12-12-2008 - Adoption Please Look!

My mood while writing this blog: Scared

So I was doing resarch on Adoptions and came across this information. Please understand I am not trying to say that adoptions are bad or the adoptive parents are all like this. I just do a lot of reaserch before making big chocies in my life! And being as I have gotten so much support from everyone I just want to know your thoughts on this information. I just want to do the best thing for my kids!

Carole J. Anderson, “Child Abuse & Adoption,” 1991

In fact, what is child abuse? All states have definitions, but these definitions differ considerably. Some include not only physical and sexual abuse but also psychological abuse; others do not. Some include neglect, another term with a multitude of definitions. . . . Should abuse be measured by the damage to a child’s body or by the damage to a child’s psyche? . . .

Risk factors for abuse
Although we don’t know exactly how much abuse there is, only that most of it is unreported, there are things we know about abuse. We know that one risk factor is diferentness. If mom, dad and two of their children are stocky blonds while one of the children is a slender redhead, the redhead is at greater risk of abuse. This is true of personality differences as well. A child who does not seem to fit in, who seems alien in looks or disposition, is more likely to be abused.

Another risk factor is separation. . . .

Lack of blood ties is another risk factor. . . .

The adoption connection
I used to think none of this had anything to do with adoption. When I first heard from abused adoptees, I responded much the same as social workers have responded to searching, unhappy birthparents: I thought they were the rare exceptions. But over the years, I’ve had a lot of letters from adoptees who report they were abused. I’ve talked to a lot of adoptees who were abused. The sheer number of them made me take a closer look. . . .

Many adoptees seem, even as adults, to express the same kinds of feelings as abused children. This cannot all be coincidence. Granting that there may be substantial numbers of adoptees who are physically or sexually abused, and even larger numbers who are psychologically abused, it seems we see abused child attitudes in a majority of adoptees.

Adoption’s inherent abuse of children and families
Adoption itself inflicts psychological harm on adoptees. Adoption means the near-impossibility of either adoptee or adoptive parent being able to take their relationship for granted. Because the parent-child relationship is established by law and not by nature, the relationship cannot be regarded as a simple fact of life as it is in natural families, by either adoptees or adoptive parents.

We often read of adoptive parents being the “psychological parents” of adoptees. Yet what does being a “psychological parent” mean? It means that the relationship is not natural, not clear cut. It means that in adoptive families, the parent-child relationship may be something that must be continually proved because it cannot be assumed. One way adoptive parents may seek to “prove” that they are “the” parents and are necessary to adoptees is to make themselves essential, which may mean being more controlling than the typical parent. One way adoptees may “prove” they are their adoptive parents’ children is by being more childlike, more immature, more dependent than typical sons and daughters, even when they are chronologically adults. . . .

Some adoptees may be less harmed by the disruption of the natural bond with their birthmothers than others. Some adoptive parents are better at empathizing than are others. Some are able to love and accept the children they adopt for who they really are, while others will never stop trying to mold adoptees into the natural children they could not have. But still adoption itself, I think, harms children. . . . Inside every adoptee lurks an abandoned child, and that child hurts. . . .

Yes, I know that some non-adopted children are damaged by abuse, poverty or other ills. I know many single parents have one or more risk factors in their families. Yet most, maybe all, of the problems that face vulnerable natural parents can be eliminated by societal and familial support, while the problems that occur in adoption, particularly when the parents are infertile and the adoption is closed, are inherent in adoption and cannot be prevented or eliminated.

Appendix B

Research and Studies on Birthmothers

Research tells us that the birthmothers I worked with were not exceptions. In 1982, Edward Rynearson, Ph.D. described the experience of twenty of his adult patients who, as teenagers, surrendered their first child to adoption. "Nineteen of them established an intense private monologue with the fetus (during pregnancy), including a rescue fantasy in which they and the newborn infant could somehow be "saved" from the relinquishment" (Chesler).

The pressure upon these mothers was one they could not stop. Sixty-nine percent of 334 birthmothers surveyed felt they were pressured into surrendering (Deykin). Another study reports forty-four percent of 350 birthmothers surveyed surrendered against their will. The study revealed the reasons for surrender centered around being single, poverty, young age, and parental pressure (VanKeppel). Some birthmothers told me they were shipped off to a home for unwed mothers, and told not to come home until they rid of the problem. For them there was no choice; they had no where to go.

The adoption experience for most birthmothers leaves a large emotional scar. According to the authors of "The Adoption Triangle: The Effects of Sealed Records on Adoptees, Birthparents and Adoptive Parents," most birthmothers expressed feelings of loss, pain and mourning that remained undimmed with time (Sorosky). A University of California, at Los Angeles, psychiatrist and author, Arthur Sorosky, M.D., likened the emotional scarring from surrendering a child to a psychological amputation (Sorosky).

The pain of the experience was hard to bear. As time went by the pain did not diminish, it increased. Robin Winkler, Ph.D. of the Institute for Family Studies, Melbourne, Victoria, reports that ninety percent of birthmothers surveyed felt deeply harmed by the adoption and the pain increased with time (BIRCO-Winkler). Drs. Harriet Ganson and Judith Cook found, "Birthmothers expressed deep anguish over adoption" (BIRCO-Ganson). Phyllis Silverman, Ph.D., who has studied birthmothers for twenty years, on behalf of Mary Beth Whitehead testified that ninety-five percent of the women she has studied found their loss shattering and worse than they imagined (Chesler).

The effect of the pain felt by birthmothers manifests itself in many ways. Sorosky tells us that most birthmothers do not enter psychotherapy because they surrendered a child; they push that experience to the subconscious. However, it often surfaces as the key to their inability to cope (Sorosky). Birthmothers seek therapy for numerous reasons:

Kaiser-Permanente Health Care conducted a study in 1979 of birthmothers who surrendered babies. Forty percent reported depression as the most common emotional disorder. Sixty percent reported medical, sexual and psychiatric problems. (BIRCO-Kaiser)

In another study 20 of 22 birthmothers sought psychotherapy for problems including depression alienation, physical complaints with no biological basis, sexual difficulties and difficulty making commitments (Millen).

Phyllis Silverman, Ph.D., interviewed fifty birthmothers and found many were not aware until years later they were grieving. "They all reported a sense of malaise. Still other birthmothers become weepy, restless, anxious and forgetful" (Silverman).

Birthmothers were not prepared for the aftermath of the surrender. They were told by the adoption professionals involved that it would be over soon; they would forget the experience; go on with their life and have more children. It worked that way for very few, if any. In the thousands of reunions I am aware of, there is only one birthmother who does not remember the experience. That one was in an accident, resulting in full amnesia of all personal history before the accident.

In time birthmothers do go on with the day-to-day tasks, but it proved impossible for most to pick-up where they left off before becoming pregnant. In Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience, Betty Jean Lifton, Ph.D., describes what birthmothers were told. "The social worker said it would hurt for a while, and then they would forget, as if they had experienced nothing more serious than a nine-month stomach ache. They found they could not go back to the life they had left behind because they had become different people in the process of becoming mothers" (Lifton). Carole J. Anderson, M.S.W., J.D., in her booklet, Eternal Abuse of Women: Adoption Abuse, explains this in another way. "Adoption is not the end of a painful chapter, but the beginning of a lifetime of wondering, worrying, and missing the child. It is a wound that time cannot heal...it is a limbo loss" (Anderson). A limbo loss is what the families of MIA (missing in action) soldiers experience. There is no finality; not to know whether the loved one is alive or dead. Always waiting and hoping he or she will be found.

True some birthmothers did marry, and have other children. However, according to research, far too many did not have another child, 20 to 30% by choice (Anderson, Deykin), and others suffered a secondary infertility rate 170% higher than the general population (Deykin).

Ninety-six percent of birthmothers want a reunion (Ganson, Deykin).