Sweet Geezus. The comments and notions of some PAPs make me want to run full speed toward a brick wall because the physical pain of the collision would not be nearly as painful as the emotional pain I feel after hearing some of their–to be polite let’s say, uneducated–remarks.
A good friend of mine who is a social worker told me this one, and it frustrated me so I had to post about it.
The Scene: A childless family pursuing a domestic adoption. The family sits down with their social worker (my friend) to discuss their openness to different issues such as alcohol exposure, mental health issues of birth parents, race, and level of prenatal care. It was clear from the beginning of this discussion that the family had a very specific and narrow idea of what they thought was acceptable. As part of their “specifications,” they emphasized that they were only open to a child whose birth mother has had proper, long-term prenatal care.
When my friend (their social worker) inquired further about this last request, they repsponded by explaining that if they were in the position of the birth mother, that this is what they would do. WTF?!?
There is serious disconnect here, so I try really hard not to just become dissolutioned altogether when thinking about this situation. But, c’mon! Let’s think for a minute how many birth mothers 1) know their pregnant or acknowledge their pregnant, 2) have the financial ability to pay for the expenses of prenatal care, or 3) are excited to be a parent and therefore want to provide good care for their child from day one?
What this family needs to understand is that this woman, the birth mother, is not having this baby for them, but rather this is her child and the adoptive family gets the privledge of raising him/her.
Although the case above may be a bit extreme, I think this feeling of thinking that an adoptive child is for you is prevalent in not only in domestic adoptions, but in international adoptions as well. Why does it happen? Well my hypothesis is that families often react like the one mentioned above due to unresolved infertility issues. If a family experiences year after year of unsuccessful pregnancy attempts, IVF, and miscarriages this obviously leads to disappointment, regrets, shame and anger just to mention a few of the very complex emotions involved. But all too often a family jumps from failing to get pregnant straight away to adoption without allowing for a grieving period. It seems, then, that families like this can have unrealistic ideals and impatient attitudes when going through the adoption process because–hey, they’ve already been trying to build a biological family for x number of years, can’t they just get their kid already!?
I think some of this could be lessened if they would just deal with their very real, very unresolved emotions about not being able to parent their own biological child. Many seem to just hold onto the hope that once they receive their adopted child their pains of infertility will just magically disappear. While enlightenment can always happen, it seems that instead sometimes becoming a parent fulfills that void of childlessness, but the family can still have these underlying feelings which may lead to further unrealistic expectations, but this time about their adoptive child instead of the adoption agency or the birth family or what-have-you.
I know that not every PAP is like this, so please don’t take this as some blanket statement about adoptive families. I know that everyone comes from different backgrounds and has different experiences throughout their life which mold them into who they are. I’m just trying to figure out what needs to be done to help the adoption field become a better place.
15 responses so far ↓
Susan // April 24, 2007 at 2:05 am
Step one is for professionals like you to SPEAK OUT. If more adoption social workers thought and acted as you did, the field would be a better place. Let me ask you something: do you think you are in the majority POV, but that most do not just speak out? Or do you think you are in the minority and that most SWs do not think things through in the same way? If you think you are in the majority POV, (or even if you are in the minority) - get your voices together and ORGANIZE. Please. (but this blog is an excellent place to start and I am very grateful to read your words)
jeffandjen94 // April 24, 2007 at 2:15 am
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful post.
I’m so glad I found you…an honest, true voice. One that’s right where she belongs: at the forefront, helping to facilitate change.
I wish you had been at our agency…
table9 // April 24, 2007 at 12:08 pm
I agree that there are people who come to adoption agencies who are looking for the exact child they believe they should have been able to give birth to. I hesitate to call them potential adoptive parents because they’re not really looking to adopt, they’re looking to somehow still have the child they want to birth but can’t.
These are people who benefit most from time to grieve, and the opportunity to say goodbye to the dream child they hoped for. I will say it’s uncanny how expectant parents shy away from these people, and they subsequently say often “how come we’re not getting picked?”
I think it’s important for adoption professionals to speak often and in many ways to hopeful couples and expectant parents about something that so many seem to think is taboo: Risk. There is no risk-free way to become a parent - even gestation and birth has risks. As well, there’s no one ‘best way’ to become a parent, including gestation.
What this path is about is weighing risks against benefits. For some, parenting a child from birth outweighs the risk that an expectant parent decides not to place. For others, that’s unbearable. These risks are present across the spectrum - from domestic parental placement to domestic waiting child/foster adoption to international waiting child/orphan adoption.
I’ve found in every case where there’s a thorough opportunity to examine, weigh, and balance risks and benefits, you have people far more prepared and at peace then when not. Risk, like many things, is far less scary when examined dead-on.
As well, for these potential customers, I’ve found the best thing sometimes to do is to give them a free copy of a book like “The Open Adoption Experience” by Lois Molina and Sharon Ruskai Kaplan and send them home for some thinking.
JMHO.
dawn // April 24, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Yes yes yes — when people think adoption cures infertility, they are simply not prepared to adopt yet. (Maybe ever.)
Mommela // April 24, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Sadly, I get it. Long ago, I was there, too. When the body fails and one gets caught in the hamster-wheel of infertility treatment, there’s a pretty well-established progression: a couple of pills, a couple of shots, a couple of procedures, a couple of IVFs, a couple of donated cells, throw in some ICSI, and, if there’s still no baby, “just adopt.” For so many, adoption is simply the next step and, by that time, brains and hearts are so addled by drugs and pain and fear, the babies and their first families are simply collateral, commodities to be procured.
My experience is with an open domestic adoption, so most of my comments pertain to that type of adoption.
For things to change, the adoption industry has to change. It has to cease to be an adoption-only industry and it must serve: first the children, second the birthparents, and then lastly, the PAPs. There must be no profit motive. Agencies (and I’ll use “agency” to also mean independent lawyers, facilitators, etc.) need to put the focus on finding ways for firstfamilies to be the only families, and, if that’s not possible, finding families for children, not finding children for families.
Agencies need to provide sexuality and reproduction education to everyone. Agencies need to provide effective birth control and reproductive health services before pregnancies occur. Agencies need to provide prenatal health care without coercion.
Agencies need to truly support women and their partners who are experiencing an untimely pregnancy by helping them find a way to parent their children, to encourage them to figure out how, to tell them that no one feels ready to parent, that there’s never a “good time,” that everyone feels overwhelmed by parenting sometimes. Agencies need to find parenting mentors for people who choose to parent. If these parents do opt for adoption, agencies need to prepare these parents for the pain with which they will live, to one extent or another, for the rest of their lives.
Agencies need to teach their PAPs that the “just gimme a (healthy, perfect, to-our-specifications) baby” attitude doesn’t cut it and to keep those families out of the pool until they clue in even if they chose to leave and go somewhere else. Agencies need to require PAPs to read some of the more emotionally raw birthparent blogs and to discuss them in prep classes, to meet with and hear from adult adoptees and birthparents. Agencies need to be able to say, “I’m sorry, we can’t work with you” to some PAPs who won’t try to grow. Agencies need to find PAPs ways to grieve for their losses. Agencies need to paint a realistic picture of adoption as being founded in loss and pain, not soft-focus fantasy. Agencies need to show PAPs that they have done all of the above for their primary clients, the children and their firstparents, so the PAPs can see that it’s the PAPs who are sought as the commodity, not pregnant women.
But your blog is a really good first step. I’m grateful that you’re out there; I sure with there were more like you. Please keep it up.
Aimee // April 24, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Amen to Susan. Social workers like you are in the minority - a very small minority.
We did counseling after all of our infertility stuff didn’t work. I wanted to put some closure on the whole mess.
And yes, I want to be a parent TODAY but the right kid & the right situation will come into our lives soon and it will be all that much sweeter.
Until a deeper understanding of how economics and class play a part in the adoption industry occurs, the above is going to be the way it is. I’m not even sure it’s possible. We hardly even talk about poverty anymore . . . . that’s why I favor John Edwards early - he at least talks about it - makes it a part of his platform.
Cheers!
BABS // April 24, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Mommela,
Wow. I don’t know what to say about this. You’ve said everything so well — you’ve really given me some more to think about. Thank you.
I do want to say that reform in the adoption world is a difficult thing to muster. While agencies are generally non-profit organizations, its still business. So, if one agency were to become hyper-ethical and really, truly put the child and birth family first while turning down families who are not quite ready, the sad truth is that denied families will just go find a different agency to work with who will take them on.
In order for one agency to work on behalf of the child and birth/first family, they all need to. And unfortunately the only way I can think of to set that standard is through government regulation. And, perhaps I’m being a bit pessimistic, but I just can’t see this being an easy thing to lobby for. Now, I’d totally be all about it if their was a defined movement, but like all lobbying, it costs money–something that human services such as adopt just don’t have. I’m not saying there is not a way, there’s just a lot working against it at this time.
Mommela // April 25, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Thanks, BABS. I’ve thought a lot about what my ideal would be. I don’t expect to see much, if any, of this to come to pass in my lifetime, but a mom can hope… You’re right, there’s a lot working against significant reform in the adoption industry. Sigh.
amy // April 25, 2007 at 9:15 pm
I just seen your blog today and as a recent amom to a 6 month old son - I just want to say thanks for your post. You are right on. I know PAP who are just as you described. I look forward to reading your future post.
Jen // April 25, 2007 at 10:48 pm
I am so glad I found this blog! Gives me so much to think about.
I can’t speak to the domestic adoption side, as we never considered that and I don’t know enough about it, but I do agree with Mommela’s excellent points above.
I’m the mom of a little boy adopted from Russia, and also waiting for a second child from China. Loved kids all my life, and just wanted to be a mom. I started exploring adoption after a year of no luck with just plain old “trying”, but was pushed by the medical machine into doing IVF, since we were “so young!” and “such good candidates!” I set my own limit at 3 tries, (6 tries would have been covered by insurance 100%). Did the 3 tries, lost a baby on try #2, finally said “this is for the birds” and went to an agency meeting after a year of this stuff.
Did I grieve my infertility? Daily, as I was going through it.
I read probably every book on the topic of adoption, from all three perspectives. One day it was like a window had opened, letting the sun in. I made my choice to stop the fertility nonsense and become a mother. And I am so glad I did.
And I met so many other couples and singles along my journey to adopt. Some were well prepared, while others made me cringe. Because we were doing international, we would have a closed adoption. I (just my opinion) didn’t want to feel like I was “competing” for a domestic newborn, I wanted a baby who already was in the world without a mom and dad.
Do I think of my son’s birthmother? Every day and with every milestone he reaches. Do I hope someday we can open this adoption, or at least contact her? Yes, I do.
I never felt the huge pull to being a mom by biology, my DNA is nothing to write home about… but I would caution all parents looking at adoption to prepare themselves, and to open their minds by reading books written by adult adoptees, birth parents, other adoptive parents.
Adoption is not just the next logical step after infertility treatments fail. It’s a completely different path, with different issues which will arise throughout the child’s lifespan.
You may be ready to be a parent, but are you ready to be an adoptive parent?
Michelle // April 25, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Unfortunately I was one of those PAP…wanted the “perfectly healthy, young as possible, baby girl”, etc. Thankfully that cloud has lifted and I see adoption for what it really is. I see many PAP just as you described and it saddens me to think their cloud will never lift. The first step is awareness and you are doing just that with this fantastic blog.
BABS // April 26, 2007 at 3:34 am
Well said, Jen! I agree that adoptive parenting has a whole different set of skills that one needs to learn in order to parent the best one can.
GDSinPA // April 26, 2007 at 4:55 pm
I think I know they “type” you’re talking about, but in my experience, it’s all about extremes.
Having met so many PAPs in the past 6 months (as I’ve become one myself), I can tell you that many of us feel like we were called or meant to do this. In turn, we believe that whatever child is placed with us was meant to be ours. In fact, many adoption counselors encourage this mindset so that you are able to become a family, viewing adoption as a legitimate means to doing so.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, it’s very much what I believe.
This cases you mention in this blog post however take it to the next level. Some parent’s believe not just that they were meant to be matched, but that they have a RIGHT to a child, often a specific child. They then feel empowered to make all kinds of demands, and in some cases act like martyrs of some sort.
It is a blessing to have children, but it is not a right.
emily // April 27, 2007 at 5:16 am
I was excited to come across your blog recently. I am a pregnancy counselor and it’s great to hear another professional prospective, especially when it is so.right.on.
I look forward to more discussions here!
~emily
Elizabeth // May 20, 2007 at 6:08 pm
This post is excellent. I’ve met some adoptive parents who still long for a biological child and view their adopted child as second best. I wish that people like this could be weeded out. I honestly did not grieve for a biological child. We wanted to be parents and it really didn’t matter how the child arrived. Not sure if this has something to do with the fact that I’m also an adoptee, but the pregnancy/birth and biological thing didn’t matter. Maybe my social worker didn’t believe me, who knows!
Leave a Comment