How giving up a child affects you in the long-term

Lorraine

Grief and anger are two emotions that we first mothers know plenty about. Often only when the grief can turn to anger are we often able to make a positive step in working toward changing attitudes and reforming adoption, but so much in the culture comes at us day after day that it feels as if we are taking two steps backward. The bliss of adoption is everywhere.

Some Mormon singer has a song about carrying a baby for another woman, as if this is a wonderful thing, something to celebrate. We read about the corruption in interntional adoption--particularly now in Ethiopia--but I also read a profile of Connie Britton, an actress who's making it big at forty, but right there on the second page is "her son Eyob, a 2-year-old she adopted from Ethiopia in 2011." My elderly neighbor, temporarily forgetting because she disagrees with me, says that the couple next door, in their late thirties, early forties, are thinking about
adoption and she holds up crossed fingers, wishing them luck. At an adoptive mother's blog of the Mormon persuasion (and we know how pro-adoption Mormons are), a mother cries and moans and posts pictures of her teary self because after three days, the natural father is opposing the adoption--her third--of a newborn, and while I don't remember the details and won't go back to read the blog to be further repulsed, the father is a a junkie or a thief or maybe both. On Facebook, you can get into arguments on pages such as The Skeptical Mother, where I did, or BraveLove, that advertises itself as "A Movement to Increase Adoption in America." There you can read a post that says:

LITTLE KNOWN FACT: 100% of all birth mothers have the right to choose the amount of openness in the adoptive relationship.

(according to the 2007 National Survey of Adoptive Parents)

This is because more adoption workers do not tell unsuspecting prospects, that is, a scared young pregnant teen, that she can. We read somewhere in the ongoing saga of "Sixteen and Pregnant" TV teenthrobs, Tyler and Catelynn, that Dawn, their social worker at Bethany, chided Catelynn, saying, if you wanted a more open adoption, you should have asked. When you are not given choices, when you do now know the impact of giving a baby up, what are you supposed to ask when you are sixteen and dealing with an adult whom you think has your best interests at heart? 

THE COST OF SILENCE
Adoption today is trumpeted today as a universal good thing. For infertile couples who wish to have a family, it is a solution. For religious organizations and fellow-travelers, agencies that use the cover of religion, it is a business. For liberals who want to do good and keep the sense of family about them, it is a way to keep population growth down. Celebrities adopt and get on the cover of magazines, thus encouraging ever more people to raise other people’s children. A liberal think-tank, the Center for American Progress, encourages women to surrender their babies in order for the mothers to have a better life in a research paper called The Adoption Option. What is rarely talked about--except at blogs like First Mother Forum--is the long-term mental and physical effect of surrendering a baby to others for adoption. One expects short-term grief in the aftermath of signing away one’s rights a child one has borne, but what of the long-term lasting impact, four, five—twenty—years later?

We are not doing so well. While there are millions of us out there, we are hard to study and pin down—we do go on and have lives and get swallowed up by a code of silence that many families and friends adopt. Our previous post, When a first mother hears people talk about adoption, reveals that even for first mothers as public as Jane and myself, speaking up is fraught with anxiety in most circumstances, even after it would seem that she and I, two of the most public first mothers, would sail through such chatter. Though those in the business of adoption do not want to hear about it, the toxic aftermath of the decision to relinquish shows up in all the research that does exist.

A British study of 93 birth mothers found that while only an insignificant proportion of these women had been diagnosed with a mental health problem before adoption  (3 percent), in the time between the parting and contact, 24 percent had a psychiatric diagnosis mainly for depression, with half of them having had inpatient treatment. [1] Not surprisingly, mothers who felt compelled to search for their children were those who fared the worst.

LONG-TERM NEGATIVE EFFECT OF RELINQUISHING A CHILD 
An Australian study of over two hundred first mothers[2] found that more than a quarter of them (28 percent) reported below-average adjustment at the time they were questioned, many up to twenty years later, and half reported an increasing sense of loss since placing their children. A comparison group of women who had not given up children were found to be in sounder mental health than the women who had. Authors of the study identified three risk factors that exacerbated the difficulty of “adjustment,” for want of a better word: lack of opportunities to talk about their feelings related to surrender; no social support; and ongoing sense of loss. Yes, support groups and friends who allow first mothers to talk about their sorrow may help, but they do not alleviate the overall sadness that permeates their lives. 

A survey of more than 300 birth parents, most of them members of Concerned United Birthparents, found that surrendering a child was perceived by them as having a profound negative effect on their later lives, particularly in the area of marriage, fertility and parenting.[3] One could argue that they were self-selected to be skewed towards pathology, as they were largely members of an organization devoted to the issues surrounding surrender and its impact on the surrendering parent, but nonetheless, the results are the same as other studies.

In one of the earliest books to investigate the effect of adoption on birth mothers, The Adoption Triangle,[4]the authors (a psychiatrist and two social workers) found that in numerous letters from first mothers collected years after surrender, “there was still the intensity of feeling and the need to describe the pain, still carried within…. Even if the birth parents had become comfortable with the decision [to relinquish] because there were no viable alternatives, they nevertheless felt loss, pain, mourning and a continuing sense of caring for that long vanished child.”

Another study available on line, the Birthmother Research Project,[5] found that on average that women who surrender children are more likely to have hysterectomies than women who do not. Researcher J. Kelly, M.A. writes: "The survey results supported other research findings…that birthmothers experience difficulties with unresolved grief, traumatic stress symptoms, self-punishment, low self-esteem, arrested emotional development, living at extremes, difficulty forgiving oneself/others, being out of touch with feelings, difficulty giving/receiving love, relationship problems, self-hatred and dysfunctional sexual problems. Unresolved grief, self-punishment, and low self-esteem ranked highest among the difficulties identified as extreme, often or severe."

EMOTIONAL DEVASTATION WHEN 'OPEN' ADOPTIONS CLOSE
One often quoted study[6] that is used to promote adoption suggests that women who give up their babies are better off than similarly situated women who kept their babies. However, read farther into the study and you learn that a full third of the women who had relinquished were not at peace with their decision—but a third of the original participants--nearly 600—could not be located to complete the survey four years after relinquishment. Many were young women (21 and under) who had been residents in a home for pregnant teens, or recruited for the study because they were considering adoption for their unborn babies.

Ten percent of the women who surrendered their babies reported a great deal of regret, while 90 percent of the women who kept their babies reported no regret. Now it is true that mothers are not likely to say they regret keeping their children, but still, the findings show a marked negative impact on the mothers who surrendered. Yet this study has been used to show that giving up a child can have a positive effect on the birth mothers because they are more likely to finish their education and less likely to be receiving public assistance. Furthermore, the mothers in this study were surveyed four years after relinquishment, and for many surrendering mothers the full extent of their grief is not realized until years later. For some, the grief is suppressed for years, and then comes out in a heated rush. They write of the emotional devastation that the surrender of their children has wrought throughout their lives in memoirs and various social networks, and comments left at blogs such as this one.

This study was done in the Nineties when open adoptions began to be more available, and two-thirds of the participants did help choose the adoptive parents, and more than half of the respondents had received follow up pictures and letters. But four years later, only 12 percent said they had phoned or visited since the child had been placed with a new family, so fully open adoptions were not typical. The one positive note is that those who did help choose the parents, and were not coerced into surrender, reported less grief and worry, and more relief and peace, then mothers who did not have this opportunity. The cohort that had the least regret and sadness were those who had continuing contact with the adoptive family. How great or small this number actually is remains a large mystery. According the Donaldson Institute, mothers who believe their adoptions will be open, but find them later closed, suffer the greatest.
 
While writing about this, I am reminded what a well-known Manhattan psychologist, Lee Salk, brother of Jonas, once said to a close friend of mine he was dating: “You don’t want to end up like Lorraine, do you?” The comment stung—what kind of vibe did I give off? I wondered, I’d only met the man briefly, I was an editor at Town and Country magazine at the time, I was in a relationship, I did not think of myself as some pathetic creature—but whatever aura I emanated at the time was inconsequential to the larger mosaic of my life: he knew my story and innately understood that giving up a child would always leave a hole.

Life did go on, but not without my daughter, a secret I carried in my pocket. That saying about time healing all wounds depends on whose time it is. You don’t want to end up like Lorraine, do you?

(Copyright, 2013, Lorraine Dusky, from a memoir-in-progress, soon to be released. None of this may be copied or used without written permission of the author.)

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[1] *The Adoption Triangle Revisited: A Study of adoption, search and reunion experiences by John Triseliotis, Julia Feast and Fiona Kyle, 2005; The British Association for Adoption & Fostering.

[2] Safeguarding the Rights and Well-Being of Birthparents in the Adoption Process, Donaldson Adoption Institute, 2006, revised 2007, pps. 46-50. The Australian study is one of several included in the Donaldson report.

[3] Eva Y. Deykin, Dr. P .H., Lee Campbell, M.Ed., Patricia Patti, B.S.N., The Post Adoption Experience of Surrendering Parents, American Orthopsychiatric Association, 1984, pps. 271-280.

[4] A. D Sorosky, Annette Baran, Ruben Pannor The Adoption Triangle: Sealed or Opened Records: How They Affect Adoptees, Birth Parents, and Adoptive Parents (1989) p. 72.

[5] J. Kelly, M.A., Birthmother Research Project. 

[6] Pearila Brickner Namerow, Debra Kalmus, and Linda Cushman,“The Consequences of Placing versus Parenting Among Unmarried Women,  Families and Adoption (The Haworth Press) pps. 175-197.

From FMF 
When a first mother hears people talk about adoption
How shame keeps birth mothers from embracing reunion
Response to The Adoption Option 

Books
The Adoption Triangle (above left)  "A classic and the first to deal with how sealed and open records affect adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents. Originally published in 1978," ... it is as true and open as the changes advocated ... comprehensive, factual, forward looking, totally honest, readable and thoughtful ..." Los Angeles Times.

Adoption Triangle Revisited  (above right) This is an amazing book. Although many books that document the search and reunion, this one revisits those involved in the adoption triangle, at least 10 years after reunion, through a comprehensive questionnaire and review. The statistics are there, but the qualitative insights and stories make the reading experience enriching and sympathetic. The summary at each section under review relates the findings to known psychology of adoption and pulls the whole set of stories into perspective. Worthwhile new insights here. I see that it is currently unavailable at Amazon; I got mine shortly after it came out. Try ABE Books if you are determined to get this.

On a computer note: I have lost the ability to transfer scanned photos to my computer and I don't know why. I have a new (old) picture of my daughter and myself that I want to show you, but though I scan it, it doesn't seem to move to my computer, as such photos did in the past. What did I do? Grrrrr. Any ideas out there? Please email me at forumfirstmother@gmail.com.