Should the Goverment Encourage Women to Choose: The Adoption Option, Part Two

Jane

"Birth mothers who participated in more recent open adoptions... found that approximately two-thirds reported a feeling of peace about their decision and were very certain they would make the same decision again." This data, reported in The Adoption Option, a report from the Center for American Progress, is from a 1997 study in Marriage and Family Review, and we do not know more about the first mothers who participated in the survey, or the number of them, or how soon after relinquishment did they participate, and if the study was under the auspices of an adoption agency, where the outcome would be influenced by the survey taker.*

Lorraine

We suspect many of those "at peace" were like Catelynn, a young first mother featured in People, struggling not to cry as she insisted she and Tyler, the baby’s father, did the right thing. When last heard from, the Catelynn and Tyler were planning their nuptials and were hoping that their daughter, now being raised by a North Carolina couple, could be their flower girl. This is so bizarre we couldn't make this up. We will have to check in on them in ten years and see how "at peace" they--and the child--are.

We further suspect that the mothers who participated in the survey mentioned above were questioned not long after relinquishment when the first flood of relief of not having a child to raise due to circumstances is utmost on their mind--and before the adoptive parents chose to close the adoption, something that appears to occur at a much greater rate than suspected, according to anecdotal evidence. At least that is likely to be impossible with the People magazine publicity.

And no matter how many were "at peace" with the decision to relinquish in an open adoption, that means that a full third of the women involved found this experiment in human engineering a failure, that is, they were not "at peace." In what other kind of survey would a one-third failure rate, no matter how that number was achieved, be considered a good result? If one-third of the people who, say, bought the Rosetta Stone to learn a language were not "at peace" with their decision and found the product not as advertised and demanded a full refund, the company would go out of business. But in the adoption business, one-third of the women participating in an open adoption are still suffering from unresolved grief, and that is touted as a "success." 

The ill-advised Adoption Option does acknowledge a downside of adoption for the mothers who bear the children, noting that: “A significant portion of women who placed children for adoption in circumstances that were closed, secretive, surrounded in shame, and sometimes coerced have experienced chronic, unresolved grief.” Ah, yes, that would be us. And the many many other voices that are heard on the Web through the blogs, as well as other writings.

Quoting from the Evan B. Donaldson report (Safeguarding the Rights and Well-Being of Birthparents in the Adoption Process), we learn “that the poorest grief resolution occurred when adoptive parents did not honor agreements for ongoing information.” We know this happens with incredible frequency. We cannot prove it, but we do have a figure of 80 percent of open adoptions facilitated by Bethany Christian Services end up closed in the first few years.

The Adoption Option decries “outdated stereotypes about birth mothers and the adoption process. ” Outmoded stereotypes?  Now here we wish the report had gone into greater detail, as it seems to silly ole' us that most everyone concedes that birth mothers come from all social strata, that we are not all crack whores, and every prospective adoptive parent hopes the mother of the child they are hoping to adopt is a careless college girl who was impregnated by the brilliant professor in X (your choice) field. But we digress.  

Perhaps our favorite line in all the report is this: "Congress should provide grants to establish national public educations campaigns to accurately inform the public about adoption and its potential benefits for all involved.”

Spending money to promote adoption would be the biggest waste of tax payer dollars since the bridge to nowhere. No one is unaware of adoption. We grant that it is sometimes a necessary evil. Adoption purveyors run incessant advertisements in the print media and on the Internet to seduce women into “making the loving decision.” The “potential benefits”--spa-like living quarters (see the Gladney website, see the great gym and swimming pool, see the video clip Bastardette is showing at her blog), college scholarships, travel, and yes, of course, being free to pursue their dreams—are displayed in living color. 

Some time ago we wrote about college scholarships being offered to women after relinquishing their babies, and while we are in favor of education, and scholarships, we cannot condone such obvious "gifts" to young women in exchange for their babies. It smacks of baby-selling. Give me your baby, and you can go to college; keep your child or have an abortion, and Gee, sorry, we have nothing for you. This is baby selling prettied up as a scholarship, which inherently sounds good and removed from the dirty business of baby selling. Why not outright grants of $30,000 to girls for their babies so they can achieve their dreams of an education? But we digress.

Despite the deficit facing the United States today, keeping mothers and children together is well within our capabilities. Western Europe and Australia have much lower adoption rates because they support needy mothers and babies and tightly regulate the adoption industry. That can and should be done here in America, but public policy promotes adoption by not supporting poor single women who have babies.

The conclusion of the report is a mass of contradiction, as it notes that it is not the role of government to persuade or coerce a woman to give her child to others to raise, and "we should be wary of any programs that would propose increasing the number of infants available for adoption at the expense of pregnant women's interests." Sounds good, but this is after pages of suggestions as to how adoption should and could be made more acceptable--and thus make it more attractive to women considering it. Isn't that a back-handed way of persuading women to giving her child to others to raise? 

The answer can only be: YES.--lorraine and Jane

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*Note: For more on the study sample, see comments submitted by one of our readers and fellow blogger, Cedar, and repeated here: 

- participants were surveyed only four years post-birth! This is NOT long-term. Weinreb states that it takes at least five years for the grief/devastation/loss to be fully realized! 4 yrs means the exiled mothers are likely still numb or in shock.


- almost 1/3 of the original survey group could not be found for the four-year follow-up -- if you were a traumatized mother, would you participate if it would trigger you?

- in this study, "parenters" have a much higher satisfaction rate with their "decision" than "placers" but that gets no mention when the study is quoted by agencies.

- the researchers don't tell about background factors as to whether "placers" are getting intensive counselling, are on meds, etc.

- the researchers admit that there are "persistant" socio-demographic differences between "placers" and "parenters" but do not explain that these could be leading to the "better socioeconomic" results for placers -- i.e. if you start off in a better social class with less oppression, you are likely to stay there, child or no child.
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Next: The reforms proposed by The Adoption Option.