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Rethinking Adoption: Birth Mothers are People, Too

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 18 2007 4:00 PM

Submitted by Bitch_PhD. Edited By erin_broadley.

TAGS: adoption, reproductive rights, motherhood

I've just finished reading a book called The Girls Who Went Away, which is about "the hidden history of women who surrendered children for adoption in the decades before Roe v. Wade."

Adoption's an issue I'm interested in for a lot of reasons. I know people who were themselves adopted, and women who placed children for adoption. And I'm well aware of the argument that anti-abortion people often make that women with unwanted pregnancies should "just" place their children for adoption--an argument that, after watching a couple of people go through that process, I'm inclined to think is one of those offhand remarks that people make without actually thinking about what they're saying.

For instance, listen to what "Nancy," whose story is one of those told in the book, has to say:

It's hard to convince others about the depth of it. You know, a few years after I was married I became pregnant and had an abortion. It was not a wonderful experience, but every time I hear stories or articles or essays about the recurring trauma of abortion, I want to say, "You don't have a clue" I've experienced both and I'd have an abortion any day of the week before I would ever have another adoption--or lose a kid in the woods, which is basically what it is. You know your child is out there somewhere, you just don't know where. It's bad enough as a mother to know he might need you, but to complicate that they make a law that says even if he does need you we're not going to tell him where you are. (My emphasis.)

Or "Karen":

The only way to heal from this is to be accepted by your child and for the public to know the truth of what's really happened. And understand it's the truth. Instead of always pushing adoption as this loving, wonderful, rescuing thing. Yes, that may be the case for people who adopt. It is not the case for us. You never are whole. Never. It's a hugely damaging thing. It's an enormously injuring, painful, fracturing amputation of families. . . .

We were not criminals. We're mothers. The difference was I was not an authenticated mother. I was an illegal mother. I was a denied mother. And I had to come home and live my life after being robbed of my child. It's as if I was an unwilling accomplice to the kidnapping of my own child. So you have to live with the trauma of losing your child and then you have to live with the trauma of knowing you didn't stop it. How do you do that? (Emphasis in original.)

Moreover, the years between 1950 and 1980, which were the high point of formal adoptions of white babies in the U.S., were atypical in ways that discussion around adoption (and abortion) usually fails to acknowledge. In 1950, 66 percent of Americans were married; in 1960 it was 68 percent. But

in 1980 the percentage of the population that was married was the same as in 1900: 54 percent. In the U.S. Census for 2000, the percentage was also 54 percent.

Also,

the median age at first marriage in the 1980s was the same as in 1890, roughly age 22 for women and 26 for men. However . . . (in) 1950, almost 60 percent of women between 18 and 24 years of age were married.

The point here is that

Even though marriage and child-rearing norms of the time (are) seen as characteristic of traditional American family life, in fact they were abnormal in comparison with marriage and childbearing patterns throughout the twentieth century.

And part of that abnormality was a serious punishment of (middle-class, particularly white) young women who got pregnant out of wedlock. Homes for unwed mothers, which had previously focused on helping young women find stable jobs and social support to keep and raise their children, started becoming baby factories where young women were pressured into giving their children up to married couples who "needed" a child to fulfill the new nuclear family "norm", and told that they were unfit mothers because, being unmarried, they *didn't* fit this model. There was a very, very strong--and abnormal--image of the "proper" family, one that caused a lot of grief to women who didn't conform.

This kind of thing is implicit in any argument about what constitutes a "good" mother, whether or not people "should" have children if they're "too" poor/young/single, and in the flip side "pro-family" pressure that everyone "should" have children and "should" behave in particular, narrowly-defined ways once they do.

And there's a lot in this book to demonstrate the results of this kind of thinking--panicked parents who beat or ostracized their daughters for becoming pregnant, parents who colluded with adoption agencies to coerce women into signing blank papers, girls who were talked into placing children for adoption so they could "get on with their lives" only to find that the emotional trauma of the adoption made doing so impossible, women who lost jobs when their adoptions were found out, women who went to their graves never telling their siblings, parents, husbands, or children about having once placed a baby for adoption.

Crazy, crazy shit. An absolute must-read if you're adopted, if you're thinking of adopting, or if you know someone who is having to think about the options for an unwanted pregnancy. And highly recommended, really, for everyone.

Bitch_PhD isn't anti-adoption. But she can't imagine losing her child, and thinks that calling adoption a "gift" implies that children are the equivalent of, like, a hand-made pair of socks or something.

33 Comments

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NinjaTech

Minneapolis, MN

November 2003

NOV 18, 2007 04:16 PM

You're absolutely disgusting.

gdarklighter

San Diego, CA

August 2005

NOV 18, 2007 04:19 PM

NinjaTech said:
You're absolutely disgusting.

She is? I found this to be an incredibly interesting read.

Renshai

Minneapolis, MN

February 2006

NOV 18, 2007 04:22 PM

NinjaTech said:
You're absolutely disgusting.

Could you be more specific?

Crissis

Ecuador

January 2007

NOV 18, 2007 04:28 PM

"proper families" are so hypocrite!

Coyotemike

USA

May 2006

NOV 18, 2007 04:31 PM

This is one of those topics that hits home for me. My grandmother (paternal) was adopted from the Orphan Train around 1920 or so (possibly before, I can't remember). Then, when she was a teenager, she was shipped off to another state to "take care of a sick aunt" which was the universal euphamism for "going off to have a baby out of wedlock." She was the daughter of the town doctor (who was a Republican Convention bigwig for Nebraska), and couldn't be seen to be sullied by an illicite daliance (no, I can't spell, get over it).

More recently, the girl who started stalking me partially went crazy from giving her second baby up for adoption (she kept the first).

I have several cousins who are adopted, including one who's birth-mother was a crack-head. She will remain a 6 year old in her head forever. She's now 22 years old.

Adoption cannot be put into any category. In some cases, it is the best thing for all parties involved. In other cases, it rips the mothers, the children, and everyone else apart. There is no easy answer here.

Good article.

almalthia

I'm lost

August 2005

NOV 18, 2007 04:31 PM

At least those poor women were not coerced into sterlization after being presured to give up their children, like many Naitve American women were during those times.

Coerced Sterlization

Great article, I'll have to check ou the book.

Flux

SUICIDEGIRL

North Carolina, USA

NOV 18, 2007 04:35 PM

I just finished reading the website referenced in the header image and, wow.

Lockeblade

Australia

May 2007

NOV 18, 2007 04:49 PM

I was so ready to get on my high-horse when I clicked on this article thinking it was going to be about birth mothers reclaiming their adopted children from the families that adopted them. Instead, I actually find myself agreeing with you for once.

Personally, I think adopting a kid out would more emotionally detrimental to the parents than getting an abortion. I could live with myself after a child of mine had been aborted, I couldn't handle knowing that my child is likely being bounced around orphanages and foster homes with a strong likelihood that they're being abused in some way. You tell me which is the crueller of the two options...

Morgan

SUICIDEGIRL

Illinois, USA

NOV 18, 2007 05:11 PM

NinjaTech said:
You're absolutely disgusting.

What the fuck are you talking about?

code_red

Portland, OR

July 2005

NOV 18, 2007 05:19 PM

Again, +1 on an excellent article. I'll have to check out that book sometime.

Oh yea, in other news...

NinjaTech said:
You're absolutely disgusting.

Care to elaborate?

MegaSurge

Portland, OR

March 2003

NOV 18, 2007 05:20 PM

That looks like a good book. I may have to pick it up. Good article...as if you ever write bad ones.

xazapdmytinu

Fort Collins, CO

July 2007

NOV 18, 2007 05:23 PM

Morgan said:

NinjaTech said:
You're absolutely disgusting.

What the fuck are you talking about?

I concur, it's one thing to make a criticism with nothing to back it up, but it's even dumber to criticize someone without providing any real concrete...criticism!

What's so disgusting...were you looking at Bitch's profile and decided she doesn't shower enough? Are you adopted and somehow think that she's making a personal slight towards you or adoption in general? Are you pissed off that she's, quite typical to her idealogy, providing information about the hypocrisy of "traditional family values? What, NinjaTech, what is so damned disgusting other than your blatant lazy potshot?

Roethke

SUICIDEGIRL

California, USA

NOV 18, 2007 05:30 PM

gdarklighter said:

NinjaTech said:
You're absolutely disgusting.

She is? I found this to be an incredibly interesting read.

Clearly, he handmakes socks, and finds Bitch's comparison of socks to adoptions as nothing short of disgusting.

wink84

Birmingham, AL

October 2007

NOV 18, 2007 05:37 PM

I guess I'm a little naive. I always assumed that adopted children go to loving families with big backyards and in-ground pools. This article put things in percepctive for me. It's not always, "Got pregnant? Just give it away" Thanks for thie article.

RedAss

Boston, MA

December 2004

NOV 18, 2007 05:48 PM

I am adopted, so is my brother, and I will be buying this book. Thank you for the article.

I've wrestled with the idea of contacting my birth mother everyday since I turned 18- this book might give me a new perspective. Being adopted is something I'm always aware of. Always.

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