(Pro) Adoption Special: Dr. Drew encourages teen moms to give up their babies

Jane

“Adoption is a loving and courageous decision.” Dr. Drew (whose real name is Drew Pinsky) parroted these words at least half a dozen times on the MTV (Pro) Adoption Special, an offshoot of MTV’s popular 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom which aired July 12. I think I first read these words in an Ann Landers column in the 1950s.

Lest viewers think adoption is all give and no take, Dr. Drew threw in something for the moms who make these selfless decisions, repeating the questionable claim that statistically mothers who give up their children achieve more education and land better jobs. I read that in Ann Landers too.

Dr. Drew, a physician, has no training in adoption and only recently got into the business. He has made his career as a media personality giving advice about drugs and sex and offering professional opinions about celebrities whom he has never met or examined. Actor Tom Cruise’s attorney likened him to Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda.

Drew Pinsky, MD

Dr. Drew is clearly unaware (or paid to ignore) that adoption experts agree that children should stay with their natural families when possible. (“Every attempt should be made to preserve the family of origin, and when family preservation is not possible, to safely place the child in the extended family,” L. Anne Babb, Ethics in American Adoption, 1999.)

The July 12 show featured three birth mothers: Catelynn, Ashley, and Paige. My heart went out to all three as I saw them trying to cope with their loss. Catelynn insists she has no regrets but it's clear that she and her daughter's father, Tyler, live for the letters and pictures and yearly visits with Carly, adopted by Teresa and Brandon. Tyler, Teresa, and Brandon appear with Catelynn on the show. Catelyn's adoption counselor, Dawn, also makes an apperance. Catelynn is proud that she gave a couple who could not conceive a “gift.” Catelynn is so much in denial, that she's been co-opted by the adoption industry. She visits high school, talking to teens about adoption and reports that four teens told her they were “choosing adoption because of her story.” She doesn't say whether she volunteers or is paid, but so much for whether these shows do more harm than good. 

For all Adoption Practitioners

Catelynn and Tyler explain that they gave Carly up because Carly deserved better parents. (No one suggests humane ways of providing more for children such as improved services to low income families.) Dawn, the adoption counselor, concedes that Tyler and Catelynn could have “parented” Carly but they wanted “more” for her than they could provide. Encouraging adoption by a couple capable of “parenting” (IE, they have more money)  should be considered malpractice and some authority ought to look into the ethics of Dawn’s counseling.)

Teresa and Brandon let us see the “more,” playing a video clip featuring their big house, Carly playing the piano, riding a rocking horse, and searching through her ample closet for a pair of pink crocs. The video closes with Carly holding a book which plays a recording of Catelynn and Tyler reading [All Things] Bright and Beautiful. When the video ends, Catelynn and Tyler are wiping away tears; say how much they appreciate the film. Catelynn adds that “Tyler always wonders what’s she doing right now. Dr. Drew comments on how lucky Carly is and everyone agrees. Dr. Drew breaks out in tears.

Judas Goat (Catelynn)

While Catelynn’s brims with superficial confidence, Ashley is mired in remorse. Ashley, whose book Bittersweet Blessings is due out this fall, placed her daughter with her aunt and uncle, Lisa and Kenny, who also appeared on the show. Ashley cries most of the time she is on camera, repeating that she wants her 18-month-old daughter back. "I wish someone had stopped me from giving her up." A clip from an episode of 16 and Pregnant shows Ashley trying to care for her daughter while her mother insists that she is on her own. "I've raised my children," she shouts. Ashley gives up and calls the prospective adoptive mother to come for the baby.

“I feel selfish” [by not raising my daughter] Ashley sobs. Catelynn responded with “If you were selfish, she would be here right now.” Ashley countered with the most perceptive statement of the hour: But doesn’t that “mean that the other teen moms who kept their babies were selfish?” Dr. Drew quickly took over: “Catelynn means she understands the deep impulse to want to be with a baby but it’s not selfish to make a choice that’s painful for you but is better for the child.”

George Orwell

Dr. Drew bullies Ashley about not continuing in therapy. He runs a guilt trip on her, telling her that “all that pain and ambivalence you’re feeling; they [children] absorb this; they feel responsible for it.” He accused her of undermining the adoptive parents, that her ambivalence raises doubt on them as parents.

Paige is new to the series; she came on the show through Catelynn who took her to a birth mothers retreat. Paige gave up her son through the notorious Bethany Christian Services, which uses “crisis pregnancy centers” to indoctrinate women into giving up their babies. Paige is accompanied by her mother, Ruth Ann, who encouraged the adoption. Ruth Ann acknowledges that she had not anticipated her daughter suffering in post adoption. She agrees with Dr. Drew that, without adoption, their lives would have unraveled. Paige adds that giving away her son gave her the chance to go to the senior prom. When Dr. Drew asks whether Ruth Ann talked to Paige about birth control,  Ruth Ann admits she told her daughter only about abstinence.

Joseph Goebbles

The show concludes with Dawn making a pitch for “adoption language” eschewing “giving up your baby” in favor of “making an adoption plan.” Adoption is “active parenting.”

I turned off the TV shaking my head. Other than allowing some contact between birth parents and the adoptive family, adoption hasn't really changed in the past half-century. It's still an Orwellian world, complete with its own newspeak, where wanting to raise your child is selfish and requires therapy to cure, giving away your child is loving and courageous, and everyone sheds a lot of tears.

Meanwhile, young mothers will be suckered into giving up their babies (oops, making an adoption plan) as Dr. Drew (Goebbels) spouts adoption industry propaganda. There’s a little irony here because the redistribution of children “to give them a better life” has roots in the same thinking which led to the eugenics promoted by Goebbels’ crazed employer.

------------------

Lorraine here: You know sometimes I just can't handle watching every adoption show that comes along and so I passed on this one when Jane pointed it out. I think I would have been enraged as the hour unfolded. Social worker Dawn is a tool of the adoption agency and ought to be in some other business, such as running diamonds from Africa; Dr. Drew ought to be drawn and quartered for his Orwellian opinions on the redistribution of children; and I couldn't help wonder how the show would have been to be watching as a grown-up adoptee who is less than thrilled at being given up...and then adopted. Let's all remember that every adoption starts with a catastrophe in someone's life. (Someone did comment about how this affected her at an earlier blog--she was bawling through it.)

Lorraine

Is little Carly going to be "thankful" she was adopted when she turns out to be like her natural parents? Is  Ashley ever going to not regret her decision? Are people going to ever stop thinking that abstinence is the only route to teach their daughters and sons? Why does the world still think that being adopted comes without its own set of unique problems? We've been preaching that adoption is way more complicated than the average woman on the street thinks it is, but seemingly to no avail. We write the blog and then we get hammered by even folks who largely agree with us.

In the meantime, I gird for Sunday night when the main character of In Plain Sight, Mary Shannon--who inadvertently got pregnant when she slept with her former husband--has been talking about giving up her baby as if she were giving away her cat's kittens (if she had a cat, which she doesn't). Mary already turned down her sister as a prospective parent, though she is about to be married to a nice guy. Mary's mother doesn't want the child adopted. The writers have made not even a nod to father's rights--will he show up? Mary has said she doesn't even want to let him know. Will there be an unscrupulous social worker who fails to tell her that she must tell the father? That he has rights? It's weird that Mary Shannon is even pregnant because in real life nearly all women like her (a tough talking federal agent in the witness-protection program who doesn't want kids) would have had an abortion. Her pregnancy totally strains credulity.  

In Plain Sight had been a merely escapist show for me until this pregnancy came up; now I have to see what the hell the writers and producers are going to do with this baby. I sometimes feel that there is no where we can go now where adoption does not rear its unfortunate and unhappy head. It's on Sunday night at ten; nine, central time on the USA network. Stay tuned. If you hear screaming on High Street Sunday night it's because the writers have their head up their asses. Along with the adoption-promoters at MTV.