At some point in the adoption experience, every member of the triad feels powerless and very much at the mercy of others.

We’ll start with adopted people. Because they are usually infants at the time of the decision, they never have a say in the matter. They can’t say if they’d like to go to a new family, which family they'd prefer, or if they’d rather stay with their first mom. They are truly without a voice. (For many adopted people, this feeling of a lack of control over their own destiny lingers, returning to haunt them throughout their life.)

For potential adoptive parents, the sense of powerlessness comes mostly at the beginning of the process. First there is the loss of control due to infertility, when your own body becomes the enemy. Then, once you decide to adopt, you have to jump through many additional hoops—filling out paperwork, allowing intrusive home studies, figuring out how best to market yourselves, and courting expectant parents in the hopes of being chosen.

Obviously, you as an expectant parent also feel out of control while pregnant, but by and large there is an attempt by adoption workers to make you feel you are in the drivers’ seat. It is in their interest to make you feel you are calling all the shots, whether you really are or not. But this is an illusion of control, rather than true control, because external circumstances are still forcing your hand, rather than you being able to make choices freely.

(Expectant fathers feel a serious lack of control because women usually get to call the shots. The rights of potential birthfathers are all too frequently ignored or trampled upon.)

Of all the power struggles in adoption, however, the very worst shift happens to new birthparents after the relinquishment. Where once you have been romanced by people who wanted what you had to give, after you sign the papers, you will probably experience a harsh return to earth. Adoption expert and social worker Jim Gritter, author of The Spirit of Open Adoption, says that never does anyone’s stock plunge so fast as a birthparent after the papers are signed.

Before the birth, everyone was telling you you were unselfish, noble, the fulfiller of dreams, a hero. “If you love your baby, you will give her up.” “You’re making another couple’s dreams come true? That’s so unselfish of you.” “I admire what you are doing.”

Immediately after the birth, though, you suddenly become heartless, cruel, a bad mother, a pest. “What kind of woman gives her baby away?” “I could never do what you did.” “Why can’t you just forget about this and move on with your life?” And where once potential adoptive parents were responsive and communicative, in many cases they grow cold and distant once they have the baby. (Luckily this isn’t always the case. Some open adoptions do work out, because the adoptive parents see the value of maintaining relationships with birthfamily.)

My point is this: whatever limited feelings of control you have during your pregnancy will not last. Where once you called the shots, now you’re waiting for crumbs from the table, begging for photos, choosing every word with utmost care in order to keep everyone happy and preserve the small amount of contact you have with your child. And that’s in an open adoption. In a closed adoption, you’re simply discarded and forgotten, your purpose served, your usefulness gone.

I wish people who like to idealize adoption would refrain from putting expectant moms on a pedestal, because it’s a long fall from the top. A woman in a crisis pregnancy isn’t a hero or a saint, just someone struggling with an exceedingly difficult choice. Let’s moderate our view of what it means to choose adoption, so that pregnant women are neither sanctified nor demonized. Let’s just let her be what she is--a normal human being doing the best she can.