15 Ways to Be Vulnerable to Adoption Agencies

How to Ensure that You Will Become a Birthmother

I figured I am usually so mean against adoption agencies and never do anything nice  for them. I am always doing things like the Craigslist Adoption Truth Project that makes it harder for them to find babies to place for adoption. So I figured that I would write a post that makes it easier for women to become birthmothers. See, look at me supporting adoption!

Hence, here’s a handy guide on how to become more appealing to adoption agencies and ways to ensure that you will place your baby.

1. Deny That You Are Pregnant and  Hope “It” Goes Away:

Pregnancy denial is something that adoption agencies love. See, when you can’t face the fact that the pee stick came up with two lines, then you don’t have  the full pregnancy to get your act together. You also, if you were so inclined, end up ruling out abortion because you miss the time frame that is the window of opportunity. The fact that you are having a baby and not at all prepared, makes you ever so much more likely to panic and consider adoption. Let’s just keep ignoring those blue lines, shall we?

2. Hide Your Pregnancy from Co-workers, Friends, etc:

This is part and parcel of Denying the pregnancy to yourself. Most of the time, the denial will actually just be a mental game of pretending that it is just not true and an inability to act on the news of the impending blessed event. The hiding of the pregnancy is more conscious as usually, most pregnant women, eventually show a belly. It takes a keen fashion sense to convince everyone that you are not hiding a baby bump. However, while one’s reproduction is not really a matter of public concern, hiding the pregnancy does keep others from accepting your motherhood and can add to the panic of being unprepared. It also cuts you off from both public opinion, but more importantly keep you cut off from possible avenues of assistance. People can’t know that you need help if they don’t know that you need help! In addition, by creating a “secret” you are also creating a secret that must be kept up, even further making adoption look favorable.

3. Don’t Tell Your Family That You Are Pregnant

Again, see number one and two as these are related, but hiding your pregnancy from your family is usually a big sign of happiness to an adoption agency! Yes, you are cutting yourself off completely form any support form family. You are also isolating yourself from any dissenting opinions which might make you think twice about adoption. There are some grandparents and siblings out there that don’t want ot lose their grandchildren or nieces or nephews either! And, it does create that secret. If you have a baby and place it for adoption and don’t tell your family, that is something that must be carried for a long time. I mean you can’t very well change your mind and call up your mom on Tuesday and be like, “Oh, by the way, I had a baby yesterday”. That’s why adoption agencies are so quick to offer you “confidentiality” and keep your secrets. They know you won’t make that call, you go through with the adoption plan. That’s why they like to “offer housing” to help you get away from those perky family members. That’s why adoption relinquishment forms are not “contracts”; by law minors can’t enter into a contract, but a minor can sign away a baby without her parents knowing.

4. Don’t Inform the Baby’s Father

Again, secrets, isolation, and removal of the MOST pesky influence around. Why do adoption agencies LOVE Utah? Because when they move a pregnant women to Utah to give birth, the father, unless he is married to you, has NO rights what’s so ever. But don’t worry. They are well versed in terminating a father’s rights without you ever having to talk to him again.  The Punitive Father’s Registries are still relatively unknown by most guys and if your baby daddy fails to register, that often weakens any claim he might have on the baby. Plus, if you don’t tell him, you can claim in many states that he didn’t “support” you or the pregnancy. And then there is the trusty old “classified Ad in the legal section of the newspaper” trick. See, that’s when they post an add in the section of the paper that no one reads, around the area where you think the baby daddy might be found, and it “warns” him of your pregnancy and potential relinquishment of said child. Of course, this kind of blows that idea of “confidentiality” out the window since they list your name and announce that you are knocked up.

Of course, NOT telling dad can be a nice back door if you should change your mind after the revoke period. Most “failed” adoptions  that make the major media are because of dad’s exercising their rights to get the baby back. Just make sure Daddy has lots of money for legal fees and about three years of his life to be tied up in court so he can “rip that baby away from the only home he or she has ever known.”

5. Doubt Yourself

I almost want to say that having poor self esteem is a must have trait for a relinquishing mother. We have to doubt our ability to mother in some fashion for they have nothing to exploit, nothing to amplify. We Maybe you had a questionable upbringing and don’t think you learned to do the “right” things and you’ll be detrimental to your child. Maybe you worry that you don’t have enough money or smarts or whatever and doubt your ability to adapt and adjust to what a new baby brings. Maybe you have a kids and get stressed and think two will push you over the edge. Maybe you doubt your ability to love? Not smart enough, responsible enough, rich enough, stable enough.. whatever those dark voices in your head say, the adoption agency is well versed in finding them and telling you how right you are, how smart, how self aware to know your limitations and desire to place your baby for adoption. They will help you to see that the biggest threat to your child is you, the mother.

6. Be Rigid About Your Life Plans and Have Goals

If you don’t have doubts, than goals will do. Are you determined to finish school, get your degree, travel to Australia? Are you one of those people who decided when you were 9 that you wouldn’t have kids until you were 29 and had a great life? Yes,  adoption agencies will love to use that too. They will make it seem like only through giving your child away can you keep your promises to yourself rather than helping you make a new plan that includes your child. Listen, life does NOT go according to plan. Stop pretending that you can control this stuff. You can’t. I’m sorry it didn’t work like you wanted, but now, do yourself a huge favor and ADAPT. You can’t play God, You can’t change biology with a piece of paper. You’re going to have a baby, you’re going to be a mother. End of Story. Make the best of it and accept what life gives you,. It might actually be just the way it should and you won’t know until you try.

7. Be Terrified of Becoming a Welfare Queen

Never, EVER, so much as think about looking for or accepting government aid. If you do it’s only a matter of time before you are selling your food stamps for cheap tequila and using your bus fare money to get your nails done. Nobody gets off welfare, they just get trashier and trashier as the years go by. And never you mind about that $12,150 Adoption Tax Credit the adopters will get, they are far more deserving of government funds than you are. They must be considering you think they deserve your baby more than you do. (Comment credit tip- Andraya)

8. Throw God into the Mix

I don’t care what you believe. God did NOT make you become pregnant so you can “build a family.” You are not some “divine vessel” or an instrument of his work. He doesn’t demand you sacrifice your motherhood to pay for your sins of having sex. If God didn’t want people to have sex and enjoy it, then it wouldn’t feel good. We would just mate like animals when we are fertile. He did not “bring you” to any  particular adoptive family to bless with your off spring. You were not put on this earth to meet their needs. They are not more worthy of God’s blessings. If he wanted them to have a baby, he would get them pregnant. He wanted YOU to have THIS baby. Now accept God’s gift to YOU and don’t give it away. Human Beings are NOT gifts. You are not a family building angel. There are no “signs”. Cut it out.

9. Don’t Listen to Adoptees

By all means stay away from the horrible things adoptees say and believe the adoption agency when they tell you that you unborn child will be happy and grateful that you gave them away. Don’t read anything about the bond between mother and child. Don’t EVER read the Primal Wound. If an adoptee dares to say anything, denounce them as angry and dismiss their ramblings with a hearty ” I’m sorry you had such a bad experience”. Who the hell do they think they are anyway? Like they actual LIVED though it? Well, they must have had bad adoptive parents who didn’t love them and your child, of course, will not since you will pick the BEST parents ever! You child will be happy with the photocopy you saved of his Original Birth Certificate and won’t find his civil rights trampled on because he or she can’t get a copy like any other non adopted person. And please, for one second, don’t think that these adoptees might actually be speaking for YOUR child. You know that kid that has no voice and can’t say that it would rather live in a cardboard box with you than a mansion without you? Yeah, keep on making choices for the kid that can’t speak.

10. Call the Other Moms Who Warn You Bitter

Times have changed. Adoption in 2012 is nothing like adoption in 1987 or 1968 and the other moms who have relinquished are just completely clueless.  There are no such thing as forced adoptions anymore. Adoption agencies are completely transparent and only want what is best for you. Adoption agencies tell the truth. It’s very very important that you dismiss all other birthmothers who warn you that adoption hurts really bad and that you never get over it. Call them bitter and pray for them. If they only focused on positive stuff, rather than the negative then things would be much better for them anyway. They just want to screw up your plans for some hidden agenda.

11. Be Trusting of Adoption Professionals

They are really nice. They want what’s best for you. They are there to help and they have tons of experience. By all means do what they say and eat up every word they utter., They know how it works and you don’t. After all, they do tons of adoptions and you never have. Trust them to be your main source for all information. It’s not like they make their money from the adoption of babies.

12. Believe Adoption is Your Choice

Of course, no one can really hold a gun to your head. They might threaten you with huge expenses, or jail time,  or a life of poverty, but of course, adoption is your choice. Please believe that you love your baby SO MUCH that you made a “loving adoption plan” because your baby needs the “best”. You are stronger, better, selfless than any of those stupid girls that keep their babies. And of course, the adoption agency will give you all the information that you need to make a true informed decision in your adoption counseling. You know exactly what you are getting yourself and your child into. You WANT to be a birthmother. You have been dreaming about giving away babies since before you could walk.

13. Think the Adoptive Parents are the BEST people Ever

You picked them, so they have to be great, Besides, we know how carefully adoption agencies screen adoptive parents. And they waited for so long and the only thing they need to be perfect is a baby or another baby.  They are now immune to any real life hardships. They will never get divorced, or get cancer, or get hit by a car, or lose a job, I bet  the adoptive parents in this world never even lost any money in the stock market crash. They are too great to be treated in such ways by the universe. It’s the infertility that causes that you know. Because they were saddled with infertility, they are protected from every other life hardship. God says.

They also cannot lie. So everything they tell you will 100% the truth. Which is good since you will have to trust them to keep your open adoption going once you sign the relinquishment agreement and all the control goes to them. These other birthmothers who had their promised open adoptions closed on them? Well, rest assured it’s their own fault. They either didn’t pick the right parent profile or they must have done something bad to make the good adoptive parents protect the baby from its demanding, don’t know your place as a vessel, mothers.

14. Think a Mother AND Father is Key

Yes, we know single motherhood is the scrounge of all good things in this world. It causes poverty and makes kids grow up to be criminals. Global warming is also caused by too many single mothers. And kids raised by single mothers NEVER EVER grow up to be President ::cough-cough::Obama: :cough-cough::Clinton::cough-cough::. It makes so much more sense to break the biological ties with a mother to give a child both a mother and father who are strangers.  That father dude, he is KEY to your child’s happiness. Coz we all know that if you were to try to raise your own kid, no one will ever marry you.  You won’t met a great guy in two years who love you and your kid. We all know that kids say “da da” first, so if you don’t give the kid a  father they will never learn to talk.

15. Think That You Are Special

Once you get your self doubts exploited, be confident that IF you do EVERYTHING right like the kid hearted adoption professionals say, THEN it will all work out OK. The promised “peace and contentment” will be yours.  You are NOTHING like these horrible people. There is no such thing as general human nature. They don’t know you. You are completely different with different life experiences and they don’t know what you are determined to do. Please know that no one else has every gone through this before and if they have and say bad things, then they are just bitter. Or they did something wrong. It’s their own fault, but you! Oh, you are stronger. You are better. You will pick the right parents and do all the right things. And it will All be perfect. I promise.

Oh, but wait.. you can’t listen to me. I’m just bitter.

Did I miss any?

 

About the Author

Claudia Corrigan DArcy
Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy has been online and involved in the adoption community since early in 2001. Blogging since 2005, her website Musings of the Lame has become a much needed road map for many mothers who relinquished, adoptees who long to be heard, and adoptive parents who seek understanding. She is also an activist and avid supporter of Adoptee Rights and fights for nationwide birth certificate access for all adoptees with the Adoptee Rights Coalition. Besides here on Musings of the Lame, her writings on adoption issue have been published in The New York Times, BlogHer, Divine Caroline, Adoption Today Magazine, Adoption Constellation Magazine, Adopt-a-tude.com, Lost Mothers, Grown in my Heart, Adoption Voice Magazine, and many others. She has been interviewed by Dan Rather, Montel Williams and appeared on Huffington Post regarding adoption as well as presented at various adoption conferences, other radio and print interviews over the years. She resides in New York’s Hudson Valley with her husband, Rye, children, and various pets.

15 Comments on "15 Ways to Be Vulnerable to Adoption Agencies"

  1. Be terrified of becoming a Welfare Queen

    Never, EVER, so much as think about looking for or accepting government aid. If you do it’s only a matter of time before you are selling your food stamps for cheap tequila and using your bus fare money to get your nails done. Nobody gets off welfare, they just get trashier and trashier as the years go by. And never you mind about that $12,150 Adoption Tax Credit the adopters will get, they are far more deserving of government funds than you are. They must be considering you think they deserve your baby more than you do.

  2. …I’m pretty sure that if you did miss anything, you didn’t miss much…wish I’d had something like this to stare me squarely in the face 21 years ago…

    But thanks for doing it now. Maybe someone will be thanking you a year from now or more…I sure hope so!!

    🙂

    High five, and keep on rockin’ on!! Heck yes!!!

  3. Agree with Imadance, I wish I had someone telling me this 22 years ago

  4. This is straight-up amazing. Thank you for this. Wish I would have had this last year to throw at all my relatives too “proud” for me to go on welfare [FOR LIFE] and the ones who kept telling me my baby was a blessing, but oh wait-still going to hell for having premarital sex! Hahaha.

  5. claudia.

    why didn’t i read your blog when i was pregnant. 🙁

  6. Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!

    I wish every pregnant mother considering adoption could read this post!

  7. Well 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11 & 14 were all true for me. Sadly…like I told ya before, I only wish I would have soaked in everything on your blog while I was pregnant :/

  8. Tested positive for 14/15 of these signs. And was in total denial of that at the time.

    Claudia — thank you for your blog.

  9. 12 of 15 were true for me too 24 years ago.

  10. but you do know some parents used their children. i am going to help you new yorkers even if jonathan larson had to gift us Obullies!

  11. Great list. Number three actually worked against me, though. My family, specifically my mother is the number one cause (right behind MEEEEEEEE signing the damn relinquishment papers) of the adoption.

  12. LisaAnne119 | January 30, 2013 at 8:34 pm |

    Did you read my mind while I was pregnant?

  13. Anne Johnson | February 9, 2013 at 6:11 pm |

    As an adoptive mom I appreciate everything you are saying. You go, girl! And may some of your efforts pay off to enlighten the New York legislature ….. those dinosaur
    lawyers!

    Anne Johnson
    Potsdam, NY

  14. You missed several Claudia: 1) If you have very conservative parents, tell them you are pregnant – you are sure to get a one-way ticket to a maternity prison or abortion clinic 2) If you escape from a maternity prison or abortion clinic – just get back home and see what happens 3) sit down and make a list. on one side of the page, put what the adoptive parents can provide for your child, then put what YOU can provide…….If “love” is all you can provide? You obviously need to go check yourself into the maternity home or licensed adoption agency STAT!

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