Grown In My Heart » Heather

Adoptee Rights Expanded in Ontario, Colorado

Heather — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:00:45 +0000

Thanks to the hard work of adoption activists, hundreds of thousands of adults who were adopted as children in Canada and Colorado will now be able to do what the rest of the population does with hardly a second thought: get a copy of their birth certificate.

Under a new Ontario law that took effect June 1, both first parents and adoptees gained access to original birth certificates and other adoption records, information previously kept hidden by provincial law. In Colorado, a Court of Appeals decison in April unsealed the records of adoptions finalized between July 1951 and July 1967. Original birth certificates will become available to affected adoptees once the State creates a proper application process.

Original birth certificates can contain vital clues to an adopted person’s identity, including the name given to him/her at birth, his/her first mother’s (and sometimes first father’s) name, and the hospital where the birth took place. They are regularly sealed in most places once adoptions are finalized, and laws granting adopted adults access to them currently exist in only a handful of states. Detractors of open records argue that they violate birth parents’ privacy, a position rejected by many courts.

Even so, the opposition’s influence shows in the recent two decisions. In Ontario, closed records supporters forced a provision that allows birth parents or adoptees to remain anonymous by filing a ‘disclosure veto’ that blocks the other parties from accessing the records. (As of May 1, just under 2,500 people–less than 1% of potentially eligible parties–had applied for the veto.) And in Colorado, the ruling still left records between 1967 (when state law first instructed that anonymity should be part of the relinquishment and adoption process) and 1999 (when the laws again changed to stop sealing records) closed shut. Showing again that there is still much work to be done until all adopted people enjoy the basic civil right to information about their own origins.

Originally posted 2009-06-07 22:55:16. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Names Names Naaaames

Heather — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:17:47 +0000

Every so often Adoptive Families magazine solicits comments for articles they have in the works. They recently sent out this request for a piece on naming adopted children:

Choosing a Name: Naming your child is a complex decision for all parents–and for adoptive parents there may be even more considerations. Tell us about your child’s name and how you made this important decision. Did you pick a name you’ve always liked? Did you name him or her after a family member? Did you ask the birthparents for input? If international, did you “Americanize” the name, or keep the given name as a middle name? If you adopted an older child, did you let the child choose?

Notice anything missing?

Like maybe keeping the name the child already has?

Obviously I’d be a big old hypocrite if I said adoptive parents are wrong to rename. I don’t think it’s as simple as never/always. But I do think the usual discussion about this issue is incredibly lopsided toward our interests. It’s awfully telling that this set of questions (a) pretty much assumes the adoptive parents are going to do the naming and (b) cheerfully hands all the authority* to them. (“Did you ask the birthparents for input?” “[D]id you let the child choose?”)

This was my response (hey, they asked):

It’s odd that the set of “Choosing a Name” questions gives no nod to adoptive parents who opt not to name their children. A child’s given name can be a powerful connection to their pre-adoption life and identity. Given the many families who maintain this continuity by not changing names–or who name a child in partnership with the birth parents in open domestic adoptions–I’m surprised this viewpoint wasn’t represented. It is often assumed that adoptive parents will change their child’s name, but I would hope any AF piece would help us think about naming in adoption in new ways and include a wide range of options.

Maybe they’ll reprint Dawn Friedman’s essay on not changing her daughter’s name and get everyone all riled up again.

* I’m not talking about the legal authority to name/rename an adopted child; that’s never in question. This is about our moral authority to re-name someone, which is much murkier to me, especially in a multi-party situation like adoption.

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If you would like to share the story of your child’s name with Adoptive Families, email letters@adoptivefamilies.com and include your name, phone number, and child’s name, age and country of birth.

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Originally published at Production, Not Reproduction

I Blame “Juno”

Heather — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:20:47 +0000

It’s not like we haven’t seen this before.

The near-constant reruns of Adoption Stories often showcase domestic adoption from the prospective adoptive parents’ point of view. Just the other month, the MTV series 16 and Pregnant featured a young couple who placed their child in an semi-closed adoption. Even Dr. Phil recently got into the business of pressuring encouraging a teen mom to place.

But the WE tv network blows them all out of the water with Adoption Diaries, a new regular series premiering this fall focusing on domestic open adoption. Not the years upon years of relationship between birth and adoptive families that is the heart and guts of open adoption. But the brutally emotional period of pre-birth matching and placement.

On their website, WE tv explains the show will showcase “the matching process between couples who, having struggled with infertility,* turn to adoption and the brave, expecting mothers whose difficult and selfless decision to place their children for adoption makes it all possible.”

If you’ve already framed the show as the story of brave, selfless women “gifting life” to helpless infertile couples, then you have a problem. Right out of the gate there is a troubling imbalance, in which the only happy ending is the baby going home with the more-deserving adoptive parents–and opting to parent means a mother is cowardly and selfish. The script is pre-written and you’d better know your role.

Think about being cast as “the birthmother” in an Adoption Diaries episode. Imagine cameras trailing you as you deliberate over which couple to choose. As you prepare not only to give birth, but to say goodbye to your beloved child soon after. While you hold your baby for the first time and the enormity of what you’re considering hits you in a completely new way. During those precious few days you have together with them.

Now imagine that you realize—for whatever reason—that adoption isn’t the right decision after all. You’re breaking from the script of the show. Not only will you have to face disappointing the hopeful adoptive parents, but millions of viewers (including people you know) will watch you do it.**

Could you choose to raise your baby in that situation?

My husband and I adopted two children through open adoption and had pre-birth matches, just like the families on this show will. Both processes were quite smooth, from an industry standpoint. We probably looked like something out of a brochure at placement, with everyone hugging through tears and brimming with love for the tiny babies and each other.

But in the years that followed, both of my children’s birth mothers have told me that relinquishment was the single most painful experience of their lives–and one of them has known some serious trauma in her life. Different adoptions, different agencies, different women with entirely different life experiences and reasons for placing. Both secure (at least in front of me) about their decision. Yet both with immeasurable grief that they couldn’t wholly understand until some time into the adoption. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

A social worker who works with expectant parents considering adoption once told me that no matter what she says or does, her clients think relinquishment won’t be as hard for them as it is for everyone else. But it always is. By the time the women on the show will have reached that point of realization, it will be too late to back out of filming. That an agency would agree to put that experience up for public consumption on a regular basis deeply troubles me.

I understand the appeal of the domestic open adoption process from the producers’ perspective. It’s a process with a built-in storyline full of emotion, tension, and longing. The creation of the new adoptive family and the trusting commitments between them and the first family are incredibly powerful things to witness, not to mention live through. Plus, babies! According to a press release, the folks involved hope to get the word out about open adoption and clear up misinformation. But doing it in this way is an ethical minefield with the potential to really hurt people. And the misconceptions I run into about open adoption? They’re not about the matching process–they’re about all those years afterward.

So here is my plea to WE tv: By all means, tell our stories. Let us show you why we are so passionate about open adoption. Let us open a window onto the joy and sadness, love and struggle that are part of it. Let our children share in their own voices about what it’s like to grow up in an open adoption. But please, please keep the cameras away until well after the adoptions are finalized.

* I wonder about the “infertile couples” bit, since the agency in question works with quite a few single folks and same sex couples hoping to adopt. Will they be excluded from the show?

** Or maybe the show won’t air because it doesn’t have a happy ending and the producers will be angry at you for wasting their time. The producers who probably offered financial compensation in exchange for your participation in the show.

Capturing the joy

Heather — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:25:19 +0000

Earlier this week my family and I played and posed in a sunny neighborhood park while a pair of swanky photographers captured our every smile and hug.

And it didn’t cost us a penny.

The afternoon was courtesy of Celebrating Adoption, a network of photographers across the United States who waive their session fees for adoptive families during the first year of the adoption. Coordinator Jennifer Samaha conceived of the idea while photographing a prospective adoptive family for their profile. Moved by the hope and love she witnessed during that session, she offered them a free post-adoption sitting, and other photographers soon followed suit. Details and a list of participating photographers can be found at the Celebrating Adoption website.

I’d love to see the offer extended to birth parents, too, whether after placement or right before if they won’t have ongoing contact with their placed child. They are as much a part of adoption as the adoptive family, after all. What parent doesn’t love a well-taken portrait with their child?

We’re scheduling a photo session on our own for our daughter and her first mom in her home town later in the year. And eagerly awaiting our upcoming appointment to view the shots from our family’s lovely day at the park. (We got a peek at some on the digital camera screen and just loved them.) The hard part now will be deciding which prints to purchase!

Heather captures the life of her family in words at Production, Not Reproduction.

Should adoption be easier?

Heather — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:00:45 +0000

Before you read Heather’s post today please congratulate her on this month’s publication in Adoptive Families Magazine! Congrats Heather and Well DONE!

An official at Duke University was arrested last week on charges of not only molesting his son but offering him up to be raped by others.

He was a father by adoption.

Before anyone protests that there are horrible parents out there who abuse their biological children, too, just wait–because it gets worse. In Internet chats, Frank Lombard allegedly said he was “into incest” and implied that he adopted for the purpose of having children to molest. When asked how he got access to a child so young, he answered, “’Adopted’… and said that the process was ‘not so hard … esp (sic) for a black boy.’” (Lombard is white and his two adopted sons are African-American.)

I often hear organizations and individuals saying we need to make it easier for people to adopt. Honestly, I’ve never understood exactly what they want to see happen. The articles don’t say whether Lombard’s adoptions were public or private. But I can tell you that the home study process for our first (domestic, private, agency) adoption was almost a joke. Yes, there was a lot of paperwork, and, sure, we grumbled at times that most parents didn’t have to jump through any hoops before birthing a kid. But shouldn’t it be hard? We were being entrusted with a child. The home study should have been the hardest, most stringent, most thorough process we’d ever faced. Frankly, I’d had tougher interviews for entry-level jobs.

And we should be ashamed that we let continue a de facto scale in which children deemed “harder to place”–like these two African-American baby boys–are adopted through a less restrictive process than other kids. It’s in the best interest of the children to have the same requirements applied to prospective adoptive parents across the board, not loosened based on what value a market-based system has assigned to them.

I know we can never predict what will happen years down the road, what sorts of tragedies will befall adoptive families, nor every choice adoptive parents will make in the future. But at the very least we should be able to stop people like Lombard, who go into adoption with nothing but sick, selfish intent.

My heart goes out to those two children and to their first families, who likely don’t realize that the unnamed boys in the news are their kin. As might be expected, the two boys are now in the protective custody of the North Carolina Department of Social Services. Let’s hope we do better by them this time.

Facing down the judges in Malawai

Heather — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:02:00 +0000

Entertainment media and adoption blogs have been abuzz lately with news of Madonna’s second adoption from Malawai. The singer’s petition to adopt four-year old Chifundo “Mercy” James was approved by Malawi’s Supreme Court of Appeals in an irreversible decision, ending a long, controversial legal struggle.

This most recent decision overturned a lower court’s denial, which found that Madonna did not meet Malawi’s strict residency requirements for potential adoptive parents, requirements meant to serve as safeguards against child trafficking. The higher court chose to view Madonna’s extensive charitable work in the country as equivalent to an extended stay. Framing the decision as a choice between growing up in a Malawian orphanage or life abroad with Madonna, the judges decided the adoption was in Mercy’s best interests.

Adoption reform activists expressed dismay that the higher court brushed aside concerns about the consequences this exception could have on future inter-country adoptions. Will having the means to make big donations be enough for hopeful adoptive parents to sidestep Malawaian law in the future? How will Malawai, not a participant in the Hague Convention, protect the rights of its children if what requirements that are in place are softened?

Nor did the higher court’s opinion reference the protests of Mercy’s biological family–both of her maternal grandmother, who resisted releasing Mercy for adoption for several years, and of her alleged father, who expressed interest in taking custody but did not have the means to prove his paternity or press the matter in court. Reducing the matter to life in an orphanage vs. being adopted abroad oversimplified what is in reality a complex situation with no easy answers.

Adoptive parents untroubled by the Malawai court’s bending of the rules might consider the fact that judges in the U.S. go around the law at times as well, and not always in favor of the prospective adoptive parents.

Consider the Michigan judge who refuses to sign adoption orders unless at least one parent stays home full-time during the child’s first year and part-time through preschool–even when the child’s birth parents are fine with both adoptive parents working outside the home. His unofficial rule–which he applies only to adoptions of healthy newborns–effectively limits infant adoption to (1) couples (2) with the means to live on a single income. While I might agree (at least in principle) that it’s important to think about attachment even when adopting babies, having adoption policy created ad-hoc by a judge based on nothing more than personal beliefs is hardly something to applaud. Whether they’re bending the rules for a pop star in Africa or blocking adoptions here at home.

Heather writes at Production, not Reproduction when she is not following the news and her favorite million dollar celebrities.