Open Adoption - Check your lenses!

From a post out in bloggerspace on http://daughterof2women.wordpress.com/:


Do you ever feel that this whole adoption thing is a battle? First, there is the battle for the possession of the child. Then, their is the battle for the loyalty of the child. From my own personal observation, it seems that adoptive parents are the ones starting the wars and picking the battles (not all adoptive parents). First, there is the battle for the physical possession of the child. Adoptive parents who choose domestic adoption must first be nice to potential birthparents. Some adoptive parents skip this part of the battle by choosing international adoption. Don’t deny the truth of this. Do you know how many times I have heard, “We chose xy country because we did not want to have to deal with birthparents. We did not want to have to have contact with the birth parents after the adoption. We want OUR child to know who his/her REAL parents are.” Those comments are the subject of an entirely different post so they won’t be dealt with at this time. Once the adoptive parents have won the initial battle and the child is in their possession, their true motives become evident. Maybe they promised to send pictures and letters but they do not fulfill their obligations. Maybe they send “pictures” but they make sure that they are out of focus or tops of heads are cut off. Why? Because they view the birthparents as the adversaries! The birthparents are trying to steal the loyalty of the child. Which brings us to the next battle, the emotional possession of the child. This battle is “won” by making sure that the child grows up understanding that their loyalty must be with the adoptive parents. Adoption discussion is tolerated only on a superficial level. Searching would be a treacherous act. After all, the birthparents are evil enemies who would only corrupt the child. Seems to me that if these adoptive parents could only understand one basic fact, birthparents are not adversaries. In most cases, birthparents are making the difficult placement decision because they want to provide their child with the best possible life. They enter into the adoption process with good faith, and sometimes they are slapped in the face. Why wouldn’t they be bitter? Why wouldn’t they be on the defensive? If adoptive parents would just realize that it is in the best interest of the child to honor that large part of the child that comes from the birthparents. If adoptive parents would just realize that by honoring birthparents they are honoring the child. Maybe then they would begin to realize that the honor and respect that they show to the birthparents results in a closer bond to the very child that they are so fearful of losing. Maybe if they would stop viewing it as a battle then a wonderful period of peace could occur.
Disclaimer: There are many wonderful adoptive parents out there who truly honor the child and the birthparent. This post is not aimed at them. There are birthparents who are abusive/neglectful and contact would not be advised. I am simply speaking about many situations that exist.

The assumption in the battle mentoned above is that all adoptive parents are just greedy with ugly motives. Would love to expand your thinking and add a couple more lenses. I am an adoptee (state run 1965 - sealed records) of an adoptee (my father in 1922 - private adoption) and we both reunited with our birth families. I am also an adoptive parent because my wife and I could not have biological children (international). The above fails to mention other reasons (much more common) why most parents go international - it's not that they don't want contact with birthparents. It's twofold, but the main reason is FEAR of having one's heart ripped out because a birthmother changes their mind early in the process (or after the child has been placed) and takes the child back (and the judge will always rule in favor of the birthparent in this country). I'm not against open adoptions, but I would never take this risk as long as this continues to be the practice. Damn if I'm going to adopt a child someone can come along and change their whimsical little mind and proceed to destroy my family!

The second one is that domestic adoption is traumatic and there are no guarantees (people are going to extreme to find a baby on YouTube now). One must put themselves up on parade in hopes that a birthmother will choose them. A homestudy is revealing enough. Have you ever been through one? Let's just say that if people knew how invasive an agency (unregulated I might add) can get in the homestudy process, adoption would only remain the last last option. I've had less questions asked of me in buying a home, a car and multi-million dollar equipment purchases for my business combined. Forgive my rant for a moment. I for one am not going to put myself on parade and hope some young teenager or twenty-somthing of another generational time is going to pick me. What in the world is going to influence them to pick my wife and me. We aren't movie stars, we're not infinitely wealthy & I hate spinning how "great I am to the world and how wonderful parents we are going to be for your child". How the heck do I say that - I've never been a parent in the first place! I have my own set of problems and so does everyone. We were in our early 40's when we made the decision of adoption. You tell me what the odds are that some teenager is going to let an average middle class 40 something family adopt their firstborn? We all must grow to understand how complex adoption really is (having lived amongst it and with those touched by adoption my whole life makes the lines very grey and hard to determine a black and white stance on anything). Many many views, angles, stances and lenses are needed to truly see into and through the many many issues of every plight in adoption. Many would think of me as an advocate for adoption. Once again - throw me into a box, stick on a label and put me on your shelf. (I'm an adoptive parent, I participate in two charities, I vote conservative and I'm a capitalist when it comes to business. What box do I belong in?)

Adoption is much more complex and I'm for a few things in adoption and adamantly against many others. I hate adoption most of the time. I love it only a small part of the time. I love my family and my 5 year old twin boys, but I hate some of the things adoption did to me. I struggle every day with the question "How the hell am I going to be a good father when I was abandoned by my birthfamily at 4, a ward of the state until 5, adopted by a troubled married couple to save their marriage, my afather leaves when I'm 10?) My adoptive life sucked 99 % of the time. I now try to commuinicate with all sides of the triad, having lived on two sides in this life. Every day I see more and more and the lines get blurrier and blurrer. I'm learning to understand the one side of the triad (birthparent) that I haven't lived on. I'm not so blind to realize that I'm naiive about many of the hurts and pain a birthmother has gone through having relinquished a child under durress, confusion or peer pressure. I used to condemn this group becuase my limited view was that relinquishment in the modern age was for convenience and purely selfish. Until I met more than one who was forced due to financial, living and other issues outside the birthmother/birthfather's control. Shame on me! Every side of the triad has a voice! No one voice of any side of the triad is the final authority. Issues abound and the minute we take a stance, someone comes along which brings our stance into question. We are touched by adoption and will continue to be touched by adoption. Call it fate, call it what you want, but it's who we are and a decision most of us did not choose.

Foster Parent Allegation - States need to do something now!

They had a heart for those with less. The couple who had two of their own biological children wanted to give back. So they went to foster child training. They were certified and then sort of let it go because many of the stories they heard were disturbing. To the credit of the state they attended training in, no punches were pulled and counselors/social workers shared the toughest and some of the ugliest from bedwetting by older kids to firesetting to sexual deviation. Marty and Mary didn't really want to subject their children to such and so they simply marked the experience off as educational.

Only months after the training, a close friend of Marty and Mary brought a concern to them about children who were being neglected in their biological home. The friend was very concerned for two at-risk girls especially. Marty and Mary listened and couldn't put down the fact that they might be the ones to help out since they were eligible foster parents.

Long story short, the two girls were pulled from their family and placed at Marty and Mary's home. They were a decade older than Marty and Mary's children and in high school. Marty and Mary poured out their heart to them and helped them through their issues and made them a part of their life. They thought about adopting, but the children didn't need it for their security, they were treating Marty and Mary as parents and family after only a few months.

Years have passed and both foster daughters have attended college and have degrees and are moving forward in their lives. Marty and Mary have always been strict in their home life and as the foster daughters get out in the world, some of their habits are of concern to Marty and Mary. The oldest foster daughter is asked to leave as she refuses to acknowledge a home curfew and other rules which Marty and Mary have always maintained. For now, we'll just call the oldest Betty. Betty is very bitter and leaves and estranges herself from the family. Barbara, the youngest continues to stay home and soon meets someone she believes will be the love of her life. Barbara is engaged and announces this to Betty, who is estranged.

Betty is very jealous and now some of the tough parts of Betty surface. You see, Betty has been passed over (in her mind) by her sister's ability to find a companion before her. She is jealous and envious and filled with rage. Betty reacts by jumping onto the Internet and advertising herself as "available". Betty refuses to be Barbara's maid of honor because she doesn't want to go to the wedding where Marty and Mary will be (even though it is a small one in the home). Betty remains estranged and bitter.

Five years pass and Marty's biological daughter Suzie has finished college and has now announced her engagement. Marty suggests Suzie ask Barbara to be her maid of honor. Barbara and her husband are over for dinner and Suzie poses the question expecting a yes and excitement and joy regarding the announcement of her engagement. Barbara's response is negative and she and her husband make a quick exit. The Marty and Mary household is flabbergasted. They ask themselves over and over, "Did we say something wrong?". What is the problem?

Two weeks later, Marty is summoned to the police station and is informed that a restraining order has been taken out against him! The order was filed by his eldest daughter. He doesn't know what to do. He is shocked and dismayed. The order is examined and questioned and a judge throws it out. A few weeks later, Marty is informed a second restraining order has been taken out against him and this one now by Betty! He goes to court to fight this just as the first and the judge will not even think about dropping the issue. Marty finds out there are 12 counts in addition to the order accusing him of sexual crimes committed over 15 years prior.

This story is true. What most people are never informed of, is that foster children are not stupid. They are very street savvy and the system actually hurts and destroys more children than it helps. Most children are abused more in the foster care system than they were prior to being pulled from their homes. They are most often abused by other foster children who are veterans and damaged by the system. Pulled from home to home in a shuffle of low budget money passing maintenance type behaviors, social workers simply pull, drop and move on. They are referred to by the little ones as "child grabbers". They are overworked with too many case loads and they are undertrained as the average life of a social worker in the public system is 6 to 12 months. They are simply managing chaos with no power to do much more than swap children amongst at-risk foster care homes. Now for the good stuff - Foster parent allegations are placed by foster children on an almost daily basis as a means to get out of a place the child doesn't like and move on to another "home". When an allegation is made, the foster child is immediately pulled and "protected". In most cases, any other children are pulled from the home and biological children of the foster family are also pulled from the home. Google "foster parent allegations" and read the horror stories.

Marty is now broke. He has had to hire a lawyer to defend him of all of the false allegations. You see Betty and Barbara were simply jealous of the wedding Marty was going to give Suzie. They had been passed over so many times, they simply wanted to make Marty's life miserable and hopefully disrupt the wedding. Little did they know that it would completely destroy Marty and his family life. Even though Mary is sticking by Marty, it's been hard. Marty's children are also sticking by Marty because they know in their hearts, that Marty is not capable of such horrific and heinous action. But the damage is now done. Marty's life will never be the same. The question of whether anything ever happened will sit over Marty by his peers for the rest of his life. His defense budget is all of his savings and all his equity of his entire adult life. Well into the six figures with no guarantee of "getting off". Marty will now have to wait and see and even if the judge throws it all out, the money is gone, the doubt will never be erased and Marty's life has now been ruined by a couple of teenage foster children who felt slighted because they couldn't have something that the biological child was granted.

Do you think you would foster older children after reading this story?

I was a foster child and I know the feeling of being passed over. It is not the fault of the children that they have these feelings. I place the blame solely in the hands of the system for placing a family at risk and not putting failsafes in place to protect against this type of action by a child. There are cases all over this country which deal with foster parent allegations. People are fighting for their biological children to be returned while they are now being abused by the same corrupt system that allowed Betty and Barbara to destroy Marty's family.

Adoption Sucks - You can make it better

Posted as a comment on http://amyadoptee.blogspot.com/

Amy,

I'm an adoptee that was adopted by an adoptee and now I have adopted children. Like you, I think adoption sucks. For years I was bitter and resentful of the "normal" lives people lived all around me. I was adopted in 1965 by a military family (Marines)having been relinquished from a Navy family. I was separated from my two older half brothers (like I'm supposed to consider them half at the age of 4). I was sent to a "receiving home" which was simply a glorified name for an orphanage full of unwanteds. My infant sister and I were immediately placed in a foster home with other children of the foster family. I never got to see my brothers again. At the age of 4, you don't know how to process what is happening and you don't have anything to compare life to. Being adopted was exciting but the joy was short lived. My new father was sent off to Nam in less than a year. We had to move to the midwest and live in the state of Missouri where all of my amom's family lived. I became the "adopted" bastard among all of my mother's 11 brothers and sisters and their children. My Aparents were in their early 40's when we were adopted and my mother was the youngest in the brood of 12 so you can imagine what going to a family gathering was like. I couldn't keep the names straight and I have 4th cousins instantly. All this to say that it sucked being the different one. The one that looked nothing like anyone else, who acted differently (raised in California my first 4 1/2 years). And then the threats and forced re-learning only caused me to ask myself every day "Why did my parents give me away?" "What did I do wrong?" And I cringed every time I heard the word "chosen". It is as though that was the ONLY training the social workers gave my parents was to refer to us as "chosen"! They sure as hell didn't teach them anything else productive. My mother threatened to "take me back" any time I didn't do things in line with her perfectionistic attitude. She couldn't be pleased and I have spent decades unlearning mannerisms which I assumed while growing up. After my father returned from Nam, he met someone who was easier to deal with and divorce happened. In the divorce proceedings, it came out that the adoption was to salvage a marriage gone wrong. I left home when I was 17, and only saw my mother once in my late 20's. My father and I got along quite well and I usually vacationed with him every couple of years. After I married at the age of 28, my wonderful wife and I waited to have children and a medical condition of hers prevented this once we decided we wanted a family. So once again, I had to address the only way to have a family being adoption. From the decision to adopt, we investigated the domestic options of fostering and then adoption, infant adoption and then international adoption. Living in the state of Massachusetts, we couldn't bear to deal with the only types of adoption they deemed us eligible for - older kids - because I knew what hell I had gone through. Infant adoption was too heart wrenching to even attempt because you have to go on parade, hope a bmom chooses you to parent their child and then hope they don't take you to court and take your child back. So we went through the trial of international adoption and i wouldn't wish this on anyone! We were ripped off by an agency who lied to us about their credentials in Russia (they weren't and the program was in the process of being shut down when they took our money and never told us their accredidation had been pulled). We had been given a referral for twin boys (our request) and then told they were claimed by their grandmother. This ripped our hearts out as we were led to believe all was well for over 12 months from the time we received the video referral. Then we sought out an agency of high caliber who did adoptions in Guatemala. We liked the program in Guatemala much better as children are fostered as opposed to institutionalized. We waited for only a few months and a referral for unborn twins was presented to us. We were ecstatic. They were still born. My wife and I promised ourselves we would only go through this once more and then we would call it a life without kids. We were called with "virtual twins" which were described to us as same age but unrelated and this particular referral involved 1st cousin boys. Knowing what we knew about the slimy creatures involved in adoption overall, we passed. Less than a week later, twin identical boys were born and we were called the same day. That was in 2002, and our boys are now 4 1/2 - the same age I was when I was relinquished. To look at them and think that someone abandoned me at that age causes me to cringe. I'd kill myself before I gave up a child knowing how the system treated me and I was one of the "lucky" chosen ones.
Adoption sucks, there is little to no interest in protecting the children because they aren't the customers. This world revolves around money and it always will. The child will always be the one who takes the hit, especially in a country that promotes education over every other major life goal, including family. It is considered OK to abort or relinquish if you've made an error. Simply erase the problem and go out and try try again. It is OK to hide the records of those who commit such deeds because they need the protection from their shady pasts, while we suffer wondering whether or not we'll ever find our original family. I did find my original family having been adopted in a state with sealed records. It took me 3 years and a lot of detective work, but I was one of the fortunate ones. I did it long before the internet was commercialized. I joined support groups, I visited libraries and I read every book I could find on the subject (not many). I used every available angle to try and find and it was with the help of another adoptee that I got the lead that led me to my grandfather who never knew I even existed as he had divorced out of the family during my mother's child bearing years. I accept my fate as one who was dealt adoption and though I think it is a putrid system, it has everything to do my wife and I now having a family. The surface hasn't even been scratched when it comes to reform, policy or regulation. The Hague is the UN method of trying to make the world play fair. It's not going to make a difference just as "oil for food" made Saddam rich. People cannot turn down the lust for money that they are born with. All we can do as a people is shout a little louder and get involved when opportunity presents itself. By doing this, we'll make small changes and persuade corrupt politicians to use us as a means to vault themselves a little higher with an air of humanity as part of their platform. But if that's what we have to do, so be it. Their means is power, so make use of it. It's what Gates and Buffett do with their money. They put it into charities to make the world step back and think they're great humanitarians. They're not. They're people like you and me and they simply have the power to use the charity card to increase their power. It's all about the money. Again, the children will continue to suffer except for those that you and I can help one at a time. Go see your congressman and get in their face. But pose it as a way for them to launch themselves and not simply to bitch and moan. They'll do it because now is the time. Adoption is center stage with the Evan B Donaldson folks, the number of families seeking to adopt because they have waited so long to have children in order to further their career and because it's a cause that has now become widespread and we as adoptees now have a voice through blogs and MySpace and so on. Speak up, pass stories like this one on and get in your politician's faces. They need more causes like opening sealed records to attach their names to. They can't save the world, but they can invoke change that will help if we get in their faces with something that will fuel their career paths.