Help adoptees reach first parents

Lorraine Dusky of Sag Harbor is the author of the memoir "Birthmark." She blogs at FirstMotherForum.com.

Published: May 12, 2011 7:10 PM
By LORRAINE DUSKY

Ask the man on the street if people who were adopted as babies should be able, as adults, to find out the identities of their original parents, and the typical answer is: Sure, isn't that their right?

Only for the fortunate few. In all states but six -- and New York isn't among that half-dozen -- individuals adopted at birth are still denied the unrestricted right to even look at a copy of their original birth certificates. Without that piece of paper, it's hard to have that longed-for mother-and-child reunion.

Even for infants adopted recently under rules that enabled the surrendering mother to meet the adoptive parents, the right to obtain the original birth certificate is crucial. Yet that all-important document remains locked up because of laws written long ago. The thinking then was that individuals would be secure in their new families and wouldn't need to know where they came from. And with the records sealed, their mothers -- their first mothers -- wouldn't be able to interfere in their lives. Those mothers would grieve in silence and then "forget" these children.

But that simplistic idea of how people are hasn't stood the test of time. Stories about reunited mother and child, or siblings, are in the news precisely because the heart understands what the law ignores: Neither does a mother forget, nor can questions of identity be stilled. They ring deep in the breast, and neither time, nor the love of an adoptive family, can erase them.

In New York, a group called Unsealed Initiative, made up of adoptees and first parents, are lobbying to repeal the 1935 law that sealed the original birth certificates of anyone adopted in this state. I'm one of them -- a woman who relinquished a child in 1966 -- and we've been at this battle for decades. We get so far, and then the bill gets lost in the morass of Albany when the session comes to an end.

This week, New Jersey's Assembly passed a bill giving adopted people the right to know who they are; it has passed the Senate and awaits a decision by the governor. In New York this year we have an energetic sponsor in Assemb. David Weprin (D-Queens). In the Senate, Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn) and William Larkin (R-Newburgh) are sponsors. We have dozens of co-sponsors and, it seems, even enough votes to get the bill passed -- if we can get it to the floor of the legislature before time runs out once again.

It's not that the legislators are mean-hearted people who would simply deny adoptees the right to know who they are. But they persist in thinking that they somehow must "protect" the women who surrendered their children when having a child out of wedlock was coated with shame and humiliation. Even if the state never promised anonymity to these women -- and it did not -- the understanding is that it was an implied promise back then. But that puts government in the untenable position of protecting one group by trampling the rights of another.

The great majority of us not only welcome meeting our children, now grown, but we anxiously hope for it. While some women would choose anonymity, their temporary discomfort and embarrassment are hardly reasons to keep the records sealed in this day and age.

Further, this position doesn't address the issue that all women, whether they wanted anonymity or not, were made party to this unjust pact with the state. If we had to surrender our children to the care and keeping of strangers, we had no choice but to be anonymous. And we have no choice today to undo what has been shown to be hurtful to our children, who are now adults and want medical histories and answers to questions of ancestry.

Another argument for keeping the records sealed is that abortions will go up if mothers cannot relinquish in secrecy and count on it forever. But data from states that allow adoptees to claim their original birth certificates proves this to be false. Abortions do not increase. Nor do adoptions decrease.

Yet no matter what happens to those numbers, they are side shows to the main issue: People adopted as children should have the same rights as the rest of us, that is, to fully answer the question: Who am I? It's only human to want to know.

Paper Orphans

Infertile woman stole newborn from hospital

HYDERABAD: Unable to bear the harassment of her husband due to her infertility, a woman was led to steal a newborn boy from the government hospital in Malakpet. After a 48-hour ordeal for the baby’s parents, police managed to trace the baby boy on Tuesday and took the accused into custody. Police got a clue from the conversation over mobile phone between the woman and baby boy’s aunt which helped them to nab the abductor.
Syed Nayeemuddin Javed, inspector, Chaderghat police said, the accused Shajahan, resident of Pahad Sharif had approached the baby’s mother Mehboob and claimed her mother-in-law was also admitted in the hospital. Before leaving, the woman played with the infant but later escaped along with the baby. He said that Shajahan got married for the second time a year back with an ayurveda doctor Ali, who runs a small hospital in Koti. After their marriage, Ali started harassing her for not being able to give birth to a baby. Recently, she approached a few doctors of Kathiza private hospital in Bhavaninagar.
“The doctors at Kathiza encouraged her to steal a child from the government maternity hospital while they prepared a fake record citing Shajahan was pregnant. After Shajahan stole the newborn from the government hospital, she went to Kathiza and took a certificate of giving birth to a baby boy,’’ the inspector added. “The accused had a conversation with Begum’s sister Baba Bee. Based on Baba Bee’s mobile call records, they identified Shajahan as accused and she was arrested from her house in Pahad Sharif. The baby boy is safe and has been handed over to his parents,’’ Javed said.
He said they would initiate legal action against Kathiza hospital management for encouraging Shajahan to steal a newborn baby from the government hospital. The hospital authorities refused comment.

Can Adoption Lead to Child Abuse?

Lisa Belkin
Posted: 11/9/11 07:08 AM ET

I have not been able to get four-year-old Sean Paddock, or 11-year-old Hanna Williams, or 7-year-old Lydia Schatz out of my mind. As Erik Eckholm reported in the New York Times yesterday, and Anderson Cooper discussed on CNN, most recently last week, the three children all died within the past five years, and they had several chilling factors in common.

Each of their deaths were brutal and agonizing: Sean suffocated; Hana, who was found lying naked in the muddy yard, died of hypothermia and malnutrition; Lydia showed signs of a brutal beating. In each case, one or both of their parents has been charged with their murder.

And in each case, those parents are said to have essentially punished their children to death, allegedly because they believed it was God's will. They are said to have been guided by the book To Train Up A Child, by Michael and Debi Pearl, which advocates beating children with rubber tubing, leaving them outside in the cold, and witholding food for days at a time in keeping with Biblical teachings. (No, I am not linking to it, out of sympathy with those who are petitioning sites like Amazon not to sell this particular book, which does not directly advocate the level of abuse that killed these children, but that appears to have been misinterpreted and misused by at least some of the parents who stand accused.)

Much attention has been paid to the religious pieces of a this tale. Less noted is that each of these children joined these families through adoption. Sean was born in the US, as were his five adopted siblings. Hana was from Ethiopia, as was her adopted brother (their parents had six biological children as well), and Lydia was from Liberia (there were two other adopted siblings among the family's nine children.)

Is this merely grisly coincidence? Or is there something about the adoption dynamic that makes violent abuse more likely?

One possibility is that adoptive children -- particularly those who spend their earliest years in an orphanage or shuttling from one foster caregiver to the next -- are more likely to suffer reactive attachment disorder, which are essentially the inability not only to bond, but to feel. The effects are not just psychological, but also physical, with evidence these children can have elevated levels of the hormone cortisol, which increases their tolerance for pain. Some speculate that spanking a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder can spiral out of control quickly, because it takes abusive levels of pain before the child actually feels it and responds.

This cycle is the talk of a handful of adoptive parenting websites, and, in particular, it has been discussed often on Why Not Train a Child, which is dedicated to warning parents about the dangers of the Pearls' book. There an anonymous commenter there, who describes him or herself as knowing the parents of Hana Williams personally, speculates:

Initially, I think their intentions for adopting were "good" (although I am uncomfortable with the idea of adopting children solely because you are religiously motivated to "rescue" them). I don't think they adopted Hana and her brother so that they could have some children to torture and abuse. However,I believe they made a huge assumption that these kids would respond to their methods just like their own biological children did. They expected Hana and her little brother to assimilate into their family, and most likely ignored their culture, how they had grown up (customs, beliefs, etc), and most importantly, the trauma that Hana and her brother had gone through in their childhoods. These kids just weren't acting like their biological children. Instead of taking a step back and getting professional help, they decided that they would continue to follow the Pearl method, but continued to up the ante, because these kids were NOT succumbing to being "broken".
Adoption can save a child and create a family. It can also come with complications that biological parents are far less likely to face. All children are vulnerable, but adopted children are more so, because the very fact of their adoption tells of a shakier start in life. They deserve more of our protection. In at least three cases they did not receive it.

Overseas adoptions 'too hard'

Adoption has been a long and emotional journey for Anita and Marty Fratel.

The couple are among of a small number of West Australians who have adopted a child from overseas but their attempt to adopt a second child came to an end last month when, after years and reams of paperwork, they finally gave up.

Before their successful adoption, which took four years, the couple lost the child they were waiting to adopt from India when the baby died of septicaemia just weeks away from the final approval for him to come to Australia.

Had approval been granted in time the Fratels would have been allowed to pay for medical treatment to save the baby's life.

Last financial year just eight children were adopted from overseas in WA, down from 18 the previous year.

Four children were adopted from China and one each from Korea, Ethiopia, India and Taiwan.

The number of children available for adoption is declining but the number of parents willing to adopt continues to grow.

Some countries have limited their intake of new applications for adoption and others have been suspended over concerns about child trafficking.

Intercountry adoption rates in WA are the second lowest in the country and the rate in Australia is among the lowest in the world.

Mrs Fratel said intercountry surrogacy had now become more popular than adoption because it was considered easier.

"We know of several couples who have taken that route after waiting so long for an adoption," she said. "They are home within 18 months with their babies."

The Fratels began trying to adopt a decade ago.

Ms Fratel said the Department for Child Protection, responsible for overseas adoptions in WA, was anti-adoption, poorly staffed and over-bureaucratic.

"We have had 14 staff dealing with the India program in eight years," she said. "The system is a mess. It is better odds to win Lotto than to get a child through intercountry adoption. "You have to be very resilient and you have to pay around $20,000."

Single mother Heidi Robinson tells a similar story of heartbreak when trying to adopt her daughter from Ethiopia.

Like the Fratels, Ms Robinson lost a baby she had been allocated while she waited helplessly for the final paperwork to be approved.

The eight-month-old girl died while waiting for her final health clearance.

"Even though I had never met her, once you have that photograph you are desperate to protect them and get them home. It was terrible," Ms Robinson said.

She was successful in a later attempt and is now the mother of eight-year-old Kendi from Ethiopia, who she says is the "sweetest, kindest, loveliest person".

"I'm sure they lose a lot of babies in those places," Ms Robinson said.

A spokesman for the Department for Child Protection said prospective parents were urged to consider fostering a local child.

"The current average waiting time for a placement is four years after the applicant has been approved," he said.

"The adoption team is not under-resourced and all applications and placements are managed in an efficient and timely manner. Staffing in the adoption team has been consistent with staff having been in the team, on average, for six years."

A spokeswoman for National Adoption Awareness Week, which began yesterday, Jacqui Gilmour, said her organisation was trying to open the issue to public debate.

"There are hundreds of children in orphanages who have no families in countries like Ethiopia, while you have parents here who are desperate to adopt and have to wait for years. It just doesn't make sense," Ms Gilmour said.

"Everyone recognises that the best option for children is to be with their parents. "We think all children should be loved and that doesn't happen in institutions."

Shattered Families, the groundbreaking new report from ARC

From Steve Jobs to Kids in Foster Care: Lessons During National Adoption Month

Adam Pertman

Executive Director, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute; author, 'Adoption Nation' and 'Adoption by Lesbians and Gay Men'

From Steve Jobs to Kids in Foster Care: Lessons During National Adoption Month

Posted: 10/28/11 01:21 PM ET

With seemingly ceaseless regularity nowadays, most recently in the coverage of Steve Jobs' passing, we are inundated by conflicting messages relating to adoption.

For the next few weeks, the wonder of adoption will be on display. November is National Adoption Awareness Month, so media outlets nationwide will be -- and should be -- writing stories about children whose lives are improved as a result of moving from foster care into permanent, loving families. President Obama will even issue a proclamation, as he and his predecessors have done routinely in past years, saying something to the effect that our country is blessed by this extraordinary institution.

At other times, of course, a very different picture is transmitted. Sometimes the focus is on adoptive parents who seem to regard adoption as child rental (remember the mother who "returned" her son to Russia?) or ones who purportedly use the child welfare system as a means of getting monthly support payments; the most sensational case took place several years ago in New Jersey, where a couple allegedly starved their four adopted sons in order to retain more of their state subsidies.

Press accounts cast an appropriately suspicious eye on parents who commit such horrid acts but, all too often, they also raise broader concerns about the competence and motives of adoptive parents per se; in particular, they implicitly or explicitly suggest that people may adopt children for dubious reasons or even that adoption itself is somehow a less-legitimate or less-desirable means of building a family than is childbirth. In the coverage of Jobs, for instance, we're regularly seeing and reading reports that question his being "given away" by his "real parents" -- language that hardly affirms adoption as a positive option.

So which is it? Lucky kids or kids relegated to second-class families? Good people trying to do the right thing for their children, either by placing their children for adoption or adopting them, or desperate people with suspect motives? What are we to think when we receive such disparate impressions, not just today, but time after time when there's a high-profile story involving adoption? Or even when adoption is depicted in either very positive ways ("Modern Family") or chillingly negative ways ("Orphan") in the movies and on television?

Based on available research and extensive experience, two unambiguous images emerge: that most adoptive parents are doing the same things as most biological parents -- that is, providing their children with all the affection and care they humanly can; and that, with rare exceptions, boys and girls are far better off in permanent families than in foster care, orphanages or any other temporary or institutional setting.

But adoption's history of secrecy has afforded us with too few opportunities to learn about its realities. So we tend to assume we're learning far more from singular, usually aberrational experiences -- man bites dog is a story, after all, while dog bites man is not -- than we usually are.

Yes, financial payments intended to increase the number of adoptions from foster care can cause complications, but that's the clear exception. And, yes, families sometimes struggle as a result of the challenges their children face as a consequence of having been mistreated and/or institutionalized before they were adopted. But there is no indication that horrors such as the ones that typically make the news are being repeated with any regularity elsewhere, even though many thousands of parents throughout the country receive state subsidies -- and even though the number of children being adopted from foster care is at historic highs.

Moreover, even in the most troubled systems, good things are happening daily. Most children are being reunited with newly healthy mothers, fathers and other biological relatives, while a fast-growing number of kids -- over 52,000 last year alone and over 57,000 the year before that -- are being adopted by loving parents who treat them well. The same is true for the hundreds of thousands of girls and boys who have been adopted from orphanages abroad over the last couple of decades.

It's hard to learn much from secrets, so we as a culture don't yet know enough about adoptions from foster care and institutions to put the aberrational stories in perspective. That's changing, to be sure; organizations such as the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, which I'm proud to lead, are providing more and better research and knowledge - please take a look at www.adoptioninstitute.org to read our most recent work - and, partly as a result, the media are doing a better and better job of informing the public, policy-makers and others who profoundly affect the tens of millions of children and families for whom adoption and foster care are daily realities.

Even as we make progress, however, the still-widespread lack of knowledge has tangible, negative consequences that play out in the attitudes all these people encounter and the policies that impact their lives.

I am not defending any system that does less than everything possible to protect the children within it. But we live in a society in which nearly every program that helps vulnerable children receives insufficient resources; in which well-intentioned quick fixes replace (rather than augment) thoughtful, long-term solutions such as post-adoption services; and in which cases like the ones I've cited above fuel our worst stereotypes about adoptive parents, birth parents, their children, and adoption itself.

A positive and fair question for the media to ask (but I haven't yet heard it asked) would be something like this: Would the world have had Steve Jobs without adoption?

During National Adoption Awareness Month, states across the country will celebrate by holding public ceremonies at which hundreds upon hundreds of children will receive the opportunity to move into permanent, loving and successful families.

I'd like to suggest it's also a good time for all of us to start learning more about adoption, foster care and institutionalization (orphanages), because the problems will be fixed more rapidly if faulty stereotypes are replaced by genuine understandings. And the ultimate beneficiaries will be the hundreds of thousands of boys and girls, in our own country and others, who will still need homes long after we turn another page on our calendars.