e-mail
(continued from previous post)
Q: How are pregnant women considering adoption treated in other countries? How are things done differently outside the U.S.?
There are places in the world that the concept and the word “adoption” (especially as it is practiced in the U.S., with name changes and sealed records) simply don’t exist. Within Western Europe and many other parts of the industrialized world, there is more support of single mothers and less coercion and pressure placed on those considering relinquishment. In Australia, for instance, domestic infant adoption barely exists.
Intercountry adoption consists of two worlds: the sending [poor] countries and the receiving [affluent] countries. The United Nations is attempting to regulate the enormous problems in international child trafficking in adoption. Black-market baby stealing, buying and selling, kidnapping, payoffs, graft, money laundering, and kickbacks are rampant in Eastern Europe, Asia and South America.
Q: Are you against all adoptions? If not, when are you in favor of their occurring?
A: I support family preservation. Like UNICEF and the CRC, I favor “appropriate alternative family environment” as “a last resort.” I also favor truly open adoption of orphans and those children who can never be reunified with any original family—in preference to institutional care. Contact with kin should be maintained, as safely possible.
I am against profiteering in adoption, and against all the unethical exploitive, coercive practices in adoption that profiteering breeds. I am against all secrets and lies in adoption which serve to aid and abet profiteers at the detriment of the people adoption is intended to serve. I am against depriving children of their identity or replacing it with a false identity. Such practices are contrary to the Hague Convention and the best interest of the child. Secrecy is not necessary to provide alternative care for children in need.
Q: What would a truly ethical adoption look like?
A: First, expectant mothers would be informed of resources available to care for their child themselves, and would be free from psychological influences and economical pressures to relinquish. When alternate care is necessary, it would look like adoption in other parts of the world and in the U.S. prior to the 1940s. Extended family would be encouraged to exercise first right to care for orphans and children whose parents could not, and if needed, receive financial subsidies to do so. If no extended family was able, then pre-approved families would be provided the legal right to provide permanent care for them. There would be no profiteering or pre-birth matching; legal counsel and option counseling would be provided from a central source funded by adoptive parents; and parents would have adequate time limits to fully consider their options and their decision. Finally, the process would be truly open with no records sealed or falsified, for all adoptions going forward and open to those at age 18 for those adopted in the past.
Q: As fellow birthmothers, how would you characterize our responsibility to today’s women who are experiencing unplanned pregnancies?
A: Again, that’s a matter of personal conscience, ability, etc. My hope would be that those who have experienced the loss of a child to adoption would share their experiences as a voice to those trying to weigh options in a time of stress.
Q: Do you have any final advice for women considering surrendering their babies?
A: Adoption is the most “forever” decision you will make. It will affect your life, that of your child, and both of your extended families forever after. It is no easier a choice than parenting, and in many ways more difficult.
- end of interview -
Informative series. Thank you.
“I am against depriving children of their identity or replacing it with a false identity”
This is absurd. No one can take away your identity. Identity forms as a result of your life experiences and your individual innate predispositions. It’s not genetic, it’s not racial, it’s not intrinsic in the culture or personalities of your biological parents.
There’s no magical identity pixy dust which only biological parents can provide.
“Finally, the process would be truly open with no records sealed or falsified”
So how can adoptive parents know if records have been falsified? Are people who just don’t know any better being vilified? How do we ensure that true records are kept?
Awesome series, Heather! Great job!
“Are people who just don’t know any better being vilified?”
Editor: no has been “vilified.”
It is my understanding, and please correct me if I am incorrect, that the choice to change a child name upon the finalziation of adoption is the choice of the parent adopting the child. If they so chose, the state then issues a new “certificate of birth” which not only the changes the child’s name, but indicates the adoptive parents as if the child were born to them with no indication that they are parents through the legal process of adoption. In some instances the location of the birth has also been changed, the date of birth, and the race of the child….all at the behest of those adopting.
This is thus a falsified certificate – known as “amended” – issued by the state that is the adoptee’s only form of ID. He is thus denied his original identity.
I don’t know about you, but my birth certificate is not my identity. It is merely a piece of paper used by government agencies.
Please do not confuse “identity” with “legal identification”. They’re simply not the same thing.
Come on Mirah – I don’t think it’s “all at the behest of those adopting”; at least not in my state. I also don’t place a huge significance on a birth certificate – I agree it is a piece of paper used by government agencies; especially with more openness in adoption. The information you are looking for on the birth certificate was all shared with us in other papers from the agency and from the birthmother – we know all that information plus much more and plan to share and pass it along to our children. I do understand how the original birth certifcate may be more significant to older adoptees-those from the bse.
Question to all: if birth certificates are meaningless to one’s identity, why amend them at all?
Heather – do you understand how demeaning it is to a bparent to be told by the state that we don’t have access to a piece of paper that proves we gave birth to our own child? And that we aren’t allowed to name the father on it (if not married)? And that we often aren’t allowed to give our kids the name we chose for them?
Birth certs have huge importance to bparents (and to some adoptees – see Bastard Nation for examples). It’s fine that this isn’t important to YOU, but it is to birthparents, and possibly to your child (though with your openness, maybe less so).
franklymydear says:
“This is absurd. No one can take away your identity. Identity forms as a result of your life experiences and your individual innate predispositions.”
I think “frankly” is confusing personality with identity. Life experiences do indeed form one’s personality. And I wonder where “frankly” thinks those innate predispositions come from? Not from your adoptive parents, that’s for sure.
Individuals develop into themselves based both on inherant genetic predispositions and the guidance and encouragement or parents and life experiences. IT’s the old debate of nature v. nurture. I believe that nurture is more significant with regard to some aspects of personality formation but it does not erase nature.
Children inherit many characteristics from their bioligical families, including race and ethnic origins. Adoption will wishing will make a child white if his natural parents are black.
If roots, bloodlines, were not important than thousands of people would not pursue genealogy as a hobby.
I am lucky that I have had a chance to meet my biological family and find out where a lot of things came from, from hair and eye color, height and bone structure to medical history. Interestingly, both my sister and cousins I have personality similarities as well as physical similarities. We had very different life experiences and therein lies the differences between us. However, I am not very much like anyone in my adoptive family — except for my speech patterns –despite many years of shared experience. My speech patterns reflect my geography more than those of my adoptive parents.
It’s still fascinating to me that I identify more with my adoptive family’s ethnic identity than my own, less with their religious preferences, not at all with their tastes in food or music — interestingly enough when I found my birth family in my 40s those things that I didn’t “adopt” closely matched my biological family.
Some of it is in the genes!
“Why amend them at all?” To make paperwork easier later in life. Have you tried, recently, to prove to the Department of Homeland Security (and countless other agencies) that you really do have US citizenship when your only “original” birth certificate is from another country? Being able to order a birth certificate from the state with current name and US birth location makes life a lot simpler. Who cares if it isn’t true. It’s just a piece of paper. A legal document, no more, no less. This has nothing to do with “depriving children of their identity” and everything to do with birthparents getting emotionally tied to words on a piece of paper.
A strangely understandable emotion, giving the intensity of the situation, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the child’s “identity”
Margaret: I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said.
But the piece of paper takes that identity away how, exactly?
You are who you are, regardless of what part came from nature (which provides the raw material, including innate predispositions) and what part from nurture (which forms that raw material into identity). My point is: None of it came from that piece of paper.
And my identity is not a “real” or “false” identity simply due to whether or not my parents share any of my genes. I am who I am and no piece of paper can change that.
franklymydear – You should talk to a room full of adoptees who are trying to get their birth certificates if you really think a piece of paper does not matter.
Not knowing anything about your family or origin really eats at some people. The rest of us know about our roots and take it from granted. Some adoptees don’t even know what race they are. You don’t think that messes with their identity.
The paperwork is part of it – knowing/having the information is also a big part of it as well.
You don’t think that messes with their identity? (omitted the question mark.)
Heather L – This is interesting to me. I have been reading these blogs for probably two years now and I recall viewpoints associated with birth certificates/open records and getting the original information couched with adoptees having the right to know. I agree with that. But in this day of more openness where that information is more readily available, is it now about birth parents being validated by the state? I am not being sarcastic when I say that, it’s that I don’t think anyone has been honest about that then. I feel like this arguement has mostly been framed in the “what’s best for the kids” and obviously there is more going on than that.
Ragrading giving false identity – if you are talking about lying to your adopted children (eg about their race) I think that is absolutely awful and indeed may be viewed as giving false identity (because part of our identity depends one what we know and believe and embrace and research and participate in). However, if there are no lies, adoptive families are not taking away the ‘original’ identity of their child. A lot is genetical, as was pointed above, but they are not taking it away! (how could they?)
And I don’t think anyone today is claiming that nature does not enter in the equation (I think everyone agrees that both nature and nurture do, maybe disagreeing on the degree. My understanding/opinion is that they are not even separable, but I won’t get into it here).
My point is to ask, why the emphasis in the above comments on how nature is so important to one’s identity and personality? Of course it is, but how does that give an adopted child a ‘false identity’?
As for the birth certificate, why not just keep all the information there – both the birth info, parents, name, etc, as well as the adoptive (and legal) parents, name, etc?
Heather – I don’t *have* to be validated by the state – I’m managing to live without that – but yes, it was a slap in the face. I think it will also be a slap in the face to my son to have a piece of paper that says “Baby Boy Lowe” (as if I didn’t care to name him) and “Father unknown” (as if I were a total slut who didn’t know). I *also* think that he might question why, in this age of openness, the state needed to issue a piece of paper that implies his adoptive mother gave birth to him. A lie is a lie, right?
Finally, all of us in the triad should question why, when adoptive and birth parents, and the adoptee, were all in the hospital room knowing the truth, do the new documents live under lock and key?
When discussing this issue, most of us don’t bring up the sting to birthparents because A) we know people don’t care and B) the open records issue is so much bigger than that. It really is about civil rights for adoptees – that’s what’s most important. But yes, it does sting on the birthparent side of the equation. I don’t think that’s a big revelation.
nicegirl phd –
I would agree with your proposal to keep all the info on one B.C.!
If we really believe that there is no shame in being adopted, then having one’s adopted status listed on a B.C. should be no big deal.
I don’t even see why they don’t do that.
It’s not as if it is the 50s or something where people seemed ashamed to adopt… It’s still like that in other parts of the world where they really probably would lie to a child about their origins and get away with it until the child over heard something or until a deathbed confession.
Gradually, the attitude changed here, so why not be honest and open.
That’s the one thing I agree with these folks about. The rest is wrapped in so many stinging bees and wasps, even if it’s honey, I can’t touch it.