I strongly concurr that the shaming of unwed mothers is (and was) a horrific tool in a culture that alleges to value family. My mother gave birth at age 16. She was not allowed to keep her child. Instead, my sister was shuttled between 3 foster homes in 2 years. During that time she went from being a happy, good natured child, to being a child who would just sit and rock back and forth, and cry. There was no evidence or suggestion of abuse at the foster homes, so suspect she was simply traumatized from being shuttled around from stranger to stranger in her short life. My mother was then ALLOWED to have her daughter when she married at age 18. By then, my sister was a very unhappy, unwell, damaged child. So much for valuing family.
Emma Peel | 11.19.07 - 1:42 pm | #

Back in the seventeenth century they used to put bastard babies out to nurse while the mother pretended nothing had happened and went to get another job as a "maidservant." There was no way of being an unwed mother in that society -- no walking around with a baby and a scarlet A. Sounds pretty similar to the adoption stuff, or maybe more like foster care -- I guess it was better than the foundling hospitals of the 18th century, anyway!
nell | 11.19.07 - 2:08 pm | #

I heard this author/artist speak at Douglass College last year to a room full of 1st year undergraduate women, and it was fascinating - both to me and to them. She also has done installment art that plays the recorded stories of women who were forced to give up their babies; hard to keep dry eyes listening to their stories. It really opened the eyes of the undergraduates, most of whom probably consider themselves anti-abortion/pro-adoption. I highly recommend going to an exhibit or talk if there's one near you.
auderey | 11.19.07 - 2:30 pm | #

Thanks for the reminder. I've been wanting to read this. Now that the paperback is out, the hardcover is remaindered ($6.99 on Amazon), so the purchase is particularly timely.
Ann | 11.19.07 - 3:11 pm | #

i read that book as well, and the only problem i had with it was that it seemed to put the problems with adoption in the past. as if now that we have the right to abortions women aren't forced to relinquish their babies. or the ones that do are making a free choice with their eyes open.

women are still coerced into adoption, it's just more subtle now.
Kateri | Homepage | 11.19.07 - 3:12 pm | #

Among the benefits of giving women more control over their lives has been the change in attitudes re adoption. I've been close to those on both sides of open adoptions and witnessed the incredibly difficult decision-making process of a young mother who ultimately decided to place her child with another family, and also the joy and love of parents who adopted a child. The families have maintained an on-going relationship between the child, family and birth mother (and in one case including the birth mother's extended family) that has been very positive.
It doesn't always work out, of course, and in one family a second open adoption has been more difficult because the birth mother's behavior is erratic and unpredictable.

But overall, a much more humane option -- for everyone involved.
cosmo | 11.19.07 - 3:29 pm | #

I placed a child for adoption 10 years ago. I was in college, and I knew I wasn't ready to raise a child and stack the deck against both of us. I'm staunchly pro-choice, and fully considered all of my options. I even waited until I had fully made the decision to talk to my family - I wanted to make sure it was my decision and that I could neither thank nor blame anyone else.

I'm thankful that different options exist now than existed for earlier generations of women. My situation is semi-open. We communicate through the agency, and I chose the placement. We don't have each other's home phone numbers or addresses, but we have occasionally run into each other around town. I was in the congregation at the baptism and I suspect other significant events may have invitations attached as well. At any time, the parents or child can initiate contact through the agency; I must wait until the child has reached age 18.

While I can't support women being forced to place children for adoption, I also can't support the maligning of adoption as a choice for women. Please remember among those of us who are fiercely pro-choice, that should include ALL available, informed choices.
nw | 11.19.07 - 3:33 pm | #

This is an absolutely amazing post! I've never even considered this tragic point-of-view - it was painful to read. You're right, we only ever hear about adoption as this "wonderful" thing that helps give kids a good home and helps complete families, but we never hear about what happens to the mothers (and fathers) that never get to see their offspring again. I could cry!
TD | 11.19.07 - 4:16 pm | #

NW, I'm not at all anti-adoption; I just think that like a lot of "choice" topics, people fail to realize that the choice is often (usually) not entirely free. For instance, one of the reasons women choose to abort/place children for adoption is that it's so damn difficult to raise a child singlehandedly, especially when you're young--and this is not just some unavoidable fact of nature. It's a product of the choices we, as a society, have made about things like education access, material support, and social stigma.

The families have maintained an on-going relationship between the child, family and birth mother (and in one case including the birth mother's extended family) that has been very positive.

That's awesome. It has to be said, though (as NW says in passing about not being able to initiate contact until her child is 18 ), that even in open adoptions, the birth mother's right to access isn't legally protected. It's completely dependent on the good will of the adoptive parents--and I think this is true in every state.
bitchphd | Homepage | 11.19.07 - 4:20 pm | #

Thank you for posting this. You are right, open adoption agreements are rarely legally binding. And many states have severely short revocation periods, some states have none at all. I am a "birthmother who changed her mind." The *entire* time I was pregnant I was convinced the right thing to do was to place her for adoption, with a stable couple who would be much better parents than I could. I had no idea, no idea, that I'd feel differently when she was born. And I was self supporting, had good health insurance, etc. What if I was being financially supported by potential adoptive parents? How could I have made the decision I did then? I was trying to be a good girl, after being "bad" and getting pregnant w/o being married. I think I would've signed the papers. And in some states that would've been it. No recourse.

Thank you again for posting this. It needs to be read by your large audience.
Libby | 11.19.07 - 5:11 pm | #

Another interesting complication to the historical narrative of adoption, birth mothers, and adoptees is, of course, the public media celebration of the entirely "adopted" family as a new multiethnic cultural unit, as in Brangelina, etc.. I wonder how the economics of these situations complicate Fessler's point.

Now, I consider myself strictly pro-choice, which, and I'm with nw on this, doesn't by default mean pro-abortion.
charlotte | Homepage | 11.19.07 - 5:13 pm | #

I've thought for years that adoption is a tragic response to the sad fact that a woman can't take care of her birth child, and that the anti-abortion people who say that a woman can always just give up her baby for adoption have no imaginations at all, or they'd have a glimmer of an understanding of what that would be like. The other thing that's important here (the legal scholar Dorothy Roberts taught me this) is that a far greater percentage of black children than whites are placed for adoption, because they end up in the foster care system, because their moms are under far greater scrutiny from social workers and the "welfare" system. So there's some serious racist shit coming down here too.
Mamasquab | 11.19.07 - 5:26 pm | #

You should read Following the Tambourine Man. It's about a birth mother who was forced to give up her child & went in search for her 30 years later. It's a good memoir.
B | 11.19.07 - 5:39 pm | #

MamaSquab, I think you have conflated two issues. There are more American black children up for adotpion because parental rights are terminated at a greater rate than whites. This is a legacy of the coerced reproductive policies toward minority women. However, the flip side is that American black babies are the LEAST desirable candidates for any prospective adoptive parents.

Historically, in cases of American black teen pregnancies, the babies were typically adopted within in the family or extended family. You visited an aunt for a school year and returned to your life. You had access to your child as a relative if you wanted. A full third of my family and my SOs family (including him) were "adopted" this way. These girls aren't that stupid. Let me assure you that no American black teenage female actually thinks that a nice, loving couple will come along and adopt her baby if she puts it up for adoption. That leaves her with two choices--abortion or motherhood.

Black and other minority children languish in and age out of foster care because there is zero demand for them. No one wants them. People would rather adopt extremely sick kids from Asia, or kids from third world countries WAY before they will adopt a black American baby/child. And I'm not even talking about the celebrities. This isn't even a real option for most minority teenagers and given the racial history in this country, it definitely isn't for teenage black girls.

This is when the schism between black feminists and white feminists occurs. What appears to be a valid reproductive choice to the majority really isn't to the minority. There is a feeling amongst some blacks that proponents of abortion have a hidden agenda in reducing the number of black babies born. Therefore, abortion on demand is hard to digest especially when they have spent their time fighting for the right to keep their children, both during and post-slavery, the right to care and parent the children they do have and the right to have a basic standard of living in which to do so. Yet, they also know adoption is not a choice for them so they continue to disproportionately become mothers at a young age.
Stacey | 11.19.07 - 6:41 pm | #

I did some work for an adoption rights group as a 1L last year. I began fairly neutral on adoption issues; I'd never really thought about it. By the end of my work, I had deep, deep ethical problems with most infant adoption, and some qualms about using adoption as a means of family completion. (Although none about using it as a way of placing children in need in homes, which is, in my opinion, an entirely different thing)

Part of the issues came from reading birth mother blogs; certainly, that was the beginning, but, it was this page which really crystallized it for me:

http://www.ncfa-usa.org/about/ po..._law_first.html

Policy statements. If you read them, and think about them, they're more than retro, more than paternalistic, more than nuclear-normative- they're chilling.
Hobolawstudent | 11.19.07 - 7:13 pm | #

Bitch: I completely agree that the thought of raising a child singlehandedly is far more daunting than it ought to be - especially in a nation with as much wealth as this one. On this note, I often ask the anti-choice folks that I come into contact with just what they're doing to reduce poverty. Knowing how much more poverty impacts women and children, and what being raised in poverty means, I know that if people really want to drastically reduce the need for abortion, they would work to make it un-necessary. Eliminating poverty and ending the need to legislate women's actions, while fully and honestly educating people about family planning/birth control and ending the manner in which women and children are still treated as property in the eyes of the law would certainly end a good deal of the need for this discussion.

And yes, I do have more limited access. Ultimately, I guess I'm not that worried about it. I'm very aware of what's going on with this family. My child is not the only adopted person in the family, and I know how to get in touch with the parents if I really needed to.

I also understand how culturally determined (socially constructed, if you will) the whole concept of family is. In this arguement, you're stigmatized if you are a single mother, but you're also stigmatized if you place a child for adoption. And then, if you don't have a desire to be contacted or have this child be part of your life later - yet another layer of stigma.

In this, as in so many other areas of life, there is an incredibly limited ability for women to truly be self determined.
nw | 11.19.07 - 7:48 pm | #

Thanks for recommending the book. I would recommend, in turn, that you check out some birth-mother blogs out there and read about their experiences with adoption. You can start with an earlier commenter, Kateri (whose blog is one of the ones I've learned the most from regarding adoption and birth-motherhood), but there are many others, some extremely articulate, like Jenna who writes the birth parent section of adoption blogs: http://birthparents.adoptionblogs.com/

I second what Kateri wrote: "women are still coerced into adoption, it's just more subtle now." It's even worse with the "open adoption" model since the prospective birth-mothers are "lured" by the prospect of maintaining contact with their child and then that doesn't materialize since open adoption "contracts" are not legally binding. This, in a sense, feels even worse to these "not authenticated" mothers than what happened in the past when they knew they wouldn't have any contact with the child.

If you "enjoyed" hearing the voices of these women from the past you'd certainly appreciate hearing their voices in the blogosphere now.
Lilian | Homepage | 11.19.07 - 8:54 pm | #

Several things about the post and comments are striking. The first is the almost offhand, but incisive historical analysis offered by BitchPhD. Namely, that the family structure that has become so idealized and normative is itself a construction of the mid-twentieth century, specifically from about 1945 through 1970.

A theme that runs through many of the comments is the complete and utter lack of meaningful "choice" that face many women who become pregnant. Abortion, Adoption, stigmatization, and poverty (for single mothers.) Very revealing.

And, finally, as I watched, in recent years, a number of friends adopt (all open adoptions with birth mothers involved), I am struck by just how emotionally and socially fraught the process is for everyone involved. I am more impressed with my friends and simply paralyzed emotion for the women who have placed their children for adoption.
Dr.M | 11.19.07 - 9:17 pm | #

last sentence should have been: paralyzed with emotion for ...
Dr.M | 11.19.07 - 9:17 pm | #

An extraordinarily good post -- deep analysis concisely presented, with compassion and honesty. And the comments are turning out to be just as brilliant. An honor to read -- Thanks.
Maggie Jochild | Homepage | 11.19.07 - 9:22 pm | #

read Promises I Can Keep and get over this Americanized adoption world--most of the world freely adopts each others kids for all sorts of reasons--as long as they have stability and love they will be okay--we do not own them
meow | Homepage | 11.19.07 - 10:46 pm | #

Hobolawstudent | 11.19.07 - 7:13 pm | #

I hear you--the statments are downright patriarchal and heteronormative and white supremist--don't buy into the shit--i know it is hard--am here
meow | Homepage | 11.19.07 - 10:50 pm | #

I placed a child for adoption 13 years ago. Open adoption. I would never have considered closed adoption. In the paralyzing years following, I have lived in poverty (partly because I was so overcome with grief I could hardly get up each day, face the only work I could find after the birth, when, still bleeding from giving birth, I was hired at 7/11), dealt daily with a grief and loss and wondered why these people I chose to care for my child were so eager to take my baby but offered me no help. (Legally they couldn't, I know the reasons why, but it was a thought process. Also there was a governmental process to provide easy access to adoption, no such easy process to help me keep my child. In fact a woman at the pregnancy crisis centre said to me at the time, "Wouldn't it feel good to give a couple the gift of a baby?" Even then I thought she was full of shit, I thought, my baby is nobody's present. I never returned. But I had no other help.)

I have also had reason to re-consider the romanticized notion of adoption: what kind of society does not welcome a child into the world simply because the mother does not have the money to support herself and her baby. The statistics that they provide in high school sex-ed classes to scare girls from having sex, scared me from taking on the challenge of mothering my own daughter, left me feeling shame for becoming a 19-year-old pregnant statistic.

I made my decision and still struggle to live with it each day. I found feminism, stumbled through college and finally began the healing process when the first of my two daughters were born. My second now is five months old and still many days I am overcome with what I lost the first time around, overcome with longings to mother the baby I lost, wondering - was she like this, did she cry like that, did she smile like this one?

I have been able to keep contact with my daughter. Telephone calls, visits every few years. It is enough to let me know she is okay. But also enough to let me know that her adopted parents are not necessarily better, not raising her the way I would, they have some religoius views etc. I have been able to overcome that and see that overall she is doing well, that they love her to death and she is very happy and does have many things I could never have given her.

But she doesn't have what I could have given her.

I am often angry too. I am angry that we teach our teenagers that becoming pregnant ends their lives and hurts the future of their children. Why the hell should it? If society supported women and children, teenage pregnancy would be no more a life-ender than the struggle I am currently having of trying to keep my career active while parenting two gutsy challenging girls.

I lost a lot. I was almost overcome by grief. And I am angry that I felt I was being honorable by sacrificing myself for the good of my child. I see now the sacrifice, as most of these types of sacrifices women are encouraged to make for the good of their children, (such as sacrificing career and work, my daughters are much better off for having a mother who is engaged with the world, who still has her creative capacity) are not required.

Bitch, thanks for the post. It's an issue that is not often talked about. Although some adoptions work out well on all sides, after having spent some time in adoption agency sponsored birth-mother groups, I have seen that for the most part, birth mothers are a lot like me, left confused by the magnitude of the grief they did not even know they would feel, and unable to move ahead, hiding a grief that they chose for themselves....

madmama
madmama | 11.20.07 - 2:21 am | #

My uncle knocked up the preacher's daughter in a small town in Missouri at the end of the 60s. I have a cousin I've never met. I'd like to meet you someday, Cousin.
TinaH | 11.20.07 - 5:53 am | #

The quotes from the mothers that you chose to use here hit me close to home. These women sound a lot like I feel about having one of my children die, and really their complete lack of contact with their children amounts to a kind of death so it should come as no surprise.
grumpyabdadjunct | 11.20.07 - 6:19 am | #

Thanks for posting this - I'm putting it on my Amazon wishlist/goodreads ASAP. I am staunchly pro-choice and come from a family of anti-choicers. Furthermore, I cannot have children biologically and do worry about adopting because of the history it has (and in some cases still has in many instances of closed international adoptions.)
BabyPop | Homepage | 11.20.07 - 6:45 am | #

Hobolawstudent, I went to the page you had a link to (NCFA) and it was, indeed, incredibly disturbing. And even if it were just a council that focused on improving the adoption process and helping kids out of foster care and into permanent homes why is there nothing for the birth mothers? Maybe I missed support services for birth mothers?! And you would think that an organization so gung-ho to package babies off to homes, would actually, ya know, care about the women who gave birth to them. Why not have support initiatives for the mothers after they gave up their babies for adoption? They could fund a support group for them, possibly offer job skill training (just in case the mother is in a bad situation--to get her back on her feet and make her feel like she has options in her life). I mean they complain about the lack of education in sex-ed programs about how women can give up their babies, but obviously they could care less about postpartum care. Creepy baby factory people.
Erin | 11.20.07 - 7:57 am | #

Madmama, thanks for writing your experience with adoption. I was in your position seven years ago, and did not have a baby, and always thought that if I'd continued I would have placed that baby for adoption. I wondered if that would have fixed the little hole in my heart. Now I'm pretty sure that the hole would exist no matter what.

I'm sending you good wishes and hope you are getting a good night's sleep (I have an infant right now too!).
T | Homepage | 11.20.07 - 8:13 am | #

This was both a very very good post and a touching comment thread. It had to think about my thoughts some months ago.
A young mother (whom my girlfriend knew as a child from a community center she used to volunteer at) visited us for a couple of days with her 2-year old. Now, the circumstances of her pregnancy had been extremely problematic (she was 15, she'd been raped which she hadn't told anyone, her own parents have serious health problems and live from public help, she herself used to have some learning disabilities and was thus behind in school) and after ruling out abortion for moral reasons, she'd been planning to give the child to adoption. But when she was about to give birth, she changed her mind: it was the child she'd been carrying for nine months and now she couldn't give it away.
When I first heard about this, I couldn't believe she did that. In her situation? With that pregnancy story? Why would she throw away the slim chances for a good education she had? And did she want to give her child such a tough start?

But then, as I saw her two years later visiting us with her daughter I just saw what she meant: sure she handled her daughter (who is very clever but a little princess) different than she would have done if she were ten years older, but obviously she loves her and somehow makes works, if rockily. The crucial point is that she could - maybe better than me - just accept that this is life: it is not easy, but she tries to be true. I understood that her situation wouldn't necessarily have been better without her daughter: she would have lost even more than she had already lost before.

(That doesn't mean I'm anti-adoption in general: I'd advise some open-type to be able to be true to everyone, including child and birth-mother. But it has to be true to the birth-mother's feelings toward the child).
Jay | 11.20.07 - 9:07 am | #

A thought-provoking post, to say the least. I've skimmed this book in the bookstore, but not picked it up yet. It's a little too close to home for me yet.

30 years ago, I was adopted. I know only that my bio-parents were 16 and 17 and Catholic. It's extremely unlikely that adoption was a choice for them. My parents (adoptive) never made a production out of telling me I was adopted -- I've always known. Seeking my bio parents has always been an option on the table, but they let it be my decision. Last year I did register in the state's database, but it was a huge emotional decision for me. I wonder sometimes what the other side of that decision is like. I'm sure this book would help provide that insight. But to be completely honest, I can only deal with my side of the emotional equation right now.

I'm still keeping this on my "to read" list, though.
Kate | 11.20.07 - 9:30 am | #

I am not anti-adoption in principle, but I hate the way adoption is presented in this culture: as the "easy" "moral" option. It it not necessarily either. Abortion is safer for the pregnant woman, both physically and mentally. Raising a child, even as a single, teenage mother can work, and can be better than adoption for both mother and child. Most women who give up a child for adoption face long term, probably lifelong depression and other mental health problems as a result. Open adoption may alleviate this a bit, but not entirely. Walking away from a baby or letting someone take it, must feel like abandoning it to be eaten by wolves, even when you know that really you've given the baby to a loving home. It hurts, always, no matter what. If a woman knows the risks and still wants to go through with it, all honor to her and she should be supported as much as possible. But no one should be tricked or coerced into putting themselves into the hell of having to give up their baby.
Dianne | 11.20.07 - 10:06 am | #

My sister is an adoptee. It was, (back in the 1960's) a closed adoption. My parents had some knowledge of my sister's parentage from the agency. It was never a hidden fact but openly and casually accepted. We had some tough times (she was prone to the "my real mother would let me..." phases) but we are family.

Some years ago (with family encouragement) my sister found her birth mother and family. Unfortunately, it was not a joyous reunion...my sister was very disappointed in how things went. She was welcomed by her birthmother, who then proceeded to try and blackmail my sister for money because my sister "owed her for putting her up for adoption and letting her be adopted by a rich(!!!) family". After a short time and a few thousand dollars, my sister ended up cutting off contact.

As a mother, I can relate to the difficulty in giving a child up for adoption. As a sister, I can say that I am thrilled I have a sister.
Adoption isn't a panacea, but it is and should be considered a valid choice along with abortion and raising the child yourself.
Dawn | 11.20.07 - 11:18 am | #

Dianne:

Adoption is certainly not easy, but not every experience of it is like giving a child up to be eaten by wolves. In fact, this perception always makes me feel like I'm a horrible person for feeling okay about the decision I made. Yes, it was difficult, and yes, I think about it often. That said, I am not tortured, empty, incomplete, depressed, suicidal, or otherwise mentally ill. Rather, I am happy, confident, peaceful, and fulfilled by the decisions I've made and the direction in which I live my life.

I would argue that in the time since Roe v. Wade, adoption has come to be seen as some sort of moral failing on the part of women who make this choice - I am obviously heartless, callous, and selfish because I was able to carry a child to term and then "walk away." Even more so since I've gone on to accomplish good things, graduate from college, and lead a comfortable life.

Again - nobody should be forced or coerced into adoption. But those who do make this choice shouldn't be made to feel like they are somehow victims or monsters either.
nw | 11.20.07 - 11:23 am | #

NW: I'm glad things worked out for you and apologize if what I said came out sounding like I thought that women who survived and prospered after giving up a child for adoption were monsters--it wasn't my intent at all.

There's no way for a young woman to win is there? If a young woman has sex she's a whore, if she doesn't she's frigid and possibly a lesbian. If she gets pregnant and has an abortion she's a murderer. If she has the child and keeps it then she's a welfare queen (whether or not she's actually on welfare) and setting a bad example. If she gives the child up for adoption then she's an unnatural woman who is willing to give her kids away to strangers. If she doesn't get pregnant then she's a baby hating lunatic who will regret it when she hits menopause.

The point I meant to make about adoption though is that it is highly risky. Most studies of the effects of adoption on the birth mother show that many (not all, of course) women who give a child up for adoption experience long lasting regrets about their decision. Here is one review of the subject.

I'm glad it worked out for you, but really dislike the idea of young women being "counseled" by "abortion alternative" clinics that giving a child up for adoption is an easy choice. It's one choice, with risks and benefits like any other. It is, in fact, a relatively dangerous choice. That does not mean that it is necessarily a bad one, just one that shouldn't be entered into lightly.
Dianne | 11.20.07 - 12:04 pm | #

Like Kate, I was adopted and have non-adopted siblings. I always knew I was adopted but it was never a big deal in my family and I'm as much a part of it as by "biological" brothers and sisters. It was also a closed adoption and I've never sought to contact my birth mother (I'm now 40). All I know of her was that she was very young when I was born.

From my perspective, I feel fortunate I was put up for adoption. I frankly always trusted the wisdom of my biological mother in her choice - but reading this post has put some of that feeling in doubt. Although my family certainly is not perfect and my adoptive parents had an ugly divorce when I was a child, I think I turned out pretty good and now have two biological children of my own and am looking at adopting more.

So as a supporter of adoption, it does pain me to see there are mothers who later regret the decision or were coerced into it. I think we can all agree that no one should be forced, coerced or pressured to give up their child. More options for young mothers to keep their children would also be nice, but what exactly do calls for society to "do more" mean? ISTM the best form of support comes from a mother's immediate and extended family who are in the best position to provide such mothers with assistance. I have a couple of friends who were raised by their grandparents, for example.

I also think the open adoption movement is a good thing provided both sides agree and understand the benefits and limitations. I would also support some limited rights for birth mothers in those situations.

Still, I think no matter what happens, not matter how open, informed and free the choice is, there will be women who will come to regret the decision. In those cases, ISTM that support services such as counseling should be made available as part of the adoption process.
Andy #2 | 11.20.07 - 1:29 pm | #

Thanks for bringing my attention to this book. I started reading it relatively soon post-partum, and I couldn't stop sobbing as I read it. I had to give up after the first chapter or so.

I'll definitely make another stab at finishing it.
trillwing | Homepage | 11.20.07 - 1:32 pm | #

My mom was forced to put a baby up for adoption in the early 60s. Do you think someone like her would get something out of this book or find it upsetting?
katrina | 11.20.07 - 2:44 pm | #

I have a dear friend, who discovered sometime after her own marriage and the birth of her first child, when her mother went into therapy for severe depression, that she was not her mother's eldest child.

She has an older half-sister. Her mother had become pregnant in college; her family's response was to pull her out of school for a year (tell everyone she was transferring schools), send her away to have the baby, and to never speak of it again. Ever. She told my friend's father of her "indiscretion" on the night he proposed.

My friend called me. She was upset, not that her mother had had a child, a girl whom she has since met, but that everything she had believed about her parents had to be re-evaluated. When her mother consoled her when her pregnancy came with severe morning sickness, when she said 'first pregnancy', did she mean her, or the other baby?

I don't know whether it would have been better had her mother had an abortion. Her half-sister is 35, happy, and seems to be doing well. But the culture of shame around it has done no one good.
Cala | 11.20.07 - 3:22 pm | #

Katrina, I think probably both.

Andy, what exactly do calls for society to "do more" mean? is an excellent question--lemme do a post on it.
bitchphd | Homepage | 11.20.07 - 3:49 pm | #

katrina, when i saw the author presenting, there were several women with her who had been forced to give up their babies. my impression was that they were just local women who wanted to attend - but they ended up telling their stories and took the majority of the questions from the audience. so, i think bitch is right - it may be both upsetting and good to have/hear one's story told.
auderey | 11.20.07 - 7:42 pm | #

I'm an adoptee. Further, I'm pretty sure my biological mother was coerced into carrying me to term (I think abortion wasn't legal here until after I was born), which sort of puts a different twist on "coerced into adoption." As near as I can figure, in that time and place, there would have been no way a single, teenaged girl with a baby could have kept it, especially with the baby's father nowhere in evidence.

I'm pretty sure that if my biological mother or father were to try to contact me (all quiet on the western front so far), I'd ask for medical records and otherwise decline the contact. Given my relationship with my adoptive relatives, more family is the last thing I currently want.

That is, of course, not to say that anyone else's different choices wouldn't work out better for them, but nobody else is me.
Interrobang | Homepage | 11.20.07 - 9:03 pm | #

I read this book awhile ago and was really affected by it, partly because my mom was adopted in the 1940s.

Several of the women said that they had changed their minds by the time they were giving birth - the hospital staff withheld pain medication until they signed the adoption papers.

The whole dynamic of the homes the women went to during their pregnancies came across as really manipulative. They really pushed the idea that the girls didn't deserve to keep their kids, and didn't prepare them AT ALL for what would happen. Some of the girls went to the hospital in labour without any clue of what the physical birthing process would be, much less what would happen after, physically or emotionally.

Often, the birth mothers would breastfeed their babies until they could be weaned - once they gave birth, they were kept in a different part of the home and had no contact with the girls who had not given birth yet. Whatever measures you would want to have in place to make the adoption process a healthy one for the birth mothers were absolutely not there for these girls.
AK | 11.20.07 - 9:54 pm | #

This post and the comments really touched me. I have a child that I had young (although not a teen) and "unwed". I dropped out of college to have her. I am prochoice, and felt that this was the best choice for me and my psyche. Choosing to have a child in these circumstances basically meant choosing poverty, weariness to point of physical pain, and sometimes hopelessness.
More support from our society, to me, would mean healthcare, affordable childcare,access to secondary schooling, and affordable centralized housing. I think that prochoice people should work every bit as hard at antichoice people to ensure these things, because really is poverty an acceptable choice?
mugbymomma | 11.20.07 - 11:02 pm | #

When I was working with parents who had chidren in foster care, one of the women who was referred to me (because the Office of Children's Services could not think of who else to send her to) had given her younger child up for adoption in order to protect both of the children from his violent father. She knew that none of them would be safe if that man ever found out about the boy. It was supposed to be an open adoption, but the adoptive parents didn't abide by the contract and there was no way to enforce it. For over two years that young woman came to my office and cried once a week. I think the only thing which kept her from suicide was knowing that her older child needed her.

I have never worked with a mother who so thoroughly broke my heart. And I would never advise anyone to give a child up for adoption unless there was absolutely no other way.

On the other hand, one of the foster mothers in our town fosters pregnant Tlingit teens and then fosters them and their babies until the girls have finished school and are able to take their babies and go out on their own. There is no special program for this, it is just her idea and she does it. If the young mother ages out of foster care support, she keeps her in the house anyway.
Maya's Granny | Homepage | 11.20.07 - 11:32 pm | #

I was adopted in the early 70's and found my bio mom when I was in my early 20s. Her entire life was completely fucked up by giving me up for adoption. Seriously. She married not long after I was born, had 2 other daughters, and just languished in constant depression, divorcing and eventually giving up custody of my half-sisters, with whom she has never been able to forge a decent relationship.

Part of me feels responsible for my bio mom's shitty life, and part of me wishes I could go back in time and stay with her, and have her be my mother. (My adoptive parents are wonderful, this isn't some sort of wistful revisionist fantasy.) Something in her died when she gave me away, and she never got it back, even after I'd found her. So much pain, so much pain.


I think adoption is cruel and unusual punishment for a woman's "mistakes". It sickens me to read about people paying young pregnant women for their babies. It's the skin trade, people. But women have always been used as a sort of currency, haven't we?
Firestarter | 11.21.07 - 12:41 pm | #

I recently read this book, and also attended a seminar for social workers on the "Psychology of Adoption". It was there, in a room of about 50 adoption workers, that I became anti-adoption. The stories they told, of siblings being separated for the conveinence of adoptive "parents" who only wanted boys or girls, the use of the term "birth mother" to refer to the mom of a girl who had raised her to age 9 (!), and the complete disregard to the fact that workers and child protective agencies are paid for each child they take from their family and adopt out, all made me ill.

If anyone is interested in getting involved in the anti-adoption/adoption reform movement, a good place to start is at http://www.antiadoption.org
Kristin | 11.21.07 - 7:57 pm | #

I can't thank you enough for raising this issue. I am a birthmother from 20 years back. I've always been told I did "the right thing." And I did, for my son (who isn't mine anymore) and his parents. That judgment of right-ness was apparently supposed to be sufficient to make it all blow over - after all, all the "innocent" parties were happy. The repercussions for me were inconsequential - I was, after all, the one who had made The Mistake.

So Powerful Couple adopted Kid who was far "superior" genetically to any they could have created themselves, and innocent Kid gets no empathy, and much pressure, from power couple who don't get the nature aspect of his equation (history of depression, and late blooming pattern). I once contacted them about medical history but they brushed me off - apparently "superior" parenting can overcome genetics.

They "got" said baby with no independent legal counsel for me (same attorney for both parties). I lied and said I'd applied for MediCal (I was a flaky lying 19 YO) so when the hospital bills came due (pre-eclampsia, emergency c-section, etc, they refused to pay because I had lied. My credit was trashed. They got golden boy child and wouldn't even cover my medical expenses.

Yes, I am bitter. I was played. Yep, I lied - I was 19, homeless, and pregnant. Give me a f*ckin break. I didn't ask for, or receive, a single penny for myself. I just wanted my hospital bills paid. They had a six-figure income 22 years ago and let it fall on me.

Yet they got the gift of a lifetime, and I am somehow saintly for going with adoption instead of abortion.

I have to say that the price I paid for going through with the adoption was much, much too high. I ache for this boy, but the party line has always been that I was not good enough to be his mother. Funny thing, I have 3 sons of my own and they are amazing, and we have a honest, wonderful, sometimes messy, loving relationships. Guess what? I AM a good mother. I would have been a good mother to you, pbg.

I remain pro-choice. I am not anti-adoption, but it is surely not the clean solution that is often alleged. And most of all, it plays into the myth that as long as everyone else's needs are fulfilled, the woman in question should be happy. I'm a caretaker par excellence, but that is bullsh*t. My needs should have counted as much as every other individual in that equation. But because I was the slut, I was expendable.

~ib
ib | 11.21.07 - 11:02 pm | #

The feminist choir in which I used to sing participated every year in a not-very-religious community service held in a local church on the night before Mothers' Day - the Birthmothers' Service.

It is very hard to sing while crying.
her | 11.22.07 - 4:41 pm | #

The birth mom above who said:
overall she is doing well, that they love her to death and she is very happy and does have many things I could never have given her.

But she doesn't have what I could have given her.

has had the last word required in the discussion of 'Is adoption good or bad, an act of charity or an arrogant imperialist gesture?'

Yes. It is all of those things.

I think that it's a majority position among adoptive parents to wonder which, among all the things that birth parents alone could give our kids, we'd like to try to make up to them. We can't take away the ultimate loss, but the enormous benefit of open adoption is that everyone knows what happened. I would give almost anything to be able to tell my child why she was left behind.

A friend who is an adoptee and an adoptive mother assures me that it doesn't matter, that she thought it would make a difference to know what her b-parents had been thinking, but when she asked them their reasons were deeply unsatisfying. Her take-away from this experience was to realize that, since other girls who were sent to the home described in this book somehow managed to keep and raise their kids, her birth mother just didn't want to fight for her. Who knows, who can judge at this remove, which of them is right?

If you think you're against adoption, get your hands on a copy of Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's excellent book about infant abandonment, Mother Nature. It makes an excellent accompaniment to the book reviewed in this post, because she writes about the biological roots of one behavior that separates us from the other primates: the fact that human females can carry to term and evaluate whether to raise the baby after the birth.

She explains that the mechanism of picking up another mother's abandoned baby and incorporating it into one's family is as old as our species. There's no question that we're going to do it, any more than there is a question that not every woman wants to make 20+ years of investment in every successful pregnancy.

So if you want to be anti-adoption, start with your plan for how to care for abandoned babies. Or make them never, ever happen. I think that reliable, safe contraception should be an important part of that plan, but I'm that rarely-seen creature the Pro-Choice Adoptive Parent.
PhoenixRising | Homepage | 11.22.07 - 9:40 pm | #

I was adopted out because my mom was only 14 at the time. She didn't want me because she didn't want me to have to go to the residential schools.She and her family lived in a car (so she wouldn't have to go there either)and drove all over the place so the police wouldn't take her to the schools. If you've never heard of Canada's residential schools, please please watch this video. It is profoundly eye opening, and to this day, it's after effects continue to marginalize my people.

http://video.google.ca/ videoplay...396204037343133

Regards,
Rixy
Rix Bix | 11.22.07 - 11:14 pm | #

My friend gave up her baby and that was nearly forty years ago and she still grieves for her baby. She was never able to have another child and ended up with a hysterectomy and later became a foster mother who adopted four of the children that were placed in her home. The last time we talked she told me she wished she could undo the past and I said me too.
jeannie waller | Homepage | 11.23.07 - 10:40 pm | #

PhoenixRising - I, too, am a pro-choice adoptive mother - why on earth would I want another woman to be forced to bear a child she didn't want just to satisfy my desire for one? That is a selfishness I cannot comprehend. I don't see my fellow women as brood cows.

My son was abandoned at a clinic at birth. He was kept there for 40 days in case his mother returned, after which he was released for adoption. Is six weeks enough for a 19 year old to change her mind? I don't know. As she refused to give her name, there's no way to try to track her down, to let her know that her son is healthy and happy and smart and talented.

Three of my closest friends gave up babies up when they were young. One of them now has a friendly relationship with her daughter, but never wanted to raise children and never had any more. She never regretted putting her child up for adoption. The other two wonder, now and again, about those babies; one went on to marry her infant's father some years later and have two more children before a painful divorce. She went through the adoption process with my husband and me and told me that seeing how happy we were when our son arrived, how much he was wanted and loved, made her feel good about her earlier decision. [She wrote a ten-page recommendation letter to the adoption agency for us, something they had never seen before.]

The friend, however, who is still in pain, is not the one who gave up a child, but the one who had to have an abortion - she was in an accident before she knew she was pregnant, and was x-rayed for back and pelvic injuries. The doctors told her that there was little chance that the fetus had not been damaged. She said telling the father, who had wanted a child for some time, was the hardest part of it. He was already rambling on about support and trust funds before she had a chance to tell him she couldn't bring the pregnancy to term. She's said she'd give anything to have been able to put the baby up for adoption than to have to abort that pregnancy.

Adoption is not always a bad thing, people - I've had friends who found their birth mothers only to discover they were the product of rape or incest in the era before abortions were legal, and that their birth mothers wanted nothing to do with them. One was told that his birth mother had tried to cause her own miscarriage because she wanted him dead - and still did. Not every woman who bears a child wants to keep it.

Before getting on board any anti-adoption train, consider, also, that there are children who have been orphaned, who have been removed from abusive environments, who have been abandoned by women who found them too much of an interference with their love lives. [Abandonment being far preferable to the Susan Smith solution.] Not every child was forcibly wrested from its mother's arms. Not every woman regrets including adoption in her options when she finds herself unexpectedly - and unwantedly - pregnant. We pro-choicers rail against the anti-abortion faction's citing the trauma some women feel after an abortion as a reason to outlaw all abortion - should we not treat adoption the same way? Not everyone has the option of abortion as a solution for an unwanted pregnancy; there are certainly those for whom the personal decision is dictated by religious beliefs. Forcing women to keep babies they don't want is no better than forcing them to give up babies they do. Think about it.
DominEditrix | 11.24.07 - 2:24 pm | #

I think my main issue with adoption is the blinding process that goes along with it. I believe that sealing the records and most of the processes of legal adoption came about to protect the parental rights of the adoptive parents--but I suspect that in most cases absolutely cutting off children and their birth parents from any contact with or knowledge of one another is probably unnecessary and damaging.

I think formal and informal adoptions are great--but just like with divorce, I'd like to see a lot less focus on the rights of the parents and a lot more on the rights of the kids.
bitchphd | Homepage | 11.27.07 - 12:20 am | #

Thank you for writing about this. My birthmom is in denial about her pain.

Just two days ago, I heard from my birthfather for the first time. He is not in denial. He became physically sick after he signed the adoption papers and has had remorse ever since.
Andie D. | Homepage | 11.27.07 - 11:46 am | #

Dr.B.

I already loved you, but reading this post and your last comments---I love you even more.

I'm an adoptee, and have fought for open records for YEARS. I am so so sick of being forced to bear the weight and the stigma of my government's decision to try to erase my identity. They handed me over to a couple they had barely checked out and kept pretending that if I was raised by a heterosexual married couple, my life would be perfect.

Not quite.

There are many adoptees online blogging as well, and many of them had decent adoptive parents, but still want to know their biological origins. According to the adoptive parent trolls who go after us, we are "ungrateful", as if we should be glad not to be aborted, and therefore willing to put up with any small scraps of dignified treatment. Amongst ourselves, we know that being a genetic orphan is the seventh level of hell, but we are so conditioned to be people-pleasers, so afraid of being rejected once again, that we don't dare tell our adoptive families how we really feel. It gets tiresome keeping up the show all the time.

We are constantly told that government know best, as if we are no longer grown adults, but are instead the last group of legally infantilized adults on earth. Judges do not have the God-like power to rewrite our language, our culture, our medical history, our DNA, and our religion. And yet, they do, forever.

Our civil rights are being violated every single day of our lives. The government cannot keep secret information about me, and deny me the right to see it. Yet they do.

Utter bullshit, and a complete violation of the Constitution. Both US & Canadian.
Aurelia | Homepage | 11.27.07 - 11:39 pm | #

Aurelia, it's interesting to read your comments. The intense anger that some adoptees feel is something I can't personally relate to. I don't find the not knowing to be hellish. I'm not attempting to invalidate your or others' feelings, I am just relaying my different experience as an adoptee.

I don't know what my life would have been like if I had known my bio-parents in addition to my adoptive parents, so I can't attest to the good or bad in that. But I am glad, not having known them, that I get to make a choice now to seek or not. I've carefully considered my options for years -- 11, to be exact -- before deciding that I do want to know. I am casually seeking, if that's possible for something so emotionally charged.

I guess what being adopted has given to me, as far as a paradigm on relationships, is that blood isn't a deciding factor. My "family" is not the biologically-related unit (related to each other, not to me) I grew up with -- it includes some of those people and others who aren't legally or biologically related to me in any way.

But then, in the context of the original post, *I* didn't give anything up. I don't know what it would be like to be in the birth mother's position. I don't know what I've lost, so I admit that I don't miss it right now.
Kate | 11.28.07 - 7:32 am | #

Kate,

No worries, I don't believe that all adoptees have to feel the same way, I know that it changes over time. I used to feel the same way as you, and then I slowly started looking. After I met my birth mother, the universe shifted in a way I can't quite explain, but a weight I ever knew cam off my shoulders. I had never seen another human being who looked like me, and then, I did, and that alone, was simply the most amazing experience of my life. I didn't know what it meant until after it happened, and you may never know either, but after you meet some relatives, well, you may change your mind. I don't know.

Regardless, I simply don't like the State making decisions for me, when I am well over the age of consent.

For example, I have met my birth mother as an adult and she and I both have given consent to get access to my files.

The weird thing is that the Province of Ontario still will not allow either one of us to look at my original birth registration, or my file at Children's Aid. Bureaucrats can look at it, the federal government and Passport Canada have access to it, and yet, I, a legal adult cannot.

I can marry anyone I wish, work anywhere, vote, join the army and die for my country, I can become Prime Minister, get access to my CSIS file, move anywhere in my country, travel all around the world, yet----I am not allowed access to my own government files.

You say that are glad you have a choice, but in most US states, you do not have that choice, to control your own body and your own life. In Ontario I definitely do not.

And unless I have the same legal rights as all of my fellow citizens, then no-one's rights can be guaranteed, ever.
Aurelia | Homepage | 11.28.07 - 9:44 am | #

Aurelia -- I haven't tried to access my state files yet. I don't live there, so that likely makes it harder, as I know it's easier to stonewall or ignore an e-mail or phone call than an actual person. I am going to look into it, though, now, because I'm curious.

I *have* wondered what it would be like to meet people who resemble me. I find myself fascinated by family resemblances in other people's families and even within my own adopted family. I look nothing like them despite similar racial/ethnic background. I do wonder about that paradigm shift, which is one of the main reasons I've waited so long to even look. I wanted and needed to feel seated in who I am now before facing that, facing the other side of that story.
Kate | 11.29.07 - 9:51 am | #

As an adoptee, I'm not sure how I feel about this discussion. On one hand, there's almost a current in some of the comments that seems to suggest that adoption is always bad, something I know isn't necessarily true.

I'm not sure that I'd agree - and I'm certain my biological mother wouldn't (at least based on what she's told me) - that you can categorically state any one party - birth parents, adoptive parents, or the child - get to have the last word in this process. For her, there was definitely coercion, but she also chose not to upset the cart in case it did work out well for me. When I went to look for information for her, I tried to do so in a way that wouldn't disrupt whatever life she would set up. Had she tried to find me without that consideration - the birth mother's feeling trumping all else that someone suggested above - it would have absolutely disrupted my life. Similarly, it's possible that my decision could have disrupted hers.

I hope people will be careful to recognize that the problem they're confronting is structural, and that it is possible for a choice to both valid and difficult, rather than building in the assumption that because it was difficult, it must have been bad.

It's also interesting that there's no discussion about the romanticism that goes with biological lines rather than lines of nurture. I can't tell you how many tv shows, soap operas, and what not I sat through that suggested that I should always feel cheated because I wasn't with my biological parents, that in the moment I met one of them, I was supposed to feel some life-changing connection. I couldn't tell you the number of times I wanted to hit someone who asked me about how much I wanted to meet my "real parents."

Honestly, I never had that urge, and when I met my biological mother, yes, I saw a resemblance for the first time. But it was on par with looking in a fun house mirror for me. And as damaging as giving me up must have been for her, I can't help thinking that I didn't react the way decades of TV said I should must have been just as jarring.

For me, closed adoption was the best of the available choices. Navigating between birth- and adoptive-parents is more than confusing enough for me today. It would have wrecked me at 8 or 15. I'd like to see that complexity recognized a bit more commonly in the discussion.
RN | Homepage | 12.03.07 - 6:04 pm | #

Dear Dr. B and commentors. For a different view, please consider the following:

Bride and I have seventeen children. Bride has three biologicals from her first marriage. I have one biological from my first marriage. The rest are adopted.

They include one Dakota Souix, one Mexican, one black, one Navaho, one with fetal alcohol syndrome, three with developmental disabilities caused by drug use by birth mother. Our oldest child is forty seven. The youngest is nine today.

We did not seek out these blessings to our life. Their birth mothers were not coerced. They were a danger to the life of their child. Not my opinion, but the opinion of the various criminal and civil courts who presided over charges of abuse, neglect and other atrocities of innocent children.

This is not the way Bride and I planned to grow old together: Having three children at home at our age. It happened. There has never been any looking back.

As for the birth mothers, it is our understanding that all but one died of drug and/or alcohol abuse within a few years of the birth of their child.

Historical or theoretical arguments against adoption do not move me.

Thank you for your attention.
GaleH | 01.03.08 - 7:56 am | #

A long time ago, seemingly a galaxy far, far away, a 16-year old gave birth to a baby boy. This baby boy, for some reason, has an image of spun gold burnt into his memory -- a memory with no source, no conscious source, at any rate. There is also a vague imprint of fingers around this spun gold. And a four-decade long feeling of having a hole, a cold, dark place where something once was, but no longer is.

This book is the only thing I have to go on about how life was in 1969, for girls who "screwed it all up." Mein gott, I'm ashamed, deepy, of being "human." The way these girls were treated by dates, boyfriends, husbands, parents and clergy.. wtf.. did people seriously think women were things, objects, tools? I'm ashamed to be counted in with people, then.

I do not blame the mothers showcased in this book, nor my own, for I think her story's much like those in this book -- what ties them all together is their parents, society and clergy held a collective gun to their heads, and said "fork the kid over, you're crap, you're scum, you're a harlot, you're undeserving."

The babies were then sold. I believe my price was $25,000. I can't remember, because I stumbled upon my "papers" when I was 17 -- I remember ages (her 16, him 19), some vague descriptions (she was artistic wtih horrible vision, gee, thanks mom =o).. him was a gas-station attendant... perhaps why petrol runs through my veins.. but I remember a piece of paper with 25,000 written on it. In 1969.. that was a nice car and a nice house, cash, no payments. That's what I was worth to the Catholic Church.

I closed the trunk where my "papers" lived, having discovered on my own the truth. I never looked in again. The moment that latch's bolt hit home, I had shut down my own life inside of me. I could not trust anymore. Still can't. I knew, in my heart, that something was off, way the hell off -- but reading two different set of papers.. that was.. crushing.

While my clock keeps running, and time draws shorter, I always wonder -- is she OK? Does she suffer still, after nearly four decades?

Does she have spun gold for hair?

I should find out.

While I can still do so. She may not be around. If her psyche's anything like mine.. I've tried to eat a bullet one too many times.

I wish I had money, mad, mad money. This book would work on film. it would have to be black and white and expressionist, full of long, cold shadows speared with the most spare of slivers of light.

Just like the hole in my heart left by the Machine.

To hell with the Machine. It's caused nothing but pain.
sept_14_california_1969 | 05.16.08 - 8:49 am | #

I'm adopted and I found my birth mother 11 years ago. She said the hardest thing was standing in court and having to admit that she was an "unfit mother" when she wasn't unfit, she just couldn't take care of me at the time. She spent the next 5 years completly lost and depressed. Finding her caused a lot of turmoil in my family (they are my family and she's more of a "treasured aunt"). It's nice to have her around and sometimes she feels guilty about the whole thing but most of the time it's ok. The only thing that sucks is that she expects to be called "mom" and I'm just not comfortable with that even after 11 years and both of my parent's deaths. She wants me to call her husband Dad but that ain't happening. She spent her whole life missing me and I spent my whole life wondering why my own mother would give me away even though I had great parents. It goes deep. As a matter of fact one of the first things I said to her was, "are you going to ditch me again?" And I meant it.
Sharon | 06.25.08 - 1:04 pm | #