Is "Positive" Adoption Language Deceptive?

© Photographer: Nruboc | Agency: Dreamstime.com

"No denying a mother's love in adoption choice"
 by Jacquielynn Floyd

Embracing new attitudes about moms is a huge part of making adoption
more acceptable.

The all-too-commonly used phrase "give a child up" and similar
derivatives must be completely removed from our vocabulary.

The words "give up" insinuate surrendering, abandonment and
cowardliness -- a far cry from the reality of an adoption decision.

"Making an adoption plan" explains the time, consideration and thought
behind this responsible decision. Making an adoption plan is a mature
act of total selflessness, requiring great courage and the ability to
put the child's welfare above pride and peer approval. Let's start
today embracing birth moms and their wonderful decision to "make an
adoption plan."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is an interesting discussion about Positive Adoption Language vs. Reality:

Posted by Laurel @ 5:45 AM Wed, May 27, 2009
Yes. Letting someone else raise your child is brave and loving and responsible. That's why everyone does it. In fact, whenever I love anyone very much, I make sure to get them out of my life as quickly as possible, because to do otherwise would be selfish...not.

Actually, I really do tend to push away those who love me. Why? I'm adopted, and I grew up hearing "Your mother loved you so much she gave you up." Think about that. Think about getting raised with the notion that love=removing yourself from the beloved's life. It's almost always a lie, and it damages children.

The "reality of the adoption decision" is that your gain is someone else's loss. Adopted children also suffer loss, and we suffer unnecessarily when our adoptive parents tell us lies to spare our(or their own)feelings. There is enough secrecy in adoption. Secrecy causes shame.

But yes, let's do embrace these women--at least until we've got what we want. It's very transparent, this "love-bombing" someone who has or had something you want badly. Something that, if you've already got it, might make you feel the tiniest bit guilty about benefiting from a "wonderful decision" very few women have ever wanted to make.

I do agree that "terminology can make or break attitudes toward embracing adoption." That's why I loathe the term "birthmother" or any variant thereof: it reduces women like my mother to breeding machines for the convenience of the higher-class infertile. It's also often applied to women who have not even given birth yet as a means of coercion. Nobody is a "birth mother" until she has given up her child.

Yes, my mother _gave me up_. There is no better or more accurate term. Had I been born at a time when giving birth out of wedlock was not so heavily stigmatized, I would probably not have been adopted. Now that the stigma is gone, most women keep their babies. I guess they would rather have their own family than help form someone else's. Selfish creatures! Don't they know they could be mature, selfless, courageous soopa-heroines?

Posted by Anonymous @ 4:40 PM Wed, May 27, 2009
You can change the wording all you like, but it's a wasted effort. Why put lipstick on a pig? People will still think exactly what luc has expressed about women making "adoption plans", and adoptees will still be raised with the stigma that their mothers are insensitive, drug addicted losers. What's worse, as long as records are closed, they may never have the opportunity to learn the truth of their own origins. A rose by any other name is still a rose, and adoption does not smell like roses.

Posted by Andraya @ 5:30 PM Wed, May 27, 2009
Giving up is exactly what it is, candy coating the wording will NOT change that.

In order for a mother to "make an adoption plan" she must first give up. She must give up her desire to parent, her ability to believe she is worthy of raising her child. In order to surrender our children we must first give up on ourselves.

Eleven years ago I gave up on myself, I gave up on being "good enough" to parent my son and I gave up my own self esteem. If I hadn't given up those things "giving up" my son would have also caused me to give up on living. Unless you feel unworthy of raising your child how could you live with yourself knowing you couldn't be bothered to fight for your own flesh and blood? The adoption industry depends on us giving up... If we don't they will go broke.

Posted by Amyadoptee @ 8:08 AM Wed, May 27, 2009
As an adoptee, I have an issue with this so called positive language thing. How about we use honest language here? It is a relinquishment. It is not an adoption plan. An adoptee will always look at it as surrendering and abandonment. An adoptee will always look at love forever in a warped way. She loved me so much that she gave me away. So love equals abandonment. Sorry that just does not work for me.

Posted by Mara @ 8:47 AM Wed, May 27, 2009
As an adult adoptee, I think adoption should be made less desirable until all adopted people are restored their civil rights and not treated as second-class citizens in this country.

In 44 states, in the land of the "free", adult adoptees are denied access to their Original Birth Certificates. This document was sealed from them when they were adopted not surrendered "given up". They were issued false documents AKA Amended Birth Certificates that list their adopted parents as their biological parents.

The lies must stop. The records must be unsealed. No one should be kept from their own biological identity. It's barbaric. It's a crime for any citizen to forge a legal document but not "the state". Scary and WRONG.

The Adoptee Rights Demonstration is July 21, 2009 in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Please support your fellow American citizens (who just happen to be adopted) and help restore to us our civil rights.

Posted by Anonymous @ 6:27 PM Wed, May 27, 2009
Having a "Blank slate" health history almost killed my firstborn. He was suffering from what the doctor's originally categorized as bad croup but was truly an asthma attack. It got worse and worse until one day he turned blue and was rushed to the E.R. The doctor was hesitant to diagnose my infant son with asthma because neither my husband's family nor I have the disease.
Imagine my surprise years later when I met my natural mother and learned that asthma runs in her family.
With that knowledge, my son would have had the treatment he needed much sooner and his life would never have been at risk.
Sealed records and "blank medical histories" affect not just adoptees but their children and their grandchildren. It is anything but a gift.

Posted by Mara @ 9:02 AM Thu, May 28, 2009
Adoption in this country is still based on secrecy and LIES. It's called "Open Adoption" now, but it's all a marketing campaign, it's not really open. There is nothing legally binding the adoptive parents to keep a connection between the biological parents and the child they share. Many adoptive parents SHUT OUT the biological parent as soon as they possibly can and keep their "commodity" all to themselves. That's right, a commodity. The multi-billion dollar adoption industry views us as commodities, not feeling human beings with rights. And when we grow up and complain we're told to shut up and be GRATEFUL.

I want my rights as a United States citizen restored to me. They were taken away from me when I was a one year old and my adoption was finalized. I never agreed to the adoption and I never agreed to have MY original birth certificate altered out of gratitude for my adoption!

I'm bitter? You bet I'm bitter. Come with me to the vital records office when I ask for my original birth certificate, you'll hear how bitter I really am.

Posted by Addie Pray @ 9:33 AM Wed, May 27, 2009
Changing what you call something doesn't change what it is.

"making an adoption plan"
"relinquishing a child"
"giving up a child"
"giving the gift of a child to a infertile couple"
"terminating parental rights"
"giving a child away"
"abandoning an infant"
"being a willful participant in a campaign to end any parental connection to a child born to you"

They all mean the same thing, and all have the same result.

Posted by Mirah Riben @ 10:30 AM Wed, May 27, 2009
I write as a mother who has lost a child to adoption and as Vice President of Communications of Origins-USA. i have spent the pst 30 years in the fields, supporting and comforting women dealing with the lifelong irresolvable grief of having lost a child to adoption.

A rose by any other name...You can call bombs peacemakers, but the still blow up and kill people.

Adoption is a tragic loss and should always be a last resort after all measures of helping families remain intact have failed. Why try to promote it or make it more appealing with language? There is only one reason:

Sugar coating the loss of a child with newspeak is a marketing technique used to obtain more babies for an multi-billion dollar industry that is struggling since the supply has dwindled as mores change and resources are made available for single moms.

For those at peace with their loss, God Bless. But it is still a major loss. One can know that they are dying...but that doesn't mean it was their plan to die anymore than it was any woman's plan to get pregnant in order to lose her child (except perhaps a paid surrogate.) No more than anyone marries planning to divorce.

And when a love done dies and is gone, no matter how much time we had to "plan" and prepare for the loss - we still grieve. It is still a loss.

And many adoptees feel it as an abandonment.

Posted by Jenna @ 10:41 AM Wed, May 27, 2009
Call it whatever you want, but "making an adoption plan" is still abandoning your child for others to raise, and most importantly it FEELS that way to the adoptees who live the adoption experience their entire life. I say rather than sugarcoating it, trying to make it more palatable to the general public, we call a spade a spade and begin to deal honestly with adoption and the myriad of emotions and complexities that are wrapped up in it, rather than blowing smoke up people's...

Posted by Marlo @ 10:54 AM Wed, May 27, 2009
Why would we ever want to make adoption more acceptable? I guess since I don't agree with that goal, I'm sure not going to agree with the coercive language being suggested here to separate more babies from their families.

I'm an adult adoptee. I had a 'good' adoptive family, and like many I was told I was loved so much I was given away. Sorry but that doesn't make any sense and it does a number on a kid to hear that kind of thing.

We are separated from our mothers and families and that causes us great pain. We feel abandoned (wonder why?). We are expected to be happy about all of this, because at least we were allowed to live. Our birth certificates are lies. We have no right to our names and our heritage or our truth.

I ask again - why would we want to make adoption more acceptable?

I ~was~ given up. I ~was~ relinquished. I ~was~ abandoned. And monkeying with the words to make it easier for the general population to choke down the rainbow and kittens view of adoption doesn't change reality. I much prefer honest language. language that doesn't turn adoption into this wunnerful thing, language that doesn't turn a first mother into breeding stock. I think this "positive adoption language" hooey is just adding to the coercive tactics arsenal agencies have to woo a mother from her womb wet infant.

Adoption stripped me of my family, my heritage, my language, my band rights, and my rights to be a whole person with the same access to my information as anyone else. It taught me that people who love you leave. I lost count of how many times people told me that my first mom gave me up out of love. What a twisted idea of love to impart to a child! Someone else made a decision for me that I had no part of, and I'm still picking out the shrapnel.

What should be embraced is enabling women to raise their children, in the event that they truly cannot or will not parent, said child should be raised still in the fold of their family if possible. Adoption should always be the last resort. Always.

Posted by beegirl73 @ 11:14 AM Thu, May 28, 2009
SB, how dare you say your adopted friends are "COMPLETE" you have no idea how they truly feel. We adoptees grow up saying what people want to hear. I did it for years. We don't want to hurt our adoptive parents feelings by admiting that adoption has damaged us and that we would rather have not been adopted. I don't care who you ask or how complete you think the adoptees you know are, who would choose to be separated from their families and raised by strangers? Do they accept it? Yes. Do they say that they are fine with it? Maybe. Are they free from self-doubt, abandonment issues, lack of medical history, and identity issues? No.

Open your mind and try to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Not all of the adoptees who make comments on sites like this one are angry, bitter adoptees who had bad adoption experiences. Many of them are like me, adoptees with great adoptive parents, who lead great lives but want to do what they can to educate people so that other adoptees don't have to grow up feeling the pain that we did and still do.

It's Not Fine

"Adoption agencies stated that the Dept. of Health told them they can "put whatever we want" on birth certificates.
 When is it ethical or legal for a government document to be falsified? A "Certificate of Live Birth" should be guaranteed factual for every citizen.



In the past a meeting like today would have silenced me for a long time with feelings of discouragement ~ questioning myself as I replay every moment over & over.

But it was different today, and I can thank my amazing adoptee, first mother, and adoptive parent friends for that. The ones who have been fighting this same fight for years and years, and who have taught me so much by being vulnerable and sharing their stories and their passions. Those who have been CHANGE agents in other states.

Four of us adoptees attended the "Adoption Review Task Force" meeting (interestingly, no adoptees were appointed) at our state capitol. We were excited because we thought we were finally being heard.

You see, last month we pointed out the gravity of a statement made by an adoption agency employee. She off-handedly mentioned that when she called the Dept. of Health to inquire as to how adoptions could be tracked in OK, that one of the employees mentioned they were getting obc's from hospitals for babies being targeted for adoption, with the names of the adoptive parents already written in as the parents (even before an adoption is finalized).

Of course, the only ones in the room whose ears tuned in immediately were the adoptees. We asked "why?" that could be done (can you imagine NEVER having a factual birth certificate, sealed or not?), and, for once, the legislators in the room seemed to take notice. They invited the Dept. of Health and other officials to the next meeting (today) to "address" this situation and the procedures done with obc's.

I had a feeling that we would be assurred exactly what "we" wanted to hear ~ that all was fine in vital-stats land and there was nothing to be concerned about. And of course, that is exactly what happened. It was apparent that today was a fluff meeting (much how all of these meetings have been) so the officials could tell "us" the procedure of how obc's are sealed, and amended birth certificates are created for adoptees in our state.

They made sure to point out that any problems that "we" hear about are simply "flukes" and could surely not be problems system-wide. By the end of these few minutes of official blabber, it was "unanimously" agreed that "we" obviously have a good system that has been used for decades, and "if it ain't broke, why fix it?" End of subject.

In essence, it felt as though it was a staged meeting to "address" these issues so we adoptees could shut up and go home. Any issues "we" have with nonfactual birth certificates are coming from the "loud fringe" and don't represent the overall picture. (Even though just a month ago it was brought up as a current issue).
A lot of back-tracking was done and fast...

We adoptees brought our obc's (yet again, as we have in the past), complete with aliases our reunited mothers were appalled to see on our birth certificates; some with changed birth dates and forged signatures. We hurriedly shared our stories with the legislators AFTER the meeting. We can only hope this will eventually make a difference. We felt so defeated, like we were given a tiny bit of lip-service, but no real validation. Having to beg for a few minutes of rushed legislator's time, and the rude stares from the others in the room, made us feel as though we were being sent back to our quarters, where we are expected to remain silent.

We endured painful statements like, "But how do you balance privacy issues?" (read "The Girls Who Went Away" by Ann Fessler); or Jan Baker's telling article "Do We Really Need to be Protected";

"You can't keep a birthmother from lying" (the agencies kept asserting that it is surely a birthmother's "choice" to put whatever she wants on an obc, even naming the child with the last name of the potential adoptive parents ~ no mention of adoption "counseling" tactics vulnerable mothers are strongly influenced by; and of course, it certainly couldn't be the blatant act of agencies, they are perfect). Agencies stated in the meeting that the Dept. of Health has told them they can "put whatever we want" on birth certificates. When is it ethical or legal for a government document to be falsified? A "Certificate of Live Birth" should be guaranteed factual for every citizen. We spent the majority of the meeting rangling over money. It points directly to a supply/demand industry, making adoptees a commodity, especially when our very human rights of identity are stripped from us.

The best quote of the day: "There is zero chance of that happening in OK" (one member's response to our mention of adoptee access legislation passed in six U.S. states). States like Oregon, Maine & New Hampshire have model legislation OK could learn from. Our neighbor to the north (KS) has NEVER sealed obc's to their adult adoptees. 

After shaking this discouragement, days like this cause us to be even more motivated to keep speaking. These are our stories, our lives & identities, our birth certificates (or faux) birth certificates. It is our money we are forced to pay an adoption agency to find our families when our obc's have false names or information. We won't slink back to our quarters. We want the same rights as every other citizen. Nothing more, nothing less. We want our truth.

No, Mr. Legislator, it is not "all fine" as you stated today. It won't be "fine" until every adult adoptee in America has the right to obtain their unfalsified, factual obc. Even if that means fixing a system that supposedly "isn't broken". It won't be fine until babies don't cost an average of $25,000 in our great state. It won't be fine until babies aren't commodities at all.

The reason this task force was appointed in the first place stemmed from an OK Grand Jury report documenting gross unethical practices. My question is how can this "committee" ethically reform adoption when it is largely comprised of those who benefit financially from the business? How can adoption "professionals" who make their living doing adoptions truly provide non-directive "counseling"? These are important conflict of interest issues that OK needs to address.

Even our district attorney's assert they are unable to fully investigate questionable practices because they are hidden behind "sealed records" laws. These archaic laws, based on myths perpetuated by the very ones who profit in adoption, allow unethical practices to be hidden and continued. Maybe the real question here is, Who are we really serving?

Amanda, who writes at "The Declassified Adoptee" wrote this profound piece just in time for me to read as I got home today. Thank you ((((Amanda)))) for putting words to our experience today and the experience of so many adoptees who are reminded often..."we didn't ask you then, and we certainly aren't asking you now".

"I gave my adopted son back..."

Why after waiting years for a baby, I gave my adopted son back

She had years of fertility treatment. When that failed she went through endless vetting for adoption. Finally, Yvette and her husband were given the baby of their dreams. So why, after just two weeks, did it go so wrong?

By Kathryn Knight

Daily Mail, London
14th November 2008

Yvette Maguire gave up her adopted son, for fear she couldn't love him properly.
The beautifully decorated nursery has long since been wallpapered over and turned back into an office.
The baby clothes and toys have been given away, and the cheerful family photographs which dotted the room have been placed at the bottom of a drawer.

There is nothing at all to suggest this was once a child's bedroom. But a little boy did, for a time, sleep in this room.
He was a cheeky two-year- old called Ben, and his arrival two years ago into the life of Yvette Maguire and her husband Mark had initially been joyful, marking an end to years of infertility.
The couple had endured nearly two years of a protracted adoption process to find him and had believed fervently that he was the son they had always dreamed of.

But just two weeks after his arrival, 39-year-old Yvette made the astonishing decision to return him to foster care. Instead of fulfilling her maternal instincts, Yvette found herself facing a terrible conflict: her smiling new arrival reminded her only of her own biological failings.

She realised she would never be able to love Ben properly, and made the devastating choice to give him back. It was a decision she acknowledges that some people will never understand or approve of. Even some of her own friends do not feel she gave herself a chance to bond with her adoptive son.
But Yvette stands by her decision, insisting that, far from being selfish, she was simply doing the best thing by her little boy. 'I'm not an ogre. I know some people will think I should have given it longer, that I was selfish and that I couldn't cope so I did the easiest thing. But it wasn't like that,' she says.

'Not a day goes by when I don't think about him and I still feel empty inside. Every day I torture myself over whether I let him down. But deep down I know I did the right thing. 'Ben did absolutely nothing wrong. It wasn't about him, it was about me. You hear so many different stories about adoption being difficult, but they are always centred on the children.

'No one looks at it from the point of view of a woman who has not been able to have a child of her own and the effect that can have. I simply wasn't prepared for it emotionally.'
Her story is certainly an antidote to the usual happy-ever-after tales of adoption. And Yvette admits that it never occurred to her that she might reject her son.

But then she had always assumed she would be able to have children. The youngest of three sisters from a loving family, Yvette, a fine art student, had spent most of her early years dreaming of the time she would become a mother.
'I wanted the fairytale - the husband, the lovely home, and the babies.'

IVF proved fruitless
After meeting her future husband Mark, now 37, at the age of 23, she seemed set to achieve her dream. Fixed up on a blind date by her sister, the couple hit it off immediately, eventually settling into a comfortable family home in Horley, Surrey.
Mark worked as a project manager in the City, while Yvette was a florist. They spent their 20s in a whirl of foreign holidays and spirited nights out. Having married in 2001, they started trying for children but were not unduly concerned when it did not happen immediately.
Subsequent tests, however, revealed that Yvette carried a high level of the hormone FSH, which can impede conception, as well as suffering mild endometriosis, which required surgery.

'I was very stressed,' says Yvette, 'I felt the pressure acutely. Everyone around me was having children.'
After 18 months, Yvette was referred to a specialist, who suggested the couple try IUI, a less invasive form of infertility treatment in which the ovaries are stimulated but the eggs are not harvested.

No bond:
Yvette couldn't connect with her adoptive son because he wasn't her own (pictured posed by model)
But after three unsuccessful attempts, the couple decided to embark on IVF. The couple told themselves they would only undergo one round, but ended up paying for three cycles, all of which proved fruitless.
'I didn't ever fall pregnant and after the third attempt the doctor as good as told me, very politely, that I shouldn't waste my money any more,' Yvette says. 'It was a hugely emotional time.'

There were, of course, still options, but one of them at least neither Yvette nor Mark would countenance.
'Some friends suggested we consider surrogacy, but we knew it wasn't right for us. We'd always had this thing that it was either both of us or none of us.'

So did warning bells not ring when they decided to embark on the adoption process?
'If I put my hand on my heart, I think I pushed my husband into adoption,' Yvette confesses. 'We had talked about it in the past and he had said he didn't feel he wanted to go down that road.
'I think he had reconciled himself to a life without children. But he knew how desperate I was and agreed to come with me to a meeting.'

And so, three years ago, Yvette and Mark embarked on another emotionally exhausting journey, that of the adoption process with its meetings and assessments and form-filling and classes.
'The entire process is designed to put you off, to frighten you to see if you're 100 per cent committed,' Yvette says.
'But it didn't deter either of us. I was so blinkered that all I could think was: "I want a baby, I want a baby."
'Mark had decided he was doing it for me and that was enough for him. And while you hear lots of horror stories of difficult children taking months and months to settle, you never hear about a total breakdown where it doesn't work at all. Whatever we were prepared for, it wasn't that.

'Our families wanted a happy ending. too. It had been tough for them, particularly for Mark's parents as he was an only child and they were desperate for a grandchild.'
Finally, 18 months later, in early 2006, the couple were formally approved for adoption.
'It was a wonderful moment, the moment you believe you are finally going to be a family,'
Yvette recalls . 'But it's also frustrating as you are literally waiting for the phone to ring to tell you there has been a match.'

He was a lovely little boy
Six months later that call came, giving the couple the news they had longed for: they had been matched with a two-year-old boy called Ben.
'I was overwhelmed and so was Mark,' says Yvette. 'I was thrilled to get a boy. I had this picture in my mind of my husband and son together tinkering with the cars in the garage. Mark was thrilled, too.'
The couple were not initially aware of Ben's background, informed only that he came from a troubled family. Only after giving their full agreement to the adoption process were they allowed to see the full paperwork. It made for upsetting reading.

One of eight brothers and sisters who were all in care, Ben had been terribly neglected as a baby, and taken into foster care at just a few months old.
He was fostered alongside two older siblings. 'It did scare us a little,' Yvette admits. 'When you see this immense family backdrop you start to think about who you are inviting into your life.
'We already had our own family, but by taking Ben in we were also opening ourselves up to his family too. But we knew we could give this little boy a wonderful life and that overruled any fears we might have had.'
Within a week, Yvette and Mark set eyes on their son in the flesh for the first time, watching from a distance as he played in a local park.

'It was wonderful, but very emotional. I just wanted to give him a hug, but we had to stay away.'
A few days later they were shown a video of Ben at play with his elder siblings, aged four and eight, at his foster home. 'It showed that he was a little bit bullied by them and I found that very difficult to watch,' she says. 'By then I really felt he was my baby - so I felt very protective.'
After final approval from the county adoption panel, Yvette and Mark embarked on a two-week 'handover' period before being allowed to take Ben home.

'We met Ben every day for two weeks, initially at his foster carer's home. Later we were allowed to take him out on our own. It's not easy at first because you are having to get to know someone in a slightly artificial environment, but as the days went on and we got to spend longer and longer with him, it got easier.
'He was a lovely little boy, very happy-go-lucky and cheeky. We took him to the park, played games and started to bond. I felt very happy and optimistic.'
Handover day, however, was not quite so simple. 'Mark and I had been given the impression that Ben would have said his goodbyes to his siblings before we picked him up, but they were there. They were both distraught, sobbing their heart out, which meant Ben was sobbing too.
'It was terrible, and I felt I was wrenching him away from his family.'

I felt no bond with him
But, once at their home, Ben seemed to settle in quickly, delighted by his cheerfully-decorated nursery crammed with toys and clothes. But within hours of welcoming their son into his new home, Yvette admits she was overcome with waves of anxiety about what she had done.
'I was completely overwhelmed,' she admits. 'On the outside I was doing all the right things - looking after him, playing with him, hugging him - but inside I felt only turmoil.
'I have a very strong memory of looking at him in the first couple of days that he was with us, and thinking: "He didn't come from me." I felt no bond with him whatsoever.
'I loved him in the abstract, but not inside. Clearly I hadn't expected this to happen, or I wouldn't have spent two years struggling to reach that point. But whenever I looked at him I was reminded only of my own failure to be a biological mother.

'I don't think I had grieved properly for the fact that I would never have my own children, and now it was coming back to haunt me. But at the same time it was the most horrible feeling - how could I not love this adorable boy I had waited for for so long?'
Ironically her husband, who had been so wary about adoption in the beginning, had no such qualms, immediately bonding with the toddler.
'Mark loved him to bits. Luckily I was able to confide in him about how I was feeling. He was worried, but I think he thought it would settle down.' It didn't.
With each passing day, Yvette says, she felt increasingly alienated. 'I wasn't sleeping, I had lost weight and I was as white as a sheet,' she says.

'As the days went by, I did everything I could to bond with Ben. At night I would kiss his forehead and read him a bedtime story before tucking him in. We'd go to the park and play with his toys - he loved trains and trucks, like any little boy - but try as I might, I couldn't connect with him.
'I would look at him drinking or eating and be painfully aware that I hadn't been able to nurture him from my own breast, or feel the kick of his foot inside my tummy.

'One evening, I sat down to complete some adoption paperwork and had to write his surname as our own. Seeing it on the page just didn't feel right.
I couldn't love him the way he deserved
'I looked after him perfectly well, but I was just going through the motions. At night I would tuck him up in his Thomas the Tank Engine pyjamas, saying to myself: "I am going to love you, I am going to love you."'
Matters came to a head just two weeks after Ben arrived, when a health visitor arrived for a routine check.
'She instantly knew something was wrong,' Yvette says. 'We started talking and I burst into floods of tears. It all came flooding out.'

Events moved rapidly: Yvette was referred the same day to a doctor, then a social worker, who said she should not be left alone with Ben.
'That was very difficult to hear,' she says. 'I knew they were only protecting the child, but I would never ever have hurt him.' Yvette was referred to The Priory, where a psychiatrist suggested that her inability to grieve over her infertility lay at the root of her feelings.

Both felt that keeping Ben was not to be recommended, and Yvette's social worker even said that she believed Yvette had post-natal depression, which, extraordinarily, can be diagnosed after adoption as well as natural childbirth.
'That made me want to scream,' she says. 'I knew what the problem was - while I loved Ben, I couldn't really love him in the way he deserved or needed from a mother.'
So, after a number of emotional discussions between husband, wife and social worker, the decision was made to return Ben to foster care. He had been with them for just two weeks.
'Mark had wanted to give things more time and I thought to myself: "I could lose my husband over this, I could lose my family." All of them felt that in time I would change, but I had to trust my instincts.
'In the end, Mark said he had married me for me, not for a child, and he would stand by me whatever I decided.'
Yvette adds: 'I know people will struggle to understand why I reacted so strongly to having Ben in the house, but I knew it wasn't just a case of him settling in.
'I knew that it just wouldn't work out with him. I felt he deserved to be with someone who could truly love him, and that I couldn't give him that.
'I have written him a long letter to be put in his file explaining everything that happened and how I felt.'
It was never going to work
One can only imagine, however, the bewilderment felt by the little boy as he was taken to his fourth home in two years, to a new set of foster carers.
Mark and Yvette accompanied him on the journey, taking with them the clothes and toys they had bought for him. 'We didn't explain what was happening to Ben as the social workers had told us not to, so on the day all we could do was take him to his new family.
'It was left to them to explain the situation, although at the time he would have been too young to understand. We stayed for three hours to make sure he was settled and then all we could do was leave,' say Yvette.
'Watching him in his new home was incredibly emotional. I consoled myself with the fact that I knew he would be loved. But when we went back to his nursery we both broke down. We were grieving for him, but also for the end of our dreams of having a baby.

'We both knew that if it wasn't going to work with Ben it was never going to work.'
Today, Yvette has, to a degree, reconciled herself with remaining childless. 'Sometimes I feel vulnerable because I look at Mark and think he could find someone who would provide him with children. But he has been a rock and our relationship is stronger than ever,' she says.
Some consolation has come, too, with the knowledge that Ben is flourishing, having been adopted by his new foster family.
'They have a little girl who he loves and they are devoted to him, so that has made it all worthwhile,' says Yvette.
It is a happy ending of sorts, but it's hard not to think that Yvette's struggle for motherhood came at a high price, not only for her, but the little boy she so longed to love.

...Family Ties Tug

Adopted as infant, family ties tug at Villanova's Reynolds

By Marlen Garcia, USA TODAY

VILLANOVA, Pa. — Scottie Reynolds made the most dramatic play of last season's NCAA men's basketball tournament.
With a chance for Villanova to go to the Final Four, Reynolds weaved his way upcourt, dribbling until he released his winning shot with a half second left against Pittsburgh in a 78-76 win.

That secured his place in Villanova and tournament folklore, but there is more to Reynolds, 22, a senior point guard who seems capable of again leading Villanova (2-0) to the Final Four. It's his compelling life story that inspires strangers to stop Reynolds on the street to say thank you. He has spoken for years about being adopted and his desire to meet the birth mother who gave him up. Finding the right time to do it is complicated.

Born in Huntsville, Ala., Reynolds was adopted as an infant by Pam and Rick Reynolds, an Alabama couple who already had three biological children. The tight-knit, racially blended family has lived in Herndon, Va., for eight years. His parents and three older siblings are white. His younger brother and sister, both African American, also were adopted.

There are two chapters to his life, Reynolds says. The first embodies his adoptive parents, who are fixtures at his games and in everyday life. "My parents made me the young man I'm becoming today," he says.

The second chapter — about his biological mother — has tugged at Reynolds since he was a child.

"I know that one day, both my mothers will be sitting together watching me play basketball," he says. "I think it will be one of the significant things in my life."

His biological mother gave him up and the records are sealed. She was located three years ago by a private investigator hired by his adoptive family. His birth mother doesn't know who he is, Reynolds says.

In interviews during the last two NCAA tournaments, Reynolds said he planned to contact his birth mom once the season ended. But after each season, Reynolds did not reach out to her.

"Last year, I just said it so people wouldn't ask me," he says. "I plan on it. But deep down, I was like, 'I don't know.' "

As a child, finding his birth mother became a mission. He recalls breaking down in tears after school in the fourth grade because of upsetting remarks his classmates made about adoption.

"I was like, 'I have to find her,' " he says. " 'I have to bring her to school.' I wanted to prove to everybody that I knew who my mother was."

He says he cried until midnight, and his mom wept with him as she consoled him. After that, he decided he would not cry again about it for fear of hurting his parents.

"They've done an unbelievable job," he says of his parents. "They were probably feeling bad about themselves. I was like, 'I can't make them feel bad.' "

The desire to meet his birth mother, however, never waned. His parents told him once he turned 18, they would search for identifying information for her in Alabama.

"If he needs that in his life, I want that for him," his mother says in an interview at her home. "I want him to be whole."

The family assumed Reynolds could seek the information at 18. Then they found out Alabama law requires adults be 19.

"Some people are like, 'I'm 18. I can smoke,' " Reynolds says. "I was like, 'I'm 18. I can find my mother.' When I found out I had to wait another year, it burst my bubble a little bit. It sucked."

At 19, as Reynolds started his freshman season, the private investigator located and contacted Reynolds' birth mother.

"She was like blown away," Reynolds says. "I know it was an emotional time for her."

He had waited for years to meet the woman, but after hearing this, Reynolds decided he would wait longer.

When an adopted child receives information about a biological parent, the child usually needs time to digest the information, says Eileen McQuade, president of American Adoption Congress. Putting off a reunion is not unusual, she adds.

"It's just a question of processing this stuff," McQuade says.

Asked whether it was difficult to delay his reunion, Reynolds doesn't answer but says: "I thought maybe I should just focus on college basketball. The biggest thing when I hit college was to be the best player I could be. I didn't want nothing to interfere with that."

Enduring the taunts

Reynolds has flourished in basketball — he is on pace to surpass 2,000 career points — despite enduring potshots on the road from opponents' fans over his adoption. Reynolds says at times he has been jeered with the title words of the punk rock song Scotty Doesn't Know.

"It's as bad as I've ever heard," Villanova coach Jay Wright says. "There are times I want to go after somebody, but Scottie sets the example."

Reynolds, he says, has never acknowledged the taunts, nor has he complained privately.

"It's never affected his play," Wright says. "It's amazing."

Some players might be tempted, in light of the harassment, to gloat after a victory or great play, but Reynolds doesn't play that way, the coach adds.

"I've talked to the team about it and said, 'You all hear it,' " Wright says. " 'We all feel for Scottie, but the way he handles it shows how strong he is and how strong we can be.' "

Reynolds says that in his sophomore year, he heard cracks in a game at Pittsburgh that he found especially mean-spirited.

"Some of the stuff I'd never heard before," he says. He listened for the first time to jabs about the biological father he assumes he will never know.

"That's the only time it really got to me," he says. He wanted to act out but instead went into the locker room to keep his cool.

Reynolds says he has learned to compartmentalize his emotions to keep them in check. He chooses his words carefully when he speaks and says his reactions are programmed.

"If I didn't have mental toughness and know how to turn it on and off, I probably would have cried at Pitt," he says. "For me to do that in a big game ... that's not going to help anybody."

The reunion question

Reynolds does not discuss the adoption with teammates. "If we're in class, and (adoption) is a subject, he feels open and talks about it," teammate Corey Stokes says. "He's proud of the parents he has. He's happy. I don't ever bring it up."

His impact on other adoptees is not lost on him. "There are so many people I meet on the street saying, 'I'm adopted; you've helped me with this,' " he says.

Some want to thank him; others want him to be a sounding board. Reynolds says he wants to lend an ear. "I'm in this position," he says. "Why not help?"

As a child, Reynolds says, he felt confused about the adoption. As a teen, he realized his birth mother made a brave decision to give him a chance at a better life.

Reynolds says he must personally thank his biological mother. "In the worst-case scenario, if she didn't want to have nothing to do with me, if she didn't want a hug, I could understand it," he says. "I would just shake her hand and say thank you. I have to get that off me."

He really has no timetable to reach out to her. "I'm more worried about her than me," he says.

In their interview with USA TODAY, Reynolds' parents expressed frustration at the publicity Reynolds gets about the adoption and the questions he faces, from reporters as well as friends, about reuniting with his biological mother. They fear he will feel rushed to meet her.

"He hasn't done it, and that ought to be a message," his mother says. "You know what? He may never contact her. And if he doesn't, that's fine."

Reynolds sometimes is definitive about a reunion. Other times, he uses the word "if."

"I can wait," he says. "Sometimes I wish both my mothers were in the stands watching me play for Villanova, but I don't really think about it that often."

If the reunion takes place, he'll finally release the emotions that for years he has kept bottled.

"The only time I'll ever cry again," he says, "is if and when I meet her."

Mugged by Our Genes?

© Photographer: Aliencat | Agency: Dreamstime.com
Mugged By Our Genes?
March 24, 2009
BY SANDRA AAMODT AND SAM WANG

Last Monday, Nicholas Hughes, son of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia
Plath, killed himself. His mother was one of the world’s most famous
suicides, and news stories have mentioned the tendency of suicide and
depression to run in families. But this tragic inheritance is just
part of a more complex story in which our lives are shaped by genes,
environment — and unexpected connections between the two.

Much more than depression is partly inherited. Here’s a weirder fact:
the genes you get from your parents partly determine your risk of
being mugged. So do genes dictate our fate? Of course not — but they
do have a say in who we become.

We tend to think of the environment as something that just happens to
us, but in fact animals actively seek out surroundings that are
compatible with their genetic predispositions. Teenagers in the chess
club choose to be exposed to different influences from their hockey-
player counterparts. Such differences don’t even have to be voluntary:
tall kids may be picked more often for the basketball team and end up
better at the game because they have more opportunities to develop
their skills.

Certain people are much more likely than others to be exposed to
stressful life experiences, including specific traumas like car
accidents, industrial injuries or being a crime victim. Some of this
variation is traceable to genetics.

Psychiatric geneticists have formalized this idea by studying
“heritability,” the amount of the variation within a population that
can be explained by genetic differences between individuals. Identical
twins are more likely to both experience a variety of life events than
fraternal twins, who, like siblings of different ages, share only half
their genes. About one-fourth of the variation in life experiences —
from strictness of parents to difficulties with friends — can be
traced to genetic origins. This finding emerges from dozens of
studies.

People whose identical twins are alcoholic — whether or not they
themselves have any substance abuse problems — are more likely to have
been robbed or gotten in trouble with the law than people whose
fraternal twin is alcoholic. It’s easy to imagine that someone who is
impulsive and prone to addiction would be more likely to get into bar
fights than someone who has neither of those characteristics.

In other words, people with similar personalities seek out similar
experience and may take similar risks. For example, if you are the
type of person who seeks out excitement, you might be more inclined to
walk through shady neighborhoods — placing you at greater risk of
being mugged.

What connects our genetic inheritance to environmental experiences?
Most likely it is personality, which is known to depend on genes. In
one study, three common measures of personality — extraversion,
neuroticism and openness to experience — were enough to explain the
entire heritability of some life events. In general, neurotic people
are more likely to experience negative life events, while extraverted
people are more likely to experience positive and controllable life
events.

So some of the effects that we call “genetic” (or “nature”) are the
indirect result of people being drawn to particular environments
because of their personality. Or to put it another way, some
“environmental” (or “nurture”) effects are actually attributable to
genetic tendencies.

This seeming paradox underscores the point that the “genes versus
environment” debate is asking the wrong question. It is said that
parents of one child believe that upbringing determines personality,
but parents with two children believe in genetic tendencies. The
evidence points to something more complex: genetic predispositions
interact with circumstances to produce unique individuals.

Now, back to Nicholas Hughes. Major depression arises from a vicious
cycle between genes and environment. Let’s start with genetics: a
particular gene influences the sensitivity of individuals to bad
experiences. One famous paper demonstrated a complex interaction
between the serotonin transporter gene and negative events. (The gene
encodes a protein that removes the neurotransmitter serotonin from the
synapse after a neuron releases it. The action of this protein is
inhibited by antidepressants like Prozac.) People with two copies of
the high-risk variant of the gene are likely to develop depression in
response to multiple stressful experiences like divorce or assault,
but they are fine if their environment remains benign.

In contrast, people with two copies of the low-risk form of the gene
are resilient against depression, even when they experience
environmental stressors. People with one copy of each variant fall
somewhere in between, as you might expect.

Genes that predispose people to depression, though, also influence
their risk of experiencing negative environmental events. In one
study, women whose identical twin suffered from depression were
significantly more likely to have been assaulted, lost a job,
divorced, or had a serious illness or major financial problems than
people whose fraternal twin was depressed. (It’s not known which genes
are responsible for this effect.) These bad events did not occur
because the women were depressed, as the correlations persisted even
when women who were currently depressed were excluded from the study.
Thus, genes can act on the same disorder by making people more
sensitive to stressful environmental events and by making these events
more likely to occur.

The interaction between genetic tendencies and life experiences may
explain another puzzling finding: the heritability of many
psychological traits — from intelligence to anxiety — increases as
people mature. This result seems odd at first glance, since genes are
most important in brain development in babies and children. But
children also have less control over their environment than adults. As
people get older, they become more able to determine their own
circumstances, and they may be able to choose environments that
reinforce their natural personality tendencies. Apparently those of us
who suspect we are turning into our parents as we get older may have a
valid point.

After all this, you may wonder if your genes are ultimately to blame
for your fortunes, good or ill. That’s hardly the case: only one-
fourth of the variation in life events is heritable, which means that
three-fourths is not. So you have plenty of opportunity to influence
your circumstances. Whether that’s better than turning into your
parents, we’ll leave to your judgment.

A Home for the Holidays

Annual CBS adoption special has extra Faith (Hill) this time
http://www.readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=118271
Jay Bobbin

`A Home for the Holidays'' is more Faith-based than ever this year,
and appropriately so.
Music superstar Faith Hill is an adoptee, so she feels a strong
connection to ``A Home for the Holidays,'' the yearly CBS special that advocates
adoption through uplifting stories of children and their foster
families. A performer on past editions, Hill returns to host and sing on the 10th
annual program Tuesday, Dec. 23.

Also rendering songs during the hour are Melissa Etheridge, Jamie
Foxx, Gavin Rossdale and Hill's husband, Tim McGraw. Some youngsters
featured previously on ``A Home for the Holidays'' return to update their
stories; new tales are introduced by Rene Russo, Martin Short, Patricia Heaton
(``Everybody Loves Raymond'') and Kristin Chenoweth (``Pushing
Daisies'').

``This is my this third time doing this show, and to perform on
something like this is just one part of it,'' Hill says. ``All the children
highlighted on it have been adopted. That's an average of 10 to 12
children each year, but the number of children adopted because of the show is
over 20,000, and that's remarkable. When you call the 800 number given on
the show, there's someone to speak to you who's in your city or your
area.''

Having such a personal tie to ``A Home for the Holidays'' made the
taping challenging for Hill at some points.
``I had a difficult moment in one of my songs,'' she admits.
``Everyone in that room had been affected by adoption in some way, and most of the
(celebrity) guests in the show either have adopted a child or have
been adopted. Jamie Foxx was adopted (he has quite an interesting story ~ his adoptive parents also adopted his natural mother, from what I've heard), and Martin Short and his wife have adopted.

``Just about everybody who works on the show has been there since the
first one,'' Hill adds of the special partially initiated by adoptee Dave
Thomas, the late founder of the Wendy's restaurant chain. ``It's a labor of
love. They are truly dedicated to these children and finding homes for
them, and I'm not sure I've ever been part of anything else that has such
dedication involved.''

Hill knows the potential results firsthand.

``As a baby, I was adopted into a wonderful family,'' she says.
``It's one of the truest testaments to unconditional love, and as long as you can
really show a child support, mountains can be moved. Babies are
adopted by the thousands on a daily basis, but children who have been taken out
of their homes because of abuse or neglect need a home as well.

``Let's take, for instance, an 18-year-old who has just graduated
from high school. He or she will be fine now, people might think, going off and
being on their own -- and they don't need to be adopted. Well, that's just
not true. That child needs someone to come home to, and when they start
having a family of their own, they'll want grandparents for those children.
That history is so important. A child is never too old to be shown love.''

Hill is never far from her own adoption history: It's right in her
name. She recalls her Mississippi-based foster parents, in pursuing a private
adoption, ``were on a long list of people wanting a girl. The doctor
had asked all these wannabe parents if they had any specific requests
like hair color, which is so ironic, because you know how kids change!

``When the doctor called my mom and dad in, they said, `We just want
to be blessed with a little girl.'' A few days later, Mom got the call that
there was a little girl waiting to be picked up, and she said, `We named
you Faith because we just kept praying that it was going to happen, and it
happened a lot sooner than we expected it to.' '' (Hill eventually located, and
established a relationship with, her biological mother.)

Having her fellow-musician spouse on ``A Home for the Holidays'' is
significant for Hill. Also featured in the current movie ``Four
Christmases,'' McGraw ``was not given up for adoption, but he had a
similar situation in that he met his father later in life,'' Hill says. ``Tim
has the biggest heart of anyone I know, and he understands the blessing
that comes from true, honest love and sacrifice.

``My parents were not wealthy people, but they worked hard to give
their children a strong, solid foundation. They've been married 52 years
this month. I wish my mom could teach a course on how to deal with life;
she knew how to stretch a penny into a dollar, and she still does.''

``A Home for the Holidays'' ends a busy television round for Hill,
who also appeared recently on NBC's ``Christmas in Rockefeller Center'' and
PBS' ``Soundstage'' to coincide with the release of her new holiday album,
``Joy to the World.'' Also still heard singing the theme for NBC's Sunday-
night football telecasts, she's looking forward to a yuletide at home in
Nashville with McGraw and their three daughters.

``The girls are in school now, so I'm a mom before I'm anything
else,'' Hillsays. ``I never enjoy working unless my family is taken care of, and
I want to be here to watch my children grow. It's been a great year, and as
long as my family is safe and healthy, I'm happy.''

I was able to catch most of this show tonight on CBS, with Faith Hill. The song by Melissa Etheridge (adoptive mother) in which she repeatedly screamed over and over ~ "Baby Come Home" ~ wasn't in the best taste in my opinion. It was hard to listen to. Where IS Home for an adoptee? To a reunited adult adoptee, it means something ALOT different than the inference she was strongly making. I saw visions of "Dear Burfmother" letters dance in my head and desperate housewives getting all upset and bothered when their potential baby-maker "changes her mind" and "disrupts" their dream adoption ~ the baby they are just SURE was made for them.

When Faith Hill beautifully sang "He rules the world with truth & grace" in her gracious rendition of "Joy to the World", I got chills as I watched the camera zoom around the child-filled room of little adoptees. Adoptees whose original birth certificates, names, identities, birth histories, medical & genealogical histories and families were SEALED permanently the day their adoptions were finalized. What part of TRUTH is protected for them and their children after them? Adoption is not the end-all cure, or win-win solution for these children, no matter how sticky-sweet the stories were engineered. It doesn't erase their histories, families, or life-long loss. TRUTH be told, there was much lacking in this advertisement about us "special" kids.

Mother Reunited with Child

Mother reunited with child she gave away 26 years earlier
October 30, 2009
By Sean Rose
srose@courier-journal.com

She gave up her daughter for adoption in 1978 in a decision fueled by
panic and desperation. In doing so, Marcie Roth, now 54, lost not only
her child but also the love of her life.

And then, almost three decades later, she found one, which helped her
regain the other.

Marcie Roth's life is a story of regret, acceptance, forgiveness, and
finally, joy; of walking away from her child's father, then
rediscovering their love 26 years later; of coming to terms with the
fact that she was a birth mother of an adopted child who was a
stranger to her.

One thing she knew for certain: She needed to search for that child
and reach out to her — if her daughter would have her.

On Father's Day, 2008, she placed the call that she both longed for
and dreaded. She identified herself to a person who answered.

"Momma," the voice on the telephone replied. "Is that you?"

An adoption tinged with regret

Thirty years earlier, Marcie Roth was a divorced, single mother in
Ephrata, Pa., raising one daughter while juggling a full-time job and
school. She didn't know what to do when she found out she was pregnant
again.

Her boyfriend, Roger Roth, told her he wasn't ready to be a father.

With little money and no plan, she confided in her doctor, who
suggested she give up the baby for adoption and arranged the
proceedings with a nearby couple.

It seemed the smart move for Marcie and a blessing for the couple.

But in the hospital, as an exhausted Roth glimpsed her infant daughter
for the first time, and felt her tiny fist wrap itself around her
pinkie, Roth regretted her decision.

Yet she kissed infant Jessica Dale Roth on the forehead and said a
prayer as her baby was taken away.

She said she didn't see Roger Roth for two months. One day as she
walked the neighborhood as a light snow fell, Roger pulled his car
next to her and rolled down his window.

"Want to go to breakfast?" he asked.

She got in. The snow grew heavier. They waited in the car, hardly
speaking. Then Roger took her hand and they both cried over the
daughter they had given up.

He asked if they could get her back, Marcie Roth said, but she told
him it was too late. Their daughter's original birth certificate and all records of the adoption were permanently sealed. Neither knew where she had been placed.

The two got back together, but they never spoke about their missing
daughter.

Marcie Roth felt the loss acutely. She said she would be perfectly
fine, then see a baby on the street and break down bawling.

"When you are a birth mother, it's like something is just ripped out
of you, and it's never acknowledged," Roth said. "And so you go on
thinking, `I made a hell of a mistake.'"

Her anger at Roger Roth for not stepping up to fatherhood immediately
and her inability to turn to him for comfort drove them apart. Two
years after the adoption, Marcie Roth moved back to New Albany, where
she had grown up.

"Somebody dies, you have family, you have friends, you have coworkers,
you have support groups and then there's an end to it, there's
closure," Marcie Roth said. "There's no closure to an
adoption, it's just there.

Daughter struggles to fit in

The child that Marcie gave away, meanwhile, grew up as Kara Gianna
Cerullo. She and her adopted mother, Sandra Cerullo, lived in Berwick
and then Harrisburg, Pa., just hours from where she had been born as
Jessica Dale Roth.

By age 10, Jessica said she knew that she was different. Her blue eyes
and blonde hair did not fit with her mother's dark complexion. And her
loud, outgoing nature did not match the quiet home in which she was
being raised. She started asking questions about her biological parents.

When Jessica Roth was 11, her adoptive father drove her to meet with
the doctor who arranged the adoption, who refused to tell Jessica Roth
the names of her parents.

Instead, he described Marcie Roth to her, telling the young girl she
looked just like her mother.

While Jessica Roth described her relationship with her adoptive mother
as good, she was a troubled teen. She began doing drugs and drinking
at 13, and by the time she was 17, she was a mother herself, she said.
With little money and no father to help raise her daughter, she gave her
first child up for adoption.

Jessica Roth had begun searching for her birth parents as a teenager,
scanning adoption registries online. But two events, the death of her
grandfather, who she was very close to, and her father's death four
years later, made her redouble her efforts.

The urgency to find her own medical history was clear as she Jessica
began experiencing seizures and even suffered a stroke in January
2008, she said.

The odds were stacked against her. Although by now her adopted mother
had given her birth parents' names, Jessica didn't have much to go on.
Because adoption proceedings were closed, Jessica Roth's birth
certificate was sealed under Pennsylvania law.

A majority of states, including Pennsylvania, Indiana and Kentucky,
require court orders for adoptees to access their original birth
certificate or identifying information about their natural parents as
adults. The three states have some measures to allow access to records
as long as there is consent from the biological parents.

Medical reasons are often not enough for a court to unseal the
records, said Robert Stenger, an adoption and family law professor at
the University of Louisville.

By 2008, Jessica Roth had been searching off and on for more than a
decade — with nothing to show for it.

Re-ignited love spurs search for daughter

Marcie Roth, meanwhile, remained paralyzed with guilt, which kept her
from trying to find to her daughter, she said.

"I felt like I didn't have a right," Marcie Roth said. "Who was I to
go marching into her life after all these years and turn her world
upside down?"

She figured that if her daughter wanted to find her, she could.

Roger Roth changed her mind.

They had not spoken in 26 years, until the day he unexpectedly called
her. They visited each other, and on their first date, he apologized
for not being a father for their daughter. He proposed. She accepted,
and the two were married in April 2008.

Marcie Roth saw a reason behind their reunion and began searching for
their daughter two months before the couple married. For the next five
months, she would stay up late into the night searching online
adoption registries online for any sign of her daughter, she said.
Reading strangers' stories online, she began to open up to others and
learned to forgive herself.

"I punished myself, and that's what every birth parent does," she
said. "You mentally beat yourself up over it, what you should have
done."

On Father's Day, 2008, Marcie Roth received a call from a woman named
JoAnne Stanik. Earlier that day, Roth had registered with Stanik's
adoption search Web site, adoptiondatabase.org.

On it she had left a typed message intended for her daughter:
"If you are looking for me and want to hear your story, I am ready to
tell it."

Stanik started looking, and in just four hours, found Jessica,
who was now Jessica Roth-Jendrick after marrying and had moved to
Florida.

Marcie Roth was stunned, but Stanik assured her that she had verified
her daughter's identity. Stanik gave her Jessica's phone number.

Marcie Roth hung up, picked up the phone again and dialed. It rang and
a young woman answered. Marcie Roth identified herself.

The response was clear: "Momma? Is that you?"

Reunion creates new family

A week later, on a summer evening, at Louisville International
Airport, Marcie Roth and her husband waited at the gate. Jessica
walked forward, surveyed the crowd and — even with no photo —
recognized her mother right away.

"I could spot her a mile away," Jessica Roth said.

That first night, the questions and answers flew as Marcie, Roger and
Jessica tried to catch up on 30 years of lost time. What were her
birthdays like? Did she go to the prom? Any boyfriends?

Jessica stayed for a week. Then she and her parents traded visits
until last June.

She started classes at the end of September at Daymar College studying
medical coding and billing moved into her own apartment in early
October. Cerullo, who'd been diagnosed with liver cancer earlier in
the year, joined her daughter in her new home, as did her husband, who
came from Florida.

Marcie Roth began sharing her story online with others struggling with
adoption. She said she's dedicated to raising awareness about the
anguish the adoption laws can cause.

She is also writing book about her experience and hopes that any
profits will further help Jessica and also go toward Stanik's search
organization.

And when there is friction in their relationship — as there sometimes
is, Marie recognizes it as inevitable as the two get to know each other.

"I just kept saying, `Honey, it's going to get better.' The main thing
is that we're together."

Independence for Adoptees?

My natural Mother, Norma Carol, was a social activist and author who wrote articles for a local newspaper. One of my treasured possessions is an article she wrote about Alice Paul, a women's activist who fought for the right of women to vote in the early 1900's.

If my Mother were alive today we'd be standing arm-in-arm speaking out about the closed record system in adoption.
She could have been one of the brave women interviewed by Ann Fessler in "The Girls Who Went Away".

She registered on the ALMA Registry, and told her family never to forget that I would someday come looking. All the while, she searched for a "son" because the hospital and attorneys told her that she had given birth to a boy by c-section, when truth was, I was a daughter. That saddens me.
In 1968 it was almost impossible for a young, unmarried mother to keep her child. In 2015 it is very possible, but the same adoption issues that were prevalent in 1968 are still in force today.

Sealed records, secrecy, lies, coercion, and unethical practices permeate the adoption system.  When will our society realize and acknowledge the researched and proven fact that separating mother and child brings life-long consequences, and should never be done simply to build another family for those willing to pay. 

A humane society would never legalize "marketing" strategies to encourage the increase of children and babies "available" for adoption ~ yet here we are.  Sealed records benefit no one except those who profit from this unethical and unregulated system in the transfer and stripping of human identities.  Our nation will never have a truly honest discussion about adoption ethics unless money is removed from the adoption system (even in the form of federal adoption "incentives") and the inhumane practice of "amending" and "sealing" birth certificates is ended.   

One of my favorite movies is called "Iron-Jawed Angels", about the women's suffragist movement at the beginning of the 20th century ~ the story of Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony. They fought for women's right to vote, even though many, including politicians and other women, thought they were "radical" and even "angry". Thanks to their hard work, determination, and refusal to give in, every American woman enjoys the right to vote in every election.

"Women in the Voting Booth", an article in the Daily Record, begins with...

"It was 90 years ago this month that women across the nation got the right to vote through ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. This was 144 years after the Declaration of Independence — proclaiming that "all men are created equal" was signed, and 50 years after African-American men were given the right to vote."

When will adoptee's be given the simple right to their own identity? 

Adoptees deserve the same right as every other American citizen to access their own original birth certificate and court records upon adulthood.

It will be a wonderful day when ALL Adoptees can proudly walk into the Bureau of Vital Statistics office and request their own original, unfalsified birth certificate without "good cause", without shame, and with equal standing.

Adoption Reform Speech: "THIS TIME MUST COME"

By Sandy Musser

Presented at the First March on Washington Adoption in August of 1989, by Sandy Musser, a natural mother who went to federal prison for helping people search:

"I stand here before you today as a civil rights activist for the adoption reform movement. But I want to talk about three well-known activists of other eras who loudly and clearly proclaimed the need of freedom for their people."If a man named Moses were standing here before us today, I believe he would be speaking on our behalf and say to our present government - Let My People Go! Because Moses was not only the leader of the Jewish nation- he was also the most famous adoptee - one who had been adopted outside of his Jewish heritage and Jewish faith.But when he became aware of the bondage his people were in, he fought and persisted to see that they were set free. The Bible says that God heard the heart cries of His people. Our heart cries are now beginning to be heard around this country. We fight against the plagues of the adoption and child welfare system - the plague of the sealed record, which always equals cover-up; and the great plague of all - a corrupt system that has become a billion dollar business!" But I believe that we're well on our way to the Promised Land, and that most intelligent, caring individuals really want truth and openness - not secrecy and lies. This will be a land that will not see the need to sever birth roots nor eradicate the family name; a time when guardianship is a more cherished role than ownership. It will be a land that will not require the control of the social work profession, nor legislated rules and regulations; a land where no money need exchange hands (known as "fees") in order to adopt a child. Our Promised Land will be a land where adoptees, birthparents, and adoptive parents can come together and form a circle of love that will be immersed with openness, honest; and heartfelt caring."

If Susan B. Anthony were standing before us today - she, too, would be speaking out on our behalf. She, too, would be saying, let these people go. She knew what it meant to be denied rights - rights that her male counterparts enjoyed. She fought and led the women of America through the streets and halls of justice so that they too could have a voice at the ballot box. In 1873, she and 15 other women marched to the voting booth and exercised their God-given right to vote - and for this she stood trial. She was prosecuted and fined - a fine she refused to pay. How many of us are going to have to stand trial, pay fines, and be prosecuted for demanding or exercising our God-given right to our original birth certificate or other records concerning our own lives?"

If Martin Luther King could be here today, he would most likely be at the forefront of our March. He would be raising his hands, his head, and his voice, heavenward and shouting to the world - Let these people go! In one of his famous speeches, Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream that someday our people will not be judged by the color of their skin" We share a similar dream - that the day will soon come when we will not be judged or branded because we bear the name of 'adoptee,' birthparent' or adoptive parent.'

"We pray for the day that we will not have to bargain, plead, beg, petition or pay for what is rightfully ours. We anticipate the day when legal documents called birth certificates will no longer be falsified - when birthmothers are no longer signed into the hospital under an assumed name, given them by an agency or attorney - we look toward the day when a simple request for information will be granted - and when Big Brother no longer stands over us with folded arms guarding our most prized possession - our BIRTHRIGHT!"

Finally, I want to share the words of a poem written by MaryAnneCohen, a birth mother with great insight and foresight. It's entitled 'THIS TIME MUST COME'

"TIME WILL COME when our tragedy will not be replayed, When no child will be torn out of the arms of love into the arms of money. When all births will be blessed, all equal. And there will be no word remembered to brand a child born outside society's ties, no recording of legal lies…When love is more lasting than papers, and no child is deprived of either heritage or nurturing, even when they come from separate places. And it is finally seen that blood and home are not the same, And neither replaces the other, and there is no quota for love…

"TIME WILL COME when social workers are to serve, not sever; When they know it is better to unite than separate, To be true than to lie, to be seen than to hide, To accept than renounce, that the give and nurturing of life are both sacred and deserving of respect; That all parents are real parent, not rivals. That love is stronger than fear of laws or time,and cannot be terminated, cannot be legislated, cannot be denied…

"TIME WILL COME when all children can grow, become real, cast off shadows, renew or sever ties by their own choice, be responsible, BE FREE! When our bondage ends, and we answer to our children; Answer with the gift of sight, gift of words, gift of sorrow…When every person has the right to trace their roots in their mother's face, their father's eyes…When nobody is condemned to eternal childhood,and no mother cries forever…

"THIS TIME MUST COME"Copyright © 1989, 2001 Sandy Musser.Visit Sandy's website at http://www.angelfire.com/fl2/musser

Age, Biology, Morality?

Age, biology, morality? Pah! Just get out that baby cheque book, girls
1st May 2009

Surrogacy and the city: Sarah Jessica Parker

Baby by proxy? You have to admit it is a neat idea. No mess. Pain-
free. And productive, too, in more ways than one. Especially when,
like Sarah Jessica Parker, you are booked to spend most of the year
making films and directing the sequel to Sex And The City.

Not sitting around getting fat and hormonal in a pair of dungarees,
thank you very much.

Instead, you can get into that new Herve Leger cocktail dress any time
you want. And clip-clop around Manhattan in unsuitable shoes, looking
like a sparkly stick of spaghetti in a wig, as usual.

You can just get on with your life while some other cuckoo hatches the
chicks. So that's just what Sarah Jessica Parker is doing.

The star has defrosted some of her eggs - she prudently donated a
batch some years ago - and got husband Matthew Broderick to bring home
the bacon by fertilising them.

Then she hired a gestational surrogate mother to be pregnant with her
twin girls, who will be born some time this summer. I like it.

It's a bit like renting a supertanker to transport your matching sofas
down the motorway to your new home, instead of strapping them to the
roof of your old banger and staggering around the back roads for nine
long, sweaty months.

During which time your axle will buckle, your back tyre blow and
headlights dim, before falling out of their irreparable, raggedy old
sockets.

Surely there is a lot to be said for surrogacy. Labour has legislated
so much in favour of mothers in the workplace that many putative
employers avoid all women of child-bearing age as if they were Typhoid
Mary.

Yet if high-flying killer bimbos could outsource the pesky business of
being pregnant to the economically deprived and desperate, then they
need never have a day off and the employment problem would be solved
in a trice. Triplets all round!

Place an ad on eBay and you, too, could find an impoverished barmaid
willing to bust her varicose veins, and pride, to give birth to your
precious little cargo while you go to board meetings and/or direct
movies.

For a price, of course. SJP is reportedly paying her barmaid just over
£20,000 to gestate her babies, not to mention a further £80,000 in
agency fees and medical costs.

Naturally, you must be wealthy to order this kind of unnatural bespoke
birth. The 44-year-old actress and her husband have a six-year-old
son, but are believed to have had trouble conceiving naturally this
time around.

Broderick's rumoured affair last year with a 25-year-old youth worker
can hardly have enhanced the romantic atmosphere, but SJP is
desperate.

Increasingly, rich, powerful and famous women such as Parker do not
have to accept the limitations of their ageing or failing bodies.

Slenderella SJP looks barely capable of carrying a potato in a paper
bag, let alone a baby to term.

Yet neither the caprices of nature nor the moral code of the natural
order seem to apply in her case.

Perhaps we are supposed to applaud such nurturing efforts to extend
the family and indulge what she sees as her inalienable right to be a
mother again.

Yet I can't help but feel slightly queasy about the whole business.
For there is something morally diminishing about using another human
being as a baby bucket, no matter how many greasy fivers with which
you cross Proxy Mum's palm.

It is not quite as ethically bankrupt as buying a slum kid's kidney,
but this celebrity tendency to bag yourself a baby at any cost does
have its disquieting aspects.

At this very moment, legions of shrieking Hollywood actresses are
scouring the globe for cute babies to bring home to play mummy with.

Look at Meg Ryan, who was between husbands - and still is - when she
flew to China to collect adopted baby Daisy three years ago.

In a 2006 magazine interview, she said: 'I never felt like I was on a
rescue mission or anything like that. I just really wanted a baby; I
was on a mission to connect with somebody.'

Connect? Connect? Why didn't she join an evening class or buy a puppy
if she just wanted to bond with someone or something? Meg, dear girl,
I've got a soldering kit you can borrow for any future moments of
connective weakness.

Angelina Jolie, Calista Flockhart, Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow are
also among the U.S. actresses who have chosen to adopt - and often, it
works out fine. The daughters don't always grow up wanting to sleep
with Woody Allen.

Meanwhile, Madonna's legal team are back in the Malawi courts on
Monday to appeal against the dismissal of her application to adopt
Mercy Chifundo James. Mark my words, this woman will not be thwarted.
Like a vampire with a taste for human blood, Madonna has developed a
thirst for Third World quasi-orphans and it cannot easily be
quenched. That girl is going back to America with old Madge if the
pop star has to drag her out of the orphanage with her own manicured
talons.

You see, if you are rich and famous, there is no barrier to what kind
of child you buy or whatever means you choose to expand your family.
Of course, adoption and surrogacy can be tremendous forces for good if
done properly and for the right reasons. Yet how often does this
happen?
More times than not, it seems to be brokered for the personal
fulfilment of a spoiled celebrity mother, not for the good of the
child. Not at all.

Frozen Children, Icy Silence: Time to Adopt Openness

© Photographer: Nikitu | Agency: Dreamstime.com
Frozen Children, Icy Silence--Time To Adopt Openness
Marc Fisher

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2008/10/when_two_children_--_two.html


When two children -- two adopted children -- end up dead in a block of
ice hidden in their mother's freezer, the entire child welfare
apparatus flies into a panic.

Almost immediately after the news broke about the gruesome case of
Renee Bowman and her children, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty called a news
conference to say that the city had done no wrong (the family lived in
Maryland, but the children had been adopted in the District). The
Baltimore-based agency that cleared Bowman to adopt dropped into a
defensive crouch from which it has yet to emerge. And social workers
braced for another round of outraged cries for heads to roll.

It sure looks like someone messed up. You might think that the people
charged with investigating Bowman before she adopted one child in 2001
and two others in 2004 should have known and raised alarms about facts
such as these: Bowman was convicted of threatening bodily harm to a 72-
year-old motorist just two years before the first adoption; she may
have had an abusive mate; she filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001;
she described her childhood to friends as akin to that of "an abused
dog"; and her own mother had been a homeless wanderer of the city's
streets.

Now we learn that Maryland's social services agency got a complaint
accusing Bowman of child neglect last January, sent a caseworker to
the house and concluded that everything was fine -- "clean and
appropriately furnished, though with a funky smell that was
attributed to mildew".

Still, it is possible, as Fenty and some adoption advocates argue,
that everyone did their jobs, that Bowman passed every screening, and
that whatever went horribly wrong in her life happened only after she
had adopted the children.

The problem is, we can't know. And the fact is, it is our business.

In the reflexively privacy-obsessed world of adoptions, it is somehow
an imposition if the public wants to know where the state's wards end
up, who is collecting the stipends taxpayers shell out to encourage
adoption and how all that money is being spent. We know best, social
workers say.

But anytime public money is involved, it's the public's job to demand
oversight and accountability, and the only road to that goal is
transparency.
I met Adam Pertman many years ago when he was a foreign correspondent
for the Boston Globe. After experiencing the joys and frustrations of
adoption, he left the news business to advocate for those who give
that loving gift of parenthood. Now, as director of the Adoption
Institute, he understands both instincts: the newsman's passionate
belief that sunshine is the best medicine, and the adoption world's
embrace of secrecy to protect children and grant adoptive parents the
same rights birth parents enjoy.

When he trains social workers, Pertman tells them: "Your secrets don't
do you any good. The only time you get in the news is when someone
dies, and it's because you won't give out any information."

The roots of that secrecy lie in the not-so-distant past, when
adoption carried a powerful stigma. "This is a whole institution built
on stigma and secrecy and shame," Pertman says, "on people being told
to lie for the rest of their lives. You didn't tell your children they
were adopted. Amazingly, we got to the other side, and adoption is no
longer anything to be ashamed or embarrassed about. But the remnants
of that era of secrecy are profound."

Executives at the Board of Child Care, the Methodist church-affiliated
agency that investigated Bowman's suitability for adoption, would not
talk to me. The top boss didn't even return my call. The reflex is to
circle the wagons and board up the windows.

Luckily, some see that public trust is essential. Janice Goldwater,
who runs Adoptions Together, a private agency in Silver Spring not
connected to the Bowman case, opened her files so I could see how
exhaustively her social workers investigate families being considered
as adoptive parents.

Adoptive parents tell me they feel as if they've had a colonic
irrigation of their finances, family history and even their sex lives.
Social workers interview friends, relatives and co-workers; examine
tax, criminal and credit records; and ask about religion, guns, drugs
and corporal punishment. Families are rejected if they are likely to
spank the child, keep unlocked guns in the house or put the child to
sleep on a bunk bed or sofa bed.

And somehow a Renee Bowman gets through. How? The pathetic truth is
that people inside the system already know that answer, but the rest
of us might never know.

The legacy of secrecy lives on. Goldwater, who has an adopted child as
well as three birth children, was appalled to see that her adopted
child's birth certificate was rewritten to show Goldwater and her
husband as the birth parents, a deception that fools no one.
Goldwater and Pertman are both wary of making adoption records public,
even in a case that ends in an awful crime. Once an adoption has been
completed, they argue, the parents should have the same rights as a
birth parent.

But the public has an obligation to children who were placed by the
government. Bowman, for example, received $2,400 a month in federal
money to defray the cost of raising her three children. In the current
system, there is no way to see if that money is being spent as
intended.
"There are sound, competent professionals doing this work," Goldwater
says. "We have to show people that, not hide anytime something bad
happens."

UPDATE (11 A.M.): Matthew Fraidin, a law professor at the University
of the District of Columbia law school, this morning passes along an
email by Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition
for Child Protection Reform, arguing for opening up adoption hearings,
as 15 states have already done:
Even journalists who disagree with my organization on everything else
usually find common ground with us on one point: The enormous harm
done to children by the secrecy that permeates child welfare - the
closed court hearings and sealed records.So I'm surprised the Post hasn't done what many other newspapers have
in the wake of child abuse tragedies - demanded, over and over, that,
at a minimum, the court hearings be opened.

One of the reasons the child welfare system in Allegheny County, Pa.
is, relatively speaking, a national model, is that the Pittsburgh Post-
Gazette crusaded to get the courts opened, and then followed up with
outstanding reporting on what was going on there.

Since 1980 about 15 states have truly opened these hearings. And even
though many of these began as pilot projects with sunset dates, not
one of these states has closed them again. And in state after state
onetime opponents of openness became converts. It's been harder to get
records open, but there has been some progress there as well.

How might that have helped in the most recent tragedy? Here's an
excerpt from an e-mail that Prof. [Matthew] Fraidin of UDC Law School
sent yesterday to Petula Dvorak [The Post's reporter who's been
covering the Bowman case]:

"Petula, don't you want to open up the court's file of the adoption
cases to see what is in there? Don't you want to listen to the tape of
the adoption proceedings, or read a transcript? The neglect case files
of the children would tell you when Ms. Bowman entered the children's
lives, what their condition was when they went to live with her,
whether the social worker and GAL and judge really gave Ms. Bowman any
scrutiny: did the s/w or GAL visit the children regularly before the
adoptions were granted? CFSA (and the Board of Child Care, the private
agency that licensed Ms. Bowman) have files, too, showing what Ms.
Bowman told them, whether they checked it out, how well they knew her,
whether they watched her with the children, whether they wondered why
her employment ended in 2000, whether they explored her bankruptcy
filings in 2000 and 2001. Etc., etc. and so on and so forth.

There is a WORLD of information in the court files and in CFSA's
files, and a puzzle in there that, if put together thoughtfully, could
save children's lives. What happened? How? Why? Were there shortcuts?
What assumptions were made? What pressures were the social worker and
GAL (who probably was carrying 75 to 100 cases at the time)
under? ..."

In New York State, Family Courts were opened by order of Judith Kaye,
Chief Judge of New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals. No one
has made the case better. Said Judge Kaye: "Sunshine is good for
children."
Isn't it time to demand that the courts in D.C.(and EVERY STATE)let the sunshine in?

My note: The sad truth is that even when these "children" become adults, they are STILL forbidden access to their OWN birth and court files, identity, genealogy and family/medical histories. They remain sealed FOREVER ~ this is a travesty to human rights of millions of adopted individuals.

Frozen children become frozen adults ~ due to sealed records & secrecy in adoption.