Get Your Facts About Adoption

Hard Truths; A Birthmother is Abandoning Her Child

Somewhere inside, they are baby who misses their mothers smell and they don’t have the words to describe that feeling. Someone inside they could be a 3 year old who is scared and angry and wishes that you could come and take them away. Someday, they could turn out to be a person who doesn’t care about stuff, but only wants to fit in with people that get them. Or maybe, just maybe, they think that THEY should have been important enough to warrant a better plan on our part. That THEY were worth working harder, pinching pennies, putting off school, fighting the system, arguing with parents, going on social services.

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Does Voluntary Adoption Relinquishment Save Children from Abuse?

Somewhere along the line the connection has been made that young, unwed mothers with unplanned pregnancies are destined to live a life of poverty and drag their children down with them by abusing their children, resenting their existence, and failing to provide an adequate life. The simple answer is given that if more of these women made adoption plans when facing these unplanned pregnancies then we could prevent future involvement by Child Protective Services and keep these children in ideal homes from the get go, removing the need for Foster homes, and prevent the damage created by the initial abuse. It’s a lovely concept, but like so much in adoption, it is seriously flawed and this belief is not based on fact.


The Culture of Poverty and Adoption: Adoptive Parent Views of Birth Families

Kathryn A. Sweeney* Purdue University Calumet Abstract This study used data from 15 in-depth interviews to better understand how perceptions of birth families by White adoptive parents rely on and challenge cultural perspectives of poverty.  Findings show the complexity of their views: even when adoptive parents recognize structural causes of poverty, they tend to rely on the idea that birth parent poverty results from inadequate choices made by individuals.  Findings…


Secondary Adoptee Rejection in Adoption Reunions

No one is trying to find their birthmothers to throw stones or cast blame, yet on that emotional level we have to acknowledge that the adoptee can feel rejected by the act of adoption placement whether voluntary or forced. It doesn’t matter how they can now, as adult, intellectualize the circumstances of their relinquishment, the child inside still knows the pain and that child wants it’s mother. There is an innocence there in this need to reconnect. It is pure feeling.


When a Birthmother Closes an Open Adoption

Often, the adoptive parents who are writing these stories are genuinely upset and confused. They actually believe in the benefits of open adoption for their children. They want the mothers of their children to have contact with the children they relinquished and to know that the kids are doing well. They don’t understand why the mothers, and sometimes fathers, of their adopted children just disappear.


Can We Understand why Mothers Relinquish Babies to Adoption?

It is only after the true depth of the loss can be accepted that we see that we made a great error in judgment. There is value in the connection between mother and child that cannot be replaced by monetary things and perceived life successes. There is value in being with our own clans and the biological connections that make us who were are. There is great pain and loss in adoption for both the original family and the adoptee no matter how beneficial their placement is. The adoption industry is just that: an industry and it is often corrupt and money driven.


The Risk of Genetic Sexual Attraction for Adoptees and Birth Parents in Reunions

“Parent and child go through a very complex bonding process from the beginning of life to the first six years,” she said. “They go through phases and in the teen years, they separate. That whole process goes dormant until they reunite as adults. It’s almost like it awakens back the recognition in that the other person is a mirror of yourself.” DeNeen said she felt like she was regressing back to childhood, falling in love and looking to her dad as a hero. “I felt a lot of need for intimacy,” she said. “The lines were so blurry.” But she makes it clear that she never had sexual intercourse with her father, even though the relationship was “very inappropriate.” And like others who experience GSA, she crossed physical boundaries that were “embarrassing, confusing, amazing and overwhelming,”


Birth Parents in Adoption: Research, Practice, and Counseling Psychology

Mary O’Leary Wiley; Independent Practice Amanda L. Baden; Montclair State University This article addresses birth parents in the adoption triad by reviewing and integrating both the clinical and empirical literature from a number of professional disciplines with practice case studies. This review includes literature on the decision to relinquish one’s child for adoption, the early postrelinquishment period, and the effects throughout the lifespan on birth parents. Clinical symptoms for birth…


International Asian Adoption: In the Best Interest of the Child?

Kathleen Ja Sook Bergquist, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Illinois State University, School of Social Work. M.S.W., Norfolk State University; Ph.D. in Counselor Education, The College of William and Mary Domestic and international adoption legislation and practice has purported to take into account the “best interest of the child.” More specifically, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and subsequently the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children…


Known Consequences of Separating Mother and Child at Birth Implications for Further Study

 Wendy Jacobs, B.Sc., B.A.    “The past is never fully gone. It is absorbed into the present and the future. It stays to shape what we are and what we do.” Sir William Deane, Inaugural Lingiari Lecture, Darwin, 22 August 1996 Separating mother and child at birth was the way adoption was practiced in Australia in the latter half of last century. We have heard from other speakers about current…


Ongoing Adoption Reunions

This article describes the expectations, responses to unmet expectations, and factors that influence adoption reunion outcomes. Themes derived for interviews with 10 adult adoptees and 10 birth mothers who had each experienced an adoption reunion beyond an initial face-to-face meeting are reported.


Parens Patri[Archy]: Adoption, Eugenics, and Same-Sex Couples

Kari El Hong California Western Law Review, Vol. 40, No. 1, 2003  Abstract:  Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, and Utah have laws or regulations prohibiting gay men, lesbian women, same-sex couples, or single parents (heterosexual and homosexual) from serving as adoptive or foster parents. In court filings, Arkansas, Florida, and Utah justify their bans by contending that married couples are the optimal families in which to raise children because families headed by gay…


ADOPTION AND AGENCY: American Adoptions of Marshallese Children

Julianne M. Walsh: Department of Anthropology  University of Hawai`i at Manoa 1999 Abstract: From 1996-1999 over 500 children were adopted from the Marshall Islands by Americans, placing the RMI well within the top twenty source nation for international adoptions. Without government regulation of this sudden and  rapidly growing phenomenon, the potential for misunderstanding and exploitation grew alarming to national leaders who supported a moratorium on foreign adoptions late in 1999….


Addressing the Psycho-Social Implications in Social Policy: The Case of Adoption and Early Intervention Strategies

A Research Paper submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Public Policy at Victoria University of Wellington ANN WEAVER: Victoria University 1999 ABSTRACT New Zealand Government policy and legislation has tended to follow a shor-term‘out-put’ rather than a long-term ‘outcome’ model. Furthermore, the psycho-social implications of policies and legislation have at times not been adequately addressed. This paper argues that it is essential to…


1800 PARENT AND CHILD

Margaret F. Brinig Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law 1999 The law and economics of parent and child involves several models. Before the child becomes part of the family, the actions of the parents resemble those of market participants, with the appropriate paradigm contract. Nonetheless, the fact that children are the ‘goods’ over which adults bargain, mandates some government intrusion on contractual freedom. Once parents and child form a family, the social…