Mother's Adoption

Making decisions about the future for a child in foster care can be difficult and controversial. "Options include: returning the child to his/her birth parents; termination of parental rights (a formal legal procedure) to be followed, hopefully, by adoption; or long-term care with foster parents or relatives. Most states encourage efforts to provide the birth parents with support and needed services (e.g. mental health or drug/alcohol treatment, parent skills, training

The foster parents couldn’t keep me forever, so every day I waited for my chance to have a stable home, but as each year went by with no calls or visits hope began to vanish.

My mother was all I had in this world. It has been two weeks and I

Although memories don’t exist for me prior to my adoption as I was only nine months old –there are recordings of this consequential event. These videos were recorded by a family friend; however, at the time of the recordings my mother and grandmother had only just met our soon-to-be lifelong friends on the plane to China. In the video, the moment when my mother meets me for the first time is when I consider my life starting. My mother was calm through the chaotic event. The video shows my mom taking me from the caretaker’s arms and holding me. The one part of the video that surprises me is that I begin to cry the moment I’m in her arms; almost as if I were a newborn being held for the first time. Depending on the person, there are many different reactions to a baby crying – some panic, while others are composed and collected. My mother was able to soothe me to sleep despite the noisy disorder around us, almost as if we were the only two people in the room. I guess that’s the effect of a mother’s gentle touch. My

“I want to be like my adoptive mother, but my birth mother says I’m like her. I don’t know what to do or who I am. My whole life is messed up. It’s not my fault. It can’t be fixed,” said a girl adopted into an open adoption (Byrd). An open adoption is a process in which the birth parents and the adoptive parents know each other and are involved in the adopted child’s life. A closed adoption is when there is no contact at all and no identifying information is given between birth and adoptive parents (Byrd). While both are common to today’s society, closed adoptions allow opportunities for the adoptive parents to raise their kids without the interference of birth parents (Bender).

In modern society, it is difficult to imagine the amount of pain women go through when losing their child to adoption. However, when women's children are put into the adoption system, they have complete control of the situation. Shortly after World War II, the pregnancy rate in young women increased a dramatic amount. Different from mothers today, these young girls were not given the choice to keep their child nor did they have much say in the adoption process. In Ann Fesslers’ book The Girls Who Went Away, pathos, logos, and ethos were used to show the lack of control young pregnant women had in the 1960s.

Many potential adopted parents have experienced heartbreak, anguish and other problems that can be associated with adoption. There is an imbalance in the Nations foster care system and the system needs to be strengthening and the quality of services improved.

About twenty years ago my Uncle Hosea had a son named Javion. He was the first boy out of all the girls my uncle had conceived, which made him very proud. However, due to some underlying circumstances, he was taken away from his mom and put into the system. He was somehow adopted and never seen again, nor has any information been given out to our family to help locate him. He had entered closed adoption, which is an irreversible system where parents give up their rights to know any information and right to ever take part in their children 's lives. The child is given a new home and grows up thinking the family raising them is their biological relatives. They never know anything about their true family or where they come from. They are mislead by this system of closed adoption, restricted from truth their own beginning, and lose touch with the family who brought them into this world. Children suffer tremendously from closed adoption, and because closed adoption has tougher policies, takes away many of children’s rights, puts a strain on biological families, distributes limited background family information, and strips identity, it should be abolished.

Plenty of information about adoption is misunderstood or not known at all. Numerous individuals do not know the difference between a closed adoption and an open adoption and the pros/cons that accompany these different types of adoption. “Confidential (closed) adoption is where the birthparents often do not know the identity of the adoptive parents and could not maintain any contact with the child or adoptive family after placement.” (9-NP) The problems in a closed adoption are more than just a lack of information. (5-31) One situation that most people take for granted is knowing his or her family history. This is something that adopted children in closed adoption don’t get. (5-30)Nearly all the time, files are physically sealed in a closed adoption. (3-NP) Up until the late 1980’s closed adoptions were considered a regular occurrence. (3-NP) Harold Grotevent, a University of Minnesota professor, has been working with 35 adoption agencies for the last 2 decades and has said there’s been a clean-cut swing from closed to open adoption. (6-NP) “Open adoption refers to the sharing of information and/or contact between the adoptive and biological parents of an adopted child, before and/or after the placement of the child.” (9-NP) Open adoption has become a considerable alterative to abortion or single

Some assert that an adoption is not open unless there is direct person-to-person contact among the birth parents, adoptive parents, and the child who was adopted, with full disclosure of last names and addresses (Melina and Rosiza, 1993).” (Siegel) For many, open adoption is a very loose term. This is because almost any amount of direct contact makes an adoption open. This can be by phone, mail (email or paper), or face-to-face contact. “The open communication, sometimes begins before placement and can continue through the adoptees lifetime.” (adoption.com) Open adoption is a term that is supposed to apply to many different arrangements that people may set up. All of these arrangements still involve the birth parents in one way or another in the child's life. The ideas that surround open adoptions are generally good or have good intentions. This is because the openness does not just extend to the birth mother. Some open adoption arrangements give other members of the birth mother's family opportunities too. So, for example, if the birth mother were to not want contact with the child this would allow other members of the family such as grandparents. The get the opportunity to meet the child. “The nurturing culture of a healthy open adoption system brings out the honor in people.” (Gritter) When big events happen that people cannot always understand people rects the best that they can. People have to make vital decisions that drastically affect others lives. At that moment people will inevitably show who they really are. For birth parents this is especially

“In 2001, there were 1.5 million adopted children in the United States, representing 2.5 percent of all U.S. children (“Pbs.org”). Parents and prospective parents who are considering adoption, there are many different types of adoptions. In open adoptions is where the birth parents are still involved in the child’s life. A closed adoption is where no information is shared between the adoptive family and the birth parents (“National Adoption Center”). Single parent adoption is the same as open and closed adoption with the exception of single parent as either a man or woman. People who are considering adoption because there are different types of adoptions including open adoptions, closed adoptions, and single spouse adoption.

Kailer slipped into a seat across from him, curling himself around his mug of rapidly cooling coffee. "Would you ever want to raise a child?"

There she was, tan with blue eyes and brown points. Sitting there was my Queen of the House cat.

In 1982, Kathleen Silber and Phyllis Speedlin wrote a groundbreaking book about open adoptions, ¡°Dear Birthmother, Thank You For Our Baby.¡± This book opened an ongoing dialog on the

Statistics show that the vast majority of independent adoptions in California are completed without a hitch; less that 2 percent are even contested. But when an adoption is contested, the anguish felt by both the adoptive and birth parents is unimaginable. Linda Ribordy, a family specialist who represented a birth mother in a legal case says that “if a birth mother changes her mind, it’s automatic that they get the baby back.” But the adopting parents feel furiously and emotionally different. “We have no legal status, no legal rights, none,” says Inger Bischofberger. “But he calls me Mama. The only thing that keeps me going is that I can’t turn my back on him, I can’t just walk away from him because all the grownups in his life have messed up.”