More On Money and Adoption

These comments from Allie are a scathing rebuke to adoption in the U.S.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the difference between even Britain's social safety net (which is shrinking) and ours and how even in Britain, our children would likely be with their first mothers. When there are "very few babies available for adoption" in a country and that country also happens to give housing and a paycheck to single mothers until their kids are 16, it ought to be a heads up to a country with throngs of children in the foster system and enough "babies available for adoption" that we are exporting them to Europe.

Giving the children of the poor to the rich is no social safety net.

Sara also mentions a key problem with using a tax credit to publically support adoption. The people who need the most help with adoption costs aren't going to have enough tax liability to recoup the costs in a credit later. Besides, you still need the money up front, which can be difficult too. This is why tax breaks of all kinds are such a stupid way to help people besides the solid middle class. Politicians love the solid middle class though, so here we are.

A couple of weeks ago I said that if the world were the place I'd like it to be, I might not be a parent.

The thing is, I know my children needed Cole Mom and Mama Shannon under the circumstances of our current system. Thus I have no qualms about adopting them. We didn't contribute to a market in babies through our adoption because the babies we adopted aren't the kind that are "in demand." I don't feel at all defensive about how our family came to be.

And yet, I'd really see these circumstances changed, even at the cost of having never met my children. Why on earth do I feel that way? Ironically, because I love my children so much that I'd sacrifice being their Mama Shannon to change the world to treat women like the women they'll grow up to be with justice and compassion.

Of course, no one has arrived to offer me this choice, so it's a moot point. But I think it speaks to the conversion experience some adoptive parents have after they bring their children home. Once you are deeply in love with a child whose life has been negatively impacted by social circumstances out of the control not only of that child but of the child's blood kin, you are seething with righteous anger that the world would treat your child and her people so badly.

Anyway, that's how it has been for me and some other adoptive parents I know. We cared about these things before. In some ways, caring about them led us to the kind of adoption we chose. And yet, the personal, parental connection does trigger a mama bear response that is different from any political or moral commitment I've felt before about these issues.

What I don't understand--and I mean that sincerely, I just don't "get it"--is why so many adoptive parents (barring birth family abuse histories) don't seem to feel these things.

Coincidentally, Third Mom is on about this one too, this week.

Comments

[maer]

Even with an abusive/neglectful/dangerous birth family, it doesn't get any easier. The "how can she be treated this way" takes a backseat to "how could she do this" but those two thoughts are more alike than they seem.

Our son, Huckle, was in so much pain a year ago (when he was removed from his mother and cmae to live with us) that for months his behaviors mimicked autism and organic mental illness. Even though I barely knew him, I loved him, and I would have jumped off a bridge, cut off my legs, or campaigned for Hitler to make his world (and family) right and whole. Or not even right and whole -- just for him not to have heard the things she screamed as he was taken away (though that goes back to the "how could she do this").

In a recent post you said that you hoped your girls' moms and family could be a part of your family. I didn't have anything else to say there other than, "me too," but now that I've had other things to say, I'll add that "me too" here. How I wish.

[Round is Funny]

Sing it, woman. I feel the same way. So many of these issues were so important to me before I adopted Roo, but it doesn't hold a candle to how I feel about them now that I see how those factors were directly related to my son's being relinquished by a first family who loved him and wanted him.

[Jennifer]

From Australia, I've wondered how much of our "baby unavailability" (compared with you in the US) is due to our safety net versus other cultural issues (willingness to have abortions and availability is the other issue that can be the elephant in the room).

But in Australia, if you want to adopt, your choices are pretty much overseas adoption or a disabled baby or older child.

[Mark Diebel]

Regarding money and tax benefits to those who adopt: think about this, I, as an adoptee, had to spend over $1000 just to learn who my first mother was... to say nothing of following up with information on my father. Non-identifying information cost over $150. A copy of my original birth certificate was $150. This is small change to what some others spend. Why no tax break here?

No pull. Adoptees are still too often treated as second class citizens, though this will be denied by some. It is simply wrong that a group of people are denied their history. (This may not be the rule with foster adoptions, I don't know.)

I'm very glad to see that you are aware of abuses in the adoption industry. How the children are procured is key.

[Mirah Riben]

Thank you for raising these every important issues.

Money and profit have no place in adoption placements. It corrupts. Worldwide infant adoption is a $6.3 billion dollar industry that often traffics children who are not orphans at all, as we have recent,y seen with Zoe's Ark in Chad, as we saw with Madonn'a and other celeb adoptions.

The problem with tax incentives is two fold:

1) All such programs to promote adoption, use foster kids as the foot in the door but them do not distinguish between the adoption of those children from foster care who could benefit from adoption, and infant adoption which does not benefit tax payers or the chidlren who need care

2) The funds used to help procure infants to meet a demand of such, could far better used on family preservation programs which have been proven successful and far more cost effective than foster care.

Mirah Riben, author, THE STORK MARKET: America's multi-billion dollar unregulated adoption industry

www.AdvocatePublications.com

[Allie]

I found that a very moving post. The phenomenon of identifying with issues through those we love is, I think, a wonderful and powerful thing. I have read things by parents of children with autism that echoes this sentiment

"you are seething with righteous anger that the world would treat your child and her people so badly."

When we love people then their 'issues' become ours in a way that perhaps they never were before. I think that's where real bridges get built - and that helps me keep hope alive in this harsh world.

[Kohana]

I so agree.

[Margie]

Shannon, first a belated thank you for the link.

I absolutely 100% agree with this:

"What I don't understand--and I mean that sincerely, I just don't "get it"--is why so many adoptive parents (barring birth family abuse histories) don't seem to feel these things."

and I'm frustrated beyond words at how to bridge the gap to those who don't understand. What I find is that some people consider this perspective "anti-adoptionism," and close their ears to the subject. I just don't know how to get beyond the block.