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While substitute care is sometimes in a child’s best interest, adoption never is.
I’m assuming you’re asking about foster care adoption?
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have you been able to find any legit information about some of the things we deal with as adopted people?
i keep getting refered to the book “the primal wound” by nancy newton verrier, but i am skeptical and wondering if any of you have read it, or any other such books you could reccomend/not…
Hey, there. I’m a fellow adoptee. Personally, I love The Primal Wound. That book was the first time I ever felt validated. I thought my feelings about adoption/being adopted were bad, wrong, abnormal, and that book was like reading myself. That said, some adoptees hate it, either because they don’t agree with it or because it’s a pretty intense book. I’d recommend giving it a try to see what you think. Of the ones who don’t like The Primal Wound, they tend to like B. J. Lifton’s Journey of the Adopted Self and/or Lost & Found: The Adoption Experience. I can’t personally recommend them, as I haven’t read them, but I know a lot of good fellow bastards that love them. BJ Lifton was also an adoptee.
Outside of books, I also recommend a visit to the forum at Adult Adoptees Advocating for Change. It’s a great group, especially for adoptees who are either A) not happy with the current adoption system, B) have issues stemming from being adopted, or C) all of the above. I’m a member, though I rarely post. It really has helped me to read about all the other adoptees who feel the same as me.
I hope some of this helps you.
EDIT: I’m also a white, domestic (USA), infant adoptee. 1987 model.
EDIT 2: Also this: Trauma to Child - Origins Canada
(Source: analogbrain)
How can someone stand behind abortion, when you have a life inside of you that God created for you? How can you say that this life isn’t worth it? If you can’t take care of the baby for whatever circumstances than there is always adoption available to couples who can’t conceive, but still want the joy of being parents. OPEN YOUR EYES! God has bigger plans for us all that we don’t even realize the picture.
Excuse me but it appears your baby is actually upside down
Did you take Sex Ed freshman year because babies come out headfirstHi, OP! As someone who was given up for adoption, allow me to call bullshit on your little post there! You see, when I was adopted, I was a white-skinned, healthy, neurotypical infant, which basically put me at the top of the list, right underneath white-skinned, healthy, neurotypical MALE infants! There’s only one kind of infant people wanted to adopt more than me! I was SOOO lucky! But if you actually bothered to look at the information readily available on the interwebs, you would be aware that the majority of people who are forced to rely on abortion for family planning are poor people and people of color. Of course, those two demographics intersect, thanks to the institutionalized racism of our society! Neat huh?!
Of course, even babies of color are not in high demand with couples looking to adopt. Many who do want to adopt outside their race choose to go outside the country, where laws are less strict and the process is often less expensive. Of course, most of the infants adopted this way are obtained in unscrupulous fashion, but who cares about that when you’re saving a little Korean or African baby from the horrible fate of growing up in Korea or Africa??? And all those children who have birth defects, are born with diseases or disabilities, or have other issues… WELL. Who wants to invest that kind of expense and time? Why would you adopt someone broken, LOLOL?!
Granted, there are some wonderful people who understand the system a little better, and make it a point to try and give POC and disabled children a good home. But they make up a very small fraction of potential adopters! This difference in supply and demand leaves a lot of children stuck in the foster system, where their chances of being adopted diminish with every passing year, and their chances of being physically or sexually abused INCREASE! Isn’t that wonderful?
And of course, we haven’t even talked about the person who is giving birth to the baby! I know you probably think pregnancy is a wonderful, happy time, and for some people it is, but it is also one of the greatest health risks a person can take. I love my son very much, and from the day I found out I was pregnant with him, I wanted him! But I also nearly died giving birth to him. You see, I had pre-eclampsia, the most commonly fatal birth complication in the world. My blood pressure was 180 over 130! At twenty-two years old, I was actually headed for a stroke, hah hah! How funny is that? And all it took was missing a single pre-natal appointment during which my blood pressure rose to dangerous levels and my body tried to kill both me and my son. Those seizures sure were fun, as was the emergency c-section performed without anesthetic! And being chained down while the operation was performed, because I was delirious and wouldn’t stop trying to fight off the doctors, that was a BLAST! It was great for my husband too, since he almost lost his wife and child in just forty-five minutes. You can imagine how thrilled he is at the prospect of me ever getting pregnant again. Babies are certainly cute, but pregnancy can have massive health complications, and I know it’s such a bummer, but they are PERMANENT. :( My abdominal muscles never recovered from being hacked through with a scalpel, and the flood of hormones caused by late pregnancy have changed things from heartburn (never used to have it, now, all the time!) to my emotional reactions (I cry when I see pictures of kittens now. I used to be tough). These are changes I did not ask for, cannot control, and cannot fix! And many people go through worse! I know, right? Unbelievable, but go look up the word ‘episiotomy’ and then look up ‘birth rape’ and I’m afraid you’ll find some stuff that just isn’t very shiny. Plus, the studies actually show that people who carry a baby to term, give birth, then give it up for adoption suffer HIGHER rates of post-pregnancy complications like post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis, general depression, and other mental health issues. Adoption actually isn’t good for the person giving birth at all!
I’m afraid the picture you chose to use there is also pretty disingenuous. I know, I know, it seems like nitpicking. I’m not trying to be mean! :( But that picture shows a fully developed, viable infant, and most abortions are performed when the fetus isn’t even a fetus - it’s a blastocyst. That’s just a clump of cells. Seriously! You can totally find pictures on the interwebs and they’re not even gross, LOLOL! Later-term abortions are usually performed because of health complications, though some of our intrepid state legislators are trying to change all that! They care so much about people who are pregnant, you see, that they want to force them to carry dead or dying fetuses inside them until their body either becomes infected while it rots in their tummies (this is called sepsis, and it makes people very sick, and can even kill them!), or forces it out naturally in a gush of blood and fluids! Isn’t that so caring of them? I’m so glad they’re around to make those decisions for me! And if a pregnant person is not allowed to terminate an unviable fetus, in some states, they have to carry the child to term, give birth to it, and then watch it die in their arms because its lungs weren’t developed, or its brain formed outside its skull, or any of a million possible birth defects that will kill you just as quick as lickity-split! Isn’t that wild?! Of course, these people go through terrible grief, and as I mentioned, some of them may get sick and die from not being able to abort dead or dying fetuses. But I guess that’s just A-okay with you, huh?
Basically, I think before you suggest adoption as a universal alternative, you should actually go do some research on adoption. And before you condemn abortion, you should do some research on abortions - not the stuff your church is giving you, the stuff the real doctors are saying. Go to Planned Parenthood (if they haven’t all been closed down, ROFLMAO!) and request whatever information they have on the process, the statistics of who has abortions and why… and actually, all of that is on the interwebs! Isn’t technology AMAZING?
And in closing, since I’ve been asked this question many times and I know it’s coming? Yes, I realize I am here talking to you because I was not aborted. But the thing is, if my mother had chosen abortion, I wouldn’t know the difference, so it wouldn’t matter to me. And if she decided that choice was best for her, then that choice would have been best for her, and I would never want to take that choice away from her. As it is, since I was given up for adoption, and since I have seen the statistics on how badly people who give their children up for adoption suffer, I have spent much of my adult life worrying about her, whether she’s healthy, whether she’s okay, and feeling that if she did suffer from any of the common post-birth symptoms, it is at least partially my fault, even though she made that decision on her own. Which is silly, I know, but at some point, all children have to stare down the consequences of their parents’ having them. For some, that’s poverty. For others, a life-time of their parents struggling to treat and care for a severe illness or disability. For others, it’s wondering if their mother ever got over giving them away, and wishing you could reach out and assure her that it’s okay, she doesn’t have to be haunted.
May your birth control never fail!
I agree with everything said above. (With a few very minor exceptions: Most people wanting to adopt want girl womb-wet infants, and the majority of mothers are coerced into relinquishing their child for adoption. But other than that…) This response is stellar.
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Joyce Maynard adopted two girls and then decided to return them to the adoption agency. What went wrong?
Buyer’s remorse. So much for that “forever” family myth. Someone should do a study on the rates of and reasons for adoption disruption and safe haven/dumpster/hospital abandonment. Maybe I’ll do that this summer. Too bad I can’t do a thesis on it. Damn me for changing from sociology to psychology. I’m willing to bet that not only are the rates of disruption higher, they’re also for more narcissistic reasons.
Also, please tell me again: Why is it that only the adopters can decide to disrupt the adoption? Think about that. It’s a forced marriage that the forced party can never leave, legally.
(Just a note: I didn’t read the article. Just that little blurb. I’m sure the contents of it require another post.)
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Ugh. I’m so tired of hearing people sputter about why the system fails. The problem is the system. The problem is capitalism
Because this applies to just about everything, it applies to adoption as well. One of the biggest problems of the adoption system (besides sealing/falsification of records) is the money involved. Adoption is big business, and the laws are made by those with the money.
There is no triad. There is a pyramid of power. At the top are the agencies, lawyers, and brokers. They have the most power and the most money. Next up are the adopters. They are the ones who give the money to the top. If it were not for the fact that adopters are sometimes manipulated right along with everyone else, they’d be co-sharing the top spot.
The fact is, if the adopters demanded ethical adoption, so far as the practice can be ethical, you’d better believe we’d finally get some damn change around here. That’s why it morphed into this lousy system we have today - bunches of infertile couples were desperate for womb-wet infants, demanded said infants, and then demanded to be seen as the only parents. Voila! The Baby Scoop Era, invention and use of the term “birth mother” and its equally awful, coercive, marginalising variants, and sealed and falsified records just sprung into existence. But the other fact is that the adopters don’t demand ethical practices. They just want the damn baby now.
Towards the very bottom of the pyramid is the natural family, particularly the mother. The industry has been at this for decades. They know all the right things to say and do to get that mother to part with hir baby. They have training programs, funded by law, and studies on how to best “counter the desire to keep their babies”. Don’t believe? Just read all the research they’ve been doing since the Fifties. So the mother is heavily manipulated into giving away hir child. But, the mother does still have some agency. Ze is, at the very least, not an infant with zero say in it.
And that brings us to the bottom of the pyramid, to those with absolutely no choice or say whatsoever - the babies. If a baby had a choice, the baby would stay with hir mother and have the people around them do whatever it takes to make the mother the safe place ze should be. Babies want and need their mothers. They know hir smell, heartbeat, and voice. It is physically and psychically distressing for an infant to be separated from hir mother. A baby has no say in whether or not that happens, they have no say in whether their name gets taken from them, whether or not their birth certificate is falsified and sealed from them, or whether or not they want to be legally related to strangers for eternity.
And in most cases, none of this happens because it’s really in the best interest of the child. It’s because it’s convenient for those at the top and makes the toppermost of the poppermost rich. It’s a billion dollar business, folks.
And don’t forget to be grateful, you ungrateful bastards.
(Source: twisttheoaks, via too-tired-to-argue-deactivated2)
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Those poor kids.
(Source: prolife4ever)
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Yes, and the gold standard is ignored exactly because of views like the ones I post about on my blog and that others post about on their blogs. My goal is to radically overhaul adoption so that it isn’t a racist, classist, sexist institution that currently exists to meet the needs of (commonly infertile) adults, make tons of money for those involved in the brokering, and erases a child’s history, legally binds them to others against their will with no way to undo it, seals and falsifies records, degenerates the natural family, and expects them to be grateful for it.
I’m sorry you have such a positive view of adoption. Adoption is loss and trauma. Adoption is never-ending for those it is inflicted upon. If adoption is ever a necessary loss for a child, then there’s no need for the legal lies and obliteration of adoption. Permanent guardianship is a perfectly good option that is rarely utilised because adopters want the ownership aspect of modern western adoption. A child shouldn’t have to have his or her history obliterated to obtain a safe family.
EDITED TO ADD: Adoption Sometimes Gets All Fucked Up, 101
- An extremely good read. I recommend it to everyone. Especially feminists and social justice peoples.
So… There’s a lot wrong with this. I won’t get into all of it. The only thing I wanted to address are the fact that this cartoon points out that adoption is not in the interests of the children. Adopters want healthy, womb-wet, white infants, preferably girls. An embryo is not in need of life or new parents. But adopters love them some embryo adoption because then they can pretend they’re the real parents even more effectively.
Secondly, adoption is not a panacea. It does not cure the things that create orphans. It doesn’t heal or treat disease. It doesn’t do anything to ameliorate poverty. Adoption is the unnecessary re-distribution of children.
Occasionally, a child will need substitute care, in the event of hir parents’ death (some children are actually orphans, just not 163 million of them), illness, or inability to cope. However, adoption ignores the fact that the best place for a child to find substitute care is in the extended family. The West assumes that the only valid family form is nuclear. This isn’t so.
Adopters don’t care that the money they spend on snapping up a womb-wet infant or slightly older international child could be better used to support the natural family. In the cases of international adoption, that money would support many families for many years. The West has a saviour complex. Adopters want to “save” a child, not help the natural family save themselves.
Furthermore, adoption is not necessary to help a child or family. Adoption provides ownership documents in the form of falsified birth certificates. If a child really cannot be with any of hir natural family and stranger care must be utilised, there exists permanent legal guardianship. The child gets the safe, loving home (presumably) that ze deserves, and the child doesn’t have to have hir history obliterated for it to happen.
But, really, society should be focusing on solutions to the problems, not the band-aid of adoption. Adoption does nothing to help children, families, or communities.
(Source: mysticalshamanjosh, via rabbleprochoice)
The anti-choice rhetoric just really flows so easily into adoption, doesn’t it? Whether it’s forcing the person to carry a baby to term and keep it or carry it to term and give it away, doesn’t really matter. Who cares about the incubator? Or in this case, the “vending machine”. Vending machines have no say in a) whether or not they’re gonna vend you a baby or b) what happens to said baby after birth. And that’s the way we like it, damnit!
(Source: , via rabbleprochoice)
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I can’t wait until I’m a mom (I’ve learned from the best). I’ve wanted to adopt children my entire life; the logistics, however, are daunting.
Wanted to adopt your whole life? No you haven’t. And even if you had, children generally grow up and learn the realities of life. I guess wanting to adopt is a special case - no need to learn about the reality of that! Oh, except for how much money it takes and how difficult and intrusive those pesky home studies are and how “your” birthmom can just change hir mind at any time and that’s just not fair.
The adoption tax credit has helped so many families achieve their and a child’s dream by moving the process along faster (crucial, ESPECIALLY in international adoptions) and simply making adoption possible. Even after the tax credit, many families have to go through the hell that is fundraising (I help families with this, and there is not a more frustrating job, especially when a child’s life is in the middle of it), and everyone in the adoption community fears this unspeakably precious resource may be lost.
Not everyone in the adoption community. I say good, good riddance. Why the hell should you get a hefty tax credit to adopt take a child away from its family (and give it a supposedly better, more financially secure life) when the overwhelming reason for mothers to relinquish their child OR the overwhelming reason children get taken into care is due to poverty?
Please follow this link to find out how you can help save the adoption tax credit. I want to see more people celebrating Mother’s Day next year!
No, thanks. I’d rather nix the adoption tax credit and put family preservation support services into place. That way we won’t have more mothers sobbing in darkened rooms next Mother’s Day because hir child has been lost to hir and the rest of the child’s rightful family. Lost to them legally forever and eternally if you’re Mormon. But… oh… My mistake. Real Mothers don’t exist. Only ones who buy purchase “adopt” them. Adoption isn’t based on loss for mother and infant/child. No, that’s silly.
Hugs and kisses to all the lovely mothers out there! X
But not the natural mothers, because they don’t exist! BABIES COME FROM TREES. Then they’re picked by the agency workers and packaged, taken to the store, then you can just come right on down and pick one out! Sometimes they’re on offer, and sometimes they’re a bit not up to the healthy-white-newborn-girl standard so there’re discounts…
