You may be making your decision based on promises of openness, but you need to consider how you'll feel if those promises aren't kept.

I wrote about this topic back in 2002. Because it's a long article, I'll break it into several parts. Here it is...Broken Promises.



On the e-mail support groups where birthmothers go to seek a soft shoulder, ask for advice and trade photos of their children, the messages come in like clockwork.

“Ladies, help. I don’t understand what’s going on. My daughter’s parents are cutting me out of their lives. While I was pregnant they told me again and again how I would always be a part of her life. They promised lots of pictures and twice-yearly visits. Well, the visits haven’t materialized and I haven’t had pictures in ten months. What is going on? Why did they lie to me? I would never have entrusted my daughter to them if I had known this was how it was going to be. I need help writing a letter to them, something non-threatening—God knows I don’t want to make the situation any worse or jeopardize my chances of future contact. I just wish they could understand what it’s like to wait by the mailbox every day and find nothing. It’s as if now I’ve provided them with a baby, they don’t want to know me any more. Am I really so disposable? I don’t want to interfere with their family. All I want is to hear some news and get a photo of my daughter. Is that so hard?”

Then comes a flood of replies from birthmothers who are living with the very same situation. In all of these discussions, the word that pops up over and over again is “betrayal.” It isn’t too strong a word, for a woman who makes the most difficult decision of her life—to entrust her precious child to others to raise—does so based on a set of assumptions, promises made by the prospective parents. When she goes through with this most agonizing of choices only to find that the conditions under which she made her decision are no longer true, it truly is a betrayal of the worst sort. Many women liken the pain as second only to the initial loss of their child. Some have even committed suicide from the grief.

Not every adoptive relationship breaks down so badly. A significant number of adoptive parents keep their word and maintain contact even when the relationships get difficult. And there are also many adoptive parents who made no promises before the birth but who belatedly come to realize the value of birthfamily involvement in their child’s life. They then proceed to welcome birthparents in. But unfortunately, these types of healthy relationships are still the minority.

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