An adoptive mother asks "How can adoption be less horrific on first mothers?"

Jane

An adoptive mother wrote to First Mother Forum apologizing for “intruding” and asking a series of questions, trying to get her head around first mothers’ pain and how it might be lessened. She has a fully open adoption with her daughter's first mother, who has told this adoptive mother repeatedly she is so glad her daughter is happy and safe. She closed by saying “I just want to commend you for speaking out so courageously about your grief.”

First Mother Forum thanks Anon for writing and assures her that in no way is she intruding; FMF welcomes all readers. Her questions are excellent and FMF appreciates the opportunity to respond. 

Those who have suffered so terribly, were your adoptions closed?

Fellow blogger Lorraine and my adoptions were closed. Knowing that my child was gone irrretrievably—and that I caused it-- made the pain almost unbearable. I consoled myself by telling myself I would find her someday.

Although it may seem an odd analogy, the best I can describe my feelings is that they were like what I felt watching The Bridges of Madison County. The Meryl Streep character ends her affair with the Clint Eastwood character because she knows it would be wrong to leave her husband and children for him. The movie closes as Streep sees her lover on the street as she and her family drive by. She follows him with her eyes, peering through car windows obscured by blinding rain until he disappears forever, the sorrow which she tries to hide from her family glistening on her face. I could not breathe watching the scene.

Lorraine

Lorraine here: The knowledge that the closed adoption meant "forever" added a crushing layer of misery to relinquishing my daughter in 1966. I managed my life day to day seemingly quite well, but episodes of grief continued to haunt me: How could this be forever? Was she alive? Was she well? Was she loved? When my daughter, found in 1981, died in 2007, the grief then too was overwhelming, but different. I knew I would always miss her, but the knowledge that this was final, that this had an answer, was easier to accept than the endless questions before we had reunited. I believe it is impossible for women who have not experienced relinquishment of a child to an unknown faceless future to understand what a hell adoption is to a woman who has.

I don't mean to imply that open adoption solves all issues. It must be extremely heart-wrenching to watch from near or afar your child becomes also someone else's child. But at least those first mothers in open adoptions do not stare at faces in the street, at the mall, in Starbucks, and wonder: Could that child be my daughter?

“Is it at all possible though that through reforms and just plain good sense that the experience for a birthmother, though always a lifelong loss, always a life altering event, can be less horrific?

Studies show that fully open adoption makes the loss of a child easier to bear. By fully open, FMF means a trusting relationship where the birth and adoptive families become extended families to each other. While they have an open adoption agreement spelling out rights and obligations, the parties never find the need to look at the agreement.

Open adoption agreements are not enforceable in many states. Sadly, some adoptive parents treat the agreement as just a ruse to get a child and soon close the adoption. What research there is shows that mothers whose adoptions have closed have the poorest grief resolution. *

Short of doing away with all adoption, would educating more people on the plight of the birth mothers and things that can make the ordeal easier on her be the answer?”

Educating the public is not the answer to making the ordeal easier on mothers but exploding myths about adoption would help. FMF would like the public, particularly the media, to stop glorifying adoption. The public should know that mothers do not give their children as gifts to deserving couples and birth mothers are not baby factories. Adopted children are not meant by some higher power to be born for the enjoyment of adoptive parents. Adoption often results from of lack of resources, not choice. Many birth mothers in closed adoptions long to see their children and support opening records--to adoptees as well as birth parents--so that they and their children can find each other.

“Is it the feelings of this community that NO woman, even an adult who of her own free will who seeks out an agency and chooses adoptive parents, should ever choose adoption?”
We do not suggest that mothers who truly do not want their children raise them. See our explanation regarding adoption, What We Think of Adoption.

However, FMF doubts that significant numbers of mothers exist who give up their children of their own free will. Women who do not want to be mothers usually have abortions, as over a million women did last year. The 15,000 or so who lose their children to adoption every year are often driven by clever industry marketing, religious beliefs, or lack of resources. Giving up a child is contrary to human nature. Where mothers have true choice as in Western Europe and Australia, only a handful choose adoption. 

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* See the Evan B. Donaldson report, Safeguarding the Rights and Well-Being of Birthparents in the Adoption Process. 


From FMF:
What We Think of Adoption
High number of adoptions in the US is a national disgrace

Birthmark is blogger Lorraine's searing and raw account of giving up her daughter in the era of closed records. Highly controversial at the time it was released in 1979, it was the first memoir by a birth mother and is a seminal work on the topic. 
 

The Other Mother : A True Story by first mother Carol Schaefer was published in 1991, and was the basis of a Lifetime movie of the same name. Carol's story ends with reunion, as the cover photo indicates. Click on the either to order through Amazon.