A reader goes against the grain:
Wow – what a topic. I can not agree more with the ideas of the “anti-adoption movement” … and I’m the mother of four children, two of whom are adopted, openly. Adoption is not easy, for any of the parties involved. Adoption does start with a tragedy; a child and his/her biological family lose the opportunity to grow up together. That is a real loss, and it’s unfortunate that many families who look like mine don’t acknowledge it. From my perspective, my kids need the opportunity to grieve that part of their life, confidently and safely. We grieve with them; it is sad. And at the same time we are so grateful for these beautiful gifts. Adoption is part of who we are as a family and it’s a part of who they are, which is why open adoption is beautiful – hard, but beautiful.
The two people I love almost as much as my children and my husband are the two beautiful women who chose me to be the mother of their children, my children. There is no greater gift. They are amazing women and we honor them every day. This is why women should absolutely not be paid, why open adoptions are essential, why birth families should have a reasonable amount of time to make the decision, and why long-term support for birth and adoptive families is a must.
My husband and I chose the adoption agency we did – The Cradle, in Evanston, Illinois – for exactly that reason. The Cradle provides education and support across both families throughout the lifetime. Birth families choose to place or choose to parent. There is no abandonment – not for the children, not for the birth families, and not for the parents. In truth, adoption work doesn’t end on your child’s “Gotcha Day”; it just begins.
Another:
As an adoptive parent, my views on this subject are hardly unbiased. After going through the adoption process, there are many reforms that I would certainly advocate.
One would be to reduce the incentives for the people making a lot of money off of couples who are desperate for a baby. And it is the baby market (as opposed to the toddler market) that is driving this rent-seeking industry. Most couples, my wife and I included, wanted a new-born and we paid heavily for that privilege.
But where did the money go? Some small part of it went to provide for the birth mother and her other children during the last months of the pregnancy. And I have no problem with that. Most of it went to the facilitator and the adoption agency who both provide services but at a hefty price. The going rate for finding a pregnant birth mother was about $25,000 when we adopted our son 12 years ago. Who knows what it is now? And there were a lot of other fees and expenses on top of that.
At one point during this three-year long process and after several trips that ended in heartbreak and frustration, I somewhat seriously told my wife that it would be a superior moral choice for us just to drive to Mexico find a poor unmarried girl with a new-born and pay her $20,000 to take the baby. I didn’t really mean that, but it was an indicator of my frustration with the process. There has to be a better way to match birth parents and adoptive parents than paying some woman in Seattle $25,000 to give you a name.
All of this considered, I am still strongly pro-adoption. For anyone come out with a strict anti-adoption stance is just denying reality. It sounds clichéd, but there are kids out there who need good homes. When I consider where our son could have been – with a birth mother who I am sure would have loved him but who has had incredible troubles that don’t need to be discussed here – sometimes I just want to cry.
As it stands, we have a great son whom I could not love any more if he was my own flesh and blood. Sometimes I think I love him more because he is not and because he made us a family. There is nothing wrong with adoption, but there is something wrong with our current system.
The Dish 