Breaking Stereotypes: Adoption Information
There are many stereotypes and myths about the adoption process and we would like to provide adoption information to set things straight. A main misconception is that adoption agencies are looking for one perfect type of family to adopt. Just as there are many different types of children looking for families, there are many different types of families.
Different people can be successful parents. We believe that every child has the right to a loving, nurturing and permanent family, and that people from a variety of life experiences offer strengths for these children. Therefore, it is the policy of the National Adoption Center that no person should be denied consideration in the adoption process solely based on marital status, sexual orientation, lifestyle, disability, physical appearance, race, gender, age, religion and/or size of family.
You will find that prospective parents are usually in the 25 to 50 year old range, but age requirements can be even more flexible depending on the age of the child. You can be experienced parents with children in your home, or you can be first-time parents or even have grown children. Agencies will consider single parent adoption, those who are married and many will also accept those in committed, yet-unmarried relationships.
Many will consider LGBT adoption, both singles and couples. People with disabilities can and do adopt, and their rights are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Please see the sections for LGBT, Single and Disabled parents for more adoption information.
Another misconception is that you have to be wealthy to adopt. You don’t have to own your own home or meet a pre-determined income level to be eligible. Your income may come from employment, a pension or disability payments. Both members of a couple may work. There are tax credits, grants, loans, subsidies and other types of financial aid available. Some families, focused on making adoption a reality, have asked family and friends to donate to their adoption fund in lieu of the usual gifts marking celebrations. Please see “Financing an Adoption” for more information.
Adoption
“The tensions inherent in keeping secrets affect all aspects of the adoptive process. Everyone involved in adoption must confront at one time or another questions about secrecy and disclosure. Should a child’s birth certificate indicate that he or she has been adopted? How many details about a child’s birth should social workers disclose to the adoptive parents? When and how should adoptive parents tell their children they were adopted? Should adoptive parents impart to their child all the information that social workers have given to them? When adult adoptees return to an adoption agency, should social workers give them all the facts in the file, including the names of their biological parents? When birth mothers return, should they learn how to contact the children they relinquished? Disclosure is also fraught with anxiety. Adoptive parents worry that they will lose their children when the children seek and find their biological family. Some adult adoptees worry that they will hurt their adopted parents if they make deeper inquiries into their past or want to meet biological family members. Unwed mothers who have married and started new families worry that the child they relinquished for adoption, now grown, will appear unexpectedly on their doorstep. Others worry the opposite: they will never again see the child they gave up for adoption.
“It was not always this way.” (Carp, 1998, pp. 2-3)
Adoption is a social organization. As such, it is shaped by society, culture, religion, politics, economics, etc. An examination of its history portrays a multidimensional portrait of its social construction. Although adoption most likely pre-dates recorded history, it is the adoption practices of the last few hundred years that are most pertinent to this study. Adoption practices have taken many forms over the centuries and across cultures. Carp (1998) contrasts how adoption is currently practiced in the South Pacific, Africa, Asia, and in Western societies:
“Whereas in Western societies modern adoption is infrequent, private, formal, and involves a complete transfer of parental rights, on some South Pacific islands adoption is common, public, casual, and characterized by partial transfer of the adopted child to the new family and dual parental rights and obligations. In contrast to Western societies, where parental ties are always broken, in Africa and Asia, adoption is a method of enriching and strengthening ties between two family groups. Similarly, in the South Pacific, it is common for adopted children to maintain a relationship with their biological parents.” (p. 4)
In Western societies, adoption has undergone a number of cyclic transformations. According to Carp (1998), by the seventeenth century, adoption was perceived as “unchristian” and “unnatural” and had practically disappeared in most European countries due to several salient factors. Prevalent factors included: (1) the Church’s disapproval of the use of adoption as a mechanism for inheritance, (2) the denouncement of adoption by religious leaders and reformers who held that sex and procreation should only be practiced within the confines of marriage and intended to discourage the practice of biological fathers bringing their illegitimate sons into the family through adoption, (3) fears of inadvertent incestuous unions, (4) the public stigma of infertility, and (5) a belief that adoption was contrary to the “natural order” (Carp, 1998).
Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, adoption was unregulated by law. In fact, adoption was not even recognized by English Common Law. Carp (1998) attributes this to the primacy of kinship and the protection of inheritance property rights for blood relatives, the prevailing moral repulsiveness toward illegitimacy, and the existence of “quasi-adoptive” practices of apprenticeship and voluntary placements. Departing from the European adoption practices and attitudes, colonial Americans “showed little preference for the primacy of biological kinship, practiced adoption on a limited scale, and frequently placed children in what we would call foster care” (Carp, 1998, p. 5). Indenture and apprenticeship were widely practiced – in both voluntary and compulsory forms. These practices provided mechanisms to reduce vagrancy and to assist the poor. Carp (1998) notes that “church and town authorities involuntarily ‘bound out’ orphans, bastards, abandoned children, and impoverished, neglected, or abused children to families to labor and be educated” (p. 5). Contrary to indentured servitude (where the child performed labor in exchange for support until attaining adulthood), informal adoptions offered “some hope or expectation that children placed in informal adoptive settings would receive care, support, and perhaps education from their new home” (TxCARE, 1994, p. 1). Informal adoptions occurred without legal proceedings. Informal adoptions often served economic purposes by supplying an inexpensive source of child labor. Another practice, known as testamentary adoption, enabled children placed with families to be provided for in their wills.
Carp notes that:
“Under the impact of large-scale immigration, urbanization, and the advent of the factory system and wage labor, the compact, stable, agricultural communities of colonial American were giving way to crowded, sprawling, coastal cities. One of the effects of these wrenching economic and social transformations was that both urban and rural poverty became major problems” (1998, p. 7).
This led to the development of almshouses and private orphanages to provide relief for the poor. Failure of these institutions to provide adequate care of the children prompted a shift away from institutional solutions to an emphasis on “the ability of a family environment to shape and reform dependent children” (Carp, 1998, p. 8). Carp writes:
“By 1900, breaking up families had become practically taboo, at least in theory, and family preservation had become a fundamental principle among all child-savers. . . . While they continued to extol the family as superior to the institution, the ‘family’ they now meant was the child’s natural parents, the family of origin” (1998, p. 16).
Poverty was no longer viewed as a sufficient reason to break up a family. State laws were enacted to facilitate keeping the child with the mother, e.g. pensions for widowed mothers. The prevailing attitude concerning adoption is evidenced in this 1927 report by the Children’s Bureau concerning ten child-placement agencies: “[They] were unanimous in their opinion that no child, whether of legitimate or illegitimate birth, should be placed for adoption if there were decent, self-respecting parents or other family connections who might later, if not at the moment, provide a home for him” (Carp, 1998, p. 17).
For some time, in the early part of the twentieth century, eugenics played a part in discouraging the adoptability of illegitimate children. A connection between inherited feeblemindedness and unwed mothers was being espoused. Adoptions during the first quarter of the century were reportedly low due to cultural, medical, and social stigma associated with adoption (Carp, 1998).
State legislation of adoption began to appear in the mid-nineteenth century. Massachusetts passed the first adoption statute in 1851 wherein “adoption pursuant to the Massachusetts statute required judicial approval, consent of the child’s parent or guardian, and a finding that the prospective adoptive family was of sufficient ability to raise the child” (TxCARE, 1994, p. 2). According to Carp, the Massachusetts Adoption Act “codified earlier state court decisions that had transformed the law of custody to reflect Americans’ new conceptions of childhood and parenthood, which emphasized the needs of children and the contractual and egalitarian nature of spouses’ rights of guardianship” (1998, p. 11). However, the implementation of the newly enacted statutes were not strictly enforced. The statutes did not address issues of confidentiality; practically speaking, these were open adoptions. Due to changing “attitudes, mores, and myths of the times,” the practice of sealing adoption records began in the 1930’s (TxCARE, 1994).
The inclusion of confidentiality clauses in state legislation was originally intended to prevent the public from viewing adoption records for the protection of the adoption triad. In New York, the legislation, known as the “Nosey Neighbor Law,” was designed “to shield the details of an adoption from the public. The NNL did NOT seal the records from any of the parties concerned – birth and adoptive parents OR the adoptee” (Sparky@netaxs.com, 1997). However, during the 1930s, some states had changed the wording to exclude the natural parents from accessing court adoption records. In 1939, a U. S. Children’s Bureau spokesperson reported that: “We have about concluded that the only persons who should have access to adoption records without specific approval of the court are the adoptive parents, the child when he becomes of age, and representatives of the State Department responsible for investigation of the adoption” (Carp, 1998, p. 42). By the end of 1941, confidentiality safeguards to secure all or part of adoption court records from public inspection had been enacted in 24 states (Carp, 1998). It was not long before confidentiality safeguards were expanded to restrict all members of the adoption triad from access to adoption court records. Additionally, adoption agencies extended confidentiality to agency records.
The following reasons were influential in the move toward full confidentiality:
“The birth parents were protected from the stigma of pregnancy without the benefit of marriage.
The adoptee was protected from the stigma of illegitimacy and the concerns of ‘bad blood’ which was loosely connected to what we know about genetics today, but carried with it overtones of the ’sins of the father.’ Secrecy would also prevent the confusion of having two different sets of parents and the conflict that might arise should contact occur.
The adoptive parents, often an infertile couple, were protected from the stigma of raising an ‘illegitimate’ child. They were protected from dealing with their infertility and from facing the differences between being a parent through adoption vs. being a parent by birth. Closed records also precluded the possibility of birth relatives seeking out the child, an event associated with potential kidnapping.” (TxCARE, 1994, p. 3)
Additional reasons noted are:
- protection from intrusion into the privacy of all parties;
- protection from blackmail;
- protecting the adoptee from disturbing acts surrounding their birth – incest, rape, etc.
- enhancing the adoptee’s feeling of permanency;
- enhancing the family’s stability and preserving the nuclear family;
- encouraging the use of adoption instead of abortion, black market placement, child abuse, or neglect.” (TxCARE, 1994, p. 4)
Adoption practices and ideology underwent significant changes following World War II. According to Carp (1998),
“The baby boom was both the cause and the effect of a profound change in the national political culture that tied the security of the nation and personal happiness to an ideology of domesticity and the nuclear family. Parenthood during the Cold War became a patriotic necessity. The media romanticized babies, glorified motherhood, and identified fatherhood with masculinity and good citizenship. The consequences of this celebratory pronatalist mood, as the historian Elaine Tyler May has written, ‘marginalized the childless in unprecedented ways.’
Uncomfortable with being childless and the subject of public opprobrium, many of these childless couples sought adoption in record numbers as one solution to their shame of infertility. Contributing to the unprecedented numbers of childless couples applying for children to adopt were new medical treatments – semen examination, tests for tubal patency, and endrometrial [sic] biopsies-permitting physicians to diagnose physical sterility more easily and accurately early in marriage.” (pp. 28-29)
It is estimated that in the mid-1950s one million childless couples were attempting to adopt an available 75,000 children (Carp, 1998). In this context, “white, pregnant, unmarried women and their babies became market commodities” (Solinger, 1992, p. 154). Prior to World War II, motherhood was considered immutable. As Solinger notes, ” . . . for most unwed mothers, black and white, through the 1930s, illegitimacy was a shame that carried with it shamed motherhood” (1992, p. 152). Since the child was believed to be both the offspring of a mentally deficient, morally weak mother and a “child of sin,” the adoptability of the child was largely diminished. Likewise, the mother was viewed as deserving of punishment for her sinful actions and not capable of rehabilitation, nor was her marriageability or community standing likely to be restored (Solinger, 1992). As a result, initiatives were taken to prevent the abandonment of these infants. For example, regulations were instituted either by the state or by maternity homes requiring mothers in maternity homes to breast-feed for at least three months in order to establish mother-infant bonding (Solinger, 1992). In contrast, in the post-war era, the ideology of illegitimacy underwent major change. Psychological explanations replaced the biological interpretations of unwed mothers – transforming her into a “maladjusted female” rather than “genetically tainted” (Solinger, 1992). Motherhood was no longer considered immutable. Within this context, the infant was perceived as adoptable; and the mother was capable of rehabilitation and future marriage. Solinger points out:
“In postwar America, social conditions of motherhood along with notions about the psychological status of the unwed mother became more important in defining white motherhood than biology. Specifically, for the first time, it took more than a baby to make a white girl or woman into a mother. Without marriage first, a white female was not considered to have achieved motherhood.” (1992, p. 153)
However, this was achievable only through relinquishment. Through relinquishment and adoption, the mistake was undone (Solinger, 1992). In the 1960 Child Welfare League’s Standards for Services to Unmarried Parents, it was stated that:
“In our society, parenthood without marriage is a deviation from the accepted cultural pattern of bearing and raising children. It represents a specific form of social dysfunctioning which is a problem in itself and which in turn creates social and emotional problems for parent and child. . . . It is generally accepted in our society that children should be reared in families created through marriage. The legal family is the approved social institution to ensure sound rearing and development of children.” (Solinger, 1992, p. 166)
Solinger (1992) asserts that unmarried mothers were “defined by the state out of their motherhood” de facto as unsuitable for parenting (p. 166). Adoption was clearly mandated as the recommended action.
The social construction of adoption has over the ages been built upon the terrain of gender, race and class prejudices and inequalities. According to Solinger (1992), unmarried black and white women of childbearing age were disempowered by the prevailing public policies and practices. Solinger (1992) notes that:
“Among single women, unwed mothers were most vulnerable to this strain of public opinion partly because they had violated multiple rules concerning femininity and sexuality, marriage and maternity, and were thus a powerful testament to the wages of uncontained female sexuality, dangerous as a threat to the integrity of the family” (p. 22).
In some states, women who bore more than one illegitimate child faced imprisonment or sterilization (Solinger, 1992). Those who kept their illegitimate children faced community ostracism. One unwed mother describes her experience as follows:
“I am an unwed mother who kept her child. And I fear no hell after death, for I’ve had mine here on earth. Let no man or girl deceive herself-hell hath no punishment like the treatment people give a ‘fallen woman.’ The heartache, tortured thoughts, recriminations, fear, loneliness could not be put on paper. Neither can the scorn, insult and actual hate of self-righteous and ignorant people.” (as quoted in Solinger, 1992, p. 33)
In the 1950s and 1960s, the prevailing belief held by the professionals was that the unmarried woman’s decision to keep her illegitimate child was in itself evidence of immaturity and unsuitability for motherhood (Solinger, 1992). Although the unwed mother and her child were socially stigmatized, the father generally escaped social punishment. Culpability was placed upon the woman who “got herself pregnant.” As Solinger (1992) comments: “The traditional expression ‘he ruined her,’ archaic by midcentury, had been meaningfully replaced by ’she got herself in trouble’” (p. 35). Society exacted its price for gender insubordination and uncontrolled female sexuality.
An analysis of the racial determinants of adoption is complex. The institution of adoption during this era was indeed race-specific. Solinger writes:
“Race, in the end, was the most accurate predictor of an unwed mother’s parents’ response to her pregnancy; of society’s reaction to her plight; of where and how she would spend the months of her pregnancy; and most important, the most accurate predictor of what she would do with the ‘fatherless’ child she bore, and of how being mother to such a child would affect the rest of her life.” (1992, p. 18)
While pregnancy among black single women was defined “as the product of uncontrolled, sexual indulgence” to be constrained by “punitive, legal sanctions,” white single mothers were deemed to be “socially productive breeders whose babies, unfortunately conceived out of wedlock, could offer infertile couples their only chance to construct proper families” (Solinger, 1992, p. 24). The institution of adoption primarily served white females. In 1960, it is estimated that 70% of white babies born to single women were adopted; compared to only 5% of black babies born outside of marriage (Solinger, 1992). Maternity homes often refused to accept black residents. Although the civil rights movement made inroads into desegregation and the provision of services to black communities, adoption agencies often refused to accept black babies for placement (Solinger, 1992). Cultural and community support for black unwed mothers and their children was significantly stronger than in the white community. However, Solinger (1992) notes that black unwed mothers did not escape stigmatization within the black community. The relationship of class to adoption is racially driven. Although adoption is not class-based per se, the level of services provided is. For unmarried white women, race was the overriding factor (i.e., the availability of a white baby). For unmarried black women, however, socio-economic class was often racially influenced and an implicit factor in adoption (Solinger, 1992).
The 1960s and 1970s ushered in an era of liberation movements, among them, the women’s liberation movement, the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, and the adoption rights movement. Solinger (1992) and Carp (1998) both refer to 1965 and onward as turning points in the stigmatization of unmarried pregnant women and their offspring. The 1960s attributed white unwed pregnancy to “social-structural breakdown, a phenomenon that could be traced to the disintegration of values previously guiding the family, youth, and the media,” rather than to individual genetic or psychological pathology (Solinger, 1992, p. 218). Gediman and Brown (1991) write that “. . . during the 1950s and 1960s, there was no greater disgrace than to become pregnant before marriage. The very term ‘unwed mother’ hissed with social disapproval and the label stuck fast until the permissive 1970s, when the less accusatory ’single mother’ worked its way into our vocabulary” (p. 9).
Prior to the 1970s, as many as 80 percent of infants born to unwed mothers were placed for adoption. However, only 12 percent were placed for adoption in the 1970s, and only 4 percent by 1981 (Carp, 1998). The emergence and greater acceptability of single parenting, coupled with the legalization of abortion in 1973, has greatly reduced the availability of adoptable children. Current statistics are not available; however, the trend toward unwed mothers keeping their infants has continued. In fact, today, many women are electing to become single parents through planned pregnancy. Since the 1960s, the institution of adoption has witnessed: (1) the advancement of open adoption whereby varying degrees of information are exchanged between the adoption triad members; (2) the growth of the adoption reform movement and lobbying for open records; and (3) the creation of voluntary adoption registries for search and reunion (Carp, 1998). As adoption continues to evolve, as laws change, as boundaries become more fluid, the social organization of adoption is injected with new meaning.
Relinquishment and the Marginalization of Birthmothers
“For language is a social medium that gives an account of the human world over time while constructing and reconstructing it in the process of these accounts” (Kahn, 1995, p. 58).
The social construction of relinquishment is tightly coupled with the previous sections on motherhood and adoption. However, in the literature, relinquishment and adoption are often treated as one. In fact, adoption is generally the research domain – with relinquishment being one attribute of adoption. Therefore, the effects of relinquishment on the adoptee has received research attention; while consideration of the effects on the birthmother has been much neglected. In the closed adoption system, the birthmother is excluded from all aspects of the adoption. Relinquishment holds an interesting relationship to adoption – for it is in the act of relinquishing that adoption becomes possible. The child is relinquished for adoption. It is what links the birthmother to the adoption triad inasmuch as birthmothers are not actual parties to the adoption. As a “shadow” mother, the birthmother is affected by the social construct of motherhood, as well as adoption. Therefore, many of the issues concerning relinquishment have already been introduced in the previous sections. This section will focus on the marginalization of women who relinquish and is drawn from published birthmother interviews, birthmother research, and/or narratives written by birthmothers.
Kirby and McKenna (1989) describe “the margins” as follows:
“The margin is the context in which those who suffer injustice, inequality and exploitation live their lives. People find themselves on the margins not only in terms of the inequality in the distribution of material resources, but also knowledge production is organized so that the views of a small group of people are presented as objective, as ‘The Truth.’ The majority of people are excluded from participating as either producers or subjects of knowledge.
One of the characteristics of living in the margins is the frequent necessity to perform a kind of doublethink/doublespeak in order to translate our experience into acceptable and understandable terms for the status quo.” (p. 33)
Kirby and McKenna’s description of “the margins” is deconstructed below as it applies to birthmothers and relinquishment:
1. The margin is the context in which those who suffer injustice, inequality and exploitation live their lives. An unwed, pregnant woman in the 1960s was subjected to injustice, inequality, and exploitation levied upon them by the dominant culture.
“Women are the group most victimized by sexist oppression. As with other forms of group oppression, sexism is perpetuated by institutional and social structures; by the individuals who dominate, exploit, or oppress; and by the victims themselves who are socialized to behave in ways that make them act in complicity with the status quo” (Hooks, 1984, p. 43).
Within society, social status and power are often defined by such factors as gender, age, and economics. Young women without wealth or education are disempowered within our society. Societal rules govern how one’s role is defined and entered into. Jones (1993) writes that since the survival of society depends on women becoming mothers, rules are defined to assist women in this process, i.e., mating and reproduction. For instance, Jones identifies adulthood, marriage, and independent financial resources as prerequisites for motherhood. Lacking these requirements places a pregnant woman “outside the norms and, therefore, outside the margins of ‘acceptable’ society” (Jones, 1993, p. 13). Jones asserts that in order to reenter ‘normal’ society, a young, single woman’s only option was often to conceal her unplanned pregnancies and relinquish her children. Of 79 birthmothers interviewed, Jones reports that “most of the birthmothers interviewed relinquished not because they wanted to, but because their pregnancies broke the rules, opposed social standards, and threatened to leave them forever isolated from respectable society” (1993, p. 13).
Another birthmother writes:
“I was willing to do anything in order to keep my child and live by my own standards. . . I was not ashamed of myself or of being pregnant. But I needed to think about the child. I had to give him his best opportunity, and that meant protecting him from the judgmental hordes. But I’ve never gotten over it, never forgiven society for forcing me to make that choice. I’ve alienated myself. I’ve become forever an outsider. . . .” (Jones, 1993, p. 36).
Shawyer (1979, as quoted in Logan, 1996) writes,
“Adoption is a violent act, a political act of aggression towards a woman who has supposedly offended the sexual mores by committing the unforgivable act of not suppressing her sexuality, and therefore not keeping it for trading purposes through traditional marriage. . . the crime is a grave one, for she threatens the very fabric of our society. The penalty is severe. She is stripped of her child by a variety of subtle and not so subtle manoeuvres and then brutally abandoned. . . .” (p. 609).
2. People find themselves on the margins not only in terms of the inequality in the distribution of material resources, but also knowledge production is organized so that the views of a small group of people are presented as objective, as ‘The Truth.’
In previous decades, birthmothers were advised that relinquishment was the best course of action for the baby. However, in a recent survey of 264 birthmothers, “the results strongly suggest[ed] that a number of the respondents believed the act of relinquishing their child was not the right thing to do, not in their best interest and not in the best interest of their child” (De Simone, 1996, p. 65).
According to Lauderdale and Boyle (1994), birthmothers in their study felt ‘like pariahs,’ and were prevented from feeling “like normal mothers after the birth because all believed society expected them to behave ‘as if nothing ever happened’” (p. 216).
3. The majority of people are excluded from participating as either producers or subjects of knowledge. According to one birthmother,
“Everyone automatically assumed that babies born out of marriage in the 60s and the early seventies should be adopted; Our parents assumed it, the medical profession and the adoption workers not only assumed it but strongly advocated it. It was as if we did not exist. Many of us were offered no support, no counselling, no information.” (Wells, 1990, as quoted in Arthur & Jacobs, 1999, p. 21)
Lauderdale and Boyle (1994) report that birthmothers in closed adoptions “described their fear and lack of information about their rights as patients and mothers. Fearfulness and being unknowing increased their sense of isolation and feelings of powerlessness” (p. 215).
Logan (1996) describes the marginalization of birthmothers, as follows:
“Historically, birth parents have been the most neglected party in the adoption triangle; both in the literature and in practice they have been afforded little attention compared with adopted people and adoptive parents. Furthermore, the proposed changes in legislation offer them little hope for the future. The proposals in the White Paper (Department of Health, 1993) indicating greater emphasis on openness and contact have been welcomed and would suggest a recognition of the importance of birth parents. However, the failure to follow the recommendations of the Adoption Law Review and allow an independent worker to be appointed to assist birth parents again suggests the marginalization of their needs” (p. 610).
4. One of the characteristics of living in the margins is the frequent necessity to perform a kind of doublethink/doublespeak in order to translate our experience into acceptable and understandable terms for the status quo.
“What ‘decision?’” one birthmother demands. “There was no decision. The word decision doesn’t apply to relinquishing a child. In fact, the word reflects the prejudice of society toward birthmothers. We are supposed to be unfeeling, inhuman trash, who decide to give up our children because life would be more fun, less expensive, and easier without them. That’s hogwash. No mother in the world, human or animal, would decide to give up her baby. It isn’t normal or natural. It wouldn’t happen if mothers had the power to decide. It only happens when they don’t.” (Jones, 1993, pp. 11-12)
Jones (1993) reports that use of the term decision may be misleading with regard to relinquishment because of the implication that there was active participation in the decision-making process or that other options were available for consideration. The birthmother may not have played a role in the decision-making process and may not have had an alternative option to choose. Lauderdale and Boyle (1994) found that birthmothers whose children were adopted through closed adoption “recalled having little control or input into the adoption” (p. 214) and “reported that the decision to give up their babies was made by family members, particularly the women’s mothers, who often enlisted the support of clergymen” (p. 215). While Lauderdale and Boyle repeatedly discuss the “powerlessness” over decision-making experienced by these birthmothers, they twice referred to this group as “the women who chose closed adoption” (pp. 214-215). Usage of the term “chose” appears unrepresentative of the findings and exemplifies the difficulties in translating experience for the status quo in light of the following: (1) the birthmothers reported a lack of input into the decision-making process, and (2) the availability of open adoptions is fairly recent and was probably not even an option for all interviewees.
As asserted by bell hooks (1984), women “are socialized to behave in ways that make them act in complicity with the status quo” (p. 43). During the years 1965-1972, a common reason why women relinquished was to provide the politically and culturally-sanctioned nuclear family for their child. However, it was only shortly thereafter that the divorce rate in America began to soar and never-married mothers could easily merge with divorced mothers – and be categorized as “single parents” (Solinger, 1992).
Language, once again, can be seen as a primary producer of meaning. In the margins, birthmothers have been using “doublethink/doublespeak” in their social intercourse with non-birthmothers. On the Internet support groups, the language utilized by birthmothers in communicating with each other differs from that used by society-at-large. In the language of birthmothers, they did not relinquish or surrender their children to adoption – they lost their children to adoption. As long as their experiences are misrepresented by language, their marginalization continues.
The preceding sections have attempted to merge theory, research, literature, and birthmother stories in order to deconstruct motherhood, adoption and relinquishment. This study explores the trauma of relinquishment utilizing a biopsychosocial model. What follows is a brief review of trauma literature and theory as it relates to relinquishment.
Adoption Facts
Overview
Private Domestic Adoption
Foster Care Facts
International Adoption Facts
Costs of Adoption
Overview
One and a Half Million Adopted Children in the United States
There are 1.5 million adopted children in the United States, over 2% of all U.S. children. [1]
Half a Million Women Seeking to Adopt, While the Percentage of Women Adopting Has Declined
In 1995, about 500,000 women were seeking to adopt a child, and 100,000 had applied with an agency. [2] The same year, an estimated 1.3% of women adopted one or more children, a decline from 2.1% in 1973. [3]
1992 Was the Last Year National Adoption Totals Were Gathered
The total number of adoptions each year has not been comprehensively compiled since 1992. While there are reporting mechanisms for foster care and international adoptions, states are not legally required to record the number of private, domestic adoptions. In 1992, the National Center for State Courts gathered adoption totals from a variety of sources, and estimated that 126,951 children were adopted through international, foster care, private agency, independent and step-parent adoptions. [4] NCSC estimated that stepparent adoptions accounted for 42% of all adoptions and foster care adoptions 15%. [5]
The Number of Adoptions Have Fluctuated Over Time
For a variety of societal and economic reasons, there have been dramatic fluctuations in the annual number of adoptions. For instance, adoptions skyrocketed from a low of 50,000 in 1944 to a high of 175,000 in 1970. [6] In 1992, the last year for which reliable numbers were available, there were almost 127,000 annual adoptions in the U.S. [7]
About 60% of Americans Have a Personal Connection to Adoption
The Adoption Institute�s 1997 Public Opinion Benchmark survey found that 58% of Americans know someone who has been adopted, has adopted a child or has relinquished a child for adoption. [8]
There Are a Variety of Adoption Types
Domestic adoption is the adoption of children who reside in the U.S. either through the public child welfare system or private adoption.
- Foster care adoption is the adoption of children in state care for whom reunification with their birth parents is not possible for safety or other reasons. It is arranged by state child welfare agencies or by private agencies under contract with the states. Children may be adopted by their foster parents, relatives (who may or may not have been caring for the child through kinship foster care), or adults to whom they have no prior relationship. Adoption from foster care has increased in the past five years in response to a federal mandate that states take timely action to provide permanent homes for children in state care.
- Private adoption can be arranged either through an agency or through independent adoption. In private agency adoption, children are placed through a non-profit or for-profit agency that is licensed by the state. In independent adoption, children are placed directly with adoptive parents by birth parents or with the help of a facilitator or attorney.
International adoption is the adoption of children from other countries by U.S. citizens. International adoptions are usually arranged through adoption agencies. Adoptions are finalized abroad or in the United States, depending on the laws of the country where the child resided.
Transracial adoption refers to children who are placed with an adoptive family of another race or ethnicity. While it is a subgroup of both domestic and international adoption, it is frequently discussed as a separate category due to the unique cultural issues faced by the new families. A study found that in 1987, 8% of all adoptions included parents and children of different races. [9] An estimated 15% of the 36,000 adoptions from foster care in 1998 were transracial or transcultural. [10]
Children Adopted Internationally Tend To Be Younger Than Children Adopted From Foster Care Almost 90 percent of children adopted internationally are less than five years old, [11] while a majority of those adopted from foster care are more than five years old. [12] Almost half of the children adopted internationally are infants, [13] compared with 2 percent of the children adopted from foster care. [14]
Inability to Have Biological Children Is a Motivating Factor in Private Adoption People decide to adopt for many reasons, but infertility is one of the most common motivating factors. In one study, more than 80% of those adopting independently or through a private agency responded that the inability to have a biological child was the reason they chose to adopt. By contrast, only half of those adopting from foster care cited infertility as the reason for their decision. [15] It is estimated that 11% to 24% of couples who experience difficulty conceiving or carrying a pregnancy to term pursue adoption. [16]
Sources and References
[1] Fields, Jason, Living Arrangements of Children, at pg. 9, Current Population Reports, P70-74, U.S. Census Bureau (Apr. 2001). [Children encompasses the ages 18 and under. The total includes the approximately 500,000 children living with one biological parent and a stepparent who adopted them.]
[2] National Center for Health Statistics, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Fertility, family planning, and women’s health: New data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, at pg. 8, Vital Health Statistics 23, No.19 (May 1997).
[3] [The estimate refers to currently or formerly married women age 18-44.] Chandra, Anjani; Abma, Joyce; Maza, Penelope; Bachrach, Christine, Adoption, Adoption Seeking and Relinquishment for Adoption in the United States, at pg. 5, Advance Data, No. 306. National Center for Health Statistics, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (May 1999).
[4] Flango, Victor and Flango, Carol. How Many Children Were Adopted in 1992, at pg. 1022, Child Welfare, Vol. LXXIV, No. 5 (Sept.-Oct. 1995).
[5] Flango, Victor and Flango, Carol, How Many Children Were Adopted in 1992 at pgs. 1018 & 1024, Child Welfare, Vol. LXXIV, No. 5 (Sept.-Oct. 1995).
[6] Maza, Penny, Adoption Trends: 1944-1975, at Table 1, Child Welfare Research Notes, No. 9 (Aug. 1994).
[7] Flango, Victor and Flango, Carol, How Many Children Were Adopted in 1992, at pg. 1022, Child Welfare, Vol. LXXIV, No. 5 (Sept.-Oct.1995).
[8] Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, Benchmark Survey. 1997.
[9] Bachrach, et al., Adoption in the 1980s, at pg. 6, Advance Data, No. 181, National Center for Health Statistics, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (1989).
[10] National Adoption Information Clearinghouse, Transracial Adoption Fact Sheet, available at www.calib.com/naic/pubs/s_trans.htm.
[11] [International adoption data is for 1998.] Immigration and Naturalization Services Statistics Branch, Table 15: Immigrant-Orphans Adopted by U.S. Citizens by Sex, Age, and Region and Selected Country of Birth, Fiscal Year 1998, at pg. 53, 1998 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, available at http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/aboutins/statistics/imm98list.htm.
[12] [Foster care data is for 1999.] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children�s Bureau, at pg. 5, AFCARS Report, No. 6 (June 2001), available at http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cb/publications/afcars/june2001.htm.
[13] [International adoption data is for 1998.] Immigration and Naturalization Services Statistics Branch, Table 15: Immigrant-Orphans Adopted by U.S. Citizens by Sex, Age, and Region and Selected Country of Birth, Fiscal Year 1998, at pg. 53, 1998 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, available at http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/aboutins/statistics/imm98list.htm.
[14] [Foster care data is for 1999.] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children�s Bureau, at pg. 5, AFCARS Report, No. 6 (June 2001), available at http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cb/publications/afcars/june2001.htm.
[15] Berry, et al., Preparation, Support and Satisfaction of Adoptive Families in Agency and Independent Adoptions, at pg. 166, Table 2, Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, Vol. 13, No. 2 (April 1996).
[16] Mosher, William D. and Bachrach, Christine A, Understanding U.S. Fertility: Continuity and Change in the National Survey of Family Growth, 1988-1995, at pg. 9, Family Planning Perspectives, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan.-Feb. 1996)
