November 20, 2007, 9:52 pm
Reunion
By Lynn Lauber
In the shady side yard of the adoption equation are birth mothers — silent, mostly invisible women who have given up their children without fanfare and often with considerable grief.
Adoptive babies aren’t hatched in factory farms or dropped from the sky straight into the laps of happy families. They are born by real women — often without counseling, legal advice or public acknowledgment. The bond that is broken at birth has real costs, for adoptees as well as their relinquishers. It is not a simple, sterile transaction, but one awash in blood.
In the late 1960s, when I was pregnant, the United States’s adoption process was secret and punitive. In the religious maternity home where I spent six sodden months, a dose of guilt was dispensed with the daily vitamins: I was bad and should be punished; that was the message up and down the line, and I registered it with my tender antennae. I was meant to swiftly sail through “delivery,” as if it were the tonsillectomy I’d had as a girl. But I remained conscious for long hours as my body initiated a process that startled me with pain and awe. It was only during labor – under lights and woefully ignorant — that the real drama being enacted inside me was finally revealed. This was no impersonal mound of flesh I’d been carrying but a kicking life, fighting to emerge. And it had come from me, who was barely finished myself. But that this child was of me — a continuation of a theme, a chip off a block, an apple near a tree — was a truth that was smothered.
I was strongly discouraged from seeing the daughter I bore on that July day that seemed to stretch .....
Reunion - Relative Choices - Adoption - Opinion - New York Times Blog
Showing posts with label birthparent rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birthparent rights. Show all posts
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Sunday, June 10, 2007
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2007/06/08/003.html
Friday, June 8, 2007.
Thousands of Babies Left in Hospital Limbo
By Svetlana Osadchuk Staff Writer
photoOne of the rejected babies looking out the window at the Pskov hospital.
Seven hours after Kristina Smirnova, 17, gave birth to her son, the doctor came into her room and said she should hand the baby over to the state. "The baby is ill. He will not live more than a week. I think signing rejection papers is the only wise thing for a girl like you to do," the doctor said, Smirnova recalled.
Smirnova had the baby at the Motorshchiki maternity ward in the east Siberian city of Barnaul on the morning of Oct. 31, 2005. She had no identification papers, no relatives, no place to live and no money. She had spent the last year living with her boyfriend, the baby's father, but he broke up with her when he learned that his son was ill.But Smirnova refused to sign the rejection papers, sparking a 2 1/2-month struggle to prevent the boy from joining thousands of babies caught in a hospital limbo.
The babies, usually referred to as otkazniki, live in almost every children's hospital in the country. No accurate figures are kept because the babies themselves do not officially exist. The babies are only counted once they are moved to orphanages -- a process that by law should take no more than four months but in practice can take several years. While they wait, they are often neglected and sometimes abused. Hospital staff commonly advise mothers who are single, very young or struggling financially to give up their babies, even those who are healthy
photoSmirnova holding her son, Vladimir, whom doctors advised her to give up.
"If Beethoven's mother had been in one of our hospitals, they would have told her to give him up because she was from a poor family and ill with tuberculosis," said Igor Beloborodov, head of Maternity and Childhood Protection, a nongovernmental organization.
Mothers of sickly babies often heed the hospital staff's advice, including about 85 percent of those whose children are diagnosed with Down Syndrome, said Sergei Koloskov, head of the Down Syndrome Association. His wife was told to leave their daughter, Vera, at the hospital when she was diagnosed with the genetic disorder. She refused.
Ten years ago, Moscow health officials advised city maternity wards not to discourage new mothers by telling them that they would be unable to care for their babies. But that has not changed what people say privately.Smirnova was released from the Barnaul hospital after a week, but the baby was kept in intensive care. Each time she returned to check up on him, she was urged to sign the rejection papers."Doctors, nurses and even cleaning ladies told me that I was stupid to ask for my baby back," Smirnova said during a recent visit to Moscow to get medical treatment for her 19-month-old son.
Even though she had never seen the baby, she gave him a name -- Vladimir. The boy was the only relative she had in the world, she said. Her mother and grandmother died in her home village of Gordeyevo when she was 14. She tried for a few months to live with her father, who had divorced her mother and lived in another town with a new wife and their children. "I was a burden for them. I came back to my village and stayed with friends," she said. She met Vladimir's father in the neighboring village of Belmesevo, and they fell in love. Smirnova said she thought he was a reward from heaven for the loneliness she had felt after her mother's death. Many young women who give up their babies share similar stories, Beloborodov said. They are from poor families and are in relationships where they sought a substitute for parental love. They often live with landlords who would evict them if they had a baby. In Moscow, many babies are given up by mothers who came to the city from the regions seeking a better life, Beloborodov said.
The procedure to give up a baby is simple, said a spokeswoman for the family, maternity and childhood department of the Health and Social Development Ministry. A married or single mother just needs to write a statement on a blank sheet of paper that she wants to put her child up for adoption for financial reasons or "difficult family circumstances," the spokeswoman said. After the statement is signed, the child usually is placed in the nearest children's hospital until all bureaucratic procedures are completed.
About 460 rejected babies live in hospitals in the Moscow region and 250 live in hospitals in the Sverdlovsk region, according to a presidential administration report on child welfare issues. The internal report dated April 2007, a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times, gave no figures for other regions."The development of orphanages is neglected in many regions, so rejected babies are kept in hospitals too long," the report said. "As a result, they are deprived of walks outside and lie in bed for months. They are delayed in their mental and physical growth."In Yekaterinburg, the capital of the Sverdlovsk region, only about 20 of the 90 children living in hospitals are sick, said the city's health department.
Two cases of abuse have made national headlines this year. Yekaterinburg prosecutors opened a criminal investigation in January into a nurse suspected of taping babies' mouths shut to stop them for crying at the city's Infectious Diseases Hospital No. 15. In March, prosecutors in Orekhovo-Zuyevo, a town 85 kilometers east of Moscow, began investigating a hospital where children were tied to their beds with sheets. In both cases, hospital patients photographed the abuse with their cell phones and the pictures were shown on state television.The rejected babies are a burden to the children's hospitals, said Boris Altshuler, who advises ombudsmen Vladimir Lukin on the problem. Most hospitals do not allocate money to feed them or hire nurses to care for them. That means nurses typically visit their rooms three times a day -- to feed them and change their diapers. Some hospitals don't even have diapers, so the babies lie in wet sheets for hours, Altshuler said. Feeding is also a problem. Nurses rarely have time to hold a bottle of milk for each baby, so they put bottles into the babies' mouths and leave them; if a bottle falls out, the baby goes hungry. When mothers visiting their own children in the hospitals try to pick up the babies, they are often told, "Don't touch them. They will then get used to being touched and will cry after you leave," Altshuler said.Since hospitals are closed institutions in Russia, volunteers are not welcome as they are in the West, said Nadezhda Davydova, who volunteers at several Moscow hospitals under a special agreement with administrators. "The administration has no right to let in sympathetic people," she said. Davydova said she, other volunteers and children's rights activists were lobbying the government to place the babies in foster families and get them adopted.
"It is naive to think that the problem is bad nurses all around the country," Davydova said. In a rare exception, a Christian charity is paying for a new hospital ward for 40 rejected babies in the city of Pskov, about 20 kilometers east of the Estonian border. Initiative Pskov, a Protestant-sponsored group, is also covering the salaries of a team of specialists to care for the babies and help place them in families.By law, the babies can be adopted while still in the hospital. But information about them is entered into a national adoption database very slowly and is often incomplete.
Two years ago, prosecutors in the Altai republic fined a social services official for failing file information about a baby who had lived at a hospital for 18 months. Some children never recover from their months in the hospital without someone to walk them, talk with them and hug them, Altshuler said."When the time comes to decide whether to place them in a regular orphanage or one for the mentally disabled, they are at risk of being placed in the second. This means they will never go to a regular school," Altshuler said. Smirnova only got her son, Vladimir, out of the hospital when a friend helped her obtain a passport and rent an apartment. She receives 3,000 rubles per month from the state to care for the boy, who has neurological and heart problems. Doctors still advise her to give him up.Smirnova recently invited another young woman, Nastya, to move into the rented apartment with her. Nastya's sad story mirrors her own. She is expecting her child in August.
Friday, June 8, 2007.
Thousands of Babies Left in Hospital Limbo
By Svetlana Osadchuk Staff Writer
photoOne of the rejected babies looking out the window at the Pskov hospital.
Seven hours after Kristina Smirnova, 17, gave birth to her son, the doctor came into her room and said she should hand the baby over to the state. "The baby is ill. He will not live more than a week. I think signing rejection papers is the only wise thing for a girl like you to do," the doctor said, Smirnova recalled.
Smirnova had the baby at the Motorshchiki maternity ward in the east Siberian city of Barnaul on the morning of Oct. 31, 2005. She had no identification papers, no relatives, no place to live and no money. She had spent the last year living with her boyfriend, the baby's father, but he broke up with her when he learned that his son was ill.But Smirnova refused to sign the rejection papers, sparking a 2 1/2-month struggle to prevent the boy from joining thousands of babies caught in a hospital limbo.
The babies, usually referred to as otkazniki, live in almost every children's hospital in the country. No accurate figures are kept because the babies themselves do not officially exist. The babies are only counted once they are moved to orphanages -- a process that by law should take no more than four months but in practice can take several years. While they wait, they are often neglected and sometimes abused. Hospital staff commonly advise mothers who are single, very young or struggling financially to give up their babies, even those who are healthy
photoSmirnova holding her son, Vladimir, whom doctors advised her to give up.
"If Beethoven's mother had been in one of our hospitals, they would have told her to give him up because she was from a poor family and ill with tuberculosis," said Igor Beloborodov, head of Maternity and Childhood Protection, a nongovernmental organization.
Mothers of sickly babies often heed the hospital staff's advice, including about 85 percent of those whose children are diagnosed with Down Syndrome, said Sergei Koloskov, head of the Down Syndrome Association. His wife was told to leave their daughter, Vera, at the hospital when she was diagnosed with the genetic disorder. She refused.
Ten years ago, Moscow health officials advised city maternity wards not to discourage new mothers by telling them that they would be unable to care for their babies. But that has not changed what people say privately.Smirnova was released from the Barnaul hospital after a week, but the baby was kept in intensive care. Each time she returned to check up on him, she was urged to sign the rejection papers."Doctors, nurses and even cleaning ladies told me that I was stupid to ask for my baby back," Smirnova said during a recent visit to Moscow to get medical treatment for her 19-month-old son.
Even though she had never seen the baby, she gave him a name -- Vladimir. The boy was the only relative she had in the world, she said. Her mother and grandmother died in her home village of Gordeyevo when she was 14. She tried for a few months to live with her father, who had divorced her mother and lived in another town with a new wife and their children. "I was a burden for them. I came back to my village and stayed with friends," she said. She met Vladimir's father in the neighboring village of Belmesevo, and they fell in love. Smirnova said she thought he was a reward from heaven for the loneliness she had felt after her mother's death. Many young women who give up their babies share similar stories, Beloborodov said. They are from poor families and are in relationships where they sought a substitute for parental love. They often live with landlords who would evict them if they had a baby. In Moscow, many babies are given up by mothers who came to the city from the regions seeking a better life, Beloborodov said.
The procedure to give up a baby is simple, said a spokeswoman for the family, maternity and childhood department of the Health and Social Development Ministry. A married or single mother just needs to write a statement on a blank sheet of paper that she wants to put her child up for adoption for financial reasons or "difficult family circumstances," the spokeswoman said. After the statement is signed, the child usually is placed in the nearest children's hospital until all bureaucratic procedures are completed.
About 460 rejected babies live in hospitals in the Moscow region and 250 live in hospitals in the Sverdlovsk region, according to a presidential administration report on child welfare issues. The internal report dated April 2007, a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times, gave no figures for other regions."The development of orphanages is neglected in many regions, so rejected babies are kept in hospitals too long," the report said. "As a result, they are deprived of walks outside and lie in bed for months. They are delayed in their mental and physical growth."In Yekaterinburg, the capital of the Sverdlovsk region, only about 20 of the 90 children living in hospitals are sick, said the city's health department.
Two cases of abuse have made national headlines this year. Yekaterinburg prosecutors opened a criminal investigation in January into a nurse suspected of taping babies' mouths shut to stop them for crying at the city's Infectious Diseases Hospital No. 15. In March, prosecutors in Orekhovo-Zuyevo, a town 85 kilometers east of Moscow, began investigating a hospital where children were tied to their beds with sheets. In both cases, hospital patients photographed the abuse with their cell phones and the pictures were shown on state television.The rejected babies are a burden to the children's hospitals, said Boris Altshuler, who advises ombudsmen Vladimir Lukin on the problem. Most hospitals do not allocate money to feed them or hire nurses to care for them. That means nurses typically visit their rooms three times a day -- to feed them and change their diapers. Some hospitals don't even have diapers, so the babies lie in wet sheets for hours, Altshuler said. Feeding is also a problem. Nurses rarely have time to hold a bottle of milk for each baby, so they put bottles into the babies' mouths and leave them; if a bottle falls out, the baby goes hungry. When mothers visiting their own children in the hospitals try to pick up the babies, they are often told, "Don't touch them. They will then get used to being touched and will cry after you leave," Altshuler said.Since hospitals are closed institutions in Russia, volunteers are not welcome as they are in the West, said Nadezhda Davydova, who volunteers at several Moscow hospitals under a special agreement with administrators. "The administration has no right to let in sympathetic people," she said. Davydova said she, other volunteers and children's rights activists were lobbying the government to place the babies in foster families and get them adopted.
"It is naive to think that the problem is bad nurses all around the country," Davydova said. In a rare exception, a Christian charity is paying for a new hospital ward for 40 rejected babies in the city of Pskov, about 20 kilometers east of the Estonian border. Initiative Pskov, a Protestant-sponsored group, is also covering the salaries of a team of specialists to care for the babies and help place them in families.By law, the babies can be adopted while still in the hospital. But information about them is entered into a national adoption database very slowly and is often incomplete.
Two years ago, prosecutors in the Altai republic fined a social services official for failing file information about a baby who had lived at a hospital for 18 months. Some children never recover from their months in the hospital without someone to walk them, talk with them and hug them, Altshuler said."When the time comes to decide whether to place them in a regular orphanage or one for the mentally disabled, they are at risk of being placed in the second. This means they will never go to a regular school," Altshuler said. Smirnova only got her son, Vladimir, out of the hospital when a friend helped her obtain a passport and rent an apartment. She receives 3,000 rubles per month from the state to care for the boy, who has neurological and heart problems. Doctors still advise her to give him up.Smirnova recently invited another young woman, Nastya, to move into the rented apartment with her. Nastya's sad story mirrors her own. She is expecting her child in August.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Birthparent Connection?
I rec’d an e-mail today. “T”, my intermediary in Russia sent me a scan of a two page letter from my youngest’s (EB) biological grandmother. At least I think it is from her. The letter is signed kisses-Baba (Grandma).
I sit at the computer with all my concentration centered on those lines of ink on paper. I can‘t read Cyrillic. I stare hard at the monitor, as if I‘m trying to inhale, digest or melt into the words. I know the translation will come in a matter of days yet I’m impatient. I crave some sort of connection, I can only imagine what Baba feels, what “V” (EB’s birthmother) feels. What would it feel like to have your child on the other side of the world, another family calling him son?
EB doesn’t seem to crave the connection as I do. He does smile, snuggle into my chest as I tell him that Baba “N” has written him a letter and show him the screen. He then slides off my lap and goes on playing dinosaurs.
I know what yearning feels like. I know what it felt to have him on the other side of the world, unable to fulfill his needs the way I knew only I could do to satisfaction. How does it feel to have a child you held in your arms for a year, a child you fed at your breast, just disappear from your life?
Are my letters an offering of some sort? Am I trying to stick a band aid on a broken heart? There are times I dream of going back to Vladimir to meet EB’s biological family. Isn’t it presumptuous of me to think that my physical presence could be a balm of some sort? That the “laying on” of my hands could heal them? Am I trying to “fix” these people?
Sometimes I want to take EB with me to Russia. I certainly won’t be able to take him back when he is of an age to be drafted into the Russian Army. That was the very first admonition of the officer at the Embassy. “Do not bring him back here after he is 16 years old. Do not let him come back until he is an older man.” How can you keep a grown man, a man in his late teens, early twenties from traveling to his birthplace, to his roots? I feel, that if I take him too soon it could be damaging. I mean, I talk to these people in letters translated by a third party. How can I discern their personalities, intentions and reactions by these disjointed interactions? But how can I force him into waiting until he is a man my own age, possibly with a young family of his own, to see his birthmother and birthfather again. What of his biological Grandmother? She will not be living by then, I know it. When we first gained contact with them, EB carried a picture of his “Baba” in his pocket until it fell apart.
Am I projecting MY feelings onto these people (including my son)? Am I?
I sit at the computer with all my concentration centered on those lines of ink on paper. I can‘t read Cyrillic. I stare hard at the monitor, as if I‘m trying to inhale, digest or melt into the words. I know the translation will come in a matter of days yet I’m impatient. I crave some sort of connection, I can only imagine what Baba feels, what “V” (EB’s birthmother) feels. What would it feel like to have your child on the other side of the world, another family calling him son?
EB doesn’t seem to crave the connection as I do. He does smile, snuggle into my chest as I tell him that Baba “N” has written him a letter and show him the screen. He then slides off my lap and goes on playing dinosaurs.
I know what yearning feels like. I know what it felt to have him on the other side of the world, unable to fulfill his needs the way I knew only I could do to satisfaction. How does it feel to have a child you held in your arms for a year, a child you fed at your breast, just disappear from your life?
Are my letters an offering of some sort? Am I trying to stick a band aid on a broken heart? There are times I dream of going back to Vladimir to meet EB’s biological family. Isn’t it presumptuous of me to think that my physical presence could be a balm of some sort? That the “laying on” of my hands could heal them? Am I trying to “fix” these people?
Sometimes I want to take EB with me to Russia. I certainly won’t be able to take him back when he is of an age to be drafted into the Russian Army. That was the very first admonition of the officer at the Embassy. “Do not bring him back here after he is 16 years old. Do not let him come back until he is an older man.” How can you keep a grown man, a man in his late teens, early twenties from traveling to his birthplace, to his roots? I feel, that if I take him too soon it could be damaging. I mean, I talk to these people in letters translated by a third party. How can I discern their personalities, intentions and reactions by these disjointed interactions? But how can I force him into waiting until he is a man my own age, possibly with a young family of his own, to see his birthmother and birthfather again. What of his biological Grandmother? She will not be living by then, I know it. When we first gained contact with them, EB carried a picture of his “Baba” in his pocket until it fell apart.
Am I projecting MY feelings onto these people (including my son)? Am I?
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Adoption Loss
I came across this discussion on You Tube about a month ago. Had problems posting it so I put it on the back burner. The subject keeps coming before me so I'm going to try to post it again.
Quick background- A couple put a video on You Tube stating they were looking to adopt and a bit about them. Some people were behind them, others extremely against. The husband decided to ask for Pro AND Anti Adoption video responses. I think some very interesting and informative information came out of this for me. I have no idea what it feels like to place your child for adoption. I have ALWAYS called my son's previous (?) (birthmother) his birthmother. I NEVER thought that that might be insulting. I'm a bit turned around about it all and hope to delve deeper into this soon. I thought it might be something you all would want to know. We are all parents- current and future. What do we bring to our children of their history? What is their true story? What is the true story of the people who gave them life?
Some Responses:
adoptee3420 (2 months ago)
Please understand that a woman who has not yet relinquished a child and signed the papers is NOT a birthmother - she is the mother of that child. Calling a woman a birthmother while she is still carrying a child is insulting. Choosing to relinquish a child for adoption is a difficult decision and refering to her as a birthmother before she has done so shows no respect for her current position and labels her as a woman who has relinquished before she has even done so.
Candiliscious0489 (1 month ago)
Adoption is NOT an OPTION EVER!!! Adoption Kills the Natural Familiy!!! U wanna help an older child whom does need a home, thats fine, but not Adopting that child but being said child's Legal Guardian, so Name stays the same, Child never loses original Identity. I really hope u r gettin this, understanding Adoption is Evil!!!Read Primal Wound, it may help u more.
slc2 (1 month ago)
To 'adoption is evil' people.You get babies whose mothers have died,or are too physically or mentally ill to be able to ever possibly care for a child let alone themselves, this is what happened to my birth mother.My parents adopted me even knowing i could inherit it (am 100% fine :P)anyway we are extremely close,I feel I have a closer relationship with my Mum than any of my friends have with theirs,it can be offensive to adoptees to tell them their adoptive parents are not their 'real' parents.
One of the video responses:
A Relinquished Dream
Please take the time to read the posts attached to this video.
There is a website that is at the end of the video. What do you think?
There are video responses to video responses. You can get a little lost in there. But good to know the feelings of others on the subject.
An Open Adoption Story from the Adoptive Mother's Standpoint-
Open adoption, broken heart
I knew it would be hard for my daughter's birth mother to give her up. I just didn't expect to feel so guilty for taking her.
By Dawn Friedman
I am unable to put down words..........
Quick background- A couple put a video on You Tube stating they were looking to adopt and a bit about them. Some people were behind them, others extremely against. The husband decided to ask for Pro AND Anti Adoption video responses. I think some very interesting and informative information came out of this for me. I have no idea what it feels like to place your child for adoption. I have ALWAYS called my son's previous (?) (birthmother) his birthmother. I NEVER thought that that might be insulting. I'm a bit turned around about it all and hope to delve deeper into this soon. I thought it might be something you all would want to know. We are all parents- current and future. What do we bring to our children of their history? What is their true story? What is the true story of the people who gave them life?
Thank You Rob (baseballgeek)
Some Responses:
adoptee3420 (2 months ago)
Please understand that a woman who has not yet relinquished a child and signed the papers is NOT a birthmother - she is the mother of that child. Calling a woman a birthmother while she is still carrying a child is insulting. Choosing to relinquish a child for adoption is a difficult decision and refering to her as a birthmother before she has done so shows no respect for her current position and labels her as a woman who has relinquished before she has even done so.
Candiliscious0489 (1 month ago)
Adoption is NOT an OPTION EVER!!! Adoption Kills the Natural Familiy!!! U wanna help an older child whom does need a home, thats fine, but not Adopting that child but being said child's Legal Guardian, so Name stays the same, Child never loses original Identity. I really hope u r gettin this, understanding Adoption is Evil!!!Read Primal Wound, it may help u more.
slc2 (1 month ago)
To 'adoption is evil' people.You get babies whose mothers have died,or are too physically or mentally ill to be able to ever possibly care for a child let alone themselves, this is what happened to my birth mother.My parents adopted me even knowing i could inherit it (am 100% fine :P)anyway we are extremely close,I feel I have a closer relationship with my Mum than any of my friends have with theirs,it can be offensive to adoptees to tell them their adoptive parents are not their 'real' parents.
One of the video responses:
A Relinquished Dream
Please take the time to read the posts attached to this video.
There is a website that is at the end of the video. What do you think?
There are video responses to video responses. You can get a little lost in there. But good to know the feelings of others on the subject.
An Open Adoption Story from the Adoptive Mother's Standpoint-
Open adoption, broken heart
I knew it would be hard for my daughter's birth mother to give her up. I just didn't expect to feel so guilty for taking her.
By Dawn Friedman
I am unable to put down words..........
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
I'm in a Time-Out
I'm leavin' Cali for Texas. Goin' to see Grandma.
While I'm gone chew on this stuff. Yep Steph- I'm the Link Queen!
Happy Festive Occasion to ya'll!
All I have to say is "Yeesh Almighty"
November News from Love Without Boundaries 
thank you
The Philadelphia Enquirer
The Philadelphia Enquirer
I Love NPR
Grandma's Veggies May Have Been More Nutritious
Popular Belgian Party Rejects Multicultural Society
Americans and African Adoptions
& Adopting a Baby from Africa, Famous or Not
Did you know that there has never been an International Symbol for Breastfeeding until now?
In Search of an Icon: Breastfeeding Symbol Contest
And last but certainly not least: The Turkeys are Fighting Back!!
When Turkeys Attack: Bostonians Battle Wild Birds
Sunday, November 19, 2006
More Rights Urged for Birthmothers
More Rights Urged for Birth Mothers
Sunday, November 19, 2006 - 12:37 PM
By DAVID CRARY AP National Writer NEW YORK
Mothers deciding to place their infants for adoption deserve better counseling, more time to change their minds, and more support in trying to keep track of the children they relinquish, a leading adoption institute recommends in a sweeping new report.
The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute said its report, being issued Sunday, is the most comprehensive ever devoted to birth mothers, whom it described as "the least understood and most stigmatized participants" in the adoption process.
"Birth parents have been a population that has been neglected for so long _ just starting a dialogue that respects them as flesh-and-blood human beings is really important," said the institute´s executive director, Adam Pertman.
The report focuses on U.S. mothers who voluntarily place infants for adoption _ an estimated 13,000 to 14,000 such adoptions occur annually. Most of this country´s roughly 135,000 adoptions each year are from foster care; the next biggest category is overseas adoptions.
In contrast to a few decades ago, many of the voluntary U.S. adoptions are "open" _ with adoptive parents communicating with the birth mother and often allowing her regular contact with the adopted child. However, the report says a significant number of birth mothers are manipulated, pressured and deceived _ sometimes finding that they have no recourse when agreements they negotiated to visit or keep track of their children are broken.
"If you make a decision about adoption based on thinking you´ll be able to see this child grow up, and suddenly the carpet is pulled from under you and the family moves away without giving you their address, you go through this traumatic loss that some women never come to terms with," the report´s author, Susan Smith, said in a telephone interview.
The report recommends that all states establish legally enforceable post-adoption contact agreements; it said only 13 now have such policies covering infant adoptions.
It also recommended extending other rights to birth mothers, including pre-adoption access to pressure-free counseling about their options.
"It amazes me how many adoptions are done by attorneys, where the birth mothers have zero counseling," Smith said. "There are a lot of sharks out there, manipulating them in every way they know how, and the laws don´t prevent that in most states."
Jenna Hatfield, 25, of Cambridge, Ohio, said she got little insightful counseling before she agreed three years ago to the adoption of her daughter, Ariana, by a couple from Pennsylvania.
"My agency did not tell me until a month after I signed the agreement that open adoptions are not enforceable in Pennsylvania," Hatfield said.
She said she has been fortunate in befriending the adoptive parents; they regularly bring Ariana to visit Hatfield, who is now married and has a 1-year-old son.
"Thus far it´s worked very well for me _ just a couple of bumps," Hatfield said. "But unless both sides are willing to put in the legwork, there are going to be problems, and they´d need counseling to help them meet in the middle."
One problem cited in the report is a shortage of mental health professionals trained to understand the grief and loss experienced by birth mothers.
The report said birth mothers´ chances of achieving peace of mind are greatest if they are able to keep in contact with the adopted children, or get continuing information about them.
"Mothers after childbirth are in a very vulnerable state," Smith said. "We need laws and practices that protect their rights and interests."
The report recommended that birth mothers be given at least a few weeks after childbirth before the adoption decision becomes irrevocable. At present, irrevocable consent for an adoption can be established within four days after birth in roughly half the states.
"In many states, you can change your mind about buying a vacuum cleaner or taking out a mortgage within a prescribed time period, but most states do not have a revocation period during which a mother can change her mind about relinquishing her child," the report said.
The report said the rights of birth fathers also deserve stronger protections, including notification of pending adoptions.
Current adoption practices, the report said, "are too often based on outdated understandings, faulty stereotypes, and misinformation from the time that secrecy pervaded the adoption world."
___
Related Links:
Institute: http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/
Sunday, November 19, 2006 - 12:37 PM
By DAVID CRARY AP National Writer NEW YORK
Mothers deciding to place their infants for adoption deserve better counseling, more time to change their minds, and more support in trying to keep track of the children they relinquish, a leading adoption institute recommends in a sweeping new report.
The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute said its report, being issued Sunday, is the most comprehensive ever devoted to birth mothers, whom it described as "the least understood and most stigmatized participants" in the adoption process.
"Birth parents have been a population that has been neglected for so long _ just starting a dialogue that respects them as flesh-and-blood human beings is really important," said the institute´s executive director, Adam Pertman.
The report focuses on U.S. mothers who voluntarily place infants for adoption _ an estimated 13,000 to 14,000 such adoptions occur annually. Most of this country´s roughly 135,000 adoptions each year are from foster care; the next biggest category is overseas adoptions.
In contrast to a few decades ago, many of the voluntary U.S. adoptions are "open" _ with adoptive parents communicating with the birth mother and often allowing her regular contact with the adopted child. However, the report says a significant number of birth mothers are manipulated, pressured and deceived _ sometimes finding that they have no recourse when agreements they negotiated to visit or keep track of their children are broken.
"If you make a decision about adoption based on thinking you´ll be able to see this child grow up, and suddenly the carpet is pulled from under you and the family moves away without giving you their address, you go through this traumatic loss that some women never come to terms with," the report´s author, Susan Smith, said in a telephone interview.
The report recommends that all states establish legally enforceable post-adoption contact agreements; it said only 13 now have such policies covering infant adoptions.
It also recommended extending other rights to birth mothers, including pre-adoption access to pressure-free counseling about their options.
"It amazes me how many adoptions are done by attorneys, where the birth mothers have zero counseling," Smith said. "There are a lot of sharks out there, manipulating them in every way they know how, and the laws don´t prevent that in most states."
Jenna Hatfield, 25, of Cambridge, Ohio, said she got little insightful counseling before she agreed three years ago to the adoption of her daughter, Ariana, by a couple from Pennsylvania.
"My agency did not tell me until a month after I signed the agreement that open adoptions are not enforceable in Pennsylvania," Hatfield said.
She said she has been fortunate in befriending the adoptive parents; they regularly bring Ariana to visit Hatfield, who is now married and has a 1-year-old son.
"Thus far it´s worked very well for me _ just a couple of bumps," Hatfield said. "But unless both sides are willing to put in the legwork, there are going to be problems, and they´d need counseling to help them meet in the middle."
One problem cited in the report is a shortage of mental health professionals trained to understand the grief and loss experienced by birth mothers.
The report said birth mothers´ chances of achieving peace of mind are greatest if they are able to keep in contact with the adopted children, or get continuing information about them.
"Mothers after childbirth are in a very vulnerable state," Smith said. "We need laws and practices that protect their rights and interests."
The report recommended that birth mothers be given at least a few weeks after childbirth before the adoption decision becomes irrevocable. At present, irrevocable consent for an adoption can be established within four days after birth in roughly half the states.
"In many states, you can change your mind about buying a vacuum cleaner or taking out a mortgage within a prescribed time period, but most states do not have a revocation period during which a mother can change her mind about relinquishing her child," the report said.
The report said the rights of birth fathers also deserve stronger protections, including notification of pending adoptions.
Current adoption practices, the report said, "are too often based on outdated understandings, faulty stereotypes, and misinformation from the time that secrecy pervaded the adoption world."
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Related Links:
Institute: http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/
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