by Anne Moody
Most traditional adoption agencies like to make it clear that their primary purpose is to find homes for children rather than to find children for adoptive parents. This distinction is especially noted when the agency handles international adoptions, older-child adoptions, or special-needs adoptions. There is no question that it is harder to find homes for some children than for others, and charitable instincts do sometimes play an important role in connecting a child and a family. But even when this is true, adoptive parents need to adjust their attitudes once they are actually parenting that child. Once the child is part of the family, relating to him or her as a recipient of the family’s charity is inappropriate and undermines the development of healthy family relationships.
This is not to say that I am unmoved by feel-good stories about adoption. It is impossible not to find it heartwarming when, for example, a community or church group rallies to adopt a large number of suffering children. The children are sometimes survivors of a natural or political disaster and were in desperate circumstances before being brought to the United States and placed in adoptive homes. Happy as I am that these kids are now safe, I have a perspective different from the norm in that I see trouble lurking behind the assumed gratitude of the children and the shortsighted assumption on the part of some parents that all is now well. Sadly (and sometimes tragically), some of the families who adopt such a child are unprepared for the enormity of the child’s needs and the task they have taken on. They may “have a heart” for the child, but they may also lack the considerable knowledge, skill, and resources they need to successfully care for him.
More than a few children who have been adopted in these circumstances do not end up staying with the family who adopted them. The happy ending to their tragic stories is never realized, and we need to examine the widely held assumption that life with an American family (any American family!) is the best choice for every child in need.
Consider the story of Rick and Betsy, who traveled to China to adopt a baby girl during a time when adoptions of children from that country were at their peak. While there, they also met a ten-year-old girl who melted their hearts. After their return home and several months of settling in with their new baby, they wanted to pursue adopting the unforgettable older girl. I talked with them at length about the difficulties of bringing an older child into a family with much younger children. But it is next to impossible to be hardhearted in these situations, and I knew full well that this girl might not get another chance to be adopted. I didn’t want to be responsible for denying her this life-changing opportunity. I wanted to believe that this girl and this family could overcome the steep odds against them. I decided to recommend that the adoption proceed, out of the notion that the connection between the family and child, having occurred by happenstance, was “fated”—a common sentiment in this type of international adoption story.
The child arrived six months later. It was a disaster from the start.
I won’t go into all the details about what was so troublesome; suffice it to say that this child who had lost every single thing that was familiar and comforting to her was distraught much of the time. The situation eventually became so dysfunctional that the mother and baby ended up leaving the home to stay with relatives. The ten-year-old, who was probably really several years older, repeatedly begged to go back to China, and the adopting parents wished for that as well. But the agency that had placed the child assured them that that was impossible, no matter what the child wanted. Even if returning to the children’s home where she had spent most of her life seemed best for her, it would be a disaster for the delicate relationship between the U.S. adoption agency and its counterpart in China.
The parents sought intensive counseling, both for themselves and for a child who appeared to be in the grips of a developing psychosis, but were unsuccessful in finding someone with the expertise the situation called for. Everyone was in tremendous distress, and there didn’t appear to be a way out for any of them. The placing agency was sympathetic but had no other appropriate family for the girl. In complete desperation, the father went online to research alternatives for treatment and discovered something called “rehoming” in which families who are seeking to relinquish an adopted child find families who are seeking to adopt such a child. On the surface, that seems like a reasonable idea. After all, it is not unlike the approach an agency would take in trying to find homes for a “hard-to-place” child. But in reality, the practice of rehoming has no legal, governmental, or professional oversight and is fraught with danger for the child.
The family did eventually find several families who could provide respite care for the older daughter and, after about a year, an appropriate adoptive family was apparently found. I hear from the first family that the girl is doing well now, and I certainly hope that continues to be the case. But questions remain in my mind about just how stable her situation really is, what the future holds for her, and whether it was really in her best interests to have left China. And I have to ask myself how I would handle things the next time a family wants to bring an older child into a family with a more vulnerable younger child. I would tell them what I have seen, I would caution them, and I would worry, and in the end I would probably decide they needed to find a counselor who felt less conflicted about this type of placement. I think I have finally come to the conclusion that I no longer feel comfortable being part of a process that puts children and families at risk in this way, but who knows how firmly I will hold onto that conviction the next time the situation comes up? Adoption counselors are just as tempted as adoptive parents are by the (sometimes misguided) desire to do good.
When people with younger children call me about adopting an older child, I ask them what they would do if they discovered that their older child was abusive to younger children in the family. Many people are shocked by the suggestion—pretty clear evidence of how unprepared they are for this type of problem—and some say they would get counseling for their children, as if that would necessarily solve things. Both answers suggest that the family intending to adopt has not fully thought through the potential issues in an older-child adoption. I believe that a child already in a family’s home, whether by birth or adoption, has the right to feel safe in that home. That child also has the right to know that his parents will do nothing to jeopardize his well-being. No matter how goodhearted their intentions, parents who bring into their home a child who has the ability to significantly harm a child already there are taking a huge risk.
I know there are wonderfully capable parents who have succeeded in bringing older children into a home with younger or more vulnerable children, and there are plenty of examples of this type of placement working out well. I have worked with some of them, so I’ve seen firsthand how successful these adoptions can be. But I’ve also seen how completely unaware/disbelieving the parents can be, sometimes years later when the abuse is revealed, and I know of too many families for whom this type of placement has been disastrous. I also know that sometimes, despite everyone’s best intentions, nothing could have been done by the agency or counselor to prepare the family adequately for the difficulties they would all face, which can be pretty unimaginable.
I would ask those who feel that I’m being unduly negative to consider who suffers when an adoption fails. The most obvious victim is the adopted child, who is now not only losing his home but also more of his self-esteem, his faith in other people, and his ability to form emotional bonds. The disrupted adoption has confirmed two of this child’s basic beliefs: (1) that people cannot be trusted and (2) that there is something unlovable and unworthy about him. He has also suffered the loss of precious childhood time. He needs to devote every possible minute of his remaining childhood to learning how to form healthy attachments, and a disrupted adoption is a setback that is hard to overcome. Whatever time the child has spent with a family that ultimately decides not to keep him is time that has been taken away from him in a new family, and this chil
d has no such time to spare. Chances are excellent that he has already endured a great deal of wasted childhood time prior to the unsuccessful adoption—time in which he was abused or neglected or suffered the trauma of poverty, social unrest, or natural disaster—and time spent trying to connect with a family that decides not to keep him immeasurably compounds his suffering and his loss, and can never be regained.
Parents, too, are victimized when an adoption is disrupted. Many of them take one of two harmful stances in reaction: either they vilify the child or they vilify the placing agency. As often happens with couples when a child dies, parents who have a disrupted adoption may find that they have very different, sometimes conflicting, methods of coping and of grieving and can be of little help to one another. For adoptive parents, there can be an added element of guilt and feelings of failure that are exacerbated by the critical—and often freely given—opinions of others. And if there is a younger child who has been abused, he may be happy and relieved that he no longer has to worry about being victimized but also feel that he was at least partially responsible for the failure of the adoption. That child may also hang onto the misguided notion, as so many victimized children do, that he was somehow partly responsible for the abuse.
My stance should not be taken as opposition to the adoption of older or traumatized children. What I object to is placing those children in homes where they have a seriously compromised chance of success. I’m afraid that parents who believe that they can always provide adequate protection for more vulnerable children in these situations are too often deluding themselves and are actually not a good resource for the older child. I am tremendously impressed by, and grateful to, the families who take on this sort of challenge and succeed at creating good lives for all of their family members. But I have also seen the families whose “success” is all for show, and if the surface is scratched a bit, layer upon layer of unhappiness and dysfunction is revealed.
International adoption of older children is sometimes driven by emotional responses that get in the way of the parents’ ability to prepare themselves for the challenges inherent in these placements. I used to do home studies for families planning to adopt from Russia, Romania, Ukraine, and other Eastern European countries. In the early days of adoption from the former Soviet bloc, too many prospective adoptive parents clung to the idea that developmentally delayed children from these countries were “only” suffering from the effects of institutionalization and could be fed, loved, nurtured, and prayed into “normalcy,” including the ability to form normal attachments with other family members. As time went on and these children struggled, people grew more informed about Fetal Alcohol Effect and the long-term, severe effects of early deprivation and institutionalization. Eventually, and very sadly, parents began realizing that a significant percentage of children from these countries had intractable problems that no amount of loving care or professional help could erase. Counselors were instructed by experts to inform prospective parents that approximately 25 percent of children coming out of Eastern European orphanages would have significant neurological damage. That’s a staggeringly high number—yet it did not discourage many families from playing the odds in their effort to adopt a (Caucasian) child who they hoped would be without significant developmental or emotional problems.
As it turned out, some of these children, and the families who adopted them, found neither the happiness nor the permanence they were expecting adoption to provide. As a counselor in these situations, I felt that too many adoptive parents weren’t fully comprehending the risks they were taking or the scope of the child’s problems. They seemed to feel that the three-to-one odds against their child having significant problems meant there was a good chance everything would be fine. While that attitude might reflect a positive outlook, it also seemed to reflect wishful thinking, and some of these parents were not at all prepared for the consequences if they and their child did not, in fact, beat the odds. I found myself struggling to find the balance between adequately preparing people for the problems they might face and talking them out of doing this type of adoption. And I found myself increasingly uncomfortable in this position. I wanted to be able to be encouraging and supportive and to share in the family’s happiness when the child was transformed and thrived. And if the child didn’t thrive, I certainly didn’t want to be the voice in the parents’ heads saying, “I told you so.”
There are no guarantees that parents will have a healthy child, whether through birth or adoption. All forms of parenthood involve a leap of faith into the unknown and a commitment to the child, no matter what problems arise. But in adoption, I believe that prospective parents have an added responsibility to be well informed about potential problems and to be completely honest about their own limitations in the face of these problems. Adoptive parents who indulge in a purely emotional response to a child in need are in danger of being dishonest with themselves about what they really have to offer that child. They are in danger of doing bad instead of the good they intended.
13
The Need for Open Adoption
Options for pregnancy was WACAP’s in-country infant adoption program. Helen Magee, its first director, was an early advocate of open adoption and a tireless champion of the rights of pregnant women who were considering adoption (among other options) for their babies. For a period of time beginning in the late 1980s, with the assistance of a large federal grant, the Options program encompassed a five-state area and handled approximately one hundred infant adoptions per year. This was an impressive number at a time when it was becoming increasingly difficult to adopt an American-born infant. My job as a supervisor in this program was to provide ongoing training for the counselors and be available to them as a consultant. My work hours were usually pretty evenly divided between work as an adoption counselor and work with the Options counselors and their clients. The number of hours I devoted to my job, dictated by the needs of each situation, varied dramatically from week to week. There were some adoptions that consumed all of my attention, while others seemed to smoothly handle themselves.
The basis of the Options program’s success was Helen’s commitment to openness in adoption and to correcting the sins of the past regarding treatment of birth mothers. Options focused on ensuring that all prospective birth mothers were treated with care and respect, and were provided with the sort of counseling that would allow them to make fully informed decisions about their babies. The program’s mission had been developed in direct response to the heartbreaking stories told by birth mothers from earlier times, when women were shamed into silence and submission by their pregnancies, and coerced into relinquishing their babies to anonymous adoptive parents. Birth mothers who had relinquished their babies in the 1970s and earlier, no longer willing to suppress their anger and sorrow, were finally beginning to speak out in numbers about what had happened to them. They wanted people to understand why their experience with traditional adoption, shrouded as it was in mystery, shame, and unanswered questions, had left them unable to properly grieve for, or fully recover from, their loss.
In the most unexpected settings, I will casually answer a question about what I do for a living and suddenly be confronted with just such an outpouring from a birth mother who needs this opportunity to express herself. I was once followed into a hotel restroom at a wedding by the maid of honor, who poured out the story of her teenage pregnancy for half an hour before another member of the wedding party tracked her down and hauled her off to the reception.
Another typical example from that era is the story of Monica, who talked nonstop for an hour one day when we met for lunch to discuss an unrelated matter. We had scarcely sat down and exchanged information about our lives and occupations when she—as she later apologized—“just spilled my guts all over the table.”
When she was a fifteen-year-old devout Catholic who taught catechism classes on Saturdays, Monica had started dating a man who was six years older. There had been
no discussion or instruction from her parents or anyone else about what to expect in this relationship and, not surprisingly, she became pregnant at age sixteen. Her boyfriend told her he would marry her but only if she got an abortion first. No one, including her parents, her boyfriend, and even Monica herself, felt that she was ready to become a parent. Monica stoically accepted responsibility for her situation, rejected the idea of an illegal abortion (it was 1966), and chose adoption for her baby. Her anguished parents, anxious that no one find out that their daughter was pregnant, sent her to what was called at the time a “home for unwed mothers,” where Monica was effectively imprisoned with a dozen or so other pregnant teenagers until her baby was born. She remembers how unkind and judgmental the women who operated the home were and how they managed to make the girls feel thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
Monica never saw her baby, who was immediately taken from her at birth and turned over to adoptive parents. Everything was done in the strictest confidentiality in the belief that the less Monica knew, the more quickly she could move on with her life. She remained in the hospital for three more days, for some reason on the maternity ward, surrounded by women with their babies. On the second day of her stay, a cheerful nurse popped her head in the door and announced that it was “time for the babies to come.” Monica remembers that she somehow found the strength to call back, in the most cheerful voice she could muster up, “I don’t get to have one.” The nurse ducked out and nothing further was said. No one in the hospital seemed to feel that Monica might need some extra comfort or support. Looking back now, her heart aches for that little girl who was so alone and who felt that it was her responsibility to reassure everyone else that she was just fine.
