Adoption: Is surrendering a baby an act of violence?

Just wanted to drop in and let you know i have not forgotten about you, friends and readers. Life has just been very busy lately all around.

But I wanted to share some thoughts with you. I have been corresponding lately with some wonderful people who do research on trauma and violence, especially violence (physical, emotional, psychological, or sexual) against mothers and children.

And it struck me, of course we all know that "disembabyment" (using coercion to make a mother surrender her baby for adoption) is an act of violence; HOWEVER, is the surrender ("placing") of a baby for adoption also an act of violence, perpetrated on the child?

The fact that someone is coerced to perform a violent act, or is an innocent victim of the same act, does not make it any less violent for the other victim involved: the child who is ripped away from family, heritage, blood kin, family history, and the nurturing maternal presence he/she has bonded with for nine months and knows of no other.

I have met many adoptees who have very justified feelings of anger, rejection, and betrayal. But what if it is not just anger and hurt from being rejected: What if there is also a very justified feeling of having been the victim of violence? What if because there are no words for this crime, we all have a hard time expressing the emotions resulting from it? Or recognizing it as a crime. I.e., if the mother voluntarily surrenders her baby, it is an act of violence against her baby. If she is coerced into doing it, then she was forced to commit an act of violence and as such was a victim as well.

What if this is why most of society shuns women who have surrendered their babies? What if this is why many mothers who have surrendered feel guilt and shame? Because they have actually committed "a crime with no name." A crime that became socially sanctioned when infant adoption was legally invented ~150 yrs ago, but even now which makes many people feel uncomfortable. A crime now promoted with carefully-researched advertising campaigns geared at impressionable young mothers who want to "do the right thing." A crime that is no longer considered a crime as it is now "legalized abandonment," but about which all humans have an instinctive feeling is still just as violent. Is this why many people's first response to a natural mother is, "I could never give away my child!"

Not violent? Let your imagination picture a 4 or 5 yr old being suddenly and permanently pulled from their mothers arms ... if i were a young child it would certainly feel violent to me. The only difference? A 4 to 5 year old is verbal and has words for their loss, their pain, their trauma. Love her or hate her, this is what Nancy Verrier says:

" While adoptive parents may refer to the child as "chosen" and to themselves as the "real" parents, the child has had an experience of another mother to whom he was once attached and from whom he is now separated which he can never completely ignore. The words we use to describe that separation or the cognitive reasons we give for it make no difference to the feeling sense of the child. As one adoptee told me, "Being wanted by my adoptive parents didn't compare to being unwanted by my [mother]." Whether we refer to this separation as surrendering or relinquishment, the child experiences it as abandonment."

If the act of surrender, or of being taken, is a violent act against a helpless newborn, then how about a billboard campaign about "Giving away your baby is an act of violence. If you really loved your baby, you would keep your baby. Have a heart!" Tell it like it truly is.

Maybe it would counter the latest nauseating NCFA-promoted "Adoption is being a good mother" and "Adoption is a loving option" billboard and TV ad crap.


If you are an adoptee reading this: What do you think? What do you feel about it? Do you feel that it was an act of violence you experienced? (Comments enabled for this post)

Looking at traffic accidents ...

I do not understand it, but it seems that humanity must have a morbid fascination with viewing disaster, death, pain, or affliction. Maybe it is the fact that the bored love to get shocked out of their cozy little worlds, or that we are an innately curious species -- but what is it that compels many of us such that many people just cannot help but slow down and look for the worst when they drive past a particularly bad traffic accident? Is it adrenaline, or is it genuine human concern and caring, that makes people slow down to "take a look" at carnage?

Anyway, out of curiosity, I decided last week to join a particular (new?) little message board I had heard of, rumored to be the site of frequent metaphorical "traffic accidents." No, not Adoption.con, or alt.adoption, but supposedly a kinder, gentler place where "all members of the triad" (as if there is any such things as an "adoption triad"!) could relax and converse in a positive and happy manner (dodging traffic accidents...).

Perhaps I should not mention the name of the group, as this post is not supposed to be about bashing any one message board site, but about an incident illustrating a dynamic common to all other "triad" boards and groups that I have ever belonged to.

But, as with any other triad group I have seen: traffic accident zone it is. And, for some unknown reason, I find myself coming back every day and reading there ...


The particular hit-and-run ...

Anyway, "P.," another natural mother (I use this term out of respect, to respect and honor her as being a Mother to her lost daughter, rather than using a derogatory term analogous to incubator) posted a sincere and insightful post on that forum about coercion and how most people seem to turn a blind eye to it. Why is it that no-one believes us when we speak about the coercion that took our babies from us? Why do they think that our experiences are the exception, rather than the rule? Why is there this stigma that comes up, over and over again, around mothers who have lost children to adoption?

As people-who-adopted are part of this forum -- and in-fact seem not only to set the tone of this forum but to dominate almost every discussion on it -- I was curious to see what the responses would be.


"I'm sorry you felt that way... "

Well, somehow, as i expected, very soon the dismissals began. Although the first person who responded understood, believed, and was cool-- as did the second -- the third, however, gave a mini-lecture about how it was all P.'s personal perception of the situation (stressing though that we have to honor her emotions and personal perception, right?), likening it to how some families faced with the prospect of cancer take the news in stride, while others view it as a huge disaster.

• Coercion is NOT a matter of perception, it is a matter of legal fact. Emotions, feelings, beliefs, responses .. these are different: One feels fear, pain, loss, violation ... one believes in God or in an ethical code or in the supremacy of law ... but coercion either happens or does not. To say that it is a perception, a feeling, again dismisses P.'s realization and her experience as just being a personal subjective belief rather than a fact, an experience, series of incidents adding up to the loss of her child.
  

Another person then chimed in with this gem: "I will just say I'm sorry you were made to feel dehumanized."

• Made to FEEL dehumanized? Again, another variant on "I'm sorry you were [made to] feel this way."... NOT "I'm sorry that you were treated in a dehumanizing manner" or "I'm sorry that you were coerced." Again, an adoptive parent puts it as, not that N. was coerced, but that she just "feels that way"! Let's use an analogy: "You were not date-raped, you just feel that way!" See how it looks?

Reminded me of a conversation I had, my one post-reunion experience with an adoption agency. While looking for a support group, they were recommended to me. So I phoned ... Part of the conversation went like this:

The Agency: "So, when did you place your child?"
Me: "I did *not* place my child for adoption. She was taken from me at birth. I was given no choice."
The Agency: "Oh ... (pause) ... Often, birthmothers *feel* this way ..." (said dismissively)
Me "This is not just a feeling. It actually happened."

Now, perhaps the participants involved don't even realize that what they have done is totally dismiss P.'s experience and reality. Maybe they posted in all innocence, thinking that they were showing support? Or perhaps their responses to her are an unconscious way to protect themselves, to deny that coercion exists in adoption and thus to protect themselves from any niggling question that the child they obtained was perhaps unethically procured for them? Perhaps they are not aware that coercion (including duress) is recognized in law:

Coercion, in law, the unlawful act of compelling a person to do, or to abstain from doing, something by depriving him of the exercise of his free will, particularly by use or threat of physical or moral force. In many states of the United States, statutes declare a person guilty of a misdemeanor if he, by violence or injury to another's person, family, or property, or by depriving him of his clothing or any tool or implement, or by intimidating him with threat of force, compels that other to perform some act that the other is not legally bound to perform. Coercion may involve other crimes, such as assault. In the law of contracts, the use of unfair persuasion to procure an agreement is known as duress; such a contract is void unless later ratified. (from Answers.com)

Is this a feeling, a belief, an emotion? I think not. Maybe the particularly little bits of support are sufficient such that P. does feel supported, does feel that the fact that they "believe she feels coerced" will suffice. Frankly, I think she deserves better.

Aberrations, Mutants, Abnormalities ...

The stigma of being an exiled mother is another fact that P. mentions, and she is right-on with this. Why do people feel uncomfortable around us? Why do they give us looks that either dress-us-down as being unfit to be mothers, scrutinize us under a microscope as if we were some strange disease, or treat us as "cold hearted bitches who gave away" our children?

This quote is from an article on open records, but it is so true about the stigma that surrounds natural mothers:

"It is the child welfare establishment that has provided the picture of 'birthmothers' as indifferent -- as mothers who abandon their unwanted children with a wish to remain forever hidden from them. They know that this is seldom true, but it helps to facilitate their work for the public to believe this. Society does not dismiss the importance of the natural family as readily as the social planners, and so it is useful to portray relinquishing parents as different from caring parents.

"The 'birthmother' must be different, an aberration; for if it were true that she had the same degree of love for her child as all other mothers, the good of adoption would be overwhelmed by the tragedy of it. Adoptive parents are presumably somewhat relieved of guilt if they can be assured that the [first] parents truly did not want their child; for, under those circumstances, it is possible to feel entitled to claim the child of others. Neither society nor the mother who holds the child in her arms wants to confront the agony of the mother from whose arms that same child was taken.

It is true. We are stigmatized because we are seen as aberrations. And not only that, but once you have diminished a mother to being a "birth mother," referring to her by this artificially-created term, you now speak of her uterus, her vagina, her blood and her amniotic fluid. These are not subjects of "polite conversation" with strangers. So, no wonder the people at P's daughter's school play flinched and became uncomfortable when she was introduced to them with this word by the a-parents. ("P," I will link to your blog post where you describe this event if you want me to, or if you prefer to remain anonymous, I will honor that also). She was not only defined solely by, but her role was circumscribed solely by, her reproductive organs. Plus, you can bet that some of them wonder how much she got paid for providing the gestational service: the word "birth mother" is synonymous with "surrogate mother" in the minds of many who are not "adoption-affected."

So, maybe not much carnage on the road today with this incident, luckily. And it is possible that many may not realize that anything actually occurred that was wrong or even out-of-the-ordinary, but once more I see one more dismissal of the experiences of a natural mother on a "triad board," even when people-who-adopt are trying(?) to be supportive. This "kinder, gentler" board is indeed not quite as bad as some boards where a mother's decision to have sex is used against her as justification for disembabyment and to say that thus she had a "choice" (as if one is supposed to lead automatically to the other!). But unfortunately, many still just do NOT "get it."

But I do have to stop looking at these on-line "traffic accidents," reading at the sites where I know they will happen, even if I do fervently pray that I will be surprised and maybe one day a "triad group" will exist where they do not happen. I'm not holding my breath though.


Footnote to "P." I do not know you, but I would LOVE to see your first post on that message board reposted on websites where people read to learn about adoption and its issues. I sent you an email. Stand strong, I hear you. WE hear you.

Late Discovery Adoptees

Just when you think that people who take newborns away from vulnerable, naive and powerless mothers can't get any more evil, you find out that sometimes they can. The issue is that of Late Discovery Adoptees. Lie to the child their whole life about where they came from, who their natural family is, who their Bloodkin are.

"Blood is thicker than paper."

The next Adoption Show is about Late Discovery Adoptees, people who were lied to by their captors about who they were, distinctly to keep them from searching. If you want to see adopter paranoia about the dreaded Natural Family of their abdoptee, here it is. Along with NCFA, a league of baby brokers and adopters who fight to keep records closed. They say that they care. They tell their adoptees that they support their searches (yeah, right up until the 2nd visit with the natural mother, then ALL support vanishes when it looks like post-reunion contact will be ongoing). Right. Tell another lie to us.

"Late Discovery"
"Long Deceived"
"Lied-to Directly"
"Lied-to Diligently"
"Leashed by Deception" ...

THE ADOPTION SHOW: Voices Ending the Myth...
on
www.Natradio.com. Click "Listen"
Sunday July 9, 2006 @ 8:30 PM EST
Please visit The Adoption Show web site! www.theadoptionshow.com
Topic for July 9th: Late Discovery Adoptees

"I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later." -Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773), Guests...

____________________________

One of the abductees ... oops adoptees ... interviewed on this show is Noreen Talbot Hunter (born Dorothy Louise Hunter), who found out she was adopted at the age of 49. Noreen was devastated upon learning she was not related to the only family she had ever known, and was just as shocked when she tried to obtain the information about her (natural) family and was told it was against the law for her to know her mother, father or anything about her true identity. Noreen is still searching for her mother and story.

So, if you really think that people who adopt do it for the sake of the child, think again. Anyone who is so selfish as to leave their ward in the dark about where they came from certainly hasn't adopted for the child's sake. They most certainly did it for purely selfish reasons. Like my child's adopters who told me after reunion that I was NOT her mother and that she had only one mother and one father: Them. Those who can steal but cannot share, who expect us to hand over everything to them but cannot share 50/50 again even though they have the child all to themselves for 20 years. Fairness? It does not exist in adoption. Never has, and never will. They tortured her for 4 hours one night as punishment for her saying to them that she considered me to be a mother to her. No, they said, that was the WRONG answer. This torture took 2 yrs of counselling and support groups for her to recover from. And they are a typical adoptive family, in their own estimation.