren’t kept. Makes it all the more welcoming to dishonest agents.
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Reblogged this on wsbirthmom and commented:
This is truth. AMERICA, you have an adoption problem. The facts speak for thrmselves.
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I am so sorry for your loss. I facilitate support groups for people affected by adoption here in Australia, both mothers, and adult adoptees. I also work with women who experienced their abortions in the same negative, coercive fashion and/or later came to realise their experience as a terrible trauma. What we do to mothers and their babies in both situations is horrendous. I am staunchly against the promotion of ‘adoption not abortion’ which has becomes so popular in prolife circles and speak out against it often. http://debbiegarratt.com/no-to-adoption-not-abortion/ Neither option seeks to uphold the sacred bond between a mother and the life she grows inside her. Both seek to exploit her in her vulnerability. Please keep telling your story and I encourage others to do the same. People will start listening if more speak up. Thank you for sharing.
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I’m so glad you came here!
I am pro-life & was very active for many years. That is until I found other natural moms and adoptees. Then I started seeing the pro-life movement in a different way. I was surprised by how many pro-choice people there are in adoption. I am one of few pro-life people. So, it’s something I usually don’t discuss. The two are conflated, but in many ways not related at all. I personally see one as aborting a child while the other aborts a mom.
For me to give my child a way, I was annihilated. I’ve battled with my right to exist for many years. And the pro-life movement is promoting this destruction in the US. And using God for much of its propaganda.
Thank you for the link.
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As a partner of an adoptee. the religious aspect of it all is so disturbing. It is his adoptive parents’ opinion that they were “blessed” with a baby, but the truth of the destruction they were a part of in his real family is not mentioned. They didn’t adopt him from birth, but I’m sure they wished they could’ve. Since my daughter was born they have been absolutely desperate to see her frequently, which I simply do not comply with. It all feels very wrong and unnatural to me that people would so obsessively pursue my baby, and push their way into her life. They feel they deserve the same respect that my own family does. However, I will never see them as anything more than deluded baby thieves. I used to feel guilty about having these feelings, but have since come to terms with them because it is instinctual. I can’t fight that, and there is reason for it.
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I had my son in 1981 in the UK at a time when infant adoption was dropping due to mothers knowing their rights and being able to get social housing / benefits if they were (are) unemployed or on a low income. My family – mostly my mother – pressured me into surrendering or should I say bullied because that is what it was. The social wrecker aka worker was just as bad. My story is here http://t.b.a.mychildlost.info/index.php?topic=24.0 if you’re interested.
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Oh, your story:(
That’s so common. It’s my story too. To this day, my parents refuse to speak of her or those decisions. So, we are estranged indefinitely.
To me, it is misogyny. An absolute hatred of our biology. And for adoption to be twisted from a response to crisis into an act of bravery- I can think of very little more symbolic of misogyny.
Thank you for your comment. Best to you and your son.
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Reblogged this on Bleeding Hearts. and commented:
This post provides some sobering numbers.
Additionally, in countries such as Australia, England, and Ireland, private adoptions are illegal, as it’s considered unethical. Imagine that. Thanks friend for writing this necessary post. America, we have huge problem.
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So much I left out.
I wish I had hammered the idea of adoption being an addiction. A lust. A mack truck plowing down any who stands in its way of getting the next hit.
Maybe next post.
Thank you for supporting and validating me. There is freedom in truth. And truth was denied to me for so long.
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It was a very very good post, thank you. I had been wondering if adoption was done anywhere else like it is in the USA. As I thought, it isn’t. The culture of needing a baby is strong here – you should check out the scary writings of people who are trying to conceive (reddit).. the women will say they go cry in the bathroom if their friend or family member gets pregnant before they do. It is insanity!
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Whoops, I didn’t see the “notify me of replies” checkbox until it was too late. If you reply to my earlier comments, could you let me know by responding to this one too? Thanks!
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Absolutely. Thank you for reading.
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Adoption is also like religion. It’s a cult. The deeper you go in, the deeper the belief. And the opinions stated as fact. And the shock and horror that there are people who actually see through the smoke and the mirrors – the mothers-of-adoption-loss and adopted people who aren’t “happy” about adoption’s life-long devastating affects on us. We must be healed. We must repent. e must be good. Or else we will be dammed to hell.
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Thank you for writing and posting this much needed post. If all the child-hungry-wanna-be-parents-of-someone-else’s-baby would read this, they might see the destruction adoption causes the family that has been torn apart. This ought to be mandatory reading in every adoption adoption agency and in every maternity home and in every delivery room. Social workers should incorporate what you say here into their mental caseload.
Speaking of caseload… did you know that social workers who work within adoption agencies must hold a caseload of 30 and up per month of children “freed” and “available for adoption”? Yes, that is true. If their caseloads fall under 30, they could lose their jobs.
I did not work in an adoption agency, but the crisis center in which I worked hired a young social worker who left the adoption agency she worked in precisely because of the DEMAND to separate children from their families to then work toward terminating parental rights in order to provide this child to waiting adopters. And to make money for the adoption agency.
Adoption is a multi-billion dollar industry. The rich buy the children of the poor.
And the religious are the worst to grab up the children of the poor. In the name of Jesus, these poor children must be saved. Saved from what? The love of their mothers? Their fathers? Siblings? Yes, children must be saved from abusive parents, but with the goal of family reunification once parental goals are reached and safety of the child can be established.
Family Preservation, kinship care should be paramount, not adoption permanency. Legal guardianship is another option. Guardianship preserves the child’s right to name at birth, birth certificate and family connections. Adoption destroys a child’s name, birth certificate, and family connections. Creating a new family via adoption is a fad, and the child is the fashion statement. The child is also the pat on the back for many religious people who see themselves as saving a child from certain danger or death if left in the care of their natural parents. right now I’m thinking of the Christian ministers who invaded Haiti just after the earthquake in 2010 under the “save the children” motto. Yes, race brings in another fashion statement. Children of color are more visible when adopted by whites.
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Amen!!!
What you wrote could be a post to share in itself.
How does the rest of society not see this?! It seems so elementary.
Are there links you could provide about caseload quotas?
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I am not sure. Will do the research. Each agency may have their own quota system. Also, the NCFA – National Council For Adoption – has it’s own guidelines and online training sessions that instruct social workers on how to talk to a pregnant girl and woman to sway her into believing she cannot parent her own child. These online videos were part of a class I saw online in 2012. No, I did not take the class, only saw it when someone pointed it out to me. You could go look up NCFA and find out if they still have this on their website.
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I will look into. Thank you!
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Because you have included hard statistics, a shortened version of this post would make a great op-ed submission to the New York Times. Please consider submitting. This is powerful and they type of writing and topic they wound consider, I believe. Thank you for this essay. For being a voice to those still untold experiences of those impacted by the BSE,and beyond.
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Hmm. I will look into that. I’m used to no one caring about us moms and adoptees. NYT would be huge.
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This is a perspective I had not heard before. As a legislator, it is an uphill fight to change the state law so that adoptees can get a copy of their original birth certificate. Cited in opposition to the law change is protecting the privacy of birth mothers. Articles like this and others show that plenty of birth moms don’t want that privacy protected by the state in contradiction to that argument. Thanks for your courage. I have a relationship with my birth family and my adoptive one and am fortunate for that despite the issues of growing up as an adoptee.
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Hi!
I follow you on Facebook and I’m thrilled you’re here! Thank you for all you have done. It hasn’t gone unnoticed.
Such a farce that moms want to be kept secret!
My mom sent my daughter to another country. So, she has no way to even prove she has American citizenship. We would have to go before a judge to make a formal request. Something we haven’t pursued yet.
Thank you again for taking the time to read.
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Richard Stark – “privacy of birth mothers”does not exist.
Not all adoptees were born illegitimately to single mothers. Many of us were born within marriages, given up due to death of one or both parents, adopted by step parents, adopted by grandparents, or, removed due to abuse and then adopted. The laws governing birth certificates were written when illegitimacy needed to be hidden, hence, the false belief in “natural mother privacy.”
I wrote extensively on this on my website where I posted scanned images of both my “medical record of live birth” and my “amended birth certificate” – falsified birth certificate. Please see: https://forbiddenfamily.com/2017/03/24/presenting-my-sealed-birth-certificate-and-falsified-one-as-evidence-of-new-york-state-fraud-revoking-sealing-and-falsifying-adoptees-birth-certificates-is-unconstitutional/
Quoting from my own article:
“Whether parental rights were terminated by a court, signed under duress, or voluntarily relinquished, the outcome is the same. Surrendering a child does not revoke, seal, nor replace a child’s birth certificate with a new one. The only legal process that results in a person’s total loss of identity of birth is court-ordered adoption.
These points are lost on mothers-of-adoption-loss who are in hiding. They do not want their names revealed to their now-grown offspring or their secret shame exposed to others. Even people who support these mothers, including some legislators, are not aware of these details.
Some raped mothers or victims of incest want confidentiality, but again, signed relinquishment removes all parental rights and does not guarantee confidentiality or anonymity. The pain of rape and incest should not force us as adoptees to lose our identity. The place to take emotional pain is therapy, not discriminatory legislation. Mothers-in-hiding need to accept that a medical record of live birth records the facts of birth of a new human being whether conceived within a marriage, by teenage love, an affair with a married man, a priest, a well-known public figure, a known or unknown rapist, a brother, father or uncle incest perpetrator. Perhaps these mothers are more afraid of repercussions when the father’s name is exposed than they are of meeting their own daughter or son. Maybe the fathers of some adoptees don’t want to be known so they fight adoptee-access legislation.
The belief that adoptees should be forever banned from knowing the truth for fear of “ruining” our mothers’ lives by revealing their terrible secrets assigns the stigma of bastardy to all adoptees. Those who were born illegitimately should not be punished for how they were conceived. But not all adoptees were born bastards. Many children were, and are, removed from married parents due to abuse or neglect and then adopted, sometimes more than once with each adoption creating a new birth certificate. Other children are kidnapped from their families, trafficked, and sold into black market adoption rings. Sibling groups are often split apart by adoption when one or both parents died, leaving the children half or full orphans; this happened in my family when our mother died three months after my birth. Many poor families are forced to give up the last child born to survive. Numerous children today are adopted by step parents, grandparents, or other family members so it is ludicrous to re-name these children, revoke and seal their birth records, create new birth certificates for them, and then impose “Mother-May-I?” legislation on them as adults.”
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A caveat is needed here before readers who don’t realize that you are speaking from your experience in one state, and like too many who encounter an issue -be it adoptions, cancer, education, or geography, et al present themselves as experts and have those who read you buying into every word you’ve written. New York State has until recently been one of sealed records & closed adoptions, but has more recently gone quite the other way in open adoptions which, in many ways, is far more damaging and problematic to the adoptee and birth parent that the older system. And although the ‘open adoption’ seems more promising when in fact it ii is as just as controlling as its closed version. NYS has also recently offered to some adoptees access to their birth certificates, except… (there is always the ‘except’ clause for adoptees) it is only extended to more recent adoptees but does not extend to we who were adopted in the 1950s and before.
The newer law does not, as the older one did not, cover the birth records of those adoptees who were not born in the state in which the final adoption took place, whether in NYS or the other 50 states/commonwealths, plus 5 US territories, and the District of Columbia. NYS is not the only state which leaves those of us not born in the state in which we were adopted with an avenue to have access to those vital statistics. And trust me, parents don’t carry vital statistic documents in their valise when traveling, and certainly not those who intend to drop off kids to a dog pound or street corner as was the case with my sister and I in the late 1940s.
Medical records are not part of a birth record; however, some do have # of live births and still births, spontaneous abortions, and children born to the mother who did not survive included on the birth record.. Medical information, like the information of a birth record are provided by the birth mother just as the name of the child is provided by her. This is not to be confused with an actual medical record completed by a physician with a current medical license. Unless the candidate adoptee was or has been treated for a medical condition, there would be no record in the child’s file. Should the child now adult be of a certain age, the records they seek may have been purged-destroyed, not digitalized or micro phished. State and county courts have limits as to how many files they can keep, and many don’t provide for or even consider the needs of the now older adoptee(s)
The newer law does not, as the older one did not, cover the birth records of those adoptees who were not born in the state in which the final adoption took place, whether in NYS or the other 50 states/commonwealths, plus 5 US territories, and the District of Columbia. We are simply SOS* if we do not know the circumstances of our births.
*A term used in the Navy and other military services which is not used in polite company.
(BTW, I am not from NY and was not adopted in that state, but am aware of some of its legislation and regulations concerning adoptees and relinquishing parents.)
That said, there are currently 36 states enmeshed in the morass of closed adoptions with sealed records. Each state has it own rules & regulations concerning adoptions and adoptees, the latter of whom are often considered as property of the state and unable to have the sense God gave a goose no matter how old they may be… kind of like an indentured servent whose term of servitude has no end. Few, if any, states actually have cluses in a relinquishment document that allow the relinquishing person(s) rights to refusal or even anonymity. the latter is extant in the change of name of the adopted child noted in the final adoption order. Some states now offer the adult adoptee right to his/her ‘medical’ records and birth certificates with the proviso that the birth parent can stipulate that their name be stricken from the proffered documents, thus defeating the whole purpose of the original request for those records. As for those so-called medical ‘records’ they most likely have little basis in actual fact and few details, not to mention that they were noted when the now adult was newborn, by the mother who was under duress. Some states have procedures for the adoptee to petition the court for access of their record, but submitting a petition is no guarantee that it will be granted.
And some states, like Nebraska, have not only draconian adoption laws that have been in place since before adoption replaced guardianship=a kinder and gentler means of protecting the parentless child. Nebraska also has a child abandonment law that makes hemlock an inviting alternative to those abandoned and one that allows the abandoners to escape any punishment for leaving a minor child alone and homeless. Cruella De Ville surely was the author of either set of legislation in Nebraska, where a minor of any age up to the age of majority (now 18) can be left with the simple statement that the ‘parent’ no longer wants them, whether that is a natural parent, a foster parent, or a surrogate (like the grandmother who raised her daughter’s child born out of wedlock as her own so as to keep it in its natural family. That by the way is quite common, even today.)
You have left out the issues of abandoned children… we who may well be the greatest population of adoptees. I will come back to this later as I have an appointment to meet and must end this conversation for.
PS If you have life ,you are not illegitimate, nor are you a bastard… think about it.
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gazelledz – “If you have life ,you are not illegitimate, nor are you a bastard… think about it.” Yes, of course, we know this deep down, but the laws were written in the 1930s to hide illegitimacy. I, myself, am a half orphan. I was born the 5th child to married parents. Our mother died when I was three months old… our father relinquished me to adoption.
No, I did not forget about abandoned babies. If you read my entire article (follow the link), I wrote:
“Foundlings may be the only children who need a legal family construct. Infants who are found on doorsteps, in dumpsters, or left in baby drop boxes typically do not have a birth certificate. They are issued a foundling certificate which approximates the date of birth and the baby is named by the person who finds the child. Once adopted, foundlings, too, are re-named by their adopters and are issued a falsified birth certificate instead of an adoption certificate. In the past, it was nearly impossible to locate the mothers of foundlings. Today, we go after putative fathers for child support using DNA, so mothers who abandon their infants could be found through DNA and hospital records.”
I continued with this:
“Criminals who are imprisoned for life never lose their civil right to their birth certificates. Felons who were executed had the right to die as themselves. Adopted people, however, are stripped of a civil right for life, and death, because of one reason only: adoption.”
Also, I am very familiar with open adoptions. Open adoptions are a social construct and are not legally enforceable (in terms of contact between relinquishing mothers and their child). And, the adoptees’ birth certificate is still revoked and sealed and falsified.
This is the case in New York State and most of the United States. What I wrote about has basis across all of the United States since the idea of creating new birth certificates upon adoption was introduced at a national conference of state registrars of vital statistics in 1930. See https://forbiddenfamily.com/1930-birth-records-of-illegitimates-and-of-adopted-children/
When I stated “medical record of live birth”, I did not mean that medical records would be handed over to the adoptee… A medical record of live birth is another name for the long form birth certificate that is signed by the attending physician who assisted with the birth and witnessed the child’s actual birth. Birth is a medical procedure. The document that is issued by each state’s health department within five days of birth is a medical record of live birth – the long form birth certificate that non-adoptees have.
This differs from the legal birth certificate issued after an adoption. This document is not signed by a physician because it does not state the medical facts of birth. It may or may not name the hospital of birth. It may state the time of birth, may indicate that the birth was a single or twin or triplet birth. All the other “facts” stated upon a birth certificate issued after adoption are false facts and are not true to the birth of the child.
All of the above is true in all of the United States. Kansas and Alaska are the only two states that did not seal the factual birth certificate from adoptees. These two states did, and do, however, revoke the official certification of the true birth certificate issued within five days of birth. Kansas and Alaska, as in all other states in the Union, issue false birth certificates upon adoption. This includes open adoptions.
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Good post…but you overlooked the major cause…. American capitalism. Adoption is a mega-billion-dollar entrepreneurial industry. Mega bucks are made redistributing babies.
Mira Riben http://mirahriben.bloigspot.com
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There is definitely an issue when babies are sold as consumer products alongside iPhones and vacation homes.
Thank you for the link!
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To Gazelledz-
Your previous post to the adoptive parents who thought their adopted children were placed with them by God’s design, was right on target. Sadly, many misinterpret God’s Word, the Bible, to mean that adoption is from God. They misinterpret the concept of spiritual adoption where God has grafted us (gentiles) into His family with His people the Jews through faith in Christ as Savior to define earthly adoption which is an entirely different concept.
Nowhere in the Bible does God support taking a woman’s child away from her to place with another family. The story of Moses, is one which adopters often like to use to support adoption. They leave out the fact that although Moses was taken into Pharaoh’s household, he was also nursed by his mother and later as an adult, returned to his people the Jews & his mother. They like to leave that last part out. In fact, in Isaiah God says, “Can a mother forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb?” – Isaiah 49:15
Of course not and our Creator knows that & didn’t intend for us to part with our own babies to give to strangers. We can’t forget them but the adoption industry lied & told us we would. So, it’s not Christianity that’s to blame..it’s the adoption industry which has totally twisted what God has intended – to keep families together – to mean something much different.
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Val – it’s not any human’s/woman’s responsibility to make you a mother. We are not your personal fertility vessel, called by God almighty, to be impregnated and give birth to your special blessing. We were not put on this earth to fill the role of a brood mare for your blessing and pleasure. You were made infertile and no human should be required to undergo the death of motherhood to give you your “blessing.” Staying delusional about what adoption really is can only bring further harm to those it seeks to harm/destroy…the mother/child bond. You may have 3 children from destroyed bonds/relationships, but that doesn’t make it okay.
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Thank you for your great and honest writing.
I’m an adoptee and mother who lost my only son at 15 to adoption. Unknown to em he was profoundly disabled and died at 8 around the same time I went searching for him. There is a void of grief and PTSD that never heals due to systemic failure that punishes women and their children.
The Grieving Mother http://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/culture/indigenous/display/50688-colebrook-blackwood-reconciliation-park–fountain-of-tears- statue you are referring to in Adelaide, South Australia is not a specific memorial for relinquishing mothers or Forced Adoption Era, or what you refer to as Baby Scoop – its specifically to remember the “Stolen Generation” .
Stolen Generation refers to Indigenous women and families who had their children removed by the Australian Federal and State government agencies and church missions, under acts of parliaments. The justifications range from motivations of genocide and ethnic cleansing- included the belief that the Aboriginal people would die out, and children could be christianised in white homes and missions. Often the children were taken as unpaid servants.
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Thank you so much for your comment. I’ve read briefly in the past about aboriginal treatment in Australia. It’s interesting that in the name of peace and Christ, people can behave so barbarically. (I’ll edit the picture in the post)
There seems to be a savior complex that pervades the religious. Where they no longer worship at the altar of a savior, but believe themselves to be saviors.
Most mothers of loss were perfectly capable of raising their children. They suffered, and still do in various places, under socioeconomic pressures. In America, the added single mother shaming and out of context scripture, creates a perfect storm of white saviorism.
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Reblogged this on FORBIDDEN FAMILY and commented:
Yes, America, you have a problem. You are addicted to adoption.
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Wow! Thank you so much for providing this perspective. I am a product of forced adoptions in Canada. My biological mother was 15 (and black) when I was born and my biological grandmother never ever knew that I existed until I showed up at age 22. My biological mother died at age 30, and I often felt that it was from heart break. It is so valuable for adoptees to have confirmed what they intuitively feel their birth mother must have felt. It is so horrid to take a child from a mother. I remember that during G. W’s first campaign, he often spoke about adoption laws, so that children could have “loving families.” I would think, ‘wow, that is an awfully big assumption.’ And why aren’t you doing more to help birth mothers keep their babies, or placing babies with family members or with able couples in the community who assist with the raising of the child, rather than removing the birth mothers from any contact. Your article is very powerful and we need much more truthful and first-hand accounts. And yes, when my adoptive parents once told me off for lying, I replied, “I think adoption is the biggest lie there is.”
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Thank you Raymond for sharing your story. It is so important for reasons of validation and culture change that we share our stories.
I wanted to include Canada in this piece, but felt it was already long enough. But yes, Canada participated in the scooping of babies and have since changed. It seems the US decided to go in the opposite direction of everyone else.
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I’m so sorry for what you went through. I can also tell you however that my stepdaughter is one of the other 20% that you speak of. She aborted 2 children and gave the other two to a family member to raise. And my twin sons mother gave them up in a divorce where she told her ex (my first husband) that he could have the kids if she could have all the material things. What happened to their dad you ask? He died 3 years after we married. I petitioned to keep the boys and she let me. I raised them. Loved them. Still love them. And I encouraged them to have a relationship with her. So reach out to your daughter. Even though she has other parents, she can still have you too. It would be a blessing to her. And a blessing to you. (((((((Hugs))))))) By the way, yes…..God loves you. More than you know.
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There are at times a neglect in knowing some of the more positive side of adoption.
Myself; I became pregnant just months before high school graduation. In those days, middle 60s, it was NOT acceptable and I would have been kicked out of school. Before continuing with MY story, some background.
My mother had been very ill for about a year before she died when I was 9 years old. I and my siblings were being cared for my grandparents and various relatives, including the infant born JUST before our mother died. Before mom died, dad knew that he had to provide for several children so he offered marriage to a single mom with 2 children, she accepted but she refused the infant. His only recourse was to put the infant into adoption. Both the birth and adoptive parents (and relatives) knew whom the infant was and whom adopted the infant; not so unusual in the ways humans behave and needs…families know whom is in need etc.
About a year into dad’s second marriage, his wife’s mental illness required hospitalization and ALL remaining children were placed in orphanage and foster homes. Over 7 or so years, one or two of us were able to stay with dad or grandma for brief periods but mostly we were ‘in the system’. I was in foster care from age 10 to 18. The year I turned 18, 1965, my step-mother and grandmother died and dad was able to BRING US ALL HOME, I was with dad for about 4 months.
So back to ME…I was in 1965, like thousands of others, a KID HAVING A KID. I was in the foster care system, but RETURNED to my parent’s home and care. Legally, I was an adult, 18 for a girl (21 for a boy). That gave me the RIGHT to make my own life’s decisions. The father of my child was under age, BUT, he took responsibility and wanted and DID marry me and claim his child.
RIGHT before the marriage ceremony the priest said I did NOT have to marry, I could GIVE MY CHILD UP INTO ADOPTION. I said WHAT??? I WANT MY CHILD. THE FATHER WANTS THE CHILD. Did we have income and the means to raise the child? HELL NO! I barely graduated from HS and my husband was a dropout, but he DID have a job. Did we have the skills to raise a child? No but we learned! And within a few months I was pregnant again! So I did what THOUSANDS of others did and do…I got on birth control! And continued with raising my children!
Our marriage did NOT work, we divorced, I went on welfare, I went to school, I got a job, I raised my children ALONE for 12 years before I married again. BTW…I was on welfare for 3 years and WORKED full time for 37 years retiring with a government PENSION. My children’s father, worked and was good at his job; he was NOT good at paying child support or being a father…such is life!
So I married again when my children were teenagers. My new husband wanted to adopt them, they wanted that as well. In my state of NY, a child over age 14 must give their permission to be adopted. As happens with some teens, they go through ‘identity crisis’ times and that’s what happened to my daughter, she DIDN’T know who she was, didn’t know her father, she was ‘probably’ going to get married early and she did NOT want to be adopted. That was her choice and decision.
When I married, my name changed; my children initially thought their name changed as well. We explained the process. Over time with home-studies, background checks, etc etc, my children learn that they HAVE to be interviewed by a judge to give permission. We pass; my daughter declines adoption, my son wants to be adopted. My husband WANTS BOTH children and never favored one over the other!
So comes the time to SIGN THE PAPERS…
Page number one states that I AM THE BIRTH MOTHER, who GIVES UP HER CHILD into ADOPTION.
That makes me a ‘birth mother’ in the adoption triad!
Page number two states that I AM THE FOSTER MOTHER OF THE SAME CHILD GIVEN UP INTO ADOPTION.
That makes me a ‘foster mother’ of a child being adopted!
Page number three states that I AM THE ADOPTIVE MOTHER OF SAME CHILD THAT WAS GIVEN UP BY BIRTH MOTHER WHO WAS IN CARE OF FOSTER MOTHER.
That makes me an ADOPTIVE MOTHER in the adoption triad!
ADOPTION is NOT AN EVIL institution. Many need adoption, for various reasons. If someone doesn’t like the fact that they are adopted, that doesn’t give them any more rights over those that are HAPPY that they were adopted.
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No offense, but what in the world does your story of a step-parent adoption have to do with exploiting poor expectant mothers and offering to separate them from their children rather than empower them with love and support?
Did you read the post? This is your response? A non-sequitter?
I can’t believe I’ve deigned myself to respond to this.
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Oh, I see your name now.
Your reputation precedes you.
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And non-sequitur. I completely butchered the spelling. Your comments will receive no further responses from me.
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I didn’t want to edit the original post, but I do want to add that it was pointed out the image is that of an aboriginal mother in Australia. Since Australia’s beginnings they practiced separating aboriginal families via force. There is a memorial entitled “The Space Between” that is for unwed mothers of the mid 20th century.
Thank you to the commenter who pointed this out!
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Interesting!
On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 2:03 AM, velvet bocephus wrote:
> Velvet Bocephus posted: “Dear America, I spent the first 16 years of my > adoption experience as a “birth” mother in complete isolation. It was > preceded by the nearly 10 months of family-conducted isolation during my > pregnancy. Such is the life of a shamed pregnant teenager. I had” >
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A powerful piece to share your voice. I reblogged this at https://riddlefromthemiddle.com/2017/09/01/forever-family-we-sink-or-swim-together/
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Someone mentioned the NY Times. They did do an article about this a few years ago:
https://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/a-birth-mother-with-the-right-regrets/?mcubz=1&_r=0
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Thank you Ericka for relocating this 2013 NYT essay. I remember reading it in 2013 and probably not responding as a ‘birth’ mother but as an ‘adoptee’, either term being imposed on we who did not ask to be labeled like a pickle or libeled … but who will forever after be seen as ‘the other’ n o matter which side of the fence -or blanket-we arrived.
I just re-posted the essay on my FB page along with the following caveat to those who might read it:
Leave the atrocious and pretentious 2013 ‘headline’ alone and read this account of the now adult teenaged mother who, in 1987 and unwed, relinquished her son for all of society’s ‘noble’ reasons … for what the courts say and the social service agents and even ‘men of the cloth’ say-‘in the best interest of the child’ (and, in sotto voice, the best interest of the child’s mother.)
And try not to buy into the ‘lingo’ … any woman who gives birth is a mother… whether or not her society tricked her into relinquishing her child. This woman is the mother who found the son she bore in 1987 who had grown into a 26 year old with a court-appointed ‘family’. They -she and he-are genetically tied far more than any stroke of his honor’s pen can fabricate.
Also, try to remember that, although it is not mentioned, the son is an ‘adoptee’, an imposed label pinned on him and me and too many other against our wills.
And be reminded for the zillionth time that not all who were relinquished were of an unwed parents scenario. Many of us were intentionally abandoned-unceremoniously dumped at a predetermined location to be snared in the webs of states who encourage the action-allowing the offensive parents impunity from felonious activity.
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Thank you for reminding readers, again, that “not all who were relinquished were of an unwed parents scenario.” I wasn’t. My 30 year old mother died when I was 3 months old. She left behind 4 other children, ages 3 to 9, and her 31 year old husband of 10 years. I am a half orphan. I know there are others out there like me, but, as of yet, I have not met any adoptees who were relinquished after the death of one parent. Full orphans are out there, too, but again, none have come forward. Or perhaps they do not know their story. There are others who were adopted by step parents, relinquished by the absent parent after divorce from the custodial parent. Other adoptees were adopted by their grandparents, or aunts and uncles, or older cousins or siblings. Still others were born within marriages and removed by social services due to neglect or abuse.
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gazelledz, I like your opinions and how you wrote them, but please clarify (if you don’t mind) if you are a “dumpee” — that is, one who was unceremoniously dumped.
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