Does adoption run in families?

Jane

Are adoptees more likely than other mothers to surrender their children for adoption? In 1966, a new social worker at the Florence Crittenton Home in San Francisco told me that many of the pregnant girls at Crittenton were adoptees, hinting that perhaps adoption was not the panacea for unwed pregnancy that it was made out to be. However, she added, other workers assured her there was no correlation between being adopted and subsequently giving up a child; it only seemed that way.

Although I’ve seen no studies, I’m convinced the Crittenton workers willfully ignored the link between adoption and surrender. One of the first birth mothers I met at my first American Adoption Association Conference was an adoptee and I have met many adoptee/birth mothers since. My fellow blogger Lorraine’s surrendered daughter, Jane, gave up a baby. Although Jane is gone, Lorraine has reunited with her granddaughter, Lisa Marie.

I was reminded about the connection between being adopted and surrendering a child  
recently when I read an article in The New Yorker (May 16, 2011) about children’s author and novelist Paula Fox and her new book, News from the World: Stories and Essays.

Fox’s mother, Elsie de Sola Fox was 20 when Paula was born in New York City in 1923. She and her husband, Paul Fox, placed Paula in an orphanage soon after her birth, intending that she be adopted. As Paula Fox recounts in her 2002 memoir, Borrowed Finery, she was rescued at the last minute by a poor but cultivated minister in upstate New York. Her parents soon resurfaced, however. Never sharing more than a few scattered moments with their daughter, Fox’s parents shuttled her from one exotic place to another, New York City, Cuba, Hollywood, Florida, New England, Montreal.

At 20 Fox became pregnant and, following in her mother’s footsteps, she surrendered her baby up for adoption. As her daughter Linda Carroll recounts in her 2005 memoir Her Mother’s Daughter, Fox explained when they reunited 49 years later: ”’I thought that you were me, and I was my own mother. I thought that by releasing you at birth, I would ensure you would not have to go through the pain and bewilderment that I went through.’”

At 20 Carroll married and gave birth to a daughter, Courtney. Carroll wrote: “When I became pregnant with Courtney, I had thought: Now I am my mother, young and pregnant by the wrong man, and this baby is me, but I will do it differently. I will keep her and love her. She will never feel that she doesn’t belong.”

That was not to be. Courtney was a difficult child. After the age of 8, she lived with Carroll only briefly, cared for by a series of relatives and therapists until she was sent to a juvenile facility for shop lifting at age 14. She never returned to her family.

Carroll and Courtney’s father divorced and she married again and had two more daughters. She and her husband adopted a three year old boy African-American Joshua. “Adopting a child seemed like a perfect way to give something back to the world by doing what we loved—raising a family. I also felt it was my duty, since I had been adopted. And beneath all these good reasons, both Frank and I secretly hoped that this child would be a shared vision, something to reinvigorate our faltering marriage.”

Carroll’s marriage to Frank failed anyway. She married Mark and the family moved to New Zealand. Joshua became increasingly distressed and distant from the family. After a visit with a family with several multi-racial boys, Joshua asked to remain with them. Carroll and her family returned to the US, leaving Joshua in New Zealand. When he was grown, Joshua returned to the US and reunited with Carroll and her family.

Courtney became a singer and married musician Kurt Cobain. They had a daughter Frances in 1992. After Cobain’s suicide in 1994, Child Welfare Authorities placed Frances with Carroll because of Courtney’s drug use.

I’m convinced that adoption played a part in the difficulties the Fox women have had in raising their children. The saga may have begun even before Else de Sola Fox abandoned the infant Paula. Elsie was the fifth child and only daughter born to a Cuban mother, forced by her father to marry at age 16. Elsie too married at a young age and had four abortions before giving birth to Fox.  
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for more see earlier post: The Adoption Cycle: Adoptees who have babies they relinquish

TO READ
Her Mother's Daughter: A Memoir of the Mother I Never Knew and of My Daughter, Courtney Love

5.0 out of 5 starsA Raw and Honest Autobiography of an Adopted Daughter's Struggle for Her Identity

Bychemesson December 22, 2016

Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

A very, very intimate and honest memoir. So many mistakes in her life; so much bewilderment! Linda Carroll seems

to see herself as one of a series of nested mother-daughter Russian dolls. Great metaphor! This unique individual 

tells her story in a way that is so raw and exposed that you feel as though you are experiencing her life through her 

eyes and heart. The subtitle is correct in that Linda's story involves a hellish struggle with her firstborn daughter, but 

her publisher insisted on exploiting her daughter's fame over Linda's objection. But ignore the subtitle, as the title 

"Her Mother's Daughter" captures a repeating theme of mother-daughter relationships. Who are we, really? The 

product of our mother's upbringing? Of our birthmother's genetic gifts? And are *our* daughters' fates solely in our 

hands and responsibility? This book struck a primal chord to me, also an adoptee, but with a different story.