Adoption, Discomfort, and Ethics

I've been thinking a lot this week about our experience in the adoption process and about ethics in adoption in general. Some of this mulling is because of Lori Lavender Luz's excellent post about the Paul Peterson case and an instagram video response from Ashley Mitchell, a birth mother and advocate. Watch the whole video, it is well worth the time. 

It is also uncomfortable. And uncomfortable is important, because it means that you are taking a hard look at things that exist in society that benefit you but that oppress others. It's a common theme in the antiracist books that I am reading and the work I'm doing with my district's Diversity & Equity Council and SEED project (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) -- that if something makes you uncomfortable, if it makes you feel "icky," then that's a sign that it's a practice you need to dive deeper into. The spidey sense is real. We know deep down when things strike an unethical chord, and to examine that can be painful, and uncomfortable, and bring up a lot of "but I don't/wouldn't..." moments, but I am sitting in this discomfort big time, for race and also for adoption. 

You see, this is a conversation Bryce and I have had more than once, and I don't always have it outwardly because I fear that it will sound like sour grapes. That adoption didn't work out for us, so I'm saying the system is flawed. I'm jealous of those who got to parent. I'm bitter because I didn't. 

But the truth is, we started feeling uncomfortable with adoption within a year of the process. And I think one reason it took a long time for us was because we had certain things that we were very uncomfortable with, highest on the list was placements due solely to financial hardship. It didn't seem right. It felt icky, that we could parent a baby because the biological parents couldn't afford it but we could. Seemed a little like there should be other supports in place if financial was the barrier to parenting. The ethics definitely seemed...off. 

Then, we were profiled in a situation where an expectant mom was due in March 2016, and she was in her late 30s and had no other children, and it was a situation (sorry, "opportunity" is how it is presented to hopeful adoptive parents) where the father wanted nothing to do with the baby. There was no financial aspect to the situation, that we were aware of, but it did ring some warning bells -- she was late 30s, no kids, a recent breakup, maybe a sense of panic...it seemed like this could get sticky. We "came in second" and weren't chosen to be matched prospective adoptive parents, which was sad because we knew it was a boy, and I could stand in my nursery and touch the blue and grey onesies I'd bought and dream a little more specifically. Later, in July, our homestudy social worker came to do the renewal, and asked how things were going and if we'd been profiled at all. When we mentioned the March baby (because we always thought about it in terms of the baby more than the expectant mother), she visibly blanched. 

"Oh, you dodged a bullet on that one, that's a very sad situation." And then she told us that the birthmom had changed her mind and decided to parent a few days after the birth, that the baby was already with the adoptive parents and the parental rights surrender had been signed, and it went to court and was acrimonious and, DON'T WORRY, it's really hard for a birth mom to prove to a court that something substantial in her situation has changed once she's signed surrenders, so it's a really small chance that the baby could be returned, but in NY it's 30 days you get to contest, and it was well within that time. In the end though, the court found in favor of the adoptive parents. But now they have to have this open adoption relationship with this woman and it's going to be so difficult. 

You know what was interesting in that moment? In that moment, we immediately felt for the birthmother, and for the baby. That this woman realized too late that she DID want to parent this baby, and that she fought to reinstate her rights, and was denied. And that the adoptive parents were going to, at some point, when their son asked, "Why didn't my mom want me," have to say that his mom DID want to parent him but that they fought it. Of course I feel for the adoptive parents, that they had this baby in their home and were parents and I didn't know their story, but it all sounded so awful on so many levels. 

I would like to think that if that happened to us that we would not have fought it, as hard as that would be, because she wanted to parent her baby and I don't think I would want to parent a baby whose mom fought to keep him, because what would that say about me? What would be best? There were no drugs involved, no financial pieces that we were aware of. It seemed to be one of those "wrong time" situations where it would be hard to say someone wasn't "fit to parent." But I don't know what I would truly do in that situation, because it did not happen to me. But it definitely made an impact in our perspective. 

It made us think, hmmmmm, that's a really ugly situation and does it make us feel ethically awesome? NOPE. We felt like we dodged a bullet but we also felt like if we had reservations for any reason, we should probably honor that because there was likely some spidey sense thing going on. 

The second thing that chipped away at our sense that adoption was an amazing option for everyone was when we did our private path exploration training with the agency. And it was literally said, "put your advertisements in laundromats, check-cashing places, where they're likely to be seen by women in crisis." 

SAY WHAT? 

We left that training not feeling jazzed about new opportunities to find prospective birthparents but horrified that we were basically being trained in how to prey on and exploit someone's financial crisis. Nothankyou. Also, they said that doing the private path meant more opportunities, but not necessarily a higher success rate, and you'd be doing all the fielding of calls and speaking with someone in crisis and deciding what was ethical or not, and that just did not seem a viable option for us. Because, ethics. And needing to dedicate time to my career of helping kids in crisis and who need academic support, not doing the job of a social worker that I was wholly untrained for and also too vested in the outcome to do ethically. 

So it really irked me when people said "it's so worth the wait" and "you will make this happen if you want it enough." Because we were starting to feel like, DID we want it enough to prey on women in crisis? Did I want a baby enough to feel okay with practices that DEFINITELY felt exploitative? 

And that's where Ashley Mitchell's video hit home, because talks about the fine line between adoption and trafficking, and puts out five aspects of trafficking that can apply to unethical adoption: 

• Propaganda
• Grooming
• Trust-Building
• Disempowerment
• Exploitation of economic and social class

She says repeatedly that what is shown to hopeful adoptive parents is often very, very different than what is shown to birthparents. And I believe it. I felt like we were frequently being pushed to go outside our comfort zone for the sake of shortening our wait. That we were asked to consider exposures and family histories and situations that we knew from training (and my experience teaching special education) that we weren't comfortable with, because it would "open more opportunities" -- which to me felt like two things -- it would give me more opportunities to weigh ethical choices against my desire for a baby and more heartbreak in saying NO, and it would make it so we had more opportunities and so felt more "cared for" by the agency and more likely to say yes to an opportunity which would result in money. The money definitely felt like more of a central feature than we were hoping it would be. 

Especially when I had my autoimmune flare with my eye and the Prednisone doses made me mentally fragile in addition to the cumulative stress and grief of all our family building processes and losses, and I could not handle my own life let alone the prospect of weighing another life against our options, and Bryce called to say "put us on hold" and our caseworker basically said if we went on hold we'd miss out on valuable opportunities. It incensed Bryce, because WHAT COULD BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN MY MENTAL AND PHYSICAL HEALTH and did they not listen when he said I WAS IN CRISIS? Wouldn't it be unethical to try to place a baby with me in that state? WHAT THE HELL? It definitely felt like money and success rate statistics were taking a front seat in that conversation. 

To be fair, there was a lot of talk about "Adoption is about finding a family for a baby, not finding a baby for a family." But it did feel like the talk and the actions didn't always match up. And it felt more business-transactiony than we really felt comfortable with. 

Deciding to end our adoption journey was incredibly painful. It felt like a failure. It felt like a horrible end. It felt like we were saying no to a possibility that COULD happen at any moment. It felt like no one would understand it (and many people didn't). 

But at the same time, it was a relief. It was a relief to resolve, for sure, but it also was a relief because we'd realized that maybe adoption wasn't our cup of tea. It was great that many of our friends were successful in building their families through adoption, and I don't know the intricate details of everyone's situation, but I do know an awful lot of stories that did not sound real ethical. Stories of "winning" against birth parents, stories of birth parents stating that they did not feel remotely supported by the agency, people who had finalizations complicated by fuzzy issues...Issues with dishonesty about birthparent exposures or health history... So many things that were ethically fuzzy. Including stuff outside of the agency, where well-meaning people suggested that we "pretend to go to a church" for the sake of our profile book if our non-religious status may have been a barrier. Because lying about who you are makes a GREAT foundation for a trusting relationship. 

It's easy for me now to say "I would never have," and I don't think I can say that. The desire to be a parent is incredibly strong. But the ethics can be so sticky when it comes to adoption and I can say that there were many, many things that made us very, very uncomfortable. And we were not willing to enter into situations where it felt ethically icky, which probably made our wait longer and then made it so that we no longer had the stamina to continue. We don't really look fondly back at our adoption experience. I don't think it was right for us, as much as I wanted it to be and wanted it to be like it is in movies and TV shows. That is not reality. 

I don't want the takeaway from these thoughts to be "Jess is anti-adoption and looks down on those who adopted." I'm not, and I don't. But I think it's okay to take, "Jess thinks adoption CAN be unethical but it can be done better, for kids, for birth parents, for adoptive parents." That's what Ashley Mitchell and Lori Lavender Luz think, too. Here are some resources from both of them: 

Ashley Mitchell: Big Tough Girl (including adoption education and profile book reviews):
 http://www.bigtoughgirl.com/

Lifetime Healing Foundation: https://lifetimehealingadoption.com/

Under construction, so here is Sit Knee to Knee: https://www.sitkneetoknee.com/

Family to Family Support Network: https://www.familytofamilysupport.org/

These are organizations and individuals who are working to make adoption better, more ethical, and to help unique families navigate delivery. These are organizations that work with hospitals, adoption agencies, birth/expectant mothers, prospective/adoptive parents, and adoptees. I'm sure there are more, please feel free to share in the comments. Thanks for sitting with me in the discomfort.