Adoption

The Fifth and Final Name by Rhonda Noonan

When the end is reached, you will not doubt the validity of her claims, for she has inherited the DNA strain that was so obvious in her famous grandfather Sir Winston Churchill, yes THAT Churchill, the British Prime Minister; she never, never, never, gave up. While Rhonda wins out in the end, The Fifth and Final Name illustrates the injustice in the closed record system while providing a strong primer of adoption truth and adoptee understanding that the non adoption affected can understand.


Hard Truths; A Birthmother is Abandoning Her Child

Somewhere inside, they are baby who misses their mothers smell and they don’t have the words to describe that feeling. Someone inside they could be a 3 year old who is scared and angry and wishes that you could come and take them away. Someday, they could turn out to be a person who doesn’t care about stuff, but only wants to fit in with people that get them. Or maybe, just maybe, they think that THEY should have been important enough to warrant a better plan on our part. That THEY were worth working harder, pinching pennies, putting off school, fighting the system, arguing with parents, going on social services.

.


Does Voluntary Adoption Relinquishment Save Children from Abuse?

Somewhere along the line the connection has been made that young, unwed mothers with unplanned pregnancies are destined to live a life of poverty and drag their children down with them by abusing their children, resenting their existence, and failing to provide an adequate life. The simple answer is given that if more of these women made adoption plans when facing these unplanned pregnancies then we could prevent future involvement by Child Protective Services and keep these children in ideal homes from the get go, removing the need for Foster homes, and prevent the damage created by the initial abuse. It’s a lovely concept, but like so much in adoption, it is seriously flawed and this belief is not based on fact.



Good Mothers Don’t Even Think About Adoption!

We see the messages that mother who keeps the child that she can ill-afford is considered irresponsible. The mother who needs public assistance is considered a freeloader. The mother who gets pregnant again too soon should “know better how babies are made”. The mother who is too young and unwed should have “thought about the consequences before she spread her legs”. The single mother raising her children is “breaking the fabric of the American values”.


Secondary Adoptee Rejection in Adoption Reunions

No one is trying to find their birthmothers to throw stones or cast blame, yet on that emotional level we have to acknowledge that the adoptee can feel rejected by the act of adoption placement whether voluntary or forced. It doesn’t matter how they can now, as adult, intellectualize the circumstances of their relinquishment, the child inside still knows the pain and that child wants it’s mother. There is an innocence there in this need to reconnect. It is pure feeling.


Crisis Pregnancy Centers Funneling Adoption Misinformation

What the adoption industry counts on is that we won’t bother digging in and finding how they are all connected. It’s really easy to make a nonprofit host one website that links to another controlled website that links to another and make them all look independent. What they are doing is breaking up the whole message into little bits that then get fed to women over and over again, It looks like the message comes from all these different sources that have only her best interests at heart, but all roads lead to Bethany and Adoption and a lifetime of grief.


Can We Understand why Mothers Relinquish Babies to Adoption?

It is only after the true depth of the loss can be accepted that we see that we made a great error in judgment. There is value in the connection between mother and child that cannot be replaced by monetary things and perceived life successes. There is value in being with our own clans and the biological connections that make us who were are. There is great pain and loss in adoption for both the original family and the adoptee no matter how beneficial their placement is. The adoption industry is just that: an industry and it is often corrupt and money driven.



The Risk of Genetic Sexual Attraction for Adoptees and Birth Parents in Reunions

“Parent and child go through a very complex bonding process from the beginning of life to the first six years,” she said. “They go through phases and in the teen years, they separate. That whole process goes dormant until they reunite as adults. It’s almost like it awakens back the recognition in that the other person is a mirror of yourself.” DeNeen said she felt like she was regressing back to childhood, falling in love and looking to her dad as a hero. “I felt a lot of need for intimacy,” she said. “The lines were so blurry.” But she makes it clear that she never had sexual intercourse with her father, even though the relationship was “very inappropriate.” And like others who experience GSA, she crossed physical boundaries that were “embarrassing, confusing, amazing and overwhelming,”



“Ripped Away From the ONLY Home the Child Has EVER Known”

Possession is nine point nine tenths of the law when it comes to child custody and contested adoptions. While dads try to understand this new reality of hell, try to find legal help, funds, and information; stumbling over punitive father’s registries, state paternity filing dates and out of state adoption agencies; they just sit back, and wait for him to get so defeated, so tired, so overwhelmed, that he just goes away, beaten. Just keep fighting.


Birth Parents in Adoption: Research, Practice, and Counseling Psychology

Mary O’Leary Wiley; Independent Practice Amanda L. Baden; Montclair State University This article addresses birth parents in the adoption triad by reviewing and integrating both the clinical and empirical literature from a number of professional disciplines with practice case studies. This review includes literature on the decision to relinquish one’s child for adoption, the early postrelinquishment period, and the effects throughout the lifespan on birth parents. Clinical symptoms for birth…


Known Consequences of Separating Mother and Child at Birth Implications for Further Study

 Wendy Jacobs, B.Sc., B.A.    “The past is never fully gone. It is absorbed into the present and the future. It stays to shape what we are and what we do.” Sir William Deane, Inaugural Lingiari Lecture, Darwin, 22 August 1996 Separating mother and child at birth was the way adoption was practiced in Australia in the latter half of last century. We have heard from other speakers about current…


Ongoing Adoption Reunions

This article describes the expectations, responses to unmet expectations, and factors that influence adoption reunion outcomes. Themes derived for interviews with 10 adult adoptees and 10 birth mothers who had each experienced an adoption reunion beyond an initial face-to-face meeting are reported.