If we are to have the voices of the exploited heard, we need to support one another in these efforts.

I am grateful to Heather and the Crisis Pregnancy Blog for giving em that opportunity.

Mirah

A child leaving his extended kinship group should be a last resort, and then it should be done with contact to the safest degree possible.

“Guardanship, to me, is too limited for those kids who need permanency.”

This is an indication of lack of understanding that my book uses the term “Permanent Legal Guardianship.” I in no way am calling for children to remain in foster care where they can float from family to family, any more than I am advocating for them to be institutionalized. That is a mis-read of the facts as presented, based IMO on a knee-jerk reaction and preconceived notions about the word guardianship.

In several other parts of the book I advocate the adoption of children who are in foster care and cannot be reunified with their families of origins. Why would I denounce foster care in one place and advocate it another under a different name? My entire thesis is based on the best interest of children.

“…I think that might leave the child feeling in limbo.”

A child in a safe, secure, loving, caring family does not feel “in limbo” because of legal status or because his/her name is different from those raising him. Conversely, children who grow up with the lies of adoption feel confused, rejected and abandoned.

People always have been – and still are – raised by extended family knowing full well who their parents are, as in fully open adoption today. Today more than half of all school students have different surnames than their families. There is no stigma.

Open adoption predicted on a false and sealed birth certificate does not provide for the rights of a child in the many instances when the adoption fails to remain open.

I urge readers here to read http://www.FamilyPreservation.blogspot.com in particular the post of May 26, “Sweeping Change” for a historic look at the concept of permanent legal guardianship, also called “adoption guardianship” that was presented by social workers to replace sealed adoption in 1991.

These are not new, “inflammatory” or radical positions.

Mirah Riben

Guardanship, to me, is too limited for those kids who need permanency. It may be a good solution in some situations, but it doesn’t work across the board. That’s where I see Riben as more extreme than I am.

I think I see where she’s coming from – why issue an untrue birth certificate that says the adoptive parents gave birth to the child, why change a child’s identity, why not just have the adoptive parents be guardians – but I think that might leave the child feeling in limbo.

Good review, Heather.

Actually, the book ends with these words:

“We can and must cultivate an alternative ethos of adoption practice. …Adoption has degenerated into a deceitful and corrupt failed social experiment that benefits only the bottom line. The profit motive and corruption in adoption cannot be mended; it must be ended.”

Replacement with guardianship, is offered as ONE possible solution. The point is clearly made that whatever it is called – the process needs to be open, honest, ethical and free of profiteering which creates coercion and exploitation of mothers as well as commodification of their children to supply a demand for infants.