More Agency Lies
Posted: July 12, 2007 at 2:52 amI’m angry. I’m angry that agencies are still continuing to mislead and blatantly lie to both expectant families and adoptive families. The problems that we see, day in and day out, exist with a basis in the lies that these families, together, have been told, separately, about everything from laws to “what to expect” in an adoption. The “what to expect,” of course, is broad as every family is different but… can we at least get some truth? Can we get some honesty? Can we get real for two seconds?
I came across this post and, truth be told, I’m not mad at the person who wrote it. I’m peeved beyond comprehension at the offending adoption agency which is none other than, drum roll please, Bethany! (Surprised it’s not ANLC? Me too.) Here’s the quote that got my feathers all ruffled:
Last night at the Bethany info meeting (previous post) we heard something we hadn’t thought of which made a lot of sense.
Many birthparents apparently drastically slow or even halt contact with the adopted kid’s family after about a year. This didn’t make much sense to me until the facilitator explained that these women are looking for closure, as is normal when a loss occurs. They want to see that it’s going to be okay and the child is thriving, and then they often feel comfortable returning to their own paths in life.
The facilitator also mentioned that, while they aren’t okay with any kind of risk for the child, most birthmom contact happens when they are very young and they are not confused about who mom really is. As they get older, they are more able to understand the situation.
Did anyone else’s head just explode over the number of falsifications, misleading statistics and outright lies included in what this potential adoptive parent has just been told? Mine did. I left a comment stating that birth parents waning in contact is a myth. (Though it’s true for some.) I believe, personally, that if birth parents were properly counseled, both prior to relinquishment and in the years after placement, they would understand, to the core of their being, how important their consistent contact is to their child. Of course, this agency isn’t going to offer that so maybe that’s not an issue for this family.
However, telling families that it’s okay to agree to an open adoption because the birth mother (and, uh, hello, father!) will magically disappear after that first year is out of the way is blatantly setting families up for failure. (By the way, ANLC told J and D the same thing even though that’s not what they were looking for.) When you tell someone that the birth mother is going to lose interest in the child and the relationship and that is the only reason an adoptive family agrees to an open adoption… both sides are going to be in for a hellacious ride on the adoption journey.
For the record: birth parents don’t magically lose interest. The first year is really, really hard for birth parents. We see a lot of the decrease in contact at that first year because a) they haven’t been offered proper counseling to process those emotions which become overwhelming at the first year birthday mark and b) without adoptive parents also receiving proper counseling, the ins and outs of a complicated relationship can seem daunting to someone (the birth parent in question) who doesn’t know what is “right” and “wrong” in terms of communication, especially if boundaries have not been specifically set by both sides. Without continued support for these families, we are seeing a failure in the relationship, in the communication. And the agencies want to blame this on a LACK OF INTEREST IN THE CHILD?
Name me one birth parent who suddenly stopped thinking about their child when the first birthday came and went. Name me one birth parent who has had an adoption closed by an adoptive family whose agency fed them this myth that doesn’t think about their child with outright longing. Name me one birth parent who doesn’t have some interest in their child, even twenty, thirty and forty years down the road.
A quote from the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute Study on Birth Parents:
Living with the uncertainty of what became of their children is identified by birthmothers in closed adoptions as the most difficult factor they cope with, and receiving information about their children is singled out in the research and literature examined for this paper as the most important thing that would help to nring them peace of mind. That reality flies in the face of contemporary stereotypes of birthmothers as women who crave anonymity and oppose contact by the children they placed for adoption; rather, the desire to know about their offspring appears almost universal.
If mothers from the closed adoption era craved that knowledge, with little to no contact at all with their newborn child and the family that adopted that child, wouldn’t it stand to reason that a mother who had contact for an entire year and then had the adoption door slammed in her face still crave that knowledge as well? In fact, the study comments on that a few paragraphs later:
Some expectant parents make adoption plans with the desire and explicit assurance that they will receive information about or have ongoing contact with their children and their families – but subsequently have to cope with the impact of this contact being terminated. Currently, 20 states permit legally enforceable adoption contact agreements, but only 13 apply to infant adoptions. Penalties for violation of such contracts include fines, but never return of the child). This is an area of law in which reforms are critically needed to support the long-term well-being and adjustment of birthparents.
Obviously, statistcs and facts are showing that, no, birth parents do not want to disappear and are not pleased when adoptions are closed. I stick to my guns when I say that those that have disappeared or have trouble with communication could have benefited (and still could benefit!) from counseling from an uninvolved third part.
MORE OVER, the information from this agency about first parents being “young” is still, not surprisingly, off base. It’s stuck in adoption mythology land, swamped in ancient stereotypes of women who “give up” their babies. Again, let’s quote the study:
Overall, the parents placing their children for adoption in the 21 st Century are very diverse and different from their counterparts in previous generations. They are no longer primarily teenagers; in fact, only about one-fourth are teens. The predominant profile is young women in their 20s who have graduated from high school, many of whom have other children.
So don’t feed parents the line that they’re all “young” and “don’t know what they want. Mothers who are placing children for adoption in today’s day in age DO know what they want: they want continued, consistent contact with a family who is willing to both be empathetic to their emotional plight and unconditionally loving to their child. Many expectant mothers and fathers come into adoption not knowing much about the intricate details involved in an open adoption relationship but they know one thing: they want to know their child, they want to know their child is loved and they want to be there for their child should they be needed.
Telling families who are looking to adopt that an open adoption involves anything less than that from birth parents is setting everyone, and ultimately the child, up for a catastrophic failure. Instead, agencies should be saying, “Oh, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, please do NOT committ to ANYTHING more than you THINK you can follow through with over the course of eighteen years. You can always ADD to contact but PLEASE do not plan on saying you’re okay with x, y or z form of contact and then take it away from the birth family. It’s morally and ethically wrong and, in the end, will backfire in YOUR face.” (And at the same time, agencies should be counseling expectant families on how to best communicate with the adoptive family on issues that involve the relationship.)
But, alas, we’re not really concerned about families and children, are we? As long as the money passes hands, they don’t care if there’s a “big issue” one year down the road. Your face and your family will be long forgotten by the time that first birthday rolls around and you’re left stranded with your hands in the air saying, “What did I do? What did I do?”
I’m so tired of seeing families set up like this… so tired of knowing that mothers are being coerced out of their children by promises that will never be kept. So tired.
The Discussion
see what everyone is saying
Well crap…no one told me that! My daughter is almost 12…I guess I didn’t get the ‘you aren’t supposed to care about her after she turns one, because you need closure (whatever in the hell that is) in your life’.
Closure…nice.
I can’t even type what I want to type Jenna…I am steaming.
Right. But Bethany didn’t do a damn thing wrong in Moonbeam’s adoption. They are angels who bring families together. They are SOOOO ethical, they have “Christian” in their name, don’t you know?
No one held a gun to my head, it is all MY fault, it was MY decision, and it was quite obviously based on completely correct information, as you can clearly see.
GodDAMN them.
Okay I have to leave now, this just hurts too much and I just wrote a post about giving up on thinking about adoption because I am not ready to be all emo and weepy again lately. Adios.
Thank you for pointing out how completely crappy they are, Jenna. I do appreciate it.
I just have to go now before it hurts too much.
((hugs))
Hope J is okay.
I wish they would take the Christian out of their name.
We were told the same thing at info meetings, before and after birth several times. In fact it was almost encouraged to let things “calm down” between us and that being so close would involve more pain for all of us. Yeah well here we are, over a year later and STILL talk via email several times a week, on the phone about once a week or two, and planning another visit in a couple of months. And I can name you dozens of families who have older kids who are still in close contact with their kids families.
I also know that this agency really REALLY likes semi open relationships because that way all updates have to go through the office. So the office can make photocopies of all letters, edit out any identifying information, REMOVE THINGS THEY FIND QUESTIONABLE i.e. an outgrown onesie, and take weeks to send the package off. They are looking for distance between their adoptive families and the birthfamilies because if the adoptive families found out about how mothers were treated before and after birth there could be consequences. They want to instill distance so that adoptive family doesn’t see the truth and will come back for repeat business and give them recommendation for their friends.
I do want to add, that even in an organization like this there are good, even GREAT counselors educators etc… I don’t want to be entirely negative about them.
However, for us, the bad outweighs the good, especially on the corporate level.
I have a firstmom out there, somewhere. My records are sealed beyond sealed. I really need to send a letter to the agency, to place in my file–I’d love for her to know that I think of her, am so thankful for my life, and that four more children carry her genes.
You are a prolific writer~~thanks for taking the time to blog!!!!
What a good post! My husband I were pursuing domestic adoption, were involved in an adoption scam, and I tesified in a grand jury trial against this woman (the scammer…there will be news coverage, she has been arrested). Anyway, everything you stated in this post we learned from the police and their investigation into adoption when we went to testify. My husband and I were HORRIFIED to learn the unethical things adoption agencies do to get babies from their mothers, the business end, and the money involved! We began our adoption journey because we were unable to have biological children and wanted to start a family, but certainly not at the expense of someone else. We did hear similar things from the agency we used, were naive, and just didn’t know.
P.S. We did look at Bethany and they rejected me as a potential adoptive parent because I have MS, real Christian like, huh?
awesome, powerful post. go girl!
Can it be anymore obvious that it’s all about the sale? During our brief exploration of open adoption the pitches were all about the ease and happiness involved for all, and quick reassurances that first moms
neverrarely regret their decisions. The thing I hate the most about international adoption is that it is so closed.Sue; some of my (adoptive) mom friends have been lucky enough to forge ahead and find their child’s first mothers and form some sort of relationship. It’s actually continuing to happen in larger numbers in international adoption, sometimes from the very beginning, which is encouraging. Obviously, it’s still far more rare than what we see in our own country with regard to open relationships but it IS happening … and I can’t help but hope that it will continue to push others to look past their comfort zone.
I didn’t write this post, but I could have. I heard the exact same speech. When it was over, I went home and tossed and turned for a week. At the time, I wasn’t blogging so I wasn’t processing my thoughts in writing.
When I tried to discuss my worries over these, what seemed to be BLATANT misdirectives, I was told I was wearing my heart on my sleeve and that it wasn’t my job to “worry about the feelings of the birthmother.” When I tried to ask about the counseling process pre- and post-placement, I was told it “wasn’t for me to concern myself with.”
More and more, I feel sick to my stomach with the agency we used. I wonder if they’re little “birthparents want closure” speech was what led them to “lose” Elizabeth’s Christmas present, letters and pictures from Crettie and Arthur? Heh. I’ll never know. Thank GOD we don’t communicate through them anymore.
[...] Never “Got Over” My Daughter. Jenna posted an interesting commentary on how Bethany, like many large agencies, diminishes the [...]
AMEN! I love this article!!!!
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