Me, at a few weeks old. Right after I was relinquished by my mother.
I read this link on the first mother forum...and I can’t fully agree. I agree that Scott Simon is a tad deluded. But I don’t think he’s evil, and I certainly think he is significantly more “aware” than most adoptive parents. The fact that he wrote a book and bothered to write a letter to the FMF is already a step in the right direction.... how many adoptive parents live blissfully unaware of the issues surrounding adoption, convinced that their adopted child will never turn out like we “nutballs” who write against it? Every single adoptive parent I know in real life. Including my own.
Which brings me to the point of my post. I am disgusted by the villinization of adoptive parents. I’m sick of it and I think its bullshit.
I do not think adopting a child is wrong.Wanting to raise a child is not a crime people. There is nothing morally wrong in having resources and wanting to raise a child. Adoptive parents don’t “have” babies like their non-adoptive counterparts. They raise children. And the desire to do so does not make them morally corrupt or evil.
The majority of the population, especially in the United States, believes that adoption is an altruistic and loving act. We, as an adoptive community, will never ever ever ever EVER be able to convince the WORLD that the adoption of a child is wrong.
But you know what I DO find wrong? Giving up a child for adoption. That, my dears, is a travesty. I’m talking about the year 2011. With modern day medical procedures, cultural acceptance of single parenting, various aid programs offered by the state and federal governments...what reason could POSSIBLY exist for a woman to give up her own child? How do we justify that? How can we say that it is a good thing?
Youth, the desire to finish school and join the work force, unsupportive partners and disapproval from family members are all good reasons NOT to have a baby. But none of them are good reasons to have a baby and give it away.
I’m not stupid. Adoption will always continue. There will always be women who think it is the right choice. And there will always be couples who are ready to adopt that baby.
But we are focusing on the wrong targets. Why villinize adoptive parents ? In order for them to adopt a baby, someone has to give one up. If there are fewer babies available for adoption, fewer people will be able to adopt. It’s simple math. To achieve change, we need to go to the heart of the matter.... the mothers who are thinking of placing. We can give them a truth that their agencies will never tell them. We can tell them our stories, give them the wisdom of our experiences, warn them against something we do not feel is right. If THEY listen, then we have won another battle. But fighting with adoptive parents who have already adopted or are considering it? Please. WAKE UP PEOPLE! There will always be couples that, for whatever reason, will want to adopt and raise a child. If we tell them they are wrong, they will laugh at us. And they will adopt anyway.
The person who is MOST concerned with the welfare of the child who might be placed for adoption is their mother. If we can convince her that adoption is not a good idea, that it hurts all involved, that her child might NOT thank her for her “selflessness”. I love my natural parents... I do. But I will never thank them for what they have done. I just don’t see a reason. They did what was best for them at the time. They had all the resources to keep a child.. in fact, they DID keep the next baby born 23 months later.
I love my natural parents, but I do not respect them for their decision to place me. I don’t think giving up a child is any sort of act of altruism or love. It may seem like it sometimes, but at the end of the day the fact is this: there is a reason that something like 1-2% of mothers choose adoption for their infants. It goes against everything that we, as human beings, were made for. It destroys the very fabric of the most important structure in our culture- that of family.
Telling adoptive parents that they are selfish, deluded baby stealers is one of the most absurd things I’ve ever heard. And I think that those who do it are directing anger in a place where it doesn’t belong, and I think they are fighting a battle that they will never win.
Stop mothers from giving away their babies. THAT’S the answer.
11 commenti:
The difference is, biological parents conceive their children.
Adoptive parents do not.
Wanting a baby is inherently selfish. But it's how you end up raising the child which impacts everyone else - particularly in adoption, where the child is part of another family as well.
Huge difference there.
I don't think he is evil. But I think he needs to be held accountable for his spreading ridiculous romantic stereotyping of adoption. He is a public media figure and deserves criticism when he speaks FOR first families and adoptees....which he is neither. He is what is wrong about adoption. Not because he adopted, but because of his ignorance.
Just a thought. In international adoption, sometimes children are taken from their first families because there are adoptive parents out there who want children. And it's really the agencies that push adoption. Yes, mothers surrender, but sometimes they make that decision based on extreme pressure from agencies that are backed by adoptive parents money.
Do I think all APs are evil? No. But I do think there are some that will go to any level to get a child, ethical or not, and I think those people ought to be ashamed of themselves. And I agree 100% that adoption NOW is a crime. There are plenty of other solutions.
It's a chicken and the egg problem. Adoptive parents create a market for babies, and then that market is filled by women who either place babies for ridiculous reasons (and there are many of those these days) or because they are coerced or babies are stolen from abroad, etc. And because there are women who are horribly selfish and place children for ridiculous reasons (see above), there will be a market for adoptive parents. I have felt really depressed about this recently having read too many stories on Birthmom Buds that made me physically ill. Adoption is not birth control, it's not a convenience to keep a man, or the solution to not feeling like parenting this particular child. How can married parents with children place a child? Seriously? What is wrong with this country???
I love my APs and don't see them as baby stealers in any way. They were parents in the best sense of the word. No complaints. They were lied to by the agency, though, and my adoption wasn't without its nasty, morally suspect parts.
I at least know that I wasn't placed for frivolous reasons, although on the flip side, I was placed so that my nmom could have the clean slate and find the husband and have the nice family in the suburbs.
I am feeling very angry today, so I had better stop here before the obscenities start coming out.
So turn it around on the first mothers who were coerced, lied to and decieved in so many cases? Good going. A battle that we will never win? Why does it have to be a "battle". Why can't we speak out about what happned to us without being told that we are villifying poor adopters and that we deserved what we got? I will NEVER accept that. I will never stop speaking out about the abhorrent way I was treated by baby brokers and their paying customers, after they got what they wanted from me. You don't know each individual story or what heppend to someone. Who are you to judge someone, when you have not walked in their shoes? It is so easy to sit in judgement of the vulnerable, scared women who were faced with unplanned pregnancies, who THOUGHT they may have been doing the right thing at the time. Never blame the almighty, altrustic adopters, now can we. After all, they are the ones who are willing to pay any price whatsoever to purchase a newborn.
By the way, what about the despicable, dehumanizing ways adoptive parents speak of first mothers whom they initially befriended? First mothers are never villified, are they? We have a prime example of that right here...
After the way I was treated
I will chime in on a few points others have made.
In the U.S. in the 1930's and before, adoption was unheard of. Women were encouraged to parent their children, with laws such as mandatory breastfeeding time period laws, because there would be a scarce few people who would want to adopt those babies if they did surrender them. When the demand to adopt children increased, the industry changed to instead encourage infant surrender.
I do not think that all adoptive parents are selfish or clueless. But I also don't think it is OK for Adoptive Parents to influence a woman's decision to surrender with profiles full of all they can offer, promises of openness (which they may or may not intend to keep and in most states, do not have to), or where a mother feels obligated to surrender because of pre-birth matching practices?
An a-mom blogger wrote in astonishment a few months back about reading an (international) agency newsletter geared to waiting hopeful parents, where they said they were doing outreach to pregnant women about adoption.
Adoption has many players and each needs to understand the part they play or do not play and how it affects others. Especially public figures who want people to buy their books--books that tell an adoptee's story on the adoptee's behalf no less.
(There wasn't supposed to be a "?" after one of those paragraphs. My browser hiccuped).
I belong to a forum where expectant mothers considering adoption come to learn and ask questions about adoption. They come expecting to hear the usual drivel about how adoption is a loving choice. MANY of them refuse to believe the words of us mothers (and even a couple of adoptees) who have been there and done that and advise them to do everything possible to raise the child they love but don't feel worthy of raising. They are so full of the "rainbows and sunshine" stories of adoption that they have heard since they were young children themselves. They are full of the "wonderment" of adoption from adoptive parents like Scott Simon. Often the words of us mothers are the first time they have ever heard a negative word about adoption, so therefore we are written off as "bitter and angry".
That is why I blog. That is why it is important that you continue to blog about things like this. So that maybe just one mother facing an unexpected pregnancy will find our words, the words of the other mothers and adoptees, and see that there is more to the story than what they have heard from a society that puts importance on material things before family. Things they have heard from a society that judges who is worthy of being a parent and who is not by the money they have, their age, and if they wear a wedding ring or not.
I don't think it's about whose fault it is ~ I think it's about moms and adoptees speaking out and telling our truths TOGETHER.
Amanda and Susie said it well.
The cards are stacked in favor of adoptive parents in the constellation, but that doesn't make all of them horrible people. Nor are all natural parents poor, beleaguered saints who would have kept their children against all odds but had their infant children pried from their fingers. Some adoptive parents are morally corrupt, some natural parents are. We're human. That's how it goes.
I don't vilify, but in my own case, the facts paint no fairy tale on my natural family side of them mourning me and wanting me back. They didn't, and for the most part, don't. My aparents are lovely people who have opened up their hearts and homes to my natural family and who do not judge them. There has only been contact between them and my brother, and it will likely stay that way, at my request. My natural mother is fond of denial and Kool Aid, and while I love her, I am not going to make excuses for inexcusable behavior. Enough is enough. She wasn't one of those who wept in closets every year on my birthday. She didn't even REMEMBER my birthday, by her own account. Sad, really.
I am fully aware that many women during the BSE had their children taken from them by family, shame, circumstances and they hated every minute of it. There was no choice, only pain and suffering. There is nothing heroic, nothing to be vilified. I feel acutely for these women, but I cannot change their lot and THEY are not my mothers.
What bothers me is the blithe happiness with which the young natural mothers over at Birthmom Buds describe their processes of placing. They feel little regret, if any, and many of them are in very different places in their lives than the women of the BSE: married, financially secure, already parenting, etc. I cannot wrap my head around placing a child in such circumstances, and I know that many of these women have been told by adoptees and natural mothers alike that placing comes with pain for themselves and their children. And they do it anyway. And they blog about it, and they seem to care so little for the feelings of their children that it hits me like a brick to the gut. THAT's what I was criticizing above, not the acts of natural mothers writ globally.
I have been thinking recently that there is so little point in writing or participating in discussions because it is so painful for my adoptee self. Nothing changes. Then again, if we don't keep speaking out, there will be no messages out there to counter the happy dappy stuff.
Thanks for the pep talk, Susie.
I agree with most of what you all wrote. I *agree* that its a chicken and egg issue....but there will always be less women thinking about placing than couples waiting to adopt. And I think trying to convince couples that adoption can be a bad thing is pretty fruitless. I think its more prudent of us to reach out to mothers who are considering placement.
I'll respond to the rest later (it's early here in Italy and I've got to get to work). But I want to respond personally to "anonymous" :
Be very, very careful before you accuse someone of not knowing what its like to experience an unplanned pregnancy. Very, very, very careful. I don't know who you are, anonymous poster, but the fact that I post my name doesn't mean you know me.
And oh please, I am not villinizing anyone! Give me a break. I'm not blaming ANYONE for adoption when it occurs. But I do not accept that it is magically the fault of potential adoptive parents. In this industry, I see so much finger pointing. And you know who is the ONLY party whom I find completely blameless? The adoptee.
I know the industry is corrupt. And thus, I think that we should focus on the same group that the industry focuses on.... women with unplanned pregnancies.
They are the ones giving up infants to the adoption industry. What happens to those children after they are relinquished isn't something we can help. Whats done is done.
Why is encouraging pregnant women to step up and not choose adoption seen as villinization or an attack? Help me on this one. I just don't see it.
When I see people like the ones on Birthmom buds, preaching the wonderful aspects of the choice they have made....it sickens me. It really does. In these days, I see very few really good reasons for placing a child. Sure, there are some pretty good motives to do so. But I would bet my right eye that women who are in situations where they should not be raising a child are not utilizing the internet to share their stories.
Am I not allowed to criticize? Because I might hurt someones feelings. Grow up people. Adoptive parents do not cause adoption.I'd be willing to accept that they play a part in that they are the ones the industry is serving. But I think thats as far as it goes. The adoption industry and the women who are placing are perpetuating it. We can't stop adoptive couples ( and I dont think we should) and its gonna be damn hard to stop a billion dollar industry. But you know what we can help? We can tell pregnant women OUR truth. In the hopes that when they come across other blogs like birthmom buds they will not be so quick to hail it as absolute truth.
I don't take back anything I said. If you see it as a criticism or an attack, that's your problem.
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